A bit of heat to start off the new year

My year started out far removed from the poker world on a beach in South Goa, India. The trip was originally planned to celebrate my good friend Rishabh's wedding in Mumbai but my friend Mike and I decided it'd be wise given we both had a bit of spare time to hit the beaches after the wedding over christmas and new year. Not only is it really, really cheap in India once you're actually there, but the wedding was a whopping 7-day event so even though I wasn't anything to do with the festivities, I felt pretty shattered afterwards and in need of some rest and relaxation.

Goa itself was fantastic and I'd thoroughly recommend it to people looking for a nice holiday spot during the cold winter months. The weather is just perfect over there, in fact, I don't think I saw a cloud in the sky the whole trip. Highlights include having dinner with a Gherka Colonel, getting lost motorbiking off into the South Goa/Karnataka jungle and bumping into snakes and monstrous sized spiders, chilling on the golden beaches and of course spending lot's of good time catching up with old friends.

Financially the year's started off on a great note. On the first Sunday and my first session of the year I was fortunate enough to win the 888 "mega-deep" tournament. Mega-deep is no understatement either, the tournament lasted just over 14 hours and it took 75 minutes to drop from 8 players to 7 players. Needless to say, what with being back from India a couple of days before and being up all night grinding this tournament out til 7:30am I was definately ready for bed. No rest for the wicked though as I had to jump in my car and race down to heathrow battling rush-hour coming out of Nottingham to make my flight connection to Miami. When will it end right? Ha...I managed to arrive in the knick of time and smoothly boarded the plane with 20 minutes to spare. To tell the truth I didn't even feel that shattered at this point, I think the adrenaline rush of winning my first major Sunday tournament in a good while and the sweat to make my flight resulted in me having an in-built caffeine boost that kept me up.

I arrived in the Bahamas on Tuesday and immediately got grinding. Fortunately the trip was a good one for me. I didn't get much going in the main event busting relatively early on day 2 in a standard flip spot. However, the side events treated me much kinder. I managed to get a solid deep run in the $2k side coming in 21st/~310 players and I believe 23rd in the $2k superKO bounty turbo tournament (which actually resulted in me making a loss on the tournament but that's a different story all together).

I did however manage to get another trophy for my cabinet in the $1k triple stud event! It was a small field with only 29 runners and $10.8k for first, but still a win's a win and I'm particularly happy as although I wasn't the best player in the field, I feel that my stud game has come on a long way in the past year and I've put a fair amount of effort in at improving. I ran pretty good 3-handed vs Kuhns89 and David Bach who were probably the best players in the field overall so it was also somewhat of a confidence boost that I didn't get totally run-over by some of the better mixed game pros. So it's nice to get my first live mixed game win under my belt. Hopefully this is just a warmup for the world series in the summer in Vegas where these mixed fields actually draw decent numbers with big money up top.

Overall my PCA trip was fantastic. I had a good balance between grinding hard, enjoying the resorts facilities and spending a good amount of time catching up with friends and going out for meals. A couple of Brits, good friend Max Silver and Tom Hall got really deep runs in the main but just fell short of the ridiculously huge money coming in 9th and 10th places respectively. I expect more big things to come from the Brits this year especially in the live arena.

So what's next for me? I'm off again on Saturday jetting off to Vegas then straight onto Vancouver for a couple of weeks skiing in Whistler with some friends. The trip coincides pretty nicely with the Pokerstars TCOOP schedule and given how West coast Canada has an 8 hour time difference to UK I can actually wake up relatively early in the mornings, grind out a bit of TCOOP then ski late morning and afternoons. In theory this all sounds like it will work out pretty well, however, if I know my friends they'll be wanting to go out drinking most nights, so I'll just have to see once the jetlag leaves how realistic this idea is! 2 years ago I was in Las Vegas during TCOOP and last year I was in China (which has the worst timezone for MTTs out there) so I've not actually had a proper go at the series. I'm not sure how much volume I'll be getting in whilst in Canada but it'd be nice to keep up the early year heater with a nice quick turbo score to celebrate out there.

GL at the tables

Escaping the British Winter

As the weather in England to continues to decline and the nights seem to get endlessly darker, I've found myself in a very fortunate spot to be heading for warmer climates again this year through mid-December through to early February.

One of my very close friends, Rishabh, who was one of my housemates during university is getting married in Bombay next week and I've been lucky enough with a friend to be invited to his wedding. He didn't have to ask me twice, as soon as he mentioned it I was immediately checking out the first flights over to India in December. I've never been to an Indian wedding before, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect but I do know it's a multi-day event spreading over 7 days so I'm sure there'll be lot's of good food and alcohol involved in the mix. This will be my second trip to India and it's definitely one of the countries which has left a lasting impression on me. Everything from the culture, the climate, the people and of course the food is like nothing I'd ever witnessed before. It's not an ideal holiday destination for everyone, but if you have an adventurous side and are open for new experiences, I couldn't recommend the country anymore. It honestly feels to me like stepping into a different world. Hopefully I'll have some great stories and photos to share in a future blog entry.

After the weeks wedding celebrations in Mumbai, I'll be heading to the beaches of Goa to spend the last few days of the year sipping beers and chilling in the sun. That does mean I'll be spending my second year in a row away from family on Christmas day which definitely has its downsides but a sacrifice I'm currently very happy to take.

Directly after the Indian trip I'll be heading to the other side of the world to participate in the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure, which could well be my favourite stop on the poker tour all year. I went 2 years ago and it was amazing. The poker schedule looks amazing for it and I've sold a fairly large package including lots of side events. I'm hoping that I can add a few more Bahamas flags to my hendon mob on the trip, but even if it all goes horribly wrong on the poker front, there are far worse places to be stranded for a week in the world!

Finally, in late January and early February I'll be jetting off to Vancouver for a ski trip to Whistler with a big group of friends. I love skiing, it's definitely among my top hobbies and I hear the Whistler resort is one of the best in the world. I'm debating getting an instructor to tackle some of the more challenging off-piste runs available at the resort. There's something about off-pisting which has always drawn me despite the obvious dangers associated with it. The feeling of going through fresh powder no-one else has skiied down is one of the greatest feelings and often the adrenalin of whizzing down slopes coupled with amazing scenery gives you such a rush almost unmatched anywhere else. Oh, and you can't flick in a trip to North America without a cheeky detour via Vegas on the way home of course!

So a very busy, hopefully fun, probably expensive few months coming up!

As far as the poker's concerned, things have been going pretty decently lately. No huge scores but nothing catastrophic either. I managed to get supernova on pokerstars for the first time this past week which is somewhat of an achievement for me. Prior to 2013 I'd never really played that much on stars, always tending more towards the lower variance, smaller fields on the euro sites. These days though I feel that large parts of the pokerstars schedule are pretty unmissable for a mid-stake MTT grinder like myself. I plan on keeping up my stars volume heading into 2014 and hopefully if the stars align can land myself with a few decent scores on there once I'm settled back in England again in the spring.

On the live front, things have been relatively quiet recently. With so much travelling going on in the next few months I fancied some more time at home to spend playing online and seeing my girlfriend and hanging with my other non-poker friends in Nottingham. This all changed when the UKIPT rolled into town a couple of weeks ago which was certainly an experience. I somewhat naievely decided that my new bungalow that I'm living in is more the size of a mansion than it actually is, so after inviting 6-7 people round to crash at mine during the series, only on the first night when everyone arrived did we start to realise there may be somewhat of a logistical problem. And so the Nottingham poker homeless shelter was established! At least temporarily... Even though everyone was huddled together slightly more than we all had planned it was great to have so many friends staying at mine for the week with the highlight being Jon Spinks using some of the house run-good and shipping the £2k high-roller with Mickey Peterson coming in a close 3rd. Represent guys!

For me personally, I just played the £1100 6-max main event. Whilst it was a ton of fun, I didn't get much going in the tournament and sizzled out on the last level of day 1. To everyone's somewhat surprise there was an overlay on the £500k prizepool that Pokerstars guaranteed. Whether that be due to the 6-max nature of the event not attracting as many players, the tournament just coming up to Christmas which is always a difficult time for families financially or that there were less satelittes due to the huge promotions Pokerstars were offering for the previous stop on the tour in the Isle of Man. Most likely it was a combination of all the factors. Huge props to Pokerstars though who after acknowledging the overlay immediately sent press releases out advertising the next seasons stop in Nottingham boasting an enormous £1million guaranteed prize pool. Perhaps the Nottingham poker player homeless shelter will open it's doors once again in April for this event...that's if I haven't put everyone off staying at mine in the meantime!

With that all said, I'll be using my travels over the next few weeks to really evaluate my year and set my focus and goals on what I want to achieve in 2014 and where I will want to be.

 Here's hoping for big things in the future.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year and of course good luck at the tables!

Heating up for Christmas

Hey,

After last months very hectic online schedule, it was time to take a little break and hit the live felt hard. I always seem to find myself having a bit of a love-hate relationship with live poker. On the one hand, the thrill of going deep, building huge chipstacks, travelling to glamorous events and getting to play for huge sums of money in often relatively soft fields is a huge draw for me. On the other hand, live poker can be a draining, withering and expensive experience. I've played a lot of live poker over the years in various parts of the world in various game types, and for me, it is what you make of it. After realising the huge opportunity cost and expenses often associated in a live tournament series, I've come up with a few rules I like to try to stick by when playing live poker.

If I can't comfortably drive home in less than 2 hours then the event needs to meet the following criteria:

1) Be in a nice setting with a good climate

 -Vegas ticks all of these boxes. Part of the huge draw I have to Vegas every year is the amazing weather. A lot of people don't like it, and a Nevada summer certainly can be unbearable. But coming from England, there's something that just makes me smile every day when I wake up and look out of my window and see blue skies and can get away with wearing flip-flops, shorts and a tshirt every day (until I walk inside the Rio poker-room but that's another story!)

2) Have great cuisine on hand

 -This isn't just about bingeing on comfort food after making a day 3 without cashing, but at various poker stops it's pretty common to meet up with lots of friends also travelling to events and going out for meals. I'm a fat-bastard at heart and food is always really high-up on my priority list. Fortunately, I'm also not a fussy-eater so I can usually tick this box in most places in Southern Europe (mmm Italian/French), Asia and America. 

3) Have outdoor activities to do outside of poker

 -This is something I've really tried to work on more the past few years, living a more balanced and healthy lifestyle. I think focus at the poker tables can be greatly improved, even if just by going on a small 1-2 hour hike and getting fresh air the day before being sat down at a poker table for 12 hours. I think going out and drinking with friends is always going to be great fun, but it's about getting the balance and having alternatives to indulge in. Plus, does anyone ever play their A-game with a hangover? Certainly not me!

So with that, it means I'm going to be looking much more at playing tournaments in places like Vegas, Italy, South France, PCA in the Bahamas and much less likely to want to fly over to places like Ireland or Germany for a tournament. If I didn't live and grow up in England, I certainly wouldn't be flying here for tournaments either, that's for sure! 

I made somewhat of an exception to my rules in early October and decided to venture out and play the full UKIPT/EPT schedule in London. It was my first proper live tournament grind since Vegas in the Summer and I was starting to get that itch again. Sure, London doesn't have the greatest of weather, it's seen as one of the tougher stops of the EPT and it's REALLY expensive but it does tick the right boxes in a few other categories. From a purely financial perspective, it was probably a little irresponsible to go given I'd had to rent accommodation for the week in central London, but fortunately this time I ran pretty hot and managed to win 2 tournaments :)

The series had a ton of side events which is always a plus for me and they're pretty much all in a range that I'm very comfortable playing (£300-£1000 buyins) where I treat the tournament very seriously but at the same time feel very comfortable with the buy-ins and won't be nervous leading up to bubble situations. In total, I played 8 tournaments on the trip securing a win in a £1k turbo tournament for £22k after a chop with good friend Timothy Finne, a win in the £300 turbo "win-the-button" event and a min-cash in a £1k single re-entry tournament. Live poker's a lot of fun when you run good! Neither of the fields in my two wins were particularly huge, especially in comparison to other EPT stops on the tour such as Barcelona or Deuville. I'm not sure whether that's to do with the current state of live poker in the UK or whether a lot of people were put off by the fairly high travel expenses required to stay in central London to play these events. Regardless, the schedule was amazing, and I have to give big props to pokerstars for including some other fun events in the mix like an affordable 8-game. When the general public realise how much fun playing live 8-game is compared to NLH grinding I think, or hope at least, that there'll be a big boom in mixed games particularly in Europe. Already PLO is catching on a lot so it'd be nice if that extended over to the mixes too. I expect that without the TV-coverage and the intimidation factor that even a £500 buyin can have, this might be more hope rather than expectation that the games start to pick up in popularity however. 

Outside of the poker I managed to visit a lot of old friends in London and had some great meals out and about town including a night out with friends to the London leg of Oktoberfest. I'm sure it doesn't compare remotely to the real-deal in Germany, but I had a great night regardless. I was also really happy to see the introduction of both five-guys and shake shack to London. Hopefully that'll be the start of the expansion of amazing fast-food in England. The English love burgers and fast-food, but are options are SO bad compared to what you can get in America. So seeing two of the best US chains setting up shop in London AND being really popular is great! I was most impressed with Shake Shack - it might well have been the best fast-food burger I've ever eaten and if anyone's around Covent Garden I'd say it's a must to try it out. 

All this burger talk is making me hungry, so back to the poker. One thing I'm really excited about that DTD is leading the forefront in is combining live and online poker together. Now for the monthly deepstacks you can play day 1 online! Not only is it amazing for the players like me, who often find live day 1's a bit of a grind but it makes perfect sense for the club as I assume they generate far more money on their online skin than the live club itself. It's really awesome being able to play a regular MTT schedule and have an online day 1 on the side which collaborates with the live day 1s and comes together at the club on day 2. Not only is my hourly significantly improved, but it should also reach a wider audience. Going back to my point above, who'd want to spend a 3-day weekend in Nottingham if you could just make day 2 online from the comfort of your home and then travel up for day 2 when the poker's a lot more fun and intense and you're playing for decent money without anywhere near as many expenses on the side. 

Following on from this, with the launch of the WSOP.com online poker brand in Nevada, it would be amazing next Summer if whilst in Vegas you could relax by the pool in the evening and play a quick $150 online satelitte to jump into the following days live $1500 buyin. Especially if they could generate decent exposure and get some nice megas with 50 seats guaranteed etc. ala pokerstars do for their WCOOPs. Hell, the WSOP might even have online day 1s in the future where you could play the first x levels online and then rejoin with the live day 1 crowd on day 2. Although that's probably several years off in reality. But I can still see it happen. Like many industries, it makes perfect sense to combine both live and online platforms especially as online should in theory be more profitable from charging the same rake but with significantly reduced expenses and having the ability where people can be playing and paying rake in multiple tournaments or cash games at once. Exciting prospects in the next few years I believe!

November so far has been quite relaxed, I've been spending a lot of time with friends and family and chilling in my new house. I've been trying to spend a lot more time working on my game away from the computer, specifically my NLH game. I'm still not at the point where I think I'm one of the best regs in the stars games I play and it's something I really strive to be and I understand how much work I have to do and put in to get to that point. Poker's such a crazy game. After playing so many millions of hands over so many years and there is still so much more to the game that I don't fully understand and areas that I still need to improve on. In a way, it's a good thing as I think that if I thought I was at the point where I was the best or had solved the game, I might have very little motivation to continue ploughing forward. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case maybe, I'm far from that point yet!

So on with the grind...

Gl at the tables all.

September: the month of close calls

September is always a huge month for online poker and in 2013 it was no different. In fact, it was probably my biggest month to date with me wagering more on tournament buyins than in any month prior. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be a pretty frustrating month with a lot of close-calls but to act as if months like this aren't going to happen (and with some frequency!) as a tournament professional would be a huge naievity on my behalf.

 I have to say, despite the frustrations, I did have a fun month hardcoring on the grind. I can mainly thank Pokerstars for this and their excellent World Championship of Online Poker series that they held for 3 weeks this month. Alas, this time I didn't manage to reach one of the elusive final tables, however, I did manage a 3rd place in the 5card PLO8 6max second chance tournament. I had close runs as well coming in 12th in one of the big $320 NL events (which I final tabled 2 years prior) as well as a couple of other top 1% finishes which don't always guarantee too much money given how many runners in the field and how small payouts can be outside of the final tables!

I decided this month as well to step my game up and really try to give some of the better structured $1k, $2k and the main event a try. Despite no real success I had a really good time playing the super-deepstacked structures and felt very comfortable in them. I had top 20% finishes in the big Sunday $2k, $2k HORSE and the $5k main event but fell short of the money in all of them. Bit of a shame, as a cash in any of those would have been my biggest mincash to date online but I'm not too disheartened as I feel I played well (oh doesn't everyone think that!) and will keep trying to put myself in these positions so with a little added run-good can make a run for the final table and victory!

Alongside the Pokerstars WCOOP I was also playing my regular schedule as well as the Winamax series and partially selecting some of the MiniFTOPs series. The Winamax series I loved, the MiniFTOPs less so. I think that FTP with their MiniFTOPs series really need to cut down on all the novelty tournaments like Irish, Courcheval, 6-card PLO and go back to a more traditional series replicating more the WSOP. Sure it can be fun playing some of these weird poker variants, but they're often hard to multitable and there's usually a reason why the games never run as cash-games or are popular outside of the series. With the lower buy-ins of MiniFTOPs as well I was finding myself less and less motivated to play on the site as the series progressed.

The Winamax series on the other hand was a lot more fun. Their series is much more NLH-focussed and I believe to be much better representation of what the players actually want to play. Myself, Alex Goulder and BobaFett did a little motivational prop bet on the series working playing all NL events 6max+ and to see who cashed for the most. To tell the truth, we all performed quite poorly without a single final table between us all! I managed to secure the win in the prop-bet by making a few deep-runs final 2-tabling four of the tournaments but falling short just before the big money. C'est la vie!

I always find it funny how heater and downswing cycles work. I regularly play on 7-8 sites throughout the week and it's interesting to see which sites I find myself running like Usain on whilst simulataneously finding I can't win a showdown on other sites. This month I seem to be heating it up on Party Poker which is really ironic as after their latest update it's probably my least favourite site I grind on now. My ROI in their nightly $100 turbo (which is more like a $100 hyper on any other site) is way over 100% at the moment, seems sustainable..!

So after a long month of being a slave to my computer, I'm giving myself a bit of a break and heading down to London for the UKIPT and EPT series. This is the first proper series I've played live since Vegas and I'm really pumped for it. I've sold action for all tournaments above £500 and can't wait to get back into the action.

Interestingly, I've noticed that buying and selling action is starting to dry up a little bit, and I'd say it's probably about time. I'm noticing more and more in the 2p2 marketplace packages that used to sell out very quickly stalling for days and often not selling out at all. Over the past couple of years, from my observations alone, I feel that the marketplace has really been a sellers market with a lot of over-valued packages, very few "good" buys and lot's of "bad" buys that are quickly selling out. Naturally, as the long-run progresses, a lot of these "bad" buys tend more towards their natural EV and a lot of buyers either run out of money or become disheartened at constantly losing money by paying such premiums for peoples action. Now, whether it is because there's less money in the poker economy (which after WCOOP and the WSOP isn't suprising) or people are becoming more educated and knowledgable about buying action and reasonable markups the demand for packages has slipped a lot. Whilst this does effect me, as a mid-stake grinder, who semi-frequently sells action to live events, I still think it's a good thing.

I'll be quite happy to see the marketplace transition more towards a buyers market, with a lot more good value packages on offer so that investors can get exactly that; an investment rather than a roulette spin. In the current climate, there's really not that many good short-term investment opportunites as there is. Hell, even short-term saving rates in banks at the moment are often running below inflation (so the actual value of your money is decreasing even in a savings account) so to have more investment opportunities in an industry that I understand and feel confident in for myself is a good thing. Similarly, I'd go as far to say it's better for poker too. There are some professionals out there, without naming names, who rely day-in and and day-out for selling action to tournaments. They're not elite regs in the games and certainly not players that you fear at the table but they're also not big losers in the game either. If in tournaments you get a big influx of marginal regs who need to sell action to get into the game and all have between 0-15% ROI in the tournament, it does significantly reduce everyone else's edge in the tournament itself. That return has got come from somewhere, either by reducing other regs ROIs or further increasing a weaker players loss rate. And when these players can charge a 25% markup on their action it's generally just reducing the overall profitability and money being spread around the poker community.

Bit of a long-ramble there and I'm not sure all of my points are totally accurate as I have no figures or evidence to support them but I'd be pretty suprised if I was wildy off-point too. I also think these points and the trend will only continue and become more apparent as the number of higher-buyins on the online and offline circuit increase requiring players to have increasinly large bankrolls (or backers pockets) to support the events. As an example, you only have to look at highrollers to see how saturated that market is becoming. In London this month there's a EPT super-highroller £50k re-entry, £100,000 WPT Alpha8 as well as the usual £10k highrollers and £2k UKIPT highrollers. This is a trend that can only be exaggerated at the lower limits. So where will the money come from to support players in these events?
So an exciting couple of weeks ahead of me in London with the poker festivities. Then I'm debating going up to Edinburgh for a few days to see my Dad and friends up there and after that depending on how things are going it will probably be time to head back to the online grind again and try to earn some money to pay for all of this!

Good luck at the tables

I'm Back!

Hey,

After a long hiatus I've decided to return to the blogging  circle to document the swings and swongs in my life as I  continue to try and make a living playing tournament poker!

It's been over a year now since I last posted and I can't  promise that the updates will be regular but I'd like to try  and do at least one blog post a month.

So what's been happening in my life in the last 12 months?  Well, a lot. Here's a some-what scaled down version.

I made it out to Vegas for the 2012 WSOP - did not return home  with a gold bracelet, but had a great time. Played my first  non-NL hold'em event; $1500 PLO 8 or better and it was the  most fun I had playing a live tournament for a long time. I  was also shocked at how soft the field was in comparison to  the NLH events.I made it my goal over the next year to learn  mixed games and get better at them for next years WSOP.

Came back to England post-Vegas, got back on the MTT grind,  studied mixed games on the side. Had a few personal issues  with the girlfriend and was becoming increasing burnt out from  just grinding tournament poker so snapped up a chance when a  good friend of mine living in Guangzhou, China invited me to  come out and live with him for a few months.

I left England in October, headed to Hong Kong, Macau and then  finally mainland China with not much of a plan other than a 6 -month visa.

Still feeling burnt-out from poker and wanting to develop  myself in other ways I started to live a polar-opposite  lifestyle for a few months from my previous poker playing  ways. My childhood friend, Atti, a sereal-entrepreneur owns a  successful English teaching agency and was interested in  starting up another project on the side with me. We decided to  venture into the (soon to be found out) topsy-turvy world of  real-estate in a communist country. And I thought there was a  lot of variance in tournament poker...

I was going out every night, meeting lot's of people, learning  Mandarin and a bit of Cantonese, eating amazing food and  working on our ideas and start-ups in my friends office in  downtown Guangzhou all week. Often we'd then end up heading  over to Macau to go partying and gambling at the weekends.


After a couple of months of living a more "normal" lifestyle,  the poker itch started to come back. Due to the time-zone, my  social commitments and the office work, MTT's were pretty much  out of the question. So I spent most of my free-time studying  and playing small stake mixed games trying to improve and  become a better player.


Come March, my visa was coming to an end. I really had the  most amazing 6 months out there and felt like I developed some  really strong friendships with the ex-pat community living out  there scraping by a living one way or the other. One of the  highlights definately being a big group of us going to  Cambodia over Chinese New Year and then road-tripping up to  Bangkok afterwards. Unfortunately the multi-million £ business  idea was starting to show some serious flaws and we were  having some real legal issues being foreigners trying to  establish a business in a country that prides itself on  keeping as much money within it's borders as it can.

I had a lot of time to reflect on where I wanted to head in  life, where I see myself in the next year and what I wanted to  achieve. Although in many ways it pained me to leave China and  my friends that I developed over the past 6 months, I decided  to come back and stay in England for a little while, refocus  on poker and really give the game another shot. Afterall it  was and still truly is a huge passion of mine and without  trying to sound too much like a cliche I am blessed to be  doing something that I love for a living.

I returned to England and with all of my stuff being in  storage and no place to live, spent the next month or two with  friends. I'm especially grateful for Jon Spinks who I stayed  with during SCOOP (Pokerstars Spring Cup of Online Poker);  he's had such a huge impact on my game and I really feel has  helped progress me a lot as a player.

Although SCOOP itself didn't treat me too kindly, I was loving  being back in the tournament scene again, grinding hard  everyday. As soon as 2 weeks of SCOOP was up, the very next  day I was off to Vegas for the full 6 weeks of fun in the sun.

Feeling ever-more confident in my mixed game ability I put a  much greater focus on the WSOP and the mixed games offered  there. I found myself getting deep-runs in a lot of events  including the $2500 OE (limit o8/stud8), $5k HORSE, $2.5k 8- game but falling short before the money. Fortunately, I ran a  little better in the $2500 10-game tournament placing 22nd  from the 372 entrants that started. I have to say, other than  winning a tournament, it was the most fun I think I've ever  had playing live poker. I felt so zoned in and comfortable  that even though it's only September, I can't wait for next  years world series to have another crack at some of these  events.

I also managed to get a deep run in a couple of the NL events  out there coming in a slightly frustrating 14th from 1819 in a  $1500 event but again feeling very happy to get a decent 5- figure score under my belt ensuring a small, but profitable  trip out to the states.

So now I'm back in England, I've moved into a new place in  Nottingham and I'm getting set up and ready to re-commence the  grind. I feel like I've come along way in the past 12 months  not only as a poker player but also as a person. It'll be  interesting to see what the next 12 months bring...

Summer is here!

Hey,

The month of June has kicked off and the Summer has officially arrived. The days are getting longer, the weathers improving and poker players from all around the world are flocking to a little town in the Desert to battle hard for shiny gold bracelets. What a fantastic time of year!

Since my last update in April a lot has happened with me on the poker front. The higlight of which being my second live tournament win and also by far my biggest ever score. It came in the FPS-Amneville; a €1100 pokerstars run tournament in East France. After 3 long days battling on the felt I managed to run good enough and maintain focus to come out winning it for €70,000, keeping €54k for myself after a chop heads-up. In hindsight, and hindsight is such a bitch, I do kind of regret doing a chop. My heads-up opponent wasn't great but his willingness to get it in relatively light preflop meant heads-up could be pretty high variance and the €26k jump between 1st and 2nd was and still is pretty huge for me especially as stacks got shallower and the blinds slowly creeped up as the night progressed. The tournament on the whole was incredibly soft though, partly due to being in France and partly because the SCOOP online series was going on at the same time resulting in not many competent players being in the field. Despite that, as the cream normally seems to rise to the top in these events, the final table was by far the toughest table I had played in the tournament thus far. Although saying that, I probably also ran-good on table draws which is another factor many people overlook. We got down to 3-handed and thanks to PokerStars' excellent structure in these events found ourselves all pretty even with 50bb a piece. And I thought the grind was almost over. We entered 3-handed play at 6pm and after many swings and fluctuations in my chip-stack I managed to finally win all the chips by 4:30am. An extremely exhausting but truly gratifying experience.

After the win, my next priority was to get out of France as fast as possible. The sun was shining, the food was delicious, but I had one thing on my mind; grind on the mind! With my new-found bankroll boost and just one more week of SCOOP left to donate/make money in I was surprisingly more motivated than ever to get back online and start grinding hard. I really enjoy grinding hard in these online poker series especially ones with mixed games with good structures.

For me personally I rarely get involved in mixed-game tournaments, usually when I'm grinding for simplicitys sake I like to stick to NLHE only and think that most mixed game tournaments on Stars either have very small fields or the buy-in is just too low to bother with. I could grind the weekly $200s but they're normally on Saturday or Sunday when I'm overloaded with NLHE tournaments and I ideally like to reduce my tables whilst playing other variants of poker and really concentrate more on optimal lines. Whereas I think I can play mixed games in that I know the rules and basic strategies, I'm far from competent in any of the variants but love the challenge and genuinely do enjoy playing them.

So that's what I started to do. In the SCOOP I got deep runs in the $50 LHE 6max, $24 Stud-hi, $27 Razz and the highlight of my SCOOP being a 6th place finish in the $215 NL Omaha hi/lo. I'd not actually played no-limit omaha hi/lo before (other than the satelitte to the event!) but have played a fair amount of cash in FL H/L, pot limit H/L and PLO so I had a fair understanding of what I was doing. I have to say I think it's a really really fun game type and something I'm going to be looking to play more of in the future. It's much more suited in my eyes towards tournament play over cash games but that's fine with me as I prefer a tournament grind any day of the week. I also managed to cash 4/4 times in the Sunday $27 and $215 6max tournaments. I don't play a huge amount of 6max tournaments as they do require a lot more attention than full ring. But with the amazing SCOOP structures I was able to play a relatively solid style and watch people spew stacks left, right and center and was lucky enough to be the reciepient in a lot of cases. My best run in these was 37/5200 in the final $200 6max. All I can say now is bring on WCOOP!

Since SCOOPs winded down I've taken a couple of weeks to relax, get away from poker and catch up with friends. I've just come back from a hiking holiday in the Scottish highlands and I'm currently relaxing on the south coast in Devon stuffing my face with far too many pasties and cream-teas! The tough life ;)

I'll be getting back on the grind as of next weekend. It'll be a week and a half until I leave for Vegas so I'll see it as a good warmup and hopefully run hot enough to get a good run going before the live grind later on this month.

As for Vegas, I'm not 100% sure what I'll be playing yet. I'll be there for just over 2 weeks to grind side-events and then there's the main. I think at the moment that I'll be keeping my own action in the side-events and will put up a package for the main event. Although I'd love to start grinding some of the mixed games at the series, I don't know if I can justify playing them. I'm still not competent enough or put the hours in off the table to be confident enough in my abilities to be playing tournaments at the top of my buy-in range in mixed events. But damn, would they be fun. I might try a couple of punts this Summer but over-all it will just be the No Limit grind. I'll probably be spreading most of my action between the Rio and the Venetian with possible trips downtown or to Caesers. I'm slightly concerned with playing the lower buy-ins on my own roll rather than putting up a bigger package to play larger buyin WSOP events. Whereas the competition will be tougher in the bigger buy-ins (and I'm talking $2ks/$3ks not $5ks or higher) due to the better structures and much lower rake they may in fact be more beatable. I'll have to have a think about this one. I always prefer keeping as much of my own action as possible, but in the past this has led to nasty downswings where I've been playing pretty under-rolled. Regardless, with my new bankroll boost I'm really pumped to get out there and start grinding in Vegas. It's going to be amazing win or lose I'm sure.

GL at the tables guys, unless something huge happens the next update will be in Sunny Las Vegas!

2012 So Far

Hey,

My last blog entry was in January after I was just returning from the PCA and a short Vegas excursion. Since then a lot has happened and I have a lot more planned for 2012. This is definately shaping up to be a fantastic year so far...

So after returning from my American adventures I had three things on my mind; get back on the online grind, get back on the health+fitness grind, my girlfriend. And not necessarily all in that order! I always find that I feel the same way on my return flight every time I take a trip across the pond. Everything always seems to cost so much more on these American trips than I originally budget for. Coming from England where it's pretty clear how much everything costs it can be a slight shock to the naieve Brit to see how much you are actually paying for everything out there. A simple example is going for a meal in a restaurant. You might order a £10 meal in England, after the meal you'll pay the £10 charge and if you were satisfied with the service leave a tip. In America however, the prices are very deceptive indeed. For one, the price never reflects the true cost of the good or service as tax is never included in the advertised price. So a $10 burger can end up costing $12.46 at the cashier. Similarly tipping is more of a compulsary social etiquette where you can really be frowned upon if you don't tip the expected amount despite how you might rate the quality of service. I still remember how shocked I was in my first Summer in Vegas where me and my house mates went for a meal and had some of the worst service I've ever have in a restaurant. The waitor was rude, got our orders wrong, put no effort in and really put no effort in creating an enjoyable experience for our party. However, one of the house-mates from California despite the agreeance amongst us of the bad service felt compelled to pay a full 15% tip just because that is the norm. It's the same for dodgy taxi drivers. It's pretty obvious from my accent I'm not a local in America but I've been often enough to know my way around Vegas pretty well so when a taxi driver takes you on the long-route to bump up the fare why the hell should we tip for that? Ha, enough of the rant. Overall I think service in America really is significantly better than in England which is weird as they expect tips almost all of the time whereas in England you'd expect a greater effort for tips as the expectation isn't always there. Similarly, I admire the corporate hustle. Corporate service-sector America seems to have successfully brain-washed the population into believing that as customers one should be responsible for effectively paying the wages of the employees on top of the price of the service rather than the corporations paying their employees a proper wage themselves.

Also the fatness. It's scary. I love my food. There's not much more that I enjoy in Vegas than digging my teeth into a giant double-double animal style burger from In'N'Out with mountains of cheesy fries on the side and washing it all down with a full-fat milkshake. The difference being that in America, in Vegas in particular, it's far too common a site to see the results of what this kind of diet can lead to. And it is scary. Just take a look at the World Series Of Poker in the Summer at the Rio. The amount of people that rely on over-sized shopmobility scooters to get them around the casinos because they're too big to walk around themselves is just shocking. In Britain walking around you rarely see the kind of obesity that you see over there. Sure, it's fair to say the average 40-50 year old male has a bit of a beer belly and maybe devoured one too many pies in their time but not to the same extent. I think it would be far too easy to slip into a destructive lifestyle with the availabilty of cheap and tasty fast-food out there and it's certainly a route that I'm determined, despite my weakness for all things fatty (except the ladies!), to steer well clear of.

So as I came back, grind was officially back on my mind. I mainly focused on grinding online and was off to a great start in February starting the year off on a nice heater after a slowish start. Unfortunately I hit somewhat of a standard downswing online donating back ~$15k in a 2 week period. With an average buy-in of around $40-$50 you can imagine how those two weeks went!

Stars seems to be somewhat a big factor towards my $15k downswing. Variance on that site can be really nasty and I'm sure I don't help myself out with my game selection. I usually just play the big 109/big162 and then flick it in for some of the late night turbos and of course the Sunday majors. Not exactly the low-variance route I should probably be taking but in playing these select tournaments on a regular basis without much filling them I have to come to the realisation that $20k+ downswings can almost be viewed as 'standard'. Not something I like to think about too much! If you're playing just on Pokerstars like a lot of people do, I would really recommend filling in your schedule with lower-variance tournaments while you play. Be it big-field soft tournaments (like the big11 if you're really over-rolled for it) cap-tournaments and 180man games. Exclusively playing big field tournaments with big guarantees can of course offer the chance of that big 5-figure score, but just be prepared for the variance that comes a long with it!

In terms of live I've played a fair bit, but mainly kept it local at Dusk Til Dawn. I'm really liking the way the clubs shaping up. Recently they had a £500 (re-entry)/£250k gtd that beat the guarantee and last weekend was the mahooosive UKIPT Nottingham with a £1million guarantee on the £770 buyin tournament which again beat it's guarantee. A great sign for UK poker and I'm just so greaful that the clubs right on my door-step. Talking about UKIPT Nottingham, those who follow my twitter might be aware I made a deep day-3 run in the event in the end busting 41st/~1700 people for a £2.7k payday. This was my first day-3 in well over a year which was really refreshing. To be fair, most of the tournaments I play are usually over in 2 days (not that I'd know :p) so I can't really complain. But it was such a big morale boost to actually get a run together in one of these tournaments. I've actually made a suprisingly high number of day 2's this year mainly in DTD deepstacks but haven't had the fortune of turning that into any financial gain so this deep UKIPT run was a real motivational-boost.

This is my second UKIPT of the year after making the trip across to Galway in February for the weekend. I didn't have much success over there as I ever have really in Ireland but off the felt I had one of the best poker-weekends I've had. So many people I knew made the trip over for this and despite playing in Dublin a few times my experience in Galway was far superior. Without going into too much detail, as due to the amount of guiness consumed on the weekend my memory is a little hazy, but Irish pubs are the best. I really enjoyed it over clubbing for instance. Socially it was far superior and the atmosphere with live music made for some really great nights out.

Onto the future!

I have a lot planned and many exciting trips for the forthcoming weeks. First off is the Marbella Poker Festival in South Spain this coming week. This plans to be a great festival. About 15 of the guys from the midlands area have rented a couple of villas for the week and we're all pretty pumped to play the WPT-regional which is in effect the main-event of the festival. There is quite a few side-events too from the €200-€700 range which I'll be grinding. I'm sure there will also be a healthy mix of beer/sun/beach/bbq/pool parties mixed into the works to make a quite memorable trip..We shall see!

After that I'm heading off to FPS-Amneville, a €1k tournament in east France. I qualified for €100 so hoping the expenses aren't too high for the trip. I've had a lot of success on pokerstars.fr so far this year, in fact I'm pretty sure it's the site I'm up on the most by a considerable amount, so I feel like I'm quite well adjusted for whatever spewy lines the French throw at me. Also despite somewhat common consensus amongst poker players I really like France. It's the only other language than English which I have any chance of having a conversation in, I love the food and scenically much of the country is quite stunning.

A few more tournaments in and around Nottingham and then it's Vegas time again! This'll be my fourth visit to Sin City as it's effect certainly isn't wearing off on me just yet. Despite only being there in January I can't wait to go back and getting grinding the Summer tournaments. I'm going for 3 weeks this year rather than the 6 weeks I've done the previous two years. I know once the series kicks off and I start reading peoples twitter updates about how they're doing in the side events I'll be longing more than ever to catch the next flight over, but resist I must! I'm really hoping I can get a good, cheap online qualifier to the main event. I'm in for roughly $1k already in qualifiers without any sweats of an early main event package bink. Hopefully it won't take too long or cost too much to qualify this year. Last year I qualified on AP relatively early on in one of the $640 qualifiers. That didn't mean much though as my $10k is still sat on their site with my withdrawl still 'processing' over 12 months later. If I ever saw a penny of that money again I would be a very very happy bunny!

After Vegas, I'll be heading north to Montana for a week in the great outdoors. I'm expecting lot's of hiking, shooting, fishing, quad biking and basically a week to recover in nature after the 3 week Vegas grind. I've always wanted to explore more of America since my first visit but have felt in previous years that after 6 weeks in the desert all I really want to do is just get back home and get back to normality. After that it's home for a week before jetting off again for Turkey for my first non-poker related vacation for a long while with friends from home.

Couple all of this with the upcoming Party Poker poker-fest and Pokerstars SCOOP I have a very busy few months planned. As always I'll be trying to squeeze as many online-grind sessions in in the meanwhile and hopefully I'll get out of this mini-downswing soon and have a sexy upward graph to gloat about in my next blog post!

GL at the tables!

A Refreshing Break in Vegas

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!

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 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!