Bring on September

Hello,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

A hard weeks grind...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

Until next time, good luck at the tables all!

Good News for Online Poker in Europe..

Hey,

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A profitable week

Hey,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live 6max, Moving places, Edinburgh, FTOPS

Hey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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







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

Back in England

Running bad at life...kind of!

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

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

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

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

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

If I did go back next year though I would:

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

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

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

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

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



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

Have fun at the tables all.

Vegas update

Hey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Til then, good luck all!