I've decided to start up a blog to document my journey of (hopefully!) fish stacking balladom.

Although I'm an avid gamer, I had never been tempted by poker and honestly didn't think I ever would be. I'd played the odd cash game with friends (by odd I mean like 2). Won one, lost one, wasn't much fussed. Then I met a boy who managed to convince me it might just be my kinda thing so I thought wth, maybe I can win me a new handbag! Little did I realise I would lose milty hours of precious exam revision time during the final year of my undergraduate degree...two weeks later I have done nothing but grind!

My appreciation for poker has grown exponentially over the past couple of weeks. This game is actually genius. I was reading a post somewhere (would link it but can't seem to find it just now) about how each situation is essentially unique as there are billions of possible combinations of hands, opponents, betting patterns, what have you. I hadn't really appreciated how much problem solving etc went into this and the sheer amount of learning! I am incredibly humbled by how little I know. Good thing I enjoy a good challenge; it only serves to motivate me more!

Luckily I have a super awesome coach - Carroters has been an excellent teacher, I definitely recommend him! After each lesson I've found that my game has improved dramatically - I'm now up 7 BIs from my start up roll after a rubbish 8 BI downswing and I aim to be hitting the 5NL tables by the end of May. The Beginners Digest has also been very helpful and now that I'm starting to post hands (via Carroters until I figure out why it's not working on my own computer - don't even start hating Macs on me cause PC users just don't realise how behind the times they are!) I hope I'll be hitting the exponential bit of my learning curve shortly.

Things I've learned the past couple of weeks:

1. Iz feesh.
2. Iz stupid feesh.
3. Iz stupid spewy feesh.
4. Iz stupid spewy LAgg tard feesh.

A very good lesson learnt today: PFR is key! Watch out when those loose feeshes open pre-flop with low PFR. Can't assume their range is wide. Oops.

Moving forward:

1. Tighter play
2. Learn about pot odds and relative hand strength
3. Work on putting opponents on ranges
4. STUDY STUDY STUDY (and not only poker!!)

Stay tuned.