Run Good --> Run Bad --> WTF Do I Do Now??

Another crazy last few days on poker front.

Run Good

Ran exceptionally well in a 420 player freeroll on Full Tilt on Sunday, playing well and being comfortable - getting it in twice with AK versus AQ for monster pots helped - and then sat tight at the final table waiting for mega aggro players to busto. Got to 4 handed then hit the biggest 10 minute heater of my life:

1. open shipping 10 big blinds from small blind with 56 to beat AQ big blind with river straight

2. open shipping 12 big blinds (after losing some blinds) with 55 to river a straight versus KK

3. 3bet jamming 20 big blinds with T9s heads up to beat KK again with river 2 pair.

Was delighted with the result - probably the biggest single tourney win I've had online - netting $1.6k. Not bad for a nights work!!!

Run Bad

Been pretty much destroyed online since I got my laptop back from the knackers yard (Brennan's PC laboratory), taking way longer than it should of to get used to multi tabling. When I finally figure out how to play again - I started to run bad too - and currently tracking at £100 loss for the month - although this is 6 buy ins short of expectation.

Run bad hasn't been restricted to online either, and I haven't been able to win for a while at Aspers either. I'm not taking big losses, only £100 a time max, but I'm losing all the monster pots. I can't get there with any big draws, and I can't hold with made hands versus tilt shoves either. Biggest sick hand of the week though was when I got £100 in on the turn with 77 full house - J799 board - versus obvious AA/KK - only for 9 to bink on river to lose me another £220 pot. Not been a good week on that front...

WTF?!?!

All the run bad on the tables though pales in to insignificance when I wake up at 1pm yesterday to find out Full Tilt has lost it's gambling licence, and therefore all rights to operate in the world. Crucially for us mere players this means no games AND NO CASH WITHDRAWALS - a bit of a fucker when I have $2.3k sitting online in their coffers.

I was mistakenly hoping that FT were going to be operating normally in Europe after Black Friday disaster - after all, there's a tonne of online sites that do pretty well having never been in the US market - but alas my misguided naivety has come back to haunt me. I wouldn't have minded too much normally as I was only keeping a small(ish) roll online, but 2 days before I take my month end wage out (including tournament bink) the poker client and their website go down, with no likely date to return.

I'm keeping fingers crossed, worshipping my lucky poker buddha and praying to my poker pope - both of which sit next to me on my poker laptop - hoping that the hearing set up for next month in London will grant them a licence again - or at the very least let them get back online so that players can get their money back. At the moment though I'm probably just going to write this off as money lost though, as with US players still without their funds I think the chances of UK players getting theirs back first are even slimmer. I just wish the whole online industry would sort themselves the fuck out so I can figure out which site is safe and which isn't.....

..... which leads me to the initial question - what the fuck am I meant to do now? I can't play online really, as have minimal bankroll and wouldn't even know where I could safely play in the future - maybe Ladbrokes I suppose. I might have to start looking for work again, as not sure 50p / 50p games at Aspers can really sustain me in the long term. Or I might sign on and claim all the benefits I can before axing it all and going to live in Thailand doing TEFL / scuba diving instructing!

Decisions decisions......