Fenix35's Poker Blog

A Refreshing Break in Vegas

2012-01-24T00:54:00.001Z

Hey!

After my trip to the Bahamas for the PCA I decided to make a slight de-tour before coming home by chilling in Vegas for 8 days. This was my third trip to Vegas. Previously I've just visited Sin City during the WSOP in the Summer for extended 6 week stays primarily with grind-on-the-mind so it was quite refreshing to come to Vegas just to relax and enjoy everything the city has to offer outside of the abundance of card-rooms.

I was staying with one of my American friends, Kenny, who had relocated and moved into a pretty sweet bungalow just south of the strip with a big pool, garden and huge rooms with an impressive looking kitchen. Unfortunately over the "festive" period some local pikeys burgled him when he was back home in Miami seeing family so the house was looking pretty bare. My other good friend Zach made the flight down from Michigan for the week. Our trip was probably quite good timing as it would allow us to give Kenny a good moral boost and have fun Vegas-style.

One of my favourite things about Vegas is the food. Being a fat bastard this is always pretty much a highlight of the trip. If anyones interested I can recommend a whole host of restaurants/bars/fast food places I could recommend and I'm no way near sampling all the city has to offer. The thing about Vegas food that I think a lot of tourists don't realise is that in my opinion just a short drive off the strip you can get some incredible restaurants/diners/fast food joints and everything is so much cheaper! I won't actually go on too much more about the food as it's literally making me hungry as I type this but here's a photo below. Mmmmm :)

I decided to hire a convertible Ford Mustang for the week which was on offer by Hertz rentals for my stay so inevitably couldn't wait to get out of the city and try this piece of all American Muscle out on the desert roads. Just a side note, after a whole week of doing wheel-spins and bombing around from place to place my fuel bill for the trip was only $40, must be nice to be American! Alas, back to the story. One of the first trips we did was making the 50 minute drive-out to the snow-capped mountains just outside of the city. Our destination was mount Charleston where you can actually go skiing and snow-boarding. How weird is that? Just outside of this incredibly hot desert there are ski resorts within an hours drive. Pretty cool regardless. The hike up to the top of the mountain is incredible. Dark blue skies with the sun shining off the icy snow patches. Really scenically beautiful and most likely the best hike I've ever had. At the end of the walk which took us to a great frozen water-fall which flows in the Summer months there's a huge frozen icicles hanging from the rock face. It didn't take us long to start sliding down the ice until we almost got crushed by some falling ice from the cliff face above. Ooops :p

We also had another great night out seeing the dubstep group 'Skrillex' at Surrender in the Wynn. Lot's of pre-gaming beer pong with hidden shots of various liquors and an awesome atmosphere at the club resorted in an amazing night out. I've not actually had that many nights out in the past on my Vegas trips. I used to do a lot of clubbing as a student at uni, but since graduating other than on holidays I really very rarely go. In Vegas in previous years we've always stuck to the bars rather than the somewhat pricey clubs but after seeing Skrillex I really think I've got to try hitting the clubs again especially on my next Vegas trip in the Summer.

Now to the gambling, what the city's famous for. I did very little pit-gambling just spewing off a couple of $100 messing around having drinks playing video poker. We did manage to get a few sessions in at the poker tables though. In total I played 3 sessions of $1/$2 and predominantly $2/$5 coming out with a $1000 profit on the trip. Unfortunately this could have been a bit more if I didn't lose a $2400 pot spazzing queens into Aces in a $2/$5/$10 game with a missippi straddle but what do you do. I enjoy playing cash in Vegas way way more than in England. I'm not sure why, maybe the lower rake, nicer scenery, efficiency and softness of the games. Who knows. Maybe it's just I like to sub-conciously gamble in Vegas but feel retarded if I spew money at the craps or roulette table. Anyway it was nice to run good over this short sample and book a tidy cash win. Zach and I also decided to flick it in for a couple of $1ks happening at the Red Rock casino a few miles off from the main strip (awesome casino btw I really liked the vibe in there). It was a $1k/$250k gtd re-entry tournament with 3 flights. My day 1a table was hilarious. I was the youngest guy on there by 30-40 years and the play was a joke. I guess it was mainly just old locals as there seemed to be almost no advertising for the tournament series and obviously no online satelittes and I feel that most of the sicko tournament guys that live in Vegas were in Australia or in LA for their respective series. The table talk did get very interesting though and with the addition of Dave Sands (Doc_Sands) I found out that 3 of my 8 table mates had played the PCA $100k super-high roller a week earlier. Sickos! 2 of them were 60+ billionaires that were both planning on playing the $1m WSOP 2012 tournament too and Doc_Sands the very good tournament pro that managed to get 2nd in the PCA $100k. Why he didn't make the trip to Australia I don't know but he certainly made the table tougher. I didn't get much going in either of my entries running AK into Aces and doing my stack off to Doc_Sands with AhTx on KhJh7x flop in a 3bet pot. #OntoTheNextDonation right?

So overall I had an incredible time. It's kind of weird seeing Vegas not in the peak of the Summer, but even in their winter-time it's just like a British Summer. Blue skies and you can get away with a t-shirt/shorts combo in the day and wearing a jumper at night as the temperature drops. Although I'm just at Vegas airport at the moment, I'm already looking forward to my next trip over in the Summer for the world series. I think this upcoming trip will be shorter than previous years. I aim to go up to Montana for a few days prior to the WSOP trip hunting/camping/fishing and enjoying the great natural outdoors before plumetting myself in the Artificial wonderland that is Vegas for a couple of weeks. First priority though is to bink another WSOP package, and hopefully this time get the money for it :)

GL at the tables guys.

PCA Trip to the Bahamas!

2012-01-17T17:09:00.000Z

I'm currently sat in Miami airport waiting for my connection to Vegas from Nassau in the Bahamas where I spent the last 9 days donating in live tournaments, relaxing by the pool and eating mediocre food! It still feels weird for me to be sat in this airport now and to not be allowed to fire up any of my poker skins and play an online session without fear of getting my account frozen. But that's a different matter. Sort it out yanks!

In the end I really enjoyed my time in the Bahamas. Despite what seems to be the ongoing trend in the poker community the Atlantis resort is, in my opinion, a great getaway and a great place to spend a week in the sun especially in January whilst most of Northern Europe is grey, wet and horrible. Sure, the food in the Bahamas is very bland and expensive but what can you really expect? It's an isolated group of Islands in the middle of the sea without any farms or ability to grow fresh crops. On the food front I wish there was more fresh local produce like more fresh-fish and fruit as opposed to lot's of over-priced burgers and pizzas but whatever, no-one comes to the Bahamas for the food anyway! I think people like to complain a lot more than they probably should, so I'm going to focus on the positives and point out the factors that resulted in me having a great week.

I've never actually been to a resort like the Atlantis, but the hotel pretty much occupies this massive island just off the main Island of the Bahamas. The Island the resort's on is called 'Paradise Island' which probably leads back to a lot of peoples criticism of the place. It is pretty artificial in the fact that this Island is custom built for the hotel and the entertainment complex that it holds. But in my opinion, it does it really well. Throughout the Island there is a huge network of pools, hidden coves and river networks all interwined and surrounded by really well kept tropical fauna and palm trees. What's more the beaches on Paradise Island are incredible. Picture white sands and clear warm waters. It really doesn't get much better. Throughout the island there is also some amazing sea-life. Not only are there the very well trained dolphins and sea-lions which do tricks on demand (artificial blah blah blah whatever a dolphin running 20 meters backwards across the water like a Jesus-style Micheal Jackson moonwalk impression is cool enough regardless!) but there are also other bad-asses like hammer-head shark pools which you can view circling below you as you clamber across swaying rope bridges. As well as a range of other sharks, starfish, tropical beasts of various shapes and sizes the animal that most impressed me was the stingrays. Some of them were literally monstorous in size about 4 meters long. I always thought they were pretty small on the whole but a few of these were absolutely massive. They were so elegant swimming past each other too and they look so alien I was pretty amazed. I guess it's the little things that count :)

One of the best times I had on the Island was on the lazy-river. The resort somehow also doubles as a massive water-park intertwined with various slides, shoots and waterways all designed to be accessible by plonking your fat ass on an inflatable tube and just lolling away to wherever the current takes you. It's also pretty awesome how they have massive conveyor belts that once you've looped around to the end hoist you up to the top of another slide so you can start all over again. A perfect way to spend an afternoon in the sunshine.

Now onto the poker. I played the main and had a pretty good table draw. The only recognisable names on my table was one of Moormans horses Chronic420 (pretty aggro, spazzy) but he was to my right and Mike Leah (GoLeafsGoeh online, a very good solid TAG) but he was to my left. Other than that the table just had your typical live setting of button clicking tards and old nits. I played a solid style, picking on the weaker players on the table and chipped up relatively variance-free from the 30k starting stack to 55k.

I got a kind of lucky donation on my way though. At 75/150 a bad older guy from the States who obviously had far too much money and was being super-splashy raised in early position to 450 and I made it 1100 on the button with AKo expecting him to flat almost his entire opening range which for an old guy from his position was pretty wide as far as I had seen so far. He was talking to the guy next to him, pulled in the 250 and chucked 2 5k chips out there making a raise to 10,100. I looked at him and I was almost entirely sure he hadn't meant this which was confirmed by his face going bright red and him looking like he just shit himself really bad. I shoved and he snap folded so that was a nice little chip-up. I think if he hadn't had been chatting to the guy next to him and didn't look like he genuinely just shit himself it could be a closer spot as people definately like to fake mis-click live and everyone falls for it. I guess it's kinda douchy and angle shooting but whatever if it works it works!

My downfall started at 250/500/50. An active player opened from early position to 1500 and got a flat. I flatted behind in the cut-off with JJ. 3-bettings certainly an option but we both had over 100 big blinds and I really didn't want to get it in at that point or get 4bet bluffed so I elected to flat. It folded to the big blind who was a young kid but really wasn't that good. He was from Canada and I'd seen him mess up a few times, not value-betting when he should and just doing stupid stuff. He had 16k to start the hand and 3bet to 4300. I'd seen he was definately capable of squeezing light before and 3betting. I'd got the better of him 3/3 times so far on the day and felt he was getting frustrated being down to half stack. Still I think with that sizing out of position and given the early position of his raise I should fold my jacks if it comes back to me. As happened, it folded back to me, I thought meh he's enough of a spazz and clicked it back/called into his aces. I think for most people it's a clear fold given his sizing pre and that there's a fairly good change he just peels with a hand like 2-8s and probably sizes 9-T's more as my table was pretty hood to 3bets and I expect he wouldn't want to play a pot OOP with a hand like 9's or T's that flops pretty badly with more than a pot sized bet behind in his stack.

In the end I accumulated a little more, made it to the penultimate level of day 1 and got in kings v QTo in a 3bet pot on a TTx board with Chronic420 when I was a little too shallow to be getting away from my hand vs. him specifically.

Other than that, I played a few of the side events in the later part of the week as the weather turned a little more sour. I felt like I played well and had deep runs in 4 out of the 6 tournaments I played. Unfortunately that didn't mean a whole lot as I only cashed for $640 mincashing a $300 turbo. I came 10 off the money in the $1k side getting coolered near the bubble. I got deep runs in 2/3 of the ridiculously soft $300 turbos I played and came 9th with 5 paid in the 2p2 HORSE event. On the plus side, I played 4 live sit'n'go's on the trip. 2x$220 and 2x$430. I managed to win one of both buyins for $1k and $2k respectively and had a $400 bonus in the $430 after 5 of us got involved in a $100 last longer at the table. So it wasn't all fail :)

I'll just explain the 2p2 HORSE event now as it was honestly the funnest tournament I've probably ever played live. I would love it so much if the UKIPT could spread it on their stops. The basic rules are that every player gets dealt 3 cards face down. THe button then looks at his hand and chooses which variety of HORSE he wants to play. The games that those don't know are all limit: holdem, Omaha 8 or better, Razz, Stud Hi and Stud 8 or better. So for instance if the dealer chooses holdem, the blinds are placed and every player discards one card. Similarly if it's omaha every player gets another card. The limit games were really fun and the mix was great. Most people chose razz/omaha/holdem which are by far the funnest games in the rotation. In the stud games when they were chosen there was also the added strategy of choosing which card you want to put face-up. For instance in razz, the highest card has to bring in so based on what cards other people show affects your decision for what card you should show. Not only due to blockers but also due to your position on 3rd street betting and not wanting to bring-in if you've got a bad hand! I'm not very good at mixed games but after playing that really really wish there was more low-buyin mixed games on the poker tour. It was such a fun change to just grinding NLH full ring which can get so so boring. There was a really fun atmosphere at the tournament and everyone had a great time. Please stars, more of this at your future tournament stops!

So that was my week! I had a great time and enjoyed seeing the sun again. Now it's onto Vegas. I'm going to probably chill a few days doing the usual vegas stuff of eating out, a bit of pit gambling and just enjoying life. And then later in the week there are a few $350 side events for the WSOPc at Caesers and a $1100/$250k gtd tournament at the red rock casino which I might donate in. Should be fun!

Gl at the tables all.

2011 in Review, Looking Forward to 2012

2011-12-28T22:14:00.001Z

2011 was a big year for me. For starters, it was my first full calender year playing MTTs professionally and it was a great year. According to sharkscope I played around 6,000 tournaments online and managed to come out with $119k profit for the year which I'm very happy with. My best scores for the year came in a WCOOP final table coming 6th in one of the $320 tournaments, winning a Sunday $50r for $14k and on the live front getting a majority chop in a $500 venetian deepstack for just over $25k :)

On the non-poker front the year has been absolutely amazing, and quite possibly the most exciting year so far to date of my life.

Rajasthan, India.

I kicked off the year partying hard in Goa in India and in the end extending my 2 week holiday to over 6 weeks. India really is an amazing country and I'd love to try and take another trip over there this year at some point. It's honestly not for everyone. In fact I think a lot of people I know probably wouldn't like it all. It's dirty, there's obvious poverty and you're almost guaranteed to get the shits if you are over there. But for those that enjoy travelling, especially more adventurous do-it-yourself kind of travelling it's probably hard to rival. It's like a different world, the weather's amazing, the food is incredible, culturally it's so different and the people are really kind and helpful. Memories for life :)

Me, Pillow100 in Seville, Spain.

After Goa I came back to England for a few weeks and got back on the grind rebuilding pretty quickly. Always nice to start the year off on a heater (repeat please!). One massive motivation for the grind was to build up a roll for Vegas in the summer. I played a few live tournaments in England and a trip to Seville, Spain for a GSOP with little financial success but plenty of good times off the felt.

Luckboxing at the Venetian, Las Vegas, USA.

Then came Vegas. Another 6 weeks in the Sun in Sin City. This year I hired a car, stayed in a house off the strip with some of my best mates in Poker and had the time of my life. I just love Vegas!! I had a rough start to the trip pretty much bricking everything I played but finally got something going in a Venetian side event putting my first official win on the hendon mob page. More of that to come in 2012 I hope! I feel like I had a great balance in Vegas this year. A good mix of grinding tournaments, chilling, eating out, going to shows and having a great time. It was an amazing trip.

Home again and despite the bink I was hardly up for the series (getting sucked out on in $10ks for the lose!). I kind of got screwed over a little after winning a main event package on AP pre-black friday which never materialised after the site went broke. Just like a business, you've got to write these off as bad-debts and move on. Shame tho as that extra $10k I put up for the main event really bit into the profits of the trip despite selling action. Regardless of that, I'm definately giving the WSOP Main Event another shot next summer hopefully satelitting in again and this time hopefully actually getting the seat I won :p (oh and then binking the tourn obv!)

The Online Grind in Nottingham, England.

After spending far too much money in Vegas it was back to the online grind for the rebuild. I'd just moved into my new flat in Nottingham which I'm really happy about. A little more money that my previous place but a lot nicer in a much nicer location. I was living in a highrise block of flats right in the city center. I'm now living in a much smaller building and can even see trees from my windows! I also bought a car after my Summer trip, a big shiny VW Passat 2.0 estate. A curious purchase perhaps, but I love it. After spending 3 months in the past couple of years in Vegas and seeing the massive cars people drive over there I just couldn't bring myself to buy some a small hatchback and didn't have near enough the roll to buy a massive land-rover or sports car. So estate it is!

David Vamplew, Jon Spinks, Me in San Remo, Italy.

I decided to play my first ever EPT in Autumn heading over to Italy for San Remo. I bricked the whole series and was still taking a pretty big % of myself which hurt a little but the trip itself was incredible. Being the fat shit I am, I literally went on calorie-overload. Every meal was amazing and I had a great time socially meeting up with a lot of people on the EPT stop. Everyone was friendly and there was a really good vibe about the whole scene. Definately big motivation to start binking and playing satelittes again to EPTs in 2012.

So that was my year scrawled out in a few paragraphs. It was certainly action-packed and I'm hoping 2012 is just as prosperous and exciting.

2011 Goals

1) [x] Ship a major
- I'm kind of half ticking this box. I did in fact manage to ship a major, being the Everest Poker weekly $50r big tournament. I managed to bink it later on in the year for $14k. Hardly a "major" bink but seeing as it is the weekly big tournament on the site I think it counts. I had a few other close calls in other majors throughout the year. I managed to get an 8th in the iPoker major, a 6th in a $320 WCOOP on Stars and 6 seperate final table bubbles of majors.

2) [x] Health and Fitness
-Pretty happy on this one. I'm not quite at the stage of being a Men's Health cover model just yet but I'm heading in the right direction. I've had a gym membership at Virgin Active for a few months now and seeing improvements in my fitness and lifting. I also got into a really good habit this year of cooking a lot more and I don't think I ordered a single takeaway when grinding by myself throughout the year. My diet is still kind of an issue as I do love my food and in large quantities but I've learnt a lot more about food and the do's and don'ts so hoping I can apply that a little more in 2012 and keep striving towards a well balanced healthy lifestyle.

3) [ ] Improving my game
-My games moved forward a lot this year but I still feel like I could have put more effort into the theoretical side of the grind. I still try to note interesting hands down mid-session to review later but have been doing this less in the past few months and watching less training videos too. It's so important to keep ahead of the curve playing professional poker and far too easy to fall back and watch the game pass you by. More effort needed in 2012!

4) [x] Grinding hard live
-Again I'm half ticking this box. I've played a good amount live this year and I'm down a fair chunk despite a small bink in the Summer. Luckily I've not been too degenerate and have either been satelitting in a fair bit or selling action but still. As I've mentioned in previous blog entries, I seem to be on a constant pattern of building up a good roll online and then playing live, having crap results, spending too much and having to drop down in stakes again. Rinse and repeat! Less buying into live tournaments and more satelitting in. I guess I just need to get it into my head that missing certain live tournaments won't be the end of the world and I shouldn't feel guilty for missing out on so called "value" tournaments.

5) [x] Travel less, save more
-I've calmed down my travel a little but it is a big hobby. Other than my Indian trip at the start of the year most of my trips had some sort of poker orientation to them. I'm always happy to take a little time off while travelling on poker trips to enjoy life wherever I end up so I'm happy with this. I'm also happy with not always ballin out and roughing it up a bit too to save money. More of this to come :)

6) [x] Vegas.
Had a great trip, played a big schedule, rented a car and had a great time. Not a tough goal to achieve but it was one anyway!

2012 Goals!

1) Less Live Shot Taking
-Travelling to play live is expensive, holds a big opportunity cost and going off past records not as profitable as it seems. I need to get out of the cycle of building a big roll online and spunking it off taking shots in live tournaments. More satelittes and then selling action if I get in.

2) $400k in online buyins for the year.
-This year I had about $340k in online buy-ins for the year whilst taking off the whole of January while in India, 6 weeks whilst in Vegas and most of December. I'd also like to try for a 50% ROI over this sample. Much much easier said than done though.

3) Bink a major
-Has to be done. I don't plan on taking many Sundays off this year. Let's go heater!

4) Improving my game
-More hand analysis, more watching training videos, more talking strat with fellow grinders! Time is the only issue. It is boring but it's an investment. Got to be done.

5) Pursuing other business opportunities
-I'm pretty lazy when it comes to doing "work" outside of Poker. I put in long hours and often feel like I can't be bothered to research in my spare time. But I think it'd be great if in a years time I could have other forms of income coming in besides poker. After all, you can get rich from poker, but can only really earn true wealth from business.

6) Health and Fitness
-Keep at the gym, keeping eating healthily and keep learning more about health and fitness. I'm a firm believer that leading a healthy life outside of poker helps to keep focus and give results on the felt.

So that about sums up this epicly long blog post. For those that made it to the end, congrats and best of luck in 2012.

See you at the tables!

The Chilly December Games and Heading Somewhere Slightly Warmer

2011-12-26T12:26:00.001Z

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.

Grinding in November, Slacking December

2011-12-01T02:04:00.005Z

Hey!

Since my last post when I was just leaving San Remo after a somewhat disappointing stretch of live poker I've been back and on the online grind. And I'm very pleased to report that I had a great month in November.

I managed to play over 1000 games this month, which for me playing across multiple sites, is a lot. In fact I think it's the most I've ever played in a month. I normally end up averaging around 600 games. And with great thanks to a $50r bink and a $50 cubed final table I can report a solid +$24k month :)

After coming back from my Italy/Ireland trip I was a little pissed with myself. I felt that I played some spots live really quite sub-optimally and wanted to go over some spots. I've worked on my game a fair bit this month a long side the pretty heavy volume and feel like I've ironed some leaks and feel a bit more comfortable in a few spots I might have been struggling in before.

As far as live poker goes. I've not really played at all this month. I've just been cutting out expenses, grinding hard and hitting the gym. December though I'll try my hand at a couple more tournaments but just local ones. I seem to get into a bit of a habit of building a pretty solid roll online, taking some shots at some bigger live events, bricking, spending too much money IRL then having to drop down stakes again and rebuild online. It seems to be a bit of a pattern forming, so there's certainly something I'll be putting on my new years resolutions this year.

To bring that resolution forward a little, I've managed to blag 2 seats to the DTD £300 freezeout this coming weekend and 2 seats to the DTD £1k monte carlo in 3 weeks time. Both tournaments are re-entry tournaments where if you bust day 1a, you can re-enter and try your luck again on day 1b. I fully intend to fire every bullet I have to make a run in either of these comps!

As for the rest of December, I'll be heading back down South to spend christmas and the preceding days leading to it with friends from home in Dorset. I'll then be spending the xmas->new year period visiting various family members around the country. Oh and I'm sure I'll be able to squeeze in a session or two of online pokers at some point as well :)

My EPT Debut and how little I know!

2011-10-27T15:43:00.001+01:00

Hey,

My EPT debut is coming to a close now and it's been a really fun trip. I was totally ready to get away from England for a bit despite not actually being in the country for that long since my Vegas trip. But the joys of blue skies, great food and some live tournaments to donate some money in is always something I'm up for.

Unfortunately on the trip I don't have anything to report on the poker side of things. The talk of the Italians being really bad and offering a lot of value is true but alas I didn't get much going in any of the 5 tournaments I played.

My main event table at the start of the trip was really really soft. Much softer than I thought it would be for a €5k tournament. I probably ran good on getting a great table draw despite not actually get much going. You start with 30k chips at 25/50 but that still didn't stop some of my table mates trying to get all 400bb in with top pair no kicker and getting far too attached to underpairs to the board. From my (somewhat limited) experience of playing with the Italians, they are the kind of players who cannot stand ever being bluffed off a pot but at the same time love to run really illogical bluffs themselves. I found the best strategy versus these players is to just try to make hands and take them all to value town. In the end I busted the main event in a slightly frustrating spot running my KK into AA for just over 100bb which was made slightly more annoying given at the time the big blind and the button was sat out. But c'est la vie!

I also played all of the freezeout side events. On the whole the fields were pretty polarised between having tournament pros who had traveled over from around the world for WSOPe which was just down the road in Cannes, France the previous week and a lot of very bad and spazzy Italian players. However, I did get the feeling there were some circuit grinders who had been out travelling in London doing EPT London, then Cannes and now playing this who were obviously getting really frustrated with the live tournament grind and punting stacks off in really unnecessary spots. In the end the best run I got was in the €2k side event on a pretty tough table when I managed to run my stack up to 42k before eventually making the second best hand in a few close spots and busting in a pretty big flip.

You'll just have to believe me when I say there are worse places in the world to brick a tournament series; San Remo is really an amazing place. Although there's not too much to do in terms of night life, the whole area is very scenically beautiful and the food is incredible. Mmmm...lobster spaghetti..

Socially this trip was really nice as well. I met and talked to a ton of poker players with far more experience in these events and with far better results than I have. It was really interesting especially in talking strategically about hands that people had played. I feel like it really goes to show how deep this game can go and how much better some people are at poker which on the surface might not be obvious. I've got a really long way to go to becoming anywhere near one of the best in Europe.

What I've found that really differentiates the greatest professionals from the mediocre professionals is their ability to just constantly put you in tough spots. In good structured live tournaments especially when the average stack is often pretty deep, good players have such an edge in the way that they can just constantly apply the pressure in spots that make it really really tough for you to play back against them. I think this was highlighted as I was speaking to a few people who had played with Erik Seidel a fair bit and I was inquiring with them what made him excel so much in the super deepstack formats that he plays. Of course he's bound to have ran pretty good, but to assign all of his success in the past 1-2 years down to this alone is just being naive. They pointed out that while he's not a really laggy 3-4bet monkey like a lot of younger internet style pros he really puts the pressure on a ton post-flop where inevitably he has the biggest edge. For instance, one thing that he seems to do well by putting people in horrible spots really deep is his relentless check-raising on flops. He can check-raise really thin and then apply a lot of pressure on turns/rivers after he picks up the initiative in the hand. Similarly, because he doesn't open as many buttons as say a typical player might do when folded to them on the button his %s when 3bet for either 4betting or flatting the 3bet in position are significantly higher than most peoples would be in that spot and as such is going to put a ton of pressure on you and just put you in some horrible spots post-flop. Someone else mentioned that if he is 3betting he's doing so to 5bet a lot of the time which is just a great adjustment to the games he plays and working off his image.

That was all a pretty round-about way of getting to the point that although it's probably a bit unnecessary in the current games I play online, if I do want to start playing higher and more high-stake live MTTs against some of the best in the world it's a skill worth acquiring. Being able to analyse someones range and put that range on different board textures in a lot of spots that aren't easy to play back against. It's not a particularly easy skill to develop and requires a good amount of thought and work away from the tables as well as a lot of practice at the tables. But it is really what differentiates the great regs from the mediocre regs.

Anyway, that was all pretty long winded. Today I'm going to just relax in the sunshine in San Remo, have some nice food and maybe a BBQ with some drinks later. Then tomorrow I'm crossing the border into France and flying from Nice to Dublin for the Irish Winter Festival. Hopefully I can do a little better on the poker-front out there than I have here, but anyway I'm sure it'll be a fun trip.

GL at the tables guys!

First half of October and Arriving in San Remo

2011-10-21T16:50:00.000+01:00

Hello,

Well the start of October hasn't gone too great online. I've been playing mainly live so far this month and as such have missed quite a few of the mid-week sessions I might put in online. As a result most of my sessions have come on Sundays in the higher-variance and higher-buyin majors all of which I've managed to brick. Oh well, can't win 'em all! I did have a bit of a saviour session though yesterday when I put in a solid 16 hour mid-week grind coming out on top almost $3k which was a nice confidence booster and means I'm not down too much on the month anymore.

I have had a few deep runs lately, I got a 9th in the Sunday $8r on stars for $650 which kind of sucks besting the $2k+ field when first is $10k, but hey, at least it's not a final table bubble! I did manage a few other deepish runs which unfortunately did result in me final table bubbling including in the Sunday big $100 fo on iPoker getting $300 for my efforts when first is $9k and a couple of other $100 fos on different networks. Again, not going to whine too much about these as theoretically for every final table, you're most likely to be making an equal amount of final 2 tables especially if you're willing to put you're money on the line to build a top 3 stack and put pressure on those slightly more nervous about making the final table.

I've also had a relatively good start to the month playing live. I managed to win a seat on the online Wednesday qualifier to the GUKPT Coventry, a £1070 buyin tournament, for £250. I went down on the Tuesday and Thursday to play their midweek prelim tournaments with little joy, but on the plus side after busting the £200 6max turbo on the thursday I jumped straight into a £50 with 1 rebuy satelitte to the main event and managed to blag another seat. I'll probably transfer this one across to GUKPT Blackpool in a month or so's time. As it happens I fear that I used up all my run good in the satelitte as I didn't get much going in the actual main event eventually busting on a flip with a lot of deadmoney in the pot nearing the end of day 1. Regardless, I really enjoyed the tournament and I'm kind of pissed off with myself that I've not put more effort in the past to play the GUKPTs. They offer great value with a great structure and maybe just because the WSOPe was going on in Cannes, but the field was suprisingly soft. I also think they have a good side event structure and I'm looking forward to playing Blackpool later on in November :)

In other live news, I finally managed to beat my long-spree of not cashing in the DTD £300 deepstack. I think I'll be making an increasing number of deep runs in this now that the tournament is multi-entry and I'll be firing 2 bullets almost every month aiming for that top £30,000 prize. Unfortunately this time I managed a still (for me) somewhat respectable 12th out of ~360ish runners but just missed out on the big money. It was quite funny actually. As soon as I busted both tables tried to organise an equal money chop for the remaining players. Thankfully (as thats so boring not even having a final table!), the tournament director disallowed this but they still did a pretty much even chop 9 handed on the final table. How boring!

I got another deep run in the £150 6max "highroller" at DTD last Saturday too but fell just shy of the final table. As you can tell, I've been playing a lot live lately. Partly because I'm desperate to get as much experience and practice in before my EPT San Remo debut and also because, embarrassingly enough, I'm genuinely enjoying it. I do like the slower pace and trying to think through every hand and build reads up on opponents based on game flow and history. It is slow and at times can definately be tedius but at the same time getting deep runs in live MTTs is really exciting. Bring on San Remo!

I'm just at the airport now waiting for my flight to France where I'll board a train across to Italy. I'll update the blog again when I'm back with a trip report and hopefully, internet permitting, be updating about my tournaments/experiences via twitter in the meantime.

Until then, ciao and gl at the tables!

October and a WCOOP final table!

2011-10-07T18:08:00.002+01:00

Hey!

Wow, I have really been getting slack at updating this blog, I've been really busy lately but I guess that's still no excuse.

September in the end turned out to be a great month for me. The highlight by far being I actually managed to final table a major tournament on pokerstars! I didn't play many of the WCOOPs as I didn't fancy putting a package together and I can't justify playing any of the non-NLHE tournaments as well, let's face it, I suck at mixed games. So the tournaments I did play were a few of the $200 NLHE freezeouts and a couple of the $300 freezeouts. Somehow I managed to run like Jesus himself and final tabled event 52, a $320/$400k gtd freezeout eventually coming in 5th for $25k.

So as you can imagine I was beyond happy with this score. This is actually my biggest online score so far and my biggest score overall given the % I had of myself. I did sell 30% to a mate as online $300s are still a slight strain on the bankroll and I'm a nit but adding a juicy $19k to the roll is something I can't ever imagine myself growing tired of.

I actually had a pretty big volume month (for me) putting in 700 games in the month making a further $8k on the side which was nice and with the WCOOP bink resulting in my best month yet as well. Thinks are certainly looking up :)

Despite the boost to my roll I'm still going to stick to roughly the same stakes especially during the week. It's all about the bread-n-butter games. I will be able to take a few more Sunday shots though which is nice and if October goes half as well as September I might try adding a few more tournaments to my roster such as nightly $50 rebuys and a few of the bigger high variance turbos like the Stars $200 turbo. I enjoy playing them, but edges are small and they are swingy as fuck so I'd like to be comfortably over-rolled to them before they become a regular part of the schedule.

Onto this month and the OnGame GSOP series has arrived and is pretty much drawing to a close. I've had no success yet in the higher buyins but have had several deep runs in the lower part of the series. I somehow managed to build 2x average stacks pretty deep in both the $50r and the $5r 6max. It was pretty funny and kind of lame though as within 5 minutes I managed to win QQ to AA for a monster stack in the $5r but busted just before the money AA to qq in the $50r. Ooops, better selective run-good needed I think! This Sunday there is a big $500 freezeout to pretty much mark the end of the series which I'm going to take a shot in, so hoping for a good run there. It'll get a lot of runners and hopefully be a softish field with a great structure so should be a fun tournament regardless of how I finish up.

Other than that, I'm starting to get a bit of post-Vegas blues and I'm itching to play live and get another good score to add to my somewhat lacking Hendon Mob page. So I'm going to be getting my live-pro/donations on this month. First off this weekend is the DTD £330 re-entry tournament. I've managed to win 2 seats online for this so I'll be giving both day 1a and if necessary day 1b a shot to make a deep run in this comp. The guarantees up to £100k now for the tournament and with it only being a 5 minute walk from my apartment it would be a crime for me to miss this one.

Next week the GUKPT is hitting Coventry. I love this casino, it's probably my favourite (other than DTD) in the country. Of course it doesn't compare to the US counterparts, but for British standards it's pretty much the cream of the crop. I'll likely play the £200 6max on Thursday and the main event £1070 on Friday. I don't think there will be that many runners what with all the action going on in Cannes at the moment. But perhaps it will be a softer and smaller field and maybe that will give me a great chance to get a deep run in and earn some moolah! I might play the £330 side event on Tuesday too but that'll depend on how I feel.

After that, and probably the highlight of the month, I'll be flying out to San Remo, Italy to play my first ever EPT. I'm really excited for this one and I've wanted to visit Italy for a long time. I hear the games are good over there and if there's one time to save and use that run-good up it'll be for this one. I'm playing a healthy schedule over there so it could get pretty expensive. I assumed like most Pokerstars events you could buy-in via the client for the tournaments but alas apparently this isn't a possibly for San Remo. So I'm in a bit of a dilemna trying to work out the best way to get my money off the sites, to my bank and register for the events without getting too royally fucked by exchange rates. Hmm, might need to think this one over. Any suggestions are welcome!

To finish what will surely be a very hectic month I'll be heading to Dublin, Ireland for a nice cold pint of Guinness. Oh, and do my best in the Irish Winter Festival of course! I won a package to this on iPoker a month or so ago in one of the first qualifiers (run good!). I'm sure even if the poker on this trip doesn't go to plan it'll be a fun boozy weekend. But hopes are I won't be drinking too many pints as I'll still be building castles of chips in the main up to day 3.

So that's whats happening for me in the next month. Plenty going on and I'll try to keep up with good exercise and grinding online in-between events if I can.

Until next time, run good people!

Hello September

2011-09-01T03:10:00.000+01:00

Hey!

August was a weird month for me. Outside of poker it was incredible; I went to Amsterdam with a few friends for a few days, managed a great trip up to Scotland and went hiking in the highlands and spent some really good time outside and chilling with friends.

But, on the poker front, things weren't so great. In fact it was probably the worst month I've had since going pro last year. I've had a pretty solid start so I guess the inevitable downswing of doom was due. Kind of frustratingly I'd actually been making pretty deep runs in a lot of tournaments but getting repetitively screwed over late can grind you down. I had 6 big final tables with between $10k-$25k this month which I bubbled. So it could have been great! But this time round it wasn't.

So as far as I'm concerned bring on September! The downswing probably wasn't helped by the fact I spent an absolute ton this month what with buyin a new car and getting my flat sorted. So this month it's going to be a big month of getting my head down and getting my grind on and fingers crossed winning money!

I'm starting the month off at DTD for the monthly £300 deepstack. Without trying to make this post sound even more pessimistic I've still yet to cash in a live £300 comp despite playing them semi-regularly for a couple of years now. It has to come this weekend right? Let's just hope :p

Other than that the WCOOP is starting this weekend, I'll dabble in a few of them but won't be getting too carried away this year with making a big package. I'll be sticking to the $200-$300 NLHE events mainly and as always going in with a naieve optimism. One time!?

But yup, the Summer's over. I'm settled in my new place, now it's grind time. Time to get back on track and start crushing some MTTs.

Gl guys..

Scotland for the UKIPT

2011-08-12T17:51:00.002+01:00

Hey!

To say the least, things have been a little slack lately. My last week I've put in pretty poor volume on the whole with limited results. Highlights (or lowlights as they might be) being a few biggish FT bubbles including the Party $100 nightly and Stars $100fo and bubbling a $14k WPT Paris package. What to do though, for every big top 3 finish and package won you're also going to have those times when you brick or bubble hard. It's what we signed up for, best not to whine about it but keep on registering and grind through the variance.

Anyhoo, that's not been the main reason why my volume has slipped a bit. I've finally managed to actually be affected by putting in long hours at the computer screen with minimal breaks. Annoyingly I seem to have found myself with eye-strain making grinding online a bit of a pain, to say the least! In fact it's really annoying. From my research the best way to fix this is to take a break from any form of screens. Oh crap, after having a little think I realised if I'm not grinding online, watching TV, looking at my phone I'm not actually doing a lot. I guess I could read a book...Oh wait...

Sooo this confirmed for sure my trip up to Scotland for the UKIPT Edinburgh. I didn't manage to bink a seat, but other than giving my eyes a break from monitors of various forms, it was also a perfect excuse to test-drive my new car on a long journey up north. And I have to say it performed well :)

Unfortunately their isn't much to report still on the live poker front, I played and busted the UKIPT main event up here eventually losing AK to AA button to SB (so rigged obv!) but got my wannabe live-pro grind on and insta-regged for the £55 turbo starting 5 minutes after I busted. Fortunately for me I managed to flip well in one tournament eventually getting 2nd in it for over £400 helping to pay off most of the UKIPT buyin. Just a shame I couldn't have saved the run-good for the main, but maybe next time!
On the live poker front, I also spent the previous weekend grinding the DTD £300. It's a great tournament, although I wish they'd change the structures a little. It's totally pointless starting 300bb deep and turn crap-shooty 10 hours later, but that's a rant for another time.
So onto the next week, I'm going to mess around at the Fringe festival tonight and tomorrow, seeing Ed Bryne tonight which should be a good laugh. I'll probably donate a bit more to the live poker front on Saturday night playing the £300 side event here. I think I'm 0/20 lifetime on live £300s so the compulsary whine/bink incoming I think! Haha...I wish ;)

After that it's off up to the highlands in Scotland for a few days hiking with my Dad before heading back down south midweek to Nottingham, when hopefully my eyes will have recovered and I can start putting some proper volume in online again.

Until then, gl at the tables guys!

Settling back in

2011-08-01T16:14:00.000+01:00

Hey!

Well I'm back in the UK now and have successfully moved into my new apartment. I'm still living in Nottingham, but a bit further out from the city center in a bit more of a chilled environment. I'll miss my balcony in my old flat, but so far I'm enjoying seeing a bit of greenery and not hearing sirens outside my window every night (lol shottingham!). I've also made a pretty big purchase since being back, that is buying a 5 year old VW Passat! After driving in Vegas and moving slightly out of the city, I decided it was definitely time to buy a car again. I really enjoy driving and without trying to sound like a snob, public transport is so tilting. I get my new wheels tomorrow and am eagerly awaiting the incoming freedom :)

I've also got my net set back up again and my set-ups looking pretty good. If I can be bothered I'll take photos of the flat to put on the blog but at a later date. I've been back playing for a week now and I have to say, I'm really enjoying it!

Other than an epic fail of a Sunday yesterday, it's been a good week back with good volume. Highlights include shipping the Stars midnight $100 6max for $4.5k and a couple of turbo binks including a €20 hyper for €2k :)

This forthcoming week I'll be playing online a couple of days before getting ready for my first live tournament back on UK soil. This weekend it's the DTD £330/£100k gtd multientry that I'll be playing from Friday. Suprisingly looking forward to it and hoping for my first DTD deepstack cash ever. Will it ever come? :p

Anyway, gl on the felt everyone, til next time..

Vegas Part 2, Brick Brick Brick!

2011-07-10T21:55:00.000+01:00

Hey!

Well unfortunately the Vegas trip is coming to a close. I'm flying back to the UK shores on Thursday. I'm kind of meh about flying back, sure it will be cool to play some online poker again and I'm missing my girlfriend, but damn this is Vegas. I love this place!

The lifestyle out here is really awesome and something I'll definately miss. Bar the past couple of days, every day has been bright sunshine, the food out here is incredible and not too pricey and it's just a lot of fun hanging around with the house mates drinking, gambling or doing whatever. Shame it's not sustainable, but hey, I guess that's what holidays are for!

So far on this trip since the last blog post we've been helicopter riding over the Grand Canyon, seeing Cirque Du Soleil, out for some incredible meals including some of the best fast food in the world. Nom nom nom, fat times. God bless America :p

It's also just been nice chilling and relaxing with others as normally at home I have little time to just put my feet back and relax. This might seem surprising to most readers given my current line of work. But normally I'm grinding for 12+hours a day 5 days a week and my off-days are usually spent away from the house with friends/girlfriend or doing chores. So to sit back and watch episodes of Arrested Development without feeling guilty about slacking feels pretty nice too :)

But it's not all good news. The main event has arrived and for me has gone way way faster that I would have liked. Just so you guys have slightly longer to think of burns, I busted in the second level! Fail!

I made it to the first break just above average grinding my 30,000 starting stack at 50/100 up to around 32k. Then things went tits up. Big time! I ended up putting my money ahead in a couple of spots with 2 pair vs one pair hands including with AQ on an AQx board vs some old guys AK who then managed to bink his king on the river after all in on the flop.

The rest went in when I was dealt AA , opened with 3 calls, got squeezed from the small blind and I just 4bet shipped it. He couldn't snap me off any faster with QQ, which turned out to be a fantastic call after the first card on the flop was a queen.

Moral of the story, never trust the ladies in Vegas ;)

So now after a very disappointingly short run in the main, I've got two tournaments left to work my way into some more profits for the trip. After my bink in the Venetian $500 I'm not back to around even (frickin main event, fastest $10k I've ever spent :p). So it would be nice to get going and have one final score before heading back home.

But if I can't get anything going in the two remaining tournaments, I won't mind too much. This summer has been amazing and I'm definately going to miss the Vegas lifestyle.

Vegas Part 1, bink bink bink!

2011-06-27T20:51:00.000+01:00

Hey!

We're over half way through the Vegas trip now and I've played 14 out of my 24 tournaments. So far so good as I've managed to luckbox my way to finally getting a live score getting the majority chop in a $500 Venetian tournament for $25,500. Although the score itself somewhat embarrassingly doesn't pay off my trip in itself, it's my first live tournament win in a very very long 0time and as you can imagine I've been over-the-moon since :)

Other than that, I got a deepish run in a WSOP $1500 coming 91st/3kish runner something for $4300 and a few near cashes. I feel like my live game has improved a lot since I've been here and I'm actually enjoying the live grind quite a lot. Surprisingly I haven't even thought about playing online again while I've been here.

When I'm not grinding tournaments I've either been chilling by the pool, various adventures up mountains, eating way too much nice food and generally just having good times. I really like the lifestyle out here and having a car with the freedom it brings here is really good.

This coming week I'm playing more of the same in terms of tournaments. I wouldn't mind next year learning some of the mixed games though just to break up the constant no-limit holdem grind but the fields seem really soft this year especially at the world series and I think I would feel bad missing out on some of the juicy fields.

So this coming week I'm kicking it off with a $500 caesers heads-up tournament that the majority of our house is playing then a few more NLH tourns spread between the Venetian and at the Rio. Then the build up to the main event will start which from what I've heard will be the ultimate grind and a great way to finish the summer off....especially if I can run good enough to cash!

Hopefully the run good continues and I can manage to get another really good run before the trip ends.

GL at the tables all!

Helllooo Vegas!

2011-06-12T18:47:00.002+01:00

Hey!

Well a lot has happened the last week. I've arrived in Vegas, got a car out here and settled into the house we're renting for the Summer. It's really nice with a big pool, big living area and I've even got a 4-poster bed. Balla!

I haven't got much time but I'll give you all a quick update:

Tournaments:

I'm so far 0/5 bricking every event pretty hard. In each event so far I've gone semi-deep in everything but yet to make a cash. Many more to come though!

One time?

Food

This is Vegas, you got to talk about food! Well I've had some incredible meals already since being here including some amazing Sushi, Steaks, Burgers. They really do good food over this side of the pond. Probably why everyone's a tad bit larger over here too! One of the highlight meals has to be going to one of the local breakfast-diners which serve so much good food like omelettes, pancakes and eggs. Mmmm, I wish they had diners like this in England in Nottingham. I'd probably go every day.

Fun Times

We've also been doing quite a lot of fun activities outside of gambling which is awesome out here. It's far too easy to over engross yourself in gambling or poker in this town, yet it has so much more to offer. Highlights have to include driving over to Nevadas adjacent city an hour away. The place is called Boulder City and is host to Lake Mead. A huge lake in the Nevada Desert apparently bordering 4 states. We hired a powerboat for Chud's birthday and one of those tube things on the back and spent the day drinking on the lake and throwing each other into the lake at top speeds. Highly recommended tilt-buster :p

I met up with a couple of other friends as well and after a somewhat disappointing start to the tournament schedule without a cash yet, I went around the massive shark aquarium at Mandalay Bay with a couple of friends. Not only does it bring back memories of nightmares I had when I was a kid, I was actually really impressed. Normally at aquariums they have a bunch of boring fish or colourful little things no one actually cares about. This place just has the biggest and the best, pirhannas, giant snakes, jelly fish, alligators, and of course a huge shark reef.

I may not have picked anything up from the sharks in the tank, but it really was a great trip and I'd highly recommend it to people visiting Vegas.

Anyway, I've got another $1k WSOP event in an hour so got to get ready to crush it, or get crushed, as the case may be :p

Best of luck at the tables all.

It's almost time for VEGAS

2011-05-24T03:00:00.000+01:00

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

2011-05-03T04:10:00.000+01:00

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!

Spain and the rest of the month

2011-04-27T03:38:00.000+01:00

Hey people,

Since my last post, my online suck seems to have turned a little and I've managed to get myself unstuck from the whole I got myself in at the start of the month. Since returning from Spain I've put in a lot of volume and have managed to luckbox my way to 6 wins in just over a week which I'm really happy about. Most notably winning the iPoker $100fo, iPoker $30r and OnGame $10r :)

As for Spain itself, the trip was amazing. I was really impressed by Seville itself. The weather was amazing and the town itself is really architecturally stunning. On top of that San Miguel on tap was cheap and the food was surprisingly good for Spanish standards! Overall an amazing trip. I made day 2 in the $3k main event but didn't last long reshoving my QQ into AA. I then proceeded to donk out both side events with QQ too. Them damn bitches. To tell the truth though, a tiny part of me was happy when I did bust the events as I knew I could then spend the rest of the holiday grinding on the sun-tan and hustling fish like pillow100 at Chinese whilst drinking plenty of San Miguel.

There are quite a few high buy-in live events going on at the moment such as the Irish Open, EPT San Remo, Everest Poker The One. I was very very close to pack up my bags and do a circuit of the events. After much disheartening persuasion from my sensible side I realized it probably wouldn't be the best to risk such high proportions of my roll chasing the dream when Vegas is so near anyway. So maybe next year guys :(

Instead I think to get my live-fix I'll head to Walsall this weekend for the GUKPT. I expect to go on the Thursday to play the £200 6max side event and then play the main event on Friday. After that I'll be playing the DTD £300 deepstack in Nottingham the week after. My sharkscope subscription has died on me a little but I'm fairly sure with the Spain trip and the sunny weather outside I've slacked a bit on volume this month, but I'm hoping to pick it up for the last few days to push this month into good profits :)

Such a downswinging luckbox

2011-04-11T21:40:00.000+01:00

Hey!

Well the month of April has left me feeling somewhat of a fool (OK, last bad joke I promise). The month had a promising start but I've proceeded to lose $6k+ in my last 3-4 sessions which isn't too great as I've practically not cashed a tournament for a whole week. Yikes!

I think it's probably borderline karma due to my insane month in March and was well due. One good thing about downswings though is that for me anyway if I have a couple of really horrific sessions in a row it motivates me even harder to study my game. Especially playing as a professional as I start to almost panic that everyones got sick good and I suck! Confidence is a big thing in poker and it's probably why some of the top players are often such cocky douche bags. It definitely helps to go over hands and spots with friends and in poker forums just to get yourself back on track and to help identify any leaks that might be emerging.

Anyway enough of the downswing dribble. So I was having a really crap week and a crap Sunday. I swapped 20% in the euro majors with my friend Pillow100 who I was grinding with last night. Obviously he went and spewed his way to the final table of the OnGame $200/$200k gtd with a huge chip lead. He then proceeded to knock out 2 players on the final table with QQ>KK>AA but couldn't find a close. Regardless, he picked up $24k for finishing runner-up which banked me a solid $4800 and wiped off a lot last weeks losses. Sick Sunday saver too as despite building a few stacks nothing seemed to materialise.

So after a pretty horrific week on the tables, I'm really looking forward to a break from online poker. Which coincides pretty well with the fact that in a few hours I'll be heading to the airport to fly to sunny Spain for GSOP Seville, $3200 buy-in tournament. It's the biggest buy-in I've played for about a year and I'm really looking forward to it. I also can't wait to just get some Sangria and Paella down my throat and relax as well. It's been a pretty hardcore past couple of months. I'm not too sure of what to expect from the town, the hotel, the tournament or anything. But it should be fun regardless.

I've also pretty much finalised my schedule for Vegas in the Summer. I'll be playing a ton of the $1k and $1.5k WSOP events as well as some bigger Venetian tournaments. It should be really fun. For those interested, here's a link:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkaN5CySIIj9dC1xQW9aUmoxV0ZrQzhvejRZcnVsVHc&hl=en#gid=0

On that note, after I return from Spain hopefully feeling refreshed and significantly wealthier (well the last part would be nice anyway :p ) I'm really going to get my head down and grind hard for the last few weeks Pre-Vegas. Although I'm playing a lot of tournaments, I'll be chilling a lot too in the evenings and if there's one place where having a lot of money buys a lot of happiness it's this city. That is some motivation right there. I'll also be really pushing myself hard on the health and fitness front too. I know I won't be some Men's Health cover model by the time I get there, but it would be nice to be a little leaner and fitter for the Summer season.

Anyway, I'm leaving in a couple of hours and need to get packing. Best of luck at the tables everyone!

March Review, WSOP and onto April!

2011-04-01T03:32:00.002+01:00

Hey!

I think it's best to start of by saying March has been very kind to me. This was one of the big months before Vegas where I can really get my head down and grind, especially whilst the weather outside remains relatively poor and everyone else seems busy with University etc. So that's what I did! I don't keep track exactly how many days I did but it was a fair few which resulted in me buying into around $47k worth of tournaments this month smashing my $40k target I set at the start of the month. I also managed a small cash in the UKIPT Manchester making me go 1 for 2 in live tournament cashes on the month. Woo Woo!

So as you can see I ran pretty hot this month which is always really nice and just what's needed pre-Vegas. Now I just need to keep this run going for a while longer!

You may notice a pretty significant blip in the graph at the end of the month. Well I managed to luckbox a main event package last night in a $500 sat! I'm pretty much over the moon with happiness at the moment. I tried really hard to sat in last year whilst spunking off around $5k in sats with no luck. Literally since I first started playing home-games with friends for £2 I've really wanted to play in the main event. I know it's pretty cliche and a fishy attitude but words can't describe how excited I am for Vegas now!

One issue which is kind of in the back of my mind is that I qualified through AP (boo, hiss!). I don't regularly play on the site and I guess from an ethical standpoint I probably shouldn't at all based on their history. Similarly I haven't really given a lot of thought in depth to how I would feel representing the site if I did get a deep run in the main event. The thing with satellites on AP, Stars and FTP is that due to some legal reason they can't actually buy you into the tournament. Instead they credit your account with the money expecting you to go a long and play the tournament. As added incentive to actually get the punters to come down to the main event and play the give a $1k bonus for showing up, cash in hand. Then they give $1k per day and a $10k bonus if you reach the money. Which is pretty damn sick all things considered. Now you've got a soft $10k tournament with a mincash effectively of ~$30,000. This is a pretty similar deal on AP and FTP at the moment, and I guess Stars will join the crew too or maybe even offer something better.

On the other hand the European sites are starting to offer satellites. But sites like 888 and party poker are must-play seats without any extra monetary incentives for turning up or cashing. Similarly these packages are about $3k-$4k more including hotels and random parties (lol nice markup guys) making them even less attractive. I mean I think the satelittes on party for instance will be softer, and there's a fairly good chance if I grind the sats hard I could win another seat via Party and then keep my $12k from AP as cash but the added incentive of playing with them is a lot.

I think what I'll probably end up doing is try to grind the WSOP sats a fair bit as they do seem to be fairly soft and try to also qualify on Full Tilt or Stars (whenever they eventually run them) and go from there.

Anyway, enough of that jibber-jabber. So I've noted a pretty mammoth schedule for Vegas which I expect I'll sell action to in the next couple of months. I'm really not sure how many 'shots' I should take this Summer with my own money. A good part of me wants to do bi-weekly packages whereby I'd put up a package for the first 2 weeks I'm there. Then a separate package for the next two weeks etc. This would then allow me to alter the % of action that I sell as my bankroll fluctuates. I mean say for instance I had a really lucky start and managed to bink pretty early but then was tied into still selling 50% for say the main event 6 weeks later, that would suck a little. I'll have a good think about it. I'll also blog about my schedule before I post it incase any readers want to buy a % or two for a bit of a sweat this Summer. It should be fun :)

I just googled "April" and this pic came up which I thought was pretty funny so thought I'd add it!

Anyway, onto April. A fresh month and a fresh start to bink some tournaments. I won't be putting as much volume in online this month as I have the previous two months. After the SCOOP draws to a close there isn't a whole lot more happening online-wise other than FTOPs which I've pretty much given up on after Full Tilts persistance in trying to make their fields as tough and annoying as possible by adding all the crap like multi-entry, rush and cashout. Whatever happened to good old fashioned 9 man NLH tourns eh!?

So instead I'll be turning a lot of my focus to the live arena this month. Partly to have a break from the computer and partly as a bit of practice for Vegas. I'm increasingly becoming more eager to play live tournaments these days and feel much more confident playing them. Yes, they are a grind, but with the right mindset they can also be a lot of fun. Plus the social side surrounding the live poker environment is always fun as I'm starting to get to know more and more players on the scene.

So first off this weekend I'll be playing the DTD £300 monthly deepstack, followed by the $3000 GSOP Seville in Spain. Then hopefully the Irish Open (satellite luckboxing dependent) followed finally by GUKPT Walsal. It looks to be a busy month ahead. I'll also supplement the live grind with some online play and hope to get around $30,000 in tournament entries online this month. It should be a lot of fun.

Best of luck to everyone in April!

Cliff Notes:
-Ran hot this month
-Binked a WSOP package!
-Planning on playing a lot more live in April

A pretty decent week with a few small binks

2011-03-28T06:09:00.000+01:00

Progress on the bankroll front!

I've started adding in the OnGame $50r and having success with it already cashing twice this week. I'm yet to get a final table on it despite the two deep runs but I hope it's only just round the corner. My best score of the week came in a second place in a €30 rebuy for €3.3k. I also managed to win the following 4 tournaments:

So a really good week :). I played pretty much every day and put in a lot of work outside of poker in the gym, eating healthily and working on my game so I feel pretty pleased with the progress.

This Sunday was probably my biggest Sunday ever. My rolls hovering about $40k at the moment so I'm taking shots at the majors on my own. Today the total buy-ins were just over $5k in the end. GULP. I lost a bit of money on the day but it was much closer thanks to a proper Sunday saver binking 4th in a $16 hyper for just over $2k :)

I didn't really have any deep runs in majors this week other than a 19th in a €150/€35k gtd and a 14th in iPoker $109/$25k gtd. I did though manage to FT a small €50r but crashed out in 4th. Still not bad!

Anyway, it's another no-lifer week of grinding coming up. Should be pretty fun as I'm really enjoying playing a higher stake schedule these days due to my increased roll. There is some serious money on the tables every night and to tell you the truth, it's quite exciting! This coming weekend I'll be playing the monthly DTD £330 deepstack and looking for a deep run. It would be nice to finally cash in that tournament anyway!

Until later, gl guys!

Success at the UKIPT!

2011-03-22T15:55:00.000Z

Hey!

I finally managed to cash in a live tournament after again another very dry stint! I managed to get 27th in the 4-day UKIPT Manchester tournament making a solid deep-run into the third day before losing my only flip of the whole tournament A8s beaten by the deuces. A bit anti-climatic, but with £1450 in my pocket from the £500 buy-in and a bucket-load of confidence I now cannot actually wait for Vegas.

In fact, I'm so stoked with this deep run I've actually planned a few other live tournaments that I'd like to play prior to my Vegas trip. So so stoked I've even pretty much planned my entire live schedule over Vegas. It will include lot's of $300 and $500 venetian NLHE tournaments, a few WSOP shots at their $1ks and $1.5ks and some random $200 8-game comps and 6-max omaha hi/lo at binions/golden nugget just for fun. This could very well be an expensive Summer coming up.

The OnGame GSOP is now over. I didn't do too great in the series cashing in just one of the $200 freezeouts and the $100r. Then again, due to playing in Manchester I didn't manage to get too much volume in nearer the end of the series. I almost played the $500/$300k gtd whilst staying in Manchester borrowing a friend, Neil's, laptop for the evening. Thank god someone in the hotel had already registered for it as Neil's laptop turned out to be the biggest pile of shit ever and would have not had a chance trying to load the stodgy ongame software. In fact it couldn't even handle full tilt. Somehow I managed to final table the $50 rush turbo thingy they have on Sundays with $7k up top. Neil's laptop obv crashed again when I was 5/7 and after 10 minutes trying to reboot the damn thing I realised I had blinded out. In 4th place though! No idea what the others guys at the final table must have been doing but it had to involve some epic ICM-spew given I was sat out! To be honest, I'm not sure if that's even a beat or a brag.

Other than that I've won a small €50 turbo this week for €1.1k and had a bunch of 2nd-5ths which has got to be a good thing! I mean it would have been nicer to close, especially on Sunday when the top prizes are often higher, but I cannot complain. I just ticked off another winning Sunday coming 4th in the 888.com $75 freezeout for $3.3k. From last year pretty much not having a single winning Sunday, this year is starting out pretty damn well in terms of Sunday performance. Still no huge Sunday bink but it has to only be a matter of time!

Onto this coming week. Well after playing an absurd amount of weekend poker I pretty much slept in all of Monday and just chilling with friends today and tonight. I'll be grinding my pants off for the rest of the week as my online volume this month has slacked a bit and I'm thus far pretty behind on my projected monthly buyins. Also my fitness/diet has sucked since Manchester so definitely getting back on that hard for the rest of the week.

GL at the tables everyone, I'll update with any big scores that I get or deep runs after next Sundays grind!

Crazy Sunday Grinding and a Small Brag!

2011-03-07T04:44:00.002Z

Hey,

I have just finished quite possibly my longest ever session of online poker before. I started registering tournaments at 1pm and finished registering at 1:30am with some turbos eventually playing my last hand at around 4am. To be honest, I have no idea how I'm even remotely capable of writing this message as I feel truly knackered. But that's some dedication to the blog isn't it!

Anyway, I am extremely happy as I have now reached the 6-figure club on Sharkscope! I don't follow the statistics too religiously as they tend to be a little inaccurate and have missed out a lot of the tournaments I used to play back in the day on networks like crypto etc. But after today Sharkscope officially has me up over $100k lifetime on my main sites :D

Back to the results of tonight. Well, it was quite a fun night in the end. I got deep in quite a few tournaments including a 2nd in a $15 hyper-turbo on Full Tilt for $2.6k, 4th in a $100 6max turbo for $2k and 3rd in the Everest $100/$50k gtd for $5.3k. Coincidently I also managed to final table this a few weeks ago coming in 3rd then as well. I think I need lessons on closing tbh..

Anyhow, profitable Sundays are always nice and a bit of a rarity so I'm enjoying every moment.

This past weekend I played the dtd £300 deepstack which was rather uneventful and another live tournament to add to the ever-growing list of live-bricks. It will come one day, it will come one day, it will come one day.... ;)

Maybe even next weekend in fact? I managed to blag myself a seat to the UKIPT Manchester in one of those gamble-fest £5 3x-turbo rebuys on Stars which I always seem to end up in for like £60 in. Anyway I got the seat and after the banter at the last stop of the UKIPT in Nottingham I'm pretty much looking forward to the social side as much as the event itself. There's something about the UKIPT I can't put my fingers on. It just seems to generate some hype and I just generally enjoy and look forward to the buzz surrounding the event.

Anyway, I'm extremely tired now and hope some of the above is remotely readable. GL at the tables guys..

February Review, Onto March!

2011-03-02T04:46:00.000Z

Hey!

After a slow start, February turned out to be a great month for me. I didn't actually bink any tournaments but got short-handed in a few including a 3rd in the Everest $100/$50k gtd on Sunday for $5k and a 4th in a stars €100/€40k gtd for €3.8k too. Both definitely helped to boost the roll.

Onto this month and a lot could happen!

The OnGame GSOP series has just started and I plan on putting in a pretty much full schedule on this in all of the NLH games. So far there's been a $200, $150 and $100r. Being the luckbox that I am I managed a solid deep run in the $100r cashing for around $1k. Let's hope it's not my last deep run of the series!

Mini-FTOPs is making an appearance starting next week. I can never expect much with these mahhoooosive fields but I don't mind playing the big-field low-buyins especially some of the mixed game tournaments that are really soft and a lot of fun. Who knows, I may even go on a sick run and have my own little silver FTP jersey this time next month.

And after that the Pokerstars SCOOP (Spring Cup Of Online Poker) will be heading our way.

A lot going on online. Other than possibly UKIPT Manchester and DTD £300 deepstack which I'm umming and arring about at the moment I don't think I'll be playing any live this month. What I will be doing though is putting a ton of volume in online. I plan to keep playing the stakes I'm playing as I seem to be doing pretty well at them at the moment and aim for around $40,000 worth of MTT buyins this month. It's a tough task but I'd like to give it a go. What I won't be doing is what I did at the start of this month and start playing too many tables which resulted in me making suboptimal decisions. The results are pretty evidential in the graph above I do believe.

So anyway, that's my plan for March. It won't be the most exciting month of the year, but it has the potential to be a biggy.

GL folks..

A bad start to 2011 turned great. + UKIPT fun

2011-02-21T04:21:00.000Z

Hey!

It's been a swongy start to the year so far. Pretty much coming back from India what with expenses from my trip and then seemingly forgetting how to win at MTTs I hit a rather harsh $7k drop to my bankroll forcing me to move down stakes. This resulted in me taking a lot more of my spare time number-crunching and going over hands/watching training videos to get me back into my winning ways. It was kind of sick in fact, I managed to final table bubble about 8 $100fo's/big field tournaments in the space of a week whilst upping my volume and without making a single final table.

Luckily things seem to have taken a turn for the better and I'm running hawwwwwt again! I managed to take down the OnGame $20rebuy for $3.5k, €50 6max for €1.4k, 3rd in a big $100 freezeout for $5.7k and blagged a seat in the GSOP final securing myself a $5k package! All in the space of 3 days.

MTTs can be the cruelest most soul-destroying things at times, but when you go on these little runs, it is honestly getting up there with the best feelings in the world. MBN right?

So since being back from India I've literally spent every minute I'm not with my girlfriend and friends thinking of poker and grinding my socks off. I'm still so focused on getting a big enough roll for Vegas so that I can take a few shots at the series and grind some Venetian tournaments.

Last weekend was UKIPT Nottingham. Living in Nottingham and having a load of superstar Online kids coming to town I felt it was my duty to put some of my mates up. So I had Michael "Ledders11" Leedham, Chud "Rje" Ellis and Ant "Anupreturns" Gaughan staying over at my place from Thursday through Sunday night. Without trying to sound gay, it was a lot of fun.

On the first night, a large get-together was organised with various degens travelling from around Europe to play the UKIPT Nottingham the following few days. We met at a curry house in Nottingham and then proceded to hit the town going all out with tripple-shots and skittlebombs. Whatever the hell they are. By the way, I think everyone has to thank Chud for not only recommending the bar "BZR" that we went to, but also kindly paying for everyones meal at the curryhouse. Learn to run better at credit card roulette next time mate ;)

I didn't last too long in the tournament getting my stack in with Js9s on a KxQsTs board but running into a loose aggressive young players AJ which sent me home rather earlier than I expected. I didn't even make the dinner break! I also had % of a few other people there but everyone pretty much failed and no-one who I had a % of even made day-2. Them internet kids pfftt...over-rated I tells ya!

Fortunately, Tim "BakinCookies" Bettingen (pictured far left next to me) managed to final table the tournament coming in 4th I do believe. So well done to him.

I was really impressed with the tournament on the whole and although I said I didn't want to play much live before Vegas the atmosphere and build-up to this tournament has actually got me really excited for my next trip to the live-arena. Just no live-cash then I should be fine.

But yes, UKIPT Nottingham was pretty incredible. For one, first prize rocketed above £100,000 with over 1000 people stumping up the £500 to play with alternatives who apparently couldn't get seated. Let's make this clear now, this tournament was held at Dusk Til Dawn, Europe's largest poker room over a 2 day period. And every side event and the main event fully sold out. Poker is heading places in England. It's exciting.

So I'm now pretty excited about my next big live tournament. Perhaps it will be a DTD£300 deepstack if I manage to satellite my way in or it could be the €3000 GSOP main event held in Seville, Spain sometime in Mid-August. The side event structure looks pretty good there too so hopefully it will be a nice little break. Who knows, by April south Spain may even have a little sunshine so that's definately something to look forward to in these bleak February days in England!

Other than that, I've booked my flights to Vegas. I'll be going over for the full series again flying out on the 3rd June and returning to England on the 17th July hopefully a significantly richer man. If not, I'm sure I'll have had an amazing time regardless!

I've got a lot of grinding to be getting back on with now, but until then, good luck at the tables guys!

India, 2011 and Future Plans

2011-02-08T11:39:00.000Z

Hey!

For those unaware, I have recently returned from an extended 5 week holiday in India. The trip was amazing, and it was really nice to zone-out from poker and be immersed in a completely different culture and lifestyle. It definitely helps to put everything into perspective at any rate. Although I won't detail too much about the trip, I'll add some photos at the end of the post for those interested.

So now my new year has finally started. After a few withdrawals and a bad first Sunday back online, my roll is floating just above $20k at the moment. This is plenty for my schedule at the moment which is focusing primarily on midstake euro comps up to $100 freezeout. I'm really putting in a driving effort to have $10k worth of buyins a week online and maintaining a 50% roi. Although I am finding it increasingly difficult given my current bankroll to get in $2000 worth of buyins per night.

I'm kind of at a cross-junction with this. On the one hand you get the sickos like Mement_Mori which have $10k+ buyins on any particular day and can mass multi-table (like 30 tables+) at once with a relatively high average buy-in. This is obviously brilliant as he gets in amazing volume and seems to consistently do very well. However, I simply don't think I'm capable of playing that many tables profitably. I much prefer having a mix between 6-9 and really focusing on every decision I make trying to decipher, given the information available, the best play. I just feel that if I start upping the table numbers any more, I'll go further into auto-pilot mode and my ROI will drop. I'm sure I'll inevitably tighten up a bit which is also never a good thing in MTTs...

So I think I should start putting in some longer sessions to try and reach this $2k buyin per day. I'll try a 4pm-midnight registering time period and see how that suits me for a while.

In terms of live tournaments, to be honest I'm pretty fed up with them. It's probably because other than a UKIPT score a year back I've really not ever had a really deep run in the money of a big event. I kind of feel like although the buyins are higher yet the standard of play is lower, they are extremely time-consuming especially considering opportunity cost of playing online at the same time, you have to factor in a lot of expenses (travel, accommodation, food), and they aren't that great especially when you seem to get semi-deep but miss the money in every comp you play :p

So I think I might just stay local in Nottingham for the first part of the year especially up until Vegas and really limit the amount I play live. Then when I hit Vegas in the Summer, I'll be dying for some live action and really get my A-game back on and hopefully win big money!

Until then, I'll just enjoy the online grind and really try to get in decent volume and hope that the poker gods bless me by pushing a little run good this way too. Only a few months until Vegas now and I'd love to have a solid bankroll for when I go over there...

2010 Review and 2011 Goals

2010-12-22T03:59:00.003Z

Hey,

Yes this post is coming early, but I've just finished off my last poker session of the year as I'm leaving Nottingham and heading to my family home in Dorset tomorrow where I'll be seeing friends and family for a few days before then jetting off to India on the 26th and returning to these cold shores sometime in mid-January.

So 2010 has been a pretty busy year for myself. I finished my last ever year of formal education (perhaps!) and managed to graduate. I went to Vegas and had arguably the best summer of my life. I got back with my girlfriend earlier on in the year and things are going great on that front. I also took holidays skiing in France, binge-drinking in Turkey and throwing snowballs in Vienna. Oh, and I decided to give playing poker professionally a shot! I'd say 2010 has been a great year.

Although this is my lifetime graph of the games I've played I think the year started around game 3000. I was on my last year of university and wasn't working on my game, exercising any bankroll management or really playing much at all due to a lot of real-life commitments.

I only played on Sundays for a while and partly ran bad, partly didn't deserve to do too well which resulted in a pretty nasty downswing to start the year off with. In fact in the first 6 months of the year I only managed to play a measly sum of around 1000 games losing pretty badly throughout.

Around game 4000 is when I returned from Vegas. For the readers that have been following the blog for a while it was safe to say I was pretty much busto. I hadn't degenned my money off hard or even lost significant portions of my bankroll. That would have probably made for a better read, but the truth of the matter was I had to put a lot of money aside for future living expenses, paying up front for 9 months rent of my flat/my bills/a new computer etc. etc.

This left me with around $2000 for poker, but with lots of spare time and enough money secured in the bank to keep me a float for the next 9 months regardless of what happened. Yeh, I felt pretty busto!

I'm happy to say that with some careful bankroll management, putting in a lot of volume, working on my game and exercising careful bankroll management the next few months to finish off my year have been really good. I only reported two losing weeks since coming back from Vegas and those were both the two weeks I played the least amount of games in. I've got a bankroll again and I can't wait for 2011. It should be a big year...

My Goals for 2011:

1) I don't like setting monetary goals too much. You can control how many hours you put into studying your game and you can control the amount of hours you spend grinding the tables. What you can't do though is control variance. I would however like to see myself grinding my current schedule hard for a couple more months and hopefully, with a little run-good on my side, get my bankroll over the $50k mark. Then I'll be fully rolled for the majors. Which leads me onto my first goal of 2011. Winning a major. I don't care what site it's on, I don't care when it happens. I just want to ship one!

2) Fitness and health. I really need to sort this one out. It's only been a few months since going pro and I really feel that if I'm not careful I will start to put on some chub in the forthcoming year. You feel so much better when you work out and eat healthily but it's way too easy to just sit on the computer chair all day and order takeaway food. I'm going to try to work out before every session. Keep cooking healthier food and cut back heavily on my takeaways. I enjoy cooking, it's just the effort and time of cooking which annoys me. So lazy I know!

3) Improving my game. The game is constantly evolving and if I want to keep ahead of the curve I'm going to have to keep evolving my game too. That includes noting hands down mid-session which I'm unsure about and trying to watch at least 3-4 training videos every week.

4) Live Poker. Weird as it may now be, I really am starting to enjoy live deepstacked tournaments a lot more. Sure, they are frustrating as hell, but I want to keep grinding them. I'd really like 2011 to be my break-through onto the live scene. I've played a surprisingly large number of live tournaments in the past couple of years and really other than a few scores here and there I have had next to no success in them. I don't believe I have huge live-game leaks, although maybe others can comment on this one. My approach for 2011 on the live poker front will be to try and qualify online for as many seats as I can. Keep focusing and keeping my A-Game and preying to the poker gods that sooner or later I have my breakthrough and can put in a really good result live. I seem to get deep in most live deepstack tournaments I play but can never make it to that elusive final table let alone ship one. I guess getting in the volume is key here. Thankfully, DTD is on my doorstep which helps a great deal. I plan on playing every £300 deepstack they have there and winning a few seats to other events around the country/Europe too.

5) Travel. I love travelling and I love how poker can give the freedom to travel. But I don't think as of yet that I'll get that much travelling done this year other than to live events. I'm almost certain I'll go back to Vegas for around 4 weeks in the Summer and maybe book a trip later on in the year. But other than India at the start of the year, this might be a little bit more of a quiet year on this front.

6) Las Vegas. I'm already looking forward to this trip though. This time round I'm going to pit gamble less and hopefully hire a car so that I can play more live tournaments at my own leisure. I'll play less online, if any this time round. I'll see Vegas as a holiday to work towards as well. I'd love to have the roll to play $1ks off my own money without having to sell action and similarly be in great shape before heading to the land of the obese! I mean it's going to be inevitable I'll put on weight over there again, so I might as well prepare myself and get in shape before I go so I don't come back feeling like a massive slob again.

And that's that. I'm clocking out for 2010 now and eagerly awaiting 2011. See you all in the New Year!

DTD £1k Monte Carlo

2010-12-20T04:11:00.002Z

This week I hardly put any volume in online. In fact my only session I played was tonight (Sunday) grinding with Ledders and Tim who are staying in Nottingham for the weekend because of the DTD £1k.

The start of the week I was feeling a bit under the weather with a cold and a heavy dose of man-flu. It's probably for the best I didn't play as I felt pretty lethargic too so just bummed around taking vit-c shots and watching movies. Luckily I managed to recover in time for my birthday on Wednesday which was spent chilling with friends/girlfriend and generally having a very good day.

I still didn't really have the poker-buzz on Thursday and insta agreed to meet up with Ledders and his friend Tim who had arrived in Nottingham on the train to chill out and grab some food in the evening. We had a few beers and donked around on Guitar hero then headed out to Pizza Express before finally getting a cab over to Dusk Til Dawn after hearing about a free bar for all the players who had registered for the £1k starting the following day. Ship it!

Well, we would ship the free drinks if they hadn't stopped serving the free drinks when we arrived! Already slightly merry we ventured onto the cash tables and I proceeded to spew off £500 in a mix of £1/£2 NLH and £2/£2 dealers choice. TBH I wasn't playing horrifically but wasn't exactly hitting the deck too hard either! I wasn't too fussed anyway, wanting to save all my run-good for the tournament the following day, plus I've been on a pretty hot run lately online up just over $7k on the month so far, so a little bump in the road won't hurt profit figures too much anyway!

Come Friday and I'm feeling alive and kicking and can't wait to crush the Monte Carlo event. My table draw appears to be pretty good with a few relatively weak players mixed in with Nik Persaud (London live pro) and Tom Middleton (HitTheHole online - very very good player). It was quite funny really as I'd only just been playing (and losing) to HitTheHole the previous week after he raped me to pieces in the $300 6max and is in my opinion one of, if not the best, tournament player in the UK at the moment.

Play started at £1k with 255 runners turning up all aiming to take the ~£75k first place. It was going to be a long, but fun few days.

Disappointingly I managed to lose half my stack relatively in a quite interesting spot. The HJ, who seemed relatively weak limped and I iso raised As9s. It folded around to him and he quickly called.

I cbet the dry Qx4s3x board after he check-called and I barrelled the Ts on the turn. By the river the board read Qx4s3xTsQs. So I river the nut-flush but the board paired. Regardless, he decided after check-calling the first two streets to lead into me and I raised for value thinking a large part of his range was random Qx he limped like QJ/Q9/QK or perhaps some sort of flushdraw that got there somehow (maybe 5s6s) etc. I also didn't think he'd have 33/44 much in his range as even the most passive of opponents normally try to get more money into the pot with their baby sets on drawy boards at some point during the hand. As it happened, I re-popped his river lead and he thought for 10second and then 4bet me. Sighhh/fold I guess...He probably had QT or maybe a badly played low set.

Anyway after that hand I managed to go on a little rush and without showdown rebuilt my 16k stack to 98,100 to end the day with. I was very happy with my play, I felt I put a lot of pressure on people and was picking my spots well.

Come day 2, I hit the gym in the morning again and felt excited for playing my best game of poker. I managed to slowly build my stack up to 170,000 before losing a monster flip with 99 to AK leaving me back at 98,000. 100 chips less than I started the day with 4 hours in. Back to the grind... I was moved tables recognising a few faces and not recognising a few others. Including mammoth stack Jerome Bradpiece of whom Cos informed me on the dinner break was a regular on the UK-poker scene and an extremely loose aggressive player when he had chips. This could be fun...

The first hand back it folded to him on the button and he opened 2.1x. The small blind folded and it came to me in the BB with AQs and 33bb remaining. I elected to 3bet, he thought for a little while and 4bet me. I hollywooded for 10 seconds then crammed it in his face and he folded. Easy game!

2 hands later and it folds to him again, he opens and I elect to 3bet the button with As4s on the button as a bluff. He tanked for a while and looked visibly frustrated before folding somewhat angrily. Nice....I've put him on tilt :)

The very following hand I look down at 99, surprise surprise, Jerome opens again and I decide to keep the pressure on with my 45bb's aiming to 3bet/call it off feeling he was getting really pissed off with me ruining his plans of running over the table. So he raised, I 3bet, he thought for a while and 4bet and I 5bet crammed it in his face once again.

He thought for a little while before calling with JJ. Really kind of a lame spot especially as I didn't get there ;) but whatevssssss! I came about 20 off the money. I'm not so sure about the hand. Given the dynamic online I'd be cramming it in the same situation all day of the week. But I was 45-50bb deep in a very well structured live tournament with 75 minute levels. Yes I could have picked a better, lower variance spot. I'm sure the play was +EV but maybe not optimal. This could just be me doubting my play as well after bricking yet another day 2 tournament though. Who knows, maybe one day I'll bink it when I'm behind and go on to win...

Nah not likely ;) I'll just add it to the long tally of lifetime MTT bricks I've made. Maybe next time, eh..

This forth coming week I'm heading back down to Dorset for Christmas with the family and plan on putting my last two MTT sessions of the year in on Monday and Tuesday. I'd love to be +$3k on those two sessions to finish off the year on a $10k month, but that WOULD be running good!

After that, I'm off on holiday with a friend to India to finish the year off. It's currently a stable 30c every day there and I can't wait. I love exploring new cultures and I love the cuisine. I'm going to have a pretty open mind on my travels and hope to do some reflecting at the same time. More to come!

Gl at the tables all...

Snowy Vienna, A Few Binks and a Few Bricks

2010-12-13T03:23:00.000Z

Hey!

A few weeks ago I won a package to the Betfair Live tournament in Vienna which was a €250 buyin with €100,000 guaranteed. The guarantee was actually smashed almost hitting €200k making a very tasty prize pool in the end.

As part of my package I was given $500 'spending money' which pretty much all went on the hotel and flights alone. I didn't take any euros over but decided to take £800 to gamble with and spend. I wasn't too bothered about the tournament and in fact didn't even know any of the details of it before leaving England. I was mainly just going for the holiday and getting some time away from the computer..

I ran pretty hot at the start of the trip blagging myself an extra €250 after my flight with Swiss Airways was overbooked and I opted to take a later flight. This almost went horrendously tits up as shortly after my original scheduled flight took off the runway was closed due to too much snow. The thought of spending the next few days in an airport didn't sound like it was anywhere near worth €250 but fortunately for me the flights reopened later and I made my way to snowy Vienna :)

I met up with one of my good friends who's currently studying at the university of Vienna. We did the whole touristy scene, looking around the city centre, drinking lots of alcoholic fruit punch and eating Wiener Schnitzels and sausages.

I've got to say, Vienna actually has the most beautiful city centre I've seen in any European city. What's more, the food is really nice for European standards (nothing beats Asia :p) and the people were all extremely friendly regardless of who I was speaking too.

I couldn't actually recommend the city enough for a weekend break as it really is stunning especially around Christmas.

Once all the touristy mumbo-jumbo was out of the way with it was time to gambooool.

The main event was going quite well. I chipped up nicely and made a few solid laydowns and good calls making day 2 with around average stack. Story of my live poker career I know, but I busted out shortly before the money reshoving 25bb with AQs over a 12bb button shove in the small blind only for the big blind to wake up with AA. The button had AT. Rigged or what?!

From then on it was the cash tables. I've ranted before of how I find live NLHE cash to be the most boring, draining, boring, slow, boring, crap, boring thing ever. So to the PLO tables I headed.

The games were great. So much fun. It was really your stereotypical old school poker game. Everyone had huge stacks built up over the night, it was smokey, loads of action, alcohol. It was brilliant! What's more it was one of those hardcore games that never seemed to break and there really wasn't any strong players in the games.

There was a single blind of €2, but that didn't stop the pots escalating to an average of about €500 with some reaching over €3k.

I managed to get off to a good start in the games and this is a photo I took of my best stack of the trip. The blues are €10 each, red/blacks €100, greens €5 and reds €1. That was in the same session that I managed to lose the biggest pot of my life as well with AK23 vs AAxx on A459 rainbow board. I've got to say that €1700 pot been shipped to the donko after he binked a 5 on the river after we got it all on the turn kinda hurt.

I spewed back a bit in my last session playing the game but managed to leave Vienna a winner of €1000 after all my expenses so I was very happy with that. I think on this trip I managed to find a good balance between poker/tourism too. Overall it was an amazing trip and I can't wait for my next trip abroad.

Arriving back in England I put a fair bit of volume online in again getting a few binks in including a lovely €3600 score in the ladbrokes €20r 6max. I used to love that tournament about a year ago but hadn't really played it since for bankroll reasons/laziness of playing on the euro sites on just a laptop. So it was really nice to win it the first time I'd played it in a while.

This week as well I've managed binks in the OnGame $100fo/$5k gtd and the Ladbrokes €55 turbo. :)

In other news, the RCOOP is over now and I'm sad to say that it's another series I'm adding to my ever-growing list of having no success whatosever in! This seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme unfortunately.

Whatever I seem to take shots in outside of my bankroll I just do horrifically in. I'm almost certain as well that I'm not playing that bad. I mean even if I was massively -EV on the field you'd expect me to get more than 2 min-cashes in my last 50ish $200 buyin tournaments online right? I mean, I haven't had a cash in this RCOOP, the previous FTOPs, one mincash in the FTOPs before and no cashes in the majors I sold action to today! Grrr...It's more frustrating than anything else.

I guess you could put it as 'fortunately' that I am selling action for these tournaments but TBH I am getting fed up of always letting my investors down in these spots. I'm in two minds going forward about what I should do for these series.

For one, I found that the RCOOP was exceptionally tough. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the RCOOP $300 6max tournament was the toughest tournament I've ever played before in the 7000-8000 tournaments I've played before. I don't frequent the highest of stakes regularly online so I don't know how it compares to say a weekday $100r or whatever, but damn, Britain really does have some talent. There are so many excellent online players coming up and really an abundance of 'fish' especially in the higher staked games online from England. I think this series really exemplified that.

Saying that, the tournament series was ALOT of fun. It was great really being challenged and having to take my thought process to a higher level to stay afloat in the games. At the end of the day though, as is the case in tournament poker. If you can't win the flips, you won't get far!

I'm just glad I don't try to grind these games out on the regular for a living, as they are tough.

In comparison, the Sunday majors which are found on almost all sites with various satelittes, a high-buyin and a high guarantee are a lot softer. I just can't decide if I want to keep trying to sell action and playing these each Sunday or not. I feel that I'm +EV on the field, but at the same time my biggest downswing ever was mainly due to running bad in these huge field variance fests. Part of me wants to gamble, play them every week to see if I can hit a big 6-figure score. The other part of me feels like I should wait until I'm properly rolled for the games (I'd like to have a $50k bankroll to say I'm properly rolled).

I think to compromise what I might do depending on how well I've done the week preceding is to put $50 a side for each major to try and satelitte in and play with 100% of my own action. That way I'll still be able to get the volume in at my regular stakes and have a chance each week to bink on one site or the other. It could keep things interesting until I gather the roll to play them all on my own dime.

Anyway its 3:20am and this blog post was WAY longer than I thought it would be, but I've had a lot to say. If you've managed to get this far, very well done. I don't know why you bother, but here is your reward. Enjoy:

The US Regulation of Online Poker - Impact on the Euros

2010-12-08T00:58:00.000Z

This is a cross post from a blog I read that sums it up really well. So thanks to The F-Train for breaking down the new bill. It's a really interesting news.

Cliff notes: US is fucked and looks to have no online poker for the next 2 years, Euros will be pretty much alone on Stars/FTP for the next 2 years. Euro sites with sportsbooks in the distant future will still be Euro-only (e.g. iPoker, Will Hill) and by the looks of things for the next 3 years Euros and US won't be playing in the same games together. Although this looks very unfortunate for my American colleagues, it looks like the games will get a lot softer. I will be interested to see if and how some people will get around the rules if they can.

Here we go again. A new version of Harry Reid's internet poker bill, the "Prohibition of Internet Gambling, Internet Poker Regulation, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2010" (what a mouthful!), started making the rounds on Capitol Hill yesterday. Thanks to Kevin Mathers, I was able to get a look at it this morning to see what (if anything) had changed.

Unfortunately, because of wildly divergent formatting, and the fact that this version of the bill is MUCH more "fleshed out" than the first version, getting a blackline of the two versions proved exceedingly difficult. So if I miss any major differences, that's the primary reason why.

My summary of the original version of the bill is available here.

On to the highlights of the new version:

* Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Contrary to previous reports, this version retains the two-year exclusion for operators who have not owned or controlled a casino or race track for a minimum of 5 years prior to their application. [Sec. 104(f)(2) and (3)] That means that sites like Full Tilt and PokerStars would be excluded from the market for 2 years after the first license is issued.

[EDITED TO ADD: Some seem to think that Sec. 104(f)(2)(B) might allow a site like Stars to sell itself to MGM and therefore become an applicant "owned or controlled by" a casino in operation for 5 years. On its face, that might be possible although I highly doubt it's what's intended.

The reason I doubt it -- Sec. 118(c)(2) is explicit that a license can't issue to any person that "purchased or acquired, directly or through an affiliate or intermediary, in whole or in significant part" any person who owned a U.S.-facing site prior to the Act. My only question about 118(c)(2) is if it's supposed to apply to ANY U.S.-facing site, or only those U.S.-facing sites that refuse to wind down as required under the "One bone..." paragraph described below.]

* The 15-month total blackout period on issuing *any* license still applies. [Sec. 118] No qualifying body can issue a license until 15 months after passage of the Act. That means that no operator could legally offer internet poker in the U.S. for those 15 months, and sites like Full Tilt and PokerStars would be shut out for 39 months.

* The U.S. player pool continues to have to be segregated from the rest of the world for at least 3 years after the first license is issued.

* One bone for Full Tilt and PokerStars: they would have 30 days to cease offering poker in the U.S. after passage of the Act, and 2 years to return all customer deposits. [Sec. 118(b)] The first version of the bill was much harsher, requiring immediate cessation of poker and 30 days to return deposits. Sites that are currently operating in the U.S. are required to comply with those provisions as a condition for eventual licensing.

["Paper sales" paragraph deleted and replaced by italics above!]

* There are now provisions at Sec. 104(k) to guide the determination of whether or not something is "internet poker" -- something that's rather key for legislation that seeks to limit online gambling to only internet poker. The determination is left to the qualified body that issued the license. So, for example, if Nevada issues a license to WSOP.com, Nevada would determine what constitutes "internet poker" in all states in which WSOP.com operates (presumably, all states that have opted in and those states which haven't opted out).

Could we see instances where certain games aren't offered in certain states? I'm thinking of the specific example of razz, which (as far as I know), is not an allowed game in New Jersey. If someone applied for a license from a state like that, would they not be allowed to offer certain games? Obviously operators would then favor making applications for a license from the state with the most comprehensive definition of "internet poker".

* It appears there is now the potential for a 5-year prison term, in addition to the $1,000,000 per-day penalty, for operating without a license. [Sec. 103(b), Sec. 104(m)(1)(D)] Those of you who thought that Full Tilt and PokerStars might remain in the States anyway (in the 15-month total blackout period) should think again. Not only that, but...

* A few changes to the licensing fee: first, it appears previous confusion in the definition of "internet poker receipts" has been cleared up. That term now means, essentially, the rake. The licensing fee is 20% of the rake.

More importantly, anyone who operates an internet poker facility WITHOUT a license is subject to a 50% "licensing fee". The bill is explicit that this fee in no way limits the liability of the operator under *any* other provision of the bill. So, if Stars or Tilt were to remain in the U.S., not only would they be subject to $1,000,000 per-day penalties and potentially 5 years in prison (for the executives), but they'd also have to pay 50% of the rake they received to the IRS.

My good buddy Shamus questions how this can be enforced if the sites, executives and servers are all located offshore. It's a good question. I'm not sure, but I suspect that, if a regulatory and licensing scheme were put into place, the US would exert some diplomatic pressure on places like England (Stars) and Ireland (Tilt) to bring those operators into line. In any event, Stars seems to pride itself on always operating within the law. Operating without a license would be expressly illegal under this bill.

* One aspect of the bill I didn't discuss during Round 1: to be automatically designated a "qualified body", for licensing purposes, a gaming regulatory board has to have been a gaming regulator for 5 years prior to enactment of the Act, and has to have been responsible for regulating at least 5% of total United States casino gaming revenue for at least 3 out of those 5 years. I don't know how gaming revenue breaks down nationwide but I would suspect this gives Nevada and New Jersey a leg up over the rest of the nation.

The reason why that's important is because other state gaming boards that want to be able to issue licenses have to apply to the Commerce Secretary, but only after all the final regulations under the Act have been issued.

Not only that, but sites that were U.S.-facing prior to the Act could only apply for a license through the automatic qualified bodies -- i.e., Nevada and New Jersey. Would existing casinos apply pressure to NGC / NJCCC to shut out those formerly U.S.-facing operators...?

* The opt-in / opt-out provisions for states and tribes remain. [Sec. 108] They appear to be largely unchanged. States wishing to opt-in or opt-out have until December 31, 2011 to make that determination. After that, their status can be changed on 60 days notice to the Secretary of Commerce.

* The concept of "cheating" is greatly expanded in this version. Cheating in the first version was largely limited to the use of "cheating devices". In the new draft, there's an outright prohibition on "knowingly violating, attempting to violate, or assisting another in violating the rules of play established by the licensee for the purpose of obtaining prohibited or unfair advantage in any game authorized under this title". [Sec. 113(a)] The use of bots is also expressly prohibited in the new version. [Sec. 113(b)(2)]

* Conviction under Sec. 113 for cheating entails two possible penalties: a permanent ban from playing internet poker, and a criminal penalty consisting of a fine and/or up to 2 years in prison.

That's all I've got for now but I'll continue to study this version of the bill and any new version that emerges. What does everyone else think?

Best Month In A Long Time

2010-12-01T02:47:00.003Z

Hey,

November was awesome. I jokingly said in a post at the start of the month that I'd wish for a $10k month. Well I'm very fortunate in that it came and November turned out to be a +$17k month with a willhill tournament leader board points prize coming too. (Not sure why sharkscope says $20k, maybe I added wrong? - defo not complaining tho!)

I was putting a lot of volume in on the euro sites and had some really deep runs. I was playing a lot though, 6-7 days a week during this month. I tried to get in as much volume as possible, partly for a chance at doing well in the Will Hill iPoker leaderboard, but also as I won't be able to put much volume in in December. More of that to come!

So I shipped a few tournaments this past week which is where almost all of my monthly profit. Sick heater :)

I also was lucky enough to blag a win in a $50 6max, $50 turbo on iPoker and a small $20 freeze.

So now I'm back to being rolled for good games again. I'll play up to $100 freezeouts and $25r now and despite the volume this month I'm really looking forward to getting busy at the higher stakes and hopefully shipping big money! I think I'll stop grinding on OnGame and iPoker as much this month and just grind a selection on different sites. Being a bit nerdy, I'm also looking forward to planning my new schedule haha.

I'm just not looking forward to the imminent downswing...

Anyway, in a few hours I'm heading over to Birmingham airport (if it's open due to the snow!?) and will be flying out to Vienna for a long weekend. I'll be chilling with my mate who's going to uni there and then playing the BF Vienna tournament. It's only $350 buyin but is claimed to have a $100k gtd. I've not really looked much into the tournament, just booked a really cheap hotel and looking to have fun taking some time away from the computer and getting pissed.

After that I'll be back on Monday and will probably play a load of RCOOP tournaments on Stars. They are high buyins but I think I'll take a shot with a bit of action sold on the side. The structures look kind of ridiculously but THANKFULLY Stars have knocked back the times to make earlier starts in the tournament. I'm so glad that for instance the main event wasn't held at 9pm with a 2 hour late registration policy as was originally scheduled. I mean who could afford to play that tournament if they had work on Monday. Or in fact those that don't play their A-Game as well at 9am after a 16 hour session!

So that should be quite a fun series, I have no idea how tough/soft it will be. There are rumours of big overlay, so we shall see... I might not play the later part of the series if I don't think there's much value in them as I don't really want to deal with the variance of being outplayed by good people at that high of a buyin!

After that there's the £1000/£250k gtd at Dusk Til Dawn in Nottingham that I'm looking forward to playing. I'm in for about €400 in the satellites so far though. It would be nice to get in on the cheap, but I think I'll prob buyin regardless of how I do in the sats.

The following week will probably be chilled and I have my birthday that week too. I'll probably grind a bit online before finally heading back to the family home just before christmas. After christmas, I'll be on a trip to India! More about that later.

Run good all, have a great December!

Moving up with a few binks!

2010-11-21T04:17:00.001Z

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

2010-11-08T04:20:00.000Z

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.

2010-11-06T14:43:00.000Z

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!

2010-11-01T03:09:00.000Z

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!

A pretty solid week

2010-10-26T02:07:00.004+01:00

I put in good volume and with the help of a nice little bink on the DTD software of €800, I'm +$2500 on the week. I think I flat out won 3-4 tournaments this week which is really nice. I'm being pretty nitty on the bankroll front but might take some more shots at $10r and $50 freezes mid-week if I'm running well. They're still really soft and gives me the chance to bink something huge.

I've kind of gone off the 90 mans at the moment. I seem to still doing alright with them, but at the moment I'm just enjoying playing the euro and stars/ftp tournaments much more. It feels much less like a grind too.

So yes, I had a lovely little bink online at DTD, and would appreciate some live binking too. This weekend is the DTD £50/£40k gtd. It's already a sell-out event and will be the biggest tournament in England. I'm really happy for the club on its achievement as it really is a nice little joint and I hope it lasts on through the ages particularly during this economic recession.

Other than that this week I've spent watching "The Social Network" which I'd highly recommend, eating at a few nice meals and chilling with some old uni friends at the weekend. I'm pretty happy with the grind at the moment and I'm looking forward to next week where hopefully I have another profitable week and can move up stakes in November.

Check out the pad

2010-10-22T03:30:00.004+01:00

Hey!

I've finally moved in and settled down. I had to take a wee chunk out of my roll for some home furnishing but I'm really happy now with how the flat is looking. I just love it here!

The view from my balcony looking over Nottingham:

The poker-set up. It's working really well so far. I'm 9-tabling on the 30inch monitor and use my 20inch monitor for all the poker clients, poker lobbys, MSN windows, HEM and music etc.

The kitchen-area. So much easier having a fridge a couple of meters from my computer so I can dash over, heat something up, grab a drink and still not miss a hand!

The living area. I've now moved the glass table to the corner and put my new Panasonic Viera TV on it with PS3 underneath. It's kind of annoying it's directly behind my PC so I can't watch and play at the same time. But I think that's probably for the best!

The Bedroom. Nuff said.

I'm having a couple of mates stay over this weekend to chill, so it might not look as clean and tidy as it does in these photos in a few days time!

As far as the poker is going. I've had a good couple of weeks since I've been grinding in the flat including winning 2 tournaments!

$20/$4k gtd 6max on OnGame

$30 6-max on OnGame

Long may the good times continue!

Live pro'ing it up for the rest of the week...or am I? (cliffs at btm)

2010-10-08T04:19:00.002+01:00

Yo yo,

I'm probably getting scammed by this new ISP I've decided to go with but after moving into my new flat (which I'm loving and photos will come when I can blog from my computer once again!) I am yet again without Internet. Urgggh such a pain! It's getting activated on the following Thursday apparently. I asked if they could do anything to speed the process up as really I need the Internet to make my money. Well I could pay £160 to get it done by Monday but then I'd still miss all the weekend action so decided to just wait it out a few more days.

To keep myself busy inbetween chilling with friends and playing the new Starcraft 2 (note to self: do not get addicted!) I shall be making frequent visits to my local card room dusk til dawn to hopefully grind out some form of wage for the week. I've been very fortunate in not having a losing week since I've been back in Nottingham so far, but this could well be
my first losing week coming up here.

I'm not being too pessimistic just realistic really. Live you just can't get the volume in that you need and also the rake live is pretty absurd! I mean i played today in a £1/£2 Holdem game for a while and it was 10% rake up to £10 per pot. Dtd were even advertising their live £25 deepstack which has a further £7 in rake. It's not really dusk til dawns fault though obviously. It costs a hell of a lot to fund the place and it is a nice and professional gambling environment so I'm happy to support them and very grateful that the club is situated so close to my flat!

Regardless, this weekend I'm going to play the £200 deepstack on Saturday and the £100 deepstack on Sunday. Aa far as cash games go after I'm really undecided. I don't really enjoy playing live cash that much to be honest and even if I assume I crush full ring live for like 5-10bb/100 which I probably don't anyway (loltourny donk) after the rake is taken out my hourly would still be really terrible. Especially as you get like 25 hands in an hour at live cash. grinding £2.50-£5.00 an hour with a ton of variance involved doesn't really sound that great at all.

But then, I am at heart a grinder and really feel like I can't only play 2 tourns this weekend lol! I mean, think what ivey would do!

An alternate would be to play some dealers choice mixed games like I played tonight which are a lot of fun, but I'm pretty sure that game can't be beaten in the long run particularly at £2/£2. The most common games in rotation are 6 card PLO hi/lo, 6 card PLO, super stud and paduki. The reason I say that I don't think they can be signficantly beat is because a lot of the pots end up being split which still have 10% rake up to £8 and the hands/hour is ridiculously low due to everyone playing every hand. And let's be honest PLO is swingy enough as it is without making it full ring and adding an extra 2 cards on top ;-) I think part of the issue is you could probably crush the game but it would take years to ever get the kind of volume in to show any signs of sustainable profit just because the variance in these games is so ridiculous.

Saying all this, I still really enjoy the mixed games. But I think the wisest thing to do would be to treat it as a pure gamble and play it recreationally occasionally when I have a much bIgger bankroll so that dropping 5 buyins is like a splash in the ocean.

Damnit, I ranted on too long and I'm on my iPhone so it's super hard to edit. So here are cliffnotes for the 90% of readers that don't fancy committing an afternoon slogging through this post:

clifffnotes:
-Internet down so playing live this weekend
-live cash is pretty boring and probably close to unprofitable for me at my stakes
-live mixed games are fun but are also one hellova gamble and probably unprofitable for me
-might just play the £100 and £200 deepstacks only and be a massive slacker as a result

Expansion Potential...

2010-10-04T00:53:00.003+01:00

After that sick little heater on Monday things haven't got as well for the rest of the week. I got deep in a few tournaments but ended up being the final table bubble-boy a little more than I'd have liked particularly in bigger tournaments. Can't complain though, still up $1800 on the week (thanks really to Monday) whilst down on the month $1770. Woops!

That's probably due to this Sunday just being a complete nob to me and not letting me win a showdown in anything of importance. I played the $500 GSOP and unfortunately lost KK v AA for a bunch of chips...and...

...wait, didn't I promise you all long back I wouldn't talk about beats on this blog?

Well onwards and upwards then...

Next week is quite exciting for me. For the past few weeks although I've had my property and kind of moved in. I've left my computer at my girlfriends to grind with. Which is fine as we practically live together anyway and she's cool with the poker. But tomorrow BT are finally coming round to connect the line and I'm being hooked up with fast.co.uk after that so I'll be grinding there from then on. I'll post some pictures of the place when I'm all settled in next week hopefully. It should be a pretty sick grind-pad.

As far as poker is concerned, I think I'll keep playing the Euro sites mainly but drop €50 freezeouts and €10r's from the schedule for the forthcoming week before I obliterate my roll any further. I'll keep in $10r and $50 freezes though. I'm also debating expanding into other sites in the future, most notably putting money on:

-party poker
-888
-Absolute Poker
-Carbon Poker
-Everest Poker

I think I'll move onto those platforms when I get the roll over $20k though. That will allow me to play a good selection of $50+ tournaments throughout the afternoon/night and provide a better selection. Where I am at the moment though there are plenty of buyins for my range, so I'm in no rush to find greener pastures to shit all over.

Anyway, a little down because of bricking so hard tonight. But then to put it into perspective and not make me feel so bad this is what I just read on twitter from Amak316, a top tournament pro, who was just playing EPT London £20,000 high-roller:

amak316 Amit Makhija
"I cant imagine feeling any worse than I do now. 9th in the highroller, lost a pot for a ~3rd place stack on the exact bubble as a huge fav."

amak316 Amit Makhija
"just a $73,000 bubble no big deal, at least I can continue my 2 year streak of losing every pot Ive played worth more than 6 figs in equity."

Now that must suck!

For anyone else having an absolutely terrible Sunday and needs some cheering up, check this out. I first saw it on Red Square Poker's blog which is a good read in itself. But here is the epic video not to be missed:

Also on the far horizon for all the UK players, Pokerstars will be having a "UK and Ireland Championship of Online Poker" exclusively online to UK residents. That will be pretty sick I imagine and probably quite soft.

UK & IRELAND CHAMPIONSHIP OF ONLINE POKER
11 Events from December 5-12
$512,500 guaranteed prize pool
EXCLUSIVELY FOR PLAYERS IN: United Kingdom, Ireland & Isle Of Man.

Wahooo, What A Day!

2010-09-28T02:18:00.006+01:00

Hey,

I don't normally post mid-week but I have just got to brag about this. Today I won 3 MTT's :D Wahooo! Nice boost to the bankroll as well!

In total I made 6 final tables today with my new schedule which combines Euro and US sites. I came 2nd in a €30 freezeout on Ladbrokes and won these 3:

I plan on spending some time with my girlfriend the next couple of days, so I guess this will be my last session of the month. And what a way to finish! This has bumped my bankroll back over the $10k mark, also meaning that September was a +$8300 month. Super happy with this. :D

Large field MTTs

2010-09-27T03:50:00.002+01:00

I'm taking a break from them this week! The past few weeks I've been playing a lot of large field MTT's on stars and FTP which are just massive variance whirlpools. Somehow, through grinding MTTSNG's along side, I've managed to profit every week thus far, but damn can they be annoying.

To beat 2800 people just to FT bubble for 10x your buyin 8 hours later really does suck.

I've had a few deep runs along the way:

5/2592 in an $11 freezeout
38/2109 in a $55 freezeout
6/2617 in an $11 freezeout
79/28,687 in an $11 freezeout
11/1301 in an $11 rebuy

etc etc

Basically just playing these without putting ridiculous volume in almost guarantees you'll consistently have losing month despite how much of an edge you have over the field.

So for this forthcoming week I'm going to chill out a bit now that the WCOOP is over and just focus on some smaller stake euro stuff and hopefully watch as my roll grows.

I did have a profitable week just gone despite not playing on Friday or Saturday night which is pretty nice. I plan on putting in more hours on the online felt this coming week.

The Pokerstars' WCOOP was actually really fun and I enjoyed the different MTT's I played in. I didn't actually have a profitable series unfortunately. But still managed to do quite well in a $256 knockout turbo cashing for $896 and knocking 7 people out (at $50 per knockout) along the way. So that was my best run, but unfortunately that score didn't push me into the + on the series. But it was fun anyway!

I've still got 3 events left in the GSOP. I seem to so far have had a very high cash% in these, but all pretty much for the minimum which sucks. I might just have to shotgun the $500 miniFTOPs final coming up next Sunday. It should be fun...

Low stakes luckboxing

2010-09-20T03:16:00.003+01:00

Hey,

You'll all be pleased to hear I had quite a good week adding $2850 to my roll. I played quite a lot putting in decent hours and had a few little scores including the luckbox award for coming second in a $10 hyper-turbo heads up tournament on Stars. Weee! Must be nice eh.

I had a few deep runs today in loads of tournaments but nothing happened. Probably had 4 tournaments where at one point or other I had over 100k chips. Normally people say this is frustrating but maybe I'm immune as I couldn't really care either way. Which is kind of weird, but whatever!

This coming week is the last week of WCOOP and the tournament leader board challenge on Pokerstars and Full Tilt. Now my rolls pushed up a little and I can play $30 games this forthcoming week I'm just going to grind the tables hard and see if I can put a few big scores on my teams chart.

For those that aren't aware, the Tournament Leader Board competition is just groups of 5 players that each put in $x (I put in $50). There are like 15 teams and every team collects their players best scores over the time period.

So far on my team from what I know some guy has shipped the late night STUPER ($150 tourn on stars) and a couple of other biggies. All I've contributed really is some low buy-in stuff and a couple of 90-man wins.

So I'll pull my finger out this week and give the TLB a good run for it's money. Who knows I may even go on a mini-heater and make some good money while I'm there. Realistically though, because of the field sizes of the low buyins on Stars and FTP. This forthcoming week could be my first losing week in a while, but I'm prepared for that. Bring it on!

Also for those not aware, The Inbetweeners has launched a new series on channel 4, and you have to watch it. It's on Monday nights at 10pm I do believe. And it is funny!

Life can be damn expensive

2010-09-16T15:10:00.000+01:00

Life can be damn expensive...

It's not really until you live on your own until you realise how much everything actually costs. If it's not an electricity bill it's council tax, if it's not that you need a tv license. They all add up and seemingly never stop. Welcome to the real world eh.

So I've kind of been hit by suprise of how much all the bills for this forthcoming year are going to actually be. I'm sticking with my proactive financial planning by putting 9 months rent, bills and a weekly living expense budget aside. But the bills are way more than I thought. Couple that with a £900 deposit on my flat it looks like I'll be bak at the $12 games again for the rest of the week.

Bankroll $3k. Watch this spac tho, it's gonna sky rocket ;-)

On a more positive note, my Twitter fan base has risen to the giddy heights of 30 followers...cough cough... But hey one of them is Phil laak so I'm certainly not complaining! I also watched kick-ass last night which is a sick film and well worth the watch. Believe me, I too was a skeptic before I saw it. Pretty damn good!

Anyway, the rebuild is on and I've got a huge few days ahead. Wish me luck!!

Slow start to the WCOOP, but solid goings otherwise..

2010-09-15T12:30:00.003+01:00

Hey,

Well although I'm still not really getting anything going yet in the WCOOP, I've been getting quite a bit of volume in outside of the series and am happy to report the bankroll to have risen just over $6k. Pretty happy with that seeing as I was at $1800 just over a week ago!

I've still got 6 events left to prove myself in, in the WCOOP. 3 turboish tournaments that I'm particularly looking forward to as well.

The miniFTOPs has also been a lot of fun so far, particularly the non-NLH events. I'm still not great at any other discipline, but I find them fun. Not quite been getting the volume in playing these as I had wanted due to me being in the process of moving into my new flat and sorting everything out there. My schedule at the moment is pretty insane trying to balance moving in, keeping a social life and grinding big schedules online at my girlfriends place. I seem to be balancing it OK at the moment. So although the flat is mine, like the typical online geek, I won't really move in until the 4th October when the internet is activated. Only then will it really feel like home ;)...haha how sad!

So most of my money is coming in these games, which I'm enjoying a lot at the moment. Thinking of some prop bets for October to really get the volume in if this month doesn't finish up as well as its started. But we shall see...

GSOP is starting on Sunday which should be fun too. I'll be playing a few of their lower buyin NLH events to see if I can bink anything.

Til next time, gl at the felt..

A good start to the BR challenge

2010-09-10T14:48:00.003+01:00

I started the week with about $1800 as the point of my poker "bankroll" and a good few days later I'm proud to report it now being $4123. I'm putting in pretty crazy volume at the moment and don't think it's impossible for my roll to be above $10k by the end of the month. But I'll set a more realistic target of $7k for the meanwhile. A good bit of aggressive bankroll management and a little run good and anything could happen.

Last night I played the $50 Mini-FTOPS HORSE event which turned out to be a lot of fun. I had started registering for tournaments from 5pm, so was a little tired at 2am when this started up. Come 3pm having 1-tabled the start of the tournament I decided to add another smaller $26 HORSE tournament to the mix too. Maybe that wasn't wise as that lasted through to 8:30am, but I managed to blag 2nd for $700 and change which at the moment is very much appreciated!

Tonight I'm going to start a little later on my session as I'm chilling with some friends in the early evening but expect to do another latish session tonight. It's the stars $109 8-game WCOOP tournament tonight and I'm pretty pumped after last night to own up in these mixed games too. They are pretty fun and people do seem to be pretty terrible at them all too! Not that I'm any good myself haha.

Next update coming on Monday, let's hope I get a good weekend. Gl at the tables all.

Broke Living f3nix35 style

2010-09-06T16:46:00.004+01:00

Hey,

Anyone that hasn't followed Jean Robert-Bellande on twitter really needs to get their priorities straight. You follow the lifestyle of one of the biggest degenerates in the industry who somehow manages to have epic swings from $100k to nothing in a day or two. Let's put it this way. I don't think bankroll-management is high on his agenda. Anyway, he somehow gets by and seems to have a great life despite the swings travelling the world and hustling enough money together to play high-stake mixed games.

Now I'm not that sick. Although I have a bit of gamble in me anyway. I still prefer the safety of knowing where my rents coming from next month. But the problem is, I'm getting a little bored grinding the same stakes and want to mix things up.

This month is the month of the shot. I've set aside a full 9 months rent, 9 months bills, 9 months living expenses (giving myself an affective weekly wage) and taken this all out of my bankroll. I've taken out my WCOOP entries and mini-ftops. And there's not that much left. But I'm pretty pumped and kind of want to be where I was a year or so ago rising up through the stakes again as it can get a bit boring grinding the same schedule day-in, day-out. Of course I could try and grind super-hard where I am, hope for a heater and hit the high-high stakes of $100r+. But at the moment I think I'll be in a better place pretty much free-rolling the forthcoming year and seeing what I can make of my bankroll not having to withdraw throughout the year for living expenses etc.

So it's not really a boku-style challenge with mad prop-bet money on the side. But I'm feeling a bit broke-living style at the moment. Broke but loving it at the same time. Wish me luck! Soon to catchup and overtake Ant again once and for all :)

Bring on September

2010-09-03T19:34:00.003+01:00

Hello,

It's been a while indeed. Since my last post I've played the UKIPT Edinburgh (no good, although had % of ledders who got a decent run in), got very drunk at the Fringe festival. Went to Turkey and got even drunker (and browner!) and somehow managed to bink a small $20 freezeout on stars while all of this was going on. So it's been a very busy few weeks.

What's more, my new computer has arrived and I'm setting it up and tweaking it to my liking getting ready for the WCOOP. I'm also moving into my new flat sometime early next week and will be praying that I can get internet there up and working so that I can play as much of the upcoming WCOOP on Stars and Mini-FTOPs on Full Tilt.

I have a very busy month planned in that respect, I'm going to be playing pretty much every tournament in the Mini FTOPS and here is my WCOOP schedule for those interested:

-Event 1 (Sun 5th), $215 NL 6max

-Event 3 (Sun 5th), $215 NL

-Event 11 (Wed 8th), $320 NL Ante Up

-Event 12 (Wed 8th), $215 NL HU

-Event 14 (Thu 9th), $265 NL 6m KO

-Event 18 (Fri 10th), $109 8g

-Event 19 (Sat 11th), $109 NL 10-min

-Event 21 (Sun 12th), $215 NL

-Event 22 (Sun 12th), $530 NL

-Event 32 (Thu 16th), $320 NL 6m

-Event 37 (Fri 17th), $320 NL 10-min

-Event 41 (Sun 19th), $215 NL

-Event 45 (Mon 20th), $265 NL Turbo KO

-Event 50 (Wed 22nd), $215 NL Big Antes

-Event 52 (Thu 23rd), $320 NL Turbo

-Event 60 (Sun 26th), $215 NL

Due to the Mini-FTOPs comprising of a lot of non-hold'em game types, I think I'll be cutting down the numbers of tables I'll be playing this month to 4-6 so I can really focus on the higher buyins of the WCOOP. This would be a nice month to bink big in!

With the new computer I thought I'd try giving hold'em manager ago as my database instead of pokertracker for a while to see how things compare. In tournament play as you rarely get the number of hands to analyse indepth statistics like river check-raise% or something, so really I'm just using it for some basic HUD stats. Pretty undecided so far. At the moment I think I've still got a preference for Poker Tracker just from the aesphetics and how they look when tables are resized quite small. I'll keep at it though and maybe explore a few more functions of this holdem manager while I'm still on trial. One big advantage of holdem manager over pokertracker is that it can apparently be used on Ladbrokes tournaments. Not that I can figure out how to get it working anyway!

I also downloaded Table-Ninja which is an addon to stars or full tilt which supposedly helps a lot when multitabling. I'm trialling the full tilt version and put a session in today, but there just arent enough tournies going on during the day to play exclusively on full tilt. So I added stars in too. Then the software didn't work quite as well. I think it would be useful if I ground out just sng's or tournies on full tilt but mixing sites it turns out to be a pretty big pain.

On that subject of night vs. day. At the moment there are no countries which have a significant proportion of their citizens playing during the UK day time. And to be honest I'm not too fussed about this. Although us Euro MTTers do seem to whine a lot about how all the action is at night forcing a nocturnal sleeping pattern, I'm pretty OK with it really. This is probably because I've always been a gamer playing at night or just used to playing poker in the evenings. Anyway, I put a session in today starting at 10am, finishing about 9pm and mehh... Just not feeling it!

It's nice waking up with society but I do think I prefer grinding at nights plus the games run a hell of a lot more and are much better. The only downside really being that in the winter I guess it could get pretty depressing waking up at 4pm and not really seeing any daylight. After speaking with a few UK Pro's and them shedding their knowledge onto me, I think a good solution is either doing a 5pm-midnight registering session, finishing around 3am and waking at 11am. Or alternatively a 6pm-2:30am session going to bed at around 6am and having the alarm on for 2pm. At least that way you get enough sleep and can fit enough time into the day to see some light, have some food and communicate with the outside world. To start with I think I'll try a 5/6pm-3am grind, waking at 11am and see how that suits me. Well after the WCOOP ofcourse!

So yes, enough rambling. It's going to be a busy month ahead, which could potentially leave my bankroll looking rather short or fully flushed out with Louis Vuitton leather. Let's just see how I run. Gl at the tables all!

A hard weeks grind...

2010-08-16T05:59:00.005+01:00

...And £74 profit to show for it. Oh dear oh dear lol. Well I guess profit is profit, but that's hardly ballin' out of control now is it.

This week I really tried hard to get into a good grinding pattern. My computer has yet to arrive, despite being promised 3 dates prior to this, so I'm still stuck on my little old laptop with a broken screen. Not that that's stopped me anyway!

I tried to copy who I consider to be some of the best MTTers and sickest grinders in the industry this week. From Thursday through to Sunday I registered tournaments from 5pm-2:30am and finishing with some hyper-turbos at 4:30am. The hours were long but things were looking up. I don't believe I ran too well during the time period.

I did manage a few scores though, most notably a 6th place finish in the stars $50/$40k gtd for just over $2k despite entering the final table as 2/9 where $8k was up for first place. But the cards weren't too friendly with me on this occasion.

I also managed to get 4 final table bubbles, 2 in the fifty-fifty, one in the $50 6-max on stars and one in a $5r (with a 20th place in the same tournament as well). I also managed to get a 6th in the $14 6-max hyper-turbo for a few pennies.

Regardless, I think I ran pretty bad at some crucial times pretty consistently this week where a flip or two could have left me up around $10k. For that reason, I'm pretty happy I effectively broke even for the week. Although I wouldn't have minded a breakthrough score!

Despite all this, you might ask how I'm not rolling in profits. Well in 4 simple letters, F-T-O-Ps. Or as I like to phrase it F-O-A-D (fuck off and die). Haha, Ok that's a little harsh. I really enjoyed the series on a whole. I got off to a good start in FTOPs 1 but that was my only cash. I build some monster stacks in other events including the $640 main event where I managed to grind my stack up from 7500 starting stack to 56,000 but bust slightly before the money when my JJ was no match for the monstrous A7. To be fair, I kind of like how the guy played his hand given our dynamic, but whatever, it sucks to get so deep and see no return especially when there is $513,000 for first place!

...What I'd do with that kind of money...hookers...coke...hahah I kidddd!

I think despite all this, and probably tonight where I ran like the crap a piece of shit would crap out, I really enjoyed the grind. It's pretty fun playing long hours and going deep lot's. Final table bubbling isn't as bad as it is when you play casually as you know that there will be another opportunity just round the corner anyway. I also think my games improving quite a bit too which I'm happy about and generally feel quite content with life.

Onto this upcoming week. Well I'm heading up to Scotland to play UKIPT Edinburgh which should be fun. Since Vegas I really love playing live deepstack events. I'm playing day 1b which is on Friday with a few friends including Chud (house-mate from Vegas) and Ledders (online pal). But I'm heading up on Tuesday to chill with my dad who lives there, get some drinks in and enjoy the fringe festival.

I'll be staying up there from Tuesday night through to Monday morning where I'll be getting a train down to London and flying off to Turkey for a week on an all-you-drink holiday package with some friends from school. Should be fun...

If anyone is remotely interested in how I do in UKIPT Edinbugh, I will be updating my twitter with my stack size periodically.

Until next time, good luck at the tables all!

Good News for Online Poker in Europe..

2010-08-11T15:24:00.004+01:00

Hey,

As a lot of regular MTT grinders from Europe will know, over the past few months the European sites have been slowly losing traffic which has been reflected in the tournament guarantees. Whilst this has been happening, the two big dogs in the industry, Pokerstars and Full Tilt, have seen ever increasing field sizes resulting in larger than ever prizepools for it's customers.

There are a few reasons that I believe this has been the case:

-Vastly superior software. The pokerboom in Europe has been around a good couple of years now and even the most casual of players are starting to realise that there are better options than just playing poker through their local sportsbook.

-Advertising. Pokerstars and Full Tilt have both had an increasing presense in European mainstream media such as TV advertising in the past couple of years which is inevitably directing traffic their way.

-Superior support. We're in a recession and quite rightly people are holding onto their pennies a little more than they were say 5 years ago. People want to put money into software where they know they will have good customer support and can rely on their money still being their in 6 months time (with the assumption being they haven't lost it in the meantime!). Too many smaller skins on the iPoker and OnGame network have gone under in recent years.

-Ability to take poker skills to a higher level. As the people that are just getting going a few years ago and have hung around are inevitably going to be looking at ways to take their poker-game forward and to become more profitable. They seek better structures and software that can allow them to multitable more effectively even if they are only playing on a laptop. Quite simply many European sites simply fail at this. Whether is be iPoker's clumsy software which means you can't resize the tables or Party Pokers terrible tournament structure resulting in every final table being a complete crap-shoot. People simply want better.

So it would seem all hope is lost right? Well no, you will be pleased to hear that the European sites are fighting back...

First of all, there is large rumours in the industry at the moment of a $1.8billion merger between Party Gaming (Partypoker) and BWin (OnGame)which, if correctly managed could result in a serious rival for Pokerstars and Partypoker in the European market. This would be the largest merger the gaming industry has ever seen. At the moment I play regularly on neither Partypoker due to their terrible structures or OnGame due to the abismal software. I would expect in a merger that the good OnGame structures (with them being the majority shareholders in the merger 52%) and I would also hope to have a complete over-haul of the software to get in-line with industry leaders. This could potentially be very very exciting news for the industry. For many that aren't aware, it was only about 5 years ago that PartyPoker was the global leaders in online poker before the American UIGEA act came into place preventing US players from gambling on the site. Since then Party has done little to expand their client-base and has in fact seen a significant decline in recent years. I'm more than sure that this merger would be in an effort to resecure market sure in the industry. Afterall they are a publicly traded company and I'm sure the shareholders are routing for something along these lines.

Similarly outside of this, I have recently been offered to Beta-Test some of William Hill's new software. Currently residing on the iPoker network which I believe to be the third biggest player in the game they too have seen large numbers of their clients migrate away from their pre-dated software onto Full Tilt and Pokerstars. I will give updates after Beta-Testing but what I will recommend to them is:

-Smoother software that allows for easier multitabling
-Better satellites into live European events such as GUKPT
-Better structures for their rebuy tournaments
-Timebank and resizing of the tables

More good news, slightly off the topic is the passing of the UIGEA in America. Very briefly this bill was put into place that made it very difficult and practically illegal for American citizens to get money online and gamble on poker-websites with it. Even sites such as Pokerstars and Full Tilt. So you can imagine a typical American fish who puts x% of his weekly pay-check in to gamble with every week is much more likely to give up and spend his money elsewhere is his debit card is constantly being refused access on the sites. Particularly if he isn't too good and has to keep topping up his roll every other week too!

Well this UIGEA bill is in the process now of making online poker legal in all states (unless they specifically opt-out which looks like it will only be Utah and Hawaii anyway) which theoretically should massively increase the number of casual American players on the sites. Afterall, 40 million people play on facebook poker every month. If only 5% of these people realise that playing for money online is legal and decide to put $100 on each, that is a huge amount of extra money being injected into the system. It also looks unlikely that the Americans will get to play on the European sites if the bill is passed. Rather have Full Tilt, Pokerstars and possibly Cereus network regulated by official bodies (rather than the current off-shore gaming that they are). This would mean more money to US-taxes but would most likely not effect us European players too much other than provide a lot more dead-money into the poker economy. Who knows, if the sites get regulated it might also spark some more deposits from this side of the pond from people who were skeptical of using their debit or credit cards for online gambling in the first place.

Regardless of all this, I think the main aim of this post is to say that things are looking up for Poker in the forthcoming 12 months. I think the industry will see a big improvement and if this bill gets passed a large surplus in additional players. It may all go tits-up but for the meanwhile I'm pretty optimistic...

A profitable week

2010-08-09T15:51:00.003+01:00

Hey,

Somehow managed to luck-box my way to a tidy little profit this week. This is most likely due to a semi-bink in a $1 turbo-rebuy I played a couple of nights ago. I was 2-tabling $5r near the money at about 2am getting near the money in both with big stacks. Well this is good and all but the min-cash is only ~$25 in each and I didn't really feel like concentrating on these given they both had over 1000 runners left in them. So I loaded a few turbo's up starting around that time. 4 hours later and besting a field of 4800 I managed to bink a second in the $1r-turbo for just shy of $2000.

I admit, this is the first and quite possibly the last time I'll play this tournament but it was actually really good fun when we got so deep. I ended up raising about 80% of hands from the final 27-down and managed to build my stack from 1mm-16mm pretty much without showdown. People just kept limp-folding 5bb stacks. It was great! I ran pretty well on the final table but unfortunately AQ couldn't hold vs. A6 for the $2700 first place, shortly losing with 66<33 for the rest. Ahh well it was a good ride anyway!

Other than that I've managed a few scores in turbo SNG's such as winning a $12/180, $24/90 and coming 5th in a $52/90. Nice little variance reducers definately help push the profit bar along.

A few near misses this week including a 20th in the $5r out of 3011 runners and also a 20th in the fifty-fifty on ($50/$50k gtd) on full tilt last night. Just shy of the big money. Saying this, I'm really happy with my late-game at the moment and can see a huge bink incoming! Watch this space...

I'm getting pretty screwed over with my computer at the moment. I rang up on Thursday and they said they were delivering it early this week. I rang up this afternoon and apparently the graphics card still hasn't arrived despite Mesh Computers confirming that the computer was already being assembled last week. They probably broke the graphics card putting it in the machine or something, clumsy fuckers. I just hope it get's here soon. Don't know how long I can put up with this dodgy laptop any more. Or more to the point, how long this laptop can put up with me for!

At the moment I'm down south in Dorset, visiting family for the weekend. I'm heading back up to Nottingham on the Tuesday night most likely. Hoping for a huge grind next weekend as it's the FTOPs final and I'm playing both a $200 6-max, $256 KO bounty and the $640 main event. Run good time please!

Live 6max, Moving places, Edinburgh, FTOPS

2010-08-03T22:28:00.004+01:00

Hey!

It's been a little while since I've last blogged as I've been so busy. A lot has happened the past couple of weeks so I'll try to be pretty brief on it all.

First off, after my laptop spectacularly failed on me in the final stretch of Vegas, to earn any sort of income through poker I was forced into the live arena. Luckily, living in Nottingham and with DTD just down the road this is hardly mission-impossible.

I ventured to the club and played the new £100+£12 6-max tournament. After a Summer in Vegas playing quite a lot of live poker, I didn't think much would top it. But 6-max live tournaments are just the best. People bust much faster in 6max and are put into many more marginal spots than in full-ring games. This makes for some very exciting poker. Added to the fact that people bust much faster, even lousier £100 structures end-up being pretty deep rather than the usual crapshoots these tournaments turn into in the late-game. So a definate thumbs-up from me.

Oh, and I final tabled it. Not that that would influence my thoughts on the tournament though ;-)

Other than that, I've moved out of my old flat and am currently in a bit of a transitional period. I'm staying in a flat with a few non-poker mates for a couple of weeks now. Then have plans to visit family up north and a drinking-holiday with friends from school to Turkey at the end of the month.

Then I'll be moving into my new grind-pad, Litmus building in Nottingham. I can't wait to get settled in with my new computer and grind some serious hands out. Although this month so far is turning out to be a real good laugh. Shame I seem to just have so much on I'm struggling to fit in the hours with the poker.

That didn't stop me today though. I played a few SNG's and won my first ever $12/180man (fishhh) on stars as well as a $26/90man on full tilt. That made for a pretty good winning day scooping over $500 in each. To finish the session I played one of those £8r 3x-turbo satelittes to UKIPT-Edinburgh and managed to luckbox a seat to that too.

So that's something to keep me entertained later in the month too. More to come on that I'm sure.

FTOPS is starting tomorrow night and I plan on playing a few of the events:

-Event 1 (Wed 4th), $216 NL

-Event 10 (Sat 7th), $216 NL Turbo

-Event 11 (Sun 8th), $129 NL KO

-Event 13 (Sun 8th), $322 NL

-Event 26 (Fri 13th), $216 NL 6max

-Event 32 (Sun 15th), $256 NL KO 6max

-Main Event (Sun 15th), $640 NL

Sold some action in the tournaments. Ideally this time next year I'll have the roll to play much more of the series on my own-roll without needing to sell action. But at the moment the $100r and $200 1r1ao are a fair bit out of my league. I guess only time, and hours of it at that in front of the computer, will dictate whether I'll be at that level this time next year!

Other than that, went to Sonosphere camping over the weekend which was ridiculously fun. Loads of top bands playing including Iron Maiden, Pendulum, Rammstein, Good Charlotte, Slayer, Alice Cooper and Skindred. I came back battered and bruised after much moshing but it's so worth it. Funnily enough I hardly ever listen to this kind of music especially when I'm grinding, but just love to hear it live.

Here are a couple of songs to finish the blog with from the weekend. Gl at the tables all!

Oh yeh and follow me on twitter, links in top-right!

Back in England

2010-07-19T09:40:00.004+01:00

Running bad at life...kind of!

Well everything is just breaking around me! I don't know what's up. First my car is a write-off, then my laptop packed-in and just now my watch has broke!

But that has kind of been one of the reasons I haven't updated my blog in a while. Just haven't had internet access.

But fear not beloved readers, I've just invested wayyyy too much in a sick new computer that should last me a few years at least. I can't wait to get grinding online again and this coupled with a new 30 inch monitor I also bought should help me ship some serious dollar online soon once again!

So I think the last time I updated was in the middle of my Vegas trip. To sum up very briefly, it was an amazing trip, ate at so many good places, gambled like a true degen and spewed epically at poker. What more could you ask for in a trip abroad? I'll try to upload some pictures when my new computer arrives either this week or next (seriously fingers crossed for this week).

Over the Summer then I unfortunately went 0/4 in my $1k's, cashed in a couple of Venetian $300's but fortunately won a fair chunk at live cash-games. Not that that mattered as I seemed to spend so much everyday eating out, partying etc. Regardless of that it was one hell-of-a-summer and I'd love to go back next year.

If I did go back next year though I would:

1) Rent a house off-strip again with the same guys as we had a blast

2) Rent a car for myself. In America you just need a car due to the infrastructure. They don't even have corner shops where you can pop-in to pick up a carton of milk or whatever making me almost completely reliant on getting my housemates to give me lifts everywhere or taking taxis. I felt like I was 14 years old again.

3) If I do rent a car then I can play way more events on the strip. I would hope my bankroll to be much larger than it is at the moment pre-WSOP next year. It would be pretty cool if I could do a full schedule playing all the WSOP $1ks, $1.5ks and a load more other events like Venetian deepstacks.

4) I would spend less time getting drunk and pit-gambling. I expect I lost a lot pit-gambling and we were going out getting drunk about 4-5 times a week at some points. Obviously it was a ridiculously fun summer but I could probably get the same fun out of 2 nights away and really focus harder on the very soft poker while I'm out there next time. And ofcourse less pit-gambling as as a professional, I just can't be doing with turning into the next TJ Coutier.

5) If I'm grinding a heavy live schedule I expect I'll limit myself to just playing online on Sundays only. I didn't play online that much, not that I could help it near the end of the trip after my laptop decided to fail on me, but I kind of needed to so as to off-set the variance of the slightly higher-live buy-ins I was playing. Hopefully next year this won't be as much of an issue and I can spend my off-days chilling by the pool etc (not that I didn't spend too much time anyway on that).

Anyway so yeh, I'm back in England, waiting patiently for my new computer to come and kind of bored. I managed to somehow graduate with a 2:1 but other than that I've just been DTD a couple of times and made a couple of hundred playing cash and managed to min-cash in a £40rebuy there on Friday. But just can't wait to get back online grinding again. Going to be hella fun!

Have fun at the tables all.

Vegas update

2010-07-02T02:52:00.002+01:00

Hey!

The last couple of weeks have been really busy between playing poker, chilling by the pool, drinking and gambling!

Unfortunately, nothing big to report on the poker front. So far on the trip I'm up quite a lot on live cash mainly $1/$2 and $2/$5 but haven't really had much success on the tournament front. 0/3 in the world series but I'm cool with that. You don't start with many chips and there isn't much room to manoeuvre if you lose a pot at the beginning.

This year I've really been chilling a lot, partying with the guys and living the vegas lifestyle. I expect next year that hopefully I'll have a larger bankroll and take some real shots at grinding the series and a lot more of the Venetian deepstack extravaganza. I don't feel like I've had days that I've wasted time as I've always been busy heading place and doing stuff but still haven't played _THAT_ many tournaments. It's all good though, been one hell of a trip!

It's been really awesome though and I've seen a lot of the pro's grinding at the Rio including a visit to Bobbys Room at the Bellagio and Ivey's room at Aria.

We just moved out of our mansion for the summer and into a smaller place for the last 10 days of the trip. Can't complain though as it's still got a pool and jacuzzi in the back garden! The only problem is though is that it's really far from the strip and Kevin, one of my house mates with a car is heading back to LA tonight so we're kind of stranded a bit. Next year I'll definately rent a car particularly if we're living this far off the strip again.

Going to chill the next few days and might play the $1k main event at the Venetian which from what I gather has an incredible structure on Saturday.

Til then, good luck all!

Deep-Stack Extravaganza

2010-06-17T11:41:00.002+01:00

Yo yo,

Pretty happy days, I cashed in the $340 deepstack extravaganza at the Venetian today finishing in 37/660 runners for $850. It's not a huge score but it's a start. I still love this tourney and as long as I still have the motivation and passion I'll try to play it as much as I can whilst I'm here in Vegas. People just dump off chips in this like theirs no tomorrow.

My bustout hand was sort of interesting, but not terribly. Old dude 3x's when we are about around 28-30bb's deep at 3,000/6,000 from the hijack and I flat the cut-off with AdQd. AsJd4d flop and he overshoves all in. Normally I'd be reshipping this flop all day long but he kind of did my job for me. I hadn't a clue what he'd do this with as it was such a large over-bet, but I figured he had something like QQ, KK, flush draws that didn't really want to see a caller and wanted to scoop right there. Well he had AK which is pretty funny as he's literally not getting called by hardly anything worse unless I have this specific combination which even then has sick equity. Liveaments!

To be fair though the only reason I got so deep in this tournament is because people spazzed out like this versus me. For instance about 50 off the money some guy flatted my MP raise when I had QQ about 30 big blinds deep from the big blind. The flop came Q88 and he overshoved all in on the 6bb pot for 30bb's with 22. Must be nice to be me eh!

It's pretty late now so I'm not sure what I want to do tomorrow. I'll see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow but might grind a few online tournaments or might try just chill by the pool during the day and play some live cash at night in the evening somewhere on the strip. I'll see how I feel. Exam results out in 24 hours too...Ahhh!

Gl at the tables all

Punishment is due

2010-06-15T18:35:00.002+01:00

Hey,

I'm pretty pissed with myself from last night. Yesterday I went to the Venetian for the $330 and was playing good poker but feel like I spewed pretty badly on my bust-out hand. I mean it's by far from awful but it's one of those pushing the tiniest of edges which simply isn't necessary in a deepstack tournament.

I had just moved to a new table for a few hands and was dealt TT in the cut-off. From what I had seen a few times the bloke in the hijack seemed really fishy and had limped about 60% of hands at 150/300/25. He did so again and I isolated to 1000.

The button was the only youngish looking guy on the table, he seemed like an internet kid with the overly large headphones and semi-professional chip shuffling moves. Anyway he 3bet me to 2600 when I had about 18,000 and he had about the same. It folded back to me and I figured he knew I would be iso'ing the fish pretty light and I was probably competent enough to be able to iso/fold blah blah blah. Anyway I slapped in the 4bet and called to find he had Kings. Maybe it wasn't too bad and I would probably have found it very hard to get away from on the flop but whatever.

I then headed over to caesers to play the 4pm $230 turbo which is a sick little tournament that I hope to play more of if I bust my midday afternoon comp. You start with 30,000 chips at 25/50 with 20 minute levels. 600 big blinds and people still can't fold top pair. It's lovely :). I raised my stack to about 120,000 then ran my kings into aces practically bubbling. Sweeeeeeet!

Pretty pissed with that so I headed to our bar; money plays where several yards of beer were consumed with my equally pissed off house mates that had bust the $2500 6-max WSOP event. The other house mate Zach just lost a couple of buyins playing high-stakes PLO online (his main game). We drank, played shuffleboard, played chinese poker, whined about our various bad-beat storys and how everyone is shit apart from us but we just run bad. You know the usual :).

5 hours in and with quite a hefty bar-tab and feeling more and more as if I was on a boat at sea, somehow the thought of hitting the casinos came to mind and everyone thought it was a good idea. Fuck!

You see, in Vegas casinos, the cocktail waitresses come round and give free alcohol. Several more beers and yagerbombs later I find myself stumbling home with the other $500 lighter. I know $500 isn't going to bankrupt me etc. But it is a lot of money to waste pit-gambling. It's pretty funny really, I don't even give a crap if I bust a $500 tournament live as I feel when entering it that I'm +ev over the field. But no matter how you look at it, playing the pit games you will lose in the end. What's worse was I was up $500 at some point. Blahh, pretty disappointed with myself for wasting so much money yesterday!

As punishment for being a pit-degen I'm taking the day-off poker today and I'm going to work on my game an hour for every $100 I spewed in the pit. Probably watch some poker videos, go through some hand histories and discuss hands with friends to see if I can spot any leaks in my thought processes. I feel that if I played today I'll still be on subliminal tilt from last night and won't bring my A-game. And if I'm spewing and not bringing my A-game, then I may as well just be gambling in the pit anyway.

Tomorrow I'll get back on the grind and see if I can make some money again!

The Venetian

2010-06-12T04:14:00.002+01:00

Hey!

I checked out the Venetian yesterday for their daily $340 and so far it's my favourite casino. For $340 you get 12,000 chips on a 45 minute clock with a very good blind-structure. The play wasn't as terrible as that at Caesers palace, but certainly ALOT of dead money.

Not only that but the poker-room and the whole interior is absolutely incredible. With a first prize of $47k with 750-odd runners it was definitely worth participating in. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll give it another shot on Monday. The food was also incredible in this place, and I'd definitely recommend the Asian restaurant in the Venetian which is surprisingly quite cheap too.

After I busted in a rather standard pattern of losing a couple of flips in a row, I played a little craps with the remaining $200 in my wallet. I ran that up to $250 then decided to play a little poker after some dinner. I started with my remaining $250 at 1/2 and ran that up to $400 before hitting $2/$5 and going on a bit of a rush cashing out several hours later for $1600 which was a pretty nice spin-up in the end!!

If I can manage to play tournaments and then grind my buy-in back every day at the cash tables that would be pretty awesome. Then hopefully I'll bink big in one of the tournaments.

As for online, I've played 3 sessions so far which have all gone pretty horrifically. I've moved my monitor and laptop downstairs which helps and I can get input from the guys in a few hands that have helped out a lot. But none of that matters if none of my goddamn hands can hold %&*£*%("£*$!!!

I'm going to take the day off tomorrow, chill by the pool, sweat England on to victory and party in one of the clubs in the evening. Sunday I'm gonna hit the online tables hard and try to get unstuck online for the trip so far.

Off to the Venetian

2010-06-10T18:45:00.003+01:00

Heading off to the Venetian in about an hour to hit the daily $340 there. From what I gather the field and structure is superior to that of caesers where I played yesterday, normally with about 600 runners making a $35k first place. Now that would be nice!

I thought the Caesers tournament yesterday was really good though. For $340 you get given 20,000 chips on a 45 minute clock starting at 25/50. It was so juicy. The amount of people stacking off 400 big blinds deep with top pair and stuff was just a joke.

I doubled up to 40,000 within the first level after 3x'ing KK from EP. Getting two callers then some guy 400 big blind reshoving AKo lol. I was seriously like 'FML he's woke up with aces and is tooling out, meh I'm a tourney donk, I can't fold KK'. Pretty glad I called it too as that set me up quite nicely.

I had a really good table and to be honest given the quality of play I expect I'll be coming back many times to Caesers over the summer. Over the next few hours I ran my stack up to around 85,000 when my bust out hand occurred. I thought it was a pretty interesting hand worth posting anyway:

It folded around to quite possibly the chip leader in the tournament, some wild bluffy Italian guy raising and 3betting almost every hand and imo stacking off way too light and trying too hard to bluff the wrong people. He 3x'd it and I elected to flat on the button with my AQo. I'm sure his range is very wide here, and kind of wanted to 3bet, but 80BB deep I felt I would have a greater success rate playing in position post-flop rather than raise/calling all in this deep at a very soft table.

So I flatted and we both went to a flop of AK9 rainbow. He checked to me and I cbet 2/3 pot. I think his range here is mainly weighted towards hands with showdown that don't want to cbet and not know where they stand. Hands such as Kx, maybe q9 or something. His cbet range would normally be his entire range on this board based on past hands, yet he has also been leading out with top set etc. so I was sure he had a marginal 1 pair holding. Inevitably he check-called.

The turn came the 10s putting a second spade on the board. Again he checked to me and I elected to value bet 2/3 pot again. Here he check-raised to 25k from my 9k bet (25k was about chip average in the tournament - we were both pretty stacked). This was kind of weird as I had about 35k behind. I was almost sure that he didn't have QJ for the straight but something like one pair that picked up a flush draw or a gutshot. To be honest with this guy I really think he could even have 67s or something trying to bluff me. The only value hand in his range that I could see doing this would be K10 hitting two pair on the turn but even then he may elect to check/call it rather than check/raise.

I elected to flat which I'm really debating now. Although if I shove, I get no value from anything that calls, I think he is bluffing/semi-bluffing such a large % of the time that I would get more value just calling and calling about 85-90% of rivers (non king and non spade). So that's what I did, which I'm not too sure about but it's certainly close. What really made me call though is that as I bought out the 25k in chips to call I saw him slightly gulp out of the corner of my eye and look straight ahead. I thought this was pretty weak and went for it.

The river was an offsuit Q. The board then was AK9TQ. With me having AQ. He instantly jammed and I called after a few seconds. The story he was telling was really polarised to QJ given my flop read, how he reacted on the turn when I pulled the 25k chips forward and given there are only 2 combinations of QJ available (I have 1 Q and 1 is on the board), the chance of him having QJ is drastically reduced. So I called and he flipped over KJ. I'm kind of happy with my read as I feel online I would normally fold the turn here, but still the added information for paying so much attention and live reads really does help to make better decisions. I'm still not sure about shoving turn or just calling but whatever, onto the next tournament!

So afterwards, I was a little annoyed given how I had about 2.5x average stack and punted it. Regardless, I headed over to meet up with house mates at the Mirage to play some cash. Won $300 at $2/$5 which free-rolled my tournament in a pretty soft cash-game. Had an amazing pizza for dinner using the comped vouchers then the whole flat went to this bar/pub just off the strip and spent the rest of the night drinking, chatting and playing pool/darts.

A fun day!

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

2010-06-09T15:17:00.003+01:00

Good morning people!

Well I'm here, I've arrived. And I'm feeling good. I've settled in with the house mates now. It consists of myself, chud (from England), and 3 American poker pro's. We're all getting on really well so far and the Americans all seem like really cool guys.

The house is amazing, seriously nice. The weather everyday is in the high 30s to low 40s so I'm really thankful for our swimming pool in the back garden. We also have a mini-crazy golf course in the 'yard' as my American pals would put it. Plenty of drunken prop bets to be made on that I'm sure :)

So far I haven't really visited the strip yet. The house went to the Southside casino last night which is a little way off the strip, but it's seriously awesome. Unlike the English casinos, all of the drinks (beers, shots, cocktails) are free. It's such a good place to go and get drunk! The place is really fine and I went on a sick craps heater running up $30 to $200, before inevitably spewing it back in various pit games over the course of the next 3 hours lol. Had to be done!

Other than that, I've tried to grind online quite a bit while I'm here too so as to hopefully lower the variance of my live tournament grind and also potentially make a little money on the side to off-set some of the costs of the trip. I don't think I'll play _THAT_ much online, as I can save the heavy grinds for when I'm back in England. Saying that, I've put in a couple of longish sessions so far with little success yet. But I have to say, the American pro's have it good. It's pretty nice to start your grind at 10-11am and have big tournaments available and be able to wrap up by 5-6pm. I even did a full 12 hour slog yesterday, but doubt I'll do too many of these while the weather outside is so good and there is just so much stuff to do here!

I'm not sure whether I should be treating this as a holiday or a profit-seeking endeavour. I guess a bit of both! After-all, I can get down to trying to grind out serious profits when I'm back in England. Then again I can't spend too much money here or I'll inevitably go broke, which is WAY too easy in this place!

Today, I'm heading off to Caesars Palace on the strip to play the midday $300 tournament in their "mega stack series". From what Chud has said, the tournaments aren't great here compared to the Venetian. But I want to test the waters out myself in all of the different series and then choose where I like to grind the most. Pretty excited, from looking at previous entrants, they seem to get around 250 runners which makes for a $15k first place. Bring it!

Until then as I woke up ridic early again (damn jetlag), I'm just going to chill by the pool for a few hours and play a little golf on our putting range. It's not a bad life :)

It's all over...

2010-06-03T20:01:00.002+01:00

Hey!

3 years down the line and my degree is now complete. Finished. No more exams, no more lectures and no more 9ams! I'm now turning my focus much more towards poker for the meantime, really focusing on my game and working on it with the aim to become one of the best and most profitable MTT grinders in the world. That's quite a mission isn't it now :)

I've got a solid-ish bankroll to start with, definately sufficient enough to play a good range of mid-high level buyins online and with some room for shots live.

Flying out to Vegas on Sunday for the world series, staying in a mansion with 5 other poker pro's. I CANNOT WAIT!

Pretty brief post, but I thought I would update you all. Expect to see more posting in the next few weeks :O)

But until then VEGAS BABY!!!!!

A quick break from revision to play SCOOP Sunday

2010-05-10T13:55:00.003+01:00

Hey,

Somehow I've managed to be disciplined enough to not play poker for the past 2-3 weeks barely at all. In doing so I've managed to get up to date with my revision, all courseworks are handed in and just preparing for my finals which start next week.

What better way to reward myself than playing a SCOOP sunday? I registered for 26 tournaments between 6pm-11pm and surprisingly only managed one cash, with 3 bubbles. Not that I can complain though, as that cash was a final table, and second at that!

I got really lucky on the final two tables leading up to the final table. I won KQ>AJ for a big pot and K9s>JJ>AQ vs. two shorties after I shoved 12bb effective from the button into their blinds. That was really nice!

So I came into the final table with a pretty dominant chip-lead. I lost a good portion of that when my jacks ran into the kings of a very aggressive opener, but all was not lost.

I got into headsup with a slight chip-lead and the grind started. Unfortunately headsup didn't go as well. I ground my opponent down and got him all in with 2 coinflips, one 30/70 and one 80/20. I just couldn't knock him out! Pretty frustrating heads up pattern, but I guess that happens sometimes.

Really happy with the score and it will set me up nicely for vegas I hope :)

As for the steps tickets to the WSOP main event package on full tilt, I haven't really played them at all. I've got 1 step 6 ($640 seat) still that I need to play and quite a few $200 and $75 seats. Unfortunately, it might be a while before I really grind on with these, as at the moment uni-work has to be my priority.

Gl at the tables all

Hyper Turboooooooooos

2010-04-19T17:11:00.002+01:00

Hey,

I'm persistent on winning a WSOP seat online. So the quest continues! I'm giving some of these FTP steps programmes a go these days. It works like this on full tilt:

-step 1: $3.30
-step 2: $8.70
-step 3: $26
-step 4: $75
-step 5: $216
-step 6: $640
-step 7: $2100

With the winner of step 7 gaining a $12,000 package to the main event. Exciting stuff!

So I decided to start at step 4, playing 9 man super turbo, turbo and regular qualifiers. I played 30 to get me on the go and so far here are the results:

-11 step 5 tickets
-11 step 4 tickets
-2 step 3 tickets
-3 step 2 tickets

So hopefully now I can spin this up and luckbox one all the way to step 7 and ship all the gold! So over the next few days I'll keep grinding and maybe make something of this. I'm not too sure which to play for the higher levels, but I know I'm going to have to game select quite a bit at the step 6 and 7 stage, sharkscoping all the players before I register trying to stay away from the high stake regs who will undoubtably have a big edge on me due to knowing next to perfect ICM in these things. I think I'll stick to turbos and hypers for added gamble as from the $75s I've played people seem to suck a lot at these! But I might not have too much choice depending on what loads on the higher levels.

Other than that, revision has been going slow for exams but I'm trying to keep my focus up and getting on with it. Which is about all I can do! Only a couple of months to go! At the weekend I went down to London to this ridiculous baller nightclub called "Luxx" for my friends 22nd birthday. It's in the middle of Mayfair, with a very strict dress-code and very expensive drinks. I was lucky enough to get freerolled by my friend all night who was buying everyone £400 bottles of vodka. One day I hope to balla enough to do all this stuff.

Other than the great tunes, it made for some amazing people watching. I'm never normally in these kind of environments, so whilst I was still sober enough to do so, i found it really interesting to see who all the other punters in the joint were. On the table next to us, some 20-30 year old blokes who to be honest weren't that good looking but had THE hottest girlfriends. I just wondered what they did as jobs, especially after ordering the 4-5th bottle of £2k champaigne... Probably investment bankers. There were also tons of toffs which was pretty funny to watch, doubt I've ever seen so many people with combed back hair in one place before. Anyway, what really interested me was how this place did so well from a business perspective. The club was infact tiny. Although I didn't ask my friend, I'm pretty sure it cost over £100 per person entry especially with a reserved table. The music was good, and the drinks were nice. But it was all VERY expensive. They must have made so much money on the place. I can't imagine how impressive the marketing must have been, literally all the women in the place were stunning. If I was single and had the money, I'd definitely be back every weekend ;) And it is way way too easy to spend over £1k in there. I mean there was one bottle of champaign costing £35,000. WTF! I was impressed anyway!

Perhaps that's motivation for the future. Anyway back to the study-grind :( gl all!

UKIPT Coventry Final Table

2010-04-13T19:57:00.002+01:00

Hey!

As some of you may well know, I managed to final table the third leg of the Pokerstars UKIPT Coventry leg finishing in 8th place out of the 328-man field. Finally a live score!!

It may not be massively impressive coming in 8th and stuff, but you'll just have to trust me. It's a huge burden off my shoulders. Not in the monetary form. But all the hours I've put in at the live-felt to pay-off and finally get a deep run in a big tournament.

I started play on day 1A on the Thursday and battled hard through day 2 to reach the money bubble whereby I had about 3.5x average chips. The bubble was beautiful. People were just so scared of finishing just shy of the money and there was so many chips to be had. The structure in these tournaments are great; 15,000 starting chips with a 1 hour clock. The structure in the late game is also really impressive with the average chip count staying around 50bbs until we reached the final table and it dropped to a still very decent 30bb.

I was picking up chips easily with surprisingly soft table draws. That was until we reached in the money. Then things changed. I think it's fair to say, I'm a way off being a gboro780 or moorman1 just yet...

As our table broke after the money bubble burst, I got put onto an incredibly tough table in comparison to the remaining field. I had EPT winner Jake Cody, online player David 'LeKnave' Jones and Daniel Carter on the same table with me. And to be honest, they all ran over the table, putting immense pressure on all the other players, themselves included. Coming from tables where I felt I had a significant skill edge and could pick up chips easily, these guys just would not let a raise go through. There were constant 3bets, 4bets, bluff raises, double floats. You name it, no pot was going down uncontested. This made picking chips up not only much more difficult but with much higher variance as everyone's ranges weren't nearly as polarised as had been on previous tables.

I think it just goes to show how good some of the top young grinders are these days. I have a lot to learn. But I feel I'm capable of getting there. They were all very loose aggressive picking up a lot of chips and I felt I learnt a lot from playing vs. them at the same time. It was a challenge and fun and it's sometimes hard not to level yourself into making ridiculous post-flop plays.

As reported by Pokerstars, this hand kind of sums up my table quite a bit:

1.25am: Dobson dodges diamonds to double
Sam Grafton opened to 25,000 in early position, next to act Ben Dobson flat called, it folded to Dan Carter on the button who three-bet to 85,000. Grafton responded by four-bet jamming for around 400,000. Dobson called to put his tournament at risk and Carter folded.

Grafton: 3♦9♦
Dobson K♠K♦

The board was A♠J♠T♦7♠2♥. Dobson doubled to 600,000 and Grafton slipped to 150,000. --NW

See what I mean about the high variance comment ;)

I don't think I ran too hot on the final table but whatever. I'm really happy I made it and can't wait to start grinding more of the UK tournament scene next year. Such good fun!

From now on though, it's work work work. Exams are looming just round the corner and I've been slacking all year on the work front. So catch up time is required. That does mean unfortunately I won't really be putting in proper sessions until Vegas now in June. That also means no UKIPT Nottingham. Bit annoyed about this one, but it's placed slap bang in the middle of my exams. So no can do! Got to get my priorities straight on this one.

Gl at the tables all!

Shenanigans in Ireland

2010-04-06T06:16:00.003+01:00

Ahh, so that's what the city looks like!

Hey!

Well this has actually got to be one of the funnest weekends of the year and I'm sure I'll remember it as being one of the best of my life. It was none other than the Irish Open festival, held in Dublin. I flew over with Ryanair on the Friday after doing an all nighter. I was pretty nackered and couldn't sleep on the plane so crashed when I got to the hotel for a few hours. After only a few hours sleep I woke in the early afternoon and so it began. A weekend of hardcore poker, drinking and banter.

Despite Dublin quite possibly being one of the most expensive places I've been, I still love it. The peoples attitudes are great and really playing poker is so much more fun at lively tables where everyone is having a good time and gambling. It really was a lot of fun and I hope vegas is like this in the Summer.

As far as the tournaments go, as usual I bricked. I got deep and built stacks playing solid poker in both. I came about 90/720 with 72 paid in the main event with 72 paid running my queens into Aces of the guy raising every hand near the bubble. Coooooool! I still can't believe how soft both the tournaments were. My bustout hand for the €1650 sort of sums it up:

UTG limps (limping every hand), UTG+1 limps (also limping every hand and about the worst player ever), I iso the cut-off with AcKs and the blinds fold.

UTG whines about how he hates folding and folds. UTG+1 flats me with Js6s. We are like 50BB effective.

Flop As9c4s. He check/calls my cbet. The turn brings the 2s completeing the flush. I've got about 1.5x pot size bet. Decide to value bet my top pair with NFD commiting myself. Kind of frustrated I ran into the flush but from how he's played seriously I double up for sure if he has a random Ace rag or even just a nine on the river. Oh well.

Just a bit frustrating after the hand and he scoops the pot he goes "that serves you right for keep raising me, I thought you had nothing". I felt like saying, well ofcourse I'm going to isolate you, you're the biggest donk I've ever played with and even if you put me on nothing, why would you call with J6! Decided against it and said GG and walked off. Still pretty annoying how people like that manage to build stacks in these things.

Anyway, enough about me being bitter about variance in live tournaments and onto the funner stuff! After busting the main just before the money, I went to the bar and met up with a couple of the other iPoker qualifiers who I had been chilling with on the first night. I then met Tom Rutter who was heading out of the bar and heading into central Dublin who invited me and the other guys to come clubbing in town. We ended up partying with him, Moorman, and a few other top online HSMTT pro's. It was a completely crazy night. Drinks left, right and center. After arriving in town and trying to unsuccessfully bribe the bouncer to get in the club which was straight up rejected and resulted in us all not being allowed to enter the club despite afterwards waiting in the queue! Onto the next place and the drinks started flowing some very bizarre stuff happened...

Here's a photo with a blanked out face for his own embarassment. But haha, yes they kissed. No there was not any money involved. And it was apparently with tongues for several seconds. Oh dear hahaha!

Other than that Ireland was really fun. I'm a big TV-poker fan. In fact I pretty much watch everything going and really like all the gossip about the pro's. With this being my first big live tournament and me effectively being a poker version of one of those middle-aged overweight women who reads OK and Hello every week. So these are my run in with the pro's!

-Kara Scott was at the table next to mine. She's even hotter in real life than on the TV. Brian Townsend is a lucky lucky guy!
-Shared a lift with Richard "CHUFTY" Ashby and Dan Harrington.
-Drinking with moorman
-Bumped into Jesse May walking around the corner in the hotel. Was so so tempted to mock his pretty unique voice haha.
-Bluffed Marty Smith in a big pot in the main event

Damn, I'm such a fish lol!

Anyway, I was a bit disapointed with the tournament failings too. I sold quite a lot of myself in both events, but still it left a deepish hole in my pockets and this was the reason I was here anyway. But it may suprise you all that I made a profit on the trip!

-I swapped 5% on day 2 with Cos when we were both pretty short-stacked 30 off the money. I ran my QQ's into AA's and didn't improve, whilst he managed to run a bit better and built his 25k stack up to 280k before busting for €13,500, good for about €650 for me, I was happy, from what I can tell he played very well too and deserves the success.

-I ground cash games on the last day for a 12 hour session and netted €400 at €1/€2 which was a nice bonus. Not huge, but certainly helps along the way.

-After busting the €1650 I was pretty annoyed and frustrated as the same shit seems to happen every live event I play. So I came to my room and luckily I can still win online. I decided to register for a tourney wasn't chilling and watching southpark fitting in a few of the later Sunday tournaments on Full Tilt. I then thought fuck it, and registered about 10 in total from 10pm-1am. By 8:30am I was at the final table of this $26 freezeout on Full Tilt and managed to ship the lot :D

That was a really nice boost to the roll and sets me straight for Vegas.

Pretty funny story with this too. I was sure that my flight back was on Monday at 8am. Well after final tabling the $26 freezeout and with $9k for the win, I thought ahh screw it, I've missed this one. I'll just book another one tomorrow and stay an extra day thinking I had to leave the hotel too. Well after the tournament finished around 9am, I went down to reception and was happy to find out that I still had one more day left with the room. Ahh that makes it easy, I can even get a good sleep in too! After the 16 hour, pretty much non-stop poker session, I just went online and bought another flight home for the following day. When I woke up at about 6:30pm the following day, I just realised, my original flight was on Tuesday morning anyway. So I bought two tickets for the same flight, under the same name. Haha such an idiot! I do kind of run good though, I was so sure my flight was on Monday and that I missed it, I would probably have just left the hotel, checked out, got a bus to the airport and found out then. I guess I prefer to waste €70 on rebooking the flight than doing all that again and trying to get a room back again at the hotel :P

Anyway, I really enjoyed the weekend. UKIPT Coventry main event is the following weekend. I've won a seat online for it already, so I'll probably go add to the dead money then head back to Nottingham to chill and see my girlfriend.

After that the real grind begins. Exam revision. Urghhh. Can't wait for vegas. What a great insight this trip has been. I really can't wait to do more of this stuff next year.

Happy days...

Easter grinding 12 hour sessions and random thoughts...

2010-03-31T03:22:00.003+01:00

Hey!

I've just finished a few days hardcoring the multi's putting into my practice my proposed grind-schedule that I'll be using after the Summer. And I've got to say I love it! I register from 5pm-11pm every night adding in the two full tilt hyper-turbos at the end of the night to spice things up for that last minute gamble.

At the moment I'm registering for tournaments on Ladbrokes, Full Tilt, Ongame, iPoker, IPN (Boss) and pokerstars. I'm starting to build up decent sample sizes on all the sites now and I'm quite pleased to report that I'm up a lot on all of them. Apart from stars. Grrrr.... But that could all have changed if I had won a couple of those damned crucial coinflips.

Anyway, I'm in two minds about the schedule. At the moment, I load up tournaments until I'm 6 tabling and then register for the next available tournament of my choice once I donk out of my existing 6. I have 4 tables tiled on my 22inch monitor and 2 tiled on my adjoined 15 inch laptop screen. After the Summer this old set-up will be off and away as I plan on investing in a new desktop with duel 30 inch screens. Pretty sick I hope. Regardless, I feel that 6 tables is probably the most that I can comfortably manage playing across so many sites. It takes you a couple of seconds to realise what's going on, who's raised from where, what the stack sizes are behind you, what notes you have on the players involved etc. etc. I just don't think I could profitably play more especially due to current screen space issues.

A possible solution I was thinking instead after the Summer would be to just stick to 2-3 sites. With duel-30inch monitors and a good resolution, screen space wouldn't be an issue, but the amount of down-time and stress I get due to different sites messing with one another could really be massively reduced. To pick these 2-3 sites I really need to base it on the tournament schedule and the level of the competition.

Ideally I would like to choose pokerstars, full tilt and ladbrokes. By far these three have the best software on the market, best support and best structures. It's a joke how much the other euro sites like ongame, ipoker etc. lag behind in this day and age. But whatever, somehow with their dodgy out-dated business strategies of doing fuck-all they are still managing to hoard in enough punters to cough up the rake on a day-to-day basis. You see stars and full tilt have the big problem that at the mid-high stakes they are significantly tougher than the euro sites. That coupled with the bigger field sizes making the variance much bigger just make them a no-no to grind on the regular.

Ladbrokes however is a good choice to specialise in. Alone however there just aren't enough tournaments to be worthwhile. The choice is then between ongame, ipoker and IPN (boss). Now, I could play all three along side Ladbrokes. Which is a good possibility. But to be honest, I'd like to just have 2-3 sites as my main focus so that I can be able to make better notes vs. the other regs and that everything can just run more smoothly. Both ongame and ipoker have pretty good schedules for mid-hig buyins whilst IPN (Boss) which is a smaller network is somewhat limited here.

I suspect then realistically I'll just try to make myself a regular on these three sites. The only problem is, ongame repulses me. I honestly think the software is disgusting, unreliable and clumsy. Yeh, it really is. But I've done so well there lately at the same time and the players seem to be so bad. I might try installing a mod to improve the look of the program, because at the moment it's just horrible. The structures aren't bad and they have great tournaments but it's just a repulsive piece of coding. Even down to the little things like note-taking it's just so tilting! I'll probably give it a shot, and I really hope the software is improved. So I'm not too sure what to do. If it does subtely tilt me while I'm playing, and I'm timing out because there's no timebank and I can't see that someone has raised in front of me because the graphics are too shit, then that is a problem. On certain hands I do like taking my time, really analysing the situation before making rushed decisions. This is just not possible on this network (or iPoker for that matter). But I've got to include either iPoker or Ongame in the mix as there is just too much value to be had.

So that's all my random thoughts about the potential schedule blurted out. To summarise for those who quite sensibly couldn't be bothered to read through the dribble:

-going to grind 5pm-11pm sessions

-going to stick to 2-3 sites preferably. Most likely Ladbrokes/ipoker/boss or possibly Ladbrokes/ipoker/ongame if ongame sort their piece of shit software out.

Anyway, the few sessions I had were fun. I played around my friend Chris' house the whole time as my internet at home is too unreliable to put in a decent session. It was nice to grind with someone else at the same time despite him focusing on SNG's which inevitably play very differently to the MTT's I was playing. I'd love in the future to be able to move in with some other MTT grinders as even though Chris doesn't play these, I still felt I learnt quite a bit just talking stuff over with him and questioning some of the plays he was making in his games and him questioning my decisions in my games.

Despite all this, it wasn't too successful. I managed 6 final table bubbles (2 on full tilt, 3 on ipoker and 1 on ongame) with only one final table in a $50/$10k gtd on OnGame where my KK wasn't enough to beat the oh-so-powerful JQ on a J-high board. Ahhh well, despite sounding whiney and now thinking about it in retrospect, I've still been very optimistic with the week and really enjoyed the sessions.

That's the last heavy grind session in a while. I'll be flying off to Dublin on Thursday for the Irish Open then Coventry. After that it's study time. I'll try to play as many satellites as I can for the WSOP main event so fingers crossed for that.

Other than that, everything has been going really well in life. And I made my second biggest hero call ever today!! It's pretty nice and I used almost my full timebank just going over the hand and thinking about various lines he could take and how little sense it made to me at the time.

http://weaktight.com/2180764 If there's any interest I might go into my logic behind the call in a future blog entry as you'll just have to trust me on this one, tilt wasn't the reason!!

Vegas, Ireland, Coventry yipeee!

2010-03-25T17:13:00.003Z

Hey,

I've just finished sorting some stuff out for the upcoming poker tournaments I'm playing.

- Ireland next week, flight booked and I can't wait. I'm still selling action for it if anyone is interested here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/163/staking-selling-shares/selling-shares-irish-open-2010-a-710325/. Where 1% is $79. I'm so ready to ship this!

- UKIPT coventry is close after where I won a £82 seat-only qualifier which should be fun. I think I'll just commute from Nottingham every day as it's only an hour drive down the M1 away..

-Vegas flights are officially booked! I'm going from the 6th June until the 12th July, staying in a house with a load of other grinders. It should be really fun as I've been dieing to go Vegas for years and now I'm finally of age with a little money in my pocket.

The schedule is pretty good, but unfortunately at the moment I'm way way under-rolled for most. So I'll probably grind a lot online and play the occasionaly weekly $1k WSOP freezeout possibly mixing in some venetian $300's or something. I haven't really got any set plans yet as I'll see what's going on when I get there but still plan on having a little bit of money when I come back.

I think there is a reasonably chance when I come back I'll have to significantly drop down in stakes and just grind the crap out of $50 freezes and under if I'm only left with a $10k roll. I want to take the gamble and go for the big-shot, in this once a year, and quite possibly once in a lifetime experience. It should be fun and I'll keep everyone updated with how things are going when I'm over there.

Full tilt have an amazing amazing promotion going on for the WSOP 2010 so I think I'm going to be trying my hardest to satellite through on their site to the $10k main event. Check this out:

- 81 player double shootout ($216) that runs twice a day at 15:30 and 21:30

- $1 mtt every sunday that guarantees 5 seats

- regular weekly qualifiers that run as follows:

Buy-In Time Guarantee
$300 Tuesday Direct Qualifier $300 + $22 21:00 ET Two $12K prize packages
--$200 Wednesday Direct Qualifier $200 + $16 16:30 ET One $12K prize package
$1K Thursday Direct Qualifier $1,000 + $60 21:00 ET Five $12K prize packages
--$200 Saturday Direct Qualifier $200 + $16 19:00 ET One $12K prize package
$600 Sunday Direct Qualifier $600 + $40 16:30 ET Five $12K prize packages

more importantly...

"In addition to the $10 million bonus, if you finish in the money at this year's Main Event, we'll give you a free seat to the 2011 Main Event."

So not only are they giving you a free entry into the following years main event if you cash, but if you are lucky enough to ship the whole thing you get a $10 million bonus on top. That is just insane.

I think I know what I'm going to be doing every Wednesday and Saturday night leading up to the Summer now..haha! I'm just interested to see how the other sites can combat this. Particularly stars, as everyone knows they hate to ever be out-done.

Check this youtube clip out. If you're not from England you might not get it as much but it's pretty damn funny.

Gl, later all!

Where's all the money gone?!

2010-03-22T13:22:00.003Z

Unfortunately it's a fact that since the glorious Summer my bankroll has become quite depleted. A lot of this can be blamed on variance, although there are always measures to reduce this variance. On the other hand, it could be that I've been getting outplayed, and then there are always measures to combat this as well!

First let's start with what's been going well. Well I've been putting a lot more volume into the European sites which I've been doing very well in. Partly the smaller fields but also the weaker competition. So that's a bonus. However, a cycle seems to be emerging. Throughout the week I slowly make $1k-$2k on the euro sites and then on the Sunday I donate it all back, often with some more playing the higher buyin Sunday tournaments.

To prevent this, recently I've been selling some action occasionally or reducing the buyins of the tournaments I've been playing on Sundays (such as dropping off some of the majors). But they are SO juicy. For those who don't know, the Sunday tournaments each week attract huge fields on all the sites and are filled with weak satellite qualifiers and recreational players trying to hit it big. It really doesn't help that since the Summer I've had 5 final 2 tables in major tournaments where first place is typically $50k+ where I've bubbled the final table for around $2k. I guess I wouldn't be making this post right now if one of those times my hand held or I won that crucial coinflip.

Anyway, I didn't win that flip or my hand didn't hold, so I'm writing this blog post now. I think I've lost a lot on the Sundays and as a result for the meanwhile, unless it's a super juicy Sunday, I'll be stepping down from playing the Sunday majors. But the action is just too juicy. So instead, I will mark my bankroll from the start of the week and if I'm up for the week, then I can try my hand free rolling a few of the majors, whilst if I'm down I'll stick to the lower buyins and grind them out.

The other area where I've lost a significant amount of money over the past year and which has really been my downfall is the live arena. I still just can't seem to get any sort of a score going there. It's getting kind of ridiculous to watch as my aces get cracked once again on the bubble of a deepstack to some drooling idiot. Without going into too much detail, without my live tournament losses, I would now be in a better monetary shape than ever before. Alas, it's not to be just yet as the poker gods laugh on and I continue to brick every live tournament I play! To combat this, I'll be just trying to satellite into live tournaments and keep most of my volume in online as I can't afford to keep playing the £300 deepstacks without selling action despite how juicy the field is. I'll probably adopt a similar strategy on the month if I don't win a seat through online qualification by seeing how I'm doing for the month. If I'm +£2k or something, I could just buy myself in and freeroll it. I don't have too much problem with this as it's not as if I'm freerolling a tournament like the stars $100 rebuy where the field is very tough and I'm unlikely to be hugely profitable in the long-run.

Anyway! Onto the future. I aim to keep grinding out the euro sites until Easter. After that it's going to be quite a break from poker as my final exams at uni come along. I've got two live tournaments ahead of me; UKIPT coventry and the Irish Open to look forward to. After that it's a break and then vegas.

I still aim to have a $100k bankroll by the end of the year. After vegas I'm really going to get my head down and grind hard, getting in good volume. From August to the following August I am to get $500k worth of buyins to online tournaments by grinding 5-6 days a week registering from 5pm-11pm. If I can manage this with a 30% roi (which is more than achievable) I should be able to crack out $150k profit for the year. It's worth a shot at anyway even if it is for only one year. I'll have to make sure I'm staying alert throughout the period, exercising regularly and eating well as well as studying up on my game a lot.

I'll do a bit of that tonight as my horse Jon is coming over to review some hand histories then put in a sweat session together where we can hopefully go over some plays together and improve both our games.

It may not be looking too great at the moment, but there is certainly hope for the future.

Fuck downswings.

Gl all!

edit: pagehfan786 theorm in practice. Whine a load then bink a nice score :)

March so far

2010-03-03T03:06:00.006Z

Hey,

Been grinding a little. Really my grind sessions were based around DTDPoker trying to win a seat to the £300 live tournament this weekend. I think I'll play regardless but it's always nice to win your way in! I'm really enjoying live poker after my cash in the side event at walsall. Can't wait!!

Played a few tournaments here and there this week. I managed to come 2nd in a $109 6 max freezeout for $850 on monday which was nice.

And today I managed to final table a €20r/€20k gtd on boss coming 9th for €450ish as well as finally shipping a donkament!

Still, it's not a huge win due to the limited number of runners. But I'm fine with having these reduced scores more often. Shame it wasn't on Stars. I still can't run good on that site for the life of me! Gahh! At the moment though, I don't really care. Shipping tournies is why we play them after-all and it's a good feeling. I feel like I'm really in the zone.

Might play a session or two more this week, other than that looking forward to the DTD deepstack this weekend.

GL all

Reverse the curse!

2010-02-24T01:49:00.004Z

Hey!

As regular blog readers will have probably gathered, live poker hasn't treated me too well over the past year. I haven't put in a ton of volume but I've definately played my fair share and without a single cash in over a year at a live tournament I was seriously starting to have my doubts. Not only was this putting pressure on my online wins to sustain the live buyins but also about how I was approaching live poker and really focusing on the differences particularly in the extra information and player ranges that differ between the two forms of the games.

Well that all changed earlier today :) I managed to final table a £200 prelim for the GUKPT Walsall. It wasn't huge and I came 9th (despite losing a 70/30 for chip lead, but that's besides the point) but I'm just really really happy that I finally broke through and cashed in a live tournament. In fact I was nervous that in such bubble situations I'd be overly tight, however, I played my game and on the final table bubble in particular worked my 40k stack up to 160k without showdown which I'm really happy with.

I wasn't getting particularly many cards, but taking advantage of others who clearly seemed like they wanted to reach the final table. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to probably more than anyone else. Yet I've played so many tournaments in similar situations that with some ICM considerations, going for first place where all the money is weighted is really my only goal.

One really interesting hand happened on the exact final table bubble with 11 players left in the tournament. I started the hand with about 30 big blinds and was covered by the open raised. He was a 25-30 something guy that had been quite active but was in no means a good player. Definitely on the fishy side with huge preflop and postflop leaks. Regardless, he had a bunch of chips and the hand was dealt.

I looked down at Kh10h in the cut-off. The big blind at the time had 3 big blinds left (as you guess, he was one of the guys folding into the money and looking to reach the final table at whatever cost). The early position raiser asked his chip count and thought for a little while then 3.5x'd as he had been doing with a wide range of holdings. Here's something I picked up that I hadn't picked up online. I could almost instantly eliminate any sort of premium holding from his range here as I felt from his body language and the fact he was concerned with the BB's stack size, whereas for this player if he was dealt aces for instance, the BB's stack size wouldn't even come into his equation. So I put him on a medium kind of hand - lowish pocket pairs, QJ, KQ, A8 that kind of area.

So when it got to me, with this little hint of weakness I 3bet him. The button, an Indian guy, some postflop logic but lacking any sort of preflop game (raising 5x with a 15bb stack then folding to a shove etc.) tanked for ages. Like 3 minutes and folded (after saying he folded queens, great one lol. Somehow he went on to win the tournament. Don't quite know what that says to me haha).

The BB then put his 3 bb stack in and it folded to the UTG guy who tanked for ages (what the hell was he thinking while the button was tanking I don't know). So I was pretty sure he was hollywooding as how could anyone take this long on a preflop decision. Then he did what I least expected him to do: flat call. Which was terrible given our effective stacks left in the hand.

Regardless, the flop came 10 9 3, he checked to me, I fired 1/3 pot and he quickly mucked 88 face up. Obviously he played that about as bad as possible as I don't know what board he was expecting but was no way near set mining odds. The BB had 55 and my hand held. Half the table was in disbelief probably thinking I'm the biggest fish alive, others said very well played.

But I think although the hand is very basic, it's these little live tells and bet sizing that I'm really starting to focus on more and implementing the extra information into my game. Obviously K10s is a terrible hand to 3bet with if your focusing mathematically with the bet sizing, but given the extra information that I was sure he didn't have a premium and it had enough showdown value to do well vs the BB's 3bb stack I was happy to make the play. And it worked well.

Really happy about my live game and finally getting some more confidence. I'm looking for a big score soon, and if I keep getting in the volume, I don't see any reason why it won't come.

Deep runs on the Sunday

2010-02-22T15:53:00.003Z

Hey,

Sunday was a bit of a marathon session. Overall it was pretty frustrating in some aspects as I got so deep in a few tournaments but couldn't win the crucial flips to propel me towards the REAL big money.

Here's the results of the session as promised:

[27/5098 - $3823.50+$160 knockouts]: $256/$800k gtd (Brawl -FTOPS 25 Full Tilt)
[52/974 - €281.37]: €55r/€100k gtd (Ladbrokes)

[9/631 - $1926]: $308/$100k gtd (OnGame)
[16/2107 - $1169]: $163/$150k gtd (Full Tilt)
[16/511 - €605]: €100/€50k gtd (B2B)
[55/7466 - $559.95]: $55/$200k gtd (80k special - Stars)

[708/5645 - $846.75]: $535/$2.5m gtd (FTOPS Main Event - Full Tilt)
[251/1904 - 1 knockout ($10)]11:35pm: $59/$32k gtd (Super Turbo - Full Tilt)

Total cashed for $8495.20
Total cashed for €886.37 ($1206.6)

Total is: $9701

Obviously I'm still happy as from the $5k buyin that definately isn't a bad result, but final 2 tabling two tournaments where first place pays $60k and getting so deep in the FTOPs where first was $200k you can't help but think...what if...

I'm pretty happy that over the past 6 months I've been pretty consistently getting deep in various majors but just need that little bit of run good at the end to ship all the moneys. I sold about 30% of my action this time round which definitely helped as I don't have the roll for the large $100rebuys and $500 freezeouts etc no matter how much I would like to grind them on the regular!

The only downside of this all was that from my deep run in the FTOPs I got to bed by 5am, and as such slept through my 9am alarm for lectures pretty well lol. Since this is a one-off I'm cool with that but as Mondays are pretty important at uni, usually I'll just register up until the Sunday Million I think.

Regardless, it was a fun night. I really enjoyed the grind and building huge stacks, then blowing them again :p.

I'm going to look over the $163 and the 6max tournament some time this coming week and chat with some friends about hands as from what I remember I was put in a bunch of tough situations where I'd like to rethink over optimal lines which will hopefully help me in future situations.

Anyway thanks to all the investors (please message me your full tilt screen name if you haven't read the 2P2 thread as I have busted my stars roll so will take a little time to get money to get on there again to resend)

The Biggest Sunday in Online History?

2010-02-20T05:17:00.002Z

Hey!

This Sunday is going to be HUGE. Not only is it the main event of the FTOPS series on full tilt, but also Pokerstars, which never like to be outdone, have slapped a whopping $4million guarantee on their $215 Sunday Million tournament. Pretty crazy! As a result of this, inevitably all of the tournaments will have inflated prize pools and all the fishys will come out to play! Hopefully it will be epic.

I plan on playing a huge schedule:

5:00pm: €140+10/€100k gtd (Boss)
5:00pm: $200/$250k gtd (OnGame)
5:00pm: $109/$23.5k gtd (Full Tilt)

6:00pm: $109/$40k gtd (Stars)
6:00pm: $215/$750k gtd (warmup - Stars)

7;00PM: $109r/$250k gtd (Stars early $109 rebuy)
7:00pm: $256/$800k gtd (Brawl -FTOPS 25 Full Tilt)
7:00pm: $320/$250k gtd (BlueSquare)
7:00pm: €55r/€100k gtd (Ladbrokes)

8:00pm: $308/$100k gtd (OnGame)
8:00pm: $163/$150k gtd (Full Tilt)
8:00pm: €100/€50k gtd (B2B)
8:00pm: $55/$200k gtd (80k special - Stars)
8:45pm: $109/$30k gtd (BlueSquare)

9:30pm: $215/$4m gtd (million - Stars)

10:30pm: $530/$500k gtd (Sunday 500 - Stars)

11:00pm: $535/$2.5m gtd (FTOPS Main Event - Full Tilt)
11:30pm: $215/$200k gtd (2nd chance - Stars)
11:35pm: $59/$32k gtd (Super Turbo - Full Tilt)

12:00am: $109/$80k gtd (Stars)
12:05am: $216/$200k gtd (Mulligan - Full Tilt Poker)

1:30am: $109/$15k gtd (Turbo - Stars)

This comes to around $5k in buyins for the day. Oh dear oh dear! This is at the moment pretty much out of my league, so I've decided to sell some up to 35% of my tournaments on 2p2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/163/staking-selling-shares/selling-sunday-shares-f3nix35-715997/

I'll update at the end of the night how I do. Hopefully it won't be full of disappointment!

As for my online grind, the afternoon sessions have been working out really well. I'm yet to bink something big, but due to the reduced field sizes I'm constantly grinding out smaller profits. For the last 3 days I've final tabled the €50fo on Ladbrokes and cashed in €109 on stars every day. Just need that little extra run good to actually ship one of the bastards!

Gl all those who are also going to be digging deep in their pockets this Sunday in the hope of shipping a 6-figure score.

End of Manchester and Ireland

2010-02-16T12:59:00.004Z

Hey!

After the very long-winded post last time, I'll make a shorter one this time. The rest of the Manchester trip was pretty quiet. I played the £330 side event and somehow managed to get sat at the same table the entire time with Richard Ellis, the guy I was rooming with. He managed to have position on me for the whole of day 1 and somehow we managed to both navigate ourselves with big enough stacks to survive through until day 2. Pretty lame that I lost 3/3 coinflips in this tournament eventually busting around 30/130ish just shy of the money, but I was really happy with how I played and my patience throughout.

There were a few younger online qualifiers at our tables who I could sort of see myself in about a year ago. They obviously knew what they were doing on the whole but were getting really impatient with the slow-paced nature of 1-tabling live in comparison to say 10-tabling online. They then really spewed off stacks in different directions and tried to win far too many pots. I'm pretty happy that I have a much more patient game now, which allowed me to win so many more chips without showdown keeping me a float despite losing all 3 of the flips in the tournament. Ahh well!

By Sunday after busting just shy of the money in the £300 I headed back to the hotel in the evening and paid £5 to use the internet in the room to play a few Sunday tournaments. I should have guesses that the internet was a pile of unreliable wank and kept disconnecting me. Talk about life-run bad ;)

Despite that I managed to win a seat to the FTOPS $530 heads up tournament which was really fun. My first opponent was very weak and spewed off his stack epically with bare top pair for 100bb's. I guess he was a non-believer! The second opponent on the other hand was a complete bastard! I was having internet problems due to the dodgy hotel connection, despite the place being new and in central manchester. So by the time the internet reconnected I had lost close to 1/3 of my chips thanks to the guy abusing my disconnected situation. I came back and ground the stacks back to even. Then in a 3bet pot I managed to stack the guy for almost all the chips getting it in with QQ on a 44T board against his AT. Well that was until he binked another T on the river sending me to the rail ;).

I did get a pretty deep run in the Ladbrokes €50r major, but with no glory. Next week it's going to be a pretty epic, and expensive Sunday that somehow the degenerate side of me is really looking forward to. Pokerstars are breaking more records again, this time with a $215/$4million guarantee. That's right $4 million. They're expected to have around 20,000 runners for this tournament. At which point you have really got to say no matter how skilled you are, it is a lottery and even the best player in the world i wouldn't believe would have a 1/3000 chance of winning. But, unlike the lottery, around 3,000 players will get paid, so I'll give it a shot and use my "1-time" wisely ;)

On the subject of big potential pay-outs. The Irish Poker Open is creeping around. I'm really looking forward to this and think despite lack of results my live game has improved immensely in the past few months. Down-swings do have their benefits as in it really makes you question all your plays and really focus and study hard on your game so as to improve. I'm ready to bink big :)

I decided as $5k is quite a big buyin, I will be selling some action for this and one of the side events. So if anyone does feel like buying a % or two, feel free to check this link out where I'm selling some of my action: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/163/staking-selling-shares/selling-shares-irish-open-2010-a-710325/

Gl at the tables all

2010-02-13T13:42:00.002Z

Warning: this is a bit of an analytical post, so skip over it if that's not what you're looking for!

Normally grinding tournaments online you rarely come into spots that really challenge and get you thinking as most spots I've been in numerous times before and are pretty simplistic just based on bet sizing and ranges. However, in the live arena you're exposed to so much more information and the stacks are often significantly deeper particularly in these deepstack tournaments that I'm trying to increasingly expose myself to.

So despite a relatively early exit, I did have a few interesting hands which are probably worth mentioning.

Due to the nature of the UKIPT Manchester having significantly more online satellite qualifiers than your typical tournament, the standard of play often seemed weaker, but due to the nature of most people qualifying online through stars, I had a much greater idea about peoples ranges and playing tendancies just due to my hours playing such similar players on the online felt. I found that I had a pretty good table where I had the opportunity to open a wide range of pots and significantly increase my stack without showdown. Which is always an aim in tournament poker so that when the inevitable flip does occur, it hopefully won't be for the whole stack!

Anyway onto an interesting hand that happened in the first level. I was dealt 3c5c in the small blind and there were 3 limpers from middle position to the button. I completed 300 big blinds deep and the big blind checked allowing us to see a flop.

The flop came a pretty decent A24 giving myself the nut straight. I have two options here, lead out here to "underrep" my hand or go for the check-raise that over-represents my hand. Of course this also relies on someone betting the flop with something strong enough to call a check raise with. Leading out will keep in many weaker hands such as A8 or a similar hand that is likely to be limped, while I expect a check-raise here would fold out many of these weaker holdings limiting the calling range to strong aces (unlikely to be the case here due to limping pre) and two pair hands (also pretty unlikely). So leading out seems like a better choice. However, with leading it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to get all 300big blinds in which is an aim, but similarly it would be very difficult to get this anyway with any one pair hands unless the opponent was a complete drooler. So I decided to bet out on the flop around 2/3 to 3/4 of the pot.

I got one caller from the big blind and a raise from the button. At this point I can assign a range to the buttons raise from 2 pair hands, medium-strong Ace X hands, 22/44 or complete airballs. Due to the flop being very dry (no flush draws or obvious other straight draws), I elected to flat this raise with the intention of check raising any non-paired turn card. This allows me to keep the pot under control out of position and will keep in holdings such as Ax and quite possibly hands such as 2 4 or A2 which may hero fold a raise here. So I called the raise and the big blind folded.

The turn came the 2 making the board Ac2x4x2c. I picked up the straight flush draw here and checked to the button who led out again. I have to flat here. Folding is too weak, remember I still have the nut straight, a redraw to a flush and straight flush and it is quite likely that I'm still ahead of a lot of the hands that the button is betting for value such as A3, A9 etc. Raising here would fold out these hands and I would only get called by hands that beat me, such as A2, 24, 44 etc as well as folding out any bluffs that may be in the buttons range. So I elected to flat.

The river was a brick, an offsuit 9, giving the board Ac2x4x2c9x. There is an arguement for me to bet out here folding to a raise as many of the hands I beat such as A8 would likely call a bet but check behind on the river, whilst all bluffs would fold (I think this is only a small part of his range though given the board texture). I checked, the button led out 1/2 pot and I called. In retrospect now, I really don't beat much of his value range and considering he doesn't have too many bluffs in his range here a fold would probably be better here. But I called and he turned over 2 4. A small dent in my stack, but a dent I could have probably avoided due to his likely polarised range in this situation.

Time to rebuild and refocus....

A second interesting hand occured just after the second break. With effective stacks at 13,000 and the blinds at 75/150, the cut-off opened to 400 and I 3bet (reraised) the button with 7h5h. The cutoff was a young internet qualifier from Holland who seemed to know what he was doing but was playing pretty ABC and somewhat unimaginative poker. He had been opening quite a lot from late position and this was a good spot where I can 3bet/fold to a 4bet (which I think given our limited history he rarely does) and when I do get called with a strong hand I have the potential to win a big pot and manipulate it in position. So I 3bet it to 1150 and after some deliberation he flat called this. At this point I don't know exactly what his range is as this varies from player to player, but given I have position throughout the hand I can take control of most flops profitably.

The flop came Kc7c2x. He checked and I led out between 1/2 pot and 2/3 pot. I can represent an AK/AA sort of hand which without history he could expect is a large part of my range here. When he flat called this flop bet I was almost shutting down on the hand as it would be very unlikely for him to call this as a float out of position and he has very few flush draws within his range of calling my 3bet I would expect (most suited aces he would fold to the original 3bet preflop as I would expect many 79suited kind of hands which play badly out of position in large 3bet pots). So I put his range here weighted towards 3of a kind, strong Kx (KQ) etc.

The turn came an offsuit 7 giving the board Kc7c2x7x. He led into me 3000, around 1/2 pot. Initially, it would be very easy to just muck my cards, we were caught bluffing and now he's showing strength on the turn. However, thinking a bit more indepth about my percieved range vs. his holdings there are very very few hands that can legitimately take this line which can handle a reraise. I feel a lot of people would bet into me here with QQ-88 kind of hands, possibly to see where they are. I wouldn't expect a 7 to bet into me here almost ever, especially considering we have little history and my percieved range would make little sense for him to lead into me with a king (as I have so many stronger kings in my range such as AK/AA/KK sort of hands). Now of course he could have slowplayed kings, AK or AA preflop yet this is such a tiny percentage of his range. I elected to shove due to his weak leading range and some floats that could be in his range. I shoved 14,000, making it 11,000 more for him to call. He folded and claims to have folded AcQc. I won't comment too much on his play, but I really don't think that this was an optimal line for his hand.

The stack is rebuild and up to around 19,000-20,000 from the 15,000 starting stack when comes my bust out hand. I'm pretty disapointed with this hand as in retrospect it does seem very spewy, and typically I'd like to think that whilst being an aggressive player I'm not the kind of player that gets myself into such bad spewy situations particularly in deepstack events such as this where there is so much room for play given the fantastic structure. Anyway, onto the hand...

Middle position, some young online looking kid with his hood up, who had been opening a lot of pots and playing very aggressively opens at 100/200 to 500, his usual raise size. It folds to me in the big blind and I look down at AcKs. I elect to 3bet for value to 1850 due to the potential difficulty of playing a hand such as AK out of position to an aggressive player. He deliberates a few seconds and calls the raise. We are around 100 big blinds deep effective so I believe he has a fairly wide range here and will be willing to float a lot of flops and generally be a pain. When playing in live deepstacks such as this, I think it's quite important that you pick on the many weaker spots at the table rather than going out of ones way to battle the tougher opponents at the table in some sort of levelling war. This just significantly increases variance and really there is little value as although a lot of spewing is likely, it's so much easier to pick up chips from the weaker opponents at the table. So I decided to not run multiple street bluffs or get too attached to my hand.

The flop came down 2s3x8s. I checked with the intention of check/raising as a semi-bluff. I often have the best hand here regardless and can fold out a lot of hands that might stab at the flop which have quite good equity vs. my hand which are likely to float any Cbet i make here (such as J9, 67, 55, Q10 etc.). Villain checks behind here. I'm not too shocked here. To a thinking player, my check here actually reeks quite a lot of strength as without any real history, I'm likely to bet almost my full 3betting range on such a board possibly with the exception of AA/KK/88 kind of hand which I was trying to represent.

The turn came the 9s, giving the board 2s3x8s9s. I now have the nut flush draw. And this is where I'm not really happy how I played my hand. I have a few options here. Check/raise as a semi-bluff, check/call (wayyyyy too weak and gives my hand strength away way too much), betting out. I really really wish I had bet out here. I can represent the same AA/KK/88 sort of hand that I had projected on the flop whilst in fact semi-bluffing the flush draw and possibly live over-cards. This would give me a much greater idea of my relative hand strength and still folds out the kind of 9J, 67, 66 type of hands that may well have called my 3bet pre.

Instead I went for the check/raise. There are some merits for this play, but it is effectively turning my hand into a complete bluff. Of course villain could also check back and I could get to showdown cheaply vs. an AJ/AQ kind of hand. However, given how I had observed this villains tendancies I found it to be very unlikely he would check back the turn given the action and would likely bet it with his entire range, hence check-raising gaining a lot of fold equity. What was so spewy about this play is though that given his betsizing and my intentions once I check-raised his 2.5k bet to 8.5k-9k I had committed far too much of my stack. Afterall, this isn't a cash game where I can just reload after such a move. I would be much happier making such a play 200bb deep.

Regardless, I made the not-so-optimal check-raise turning my hand into almost a complete bluff and villain tanked and tanked. For literally 5 minutes he thought about the hand. I was observing him and he didn't seem to show much emotions but was certainly genuinely thinking. After so long I felt I should be excluding sets/flushes from his range as even people hollywooding such hands never seem to think for THAT long. And trust me, at the poker table waiting 5 minutes when half my stack is in the middle seems to take an eternity...

He eventually shoved the remainder of his stack in, a further 9k for me to call. If he had acted within a couple of minutes I would almost snap fold. Recently watching Daniel Negreanu in the WSOPE he highlighted the importance in tournaments of avoiding marginal spots. But as this guy had tanked for so long, and it seemed like a genuine tank I had to believe he didn't have a strong made hand such as a set/flush but could even have some bluffs in his range despite the circumstances. I deliberated and getting 4.5-1 on my money made the (bad - awful) call and met his pocket 3's to see myself drawing very thin. I think he played the hand well, and his huge tank thinking really pushed me more towards a call. I was under the assumption that it was likely my ace and king were live and a very likely holding of his was something like AsQh, two overs etc.

In hindsight and after going over the hand many times in my head (trust me, I'm pissed off with how I played it), his range is in fact much wider and far less bluffs than I had imagined. Not only for a lot of people getting it in with a set here may be a tough choice given the flush (as I could have AsKs in my c/r percieved range, despite myself not believing it was a significant chance), but there are other hands that if he's not thinking on the same level he could be committing with such as 99's/10's/J's or even 89 for top two pair. I had outs and equity and was getting around the right price given the range I assigned him. But still, in such a tournament, there is no need to be getting in SUCH marginal spots, where I could have folded on the turn given how I had played the hand and nurture my remaining 30 odd BB stack picking on the weaker players.

Anyway, the river was a blank and his bottom set held for a monster pot. He played it well, so I can't fault him there.

I'm looking forward to the side game action tomorrow, probably playing some cash, having a lie in in this nice hotel, working out and making money! Despite my day 1 exit, I still had a great time and I really am looking forward to the next UKIPT main event on the tour..

..Played a little £2/£5 cash yesterday. Really juicy table and I won £400 so pretty happy there! Went out in Manchester last night with some friends but feeling the effects now haha. The £300 side event is today at 7pm, so I'll rest up til then and be ready to crush!

Live pro in Manchester

2010-02-10T13:14:00.003Z

Hey,

Well DTD didn't go too well. I made it through to day 2 with a 60,000 stack ranking me about 20th/56 left with 36 paid. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be as I lost two big flips both of which would have left me with a top 5 stack busting out on the bubble. Sigh, liveaments!

Regardless, heads are held high as tomorrow I'm off to Manchester for the second stop of the UKIPT sponsored by Pokerstars. For those that aren't aware, Manchester looks like a sell out main event with 500+ splashing out on the £550 buyin. This will generate a big prize pool so here's to running good in that festival! I suspect I'll also play all of the side events as they are likely to have very good structures thanks to the Stars involvement. It should be a fun week.

Online I put in two sessions since the weekend on Monday and Tuesday night. Monday night I final tabled the $20rebuy on full tilt but splashed out in 7th for just shy of $1k and last night I had a deep run in the Boss €50r but unfortunately losing 4/4 showdowns in the money busting my 1/36 stack on the bubble to coming 18/19th for around €250. Woops!

I'm taking the day off today to play some squash, catch up with a bit of university work and see friends before I head off tomorrow morning to Manchester.

Binking and rebuilding

2010-02-04T20:17:00.003Z

Hey,

I'm finally managing to put a bit more volume in playing the afternoon schedules, unfortunately the buyins are a bit lower than I could be playing as are the field sizes and hence first prizes, but this works so much better with my lifestyle at uni as I'm usually finished by around 8pm which allows for lots of chilling with friends and partying! Also with lower buyins and field sizes, the variance is arguably reduced which can only be a good thing for a guy playing exclusively MTTs. Not only that, but having such a lower buyin means that taking live shots which go unsuccessfully have a much smaller impact on the buyin if I haven't been running particularly well. Saying this, it is always nice reaching those elusive 5-figure scores. But for the meanwhile at least I'll stick to this lower-variance approach and hopefully grind out some money.

Today I made a couple of final tables, both on Ladbrokes in smallish tournaments. Most notably taking down the €50/€1500 freezeout for just under €1k.

Last night I also managed to blag a seat in the DTD monthly £336 deepstack in one of their online satellites so that's where I'll be heading this weekend. I think I've done enough of the "one-time" or "i'm due live" posts in previous blogs, so this time I'm just going to say fuck it, I'll play a patient game, play each hand as optimally as I can and if it doesn't work out so be it! GL to all those other folk heading up to Nottingham for the series!

A late start to the new year

2010-02-01T15:08:00.002Z

Long time no blog!

I've been really busy since the start of the year. First of all I had exams which basically took all of my time and priority in the first few weeks. I don't like blogging about stuff that doesn't interest me so I'll leave it at that but they went all right with me averaging 62% which means its going to be close if I can secure a 2:1 in the Summer...But it's still an improvement from last year so I'm happy :)

After that I was pretty burnt out from all the studying, insane sleeping pattern and general bad work-life balance. So I went with a friend from home skiing in the Alps for a week! What a break. The conditions were amazing, clear blue skies all day and powder snow at night which meant for great off-pisting conditions. Plus the slopes were basically empty. It was an amazing week and now I'm back refocused and ready to make 2010 a great year.

Here are some random photos from my holiday:

So now I'm back, the new semester has started, as will the poker volume! I'm going to try playing a few afternoon sessions and playing a bunch live this month in February including DTD deepstack, UKIPT Manchester and GUKPT Walsal prelims! Possibly even visiting Reading for the student poker championship there, although that clashes on the same weekend at the DTD Deepstack so we shall see...

Let's hope my extended break over January means I come back on form and make February a great start to the year!

Gl all

The Sunday Results

2009-12-28T11:29:00.002Z

Well that day went weird haha.

As for the schedule, it all kind of went tits-up if you will. But it will make me more prepared for future grind sessions I'm sure. And I'm not even talking about how I ran here...

The slight hiccups which disrupted my night:

-getting the hour difference the wrong way round on the Boss network, thinking their €150 major started at 7pm, rather it started 5pm and I missed it. Woops!

-The friend I was planning on playing at completely forgot and made other plans (other plans on a Sunday, what is this?!?!), luckily another mate that also plays poker invited me over last minute. And he had a reliable internet. Win!

-I found out that all my recent computer slowness/lag issues is to do with my poker tracker 3. Thinking about it, my database must be HUGE by now, and this little laptop just can't handle it with 8 other poker sites up. So I went a good portion of the night without a hud, then turned it on later again.

-I deposited money on BlueSquare Poker to play their £150 GUKPT satellite with 1 seat guaranteed. Well I guess to iPoker that doesn't mean much as there was an overlay and the tournament got cancelled as we were short of 1 person. Lame!

-For some reason UKIPT Manchester 8000 FPP tournament didn't actually have any satellites going to it and that was the only UKIPT Manchester tournament running. Weird :S

-Full Tilt Poker servers went down. Yup, at about 12:30am all of the servers went down. They went down for over 3 hours and all of the tournaments got voided. This meant players get their money back with a chip-chop for the rest of the chips. Very lame, but at least I got my buyin back and a small bit higher than the rake :( For instance I was closing onto the bubble in the double-deuce with well above average chip stack and would expect to get much more than $90 on my average run in the tournament. Oh well!

So that all kind of went tits-up!

On the plus side, I did manage to cash in the party poker major for $600ish, I won 3 seats to the Sunday Warmup valued at $645 from about $100 worth of sats but then bubbled my satellite to the Stars 500. I also managed a good run in the iPoker major coming in the top 100, but failing to get the drive needed to propel me to the final table.

I have a few interesting hands saved I'm going to chat over with friends about different lines. Other than that, was pretty happy with how I played and a side from all of the little upsets had a pretty good night!

Big Sunday Planned

2009-12-27T10:07:00.004Z

Hey!

After eating too much, playing lots of board games with the family and chilling its about time to play some poker again I think!

Today being Sunday is undoubtedly going to be a huge day. I have planned on going to a mates house who will also be grinding (unfortunately not the same stakes though) which should be fun and probably insightful too!

So here is the schedule, I'll update at the end of the night with how I do. Here's to running good to finish off 2010 in style:

Sunday Tournament Schedule
-- = satelitte in (spend $100 max)
~~ = Depending on LAG

~~5:00pm: $200/$250k gtd (OnGame)
5:00pm: Play turbo sats to the Warmup
--5:15pm: 8000fpp/UKIPT Manchester (Stars)
5:45pm: $215/$300k gtd (Party)

6:00pm: $109/$40k gtd (Stars)
6:00pm: $215/$750k gtd (warmup - Stars)

7:00pm: €150/€100k gtd (Boss)
7:00pm: $256/$400k gtd (Brawl - Full Tilt)
7:00pm: $320/$250k gtd (BlueSquare)
7:00pm: €50r/€100k gtd (Ladbrokes)

~~8:00pm: $100+$100/$100k gtd (OnGame)
8:00pm: $163/$150k gtd (Full Tilt)
--8:00pm: €200/€50k gtd (B2B)
8:00pm: $55/$200k gtd (80k special - Stars)
8:30pm: £162/GUKPT Satelitte (BlueSquare)
8:30pm: 3000fpp/$1m gtd (Turbo Takedown - Stars)
8:45pm: $109/$30k gtd (BlueSquare)

9:20pm: $22/$200k gtd (Double Deuce - Full Tilt)
9:30pm: $215/$1.5m gtd (million - Stars)
9:40pm: 2 $51 hyper turbo sats to Sunday 500

--10:30pm: $500/$500k gtd (Sunday 500 - Stars)

11:00pm: $216/$750k gtd (Full Tilt)
11:30pm: $215/$200k gtd (2nd chance - Stars)
11:35pm: $59/$32k gtd (Super Turbo - Full Tilt)

12:00am: $109/$80k gtd (Stars)
12:00am: $75/$40k gtd (Full Tilt)
12:05am: $216/$200k gtd (Mulligan - Full Tilt Poker)

1:30am: $109/$15k gtd (Turbo - Stars)

Back to what I'm meant to be

2009-12-21T04:22:00.002Z

Hey!

After a bit of a chilled day on Saturday and a brief pop at the wild £1/£2 games at DTD I am back down in the (not so) sunny south. It's not yet snowed down here but I have high hopes for a white christmas!

Anyway onto the poker. Well we got back at about 6:30pm. Unfortunately due to my current situation with the internet suffering massively at peak times I didn't even want to try to load up any tournaments having seen my MSN connection constantly disconnect which ofcourse tilted me massively when trying to have a conversation only to find half the messages hadn't been sent. Not the best of starts if your then going to buy into $1000's worth of tournaments!

So I skipped almost all of the majors and started at around 9 o clock playing the Sunday Million and steering clear of Full Tilt due to last weeks Sunday night crisis. You would not believe how much I am looking forward to getting a stable connection and a good computer lol. There is no point at the moment as I'm likely to only be here for a further 4-5 weeks in the next 52 and thankfully some of my close friends here also like to grind poker so I can play round theres when I need to.

But tonight I opted to stay in, partly to get an earlyish night and partly as I'de been staying with them the last few days in Nottingham and felt like a little time apart would do some good!

So back to the poker, well I stuck to the smaller euro sites today on the whole and had some good success!

I got a little bit unlucky on the final table of the €25 rebuy on ladbrokes but ran pretty hot to get to the final table, so I definitely can't complain. It's a nice little payday kind of needed after degening it this weekend buying directly into the DTD £1k which I'm obviously quite under-rolled for (infact using my bankroll management I'de need £200,000 to be comfortable playing that tournament, but whatever :P).

The couple of cashes aren't going to explode my roll to dizzying new heights, but they will keep me afloat before that beautiful 5 figure score rolls along again.

So a bit of an annoying start to the Sunday turning out quite nicely in the end!

Busto first day

2009-12-19T10:45:00.003Z

Hey!

Well unfortunately the DTD Grandslam didn't go my way. It was a very very sick tournament though. These super-deepstack tournaments are very fun, and with a good level of patience the rewards can be very decent as well. Yet unfortunately I didn't make day two, busting late into day one after beating 1/3 of the field.

There were a couple of interesting hands I played other than the usual small-pot poker that kept me afloat throughout the tournament.

At 200/400/50 I raise in middle position with AQo to 1100 and get 5 callers (told you there would still be a lot of dead money in the tournament ;) ). At this point I'm pretty much giving up on most flops and will be playing with a slight level of caution even if I hit either my ace or queen.

The flop came down a harmless J22 rainbow. Pretty dry board, but with 2 people checked before me and 3 to act behind, I checked, as it got checked round to deliver a queen on the turn. The queen gave two to spades putting straight and flush draws out there.

The big blind, who was quite an active young player led in from the small blind for roughly 1/3 pot. This didn't send too many warning bells as I had played with him for a few hours and he liked doing an Ivey and taking lots of shots at pots with mediocre holdings. Regardless with the action behind me, and the fact that a raise wouldn't invite in any worse holdings and only get called by hands that beat me, I smooth called the raise.

It folded to the button who was a young guy, yet I had only played about 4-5 hands with the guy. Without knowing much about how he played, seeing as he was young you could infer he is pretty good at poker to be able to afford the buyin for such a tournament, and I had yet to see him around before so its likely he travelled up especially for the tournament meaning he could be quite decent. Anyway, he then raises it up 4x the original bet to around 6000. It folds back round to the original better who quickly mucks and the action returns on me.

At this point, I have to put this guy on a range. I don't believe he has a hand like QJ here as any jack would likely bet the flop in position. JJ is an unlikely holding as he would have undoubtedly squeezed in position, particularly if he was any good. I beat all the other queens, and there just can't be many, if any 2's in his preflop flatting range. However, I could see him squeezing with a combination of drawing hands such as K10, possibly A10 and a variety of spades such as 9, 10 suited and stuff. He had a further 13-14k behind him, about half my stack, so after thinking for a brief moment I set him all in figuring that drawing hands raising on the semi-bluff compromised the majority of his range. Unfortunately this time he snap called me after flopping quads. Woops...

This left me at roughly the 50bb stack, a dented chip stack, but still plenty of room to manoeuvre and no need to panick. Over the course of the next 2-3 hours whilst being pretty card dead, I managed to add an extra 25% to my stack without showing down a hand. We reached level 8 and the blinds had escalated to 400/800/75.

I was dealt AA in middle position and opened it with my 21,000 stack to 2000. It folded to the button, a young girl who 3bet me to 5800. She had been playing pretty tight, solid poker without getting out of line. I doubt she was creative enough here to be 3betting me light, yet still I am concerned that she might do something stupid like 3bet/fold 99/10 10/AK/AQ with the 23bb stack effective. I elected to disguise my hand and smooth call the raise. To a good player with this stack size, this would look very strong, yet I didn't believe she would pick up on this. And so the trap was set.

The board came down as 2s, 4d, 9d. I had the AcAh but checked over to her. She bet almost full pot, and after I check/raised the remainder of my stack in she stated she was priced in and called with AhKd. So the trap worked, and I doubt she would have folded pre to my 4bet shove anyhow. Happy days right? Well unfortunately the turn and river gave running diamonds to see my 95% chance of doubling through and having an above-average stack diminish as I was forced to hit the rail. Big sigh..

Kind of lame, but I was very happy with how I played. I think my live game is improving a lot and I was very happy with how patient I played in the tournament, not stressing about trying to play too many hands but just biding my time and letting the right spots open themselves up to me. It was a great tournament and I'm glad I played it. It's just a shame I couldn't get much deeper in it.

Today is a £300 side event. As of 11am there are only 14 registered for it and it starts at 2am. So I doubt I'll play it to be honest. I think instead I'll hit the cash tables, probably a deepstacked £1/£2 game and see if I can get into the grind and work some stacks up.

Oh well, another day another dollar. Bring on 2010: the year of me winning a live donkament!

Not a good start...

2009-12-18T09:52:00.002Z

Hey!

Today is the day of the Monte Carlo £1k at DTD. I have been looking forward to this for ages, but things don't seem to be going my way!

Yesterday I must have eaten a dodgy sandwich from Subway, which made the journey from home up to Nottingham a nightmare. Not only was the traffic ridiculously slow due to the snow and grit trucks, but on the way up I started to feel pretty ill and had to stop halfway up the M1 to be sick. Not a good start at all.

luckily I made it up, but didn't feel well enough to play the £50r satellite as I intended to see if I could blag a cheap seat. Instead, feeling like complete death, I went to catch a couple of hours sleep at 5pm only to wake up at 5am this morning, feeling refreshed but completely out-of-sync sleepwise. I think it's going to be a struggle today if play goes onto 2pm, but all I can hope is that I make it that long, play my A-game and don't start to feel too unwell again. So fingers crossed for that.

Other than that, had a pretty frustrating session on Wednesday night where I final table bubbled two big-ish tournaments and spewed hard in the $50r on ongame. I was 1/55 with 50 paid, but the bubble abuse didn't go well and ended busting in 45th place. Woops.

So now it's turn around time. Come on Monte Carlo... one time!