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!
Monday, 19 April 2010
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
UKIPT Coventry Final Table
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!
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Shenanigans in Ireland
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...
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Easter grinding 12 hour sessions and random thoughts...
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!!
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!!
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Vegas, Ireland, Coventry yipeee!
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!
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!
Monday, 22 March 2010
Where's all the money gone?!
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 :)
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
March so far
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
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
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