Previous Thread - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...014-a-1415926/

Cliffs about me:
- 19 years old
- 2nd year student at Aston University Birmingham studying Business and International Relations.
- Been playing Live since last January
- I was pretty awful, now I'm slightly less awful
- I'm apparently a nit
- Mainly play £1/2 cash in Birmingham, don't travel to play/play tournaments much

Goals:
- Focusing on playing the deepest games in Birmingham possible
- Continue studying/looking to leaks in my game I can plug
- Actually travel to different places to find different games
- Start playing better structured, higher entry tournaments like GPS/DTD/other now I'm rolled to do so.
- Try and take at least some shots in higher juicer games if/when they come along.
- Continue trying to find competent people to stake
- Post more pictures in thread to make it more interesting
- Run better (hardest task obv)


Cliffs of January:
- Went to Dusk Till Dawn for the first time to play the £300 deepstack, didn't end well
- Didn't play for majority of December/January due to Holidays/Exams
- Made up for it slightly by playing 38 hours in last 7 days of January
- Ending +£1.8k during that time
- Got stacked in an 800bb vs a complete maniac A10 vs QJ on 9104r.
- Folded AK to a 5-bet cram for 200bbs, got shown 102ss
- Called someone down with 72o on A7334ss in a straddled pot when 72 game in effect and was correct.
- Won a free seat to the £440 GPS series in Star City to be played on Thursday as part of a casino cash game promo.


Hourly over my brief time playing over the last 3 months when I started recording it (lol sample size etc etc):



I hope not to fail.

Glgl

What are the cash games in Birmingham like? Much selection?

fyp
gl fish. hope youre on my table on thurs so i can peel your 4b w/ T4ss again.

You're still pretty awful mate, gl

There is a lot of competition in Birmingham as the games very rarely go above £1/2 meaning all the crushers and fish are in the same games which makes games pretty inconsistent going from amazing games on certain days to downright awful on others. The upside to this however is, due to there being 4 main casinos all fighting for a limited amount of players, rake is very low (5% capped at £3 usually) and promotions/incentives are very good to.

Also did an analysis comparing the said 4 casinos here which is still fairly accurate - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...80/index2.html

And I'll get you off it with 94dd.

But slightly less awful then last year right .

play in the 2/5 on friday

glgl

If the game is good enough why not.

Pretty boring update from the GPS, busted my first bullet at the start of the second level where UTG opens to 300, my friend in MP 3-bets to 800, I 4-bet to 2200 with kings and both call. Flop is 1044r, I continue for 3600, UTG crams for 21k, MP folds and I call to be shown AKo, but he rivers an ace.

Second bullet I fluxuated all day from 80k at peak to 15k at the low point but I end on 46k at the end of the day. But bust 4 hours into day 2 where I couldn't win the flip. On the bright side I made back the second bullet in cash on the day and the first was a freeroll so it wasn't too bad.

I'll try to put more volume in this month but it just depends on how much Uni work I have to do, but I've moved into accommodation now which is only walking distance from one of the main casinos I go to so that's pretty neat and should help to increase my volume by some amount. GL all.

Subbed!

What are your opinions on live games in bham in comparison to online?
By this i mean like a good winning 5nl 10nl player, would they be a winner in your 100nl live games?
Just wondering how in bham what skill level is needed to beat the fish in your live games, obvs the regs are probz sickos

Hi there, the games in Birmingham are definitely drying up, you'll find the same regulars on the same tables pretty much wherever you go and there definitely seems to be an over saturation of good players right now but if you can beat 5/10nl online profitably you'll probably be able to beat like £1/2 fairly easily to as long as you're not playing completely exploit-ably. I mean live is a completely different beast to online because things like recognizing the fish/whale and opening/closing your range/sizing appropriately has a much bigger emphasis live so you'd need to pick up new live skills to beat the games more profitably, but once you've picked that up you could fair pretty well.

But if you live in London definately take advantage of London games just sayin.

I haven't updated this month really but I if I had to summarize February in one word it would probably be "meh." Although I have moved a lot closer to the casinos and thus have been able to generally put more hours in, the fact is that during the weekdays there is little to no action around Birmingham worth playing in and if a game does open up somewhere it's either completely reg infested due to the supersaturation of pros, or the same old nightly MTT tight fish who only buy in for minimum anyway. As well as this, one of the casinos I put the majority of my hours into and the one that is walking distance from me chose to almost double their rake in January, which, while still low in comparison to some of the bigger places to play like Nottingham/London, because of the amount of the recreational players who happen to be short stackers in the game, it means that now when you win a pot versus them, the majority of the time you're going to be raked for the maximum which over a long term can lead to a noticeable reduction in win rates.

I'm pretty sure that we're nearing the threshold of finally saying that "Live poker is dead in Birmingham" which is pretty strange considering that it's the second most populated city within the country, but when the best casino for poker in the city usually can only hit a peak of three £1/2 holdem tables on their best day of the week and nothing higher whilst the other competitors struggle to even get one going on that same night and even then around 50% of the field are the same tight/competent regulars anyway, I can't really see how you can go further down. I'm not entirely sure why this is, maybe the people in Birmingham just don't like playing poker, maybe it's the fact that because there is no guaranteed game at one particular casino that they don't even bother turning up and chose to play online instead, or maybe it's perhaps that the majority of the recreational players that come to sit choose not to come back due to the over abundance of regs who won't even give them the time of day making the games less fun meaning they are much less likely to come back, which brings me on to another point that has been bothering me at the moment, from the last year of playing in Birmingham exclusively, I can honestly say that there is a certain toxic stigma with the pros in these games where the majority of then make little to no effort to try and socialize or make the game fun for the recreational fish in order to try and persuade them to come back even if they end up losing if just for the social side. This has always confused me as these people are where you'll be making the majority of your income as opposed to just trading money with regs. If mean, if I was just starting to gain an interest in poker and wanted to try a live game in Birmingham, I can honestly say that I would be reluctant to ever come back to play on a current average night, as the atmosphere in these games are very often more tense and serious due to the large amount of pros who rely on this game as an income, and as a result choose to take it very seriously as opposed to a game where the atmosphere is much lighter and friendly which would help to bring players back repeatedly creating an overall better game. This has created a sort of divide in Birmingham between the older regulars and the young pros creating a negative atmosphere as neither side wants to associate with each other. I'd like to think that I'm one of the exceptions here as I try to make an effort to socialize with the young regulars as well as the older ones and especially with the fish/whales at the tables.

I remember reading one of Robfarha's posts on here (who by the way posts some of the best stuff on this forum about the reality of poker and what comes along with it and if you don't read that thread I highly recommend you do.) where he wrote about this saying that, while you don't have an obligation to entertain the recreational players at the table as a pro, but this doesn't mean that you should completely ignore them and you should at least make an effort which doesn't mean you have to start playing every hand and downing a round of shots every orbit to liven up the table, but to just start making light conversation (NOT ABOUT POKER) around the table as opposed to just talking hand strat to your reg friends about how you called there with second pair because it was ahead of his perceived range of some **** like that. There just seems to be a negative air of arrogance around the average pro here which just doesn't make good games which, in the current state that poker in Birmingham is in, is just going to stagnate the game if not make it worse.

TLDR - Games in Birmingham are dying/almost dead, how the pros act within these games are terrible and something needs to change if the games are to start picking up again and the game is going to be able to keep running.

So I hit the 200 hour mark this week and since I rarely update thought it would be worth updating with progress.



I'm obviously really happy with my stats at the moment, I can really say that the last month I've been certified golden on the felt. Whilst all of last year I never felt there was a period where the stars had aligned for me for more than a couple of weeks, but right now it seems in a lot of cases I'm getting there and getting paid full on a regular basis. However as a counter point I think my volume for the last 2 months has really been poor. I know people usually want to play more when they're experiencing an upswing, but right now I feel quite unmotivated to play even if, when I go I'm usually winning big. I think my stats are really inflated now with the upswing I'm experiencing. I'm hoping when I'm getting closer to the 500 hour mark it will balance at about a £25-30 average but we'll see.

As far as the games go, they are still pretty dead in Birmingham but at least they have started to slightly pick up from early February where they were weeks where I was playing in some of the worst games I've ever played in. However I still think there's a long way to go before anyone could ever class the action as great as other places in the UK.










Mandatory chip porn I said I'd start posting to

Agreed the younger generation of players need to start interacting and socialising with the old regs/fish to make it a better game. But unfortunately with regards to the younger people, poker does tend to attract the socially inept and the kind of people that lay into you if you make a mistake rather than giving constructive criticism.

Anyway subbed and gl! Maybe this year you'll actually beat me in a hand :P