May was my biggest winning month by a long long way. I added over £6000 to my bankroll and withdrew a couple of £100 for expenses. After the down-swing at the start of the year this was a huge huge boost for my confidence levels and I'm well on my way to reaching my yearly target of £15,000 bankroll again. The majority of this came from Omaha and I won roughly £1000 net in tournaments.
I think the main thing now that I have to do is keep it cool and stick to good bankroll management. In a way I'm quite glad that I'm not old enough to go to Vegas this summer as I would undoubtably have a shot at the WSOP and some other events that I couldn't afford.
I've 2 exams to go and finish on Thursday. I will be playing the £330 in a weeks time as a treat, but this will be the only exception to my otherwise rigorous BR management. Besides, the entry is only 3% and I can't wait to try another deep stacked live tourney after reading up about the WSOP so much lately!
Other than that I'll be getting my grind on and really start to work on my game and eradicate some of my leaks so that when I do start to take shots at higher limits I don't get too run over.
As you can see from the screen shot of the $7rebuy, the fish (haha) that came 3rd was Dulwich AKA Ant who I've met and speak to quite a lot on MSN. It was funny, with about 50 to go he shot into the top 3 in chips with me lagging behind so we started chatting shit to each other on MSN as I think we were both 1-tabling it down into the money. Funnily enough we both managed to final table and make it short-handed. The dynamic was really interesting on the final table 3betting and 4 betting one another. In what was a very swingy final table (me going from 1million chips to 300k chips in a few hands 3-handed, then back up to 800k chips) I managed to double through Ant twice with AQ>KQ and then AQ>8 10 or something.
After last nights late success I managed to finally get to sleep at around 6am. So as I woke at about 1pm the following day I went down to the library to prepare for my Marketing exam on Monday. I guess life can't always be fun eh ;)
By about 9pm I was bored out of my mind so gave it up for the evening and went to the cinema with a few friends to watch the new Star Trek film.
I've never actually watched Star Trek before and to be honest I'm not even interested in the sci-fi genre. But this film was just beyond good. I mean it was amazing. They mixed in some amazing action scenes, good comedy and an awesome plot. It wasn't even nerdy! I think this has to be in the top 3, if not the number 1 film of the year for me so far (with Into The Wild and Slum Dog Millionaire - I saw them this year).
So yeh, watch it. You'll probably like it!
In other news the WSOP event 2: $40,000 buyin NLHE event is almost reaching the final table. A little disappointing as a lot of the bigger "celeb" players have been knocked out. Saying that there is still some huge names in the tourney. I'm rooting for Brian Townsend to take it down, so good luck to him!
A little closer to home, the final table of the £1k DTD Grandslam main event is underway. I notice that blogger James Atkin came 8th for just over £6k and with 6 players left I'm rooting for fellow Nottingham Uni student James Mitchell! He was a dominating chip leader for a long time, but from the DTD website updates seems to have lost a little now that we are 6 handed! Good payday regardless, but I guess he wouldn't mind shipping the £88k for first place!
I played today despite designating it as a revision day which does kind of suck. Then again it was a really good day.
In the afternoon I headed to DTD and sat down in the freshly starting £1/£2 NLHE cash game. The line up was actually really tough for a change but it was a fun experience as it made me actually start thinking at a higher level than ABC poker. And that in turn paid off ;)
I sat down with £200 originally and the stack fluctuated up to £400ish then I lost a buyin getting it in with 89 on an 893 board to 10j which is mehhh, can't complain. The stack re-fluctuated up to about £400ish when this interesting hand happened.
I raise to £7 in MP with Kc 10c. The small blind and big blind both call. From what I gather the big blind was a bit of a fish and quite short stack and the small blind seemed to be a higher staked pro who was obsessed with having everyone at the table covered, so bought in for 600bbs himself. Fair enough! He was wearing some really nice clothes/designer sunglasses so without seeing him play I assume he's decent.
The flop came As 10s 4d. It checks to me and I check behind looking for a safe turn card.
The turn brings a 5h. It checks to me again and I bet £17 into the ~£24 pot. The SB thinks for a second then check/raises it to £55. The BB folds. At this point, I'm thinking what the hell has he got. With the flush draw on board, he never has an ace here or a set or anything really other than air as by me checking behind on the drawy flop my perceived range is weak so it looks like im bluffing. And if he had a set/2 pair etc. he would bet the turn as it looks like I'll be checking behind on that turn a lot of the time.
So I elected to call his check/raise.
The river came the 4h leaving the board as:
As 10s 4d 5h 4h
He overbet shoved £250 into the ~£140 pot. I thought for a couple of seconds, confirmed my logic on the turn that here as all the draws missed he must have air and called. It was a nice feeling watching him muck it after. It may not seem that much, but I felt I was getting it in quite light in a check/raised pot on a paired board for 400bbs with just 2nd pair. Maybe it's standard but I was really happy how I thought through the hand and made the call which I don't think I could say that I would have done a couple of months ago.
I think that's the beauty of upswings: you gain a lot of confidence!
Anyway, I left the game at around 7pm and headed out for a meal with family who were staying in Derby nearby. On my return to Nottingham at about 11pm-ish I figured it was a bit late for DTD so I thought I'de get a couple of hours in at the online felt.
But the MTT's were too much to resist :)
I managed to ship the $7rebuy on iPoker which started at midnight for a healthy ~$1900. I'll get a screen shot up soon!
So it's been a really good day on the poker front and my bankroll is over £9k now. I will however be sticking to my 200buyin rule for online MTTs and keep grinding the same stakes for the meanwhile.
After exams I might start taking shots at the £5/£5 dc but I feel in some games like stud hi/lo I'm pretty weak so I'll probably practice up online before I give it a shot.
The world series has officially started! It's a shame that I have to wait another year to get any part of the action. But as my bankroll currently stands, maybe it's a good thing as I from what I hear I don't think I could get too far as it stands at the moment!
Nevertheless, the first event is the $40,000 NLHE tourney. And what a line-up, I can't wait to see the final table of this one! For instance, check out one of the starting tables:
1. Scott “mastrblastr” Seiver 2. Scotty Nguyen 3. Phil Ivey 4. Brett “get crunk” Richey 5. David “The Dragon” Pham 6. Alan “The Usher” Sass 7. Phil Hellmuth 8. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier 9. Steve “MrSmokey1” Billirakis
I think it is fair to say that is one of the toughest line-ups ever. There must be crazy action at the tables!
My life lately has been about as swingy as the poker!
-I'm 4/6 of the way through my exams. I'm pretty sure I've done alright in a couple and epically failed my econometrics module. So I think I'll have to resit that one in the Summer :( FML..
-I hit DTD again but final table bubbled the £56 tourney I was playing.
-Went to the £2/£2 Omaha and managed to blag a profit of £550 for the night, thus pushing my bankroll up higher and reaching my summer target :)
-My car was broken into last night outside the flat, with shattered glass all over the seat some pikey managed to get inside, rummage around trying to find stuff but as there was nothing there just left a lot of glass and mess all over the place. Grr, more hassle to deal with.
So there we go, quite a few highs and lows.
My next session will be on Monday night online where I'll be trying to satellite into the DTD £330 on the 6th and 7th of July. I've had a lot of fun (yet no success) in this tournament before, so can't wait to play it again. If the 20rebuy satellite fails, I'll probably just use some of the profits from last nights session to buy into the tournament.
Unfortunately, I won't be blogging (or playing to that matter) too much until the end of the week as I have exams on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Sigh.
But as I'm sat at my desk trying to remember all of these uninteresting academics thoughts and theories on the psychology of consumer spending patterns, my mind can't help but wander onto the Summer. And more importantly how I'm going to spend my time in the 3 month holiday I get.
Poker-wise I'm going to:
-Continue playing live £2/£2 omaha cash as I'm enjoying it so much -Mix in some more live tournaments -Satellite's for larger buyin events (like the DTD £330 and selling %'s so that there is less financial pressure on my bankroll).
-Online I'll continue my mission to become a decent PLO player but continuing at PLO 25c/50c until I'm a proven winning player over 10,000 hands and move up the ranks as I go. This will be played on Ongame or full tilt most likely. -I will also play some online tournaments to satisfy my love of final tabling and huge cash prizes. I will most likely keep this exclusively to iPoker and Full Tilt. Or possibly iPoker and Boss. But this depends. After my massive MTT downswing at the start of this year and talking to other MTT pro's I think I'll switch to having a 200buyin rule for online MTT's due to their sick sick variance and try to stick to it!!
I also hope to travel a bit during the summer. I'de love to do the following: -Go surfing in Cornwall with the lads -Possibly go sailing for a bit -Travel around Europe possibly playing poker as I go with a friend or two. -Trips up to Nottingham for the £300 weekends -Maybe visit my friend who is currently in Equador, but this is quite far away and probably costly! -I'de love to visit some other parts of Asia again such as Macau and check out Indonesia/Japan.
So as you can see I have a lot of ideas. If I manage to do 2/3 from the list I'm sure this summer will be truly amazing. If anyone else has any recommendations that won't cost too much and don't involve Vegas (I'm not 21 yet :( ) that would be really cool and I'll look into it!
I slacked really hard today unfortunately and just could not get myself into the mood to work no matter how hard I tried. I don't know if this is something to do with it being a Sunday as I had the same problem last week but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't focus. Grrr!
So I headed down to Dusk Til Dawn with the intention of playing for a bit then heading home for an early night so that tomorrow I can get a full days worth of revision.
I arrived at about 7:10pm and was surprised to see a tournament was already well under-way with cash games on the side. Apparently this was some Rileys grand championship or something. Regardless, I put myself right down on a £1/£2 NLHE table. It was juicy to the say least. I didn't recognise anyone at the table, so I assume they came up for the Riley tournament. But the quality of play was awful. It was a shame everyone was sat so short-stacked though. Despite that I managed to clinch a nice £190 profit in the hour I was there. The cash game broke and I decided rather than waiting around all night to see if a PLO table would start I'de just join one of the nightly tournaments.
I signed up the £75 + £10 (grrr at the rake!!) and managed to play a really solid game. Normally I spunk a load out calling with K9o in position in the first level trying to stack someone despite knowing that when I do hit my king I'll often be in a world of pain. But today, I managed to play a very patient and disciplined game especially after my very inpatient and undisciplined game I felt I played last night.
As a result I managed to pick up chips in nice spots with adopting a very tight aggressive style of play. Unfortunately, I didn't make the antes after I was crushed in a 3 way all in pot just before the first break, 2 hours in.
UTG (maniac LAG style) opened at 100/200 for 525, it got 2 callers and I called 40bb effective from the BB with 10d 9d. The flop came Qd Kd 4s. Thus giving me a gutshot straight flush draw. I checked, UTG overbet shoved. CO tank called and I got the rest in. Unfortunately this time I was up against AKo and AdJd. Woops! I had 3 non-clean outs haha. I don't think given the amount of deadmoney in the pot and my pot odds it was terrible, but I was sort of relying on no-one else having the flush draw covered. Maybe I could have picked my spots better but with a relatively shallow structure and fast clock I wanted to pick chips up quickly early on and felt this opportunity was too good to pass.
But out I went as the turn and river bricked!
Despite that, my bankroll has hit an all-time high on over £7000 now. My once unrealistic summer target of having a £7500 roll is now well within sights. I just really hope the inevitable downswong doesn't come soon!
I woke up today and watched "Walk The Line", a film about the life of Johnny Cash. It truly is an amazing movie and I thoroughly recommend it to everyone. I'm not really interested in the country music scene but his life story is so good. I think inspirational is definitely the wrong word, but I came away from it feeling really satisfied which is quite a rare feeling after watching a film. So that was good.
The day was spent on revision whilst the night was spend at Dusk Til Dawn!
I got down to the club a little later than normal tonight at about 11ish and hopped straight onto a £1/£2 NLHE game whilst I was waiting for a seat in the £2/£2 Omaha game. I sat with about £160ish to start and unfortunately played pretty badly. Not sure why, I just wanted to see a lot of flops and played pretty bad. I think the worst was when I opened AQo under the gun to £11, got 2 callers and then the BB reraised to £35. This is such an obvious laydown pre to the guy, but I called and got in trouble when the ace hit the board. Pretty bad play by me and I deserved to loose there. It's definitely not something I usually would do anyway especially given the stack sizes. Doh!
The £2/£2 omaha started up and it was pretty break even for a couple of hours. I was folding quite a lot as I was quite card dead/missing board, but the table banter was decent with the usual regs. That was the problem. There was no obvious fish, so as soon as the £2/£2 dealers choice started at about 1amish I hopped right over with my £200 stack.
I managed to double through in a sort of speculative spot. I chose the game as 6 card Omaha Hi-Lo and was dealt a 7s,8,9,10,j,Ks hand. Obviously not the best as I have no low draw but it was limped round to me so I merely checked to see a flop. (In the Dealers choice game the button pays the blind for some reason - club rule).
The flop was a rather eventful Kc 8s 4s giving me top two pair and the second nut flush draw. However, the 4 and 8 were quite worrying due to the fact that 1 card is needed to give the low.
It was checked to the CO who bet pot (around £20). I flat call on the button as do 2 others.
The turn brings the 9d giving the board Kc 8s 4s 9d. I now have top 3 pair, gutshot to the nuts and the second nut flush draw with no low draw out there yet.
Again, it checks to the CO who bets pot again. At this point I feel that I scoop the high a lot here as he likely has an A23 draw with some sort of high draw too knowing the player. At which point I reshove to isolate as I feel that I'm ahead of his hi hand and want to charge the player to reach his low.
As it happened I got 2 callers, one with the bare A23 (gambooool for a split?!) and 44A23x hand. I managed to bink the Q on the river giving me the nut straight with no low draw.
It's nice to run hot in multiway pots :). In retrospect I'm not too happy with my shove on the turn. I don't think I played too well overall tonight. I have exams next week so that will be the break required to regain my focus and patience required for live cash success. Despite that finished the night +£180.
To leave on a positive note, here is one of Johnny Cash's songs. Pretty relaxing after a long day on the felt anyway despite how old it is!
