Moving up with a few binks!

Hey!

Good news to report. The long grinding is starting to pay off quite well and I'm happy to report I'm moving up the stakes playing up to $50 turbos, and taking some shots at $20 rebuys now as well as everything under-the-sun beneath that.

I had a pretty sick little run tonight in the $5r /$8k gtd on iPoker. The previous night I ft bubbled it pretty harshly on a 70/30 so was pretty gutted, but I came back for revenge tonight and this time I ran a lot better!

 I also managed to win the late $55 freezeout on OnGame too earlier this week for another nice little score!

So things are going very well on the poker front at the moment and I'm loving it!

Unfortunately, I'm not running quite as good on the US sites though. I came 12th out of about 7000 runners last week in the big $55/$300k gtd for $1.4k. I lost AK to AQ for second in chips. It kind of hurt considering first was $42k and change which would have crushed my previous roll and given me a lot more financial freedom. Ahh well, hopefully I'll be given another chance one day to win such ridiculous sums...Lucky to get that deep I suppose!

I also didn't do so well in the FTOPs cashing in 0/5 that I played. I sold a fair bit of action in this though so it wasn't too detrimental to the roll. Still kinda annoying as I pretty much bubbled two getting it in ahead.

Loldonkaments right ;)

Onto the next tournament series though! Coming up is the UKCOOP in a couple of weeks time. I'm planning on playing:


#03 6th Dec: $415 2xchance turbo
#04 7th Dec: $320
#07 10th Dec: $320 6m
#09 11th Dec: $615 1r1a
#11 12th Dec: $530 main event

total = $2200

My plan was between tonight and Wednesday night to take out all of my profits from the 5 days and sell action based on how I've performed financially in the past few days. But after tonights bink I'm tempted to withdraw the win and have 100% of myself. I think I'll sell about 25% of the action just to reduce variance though. I'd hate to play with scared money and not play the bubble well and stuff...

As far as the series is concerned. I am a little surprised that the buyins are so high for the UK. There aren't THAT many high-stake UK players and the guarantees are quite high. I expect there will be a lot of satelitte qualifiers but I'm really not sure how soft or tough the fields will be. I know for a fact there is a core of VERY strong UK grinders out there and some good online cash players from England. Who knows, we'll see I'm sure!

On the live-front. I've not played much live lately. I played a £200 fo and a £100 fo at DTD a couple of weeks ago with no success. I won a Betfair Live package to Vienna next weekend though. It's a €250/€100k gtd tournament. It's not a huge buyin but should be pretty fun and I'm looking forward to meeting up with one of my old uni mates who goes to Uni doing his masters there at the moment. If anything it will be a nice holiday from the online grind.

Until next time guys! Run good!

Sunday Mahem

I think I'll always have a love-hate relation with Sunday. So many juicy tournaments with such little time.

But today I was definately feeling the hate part of the Sunday relationship, grrr!

Live Poker Scandal. And They Said Online Was Rigged.

The news has been announced today by the director of french casino network Partouche: Ali Tekintamgak one of the nine player who qualified in september for the final table of the Partouche Poker Tour which will took place tomorrow (saturday 6th) has just been disqualified for cheating.

Details are not known yet, but the director told that they have proof on videos, have reported to the authorities and are pressing charge.

It seems that Ali Tekintamgak was already disqualified during EPT talling main event this year after being caught receiving signals from fake bloggers/journalists looking at his opponent cards.

Ali Tekintamgak won the WPT Barcelona in 2010 for 278,000 euros.

What's more, there had been rumours going on around the circuit that this kind of stuff has been happening for quite some time. Shaundeeb made a post a couple of months ago before this disqualification occurred about such cheating scandals that are rumoured to have taken place. 


There has also been a clip on youtube about Ali Tekintamgak in action with someone from the media clearly giving him a signal of his opponents hole-cards whilst heads-up in at EPT Barcelona:





This stuff is just insane. This Ali guy has previously had fake reporters escorted and banned from European casinos before but still nothing serious has been done about this. Until now.


What's more despite claims that Ali didn't know the journalist or had seen him before, here is a picture from the WSOP 2010 that clearly shows the same reporter from the video standing on the opposite side of the table to Ali checking out his opponents hole-cards:

Ali and his friends defend his team of personal bloggers stating that he is a big name on the European circuit. He claims that this is a racially driven attack on him being Turkish. Yet as one poster on the 2p2 forums points out:

"first of all ali ist not famous over here...fact is...this is the first time i have realy heard of him...and i am following the german poker szene for years now...it is suspicious that there is a whole blogger team following him...since there are a lot more successful german players and none of em has a own blogger team...i mean...does any livepro have an own bloggerteam...??

i grew up in the same area as one of the blogger and know him...and it is so out of line to say we germans are racists...i have tons of turkish friends...and especially with our history...we germans...are so so so so so so so fckn cautiously with racism of any form...so there is no way that this would ever be the reason for these allegations...absolutely no way...

a friend of mine...manuel blaschke...was at the WPT FT with ali...and here is his reaction to all this...

"OMG...this guy was standin behind me all the time @ the FT..."

"like 5 times where i open OTB, ali defended his BB...i cbet...and he shoves for 5xpot...and those where all boards...that hit my range pretty good and where coordinated...but i just couldnt call because i never had a hand..."

and manuel is a realy nice guy...def not talking ********...

Legal action is currently being undertaken about this scandal and a prison sentence for Ali Tekintamgak is not off the cards.


To read up more information on this check out:


The thread on 2p2
French news article with English summary at the end

 Ali's HendonMob page

Herro there November!

Hey!

From a quick google-images search, November sure looks pretty beautiful. But then I look out of my window all I can see is rain, dark clouds and darkness. Yup that's right, winter is really on it's way! What's more, it offers a great environment for some heavy grinding. And I plan on doing a lot of that in November.

The past week didn't go too well in the end. I kind of suffered a little on the volume front and coupled with a little downswing saw me at my first losing week in a couple of months. It had to come soon I guess!

I'm now pretty keen to get back into a good routine of working out, cooking, alarms, poker-study to get me back on track however. I also deposited a little money on a couple of new sites so it will be interesting to see how I find these and if the playability doesn't screw me over. That now leaves me with money on 11 different poker sites to fix my tournament needs.

So what's going on this month?

Well I'm looking forward to a few things:
-FTOPs is back. That means more bankroll demolition then! I've seen the schedule and will probably play a few of the events selling action to the ones I choose. I don't think I'll be quite as extravagant as before. I'm really happy with my new schedule and staying up until 2am to start a deepstacked $200 tournament hasn't got quite the lure it once had. So we'll see...

-DTD £300 deepstack. I'm going to try to sattelite in tomorrow and Tuesday for the weekend tournament that now has a £40k guarantee and is televised! I'm not sure who will even want to watch a £300 tournament on TV, but that's besides the point! I can see the fame and stardom already...cough cough..

-I've got various family members visiting at one point or other to see my flat this month. I think they'll be quite impressed with how things are going, I certainly couldn't see myself in a place like this a couple of years ago.

I would also set some goals, but I really find it hard to keep track of these things. And whilst monetary goals are kind of lame as nobody can control variance. I would love to have a $10k month in November and get my roll up over $20k so I can hit December hard with some $100 freezeouts and $20r's. Now that would be nice! But still, we'll see. If I keep trying to maximise the volume and create the right frame of mind and grinding environment, I don't see why this can't be the case. I'll keep you all updated along the way.

I think this is quite a fitting song for the new month too. Gl at the tables, I hope everyone has a great November!