The Chilly December Games and Heading Somewhere Slightly Warmer

So the year's coming to a close and I've pretty much finished the poker-grind for the year. And I'm happy to report it's been a good one :) I'll go into more detailed specifics in a blog post nearer the new year reviewing my goals of 2011 and collaborating some New Years resolutions and goals for 2012. A little more thought is needed on that front in the meanwhile.

December's been a pretty low-volume month on the whole. What with a lot of visiting of family and friends, drinking and pretty much enjoying life I've hardly played any sessions. I'm fine with that after a really heavy volume month in November. I've been playing on the new modern warfare game on the PS3 this month which I'm loving grinding online, especially in domination mode. I've also been catching up and finishing off some really good TV series lately. I would thoroughly recommend people that haven't tried the following series to give them a try, TV really is amazing these days.

-Breaking Bad
-Homeland
-Board Walk Empire
-The Wire

In terms of actual poker in the few online sessions I did play I (finally) binked a seat to UKIPT Galway. It's a €770 seat and I'm sure I'm in for about €600-€900 in the sats so it's not really a massive discount but it'll be a fun tournament. I love the UKIPTs. I think they're great tournaments with great value and it's really fun meeting up with all the UK circuit regs on these stops. Drunken times ahead I'm sure.

Other than that I had a few smaller final tables and a second in a $100/$25k gtd for just over $4k which was nice and pretty much saved the month :)

Oh, and then I had a little Sunday bink!

I logged in as usual to Pokerstars on Sunday and for whatever reason I decided not to auto-click close to the welcome message that pops up. This past weekend it was a big PCA qualifier promotions on Stars. I decided to flick in my last 25k FPPs on Stars into a qualifier to a 125k FPP qualifier to the PCA in January. Without also realising that 125k FPP is ~$2k I managed to bink one of the 10 packages guaranteed. There was a nice little overlay in the sat and a massive sweat on my side when I was sitting 11/11 with 10 packages available. Got to love Zackattack for running like god and getting there versus another shorty. Gonna have to find that guy and buy him a beer I reckon.

So new year's looking pretty epic! I have 9 days accomodation at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, $1000 food expenditures and a $10,300 tournament to win! I decided to sell 50% of my action to the tournament which will give me a little pocket-money for some side events if I fancy playing them. I then decided, well now I'm over this side of the world I might as well flick in a trip to Vegas to catch up with my US mates that I stayed with over the Summer. I'm hiring a Ford Mustang for the 8 days I'm out there and cannot wait. I genuinely love Vegas. No idea what I'm going to do out there but expect it will be something a long the lines of drinking lots, eating at some amazing restaurants and possibly playing a bit of Poker! I don't think I'll be treating this short trip to Vegas as a "business" holiday but I'll probably grind a little in cash games when I'm there. Caesers is also hosting a WSOP circuit event while I'm there so I might donate to the prizepool of an event or two.

So exciting!

After that I've got to dash back to the UK so I can play the latter part of the TCOOP which is going to be very fun. Thanks Stars for listening to what your customers want! Then a big family meet-up party for my Granddads 90th birthday rounding off the month with watching the Scotland v England rugby match in Edinburgh later on in the month.

I'm not sure if this will leave much time for online grinding but it certainly looks like 2012 is going to start off in an awesome way :)

GL at the tables all

ps. I've found this awesome blog the last few days. It's pretty much the ultimate degeneracy story of some guy trying to grind it out in Vegas in the small stake cash games whilst borderline being homeless and living off comped rooms and comped food. An entertaining read nonetheless, check it out here.