As you may have noticed i havn't updated this blog for ages and i have a lot to write about. Firstly i'm going to mention that i'm now a sponsored 'gutshot pro'; I'm getting £20K in tournament buy-ins and i get to keep 50% of my profit with 0 make up. I can play 3 GUKPT's, EPT London and then i can spend the other money on the tournaments i want. In return i have to make some videos, post on the forum and blog the tournaments that i play for them on the site:
The reason that i havn't blogged for ages is firstly i'm a lazy shit and secondly we were unable to get the internet going in the new house for 3 weeks. Overall the move has been fine, i have a bigger room, we have a little garden and all in all i like this place better than the last (even though it's just round the corner).
With no internet at home my opportunities to play online have been limited. Just realised that i havn't even put my graph up for March:
Once again it was an up and down month but obviously i'm glad that once again it was a profitable one. Breaking even after 25K hands sucked but thankfully managed to end the month well and ship some $. I've now played anout 15K hands of 400nl and am up about 10 buy-ins. This is fairly break even but winning a ton at 200nl this year so even if i do jerk off some cash i'm very confident that i can grind it back lower down.
With the internet down i've been playing quite a few live tournaments over the last couple of months. I played 3 comps at the start of March at the international for the Spring poker festival and unfortunately i was unable to get much going. I kept drawing really solid tables that made chip accumulation tough and when the blinds got high i would lose a flip or just run into big hands so i didn't get a single deep run, booooooo.
I have however managed 2 deep runs in both the GUKPT events that i have played recently. The tournament in London was a strange one, i played day 1b and for the first 5 levels i couldn't find many spots to make chips and found myself with about my starting stack at the start of 200/400/25. Anyway the first hand of this level i find QQ Utg and playing an 11K stack i start to think how can i get my chips in the middle, i make it 1050 and a guy in mp who also started the hand with about 11K makes it 3K total. At this point i think shoving is obviously standard, online it is just easy but i looked at the guy and he looked so strong and i thought about his raise (why make it 3K and not shove?); i thought he had me crushed so i told him that i was folding and begged to see his hand, after some persuasion he showed AA and i tabled QQ, hero folds are fun.
After that great laydown the poker gods decided to reward me with some hands. I won KQ v K6 when a shortstack shoved and then 3 bet shoved against James Keys with AQ V his A10 to get up to 30K. Once this happened i was able to raise a lot wider and managed to make a few hands and win a few small pots with air against some weak players, i finished the day with 55K about to start 600/1200/100 and was just over average stack.
At the start of day 2 things went from good to great when i managed to get my whole stack in pre flop with AA v 1010 to get over 100k. I then got moved to a really weak table and despite losing a huge pot with a straight flush draw v an overpair i was able to build up to 160K without any real problem. Then this hand came up with 45 left:
Playing 1500/3000/200 a guy in Ep limped (200k stack), mp calls as well (80K ish stack) and the sb calls (200k stack). I make it 12k more from the bb with and to my surprise they all call. Flop comes J106 and after the sb checks i cbet 25K. Ep calls and other 2 fold. Turn is an 8 and i check call a 30K bet and the river brings a 9 . I bet 50K and he puts me in for 40K ish more which i call. He flips KQ for the nuts, gg me.
I'm not upset at how i played the hand but the river is just so brutal as i'm check calling a brick, if an ace hits i can check fold and if a king hits he wasn't good enough to value bet so i'm winning the hand or not losing anymore chips. When he flipped his hand i felt sick but what can you do? Congratulations to Jambon for finishing 4th and making it to final tables out of two.
After the London event i was gutted but i didn't have to wait a long time to have another deep run, finishing 8th at GUKPT Manchester in my first major tournament as a gutshot pro. I'm going to be writing a pretty long report on my blog over there so i'm not going to go into any specific hands here but i'm just going to say that having started the final as chip leader and being the best player at the table by a distance finishing 8th was like being kicked in the balls, it still hurts two days later.
One thing that the last few months has taught me is that live tournaments are still the strongest part of my game. I have a big edge over the live players because most of them, even some of the pros, have no idea how to play there stack size and struggle to play after the flop and i feel i have an edge over a lot of Internet players who struggle to adjust to the pace of a live tournament and simply do not have the abilty to read there opponents. I'm now really looking forward to Las Vegas and really hoping i can have a big score at the series this year. Here is a list of the tournaments that i'm planning on playing:
Monday 15th June: 12 noon (US time) $2K NLH
Tuesday 16th June: 12 noon $1500 NLH
Thursday 18th June: 12 noon $2K NLH
Saturday 20th June: 12 noon $1500 NLH
Saturday 27th June: 12 noon $1500 NLH
Monday 29th June: 12 noon $1500 NLH
Sunday 5th July: 12 noon $10K NLH Main event.
So basically as you can see its no limit holdem all the way for me this year. I'm playing $20K worth of buy ins but Jambon is staking me for most of it so i'm going to buy about $6K of myself in total. The starting stacks are 3 times the buy-in this year and the clock is still an hour so even in the $1500 events there is still a bit of play. The fields will be huge but as long as i can stay focused and take it 1 decision at a time i'm sure that a deep run in one or two of the side events is on the cards. As for the main event the structure is so good and so much of the field is so weak that busting day 1 with my style of play would have to mean that something has gone badly wrong, let's hope another in the money finish is on the cards.
