I am actually proud of the fact that I have dug in and seen out the rough times……but the rough times are continuing. I feel like I simply cannot do this any more and the act of playing so low has mentally done me in. I was on the verge of quitting or having a wild thrash at the $200 level with only three buy-ins when I had a Eureka moment.

My problem is that I am getting bored and then start spewing money which usually comes by way of crazy bluffs and very loose calls. I was in a prison of my own making. The boredom leads to bad play and the bad play leads to frustration and the bottom line is that I am basically treading water. The problem is that subconsciously I don’t want to do the challenge or the act of playing such low levels.

I was fine to start with because I was mentally strong but that evaporated like the morning dew. So I have hatched a plan to multi task while I am playing poker. This usually doesn’t work for numerous reasons. Mainly it is to do with concentrating less and that usually hurts your bottom line in poker. But it is the act of concentrating that is hurting me. My automatic default game should be enough to make money up to and including NL50 at full-ring.

It gets a little tricky at NL100 and certainly at NL200. But I reckon that 3-4 tabling NL50 full-ring and multi-tasking should help me to stop spewing money because the poker will not be my primary focus. It also allows me to increase productivity as well as playing 40 hours a month means that I am not doing other things for those 40 hours. Multi-tasking is hardly a ground breaking theory and it is usually frowned upon and rightly so. But I have a sneaking feeling that it is going to be the best thing that I have done so far. I have already tried it and had three winning sessions out of three with $83 in profit.

But the difference was that it felt so good for the first time and it has led to a total transformation in my mindset as I am almost no longer playing the games or at so it seems that way.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson will also be playing on PokerLoco next month and you can come and play with Carl using the sign up code DEAN600

I then laid England full-stop as I felt that the 11.5 on offer was way too short to win the World Cup and if you think that this is wrong, consider the chances of four consecutive coin flips going in and then compare that with the odds on the exchange of 11.5. On top of all that is the fact that England wouldn’t have even been a coin flip in most of the games that they would have played in order to get to the final. As soon as I knew that the USA had scored late on against Algeria then I knew what that meant for our chances.

Another successful lay of Andy Murray at 3.95 to win Wimbledon before his semi against Nadal saw me make some money there as well. So all in all, the World Cup was disappointing in a football sense but profitable. Anyway what of the 10k challenge on www.888poker.com . Well the good news is that I am still fighting and am currently on $535.44 from my original $100. Another $65 and I will move up to $30 games after beginning in the $2 games with $0.01-$0.02 blinds……boy that was tough.

The next stage after that is to try and claw my way up to $1000 and then move up to $50 games. I tried playing some low stakes limit and double or nothings to try and spice things up a bit and it worked for a while but the double or nothings are just too boring for me to take seriously. Although the ease at which you can play them means that multi-tabling them is a doddle. I think that any player with the proper strategy can grind out steady profits in these games and the variance is so low that they appeal to loads of people. But I am happy with $535 as I never expected to survive the first week and so it just goes to show that even an idiot like me can grind sometimes.

Anyone who would like to know more about my Double or Nothing poker strategy in SNG’s can contact me at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk

The Jackal ended lower at 4.02bb/100 but I am very pleased with both sample sizes. Anyone who wishes to contact me about these can do so at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk and I will be happy to discuss this with you. It has been great to see the home players doing so well in Vegas and it would have been great to see our football side do really well in South Africa.

Alas though I feel that we got punished by not winning our group as we had a nightmare draw to get to the final. I have been looking forward to the football for ages and now I will be glad when it is all over as it is seriously getting in the way. I will also be offering coaching sessions for players as well starting next month and the basis of that is that players can contact me via my e-mail if they would like me to critique their playing sessions.

After the World Cup and WSOP then my next plan is to play more poker than what I am doing. Would really like to have a shift away from writing and playing more poker and will be looking to expand more into PLO this summer and autumn. Also been good news regarding my poker challenge on www.888poker.com

I have just passed the $400 mark and have now moved up to $20 games in my bid to reach $10,000 from $100. In this challenge I have not been using my Poker Office HUD which seems very strange to me but spewing at these low levels has been a serious problem and it is ongoing. I will keep regular posts coming about that but playing the challenge, more PLO and dealing with the Jackal and Vulture systems is going to be filling all my time next month.

But imagine if the standard of play increased so that most teams were playing quite close to your standard. Would this mean that you could no longer make money? Well it would if you stayed at your present level but the key then is to make yourself as strong as a lower football league side. This leap isn’t anywhere near as far as going from the lower football league to the Premier League or the Champions League.

Can you see where I am coming from here? You do not need to be a great poker player to make money online as you can pick and choose the level of opponents that you play against. So there is simply no need to panic with regards to how online poker is going. Every single day there are literally thousands upon thousands of people coming of age who are computer literate who will want to play online poker. Many of these players will simply not educate themselves higher than a certain level either through a lack of time or inclination to do so.

At the end of the day, people want to be good and they want to be winners but most people do not want to have to put the work in to get to that stage. So they look for short cuts and is why they get seduced by bots, systems and cheating techniques. My poker challenge on www.888poker.com where I am trying to convert $100 into $10k is basically trying to prove that anyone can make money at low-stakes poker with minimal risk. For those interested then the bankroll currently stands at $323 by the way so I am slowly starting to make progress.

If more and more people gave up aspirations to be big shots or gave up their pie in the sky ideas then I am convinced that the way to make money for most people is in the comfort of their own homes doing boring and repetitive things constantly. Because this is what winning poker is all about! It isn’t about Las Vegas or The World Series or anything glamorous like that. Poker is a job and most jobs are dull but it is only the poker media that paints a picture of excitement.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be contacted at Sharkpooldean@yahoo.co.uk for coaching and his poker systems.

Actually I think that my guinea pig was getting a little fed up towards the end and probably wanted to get back to playing the way that he normally does. So the Jackal is finally completed and The Vulture stands on the verge of completion too and is at the 90k hand mark. The Vulture is ahead by $2117 which is $2.35/100 and 4.70bb/100.

So it is showing very similar results to The Jackal which I can’t understand as I expected it to do far better but that could be down to the sample size. For those of you who haven’t been following then The Vulture is my full-ring version for low-stakes NLHE. But remember that these are taken from NL50 so the actual earnings of bb/100 is what should be taken as the relative figure and not $/100 as if you were playing far lower then the $/100 would obviously be lower.

The flip side of this of course is that the system is easy to multi-table so you get the extra benefits of that and so the bb/100 in other situations by other players could be substantially greater in some cases. I have also been told that The Fox shorthanded limit hold’em system is also 25k hands into its 100k sample but I don’t have any data as yet.

For anyone who wants to contact me about The Jackal or The Vulture and how to get access to the system then please contact me at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk in the first instance and register your interest. Hopefully starting either the 1st July or 1st August I should be able to proceed further by putting it into circulation.

So accept it and get over it and move on. Cheats always flock to poker simply because there is money in it. But let me tell you this, if anyone needs to cheat to beat low-stakes poker then they must be pretty crap at poker because it isn’t hard to beat this games. So what has been happening with my poker challenge?

Well I am still spewing money like I have done from the start but my bankroll now stands at $293 from the original $100 so I am making steady progress. I reckon if only I could start to show more discipline then I could really start to pull away but I reckon that this isn’t going to start until I hit the NL50-NL100 levels. Still feels weird without the Poker Office HUD turned on but it’s just a case of adapting. The games are easy to beat if you can just stay disciplined.

The road testing is almost at an end with The Vulture and everything has been going very well and the Jackal has also got away to a very good start. But this basically mirrors what financial traders do. If you can select good entry and exit points and then exercise sound bankroll management and risk control and with discipline thrown in then you are going to make money in poker and it isn’t rocket science. This is why the players who cheat at low-stakes levels simply do not need to.

I will try and keep the reports coming regarding the challenge and the road testing of my poker systems but with the WSOP being in full-flow and the World Cup just around the corner then life is going to be tough.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be contacted regarding his poker coaching and poker systems at Carl@pokerquest.f9.co.uk

I have spoken to no fewer than three people recently who have said that they are seriously contemplating cheating online simply because everyone else seems to be doing it and they don’t want to be the mug who is getting fleeced. This leaves online poker in a very serious situation because at least if you got caught cheating in a live game, you then have to run the gauntlet of the other players and getting knee capped may not be out of the question.

Online and no one knows who you are and you certainly do not have to face anyone. But this on the back of Brian Townsend, Brian Hastings and now Nick Grudzien and you have to wonder where it is all leading. But human nature is human nature and greedy people and cheats inhabit this globe in the hundreds of millions so it is only natural that online poker attracts them.

Still let’s not talk about all bad news, someone asked me the other day what my poker systems entail. Well without going too much into details for obvious reasons, they have been successful for one very important reason……they can actually be seen as anti-poker. I stopped trying to play “real poker” about two years ago when I started using Poker Office (www.pokeroffice.com) and my actual game play is getting more and more removed from how I would play live every week.

My challenge to turn $100-$10k on www.888poker.com is still going along and my bankroll stands at $250. As of tomorrow I will be adjusting my play somewhat and looking to really push on this summer. I will be making some reports this week on the Vulture and Jackal as we are hoping to push on and complete the testing this month.

See you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk with regards his new poker systems and for coaching.

I am going to end the road test at 100k hands although that is by no means conclusive. My main system which people will be able to get from me starting July 1st or possibly August 1st is The Vulture. My very own Guinea pig managed to clock in a staggering 48,000 hands since our last report and after 65k hands the profit stands at $2231. This works out to $3.43/100 hands and 6.86bb/100.

Both samples will be concluded this month and also I am fully expecting The Fox six max system to start on June 3rd. I have also been working on my first ever PLO six handed system which I have just dubbed “The Viper” and this is something that I will be using at $100 through $400 PLO come late summer.

But anyone who wants to contact me for access to the Vulture can do so by contacting me at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk I have fixed a price for this and it is $77 and the process that I am going to use is to break it down into a series of easy to understand lessons and then e-mail them one at a time. But remember that the Vulture is a full-ring NLHE system and not for six max……The Jackal is the six max system and the Fox is for six max limit hold’em.

Also remember that these systems are for low-stakes poker games only and not to be tried at higher levels. Also starting next month, I will be available to coach players by way of session and hand analysis so that is something else that I will undertaking to do. I have also been building up my base of players that I have been staking as well so I hope that you can see now how busy I have been and why I haven’t posted in a while.

See you soon

Carl

I am starting to think now that I simply don’t have the stomach to play meaningful stakes anymore. However this does not mean that I am done with poker…..far from it. I have too much desire and love for the game. But it has got tougher over the past few years and the last year or so has seen the online middle limit levels become very tough. However I will be looking to start a new project this year and that will be to mass table NL50 (possibly NL100) with The Vulture system.

I started this nearly two years ago and was doing very well making about $25/hour on Cake Poker and this could be a great way to make money playing online poker. At NL50 then there are enough bad players at full-ring for a player to make money if they have a very strong default system in place and that system is conducive to mass tabling. I really don’t see why $100/hour cannot be achieved and this is something that I want to do towards the back end of the year.

I don’t think that I would need to use Poker Office (www.pokeroffice.com) at these levels even though doing so would increase bb/100. I think that there would be too much time lag to do this properly and there has to be a serious trade off somewhere. I am slogging away with my Poker Challenge where I am trying to turn $100 into ten large. I do love my challenges but this is one challenge that I will find very difficult simply due to the low stakes. You can follow my progress on this site so keep your eyes open and I am currently $36 ahead so far.

See you soon

Carl

The latest results for the Jackal and Vulture road tests have continued to be positive and The Jackal now stands at a profit of $1375 and this equates to 6.11bb/100 after 45,000 hands.

The Vulture is $679 ahead after 17,000 hands and this equates to 7.99bb/100. I have been disappointed that the sample sizes have taken so long but my guinea pigs have their own lives to lead and I don’t have the time to do this. A few people will have been wondering what has happened to my posts but I have still been very busy, too busy for my liking.

All of my spare time has been devoted to working on these systems and playing the $100-$10k challenge which for me just could well be the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life. Trying to keep discipline when you are playing poker for such small amounts of money is very tough. In fact these are the smallest stakes that I have EVER played in online poker.

In terms of average dollar pot size then the $6 games have smaller pot sizes then the $1-$2 limit games that I played when I was testing The Fox a few weeks back. I have not played any serious poker for meaningful stakes for ages so I have not had any reason for using Poker Office.

Actually the 10k challenge is starting to grip me but my own indiscipline is my own worst enemy and I always knew that it would be. I have also lost four big $12 pots (200 big blinds) on the river to two out hands and when you are trying to claw your way up then these really hurt.

I will try and keep you updated with the challenge but the challenge was to show how a player could turn $100 into $10k playing carefully and using bankroll management. My bankroll philosophy is very cautious and not my usual aggressive style but then again this isn’t for me but for you out there. If I can pull this off then anyone can do it and I really do mean that.

So three challenges on the go……Jackal….Vulture and Me reaching 10k. Oh and nearly forgot……I have a fourth challenge……trying to lose three stone in weight and this was something that I started over two months ago…….result so far……lost 17lb so good news on that front. Now if I can make it to 10k then that should be a great grand slam to win!