Student Poker Blog

A lot of the time when I’m playing online poker, I’m usually on messenger at the same time talking to a few of my friends. In fact, I’m probably surfing the web and browsing through random web pages in the time between I’m talking to friends and making my plays at the poker table. If I’m pushing the boat out I will probably have media player on in the background so that I can listen to some music, but its at about this point that my laptop starts to get a little tired out and slows down under the strain. My laptop isn’t the newest so I have to be gentle, but I’m looking to get a new one in Jan so I can kick the shit out of that one for a while to stretch its legs.

But anyway, the point is that I am rarely ever committing 100% of my concentration to the poker table, and I never take note of any hands played by my opponents in between my own hands. This obviously isn’t going to be too beneficial to my game, because I’m missing out on the opportunity to pick up reads on my opponent and then use them to my advantage when I get caught up in hands with them. There have been countless times that I’ve come across the poker tip ‘always watch your opponents at the poker table, even when you’re not in the hand’ or something along those lines, yet I’m disregarding it at every opportunity. But at what cost?

If I’m being honest, I don’t think that it’s going to be too detrimental to my game. Whenever I play poker and use messenger or browse the Internet at the same time, I’m pretty much playing ‘casual poker’ and using poker to kill some time. I’m not diving head first into any big stakes cash games, I’m just hanging around the lower stakes playing a couple of hands and seeing what happens. I’m obviously playing with the intention to win, as I’m going to employ a good strategy to the best of my ability, but I’m not completely focusing on the game to extract every last cent I can from each hand. So although my win rate is taking a slight hit, I doubt its something that I am going to lose sleep over.

To further my point, if I did sit down at my laptop and say to myself “Right, I’m going to dedicate the next hour to winning as much money from poker as possible”, I would almost definitely open up around 4 tables at the same time and multi-table away for the hour. Now whenever I multi-table, I’m probably going to pay as much attention to picking out reads on my opponents in between hands as I would if I was on messenger and clicking off the screen every time I wasn’t involved in a hand. So I’m going to assume that my ability to focus on one table is the same during multi-tabling as it is when I’m playing ‘casual poker’.

It would be interesting to actually find out the difference in my win rate, but I’m guessing its probably only going to be around 2BBs per 100 hands or so. But at the end of the day, if I wanted to play poker to the best of my ability and really focus, then I would exit messenger and put all of my attention onto the table. But considering I’m not overly desperate to earn some money at the moment and because I’m not at a higher limit, I’m quite happy to multi-task and miss out on the extra big blind or two every 100 hands.

I guess that using messenger and not focusing on the poker table completely is all a matter of preference. I am pretty happy to talk to friends and try and earn a little bit on the side, but I’m sure that if I was losing money because of my lack of focus then I wouldn’t take my seat at the table without giving it all of my effort. I am at the stage at the moment where I can make plays without thinking too much because I have been playing for quite a while, so I’m basically playing mechanical poker. Therefore it can work well at the lower levels but it probably wouldn’t work well at the higher ones.

There are a few instances where I wouldn’t consider taking my focus away from the table however. For example, if I am going to play a heads up game there is no chance that I am going to be taking it lightly. It is in heads up games that you really have to get inside the head of your opponent, and I’m not going to be able to do this if I don’t focus properly. Similarly, if I’m at the final table of a tournament or playing against a small number of players, I want to give it my best shot to get the top prize. But if I’m in a full ring, low-stakes game, the scenario is a little different and I can afford to let my attention slip a little.

So if you like to use messenger and surf the web whilst playing poker, you have to be prepared for the fact that you are going to be shaving off a little extra cash from your potential winnings at the end of each session. Reads that you have your opponents can often play a vital role in making a profitable decision or making an unprofitable decision, so you will be lacking in an area that would normally bring a little more confidence to back up your decisions. So I would recommend that you have a solid game under your belt before you spend too much time playing without your full attention to the table, otherwise you might find that your game will be transforming from a winning one into a losing one.

After losing my debit cards last saturday, I finally got one through today. Didn’t expect anything to come through from the bank on a Saturday but there we go. So although I say ‘cards’ I only really had the one, but the next one shouldn’t be too far away. Luckily it was the card for my main account where I keep most of my money, but unfortunately I have been given a new pin even though I asked to keep it the same. But I think its possible to change the pin through the ‘hole in the wall’ anyway so its no big deal, but it definitely needs changing because I am so familair with the old one.

Anyways, I decided to celebrate by making a deposit at Titan to check out the action at the 10c/20c tables. Turns out that the table I sat down at wasn’t as fishy as the last time I played at the room, but after a few players dropped out and were replaced the dynamics changed a little and there were some very obvious bad players. I think that there are still a number of people that are enjoying the festive season with a dash of online poker, despite the fact that they are pretty clueless when it comes to strategy and are relying on the luck of the draw. But I’m not going to complain about that.

Even though the table at the start was of a decent standard, I managed to get things going with a nice hand. I was dealt 3c 3s on the button and called a 4BB raise from someone in mid position. I felt the implied odds were there  because they had a decent size stack, so I comfortably made the call. I’m obviously looking to hit a set on this flop, and if I don’t I’m going to make an easy fold. 

Turns out another player made the call and came along for the ride. I was happy to see a 3 come down on the flop, and even more happy to find out that both of these players had decent hands. All the money wen’t in on the flop, and no cards came to improve the other two who were holding an overpair and top pair respectively. Theres not a lot that they could have done to save themselves from losing here, it was pretty much a cooler for the both of them. So worked out to be a nice $32 pot to get the session started.

The rest of the session was pretty standard, as I floated around the same mark for a while with small wins and small losses. There was another hand that I managed to win a nice amount from, around about $20 or so. I can’t remember the details but I think I had a straight, and I think they must have had top two pair. Either way I finished the session with about $50, which works out to be around $30 or £15 profit. This is more than I would usually make in an hour of play at one 10c/20c table, but I’m not going to make any complaints.

Its nice to get back into the swing of things with a decent win, especially considering I was just at one table and on MSN at the same time. I’m not exactly sure how much of an impact being on messenger whilst I play poker is having on my game, but I still feel that I am able to continue to play profitably, even though the amount that I win per hour is more than likely reduced. I’m not that great at multi-tasking to be honest. I will make a post in the near future about being on messenger and playing poker at the same time, I’m sure that most people have done it or do it from time to time.

Before I came to Uni I wasn’t much of a cook. I knew how to cook, but I didn’t really know any recipes for a decent meals, and so I was kinda stuck for a week or two when it came to cooking food. I found a love for Fray Bentos pies, which are pies that you cook from a tin and work out great as a meal. I mean you can just literally open them up, stick them in the oven and 20 minutes later you have yourself a meal with hardly any washing up and fuss, all for just over £1. But after a while things became pretty tiresome and I needed to find some ‘proper’ food to cook, instead of living on pies and whatever I could put on toast and eat.

Turns out that some decent meals really arent that hard to cook. Cooking rice and pasta is simple, and most of what I cook can be made with either of these and in around 20 minutes with minimum amounts of pots and pans to clean. I know a number of people that are still managing to live off ready meals and such, but these aren’t really sizeable enough for me and the half decent ones are expensive. Therefore being able to cook meals for myself is working out nicely. So here are my top 3 meals as a student…

1) Spaghetti Bolognese
This is so much easier to cook than I expected. I know how to make it using all the individual ingredients, like using the tin of tomatoes, onions, oregano and all that, but I find it much easier to just use a jar of Dolmio. I much prefer using Dolmio over Ragu because I find it tastes a little bit nicer, but I will use Ragu from time to time if its on offer like 2 for 1. I also use the pasta shells rather than spaghetti, as they’re easier to stab and pick up with a fork, instead of cutting and twiddling around like you have to with spaghetti. So maybe its more like ‘Conchiglie Bolognese’ rather than ‘Spaghetti Bolognese’.

2) Curry
This one isn’t specific, as I like all different types of curry. Again I don’t cook these from scratch because its so much easier to just throw the sauce on top of the chicken and cook away. I only really use chicken as the meat for my curries, as I hear its harder to cook curry with beef or lamb. I’m a big fan of chicken anyway so I’m pretty happy to stick with that. I usually opt for the ‘Pataks’ sauces range and go for either Korma or Jalfrezi. There are a number of other sauces to choose from that I might have from time to time, but these are my favourites for now.

3) Burgers
This one will probably change in the near future when I find something better to replace it with, but for the time being I am really enjoying the burgers, sometimes with chips or wedges. You can get really some decent size burgers from places like Lidl, and they are a decent price too so you can really get your money’s worth. The burgers have also got to be in buns, thats pretty much a neccesity as bun-less burgers really don’t cut the mustard. I usually have some relish to go with it, but if I haven’t got any then tomato sauce works out fine.

So thats my current top 3 meals at University. Looking at it I could probably be a lot more adventurous, but its only been 4 months so I’ve got plenty of time to try new things out. Also it probably could be a hell of a lot healthier, so maybe I should look to have something low in fat from time to time to balance things out a little. But anyways, there a little insight for you on my current eating habits. I’ll give it an update when I’m cooking real classy food like lasagne and all that. Let me know if you have found anything really easy to cook and tastes nice, I’m open to all suggestions.

We’ve heard it all before, about how all students are lazy and are out to get drunk as much as possible and lie in bed for as long as possible. But are students really that lazy? Although thinking about it this statement pretty much hits the nail on the head, I feel that students don’t get as much credit for the work that gets done in lectures and behind closed doors. When people think about students, they will normally think of them as being lazy, tax-dodging, drunk, poor and numerous other flatteringly descriptive words, but theres never really much said about the work that gets done when needs be or the extra effort in other things outside Uni, such as sports and societies.

Lets not forget the real effort it takes to go to 9am lectures after a heavy night drinking. The students that make these lectures are the true warriors that have the exceptional will power to fight through sickening hangovers whilst still being half-cut at the same time. Thats determination right there. Even so, the 10am and later lectures can still be a big struggle to get to and require ten times the amount of effort than would be normally needed if you were not drinking the night before. So the people that accidentally mix both their social lives with lectures and still manage make it work, really can’t be all that lazy with all the effort that is put in.

Furthermore, most people tend to overlook the fact that students are actually studying at some point in between their drinking and tax-dodging endeavours. You have to have a certain level of ability to be in University in the first place, and none of the courses can really be called all that easy. There is a lot to be learnt and a number of exams to sit each year that aren’t going to pass themselves. At some point a lot of revision and studying takes place, which can often be time consuming and hard work.

Outside of lectures are the sports and societies that a large number of students take part in. Fitting these in around a busy drinking schedule isn’t an easy task, but for most students they can make it happen. So when you combine this with all the work that gets done in the day at University, you will find there isn’t a great deal of time left to watch tele and procrastinate and do nothing. A lot of hours in each day can be pretty productive, and probably on the same level as most working people with full-time jobs. So maybe students aren’t that lazy afterall.

This whole post isn’t really a debate about whether or not students are lazy, because I know for a fact that a great number of students can be hilariously lazy at times. I mean I love sleeping until the last minute before I have to get out of bed and stumble to lectures because I spent the night before staying up ’til stupid o’clock in the morning on msn and eating pringles. But you know, when I’m revising and doing coursework I like to think I can be really productive and manage my time well, as can most University students at the end of the day, otherwise they probably wouldnt be there. So yeah, not really a rant, but I’m sure students deserve a lot more credit for their efforts than they get.