It's almost time for VEGAS

Hey!

It’s been a while since I last updated the blog. So what has happened with me. Well unfortunately the month thus far hasn’t treated me spectacularly well, but I’m not actually down money so I really can’t complain. I’ve put in a lot of volume online this month which has kept me afloat after so far being 0/9 in SCOOP M’s and 0/4 in Live MTTs this month. Don’t worry though, saving all that run good for next month in Vegas! :)

So I’ve had a few binks in some of my regular tournaments and a few final tables that has kept me a float. The win in the €15r/€25k was a real personal victory. I've FT bubbled that tournament 5 times lifetime and it was turning into a bit of a nemesis tournament for me. Thankfully my first time final tabling it after playing it for the best part of 2 1/2 years and I win it. I’m really enjoying my online schedule at the moment and I’ve found a nice amount of tournaments to grind each night without being overwhelmed with too many tables. Which would be fine if the euro sites had timebanks or had clean and simple layouts like Stars. But alas! I’ve always been under the impression that it’s much better to play less tables, possible sacrificing short-term hourly whilst having longer to think through situations and make better decisions so as to actually improve as a player. After all, in todays mid-high stake tournaments, playing a nitty ABC style just won’t suffice. Unless of course you run like pillow100 ;)

Now that it seems very probable that I’ll finish in the top 20 in the iPoker $5k WSOP deal I’ll probably cut down my volume for the rest of the month. I’ve played a lot this year pretty much without taking too much time off. I also know that this year in Vegas I plan on playing far more live poker than I did last year too so I’d like to be mentally ready for this and not feel too burnt out. This has the potential to be an epic Summer. I’ve also got to move out my flat at the end of this month and I’m moving into another place just out of Nottingham center. Change of scenery and all that. What a fucking hassle though lol.

I’m hitting Vegas on June 3rd and plan on playing pretty high. Here's my schedule. I’ve sold off 50% of my action but it’s still quite a big monetary risk. Get rich or die tryin’ right? For anyone that is interested in following my progress to root me on or laugh at me going busto, I’ll be updating this year pretty frequently on twitter, and you can follow me here!

Anyway, just under 2 weeks left before it all kicks off. And I am pumped. Vegas baby!!

April Showers, onward and upwards to May

Hey,

In the end April turned out to be pretty fail on the poker front. Check it out below:

 (dark red line not the lighter pink one at the top)

As you can see it was a pretty swingy month. I missed by target buyins of $30k by about $1.8k but I'm not too fussed about that as I played a fair bit live going to Spain, DTD and Walsall for tournaments. Unfortunately I have nothing whatsoever, not even a deep run to brag about. But so it goes. Saving all that run good for Vegas, I hope ;)

Online the month was pretty rough and my lowest profit month in a while. I'm cool with it though. I had more than my fair share of biggish FT bubbles this month in the larger buyins on my schedule. What probably is noticeable though is that my ROI for the month is still pretty solid. I know sharkscope ROIs have a tendency to be pretty inaccurate but I think this shows I ran good in my small stuff and bad in my big-buyin stuff. Afterall, that's why you play the smaller stuff too, to help off-set the bigger buyin MTTs. Let's hope in May I run horrific in all my $20 freezes and ship all the loot in the $100s this month then!

One other pretty catastrophic bad beat that has affected me pretty badly this month is the dealings of Black Friday. When I say pretty badly, let me just point out that I am in no way as badly affected by this as most, but still it kind of sucks. I won't go into the specifics of what happened on April 20th as most people reading this blog will probably be pretty clued up about it. But basically my WSOP $10k package that I won with AP looks like it's gone for good. I guess that's karma for depositing on the crooked site in the first place!

After the Americans have been kicked off the site for good, AP which focused heavily on the US market has pretty much become a ghost town. Not only has the site got pretty much no traffic whatsoever now, but with rumors and articles circling the internet about it's shareholders having disputes as well as the fact that even Europeans are having trouble withdrawing $250 every 2 weeks I think it's fair to say that there is a pretty good chance the site will go bankrupt. And I don't think you even need a top-notch Economics degree to figure that one out. I've got a lot of US friends with a lot of money locked up on these sites, so fingers crossed for everyone. As for me, most likely losing $10k sucks pretty bad, but c'est la vie. Treating poker like a business it's one of those things you have to cross-off as a bad debt and change your plans accordingly.

So despite the amazing weather we've had this month, April to me would have seemed more fitting with black clouds and thunderstorms! But hey, I made profit on the month so I can't complain!

Onto May and it's a long month of online grinding ahead of me. I've won a seat to the DTD Deepstack for my monthly £300 donation this coming weekend before SCOOP starts on PokerStars. The schedule is pretty damn awesome and I wonder how badly the SCOOP-high events will be affected by the lack of US players now. On a good note though, the times for a lot of the SCOOP events have been moved to more euro-friendly time patterns so we don't all have to stay up til 11am if we get a deep run. It's nice to be considered sometimes ;)

I'm not sure exactly how much SCOOP I'll play as I do like to steer clear of large field MTTs like the plague. But they don't come round too often and a sucker does win the lottery every week. So who's to say I can't be next weeks winning sucker? In reality I'll probably play most of the low events and take some shots in the medium events, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Other than that I'll be grinding a lot on iPoker this month trying to maintain myself in the top 20 in the tournament leaderboard to win a $1k seat in Vegas next month as well as playing the PKR £750 main event in London much later on in the month.

This is also the last month before I head to Vegas for the Summer, so a good one to get my hopes high would be nice. I wouldn't mind getting $40ks worth of buyins for the month under my belt, but at the same time I think with so much stuff to sort as I'll be moving out of my flat at the end of the month too as well as getting everything ready for Vegas, my volume might suffer a little as a result. We shall see. I hope this is a good month....

Gl at the tables all!