A pretty decent week with a few small binks

Progress on the bankroll front!

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

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

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

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

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

Until later, gl guys!

Success at the UKIPT!

Hey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crazy Sunday Grinding and a Small Brag!

Hey,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February Review, Onto March!

Hey!

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

Onto this month and a lot could happen!

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

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

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

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

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

GL folks..

A bad start to 2011 turned great. + UKIPT fun

Hey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

India, 2011 and Future Plans

Hey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2010 Review and 2011 Goals

Hey,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Goals for 2011:


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

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

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

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

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

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

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