The College dropout

Day 2 Busto

2011-07-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

I busted out the WSOP main event right at the end of day 2. To be honest I wasn't that annoyed. I never got above 60K and it simply wasn't to be.

Trying to change flights so I can get back to the UK in the next couple of days. Will blog when something of interesting happens.

Main Event

2011-07-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

Made it through the day with 33.5K from 30K starting stack. Fairly happy with every decision i made except 1. Day 2 is on Monday. Run good please!

Vegas

2011-07-05T00:14:00.000-07:00

I've now played 4 WSOP tournaments, they have not gone well. In better news I've played a few sessions of $2/5 and am up about $2.5K on the trip.

Played about 6 rounds of golf and have started playing better. I'm averaging about 22 over but would love to get down to 18 by September, probably will not happen.

Playing the main event on Saturday, day 1C. Will post when I'm done for the day.

Vegas

2011-06-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

I arrived last tuesday. Have played 2 events so far and failed to cash in both. First one I lasted 20 minutes, lost 2 crucial hands. First with top set v turned flush. Then AK v AJ. Second event was yesterday. Lasted 8 hours but never really built up chips. Ended up 3 bet jamming KJ against the chip leader and he called 1010. I lose.

Already played a couple of bad rounds of golf. Nice to see Rory crush the US Open from start to finish, he's a joy to watch when he plays well. Planning on playing a lot over the next month despite the heat.

Playing the $1500 on Wednesday. Hope I win.

Is it April aleady?

2011-04-08T03:47:00.000-07:00

They say that time flies when you're having fun, the last few months have flown by! On the whole life is great. I managed to come 2nd in a £400 live comp, I've been ticking along nicely online, winter is over, I've finally had a decent win from staking and everything friends/family/girlfriend related is just groovy. I'm +$38K so far and well on the way to that elusive $100K year.

I was planning on expanding on the previous paragraph but I've changed my mind. This is mostly due to two reasons. Firstly, it's short, concise and brings me up to date. Secondly it's a lovely day outside and I'm off to play golf. Will update with Vegas plans soon.

A long overdue update

2010-12-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I would like to apologise to those of you who follow this blog. I haven't posted for a long time and I'm sorry.

The good news is that life is great. The new flat in Bristol is fantastic and I'm really enjoying living hear. I already feel that my game is improving and that the decision to move here was a good one. By surrounding myself with other poker players I've given myself the best chance to be successful in a healthy environment.

My results thus far have been a little disappointing but that doesn't concern me. I'm enjoying playing and have increased my volume significantly since the move.

I'm really trying to stay positive and look forward to next year. Before i can do that however i need to be honest about the last 12 months. I haven't played anywhere near enough poker and still have a lot to work on. I'm pretty much in the same financial position as i was this time last year and that isn't good enough. Just because I'm lucky enough to pick and choose when i play this shouldn't result in an excuse to be lazy and go through long periods of hardly playing.

I set myself some targets at the start of the year and i haven't come close to hitting any of them. I'll admit that winning the WSOP main event was a little ambitious but the other three were certainly achievable. To have failed so miserably is extremely disappointing for me.

If 2012 is going to be different i need to take things more seriously and dedicate a lot more time to both studying and playing. I think I've taken the first step by moving away from London to be amongst fellow professional players. If i can stay focused on making good decisions then i see no reason why next year can't go a lot better than this one has.

Away from poker the last few months have been fairly quiet. I've been in London a lot seeing the girlfriend and been on a couple of holidays. One was a trip to Florence which was very enjoyable and the other was the golf holiday to Okehampton that i somehow managed to win! I really love the annual boys trip and i really hope that we keep it up for the years to come. I was really happy to win but i felt a bit guilty playing off such a high handicap having played so many rounds leading up to the competition. Looking forward to getting down there next year and defending my title!

I'm heading home for Christmas tomorrow and then will probably be back in Bristol for the new year. Hard to say when I'll next blog but i will try to keep it going, certainly think it's a positive outlet for me. Anyway happy Christmas to you all.

Life Update

2010-09-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

The last six weeks have been fairly eventful. I've played some online poker, bashed up Broadstairs folk week, moved out of the London Pad and even won a live tournament! I'm now back in sunny Broadstairs whilst a few friends and I sort out a move to Bristol. I didn't really feel like blogging until I had something to write about and I now feel like this is a good time for reflection.

I'll start with an online cash update. On the whole it has gone quite well. I'm up about $10.5K since Vegas playing $1/2 and $2/$4. I've also put a solid amount of hands in which is encouraging. Usually at the this time of year I have very little interest in playing much online but I've been helped out by the shoddy weather.

I took five days off in the middle of August to come home and enjoy the awesomeness that is Broadstairs folk week. This is by far the best week of the year to be back home. The town is packed, the atmosphere is very friendly and the beers are flowing. It also gives me a chance to catch up with some of the boys from school that I don't get to see enough of. I'm going to give a big congrats to my friend Alec 'the boy' Howard for his stellar performance, getting pissed on every night of the week, you are my hero!

As usual the main event of the week was the annual half pint challenge. Now in its 5th year this particular pub crawl is going from strength to strength. 18 pubs, 9 pints, silly hats, flip cup and the Jurassic park theme tune all contributed in making this year the best yet!

The last two weeks in London have been very enjoyable but also a little sad. We've had some great nights out, most notably an absolute tear up in the Venue and my birthday meal at Goodmans. I still can't help but feel a little sad about the closing of another chapter in my life. Living with Tone, Liam, Mike, Brad and Hatz has been great fun and I wouldn't change the last three years for anything. Along with the rest of my friends they've all been very supportive of what I do and living with them has been an absolute pleasure.

Anyway the plan now is to move to Bristol for 9 months before the next WSOP. I'm looking forward to living with other poker players and I'm sure my game will benefit enormously. Just having other people to bounce ideas off and dissect hands with is great, hope I can continue to improve and put some serious volume in over the winter.

Now some very good news. Last week I won a £300 tourney at the international for £9.2K. I'm excited about this result for a number of reasons. Firstly money is awesome, secondly the field was quite tough, it's my home club and finally the structure is very unique for the size of the buy-in. You start with 20K in chips and the blind levels are 90 minutes. This offers phenomenal value for all players and it gives people a chance to play a $10K structure for just £300. It was nice to win a tourney for the first time in ages and the whole experience was a lot of fun. The club has a lot of regs and the banter was flying around. A lot of characters and a very good 3 days of work.

Anyway I'm about done on this one, very solid blog IMO! Not sure when I'll update next but the golf holiday in Okey is coming up so hopefully I can write about getting rid of that Fucking wooden spoon!

Day 3 busto

2010-07-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

I just busted out the 2010 WSOP main event. I managed to finally get some chips to play with then lost a 120K flip with AK v QQ playing 600/1200/200. The hand itself is very standard and i think it represents my entire world series very well, double my stack then lose the next important hand i play. This seemed to happen in a lot of the events.

On the whole i'm extremely happy with the way i played this summer, especially in the main event. There isn't much i would change if i had to do it all over again. Unfortunately the reality is that i'm now enjoying a fairly brutal $16K downswing. The plan for the next few months is very simple: get back to England and get on the grind. Looking forward to the next world series already.

Hard Day 1

2010-07-06T02:37:00.000-07:00

The good news is that i managed to make day 2. I only have 25 of my 30K starting stack but the blinds are only 200/400/50 so plenty of play left yet. My table was fairly soft with one guy in particular being terrible. The funny thing was the 'Italian stallion' ran his nuts off all day and finished with a 110K stack! I'm fairly happy with my decisions but a little frustrated about how the day went. I felt like i was in so many multi way pots against bad players with good hands but i just couldn't connect with a fucking thing. I really need to stop complaining about things outside my own control though and focus on the positives. I'm playing day 2A on Friday and all i can do is focus on making good decisions and hope to run much better than i did today. In the mean time I'm just going to relax and enjoy the holiday.

Main Event

2010-07-05T01:10:00.000-07:00

I'm playing day 1A of the main event tomorrow. It's obviously the biggest and most prestigious event of the year and i'm fairly excited about playing in it for the third time. I'm a little annoyed that the recent downswing has prevented me from having a larger % of myself but all in all i'm just happy to be playing.

The latest side events did not go well. I busted both of them fairly early, one losing a flip and the other with AA v QQ all in pre. Away from the tables Vegas life has been a lot of fun. We've just been hanging out, drinking, watching the world cup and going out a lot for dinner/drinking/crazy shenanigans. A couple of the people in the house have been involved in some really fun situations with the ladies, most notably one William Brewin. Whilst i'm happy to write anything about myself on this page it probably isn't fair to write about his exploits, no matter how entertaining. Anyway i'm glad to report that on a personal note i've been behaving myself a bit better this year. My diet had been appalling and i've done very little exercise but life is good and i'm enjoying the whole Vegas experience, now to go and win the main event!

I cashed!!

2010-06-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

I made the money in the latest $1500 event, finished 169th For nearly $4K. It was obviously a bit annoying not to make any real money but nice to have the first cash of the series. I ran really well in the first 8 levels to get up to a very healthy 65K in chips but the lost a 60K pot with AK v JJ. If i had won that pot i would have been i the top 10 going into Day 2. Unfortunately i suck at winning important flips and lost another one in the third level of day 2 to bust.

I'm playing the $1.5K on Monday and obviously hoping to keep my amazing streak alive. It also looks like i'll be playing the main event but only keeping a small % of myself.

0 and 4

2010-06-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

I played the $1.5K shootout today and came 4th. I never really got anything going but i think i played fine. Ended up losing QJ v AK in another boring, standard hand. Next is another $1.5K on Wednesday. I hope England are safely through to the last 16 of the world cup by the time i take my seat.

More Fail

2010-06-20T02:19:00.000-07:00

Busted the $1K in level 5 today. The hand was a total cooler. I had top set, he had an open ended straight flush draw and got there. It was a 13K pot playing 100/200 so obviously that would have been a nice one to win.

Can't stop losing

2010-06-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be a good idea to play some online poker, it wasn't. Lost $3.5K playing 2/4 running like shit and tilting a bit. I can't stop losing at the moment and it's getting hard to take. For the first time in my life i'm hating the game and how unfair the variance can be. I'm 100% not playing online again whilst i'm out here.

0 and 2

2010-06-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

Busted the $1.5K on day 1. I got off to a fast start chipping up to 11K from 4.5 start then this happened:

75/150 UTG+1 limps (playing to many hands and not playing them very well). I iso from CO with KQ to 500 playing a 11K stack to his 9Kish, everyone else folds and he calls. Flop AJ10 all spades, i have Queen of spades. He checks, i bet 675, he calls. Turn is off suit 9, he checks, i bet 1250, he calls. River ace, he leads for 3.3K, i call, he wins with A9 no spade. It was quite disgusting for me to lose that one and i never got anything going afterwards. I probably could have folded but it certainly wasn't an easy fold or a big mistake to call in that spot. I'm going to chill for a few days then play the $1K on Saturday.

$2.5K 6-max

2010-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

I busted playing 300/600/75 when i re-shoved 1010 with 20 bb's and got called by AJ, fairly standard.

I think the overall standard in the tourney was quite high. Of the 15 opponents i came up against only 2 were bad players and 6 or 7 seemed to play very well. I think i played well. I certainly didn't make any big mistakes but i think i made one small one. I basically made a bluff that was fine but I'd just lost a fairly big pot and might have had a tilted image. This is obviously a good time to go for thinner value and not make a big bluff, oh well.

Next up is the $1.5K tomorrow.

Downswing

2010-06-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

The last week has been one of the hardest that i've ever had to endure. I've lost $7K and gone through a very wide range of negative emotions. Most of the time i've just been really angry. I'm running so horribly it's sick. I can't remember a run of cards this bad and it's been hard to take.

The worst thing is that i've had to cash a lot out my roll to pay for Vegas. If Vegas goes badly i might have to move back down to $1/2 and i would hate that. I want to be moving the other way and moving back down would be a major blow to my pride. All this just makes the trip even more important. I really think it will define my year and i could very much do with catching a break.

I'm flying out next week and here is a list of the tournaments i plan on playing:

Mon 14th June - $2.5K 6 max
Wed 16th June - $1.5K
Sat 19th June - $1K
Mon 21st June - $1.5K shootout
wed 23rd June - $1.5K
Fri 25th June - $1.5K
Sat 26th June - $1K
Mon 28th June - $1.5K

I really would like to play the main event but I'm going to see how i do in the side events first. I'm not going to play online again in June, think i could do with a month off and just focus on winning a bracelet.

Groundhog day

2010-05-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

My last three appearances on the Grosvenor Poker tour have been eerily similar in nature. Firstly i arrive, full of confidence, hope and expectation. Secondly I'm ecstatic to discover that the poker ability of the majority of the rest of my table is somewhat limited.

After these initial discoveries is where the fun starts. I spend the next 8 hours playing as well as i can whilst the poker gods have a good laugh at my expense until my inevitable exit at the end of day 1. The worst thing about it is the seeming inevitability of it all.

As you can probably tell from the first few paragraphs of this blog, my trip to Coventry was not a successful one. My starting, (and finishing) table was again very soft but yet again it was unable to do much about it. The first level was hilarious. I lost with KK to 33 on a J4386. Thankfully i was saved by a retarded opponent who didn't understand bet sizing. Next up i lose 99 to 43 when it comes 633, (he decided that his hand was good enough to defend v my UTG open). Next i have to fold AK when i smash the bus into AA. I the lose 77 twice multi way and then have A8 v an unknown over pair when i fold to his 2x pot bet on an 864. If my opponents were even somewhat competent i would have probably gone busto but all in all i was very happy to have only lost 30% of my starting stack.

I spent the next 7 levels totally card dead playing very few hands. I was able to grind back to my starting stack but unfortunately for me that was all i could manage. I think my exit hand was very standard and all in all i see nothing i could have done differently. Yet again I'm content with my performance but left amazed at how bad the last 2k hands of live poker have been.

Can't believe what a whinny little girl i am sometimes!!

Quick Update

2010-05-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

I managed to just about ensure that April was a profitable month. Even though this is obviously good news i'm concerned about my mindset. I've been getting more and more frustrated with poker over the last few months. I'm not sure if this is because i'm bored of playing and in need of long break or because i'm running bad and struggling to emulate the success i had online at the end of last year.

The good news is that away from poker life is great. The flu is gone and the asthma pumps have helped a lot with my breathing. I swam half a mile earlier today and felt fine. I'm going to run a couple of miles later and see how i feel. I really hope i can maintain a healthy lifestyle for a while because i've been letting things slip. No exercise and lots of takeaways make Eddy a chubby boy!

I have a very strong feeling that this week will determine how much poker i play before Vegas. If things go well i could easily get my appetite back and play 30 hour weeks. If things go badly i might end up throwing my monitor out the window!

The end of my live drought

2010-04-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Good news!!! I finally cashed again in a live tournament.

I was home alone last Saturday so i decided to head to the international to watch the Spurs game. As well as being a good poker venue the club also has a wide screen to watch the games and serves good food, easy decision. After a great game and a very important victory for my team i decided to play the weekly £150. Now this tournament isn't great value. The level of play is quite high, the field quite small and the structure is obviously quite fast because it's a 1 day event. Despite all these negative factors i ended up 4 handed and we decided to do a chop. Two guys had about 180K in chips, i had 160K and another guy had 90K. After some smooth talking i managed to negotiate a good deal. The top 3 got £1750 and the other guy got £1450. If the blinds had been lower i wouldn't even think about a deal this generous but at 5K/10K my edge was fairly small so i was just happy to take the cash.

The online situation hasn't changed much since my last blog. I haven't been more than $3K either side of even this month and it's been a little frustrating. Every time i have a good day and feel like I'm ready to go on a rush and make some money i end up losing money in my next few sessions. The good news is that I've been a lot more level headed about it all since my last post and i feel like I'm playing well again. I really hope i can have a strong end to the April and avoid my first losing month since September 2009. I've still never had a losing month playing cash when I've played over 10K hands so this is the record i really want to hold on to.

Unfortunately I've had some bad news about my health. I've been struggling with my breathing over the last few months so i went to see the doctor. After a few tests she decided that i have asthma. My dad and sister have both had it for most of there lives so it wasn't that much of a shock really. I'm not to upset about it and it's nice to have the inhalers on hand to help when I'm struggling to breath. The worst think is that I've had a bit of flu recently which obviously makes things ten times worse. My nose has been completely blocked and this isn't really ideal when breathing is the major issue.

Anyway I've been feeling progressively better over the last few days and am now looking forward to going up to Manchester tomorrow for the GUKPT. I'm playing day 1B on Friday and obviously it would be nice to have a decent run after making the final table last year. I hope the next blog is a tale of victory!

Running out of momentum

2010-04-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

The last few months have become increasingly frustrating. My win rate had been slowing down and now I'm struggling just to break even. Although I'm not overly concerned with short term variance i am annoyed about my reaction to it. I'm getting annoyed about really standard shit and getting angry about poker is never good. Sometimes you just need to take a step back and put things into perspective, hopefully this blog is me doing that.

I think one of the best things about losing is that i tend to learn things. Even if it's not learning new things but reinforcing certain things that i might have temporarily forgotten. I'm not going to go into the boring details but there have been certain things about my play that I'm not happy about. The good thing is that i recognise what they are and can take fairly obvious steps to change them.

The Ski trip was loads of fun. We only had 4 days but i really enjoyed everything about Chamonix. The trip also reminded me how insanely lucky i am. For most people a holiday is an important break from work, my whole life is a break from work!

Since my return to London I've not been up to that much. Liam and Ant are both changing jobs and have the next couple of weeks off. Basically that means that i won't be playing much poker. It does mean that i'll be playing a bit of golf, fifa 2010 and ping pong. I played my first round of golf of the year last week and it went quite well. I was crap on the front 9 but played a strong back 9 and tried to think hard about what i was trying to do with every shot, just need to work on the execution now. I also hit one of the best shots of my life on a 150 yard par 3 when i ripped a 7 iron 1 foot from the hole.

Hopefully my next blog will be about my winning $10K in a week but until them some advice; go to the cinema and watch Kick Ass. It's brilliant!

Live V Online

2010-03-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

The last 6 months have been fairly consistent. I've been making a good amount of money online and losing a fair bit live. The latest GUKPT was no exception to this rule. After making day 2 of a £300 side event, running KK into AA to bust, the £1500 main event was another dissapointment. My starting table was awesome with fish all over the place but once again i was unable to take advantage thanks to a horrible run of cards. I didn't flop better than middle pair for the first 3 hours but thanks to the structure i was still in good shape. I then got moved to a really tough table and continued to lose every hand i played. I eventually got it in with AJ v AK and somehow managed to win. This immense feeling of being above my starting stack was not to last however and i busted out a few hours later with 99 v JJ on a 865 board. I think the hand was fairly standard. It was certainly a nice feeling to have an overpair.

Ant Forrest and Will Brewin stayed at ours most of the week which was a lot of fun. We basically played a load of 25/50p and fifa 2010. I didn't win any money obviously but it was nice to see the team dropout boys. Will ended up cashing for £4.8K coming 14th in the main. That position really sucks but i'm sure one of us will ship a decent live score soon. On that subject i haven't cashed in a live tournament for nearly a year now. I think i've played about 25-30 which seems quite a lot but when you think about the number of hands it really isn't. I just have to mkae sure when i am playing live i'm playing my best and hope the cards turn for me.

I haven't worked out my exact profit for March but i think i made something like $3K. I jerked so much cash off on stupid things and also lost about $1K staking which sucks. The plan for April is to grind fairly hard then go to the Manchester GUKPT and win that.

I'm going Skiing tomorrow with Juliet and my sister. We're only going for 5 days but it should be fun and i'm looking forward to getting out the country.

The days when it all goes wrong

2010-03-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

Why did i mention my winning streak?! I sat down today full of confidence and momentum. Little did i know that it was going to be one of those days when the poker gods take a piss on your face. I lost K10 V KQ on a KKQ10x. I lost A5 v 88 on a A85, lost 3 flips in a row and lost pretty much all the small pots as well. I'm still in a bit of shock to be honest as i only played for about an hour and managed to dump off $2.7K but oh well, shit happens. I don't think i made any big mistakes and these days happen to everyone so i just have to get on with it. I'm obviously taking the rest of the day off and will come back tomorrow fresh and ready to play.
The 11am experiment is still in it's infancy but i slept 5 hours the first night, 10 hours last night and both times did not wake before the alarm. The plan is to sleep at 2am tonight and try to rock the 9 hour pattern.
Shutter Island was a very good film. The acting was excellent and i would recommend it to anyone, 9/10. I'm looking forward to the champions league tonight and i really hope Inter can knock out Chelsea. I know a lot of people always support the English clubs in Europe but i have never understood that logic. I don't like the way Chelsea play and i don't like it when billionaires take over clubs and starting paying silly money to build an all star team who don't give a shit about the club.

The 11am experiment

2010-03-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

Leading on from my last blog about laziness I'm now going to write about sleep. We all need sleep to function but exactly how much do we need? Can some people survive on less sleep than others and finally is there a perfect number of sleep hours that allows us to be at are most productive during the day?

My increased interest in the subject has come through observation and discussion. I've lived with Antony 'big tone' Yousefian for the last two and a half years now and i would say he has had approximately an average of 7 hours of sleep a night over that period. I on the other hand would be much closer to an average of 10-11 hours. Now when you start to add that shit up it's a hell of a lot of sleep! I guess without really knowing the affects of the difference I'm really interested in what they might be. Ant is a very driven, productive person though and has simply got use to working and maybe even thriving on a lack of sleep. Comparing the two of us is effectively a waste of time because we're different in so many ways.

A more appropriate case study might be to compare myself with another friend, Joe 'razzle dazzle' Whittaker. Now Joe is a full time poker player as well but he sets his alarm most days and tries to sleep for about 8 hours a night. His sleeping pattern is all over the place but the key variable is the amount of hours which remains constant. In terms of productivity Joe plays a lot more than i do although like me can sometimes lead an unbalanced life. I guess what I'm trying to answer is whether or not the huge number of hours I've spent asleep is having a negative affect on me as a person? I've stopped exercising over the last 2 months and have eaten a lot of junk food. I've also not been putting much volume online but that being said when i have played I've being focused and playing fairly well.

Maybe I've just got used to having a lot of sleep. The human body needs sleep and my own is simply getting all it can. Is there even a thing as having to much sleep?

I realise I've been asking a lot of questions in this blog but that's come from a total lack of knowledge about the subject. I feel like a kid who's trying to work something out for the first time; a bit like i imagine CashyP feels on a daily basis.

Anyway back to the title of this blog, the 11am experiment. The plan is to set my alarm for 11am everyday until the end of April. If i get up before 11am that's fine but 11 is the absolute latest I'm allowed to get up. I'm hoping this will help me in two ways. Firstly i hope to get myself back into a healthy style of living. Getting up early obviously results in more sunlight and therefore more going to the gym, swimming, running, sculpting the guns etc etc. Secondly i want to be able to start answering some of the many questions that I've asked in this post. Will i be going to sleep the same time every night by the end? Can i function on less sleep etc? The best thing about the experiment is even if it turns out i do need 10 hours of sleep a night I'll still be up at a reasonable hour so it's win win for me. The hardest morning is going to be the one coming up, it's coming up to 5am and I'm not very tired yet. Should be fine getting through the day then we're all going to see the new Scorsese film tonight night which I'm very much looking forward to. Overall I'm actually quite excited about the experiment and hope i can stick to it. I think the biggest potential problems are hangovers and late night sessions but I'll try my best to stick it and will be blogging my progress.

Just a quick paragraph on my poker exploits. I've been running really hot for the last 8 days and have made $10K playing 2/4 and 3/6, mostly heads up. I've also managed to avoid having a losing day so really hoping i can maintain the streak as momentum is obviously important in poker. I've been playing close to my best which is also a nice bonus. Peace and love to you all.

Getting into bad habits

2010-03-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately this is something i do quite often. The lack of authority in my life twinned with the drinking, the laziness, the gambling and the rest of all that great stuff makes it hard for me to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I really feel like i have a good idea of how i want my life to be. Eating healthy, regular exercise, reading, writing, learning etc etc. The truth of the matter is it's 4am, I've watched 8 hours of shit on TV today and managed to work my way through an entire tub of ice cream. Now i know these are impressive accomplishments in themselves but i think i could be doing better.

It will always come down to the fact that I'm lazy. The worst thing about my laziness is my acceptance of it. I've been lazy my whole life and to be honest I've never really understood why people spend so much time doing things they don't want to. I like to do what i want, when i want and for a large percentage of my time that means relaxing in comfort.

The game of poker has been both good and bad for my natural laziness. On the plus side it gives me something to work on, makes me concentrate and challenges me on a daily basis. On the other side of the coin it's created a way for me to make quite a lot of money with not much effort. I'm 23, have no degree and 'work' an average of 15-20 hours a week. The sick thing about this little story is i make more than most Oxbridge graduates my age and i don't pay tax. I don't want this post to turn into a shameless brag but for a lazy fucker I'm doing OK for myself.

I'm sure a time will come when I'll have to think about making some major changes in my life. When that time does arrive i want it to be through choice and not have been forced from going broke. The idea of busting my roll is petrifying. The scariest thing about it for me is the idea of trying and failing at something. I'm use to mediocrity. I was mediocre at school and I've always been a mediocre sportsman. The reason I'm OK with this is the reason behind it. I never worked hard at school and I've never really worked hard at sport. What i have worked hard on is poker. If i went broke i know my family and friends would help me through but I'm not sure i could ever get over trying and failing at something.

You'll be glad to hear that's the soul revealing, philosophical side of the blog done. I never really plan what I'm going to write on this page and sometimes things just spill out. Back to my recent poker activity:

Live poker sucks! I played 4 events at the London poker masters and cashed in none. On top of that i lost £750 playing cash and another £130 staking, what a superstar! The grand total for the festival came to a loss of £1980 so overall not a good week. As far as decisions go i did quite well. If i had to grade my performance at the festival i would give me a B-. I still pushed a little to hard at times and my timing/live reads were not very good at all. As is the current trend with my live outings i did tend to run into a lot of hands. It's so hard to get momentum going in a tourney when you can't make hands and your opponents keep making the nuts. Really hoping i can save all my run good for one tournament and ship something big.

After a 10 day break from online poker I've been back on it this week. Glad to report I'm +$5K from the first 4 days. Most of that came from one guy on party that sucks hairy man cock. My heads up game is getting really strong and I'm still improving. Planning on playing online quite a bit for the next couple of weeks then I'm playing the GUKPT at the Vic at the end of the month. Hugs and Kisses xxxxxxxxxxxx

End of a swingy month

2010-02-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not upset to the see the end of February. Another cold winter month out the way in which i underachieved at the tables. At least i managed to make sure i finished up a winner, +$5.4K. I've also been playing better since my last post and obviously I'm hoping that i can maintain this.

I've been at home in Broadstairs for the last 3 days and have had a really good time. The four of us haven't spent a great deal of time together over the last couple of years and it's been a lot of fun. We went out for dinner on Saturday to a nice fish restaurant and then for some reason went bowling today with 15 of my parents friends. I scored 106 and 101 but actually bowled quite well and had no luck at all. To make things worse my sister, my mum and my dad finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Talk about letting the family down! My sister scored 128 and 134, well played!

I went to the driving range with dad on Friday and didn't hit the ball well at all. My swing is a mess and i really need some lessons if I'm going to avoid the wooden spoon in okey this year.

The plan for next week is some good old live poker action! There is a festival at the international and I'm playing in 4 of the events. It would be really nice if i could make 1 final table because my recent live results have sucked! I'm not going to play at all online until the Monday after the festival. I thought it might be a good idea to take a little break and come back fresh and ready to play like a champion. I'll probably blog how i get on at the festival at some point next week.

I wrote this blog on the train back from London:

http://www.gutshot.com/bforum/blog.php?b=764

I think it might be the best thing I've ever written, exploring new concepts is fun!

I should work in Mcdonalds!!

2010-02-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately February isn't going very well. I'm playing with about as much intelligence as someone who works in the fast fast food industry and fittingly I'm earning about the same wage. I'm aware that these break even periods are a part of the game for all players and all i can do is work hard and push through. The thing that bothers me the most is my level if play. If i was playing well and losing then i would be as happy as a Frenchman living next to a brothel. The problem is I'm playing badly, to many poor hands, poor sessions and even poor days. One day last week i lost $4K and played fairly terribly. I think i might have made more mistakes that day than i did in the whole of November; an impressive achievement!

Despite my startling lack of consistency I'm still slightly up on the month. I'm -$1K on live poker outings, thanks to a couple of unsuccessful trips to the international and DTD, but +$2.2K overall. Obviously at the stakes i play this number is fairly insubstantial but it's always nice to be ahead. The plan is to try and grind as hard as i can over the next ten days before returning home for my dad's birthday. I'm pretty much in the routine of going home 3 or 4 times a year now and that suits me just fine. I'll probably post when i get home about how the next week or so goes. It would be nice to keep my streak of $10K + months going but in order to do that I'm going to have to have to maintain a higher level of play and stop tilting it off like a mongoloid!

Good month, terrible day.

2010-02-02T16:52:00.000-08:00

January is in the books and overall it went quite well. I made $15K online but lost $3K playing live. My volume was fairly decent and i played a lot of solid if not spectacular poker. I'm fairly happy with a +$12K month and it certainly gives me something to build on in 2010.

One particular highlight of the previous month was the birth of Noah Michael Alp. Even though the baby wasn't planned i know Mike will be a great dad and I'm really happy for him. Unfortunately for me the birth of this perfectly innocent, healthy child coincided with the worst day of my professional life. I bent over and took it like a champion on the 26Th January, it was not an enjoyable experience! I lost $4K online running like a fat kid on a hot day and then thought i would party on down to the Vic and play some good old live cash. A very generous £1500 donation later and i was left with that wonderful feeling of disappointed emptiness. I know days like these can happen, they have before and they will again but they still hurt the ego as well as the bankroll.

The other money lost live was at the monthly £300 at the international. I started the tourney playing like a superstar, building the stack up nicely and playing very aggro. I then find AA against Joejoe's KK and obviously we get it in pre. He binks on the flop and I'm left with 30% of my starting stack. I'm in no way annoyed about the hand, just one of those things. I am glad however that Joe went on to win the comp for £7K, well played sir! I even got to watch him take it down at 5am after a heavy night out in Old street for Kips' birthday. The night out was great fun and the Ant and i have both agreed that the Bavarian beer house is the greatest pub in London, what a place for a drinking session!

I'm a blogging machine these days, will try and keep it up.

A cheap failure

2010-01-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

The first live tournament of the year has come and gone, unfortunately it ended in failure. The good news about the trip was that i managed to get in via a £150 satellite the night before. The bad news is the satellite didn't finish until 4am and in the main event i ran like shit.

I haven't got that many interesting hands to write about to be honest. My first table was incredibly soft but i was very card dead so i couldn't take advantage. Most of the players were just playing to loose before the flop and butchering their hands post-flop. It still surprises me how soft these fields are but you still need to make hands to take advantage. I eventually busted in the 9th level shoving 13bb's from the small blind with K7 and running into A7 in the big, sigh. Overall I'm very happy with how i played and wouldn't change a single decision i made all weekend. I'll be getting back on the grind this week with a few interruptions; Spurs game on Tuesday, seeing my sister on Wednesday, trip to cheeses' on Friday and the £300 at the international Saturday. I'm also planning on swimming a couple of miles so 12 hours of online poker should be a fairly accurate prediction.

Update

2010-01-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to report that the move up to $3/6 has been a relatively smooth one. I'm +$9K since my last post and looking good for a +$20K month overall. Despite this brilliant news there are still a few things I'm not happy about. The main one has been my general level of play. It's so easy to just presume you're playing well when your winning but this isn't always the case. I've played well the majority of the time but in two or three sessions I've been pretty poor. I really want to continue moving up but i know my consistency has to improve. If i can start producing my best game 90% of the time then i know i can compete at the higher levels. Obviously I'm going to make mistakes sometimes but i just need to keep learning from them.

In live poker news I'm heading to Bolton for the first leg of the GUKPT tomorrow. I'm getting the train up with Will in the afternoon, playing a satellite in the evening and then the main event starts on Friday at 2pm. This is my first major live event of the year so obviously hoping to start things off with a bang. The structure is quite good and in my experience the standard is usually fairly low. I'll probably blog when i get back about some fantastic hero call i made with king high against top set.

Away from poker I'm really starting to get excited about this premiership season. We lost to Liverpool tonight and played fucking terribly but i still think spurs have got a great chance of finishing 4th. The bookies have got Man City as favourites but i think it could be any one of four. Injuries will be a really important factor and from a spurs perspective we need Lennon back as soon as possible. He has been on fire this season and we really lack width without him playing.

I'm going to finish this post with the creation of another life rule:

NEVER BET ON AMERICAN FOOTBALL AGAIN YOU STUPID DEGEN FUCKWIT!

Anyway the Australian Open is on now so I'm going to bet on that instead.

Record Breakers

2010-01-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

The year is still very much in it's infancy but i'm already a massive fan of 2010!! I've already beaten a couple of my poker records and the best thing about it was i managed them both in one day. First my 'biggest pot won' record now stands at $2800. I decided to see if i could find a juicy $5/10 game on cake and i couldn't resist when i watched a game for about 15 hands and saw some fundamental errors from a few players and one guy stacking off retardedly light. The best thing was someone soon quit and i was first on the waiting list. Anyway the hand itself was kind of a late Christmas present. I open to $30 UTG with AA, button reg 3 bets t0 $110, tilting mongo ships for $750 and i obviously stick my $1K and change in the middle. The button tank calls AK and the mongo has 55; no sick otdraw and we have a new record. I quit when the idiot did and then realised i had beaten my best ever cash game day, +$4K. Obviously i'm hoping this is a record i will be breaking time and time again as i work my way up the cash game ladder.

On that subject i've decided to move up to $3/6 NLH full time. I've played a bit at this level and a bit of $5/10 also but this time i'm taking a 10 buy-in shot with no intention of moving down unless i lose the whole $6K. In general moving up in the past has been followed by a period of breaking even until i become a steady winner. I'm seeing it as a challenge and this has to be seen as a positive step. Personally i find poker just as much about the competition as about the money and this is the main reason i'm still in love with the game. My own game has come on a lot at $2/4 and i'm hoping i can maintain this self improvement as i work towards achieving my annual goals.

I'll post when i either lose the $6K or update my progress at the end of the month. At the moment i'm +$10K in January so let's all hope the good times continue!

A mediocre year

2010-01-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

We've reached that time again. The passing of one year and the transition into a new one. A good time for reflection, analysis, forward planning and hope.

All things considered i'm disappointed with 2009 from a professional perspective. Here is a quick review of my various results:

ONLINE CASH:

This was certainly where the vast majority of my 'work' hours were spent. I made $75K playing mostly 200 and 400nl, Hu and 6-max. I'm fairly content with this return but not over the moon. In all fairness i hardly played for 4 months of the year so the figure could certainly have been higher if i had managed more than a rather pathetic 250Kish hands which in poker terms isn't exactly high volume.

ONLINE TOURNIES:

I'm a little surprised that i actually has a losing year in online tournies but when you consider my volume this really was always going to be a possibility. I only managed around 40 tournies in an entire year which is obviously fairly laughable considering how profitable they are for me. Anyway i lost $5K.

LIVE CASH:

Only played 3 sessions all year and it was all quite low stakes. I made about $1k.

LIVE TOURNIES:

Oh dear!! Lost quite a lot of my own money in these bad boys and quite a lot of other peoples' as well. Lost approx $11K of my own money.

You don't have to be a genius to work out that gives me a +$60K 2009. The low point of my year was GUKPT Manchester where i played an awesome tourney, took the chip lead into the final and ended up finishing 8th. The highpoint has been the last two months online. I've been playing well, running good and have made just over $30K which has kind of saved my year from being a bag of shit. I'm also happy to report that i've improved as a player this year and this is something i'm obviously looking to continue with for as long as i'm playing for a living. I've also really worked hard on my Bankroll management and have never felt close to going broke at any point. I had to move back down to 200nl when i got back from travelling and even though i knew i could beat the higher limits i swallowed my pride and grinded hard.

Personally the last year has been fairly awesome. I'm just a really positive, happy person most of the time and i'm not one to take how lucky i am for granted. I have a great family, fantastic friends and a lifestyle that i just love, happy days!! I had an amazing time travelling with one of my best friends and also a great month in Vegas. Whenever i hit a low point with poker i just try and remind myself of these things and it serves as a great way for me to relax and stay positive. The year certainly ended with a bang with a little get together round our house. It was only about 30 people but i had a really good time and it was much better than going out for new years which tends to be an expensive anti-climax most of the time. Highlight of the night was our friend Bestie getting to drunk to stand by 8pm, getting naked and then being put to bed, i love that man!

Anyway that just about rounds up the year and the only thing to do now is look forward to 2010. Here are some goals that i'm shooting for:

Make $100K from online cash games.
Be beating $5/10 at a solid rate by the end of the year.
Make the final table of a major live event.
Win the WSOP main event.

I've also added a couple of rues that i will be trying to stick to:

No drinking the night before a live tournament.
No playing online before 5pm if i have been drinking heavily the night before.
No listening to music when playing live, (amazing how much you can miss).

My general plan for the year is to play quite a lot of online cash over the next 4 months. I'll be playing all of the GUKPT main events in this time but won't be playing live apart from that. By the end of April it should be a little warmer so i'll be coming out of hibernation. I'll be looking to play more live tournies and maybe some £5/10 live. I'll then be smashing up Vegas for 5 weeks in the summer and preying i can do better than last year. Break even one time!!! After the series i might do some travelling for a month but i'm not sure yet. The contract is up on the house in september and i'm almost certain i will not be staying in London. I'd love to live overseas but i'm the laziest man alive so this could be a real hassle to set up.

January tends to be a fairly shit month in general but i've never really minded it. I'm going to be getting plenty of sleep, drinking lots of tea and hopefully win lots of $; let the games begin!

Finishing strong

2009-12-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start off with a fairly obvious statement, 'there is nothing you can do to change the past'. This little nugget of information is particularly important for poker players. There is nothing i can do to change the decisions i've already made. All i can do is keep on learning from my mistakes and look forward to what really counts, the future.

This year has been a fairly disappointing one for me professionally. I'm going to look into facts, figures and reasons in my end of year blog but in the meantime let's just say that i'm looking forward to putting this year behind me and moving forward to 2010. That isn't to say that i haven't had a fun-filled, awesome year, i have, but from a poker perspective things could have obviously gone better.

The good news is that i'm finishing the year strong. I had my best ever month online in November winning $19K. I ran super hot obviously but i honestly think it was the best i've ever played online. I didn't tilt for more than 10 minutes the entire month and only played 2 sessions where i thought i wasn't playing close to my 'A' game. Ironically they were both sessions where i won over $1K. One of the most important lessons i've learnt this year is that just because you have a winning session it doesn't automatically mean you played well.

I also played my final live event of the year, the £3K GUKPT final at the Vic. For some reason i decided to play day 1A which only got 58 runners. I had a really strong table draw but ran really well in the first 3 levels, moving my 20K starting stack up to 80K. I basically just won all the big hands i played which is always nice; flopped a set of 9's v AK on a A9x and won a huge pot and then made a straight v's a set for the chiplead. Unfortunately i only ended the day with 46K thanks to losing QQ v 77 aip for 35K pot, KJ v J8 aip for 25K pot and 55 v AQ aip for 15K pot, fml!

Anyway i again got off to a great start on Day 2 winning KK v AK aip for 100K on like the 8th hand of the day. At that point i really though it could finally be the time for a big score. Then a couple of hands later i lose that 50K back again when i run AJ into JJ on a J10x with two diamonds. The guy was clearly on tilt from playing a hand terribly an orbit before but unfortunately for me he was tilting with top set!!

I then lose 1010 v A6 aip for 70K pot at 1K/2K and finally bust shipping A9 in and running into AK. On the whole i would say that on my 4 appearances on the tour this year i played decent once, really well twice and great in Manchester. I'm quite a bit down on live events this year but with so few hands played all i can do is keep sticking in the money and hope the fact that i play much better than 90% of all live fields, (apart from WSOPE and $25K wpt champ), can result in a nice payday soon.

Plan for December is just to grind as hard as i can and maintain my level of play from last month. If i can do that long term then i know this whole poker thing might just work out.

Running Hot

2009-11-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

I've made a conscious effort to try and play a lot more poker over the next few months and things have started rather well. I'm +$14K so far this month and obviously loving life at the moment. I'm running really good but playing a lot of great poker, staying really focused and not even looking like tilting at all.

Today was one of my best days of poker ever. I only played 1K hands of $2/4 but ran my nuts off and managed to book a +$3K day:

I know that this hot streak will have to end at some point but if i can maintain this level of play over the next 4-6 months i will be a very happy camper.

Along with playing more poker i've also been thinking about ways to improve my game and most importantly my profit. I'm playing less tables, shorter sessions and i'm even back watching vids on leggo. I've got some financial goals that i would like to hit before the end of February and at the moment i'm well on target.

Not much going on in my life outside of poker right now but for the rest of the cold winter i'm hoping this hot streak can keep me warm.

A few thoughts

2009-11-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything on my blog for a while so i thought it might be a good time for a cheeky update. I really want to be able to look back at this thing in the years to come and be proud that i stuck with it and maintained a high level of honesty throughout. Anyone that knows me will recognise that i joke around all the time and talk a lot of crap. One of the best things about keeping this page is that i always feels i can write down my true feelings about anything and everything and i really don't care who reads it.

I've now been back home for 6 weeks and on the whole i'm very happy to be back. As expected i had a fantastic time in Okehampton with the lads. My golf was pretty shocking and rather disappointingly i did end up with the much feared Wooden Spoon. My biggest frustration was that i actually started out playing well and thought i was hitting the ball fine. I then started to crumble on day 2 and eventually my putting really cost me. For some reason i've been missing a huge amount of short putts over the last 2 years and it's starting to piss me off. Atleast i really understand the meaning of the old saying, 'driving for show, putting for dough', the trip was an expensive one!! Still can't wait to get back next year and do it all again. The banter was fantastic and at the risk of blowing my own trumpet my drinking performance on the night out in Exeter was world class, i was shit hammered!! Just going to give a quick congrats to my hero Big Cheese for taking down the title for the second year in a row. His last round was superb and even though i don't think Ben is the best golf in the group his mental edge is huge and he is certainly the best at producing under pressure, (yes i do know how gay this is all sounding!).

Unfortunately i didn't play the WSOPE. I was really excited about it but the buy-in was huge and i couldn't quite manage to sell off enough of my action in time. I could have played it but it would have been risking far to much of my own money. Undoubtedly one of the best skills i have learnt as a poker player is bankroll management and i'm proud i was able to show that in this case. I did play the EPT though but things didn't go that well. I had a really fucking easy day 1 table and even though i was card dead most of the day i was able to go on a heater in the last level and move my starting stack of 30K up to 70K. I came back for day 2 full of confidence but i got a hard table and ran bad in big pots. The worst player on the table was running his nuts off and for some reason i was getting really frustrated by this. I was really harsh on him to his face but i'm not proud of how i acted and i actually regret my behaviour. I think it was a combination of things but overall live poker has been really hard on me this year and i think i just needed to let off some steam. I'm not making excuses though and i never want to behave like such a Juvenal moron ever again in a high profile event, i'll save it for the 10p/20p home games from now on. Anyways i busted when i re-shipped it all in with 23bb's with A10, he didn't take long before calling me with KK and once again i was left to deal with another failure in 2009.

I got staked for most of the EPT by my friend Kanu as gutshot decided i hadn't put enough work in to merit them sticking in the £5K. I think that the decision was a correct one as i have done very little for them but the whole situation is getting a bit annoying. I really can't be asked to do the stuff they want me to do but the guy running it is keen for me to still be involved. We'll have to see what happens on this one but as usual i'm not taking things to seriously.

My results online have been swingy but are certainly improving. Things got off to the worst possible start when i got home and i think i lost about$6K in the first few weeks. Since then things have been going much better and this has been aided with a couple of really spewy heads- up opponents that have been more than generous with their contributions to the Ed Roger foundation, happy days! I've set myself a target of how much money i want to make by the end of February and so far i'm off to a great start. I'm planning on grinding as hard as i can over the next few months and am trying to concentrate on maintaining a high level of play over long periods of time. My volume has been quite pathetic so far this year but i'm really looking to finishing with a bang.

Despite the increased volume i'm still obviously aware of the need for good balance in my life. I've been swimming and running a couple of times a week since my return home and am hoping i can stick with it. My diet however has been as crap as ever so this is defiantly something to work on. I've also got some books to read along with 24 season 3 and Dexter series 1 to keep me entertained. Doubt i'll blog again until the end of the year, lots of long hard grinding to do this winter.

Airports are boring!!

2009-09-11T01:54:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in the 6th hour of my 15 hour stay at Auckland International airport. We flew up from Christchurch this afternoon and got in at 4pm, our next flight to Hong Kong is at 6am tomorrow morning so we just decided to hang out here instead of going to a hotel. I have to say that airports really aren't that fun! The worst thing is that the computers here won't let me on any poker sites so i can't even grind out the time. My second option would be to get on the source but i'm feeling really groggy right now and the flight is sooooo early. On the up side they do have a number of high quality restaurants to keep me entertained. I've already had 2 Mcdonald's meals and a big plate of chicken noodles. I'm feeling a little full at the moment but i might be able to slip in one more meal before bedtime.
When we finally get to Hong Kong, (12 hour fucking flight!), we have about 30 hours to kill before our flight back to sunny London. Thankfully Juliet has some friends who used to live there so we have a few reccomendations about where to go and what to see etc.
In all honesty i'm looking forward to getting home. I've really enjoyed the last couple of months but there is a lot i'm starting to miss. I also have a ton of cool stuff coming up in the next few weeks that i'm looking forward to. Firstly our trip golf trip to Okehampton should be a lot of fun. I have hardly played this year so i'm really hoping i don't come last. The general banter and gambling should be up to it's high standard though so i'll have a great time even if i play crap.
I think we get back from golf on the 23rd and then i get to play WSOPE main event on the 26th, yipee!! I'vc never played this tourney but am looking forward to it. The structure is awesome and the competitor inside me is loving how tough the field is. In my opinion it's the strongest field on the current poker calender and you really need to play your ass off to go deep in this one, not much dead money out there. Despite this i still think that i can compete and am just hoping to run good for the first time in a tourney this year. Just in case your wondering i have 35% of myself.
After i ship the WSOPE i'm getting staked by gutshot for EPT London. This is obviously another big tourney on the poker circuit and again i'm very much looking forward to playing. Having hardly played recently i'm missing the game loads and can't wait to get right back in the deep end.
I was going to do a quick review of the best things i've done along with the books i have read and the films i've seen on my travels but i think i'll save those for my next blog. I really don't enjoy flying these days and the thought of spending 24 hours on a plane over the next few days is tilting me hard!

Life is good

2009-08-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i put up a blog. The main reason for this is that the main theme of this page is poker. I haven't played a great deal and therefore have limited things to report.

I'm well and truly over the disappointment of Las Vegas. Things went really badly for me out there and although i hate to admit it, i think that i could have played better. One of the hardest things to do is to play your best game all the time, no matter how your luck is. In retrospect i would have done a few things differently and there were certainly times where i played like a tilted Mongoloid.

Despite this i'm trying to take the positives from the experience. I'll certainly go back a better player next year and will be trying hard to play my best the whole way through. I'm also proud that even though i cashed for $0 my bankroll management was really good and i'm pretty much in the same fiancel shape as i was before the series.

As far as online poker goes things have been ok. I was on a $6K downswing in Australia which sucked donkey dick but thankfully i have won that all back now, yipee!! I'm not going to play again until i get back to London and then i'll be grinding hard for a few months. I'll be playing mostly $2/4 hu when i get home but i'm really hoping i can crush it for a while and take a shot at $5/10 by the end of the year.

My last piece of poker news is that i've changed my name on party for the first time in 4 years. I'm now playing under DRC0CKnBA11S which is a reference from my new favourite tv show, Eastbound and down.

Travelling has been a lot of fun so far. Juliet and I flew up to Cairns and then hired a camper van and drove all the way down the east coast. It was about 3000Km but we had 17 days so it only worked out to an average of 2 hours driving per day. The highlights were without doubt the sailing trip around the Whitsundays, the chicken nugget challenge straight afterwards and the smash up in Byron bay. We had a really good group of people on our sailing trip which made it a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed Scuba diving on the great barrier reef and would recommend it to anyone. Even though it's winter over here the weather has still been great, sunny and clear most days so nothing to complain about on that front.

We went out for my Birthday last night which was fun. We went to this karaoke bar with a load of my sisters friends from work, after that we went to a cool bar but having consumed a ton of alcohol my sister was soon removed. She then proceeded to chuck up in the cab on the way home, thankfully he only charged us $30. In London that could have been a lot worse. We ended up getting home very early but i still had a fun night all the same. It did make me miss home a bit though, especially my girlfriend and all the lads. Think one of the main things that i've taken from this trip is that life is much more about people than places. You can have a good time anywhere as long as your with the right people.

Got a flight to New Zealand tomorrow morning at some ridiculous hour. I'm really looking forward to heading over there because i've heard a lot of great things about the place. My sister is coming with us for the first week and that should be fun. We're going Skiing for the first week and then have 2 weeks to make our was up to the North Island before we fly to Hong Kong on the 12th of September. We have a night there and then back home on the 14th. Life is good.

First part done

2009-07-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

The good news is that i have made day 2 in the WSOP main event, yipeee!!! Thought it might be a good idea to write up a quick update before day 2 just explaining a few hands.

I basically ran like shit for the first 3 levels, thankfully we started with 30,000 chips and the levels were 50/100, 100/200 and 150/300. If your going to run bad then this is obviously a good time to do it. The first decent sized pot was at 50/100 with AK off (as Cashy will tell anyone i do not play this hand well); i raised to 275 utg +1 and get 3 callers. Flop came A J 6 with 2 hearts, bb checks as do i and the dude in middle position, the button bets 600 which folds out the other two guys and i call. The turn is a 5 and i check call a bet of 1800. River is a 6 which does not complete the flush, i check call a bet 4000 and he shows 65, good start. I didn't love his bet on the river but i think having massively underrepresented my hand i couldn't really fold. I'm repping KK or QQ really well and would expect him to bet a lot of missed draws and bet worse aces on the river for value. I spent the rest of the first level folding, raised AQ, got 3 bet fairly big and mucked pre and gave up on Q3 of spades when i raised and got 3 callers then missed the flop. The table was fairly solid and noone was playing that badly, the young guy on my left ran super hot and seemed to play well. He was opening quite a few hands but instead of getting involved in a pointless lag war in the first level i hust folded the crap i was being dealt, ended the level with 24.5K stack thanks to winning a few small pots at the end.

The second level also failed to go as planned. I felt i had a fairly good feel for the table at this point so i played a few more hands but unfortunately my opponents were making a lot of hands against me and i was being shutdown fairly early. The biggest pot i played was with 75 of clubs when it got folded round to the cut off who raised to 600, i made it 1700 from the sb and he snap called. He seemed fairly nervous and not that great so at this point i was sure he had 99-JJ or AQ, maybe AJ suited at a push. so the flop came 442 and i bet 3000, he called without thinking and now i know he has a decent sized overpair and is calling quickly to actually avoid thinking about the hand. Turn was a 3 giving me a straight draw and i check folded when he bet 5K, at the time i was close to check shoving but i really felt like he would have cry called, somehow managed to convince myself that i have a huge edge in this tournament and shoving into an obvious overpair would be fairly retarded. I ended the level with 19.5K.

The third level saw me pick up some big hands, the bad news was the other players were picking up bigger ones. Twice i raised QQ, got called and check folded an A K x flop. I also raised AQ and folded to a 3-bet and JJ and folded to a 3-bet, both times i felt like they were super strong and both times i was shown KK. Obviously by this point i was steaming a little, nothing was going my way and i felt like a day 1 Knockout was almost inevitable, i then pick up the Ant Yousefian hand 22 and my spirits lift. UTG raises to 800 i call on the button as does the bb. The flop comes with 45Q 2 spades and we check through. The turn is the Q of spades and after the bb check the original raiser bet 1200. I felt he was super weak here and almost defiantly had a pair between 66-JJ or even ace high so i raise to 3600, he calls. The river was the 3 of spades and he checks fairly fast. I felt like i simply needed to win this hand and bet 7000, leaving myself with 7.5K if called. After a horrible 3 minutes he folded, thankfully i had my i've got the nuts face on. This was the only decent sized pot that i won in the first 3 levels and spent the next 30 mins losing a couple of thousand back, finished the level with 24K.

Shortly into the fourth and final level i was moved table and i caught the hot streak that i felt my patience deserved. I managed to win a few pots without showdown and then i raise to 825 UTG playing 150/300/25. The cut off called, as did the button and the bb. Flop hit KJ3 with 2 hearts and i c-bet 1725, the Co folded and the button called, bb folded. Turn was a blank 6 and i decided to barrel thinking that he would fold anything that wasn't a king or better and i bet 3775, he called and the river came another blank 7. I checked and after a while of thinking he checked back, he had Q9 of hearts and i won a big pot with ace high, putting me up over 35K. He was thinking of shoving the river for 11K and the honest truth is my instinct was to call and i tend to always go with my instinct. I didn't think he would bet one pair for value in that spot and thought he would raise 2 pair on the flop, really thought he had Q10 off or a worse flush draw. We will never know if i would have called but i'm 90% sure i would have done. Anyway shortly after this i busted the same gut with AQ v 1010 when i raised and after 1 guy called he re-shoved for 8K total, thought he could have a ton of hands in that spot and i was surprised he was that strong, anyway i won a flip for the first time at the 2009 WSOP. Next i called a bet from the sb with QQ after a guy in mp raised to 1200, (felt he was super strong pre). Flop came Q67 2 flush and he bet 2k after i checked, i then made it 6K and he shoved for 10K more, snapppppppppppppppp!! He showed AA and i won. After that was taking hands for fun, loads of people trying to make day 2 and no one else any good on my table so i ran things for the last half an hour, chipping up all over the place. I also got a bit of coverage from ESPN so would be good to make the tv coverage this year, one time. Ended the day with 71K and about 3 double vodka red bulls inside me. This Aussie on my table thought it would be a good idea to get on it and i wasn't in the mood to turn down $1 drinks. Roll on day 2.

Half empty of half full

2009-06-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

There are two ways that i can look ay my current situation: 1) I havn't cashed in a single tourney, I'm spewing off way to much money on shit, I'm having a losing month. 2) I havn't played that many tournies, the main event is coming up, i still have positive expectation in any tourney or any cash game i'm rolled for.

As far as my life outlook goes i think it has to be the second option. I've been running bad in Vegas but i really havn't played that many hands yet and am still hoping that things can turn around in the upcoming weeks. I'm playing a $1500 on saturday and then anothr one on monday so they are my last chance for a decent score before the main event. In the last bracelet event i played things went a little better. I made the dinner break and managed to get up to 18K at one point from the 4.5K starting stacks. Things went badly from here however and i eventually got cold decked before running a shortstack shove into KK. I also played a $330 deepstack at the venetian yesterday and got a guy to stick 130 bb's in pre with AQ v's my AK, flop K 7 3, turn Q, river Q, horrible way to lose but life moves on.

Life in the house is still fun, my diet has been shocking so far on this trip but this was to be expected. Hope to eat better and exercise a bit more when in Australia. Started playing heads up online a bit more and am finding it quite exciting. Think playing every hand certainly suits my style but havn't run that well so breaking even at the moment.

Having Fun

2009-06-17T20:56:00.000-07:00

So the bad news is that the last tournament went worst than the first one. I started out really well, playing fast and making a few hands early to get up to 7K from my 4.5K starting stack. From then on however everything went wrong. I ran AA into 86 on a 88x board and lost a bit then fired 3 barrels with J5 on a JJ104K board. Was called all the way down to be shown Q9, nice call on the turn sir!! Finally i ran KQ into AQ on a on a queen high flop before shoving a shortstack 56 into A9, oh well. The good news is that i'm happy with every decision that i have made so far in the two tournaments, sometimes it just isn't meant to be. I'm playing another $2K event tomorrow so hope that one goes well and i can have a deep run.

In other news everything in the house is fine. Just spending a lot of time chilling playing a massive pool tournament and drinking lots of beer. Played golf today and lost $300 on silly betting but still had fun. Didn't play great on the front nine but to my great suprise found some of my best form on the back to shoot 42 which was +7. I also hit 4 or 5 shots with my Sw that were fucking awesome so happy with that.

Ouch!!

2009-06-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Just busted out of my first event, the $2K NLH. Had a fairly tight table and not much happened in the first 2 levels until right at the end when i got in 2400 playing 50/100 against a shortstack with J10. He hit the flop and after that was down to 3.5K from my 6K starting stack. Thankfully i doubled soon after this when i slowplayed AA and then got it in v JJ on a 10 high flop. Chipped up after this hand to 10K before running QQ into a shortstacks KK.
My bustout hand was pretty sick. Playing 100/200/25 a bigstack who had been play quite loose but very badly opened UTG to 600. Three players called and when i looked down at KQ on the button decided it was a good spot to squeeze and made it 2600 total. UTG called and the rest folded, we saw a J108 board and he put me in for my last 5400. I called and he showed up for AQ which was one of the worst hands i could see and pretty terible play from him. Anyway i missed and he ships the 18K pot with ace high.
$1500 tomorrow so hope to go better in that one.

Greetings from Las Vegas

2009-06-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm very aroused!!! Landed here in Las Vegas yesterday and can't wait to get playing my first wsop event of 2009.

As usual the flight was shit. I'm not a great flyer at the best of times but being on my own and the bad turbulence made it a bit of a nightmare. I'm also a really moody flyer which makes it difficult to enjoy the entertainment. I watched Milk and Valkyrie which were both quite good but i'm sure i would have enjoyed them a lot more if the screen was bigger, sound was better and i wasn't constantly thinking about plunging to my death from 30 thousand feet.

Moving quickly on, the house is awesome. Five double rooms, A+ Pool table and a really nice swimming pool outside. The weather is ideal. It's hot but not as crazy as last year so i spent yesterday outside just lapping up the sun and trying my best to stay awake. I'm already -$60 on the pool table playing $20 a rack but hoping i can improve on my 2-5 record throughout the holiday.

One good thing that has come out of my current lifestyle is the ability to deal with jetlag. Despite only getting 3 hours sleep on the friday and not sleeping on the plane, i was able to stay up till 10pm saturday night, (which would be 6am UK time). I was then able to sleep 9 hours and get up at 7am this morning. My first event is tomorrow at noon so the plan is to stay up till midnight tonight, get another 9 hours and then get to work. I'll be writing tourney reports on my gutshot blog as well as on this one. The only difference is on this blog i will be writing tons of random crap as well. If you only really care about the poker side of things just click on the link from one of my previous posts and that will take you to my gutshot blog.

Before i go i just want to say that Newquay was epic!! Although we didn't see more than 5 hours of sun in 4 days the drinking and general banter was fantastic and the dressing up was hilarious. My body has just about got over it but drinking that amount in four days is quite a challenge and probably not a good idea. Personal highlights include the all round performance of Michael Alp, the dressing up of big tone, Brad Larks 10/10 ipod and Tom 'the ranger' Parkinson asking if he can do a girl up the arse that he had met 2 days before, kids these days!!

A few thoughts

2009-05-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

It's 1.40am, i can't sleep and i'm not in the mood to play any poker. I thought it was time for a blog entry.

This month has been up and down so far but i've only played about 8K hands, time will tell if it's a good one or not. I'm going home this weekend so planning on playing a lot this week and hope to reach my rather modest aim as far as how much $ i want to make before i head to Vegas. I want to take about $7K over with me but the money i leave behind is more important than the money i take; (not sure if that made any sense). Anyway if the worst case scenario occurs and i fail to cash in a single wsop event i want to make sure that i come back to a healthy role and not have to worry about grinding to hard or even think about going broke and getting one of those job things i'm always hearing about.

I've mentioned a lot in previous posts about how important i think maintaining a balance in your life is. A lot of poker players simply get addicted and lose focus on other aspects of there life, becoming increasingly consumed by greed and the desire for wealth. I want to become a successful poker player, i want to be respected and i want to make a lot of money from the game but those aims should never be achieved at the expense of my friends and family; nor should they come about through me changing as a person. I'm proud of who i am and think for the time being i have a really good balance in my life. One guy who seems to sum up these thoughts is a player called Hoss_TBF; he plays the very highest limits but at the same time seems a really down to earth guy who has a lot of good things going in his life outside a very successful poker career:

http://hoss-tbf.livejournal.com/

His blog is a really good read and is one that i've been following for a while now, would give away my right arm if i could get where he is within the next 3 years.

Think i might be ready for bed now, will blog before i go to Vegas at some point.

new post at last

2009-04-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

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:

http://www.gutshot.com/bforum/blog.php?u=21969

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.

Grinding away

2009-02-28T17:56:00.001-08:00

As you can see from the graph above february wasn't quite as successful as January in terms of winnings or consistency. I ended up making $5.7K over nearly 45K hands but after getting out the blocks like a greyhound i ended up breaking even for a long period; truth be told i'm a little disappointed.
Two things that i am happy about are my attitude and the the fact that i increased my volume, i'm playing a fair bit these days and still enjoying the challenge of 6 max. I constantly tried new things when breaking even, my playing style, the number of tables i was playing etc but looking through the hands i'm still tilting to often and still making to many mistakes. Having said that i ran pretty badly at times and i think a couple of months ago i may have even have had a losing month with the cards i was dealt because at times it was just brutal. Still i'm happy to have had another winning month and badly want to win $10K in March, i'm still going to be playing mostly $1/$2 this month but i have the bankroll for 2/4 and even 3/6 so if i can get up on the month early i may well look to stop being a fairy boy and move up sooner rather than later.
My live poker was fairly limited in february as it was bloody cold outside and leaving the flat is a pain in the arse. Joe and i went back up to Nottingham to once again donate to the monthly £300 two day event at Dusk till Dawn, the structure of the tourney is excellent and most of the players are terrible but as usual i was unable to take advantage of these important facts. I thought i played decent again but as far as live poker goes if gutshot/the international is my party poker then DTD is without doubt my fulltiltpoker.net! It just seemed like in every big hand i played it was me facing the big decision to call or fold, i never had the hand that was value betting/ bluffing it was always does he have my strong hand beat? I made some big folds and one great call but i felt a bit like Negraneu on high stakes poker constantly facing bets, AK when it came 99k9x obviously he has called my raise with 97 off or AA on a 10 9 6 3 2 rainbow having played the hand passive and he shows up with 66. In the end i busted in the fourth level, i didn't give up this time but no matter how bad the opposition are in these things to make a run in a tournament you need a little luck along the way.
My second live trip of the month was the fourth annual Reading series of poker last weekend. The fun started at big cheese's place on thursday night with a darts tournament; i once again scored ok but my inability to hit a double resulted in an early exit with Ben running out the eventual winner with a 3-2 victory of Futon Mike in the final. From there we hit the golf course on friday morning and to my great surprise i actually played well. All in all it was one of the most enjoyable rounds of my life, the weather was great and the other 3 guys i played with (Ben, Liam and Cashy) all had good rounds so the standard was fairly high. Liam took down the 7 man stableford competition with 46 points (good for £70) and i ended up in 3rd with 36. I also won £15 off cheese in sidebets and £60 (main event buy in) off cashy by beating him by 1 shot and another £10 for beating cashy and big cheese at doubles playing with Liam 'the bandit' Kelly. Having played so poorly in SA it was nice to play some solid golf and am now looking forward to my next game.
After golf we headed back to the hotel to check in and grab a shower before the £20 IHO comp that evening. It was great to see some of the lads from uni again and spent much more time drinking and fucking about than playing to seriously. It was no surprise that i busted after a couple of hours and quickly increased my consumption of alcohol to catch up with the few lads that managed to bust before me. Soon most of us were busto and headed straight down to spoons to meet up with even more people and soon it was 15 lads round a table getting well and truely on it; it isn't to hard to guess what happened next. Anyway after we were removed from the premises we soon bundled into bar risa and quickly hit the dance floor, i was off my face by this time and remember a lot of dancing and a lot of hugging other pissed up sweaty men but not a lot else; the night was rounded off by the group splitting; half into the chicken shop and half into the srtipclub, for once i was in the cool half off the group and soon paid up £20 for a lovely young lady to rub her melons in my innocent face.
One hangover later and minus the big cheese (worst man with a hangover ever!) we got ready for day 1 of the RSOP main event. Long story short we started on 12K i had an annoyingly tough table but was determined to give a decent account of myself. I didn't do a whole lot throughout the day but ended up on 28K having played some super solid poker and for once no huge bluffs. After this we were soon in the union and well and truly on it. It was cool to go back to the union and all in all i think we all had a good night, a personal highlight for me was organising a 5 on 5 boatrace in the middle of mojos, god i miss being a student! Day 2 wasn't a very long one for me as i soon lost 10K with J9 of hearts when it came 972 v's KK then lost AJ of spades v Q8 when it came Q65, 2 spades. I won a few small pots to get me back up to18Kish but then ran JJ into Jack 'the lemons' KK playing 400/800 oh well at least i played good. Overall it was a top quality weekend but i don't think we will be going back next year, even though Uni was the best 3 years of my life i think that it's time to move on and Newquay will be are last student trip, can't wait to go out with a bang!!
Away from Poker the 4 of us are moving round the corner so Mike can get his own room finally and not have to live in the lounge. The move is at the start of April and shouldn't effect me much at all really, we will still be in the same complex and still have full access to the awesome facilities that this place has. On that topic i've been such a lazy shit recently, couldn't have been to the gym more than twice last month, simply shocking! Also i've booked my trip to Australia and New Zealand for the middle of July until the middle of September. Jambon has sorted a house for Las Vegas but i need to book my flights at some point this month and then i can think about what events i want to play, one time let me run good!
Anyway think that post brings me up to date quite well. The International is having a festival next week and i'm planning on playing the £500 main event along with a couple of the side events which should be good fun. High Stakes season 5 is starting soon and that should be fucking awesome as usual, hope to look forward to another winning month.

Confident start to the year

2009-02-02T17:16:00.000-08:00

Thankfully this year has got off to a solid start. I played just under 35K hands of 6max online and despite a poor start (fucking jet lag!!), i ended up winning just over $8K. I can't of played more than 5 tournaments online and truth be told i'm not missing them a great deal; 6 handed cash games are making me a better player and are providing a steadier income. I'm still a big fan of tournaments and in my own opinion still a much better tourney player but for the next few months i'm going to be playing mostly online cash.
I'm also pleased to report that my only two live poker outings of the month have both been a relative success. I've played a £100 and a £300 comp at the international and made the final table on both finishing 7th and 5th respectively. Although making both final tables is showing good form obviously i'm disappointed to have placed so poorly each time; still a £2000 profit isn't a terrible return for a couple of nights work. I'm probably going to head to Nottingham again next weekend to take on those idiots from Dusk till Dawn for the monthly £300, will hope to run better and play better than on my last two outings to the midlands.
Away from poker life is still pretty sweet. We're in the process of sorting out an extension on our current contract on the flat but at the moment things are still up in the air. I'm going to be living in Vegas for a month or so from the start of June until the end of the WSOP. I haven't spoken to Jambon yet about a staking deal but i'm hoping to play 3-5 side events along with the main and will be trying to pay about 1/3 of each entry fee, ship the bracelet one time etc etc. When i get back from vegas i'm planning on doing about 6 weeks of travelling round Australia with my friend Juliet and hopefully with some skiing in New Zealand thrown in as well. After that it's Oakhampton and then who knows, lots can happen before then but for now life is good. I've decided to try and make the blog a monthly thing excluding big occasions (deep run in the main event etc) so anyone out there following this it probably wont be updated until the start of march. One more final exciting thing to look forward to is the RSOP III which is in a couple of weeks, the poker should be fun but the piss up, golf and banter will no doubt be better.

Bring on 2009

2009-01-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

I got back from South Africa a few days ago and as expected i had a really good time. There were 16 of us spread over 3 houses with everyone sharing a swimming pool and 3 golf courses and tennis courts within a 10 minuet drive. As i'm used to a incredibly relaxed lifestyle it certainly wasn't to hard for me to get back into holiday mode and i'm glad to report the whole family got on well and i've even started likeing some of my cousins as they get older and less annoying. Most days consisted of getting up about 9am (big shock) and then going to play golf or going to the beach and then just chill out in the afternoon reading, swimming and playing the awesome game that is clappy clap. This was followed by a really good meal, was so nice to eat well for 2 weeks in a row; washed down with a few nice beers and usually a game of trivial pursuit, shame the game was 25 years old as i was usually reduced to 2 or 3 correct answers a game.
Unfortunately despite getting in 6 rounds of golf in good conditions i was unable to put in a strong round. I played some decent golf in spells but i lost so many balls that it made a good score difficult. On the plus side i was able to beat my younger cousin at tennis twice, much to his annoyance. I'm also sure playing singles in 25 degree heat will be good for my fitness even if at the time it made me feel like a heart attack was inevitable.
I think the main plus side of the holiday is that i've come home mentally refreshed and i really want to play poker which is always a good sign. This excitement was probably the reason that i played a 5 hour 200 nl session as soon as i got back to the flat despite having slept for only 1 hour on the flight, woops. Obviously being stuck $1500 for the year sucked pretty hard but thankfully i managed to win it all back over the last few days and am now +$400 on the year, go me!! As far as plans for the year go i'm not exactly sure what i'm going to do. Newquay in June, Vegas in June/July and Oakhampton in September are all a lock but my sister is moving out to Australia in a few weeks and i would quite like to go and see her and maybe visit New Zealand or Thailand whilst i'm down there, have to wait and see. As for poker targets i'm still keen to work on my 6 max game over the next few months and try and play 30 hour weeks if i can. $100K would be a great amount to win in 2009 but if it doesn't happen then so be it, right now i'm looking forwards to my first full year as a poker pro and enjoying my life as much as possible.

Stuck in a moment

2008-12-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged for a while and although the reason behind this can usually be explained by a bad run at the tables in this instance this is not the case. Things are going fine but for a while i just felt like i was stuck in a bit of a rut and didn't really feel like expressing the negative emotions that i was feeling.

The way that i spend my life is certainly unusual and although i wouldn't trade it for anything else, like all things there are downsides to go with the positives. Sometimes i get bored or frustrated and one of the things that bothers me the most is my selfish nature and the whole moral question of gambling for a living. I try and remind myself that i play for my own enjoyment but it can be hard to get your head round the fact that i make a living out of other people losing money. This feeling is also heightened in cash games where you can obviously take more off individuals than in tournaments. Still what's great about poker is that it's a game of skill and if someone wants to get better and turn themselves into a winning player then there is a wealth of information out there to help them do that.

Wow, when i started writing this i had literally no idea what i was going to say so i guess all of the above is the truth, even if it is a bit of a rant.

Online Report:

Since my last post my online poker addiction has brought mixed success. In tournaments i've pretty much being having to take it hard and fast from everyone out there. Full tilt poker officially hates me, every time i log onto there site i'm sure administration is thinking of a fun way to bust me out, hmmmmmmmmm set on set, flush v flush, KK v AA or shall we just do the usual where i get my money in as a 3/1 favourite and win about 5% of the time. The field are bigger and better and my volume hasn't been great as i refuse to play low stakes MTT's but having to constantly ship money to my neteller account and then to my full tilt account is not much fun at all. Also with the $ getting stronger against the £ having to ship money the other way is a real kick in the nads. As for party tournaments things have been a little break even for my liking but i'm not to worried as i have an ROI for 2008 of 148% and have won a rather impressive $47,824 this year without even having a big score. Those morons have paid for my right to sleep till 2pm and to spend £40 a week on takeaways and to go out and get pissed whenever the hell i want, long may this continue!! Just looking at my OPR stats i also have got a lot better at closing out tournies with 8 wins from 25 final tables in 08. Seeing as all the money is on the final table this is something that i feel extremely positive about, final tables are my bag baby, just wish i could make a few more of them.

Ok so brag over onto cash games, monthly graph:

As you can see things were a bit shit for a while but am currently up about $2500 which is coolio. More importantly i think that i've learnt a lot about 6 max and my game is going from strength to strength, just wish i had been learning 6 max cash 2 years ago and then i might be a $10/20 reg like Jambon and be smashing it up. Overall i'm up about $9K since the end of October which is a good start all things considered. The exciting thing is i still have a shitload to learn and i'm really enjoying the game at the moment, my hand reading skills have always been my best skill and if i can avoid tilting 2009 could be a big year for me in the world of online cash.

Live Report

After my last rather disappointing trip to DTD i decided to head back up there at the start of this month to play the £1K annual event. The structure was awesome, same as the WSOP main event and obviously i was hugely confident in doing well. My starting table was fine and in general quite tight and easy to control, i was playing fast but not crazy and got a really nice double up in the second level with KK v AQ on a AKx flop. To be honest i think my style just confused the guy, i was raising a lot pre but as usual was trying to control the size of pots, bluff dry boards and extract value where i could but in his simple mind maybe he was thinking i was a maniac and top pair was the nuts. Unfortunately for me that hand was as good as it got as i busted in the fourth level. It wasn't a case of one cold deck or one bad bluff it was just simply nothing went right. Every bluff failed and every good hand lost, i then lost 15K with AQ v 1010 on a AJx board when he made trips on the river, what made it worse was he was fat, welsh and shit. After the early double i thought the chance of me not making day 2 was about 20/1 but the experience taught me that sometimes it just isn't to be. I'm proud that even though i was a complaining little bitch i still don't regret a single decision that i made and i'm looking forward to playing as many live deepstacks as i can, without doubt the greatest form of poker.

Surprisingly i haven't mentioned already that i'm flying out to South Africa tomorrow for Christmas and new year. I'm going with my mum, dad, sister, aunty, uncle and two cousins and we're meeting up with the rest of mum side, who live over there. It should be a lot of fun and i'm kind of glad that i wont get to play poker for a while so i can take a break and reflect on a few things in general. We get back on the 5th i think so i'm planning on doing a blog then which will be all about what i hope to achieve in 2009, i've been saying for a while that i plan on winning the WSOP main event in that year so will have to make that goal number 1.

Graph

2008-11-20T02:47:00.000-08:00

It took me a while to work out how to upload this as i'm that retarded.If the numbers are unclear just click on the graph, It catches the downswing beautifully and the long grind back to former glory. I'm putting a few more hours in of late and i hope it pays off with continued success, graphs are fun.

6 Max swings

2008-11-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Not played a whole lot of tournies this month but instead have been working on improving my 6 max cash game. To aid me i have been using a trial version of poker tracker 3 but have recently purchased holdem manager which apparently is in some way better, i'm not sure how, truth be told i'm such a retard that even installing it is proving to be a little difficult at the moment. Anyway so far i've had mixed success, I'm up $3.7K since i started playing toward the end of October and $1.4K of that is this month. I was up a shitload more than that but had two disaster days where i lost $3K and most of that money was my fault. I ran pretty bad but instead of just stopping i started tilting and jerking off buy-ins all over the place, that was a good couple of days, lol.
Overall i would say that i'm happy with how things are going, i started off running really well and most of my decision making has been quite sound. The main thing to work on is defiantly finding a way to avoid tilting because even if your running badly the players at 0.5/1 and 1/2 are so bad that you can still find ways to win even when the cards aren't negotiating. The main thing that has improved my game has been watching some videos on leggopoker.com, not so much copying what these guys are doing but just seeing what there thinking about during hands and being able to logically justify your actions. I know i'm playing crap when i'll make a bad call or a shit bluff without thinking about it, i'll then go through the hand and just be like, why the fuck did i do that?; thankfully these hands are becoming a lot less frequent. I'm still making a load of mistakes but at least now i'm recognising them and this is the first step to stopping them altogether.
Saved a few hands that i thought were cool/interesting:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3439019

That was a nice turn card and always nice to 3 bet the 75 soooooooooted!!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3439027

This hand is a classic example of people playing like total retards, his line in the hand is simply awful. Ship his 120 x.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3439026

Sick beat on this one and nothing i can do obviously this worst thing is even if the river blanks you know he'll just call all three barrels with top pair 3 kicker.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3439025

Another mong donk! when he bet the river i was just confused as hell because it makes no sense at all, the stacks were so deep pre which made it fun.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3439022

Finally i nice call by me.

So i'm planning on playing another 10K hands or so this month and obviously a few more tournies but nothing to excessive. In life away from poker 6 of us are heading back to Kent this weekend for a game of golf and a piss up in maidstone. We're also doing a combined 'sports' event on the following; golf, pool, pingpong, bowling, darts and tiger woods 09. I'm not sure how i'll get on but am quietly confident as i'm one of the best at bowling and ping pong and am the man to beat on tiger woods, should be a fucking good laugh! Think i'll play a heavy schedule on sunday but i might be a bit hungover so have to wait and see.

DTD trip report and crushing 100nlh.

2008-11-04T19:12:00.000-08:00

My trip to Nottingham brought mixed success, Unfortunately i was unable to cash in either of the tournament that i played but thankfully i was able to win both of my buy-ins back playing cash games. On the surface this may seem like a bit of a waste of time but overall i had some fun and it was good to get out of the flat for a few days.
I left London quite early friday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised how quickly it took me to get to leicester, where i was staying with my friend Joe. After dropping my bag off at his student accommodation (nice spacious room but classically dirty communal areas), we jumped on the trains to notts and got there in plenty of time to play the £100 comp at 8pm. The structure was ok (5K in chips and 30 min levels) but i found myself a little bit bored and in a childish mood surrounded by mostly middle aged men. So in a moment of inspiration i decided to start drinking, 6 bottles of Corona later and i'm all cheered up.
Not a great deal happened in the first few hours as i had very few hands and very few spots to take advantage of the relatively poor standard of play. Soon we were playing 300/600 and i only had 7K, one poorly timed shove (running J8 sooooooooooooted in to AA) and after the monster suckout i'm up and running. I then find AK v AJ at 400/800 and by the start of the 600/1200 level there are 22 left from 90 and i'm one of the chipleaders with 35K. From this spot i'm crazy confident to make the final as i have a huge amount of experience with this stack playing these blinds but alas it was not meant to be. First i get 16K in with 88 v QJ on a 10 6 2 board having made a very good call he hits a queen on the river then i get my last 18K in 3 betting a lag with 66 v AJ when he raises the button, gg me.
So the first tourney was a bit of a nightmare but this was soon behind me by 6am as Joe and i returned to leicester after a lengthy cash game session of PLO and NLH. I won £350 but felt a bit rough by the end of the night and even by the time we returned for the £330 the next day i could think of thousands of places i would rather have been.
Obviously mood is an important factor in poker. When you really want to play your focus is there and inevitably your decision making is improved. Think of the total opposite mood and for some unknown reason this is the one i found myself in on saturday, as a result my play was shocking. I played some of the worst poker that i ever have and nothing went right at all. Every bluff failed and every decent hand was outdrawn and the worst thing was the standard on my table was laughable, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a £5 comp not a £330 one, people were limping in 80% of hands, limp calling 7x the blind raises with 10 5 sooted, cold calling 3 bets with 56 and my favourite gentlemen liked to min raise from the small blind after the obvious 5-6 limpers. The tourney has such a great structure and the general standard is so poor that i would be willing to stake anyone i know who knows the first thing about the game, simply shocking.
Anyway that's the end of my little rant, i busted at the end of level 2 and Joe busted shortly before. We played a lttle bit more round of each and i won again winning a big pot in PLO when it came 963 with me holding 8765 v 99xx. The other guy was a bit of a rock/station so i even waited till i hit the straight because he was so bad that he had to have 99 and nothing else, nice 5 on the river, ship ship.
I got back on sunday and played the full tilt $750K gtd finishing 160th for another frustrating deep/annoying run on a weekly major title and last night i came 30th in the $100 + 1 rebuy + 1 add-on with 27 getting paid having lost AJ V J10 for a top 5 chip stack, nice to see i'm still running like a retard on that site. Anyway i'm still of to a good start this month thanks to being +$3K already playing cash. 100nl is full of morons and thought i'd post a few examples:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3408032

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3408032

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3408032

I've moved up to 200nl ahead of planned and things have gone very well so far. I'm still watching a lot on leggo poker and this is really helping with my though process during hands. The one obvious major difference in mindset between cash and tourneys is going from how do i make sure i survive? to how do i extract maximum value? I'm working hard and so far have only had 1 tilting session, apart from that i'm happy with my game and running very hot v the right players.
In other news i'm still feeling a bit lazy but have managed to get half way through freakenomics which is a very interesting book, it's mentally demanding but certainly changes the way that statistical data can be analysed and explores a lot of the topics that i myself find quite intriguing, i.e nature v nurture and individual human greed. Finished prison break series 1, fucking awesome and i'm now onto series 2 which my friends have give mixed reviews. Going to see Russel Howard on friday which should be cool then out on the piss with a few of the boys from home. Not sure when i'll blog next but for now the goal is simple, another solid $10K month.

Come on you Spurs.

2008-10-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to have tickets to the Arsenal V Spurs game last night and as i'm sure any football fan would already know, it turned out to be an absolute classic! To come back from 4-2 down with 89 minutes played and get a point away from home was an awesome result for us and i'm proud to say that i was there. The only problem was that i was in the home end so obviously i had to keep my celebrations to a minimum and do most of my celebrating in my head. Overall i thought that it was a bit of a lucky result, Arsenal dominated the game for long periods and when theo got the ball i was shitting myself because his pace is electric and he played really well. Having said that Spurs stuck in the match and scored 2 great goals, David Bentley you hero! As far as the new manager goes i think that it's a decision that had to be made, Ramos finally learns English and gets fired, i guess that's football. Still it looks like Harry has had a immediate effect and i'm sure that come Christmas we'll be safe in mid table and can hope to push up into the top half in the new year, we've always been a cup side anyway, lol.
On a personal note not a great deal has happened since my last post, i've been a lazy lazy fucker and most have my time has been spent wanking, sleeping and watching prison break series 1; 10/10. Having set out with such hope at the start of month to try and be fairly productive i have failed miserably. I've had somewhere between 8 and 10 takeaways, been for 6 swims and been to the gym a pathetic 4 times. Despite theses short-Cummings i have managed to achieve 1 of my for monthly goals by racking up over 100 Mtt's. My results have been mixed and have continued on from the same trend as before, do well on party and suck balls on full tilt. I lost $5K this month on ftp but thanks to 3 decent scores on party i won about $14K on that site and am +$9K on the month, this has also been aided by the dollar getting stronger so it converts to around £5.5K and the best thing is its all tax free obviously. Tournaments have always been stronger for me than cash games but seeing how much some of my friends have made playing cash has urged me to take closer interest. I've downloaded poker tracker 3 and poker hud and have been working hard on my 6 max cash game. I've only been playing 4 tables of $0.5/1 but the software is helping a lot with game selection and i'm watching a lot of videos on leggo poker to try and improve. Although i still have tons to learn i've made a good start and am about $1.5K up this week, although i have the bankroll to play 3/6 i'm more than happy to start playing low and just try and improve enough to crush theses games, planing to move up to $1/2 at the start of December but i wont be doing that until i clear $5K at the lower level first.
My big news is that for the first time in over a month i will be leaving London! Scary! I'm going up to Nottingham tomorrow to play some live tournies, the first at 8pm is a £100 Freeze and the next is a two day £330 deepstack running on saturday and sunday. The structure of the two day comp is fairly decent so i should have a fairly big edge, i have no idea how many runners to expect but would be disappointed with anything under 60. Will do a full write up when i return to sunny London and i might set a few more realistic goals for the month we call November.

A tale of two sites.

2008-10-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Just gonna start by saying that this is my 50th post, when i started writing this blog over a year ago now i thought it may well be another short term project that i ultimately got bored with and gave up on. Despite these immediate concerns however i'm very pleased that i've been able to maintain the blog and in return i think that it's allowed me to keep my poker in perspective and allowed me to express myself freely so i would say that overall it's been a success. Personally one of the major advantages for me is to be able to look back in time and see how i was doing at any given time and i certainly hope i can keep going with it even if this poker thing goes tits up.
My October goals have started with mixed success. First up the no take-away rule has failed horrendously; Liam and Mike have gone to Dublin for four days and we weren't able to do a big shop. Although i share the responsibility as i could have walked to Asda and bought a load of healthy stuff the simple convenience factor was to much for me and dominoes were on there way, i lasted 6 days btw. Since then i've had 2 chinese takeaways, might as well go down in a blaze of glory.
The swimming and gym sessions have also got off to a pretty bad start. As i sit here writing this it's coming up to 2am on the morning of the 12th, i've been swimming 4 times and to the gym twice so i'm way off my target of 20 and 10 respectively. It's going to be a huge ask to reach those targets but i think if is stop being such a lazy fucker i can do it; there are so many free hours in my days it would be a huge shame if i couldn't manage something that in reality should be fairly easy.
The one goal for the month that is of course going to plan is the increased amount of poker tournaments that i've been trying to play. I've racked up over 40 already so getting to 100 should be no problem whatsoever. Quantity however is of course a distant second in importance in this instance to results which as the title of this blog suggests have been mixed. Unfortunatley i'm -$3K on fulltilt and this is a big disappointment. I've made some conscious changes to my play in order to adapt to the site but i think i need to make some more. I've ran quite bad at the wrong times but i still seem to struggle in the middle stages of a lot of tourneys when maybe i hit the panic button a little to early and try and force a move or call off in a spot where deep down i know i should be folding. The worst thing is that i know in a lot of full tilt tourneys i've not played my best and as i've said before being a pro is not about playing your A game some of the time it's about bringing it most of the time and if i can do this i'm sure a decent score on that sight will arrive before i go on holiday to South Africa in a couple of months. Fortunately things have been going much better on my beloved party poker where i'm +$9.5K over the last 12 days. I've only made 2 final tables but on both occasions my concentration has been 100% and i've won them both in style. I feel really comfortable on this site as soon as i get a stack together i'm very hard to beat, god bless those party donks. I havn't posted a hand for a while so i'' stick this classic up just to annoy cashy when he reads this:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3310610

Quite standard for me really, to lazy to explain.

So as far as poker goes i'm up $6.5K on the month and will be more than happy if i can get to +$10,000 by the end of October. Hope to put a big effort in next week in the pool and gym and hope to get back on track in relation to my goals. Fuck the no take-away rule, why change the habit of a lifetime. Just as a side note i smashed through Harry Potter 7 and i feel like a prick for saying it but as a series of books they were fantastic and get better and better as you go through. The author has an amazing writing style and just as was the case with the davinci code i couldn't book the last three books down. To anyone who has only watched the films and is a cynic of Harry Potter i would urge them to read the books, they are phenomenal. The next two books i'm going for are 'the curius incident of the dog in the night time', by Mark Haddon and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Both have outstanding reviews and am looking forward to both. On the DVD front i'm 6 episodes in to the first series of 24 and i wouldn't say i'm enjoying it but i'm thrilled by it if that makes any sense at all, looking forward to seeing how things turn out cause at the moment the wife is in a car with a killer, the daughter is kidnapped by an evil genius and as for Mr Jack Bauer he seems to be fighting a 1 man battle against the rest of the world.

Monthly Goals

2008-09-30T06:24:00.000-07:00

Got back from Devon yesterday afternoon and as expected had a good time. We left at 6am on Friday and from that moment on was pretty tired, playing a lot of golf in the day and then drinking till midnight every night. We played a 54 hole individual competition and i got off to a nightmare start, finishing dead last by 7 shots after day 1. I hadn't played for a couple of months and only 3 times this year so i wasn't shocked by this outcome, i was also giving 3 of the guys between 4 and 8 shots a round so it wasn't looking good. I played a lot better on day 2 and was still in last place but had shut the gap to 3 shots on mike and Liam so the 3 of us went out in the wooden spoon match on the final day. After a ding dong battle with Liam i managed to sneak past him on the 17th to finish 8 out of 9. I played better each day and by day 3 was at my very best tee to green, i putted terribly however which cost me a lot of shots and overall i was just glad not to finish last. Congrats to Ben 'big cheese' Warwick on his victory who played very solid all week and deserved it 100%. I only lost about £50 on the golf course thanks to my victory in the closest to the pin comp and won £30 in the paper/scissor- rock comp after a dramatic 4-3 victory against cashy in the best of 7 final. That's 2 in a row for me and am very pleased to rank myself as the number 1 player in the group, if not the world. We also played a 7-man £5 poker crapshoot which i obviously won winning every single all in pre showdown along the way, my favourite being the 8-3 V A3 classic coin flip scenario, lol. As far as the rest of the holiday goes, rooms were fine: 4/5. Food was good enough and a lot of it: 4/5. The main problems were that it felt a bit like an old peoples home and the rest of the people were mostly over 40 but this is to expected from a golf holiday i guess. Looking forward to next year.
Looking into the immediate future i've decided to set myself some goals for the upcoming month. I've been a bit of a lazy fucker of late and i think my results have reflected this. September was a decent month and it was nice to get back to winning ways after a shit August but i threw away a lot of good chances for $5K + paydays and am looking forward to trying to change this over the next few weeks, i also feel like i once again didn't put the hours in and am looking forward to pushing myself as hard as i can. Finally i ate real bad throughout the last few months and havn't put the hours in the gym and in the swimming pool since my return from Las Vegas. So with this in mind my goals for the month are:

1) Play a minimum of 100 MTT's before the end of October Ranging from anywhere between $50 to $550 freezeouts and $30 - $100 rebuys.

2) I'm not allowed to eat any fast food including pizza, indian, chinese, kebabs etc. Also make a conscious effort to eat less crisps, chocolate and biscuits.

3) Swim at least 20 times. Each session being 100 lengths of the 15m pool.

4) Go to the gym at least 10 times. 2000M on the rowing machine each time and weights as well.

So those are my 4 simple goals for the month and i think with a bit of hard work i should be able to manage. I was thinking about giving up alcohol but that might cause my body to die of shock so i'll just stick to fast food. I don't think i've gone a month without eating junk sine i was about 12 so this could be a struggle. As for the poker i'm not sure what effect a dramatic increase in play will have on my results. If i can keep my ROI above 100% on party and Full tilt i would be a very happy boy as that would result in a $10K month. I think the average day will be something like this; get up at 1pm, eat, go to the gym/pool between 2pm and 4pm. Play tiger woods-watch tv/read and eat dinner until 8pm and then play 4 or 5 tournies starting between 8 and 1am. The sleeping pattern might get a little fucked but as long as the last tourney i play doesn't start later than 1am and i'm always up before 2pm i should get plenty of sleep and be rested enough to achieve my goals. Will probably to a progress report after each week explaining how each of my objectives are going, who says poker player have no structure?

Poker, Golf and drinking.

2008-09-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

As you may be able to guess from the title, this blog is going to be about 3 of my favourite things; poker, golf and drinking. In truth this is pretty much all my blogs are ever about so it shouldn't be to hard to write and certainly not to hard to follow.
Before i move on to my WSOPE event 1 report i'll just mention a few things from the night before. Jonn Taba organised a birthday party for reigning WSOPE champ Annette Oberstadt and very kindly invited us along. We had a few drinks before hand but seeing as the boys had work the next day and Will and i were playing i didn't plan on staying to long or drinking that much. This plan changed very quickly when we found out the drinks were free and most of us decided to take full advantage. Long story short after about 10 double vodka and Oranges and a bad night sleep i arrived at the empire feeling a little worse for wear and looking a little fragile. I was however dressed amazingly in my pink headband sunglasses and a rather fresh looking shirt. Just going back to the party for a sec Greg thought it would be funny to ask Phil Hellmuth if he was Phil Ivey, it was funny. It was even Funnier when he asked him again 10 minutes later, that boy cracks me up.
Anyway i took my seat in the upstairs section of the empire which was away from the main pit and got down to business. Folded for the first 10 minutes and was just having a look at the opposition and soon realised that i'd drawn a pretty weak table and everyone was playing quite tight; if its 1 thing to get over a hangover it's a weak table. So i raise the 74 soooted to 150 get 3 bet and fold, he shows AA. Raise the 10 8 off a few hands later, get 3-bet, fold. Wait a few hand raise on the Co with AJ get 3- bet, fold and get shown AK. So i'm sure you can notice a theme going on here but i wasn't to worried about this and just hoped that this pattern would fade out sooner rather than later. Managed to chip up to 6800 from a 6k start and felt like things were going rather well when this hand took place: UTG limps and i look down at 77 in mp so opt for the limp in behind and flop a set tactic. Folded round to the bb who checks before we see a rather sexy Q 7 6 rainbow flop. BB checks as does the limp and i bet 125 into a pot of 175. BB raises to 350 and limper folds. At this point i was sure he had atleast a queen and maybe 2 pair. He also was over 30 and seemed quite nervous so i'm not gibing him the straight draw as i think would check call in that spot. So now i'm thinking how can i try and get it all in by the river and raise to 900, he insta calls. Turn is another Queen which seems a great card for me considering his range and he bets 600. For some reason i just insta flat called, not sure why. Anyway river is a 9 and he bets 1500. At this point i have 2 options, call or go all in for another 3800. Online i would have just moved in in on the turn but the guy looked quite relaxed so i knew he though he had the best hand but obviously it's been 30 mins and i have no idea if this guy can play, he may think KQ is the nuts in this spot. Going back through the hand i made a desision that Q6 was a massive part of his range and decided that just a call was the correct play, he flipped Q6 and i managed to survive an absolute cold deck and still have over half my starting stack, very happy with that.
After about 5 orange juices the hangover was totally gone and i was feeling in the zone. Got my stack back up to 8000 during the 50/100 level witha few good bluffs and a some decent hands before i got the dreaded table move. The 100/200 level was a bit of a blur slipped down to about 7K and then got moved again to Will's table which was funny. This table was looking very serious and despite my good natured banter the rest of the guys were pretty much in the zone so i just tried to quite down a little bit and get on with it. The standard was certainly better on this table and as soon as we started playing 100/200/25 the aggression was a lot more noticeable. Soon got my stack to 11K when i won a flip with 88 v shortstacked J10 and then this went down: I look down at AK sooted on the Co and raise to 575, button folds and then the Sb (young American guy who just yelled online player) made it 1900. He had been looking for a spot to 3 bet me and i was sure his range was massive. I thought about smoothing but i thought he would bet most flops and it would be hard for me to call unless i hit so i thought 4-betting all in was the better play. I know he is unlikely to call with much but thought he would call with 1010+ and maybe even AQ, AJ considering the table dynamic, He did call but the bad news for me was it was with AA.
It turns out that young guy was Yuvgeni Timeshenko and he is a pretty big deal, he ended up finishing 3rd and has had some other big results as well:

http://www.pokerpages.com/players/profiles/91983/yevgeniy-timoshenko.htm

We talked the hand over and he agreed it was just standard, seemed like a nice guy though and is clearly a great player. Overall i'm happy with the way i played but there was nothing i could do. Was a miracle i survived the first cold deck but surviving 2 in a structure that isn't the best is next to impossible.
Not sure when i'm going to play live again. Maybe the GUKPT Thanet if my 6 month ban is over, was thinking about going home anyway so would be a double whammy. In the Online world it's been a solid month, up about $4K ish and took down my first ever PLO comp last night on full tilt. It was only a $30 rebuy with 120 runners but the $3.3K was nice and i was surprised how bad the standard was. Twice i got donked on by other big stacks and had a big chiplead from 3 tables out. I didn't push quite as hard as i would have in a holdem comp as i wanted to avoid to many marginal spots but i played an aggressive game and in all honesty think i played quite well.
Finally its time for Oakhampton on friday and can't wait to get down there. We're leaving at 6am which sucks and i'm pretty sure i'll play crap but there are other sports down there as well and i just shot a 59 on tiger woods 2009, that had to be a good sign.

Full tilt V's Party

2008-09-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

I've now been playing on full tilt poker for a few months and am pleased to say that i had my first mini score on the site a few days ago. I took $3.8K for 6th place in a $162 comp but was pretty fucked off with it as i had the chiplead with 8 left; then i just kept losing showdowns and eventually ran QQ into AA and went busto. Was pretty happy with my decision making throughout the tourney and am pleased to have a positive ROI on the site after a slow start and a terrible FTOPS.
The problem with starting to play on a new site is that you can't simply presume that you can play exactly the same way and make the same positive returns, a lesson i have now learnt. I'm not saying that you shouldn't keep the same general plan but i've just simply had to make a few changes to combat the contrasting style of the opposition. I'm not going to go into great detail on this one but one thing i will say that in general the standard on full tilt is a lot higher especially as you get deep. Despite this however the structure of the double stack tournies is also far superior to the regular comps on party poker. For the time being i'm happy to play on both sites and am planning on putting as many hours as i physically can in when we get back from Oakhampton.
On that note i simply can't wait for this golf holiday!!I'm not expecting to much from myself on the course but the banter will be awesome no doubt and it'll be good for some of the boys to get a break from the real world, man am i glad i'm not doing something to serious with my life.
Planning on buying into WSOPE tomorrow and then going to watch a little bit of champions league action after. Still not sure if i'm going to sell any % in myself, i think i should but at the same time i quite want to take the risk and just say oh fuck it lets gamble i don't want to give away any of my £150,000 first place, one time etc etc.
Not much going on at the moment in truth and think i'm writing this blog out of boredom more than anything else. Played 5-side football today and nearly died. Our team got quite easily beaten and i played pretty bad on pitch but was quite good in goal. Have finished Harry potter 5, another very good book and am now looking forward to smashing up the last two in the next few months.
Finally i think i have a new hero, this guy is sooooooooooooo sick funny:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xQWYfbqFiGE

Fixing some leaks.

2008-09-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

I think one of my main weaknesses as a poker player and as a person in general is my over-confidence/arrogance. I'm certainly not a modest person and i also think i am realistic about my skills across the board; i am however a very gifted poker player or to be more exact a great NLH tournament player. The problem with this attitude is that sometimes it makes it hard to look at my game and analyse the weak elements of it, especially when running good and making plenty of cash.
Carrying on from my last blog things haven't been going great but i do feel that i've been able to make a few adjustments to my play that have already swung me in the right direction (cashed in 4 from the last 6 comps). The main problem was that i was simply busting to early in a lot of tournies and really not giving myself a shot. The main skill element comes deep in the tournies when applying a lot of pressure and essentially knowing when to gamble and obviously start 3 betting all in with utter filth etc. To be able to do this however you have to get there first and i certainly recognised that i was making a few to many plays early and maybe hitting the gamble button to soon. Obviously i was running quite bad which sometimes makes me want to gamble but i really should be trying to avoid getting it all in pre in the first few levels in a coin flip situation when there are so many easy double ups out there. The truth is that anyone who plays a lot of MTT's will agree that there is simply no point playing fast early on because there are so many morons out there just waiting to give it all away.
I also found that to a large extent my concentration levels were at an all time low, either i was bored, simply not paying any attention or watching tv and although playing an auto pilot stratergy is easy its certainly not the most profitable, especially when you get deep.
So anyway i'm trying to improve and am sure that a $5K payday will pop up soon. Until then i'm happy in my own head trying to make as many good decisions as i can and trying to ignore the results (some of the beats have just been disgusting).
In other non poker related shit; first i've been a lazy fucker recently very little gym or pool action and i did 100 lengths today which is standard and nearly drowned!! Sports betting is going as well as ever, lol, had $50 on Murray to win the US open at 15/1 gg me. I also put a massive $600 bet on the womens semi-finals, woooooooooops!! never betting on that retard dementieva again! Also my cheeky bet on spurs to make the top 4 is looking fantastic, the usual strong start to the season as we'll no doubt float around in the relegation zone for 3 months and then start playing sometime in 2009, the pain of being a spurs fan is just sick!
I'm half way through Harry Potter 5 which so far is quite slow but i'm still enjoying it and am proud to say that for once in my life i'm going to achieve something that i set out to do. On the music front i'm getting more and more into kings of leon, i've always liked them but they just have so many great songs and the songs i've heard from the new album are quality. On the golf front i'm shitting myself. Looks like i might not get a game in before oakhampton and despite showing signs of promise last time i played i'm nowhere near ready to compete with some of the guys and would be more than happy to go down there play ok and not finish last.
Finally i saw the full line up for the wsop final table and i hadn't realised that i played a lot of poker with 3 of the guys on the final. The American chess prodigy with the jewish name is actually the guy i ran the huge bluff on on a J J 7 flop for all the tea in china, glad to see he put my chips to good use. I'm not sure he has the game to win it but he will certainly be a threat and he was a fan of the pinkheadband so i'm behind him 100%. Its now 5am so better go to sleep £180 sat to the WSOPE event 1 tomo at gutshot which would be nice to win, gotta start running good again soon.

Long update

2008-08-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

So i haven't done a blog for a while and i guess this is just down to a pretty poor run at the tables. Things have gone quite badly in August and its a shame to report that it will be my first losing month of 2008, boooooo!
Picking up where i left off, i played 4 of the FTOPS events and failed to cash in any of them. I never really got going in any of the comps and wasn't close to the business end of things once. A Personal highlight however was busting Mike Mattasuw out the $240 6max comp when i 4 bet him all in pre with J8 V his AA, lol.
After that was all over i headed back to thanet for folk week, which as usual was awesome. Went out every night and the town was very busy but was nice to see all the lads from home with the banter flowing as usual. The annual half pint challenge was certainly the highlight of the trip (drinking a half pint in every pub in broadstairs) and it was achieved in record pace this year, with only 2 of the 13 starters being sick, not a bad ratio at the speed we were going.
I was back in sunny London just in time for my birthday which was a quiet affair, just the way i like it. We went to a pub in Canary Wharf for a few drinks then we went to Goucho for dinner which was excellent. The fillet steak was 9/10 and the red wine was some of the best i have ever had, will certainly be back there again.
The next day was the GSOP £100 nlh which was full to the 80 capacity. I was going along quite steady up t0 12,500 from my starting stack of 8000 when i find 10 10 playing 200/400. UTG limps and after some thought i make it 1500 from the CO, button and blinds fold and after about 15 secs the limper (who i knew nothing about calls). The flop comes Q 9 3 and the guy checks so i check behind. Turn is a 10 which obviously is always a nice sight and i see an even better one when he bets 3000, i move in, he snap calls and flips QQ, gg me!
Next day was the PLO £150 which was equally annoying as i bubbled in 8th with 7 getting paid, thought i played ok getting my fair share of luck on the way but i couldn't find a good spot towards the end. A big congrats to my friend Joe for taking it down and playing a very good tourney and a very well thought out heads up match. I also had a 15% swap with him which softened the blow of bubbling.
So the warm up events were a little frustrating but was still very excited about the 3 day main event which kicked off at 2pm on saturday. Also had quite a few friends in the tourney and a few big names as well including the hit squad and nick persaud among others.
As usual my day 1 was a lot of fun. I cruised up to 28K in the first two levels on what was a pretty weak table all things considered when i decided that i wanted to play a big pot with 97 soooted, lol. I raise in ep to 550 playing 100/200 and get 3 callers, standard. Flop comes 10 8 3 rainbow, bb checks i bet 1200 the 2 behind fold then the bb makes it 3200 leaving himself 10k behind. He had been playing a little fast so i figure i'll just move him in and take it down, he calls with a set of 8's and i'm down to 13K. I then lose 9K against a moron when he check calls a bet on the flop of 10 8 8 with AQ then check calls a bet when another 8 hits the turn and then bets 3K into a big pot when the river comes a Queen and i pay him off with a 10. So i was down to 4k playing 200/400 which was a small problem however i soon got things going again when i got it all in with KJ v 7x on a 9 7 3 board, jack on the river and i'm back in the fight. I double again with 99 v AQ all in pre he flops a flush but i then hit runner runner house to get up to 16K. Finally i find QQ v AQ blind on blind to get back to 30k and i start to wonder what all the fuss was about. The rest of the day was very smooth as i found a few hand and managed to 3-bet in some good spots to end the day with 42,700.
I had about average stack at the start of day 2 with half the field left and we were playing 500/1000/100 so still had some time. Lost 10K early but got up to 60k when i had 88 v 98 on a nice 9 8 2 board and from that moment things went very well indeed. Got my stack up to 100K showing down some big hands and running a few bluffs along the way and then a guy bluffed of his 50K stack against me when i had raised the A5 and it came A 4 5. Shortly after this the strangest hand of the tourney came up playing 800/1600/200. Folds to me on the button and i make it 4500 with A7 off, sb folds then the bb calls and bets 4k in the dark!! The flop comes 9 8 8 and i figure i'm still good so i make it 11K, he calls and then shoves for his last 20K in the dark, WTF?! So the turn comes a 6 and its decision time; running through the hand i think he hasn't got an overpair or a big ace having flat called pre. I make my read that he has J10, qj or Q10 so i call saying that i think ace high is the best hand, he shows Q10 and i win a very bizarre but also a very nice sized pot. With 2 tables left porno Mark gets moved to my left with a mountain of chips so i make a conscious decision to slow down a little and try to avoid playing to many hands with him out of position, thankfully he also seems eager to avoid playing big pots with me so we take it in turns to bully the table and we make it through to the final table as the two biggest stack.
The final table was crazy, i busted in a disappointing 7th for £2200 and Porno Mark smashed it up in record time to take the title and the £12000. Before the final table we had agreed to swap some % so at least i got another £1000 for that. My key hand came up playing 2000/4000/500 when i raised to 11K pre with J10 utg. Folds round to Mark in the bb who calls, flop KQ5 with 2 hearts, he checks i bet 20K he makes it 60K and i move in for 200K more thinking that he can only call with a set, KQ or a big draw like J10 of hearts or AJ of hearts. Shame for me he had one of those hands and i was busto, I don't really regret the way i played the hand cause the stacks were deep enough for the move, oh well.
Went out for dinner and drinks with Mark and a few others after to celebrate which was a lot of fun. Mark lost 3 flips in a row for cocktails which was a nice piece of poetic justice and we ended the night in Mahiki which was a pretty awesome club with the dj banging out some classics.
So that pretty much brings my life up to date, went to Roadhouse last night and got absolutely smashed having decided that dinner is for girls and a pint of gusiness and 2 bottles of wine would be a better idea, worst hangover of 2008.
So August is nearly over and we're now moving on to good old september. I've been getting a bit lazy of late basically just jerking off money on play.com, getting up at 2pm then watching peep show, inbetweeners, green wing and good old teachers instead of doing much work. So i'm going to try and be a little bit more productive this month and try and play over 50 mtt's and a hell of a lot of stt's and maybe even win some $. I also have two massive highlights to look forward to, first is WSOPE event 1 on the 19th which is £1500 with a decent structure can't fucking wait. Also going on a lads golfing holiday to Devon right at the end of the month which should be a good laugh. I've only played 3 times this year so i'm a bit worried about my game but a couple of hours on the range and a bit of happy gilmore and tin cup should have me ready to go.

No love on Full Tilt poker.com

2008-08-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

So it looks like fulltilt poker has not taken kindly to wendyx25 jumping on their site. I've now played 2 of their festival tournaments and busted early in both.
First up i played event 1 the $216 buy in $1 million gtd and was card dead for the hour and a half that i managed to survive for. The structure was ok with 3000 starting chips and very low blind increases: 10/20, 15/30, 20/40, 25/50, 30/60 etc so as usual i wasn't in a hurry. Had 3 or 4 low pairs and got in quite cheap everytime but no set and no win on any of these occassions. I also had AQ twice and both times it went raise then re-raise from the first two spots so i had to fold which sucks. After the break i then had 10 10 playing 50/100. Started the hand with 2100 so was ready to get it in when i raised in mp to 300, guy next to me re-raises and then the button 4 bets so i have to fold again marvelous! Finally i find AQ soooooooted in ep so i limp for 120 with 1600 behind, Co raises and sb flats so i insta jam and the Co has AK, gg sir.
Event 2 was a $216 6-handed shootout. Very little experience playing these but i found a shed load of hands early to get me going, problem was i wasn't getting paid and building a loose image so think getting AA, KK. AK, 10 10 and AA again in the first 20 hands was actually a bad thing. First big hand was playing 40/80 and folded round to the button who made it 230ish. I make it 660 with JJ hoping he'll shove which he does for 2000 total and i snap call, he has KQ and hits the flop. The same player busts me a few rounds later with his QQ v my AA, ffs gg sir!!!
So that sucks. Also played the super thursday tonight on party and lost a massive race for 20,000 chips with JJ v AK playing 300/600. It's a massive race for me cause once i get the chips on that site my record over the last year is just so so sick as anyone who knows my results will confirm.
So not a good couple of days (i'm also down $1500 playing stt's). I might play on party tomorrow night but not sure, i'm defo playing the $1m gtd on party on sunday and the $250 comp on full tilt but the fields are massive so just hope to run good and keep playing my best. Dinner with the family on saturday at a fancy restaurant and a show before, nice change from usual.

Heavy training

2008-08-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

I use the term heavy training quite lightly in this instance. Basically i'm staying up late cause the FTOPS event 1 kicks off at 2am our time and i want to be in peak mental condition for it, well at the very least i want to be awake. Event 2 is the same time on thursday at 2am and they are both $216 so if i make it past the 2nd hour of either of these comps i want to give myself a shot or i could just get one of my flatmates to play when they get up, hmmmmmmmmmm.
I've played a bit tonight but only a few sng's and one very early exit in an MTT, up about $600 so nothing to exciting. What is exciting however is the USPGA which starts on thursday and in the immortal words of sky bet, it matters more when there's money it! I've gone for three to win bets which are a little silly but all three are playing quite well and have quite long odds: $75 on M A Jimenez at 66/1 (ship the $5K). $50 on R Goosen at 22/1 and $50 on Zach Johnson at 50/1. They also had Zach Johnson at 80/1 so i stuck $25 on that. I'm sure that all these bets seem like long shots but with no tiger it's so open and as long as 1 of my men is in with a shout on sunday i'll be a happy bunny and if its Zach Johnson that would obviously be awesome.
I've also got some bets on the US Open but that is after the Olympics so plenty of time and may change a few before the start. The one bet i will not be changing however is my $50 on big Andy Murray to take it down at 15/1, good luck getting a price better than that. It's coming up to 3am and i'm exhausted not looking good for event 1.

Close again

2008-08-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

So i just busted out the party 300k gtd in a rather annoying 13th place for a massive $2400. It's my best ever finish in one of the big sunday comps but this is little consolation and right now i feel pretty gutted. I had a really slow start to the comp but after a couple of hours i went on fire turning 7500 into 68,000 in about half an hour, the best hand was when some donk shoved on me blind on blind with 32 off for his/her whole 22K stack playing 400/800. I snap called with JJ and from that hand on i was in my element and able to build quite easily. I got up to 420K playing 4000/8000 but i lost two big pots with AK and 1010 that i might have misplayed but not to sure. Finally busted shoving 250K playing 15k/30k blinds with A9 v AK so no complaints on that hand but i was a little disappointed with the structure. From the 3rd hour on the average stack was always around 16-18 bb's and there was very little play post flop, i rate my pre-flop game very highly but the poor structure certainly wasn't allowing me to play many flops at all and 3-betting light pre was often difficult without committing my stack.
Anyway that's 5 top 100 finishes and my number 1 goal for the rest of 2008 is to make the final of a major sunday comp. When i do i'll probs bust first hand but i don't care i just need to make one cause it's starting to really fuck me off!!
In other news i can now confirm that July was my best ever poker month winning close to $30K. It's a strange thing to say but my main emotion would have to be that of relief, it's nice to feel i have some decent cash behind me and now a couple of bad months would still suck but it wouldn't be the end of the world and i certainly wouldn't have to face the horror of getting a real job. If i had busted the main event early i would have probably tilted the $3K i had left for the trip and had to come home facing a long grind on a $7K bankroll with not a whole lot in the bank. As it happens i have a roll now in excess of $20K and enough in the bank to allow me 6 months of rent/booze/chinese food so life is all good. For some reason i can't help but think my 86 sooooooooted holding up v AQ was a sign that when it really matters the luck will always be in my corner, bring on the WSOP 2009!!
As far as the live poker goes i'm glad to say that i've now played since Vegas when last night i hit the gutshot for the £300 monthly comp. It's a shame there was only 25 runners due to the festival at the empire (that i didn't know about), but the structure was all good and the £2400 for first would have been nice. I lost 2.5K early but doubled up in the following hand: Folded round to young aggressive guy on the CO who makes it 525 playing 100/200 button and sb fold but i call from the bb with 53 sooted. Flop 3 5 9 and as usual i've smashed and i know this guy is very lag so i figure my best option is to fire at it, 750 so he thinks for 10 secs then calls and i just know this kid is floating and he has no idea that i'm any good at this game so he'll try and take it on the turn which is a 6. I think for a while then check and obviously he bets 1500 leaving himself 4K back (i had around the same) so now the question in my head is do i stick it in or just call. I think his hand might include a 7 or an 8 so i think about shoving but at the same time i know he is mega weak and i want that 4K so i think for about 30 secs and call with the intention of snap calling any river and hoping its not a 7 or 8. The river is a king and i check fast he moves in and i snap call; his hand hits the muck very quick and ship the easy double up, pweennnnnnd! After this hand things were quite easy and the early introduction of antes meant i got up to 25K without to much work when this hand goes down: folded round to me on the Co playing 300/600/50 so i'm pretty much going to open with 60-65% of hands in this spot so to look down at JJ it was actually a pleasant surprise so anyhoo i make it 1600 and the button who has me covered and been calling light all day calls again, the blinds pass and we see a juicy J 8 5 flop with two spades. I check he bets 2K, i make it 5500 total and he raises 8000 more so i ship it in and he explains he is committed (which he is) and calls with the 65 of spades. So it's the biggest pot of the tourney and i'm a 5/2 favourite which was nice, instant service for him on the turn and the river brick meant i was officially busto. It was a shame cause i was playing my absolute best and this is not always the case with me in live tournaments. I've also played the £300 twice now and on both occasions busted with a set v a flush draw but i hate blaming luck and just have to hope i can win the next one and maintain a high level of play.
So into my schedule for August which i wouldn't describe as hectic with a lot of sleeping/wanking planned but does include a little bit of 'work' as well. The bad news is that i'm not going to be able to play the GUKPT Luton as i'm not allowed back into grosvenor casinos within 6 months of finishing work, boo! I'm not sure on the date i finished but i think i'll be ok for the GUKPT Thanet in October (will have to check that at some point). I am looking forward however to the fourth annual FTOPS on full tilt which starts in a couple of days. I'm looking to play around 4-5 of the tournaments and realistically i'm just going to hope for 1 decent run as i know with the amount of runners it's going to be a bit of a slog. The buy-ins aren't to excessive however so worst case scenario i'm going to drop $1K which isn't a nightmare, i'm also not going to play at all till event 1 so i wont be tilted at all and can bring my A game every night. After that i'm going to head back to the planet that is thanet for folk week which is always a good fun so as usual hope to spend it on the beach and then in the pubs with my friends having a good old folky time and playing 0 poker. After that i'm back in London for the gutshot series of poker (GSOP). Wednesday the 20th is event 1 but is also my birthday so i'm gonna take that off and go out for a few drinks with the lads instead but nothing to major planned. The day after is event 2 the £100 nh freeze which will be fun and then friday is the £150 PLO which i'm most looking forward to, finally the 3 day main event runs from the saturday until the bank holiday monday which is a £500 with a great structure. The only problem is that the size of gutshot will mean small fields so when i get back from thanet i'm going down to gutshot with £650 to buy in for all of the tournaments and then i can spend the next 3 days relaxing before it all starts.
Ok so as far as poker goes that pretty much is the lot for the past present and future, as usual writing this has taken me off tilt so life is good. On to the non poker shit:
I'm starting to lose back the weight that i stuck on on Vegas. Been swimming most days and also been in the gym a fair bit, still eating really badly but as long as i exercise to balance this out this seems ok.
I shot through 'beneath the shades' which is a book all about the legend that is Stu Ungar. It was a fantastic read and a real insight into the man that is talked about as the greatest poker player of them all. I would recommend it to anyone, not just poker players, and it certainly was fascinating reading about the extent of his gambling and drug addictions and the way they took over his life; a sad but great story. I'm also reading 'scar tissue' by Antony Kiedis which is also a very good read and in the same way as the Stu Ungar book talks in depth about the problems caused by drugs. I'm only halfway through the book but given RHCP's status as one of the biggest bands in the world, i'm sure it will have a better ending. Finally i'm just finishing off Friends like these by Danny Wallace. It's a lot more lighthearted than the other books but still quite good. I'm not enjoying it as much as 'Yes man' or 'are you dave gorman' but i really like the authors writing style and his decision not to take life to seriously, something i feel that i can certainly relate to.

Home sweet home.

2008-07-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

So i'm back home now after the 16 days in Vegas and on the whole i'm going to say that it's nice to be back, apart from obviously the shit weather. Its the middle of July where is the fucking sun?
Las Vegas is certainly an interesting place. Very glamorous, exciting and non stop action all over the place its also in the middle of the desert which just adds to the unique appeal of the city. Even though i enjoyed the trip and made plenty of $ i wouldn't like to be there for over a month the constant sounds of the slot machines and the over the top attidude of most of the locals quickly gets annoying and at the risk of sounding like an old man sometimes its nice to put on your dressing gown and have a cup of tea without a 40 year old waitress walking round with her top off yelling 'cocktails?'
I think the biggest regret of the trip is the fact that Will and I got to do very little outside playing poker. It would have been nice to see some more shows and go to a nightclub but the deep runs we both had in the main event prevented us from doing this.
As for the main event i still have mixed emotions. For my first go at it 191st is a great effort and i certainly am proud that i didn't change my game to much and wasn't afraid to bust at anytime. I played a few hands badly but on the whole think a played some very good poker and i really enjoyed the event from start to finish. Its just a shame A9 never wins, boooooooo. From a finacel point of few the trip was a massive success. For those of you that don't know i was staked for 80% of the main event so i only risked $2K of my own money. In total i took $3.3K over to Vegas with me and after spending a shitload on food and booze i came back with $15.4K so obviously i'm delighted with this and just as i think the month can't get any better within 2 days of being back in sunny London i have my biggest ever win online taking down the $320 $50K gtd on good old patry poker for $13.8K SHIPPPPPPPPPP IT!! I had to ship big Tony 10% for our swap (he misclicked all in v full house in the first level) but i was a nice feeling to be keeping the meat of my winnings after having to give away most of my main event gold.
Just one more piece of good news (i'm such a sick luckbox), for the first time in my life i actually won money staking. I gave $150 to my good friend Alec 'the boy' Howard to play the $30 rebuy $10K gtd and he came 2nd for $2.8K which meant he made me a nice $1350 profit. He played a very strong tourney and i think its even better making money without even playing the game.
So July is quickly becoming my favourite month poker is just going great and i'm now going to try and focus on getting rid of the weight i piled on in vegas. 10p/20p game on friday, can't fucking wait!!

Busto!!

2008-07-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

So for both Will and myself the dream of winning the WSOP 2008 is over. I busted right at the end of Day 4 playing 6000/12000/2000 when i was down to 260K shoving with A9 over the top of a raise from late position. No problem with that play but the 500K bluff i tried to pull on a guy with an obvious over pair on a JJ7 board was a bit dumb, at the time it seemed like a good idea, lol.
Will just busted for his last 300K with 1010 v AJ all in pre finishing in a respectful 118th. Overall think we both learnt a lot and certainly enjoyed the whole thing. Next stop GUKPT LUTON!

In the money!!

2008-07-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

So this is going fucking great!! Will and i have both made the money and he has 125K and i have 477K the blinds at the start of today are 2500/5000/500 so still have close to 100 bb's which is plenty. Yesterday was another real tough grind and was up to about 630K but got raped in the last level thanks to one bad time bluff and some russian dude kicking my ass. Its hard to describe the way i'm feeling at the moment but its a bit like every emotion i have ever felt all at the same time. Day 4 is about to start so i have to run. If i make it through the day i will put up a long blog tonight.

Day 3 here we come

2008-07-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

I think yesterday might well have been the best day of poker that i have ever played. I started the day with 28,600 and got up to 40K early thanks to finding AK and AA early, then it got hard. Playing 250/500/50 it gets folded round to this chinese guy on the button who makes it 1400. SB folds and i call out the BB with K6 SOOOOOTED. Flop 8 7 5 and i lead for 2K just trying to pick it up. He raises to 6 and i smooth call. Turn K goes check check then when a 10 hits the river i bet 6K for value/defence and he insta raises all in for 18K more. If i called and lost i would have 3K back but this just smelt like a bluff and even though it was early i went with my instincts and called after about 30 secs, he had J8 and that was a good start for me.
Soon after the table broke and i was moved to one of the toughest tables i have ever played. I was in seat 4 and the 4 guys on my right were very strong aggressive players. The swedish player in seat 2 was very very strong player who plays 10/20, 25/50 on laddies with 200BB buy ins so the fact it was so deep stacked was a bit scary but i found some good hands to play at him with and thankfully the two players on my right (one was Liz Lieu) were the weakest on my table so i was able to play a lot from late position knowing they were gonna fold 95% of hands and i would have position.
After around 4 hours of floating between 60K-80K i managed to put a good run together playing 500/1000/100 and broke the 100K mark and then the inevitable big hand took place. The swede opens on the button for 3200 the sb calls and i make it 14K total from the BB with 1010 button calls and sb folds. Flop 5 4 3 and i bet 21K, he insta moves in for 47K more and although it was a very tough spot i thought i was committed against his range and called, he flipped K2 soooooooooted and i managed to fade the 11 outs and win the pot.
After that i ran the table, made a few hands and flopped a set of 2's V KK which tony would love and ended the day on 265K. Day 3 starts in an hour playing 800/1600/200 so lots of time to work out the table and then smash it up. Will ended his day with 91K and is playing on a table close to myn, wish us luck.

Quick post

2008-07-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Ok so Vegas is awesome, me and Will having a great time. Both made it through to the 2nd day of the main event. Will is playing tomo and has 34,700, he played a very solid day 1 was a bit card dead but picked his spots well. I went for a slightly different approach and decided to play about 60% of hands. Ended the day on 28,700 and am playing again on wednesday. Was 11th in chips after 4 hours with 61,000 butthis was as good as it goy. Bluffed off 25K V KK on a board of 10 10 9 8 6. O knew she had QQ-AA but she made a good call. Also bluffed 10K 5 betting QJ v AK on a board of K 8 2 which sucked. Ran QQ into KK for 12K pot and at one stage was down to 11K but got my stack in at 200/400/50 with 86 Sooooooooted v AQ after a raise and a call and as we all know the 86 will never lose.

Cash is going well up about $500 and played 1 very sick hand V Brewin with J6 sooooooooted v A10 on a 9 7 7 board playing $2/5. long story short i check flop, he bets 85 into 100 pot i make it 200, he makes it 400 more and i push for 650 more knowing he was full of shit, lol!

Food is great, banter is better. Had the pleasure of meeting Kara Scott on the first night who is the fittesr woman i have ever seen also met the voice of datrs Sid widdel on the plane what a legend. Will post after day 2 i hope, wish me luck.

I love sports betting

2008-06-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

The simple problem is that i'm not very good at it. Down about £350 on Euro 2008 and the last few days have been the worst of the tournament, lost £100 on the Italy v Spain game and my £30 bet on Croatia to win the comp at 14/1 was looking awesome until Turkey scored in the last minuet and then won the shootout. Think i'm now going to switch my attention to Wimbledon and hope this goes a little better.
In other news i was reminded last week of why i love living in London so much. Went to a silent disco in south bank on thursday which was loads of fun. I hadn't been to one before and was a little sceptical but as it goes we all had a good time my only regret is the massive hangover i had on the friday. Thankfully i had just recovered in time to attend my sisters 24th on the Saturday, which started in a bar in Angel and ended in a Karaoke bar in Farringdon. Once again not a regular night out for me but the place was well set out with a central bar/dance floor and a number of private side rooms for the karaoke each holding parties of between 8-40. All of my sisters friends from work seemed really cool and have always got on with her friends from home so had no problem making a total twat out of myself; why change the habit of a lifetime, and would have to say that hello by Lionel Richie was a personal highlight.
Will just write a few quick words of congtars to my mate Will for coming 11th in the GBPT Bristol. I'm sure he was dissapointed not to make the final but its still a good result and good practice for the WSOP main event.
Now onto my own poker playing of which i have some good news. Managed to chop the $20K gtd on party last night for $4.6K/$4.3K, certainly a well timed win. The weird thing was that i had no intention of playing the comp but logged in at 11.58 saw the comp was seating and just thought wtf might as well. It certainly felt a bit like fate through the first 50 mins of the comp where i went from 3K to 12K thanks to some serious donkey play from my opponents and 1 cold deck with 22 v QJ on a JJ2, SHIP IT.
So things were going great when this pot took place:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795161

Ouch!! Obviously the beat hurt but his stack size made it that little bit more painful. Went a bit card dead after this hand but managed to survive for a while and then got lucky to double with AQ V AK all in pre. Another fortunate hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795166

This hand is so very lucky for a number of reasons the sb could very well have had a hand like 77 - 1010 which obviously has me in a load of trouble. When the bb raises he must have a big hand so to be up against AK with the dead money was awesome. Tournaments are crazy, 1 sec i've got 5000 playing 300/600 then a few hands later i have 35,000 playing 400/800, insane.
This is the worst hand i played all comp:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795174

I open light which is standard and have no problem with but the call in the middle gives me a tough decision when it gets back to me. I can't fold cause obviously to much in there so i have to raise the other guy all in or call. I made the wrong choice but at the time was thinking i can just call hope to get lucky and also the fact i'm out pf position is not important cause he is unlikely to bluff me with the other player all in. Obviously i make the value bet on the river but the sick thing was i worked out he had KQ as soon as i made the bet, not to sure how but when he moved in i was pissed off. The 1 good thing about the hand is that a year ago i would have said ffs you have KQ i call, i was annoyed by the hand but the fold on the river allowed me to save some crucial chips.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795177

This hand got me going. The guy had been raising a fair bit and c betting most of the time so i figured i could well be winning on the flop and also could well bluff him off 99-kk on the turn. As it turns out he did have an ace and i got the miracle river, who said poker was a game of luck?

From that hand on i got into full swing and started running the comp playing very Lag and loving every second of it, couldn't help myself:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795181

So at this stage of the comp there were about 14 left and from here to the final table i got a lot of chips together and managed to build a bit of a lead on the field. When the final started had 35% of the chips. This next hand is a weird one:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795185

The sick thing is that if he moves in i would probs just move in over the top but the size of the raise was filthy and my gut said AA, guess we'll never know.

Busting 2 short stacks:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795186

From this hand to 3 handed things were quite easy some of the players were quite waek and was able to pick up a lot of chips at 2000/4000 and 3000/6000 with very few people ever playing back at me. The only real threat was FaxEmpoker who played very well all comp so i was a little worried when this hand took place:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795196

Got them all back:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795199

The guy busted a few hands later so when the heads up started i had him 550K v 70k but this changed with 2 back to back all in pre hands Q9 V 76 and A4 V 88 both of which i lost. When he offered a deal i had a slight chiplead but he had the momentum so i went for it like the girl i am.
Nice to win some $ before vegas and wont be able to play that much before hand so doubt i will blog until i'm day 1 chipleader, one time!

The day of the $.

2008-06-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Just thought i'd write a quick blog about the most profitable day in poker history. Played for about 6 hours, couple of $100 MTT's and a shitload of $55 2/6/10 handed stt's and i managed to win the grandtotal of $1!!!! Oh yes that was awesome. To be honest have been down most of the day so i'm not to bothered. It made me question the whole reason i play poker a little bit but right now i don't regret a single moment of this seemingly wasted day. Yes poker can be a grind and it hurts when you run bad and make some bad decisions but the very fact it can be difficult is the reason its so great. When i'm running good it feels like the easiest game in the world, everything just seems to fall into place but to be a truly great player i believe you must be able to ride out the bad times and maintain a high standard of decision making, a skill that i dont possess at this moment in time but hope to attain in the near future.
I'm in a kind of weird philosophical mood at the moment and feel like i'm able to assess where i am as a person. In general i'm very happy with life the way it is and not really thinking about the future but my immediate frustrations lie with my inability to secure a big win that would give me some much needed financel security. I've made the top 100 of a major sunday comp four times and to have 0 final tables is a bit of a joke. Its hard not to get frustrated at times but i've just got to work on getting better and hoping that i can win that big hand at the right time which has eluded me thus far. Might have to save that for the WSOP main event.

Close again

2008-06-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

So just a few weeks after the agony of finishing 22nd in the 5ooK gtd on pokerstars i was back at the business end of a major comp. As the title of this blog would suggest once again i failed to make the final table and ended up 36th getting $1200 for my trouble (first place $60K) arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
I feel like from start to finish i played my absolute best and would say in all honesty i don't regret a single decision i made. Had AA v QQ twice for big pots which helped a lot but most of my stack came from a lot of well timed aggression. I was able to build throughout the middle stages thanks to a couple of weak table draws and at one stage things were looking great. I then lost a big pot with AQ V 77 and then playing 6000/12000 i found AQ and got my 160K stack all in V sb's 88, 8 on the flop bye bye wendy.
Oh well one day i'll win that race, make the final table and go on and win a sunday major, the sooner the better!
Another piece of poker related news is that i will be flying out to Vegas on july 1st. My friend Will 'the iron man' Brewin won a package with free flights and accommodation for 2 so when he asked me i jumped at the chance and can't wait. I've already been in contact with Jambon about staking and he seems well up for putting me in some of the deepstacks at the Venetian and also the main event (as long as i put some $ up). It's been my dream to play the main event for ages and i'm really looking forward to it also just can't wait to check out Vegas, hope i don't blow what little money i have out there.
We're flying back on the 16th and on return i will hope to have a few war stories to tell, btw if you want to buy a piece of me in the main event get in contact cause am happy to whore myself off at a decent price, it's all about the bracelet anyway, lol.
So plan on playing quite a bit of poker over the next few weeks to win some $ to spend in Vegas, might even hit the gutshot for a bit of live cash and maybe even a tourney along the way.
Once again Newquay was fucking awesome. The weather was great, the banter was top notch and the drinking was excessive,. Think the best thing about summerbreak is that all the people are students or ex-student and everyone is just up for a laugh and making a twat of themselves, i was wearing pink legwarmers and a wife beater for most of the time, a fantastic combination imo. Bring on Newquat 2009!! Bring on Vegas 2008!!

massive tilt

2008-06-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

Just thought i'd post to say that i just went on mad major monkey tilt and lost $1500 in about an hour. This was started when i got knocked out the super tuesday by running AQ into KK twice in 3 hands and then losing with 33 v 22 all in pre. Then bustted the $109 20K gtd with AK V AQ AIP. I then lost 3 $109 HU matches in a row JJ v 33, 1010 v 99 and AK v 55 all all in pre. Then lost $700 playing $1/$2 this was the pick of the bunch http://www.pokerhand.org/?2708028
In an attempt to win some cash back i then played a $310 Hu match. We pick up the action when the chip counts are wendyx25 3960 and worm tail 40:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2708045

Ok so thats 1:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2708055

2 in a row no big deal:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2708061

starting to worry:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2708065

ARE YOU SERIOUS!

So as you can guess i went onto lose the match in spectacular fashion, i don't think i've ever been more mad than i am now. I hate poker!

Bring on the summer

2008-06-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

So as May has come to a close and we move into the summer months i'm not in a particularily good mood. Put quite frankly the last few weeks have sucked big time, the reasons for this are as follows. 1) i'm running very badly indeed. 2) 1 has caused me to make some crazy decisions 3) i hate to lose!
I'm up a pathetic £500ish in may and seeimg as i have spent £2000 its not looking great. I'm trying to cut down on spending but this is proving to be difficult with the whole living in london/gambling problem thing. I played the $530 high roller comp today and got all my stack in on the first level with QQ v AK on a J 9 3 board, boooo. I get my 18K chip stack in on the sunday million at 200/400 with KK v Q9 on a Q 10 6 2 board, OUCH! so i'm running like a gypsy and this has led to some bad calls/bets that has pissed me off even more. I've also been playing some cash games both live and online and these have both gone badly to. Online i've been playing PLO 1/2 and running so bad it hurts. Most of the people that play this level play so poorly its almost impossible to lose but i've found a way. I've also dropped about £800 live running nut flush into house and KK into AA AIP, awesome.
I saved a load of hands but looking through its just beat after beat amd posting them may make me cry. The only good news is that i'm starting to dominate the hu stt's on party I'm mostly playing $55 and have won about 22 of my last 30 which is cool.
Tried to play the main event of the ESOP at the gutshot but they were sold out which was annoying cause the structure was awesome. Played the £100 NLH and the £150 PLO but no result to speak of which is a shame, think my next live festival will be GUKPT Luton at the start of August.
1 week till Newquay i can't fucking wait! Hope next time i post it will be better news, back to the grind.

Steady as she goes

2008-05-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

As the above title would suggest the last two weeks have been steady but certainly not spectacular. I'm up about £1500 in May which is nice but if it wasn't for some bad luck at the wrong time it could have been so much more. Truth be told i still feel a sharp pain in my stomach when i think about my deep run in the stars $500K gtd, god making that final would have been sweet!
Overall though i'm pretty happy with poker in general. I feel like in a large percentage of tournaments i'm playing my best game and am finishing in the money about 20-25% of the time which is cool. Also playing $55-$215 buy-in comps so i feel quite comfortable and know i'm not going to lose to much in one go. Posted a few hand below that sum up the last 2 weeks quite well:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2652571

This hand is funny as fuck! I was happy when i saw the first raise but i couldn't believe how many people called! Nice call by him/her for basically the whole stack with 5 high, lol which way to the roulette pit?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2652573

I've never been a fan of the minimum raise and feel like it is rarely the correct play, this hand however is an exception, imo. I'm just hoping the bb does this and my plan works, shame about the flop!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2652574

Quite simply this is the way i play and will continue to play, i'm so sick i actually enjoy these hands more than winning with set on set, i'm a sick puppy!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2652578

This was a horrible spot with 11 bb's. Very happy with the fold.

So like i said at the start i'm happy with my game and just hope i can have a $4K plus payday soon.
Anyway enough of rubbish old poker, life is great! Just do a quick paragraph on all the other aspects of being a full time bum.
Exercise routine is going well. Am swimming about 5 miles a week on average and hitting the gym a couple of times a week as well, feel like my upper body is getting much stronger but i fear the beer belly may take a bit longer to get rid of, 4 years of eating badly and getting pissed 4 times a week is a lot to get rid of.
I'm being a bit more selective with my t.v which is good, means i don't watch as much crap. The inbetweeners is a new show on E4 and is absolute genius. It's kind of like a british version of superbad but as a series and i love this humour to bits. The Apprentice is great again this year but was very sad to see Raef go, like most people i though he was a posh moron at first but quickly grew to love him and his amazing wardrobe. Also have got into great british menu in a big way, the final is tonight at 6pm on BBC 2 can't wait, i'm so sad!
Half way through Harry Potter 4, i promised myself i would read them all and to be honest am quite enjoying them so far. The first three were good but quite easy but the 4th is a bit darker and so far has been a step above.
Ok so that sums things up quite well. Cheeky 10p/20p cash game tonight with some uni lads which will be great fun as always. Going home saturday for a night out with some of the boys from school then coming back monday for a week long festival at the gutshot:

May 26th Monday 4pm £100 Bank Holiday Freezeout 10,000 chips Dealer Dealt
May27th Tuesday 8pm £30 S.Sat. to Main Event
May 28th Wednesday 8pm £30 S.Sat. to Main Event
May29th Thursday 8pm £200 N.L. H’em Freezeout 8,000 chips Dealer Dealt
May 30th Friday 8pm £150 P.L. Omaha Freezeout 8,000 chips Dealer Dealt
May 30th Friday 11pm £30 S.Sat. to Main Event
May 31st Saturday 12pm £30 S.Sat. to Main Event
May 31st Saturday 6pm £500 N.L. H’em Main Event 10,000 chips Dealer Dealt
June 1st Sunday 3pm Main Event Day 2
June 1st Sunday 8pm £30 Extreme Stack 6,000 chips

I'm defo gonna play the comps on monday thursday and friday not sure about the main event but if i make a final of the first three i will for sure. If not will think about it anyway and will probably play, bring on the live poker action!

Intresting start

2008-05-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

So i'm still kind of getting used to the amount of freedom that comes with having no job. I can get up when i want and basically do whatever the hell i want so on the surface this would seem like a great thing, and certainly something that i'm used to over the last 3 years. The problem is however that i'm a total degenerate gambler and this has its own set of problems that i have to deal with. So with this in mind i've decided to draw up a list of rules that i'm going try and stick to in an attempt to maintain a positive structure to my life and to my poker:

1) No more table games. I'm down about £2000 on the year and even though i love them running up hill is stupid as hell.

2) No more online cash without stats. When i play low stakes online i tend to get bored and play like a twat. When i play higher i'm at a disadvantage cause most of the regular players have stats that help them make the big decisions, where as i feel like half the time i'm guessing. Jambon is gonna help me with my 6 max game and teach me about the software to use. Until this happens no more cash online.

3) The most i can lose in 1 day is 10% of my bankroll. I currently have $13,000 so i will stop playing for the day if i drop $1300. Also no buying into comps for more than 10% so live this would mean, because i've never heard of a £650 pound comp the most i will be paying is £500+50.

4) Exercise everyday. With a gym and pool in the complex there is no excuse not to get in better shape. Healthy body = healthy mind.

5) $200 on sports betting per month.

So those are the rules. I'm sure i'll struggle to stick to them but if i can i'm sure things will be ok for me in the near future.
Poker has been a bit funny over the last week or so. Running like total pig shit in stt's and am down about $3000 playing $109 buy-ins which is pretty sick. Obviously lots of bad beats but 1 or 2 shit calls and far to many bluffs in the heads up matches when i know i'm getting called. Fortunatley i took down a $55 speed comp (first ever turbo victory) for $2.2K, only 160 runners but still pretty cool. Obviously i needed a bit of luck; KK v AA with 40 left for big stack and A2 V KK 4 handed, but with a structure like that you need a bit of luck to take these comps down. So i'm down $1K on party but up $2K on stars thanks to getting 22nd in the 500K gtd on sunday. Things were going great for me all tourney and felt like i was playing my best and getting the luck you need for the good hands to hold up. Was in the top 10 in chips for most of the comp and not to final table was gutting. I ended up bluffing 0ff 2/3 of my stack with J2 and then pushed the J10 into AQ to send me to the rail. Although i regret both those hands now i'm proud that i didn't change my game to creep ut the money and i stuck to my own aggressive style. I saved a few hands from the comp and was gonna post but to be honest i'm still hurting from not getting the job done so i'm not gonna bother.
So i'm up about $1400 in May which is ok seeing how bad i'm running at stt's at the mo. I'm gonna play some comps tonight and thursday on stars/party and take a few days off playing stt's to re-focus. Hitting Essex this weekend for my friend brads' 22nd. Golf in the day then night out in town which should be cool. I wonder how long it'll be before i break one of my rules, anyone fancy a bet?

Up and Running

2008-05-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

So this is my first blog from the new flat. The Internet got sorted yesterday and just about everything is now in place. The big news of the week is that i handed my notice in at work; 4 shifts and i'm a free man! Although i havn't quite got the finance that i was planning i couldn't wait any longer, the weather is far to nice to be at work and am now really looking forward to the summer.
Poker has been a bit rubbish of late and ended April breaking even, I didn't play a great deal though and am not to disappointed. The first three months of the year were all quite good to me and i'm sure i'll be back to winning ways soon. Just played a 5 hour STT session (10/6/2 handed $100/$200 buy ins and won an impressive $0.84 so May is a winner already lol!
Life away from poker is all good. Went to Greenwich to explore yesterday and had a great time, the park there is amazing and the view from the museum at the top of the hill is stunning. I cant think of a better way to spend a nice sunny day. I only managed to get through 4 chapters of my book in 3 hours however cause i spent the rest of the time looking at the hot female students, i'm such a pervert its sick. My friend Sean is at Uni over there and am meeting for a beer tonight so i hope he can tell me the best places to go, now i have all this free time i think getting a hot student girlfriend is very high up the list of priorities.
My Chest infection has got a lot better and am glad to report that i'm back on the exercise routine. Currently swimming sets of 10 on 3 minuets which works out to 1 mile in half an hour so hope to build on this over the next few months. Would be good to be up to 2 miles in 1 hour but that seems a long way away at the moment. First official day as a pro Tuesday the 13th May, wish me luck.

Quick update

2008-04-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

So its 5am and I'm sitting in an Internet cafe on tottenham court road having just finished work. Had to sort out my new online banking account and thought that seeing as i have 51 minutes of free time left that i would just do a short blog before bed to get a few things out.
First i'm ill! missed 3 days off work this week and i don't feel much better now. I hope that its just a really chesty cough but am a bit worried it might be an infection which would suck. I'm gonna stick on the over the counter medicine for a while and hope that it clears itself up but the most annoying thing is that it has ruined my swimming routine. I was up to 80 lengths (15m pool) a day but haven't been able to swim for the last week which has annoyed me big time!
The new flat is awesome, i love my room, i love the lounge, i love the whole fucking complex. It really is so much better than the old place and we are planning on moving a friend of ours (Mike 'N-dog' alp) into the lounge so it will be exactly the same price as the old place. Only put in 1 gym session thus far but when i'm feeling better hope to go a few times a week and swim most days. I'm also loving the ping pong table can't wait to gamble it up on there.
So on to good old poker, the internet has not been installed yet (should be about 10 days) so have had limited opportunity to play since my last blog. Up about $1500 from a tidy little online session at gutshot and also won £400 playing live but in general not been putting the hours i would like in. Think i'm gonna play at gutshot the next two nights and will mix it between live and online and hope to win another $1K or so and make sure april wasn't a complete waste of time.
Still not sure when i'm going to leave the casino and go back to full time. I have a good idea of the kind of money i'm gonna need for living expenses and the separate poker bankroll i would like but i'm not in a massive rush. Plus when i leave i plan on giving this a real shot so i'm gonna try and write some poker/lifestyle rules that i will hope to stick to, yes i will post these at some point.
With poker out the door been gambling far to much on pro evo 2008. Down about £500 on the month (£170 in 1 night) but i love it and have no desire to stop. Also had a few cheeky 10p/20p games at the flat which have been as fun as ever, usual sick game with great banter and still amazing how much money swings in this game. My proudest hand was last night when i played the whole hand blind and won a £100 when i flipped KK at the end. WHAMMY!
Not much else to mention really, looking forward to playing some poker over the next few days and am so happy that winter is finally behind us. Going to Newquay again this year on June 8th with summer break and i can't wait. Thousands of students, great clubs, great beach and some top quality lads so bring on the bottle of red wine at 2pm in the swimming pool! good times x

new pad/six figures/t.v/future plans.

2008-03-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Been quite a lot going on since my last blog as the multi-title above would suggest. The first piece of news is that Antony and i signed the contract on our new flat in East London. We're moving in on April 5th with a good friend of ours liam 'the big guy' Kelly and am very excited about the whole thing. This place is the definition of pad, the 3 double bedrooms are a very nice size and the lounge is cool but the best things are the extra features that are included in the price; gym, swimming pool, sauna, hot tub, pool table, snooker table and ping pong! so sick! The area also seems really nice which makes a nice change from camberwell and when we signed the contract we also got to have dinner in the local rstaurant which was expensive but well worth it. Think i'm gonna be paying about £120ish more a month total but i really don't care cause it is soooooooooo worth it, can't wait to move!
Very good news for me as a poker player, my winnings on pary has hit the six figure (usd) mark in just under 18 months of mtt's. This wasn't a specific aim of myn but am very happy about it obviously, all the results are on opr.com but the main stats are: total winnings $101,541. total profit $52,032 and RoI 105%. My current rank on party is 48th but these are only on the last 120 days and get changed a lot so although i would like to hit the top 10 someday its not my number 1 priority. It would be really nice to have really accurate stats on my stt's and cash game reults over the last 18 months as well but although i do believe both would be pfofitable i doubt the stats would be as impressive. One thing that does worry me is the amount of money i spend on total crap! I wish i had more to show for my hard work than hundreds of drunken memories and an ever increasing belly, fuelled by pizza and chinese food, i just hope the new gym being a 30 second walk will encourage me to get in decent shape.
Since my last blog am up about $7000 which is contributing to an ever increasing bankroll. Have won about $2000 playing $100+9 stts running quite steady which is what you want as a poker player. The Mtt result which brought up the six figure mark came last night in the 11pm $109 $20K gtd. I wasn't really planning on saving many hand but got a few in:

Think in this hand there were about 30 left and this got me the kind of stack i need to do the damage:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2343943

All donations are welcome sir! This next hand is a pretty good example of how i've been running over the last month:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2343957

As you can see the stack sizes were quite even and at 3000/6000 there wasn't much play. I put the guy on a hand but i can't fold 1010 for one bet here and when i see that flop ithink the shove is the only option imo. This was oneof the first hands on the final table so if i lose its 10th for $350 and if i win its the chiplead, atleast i had 6 0uts instead of 2 lol. After this hand i ran over the table for a while but i lost 3 or 4 showdons in a row and kept doubling up shortstacks 6 and 7 handed which was quite annoying.

Back to what i'm good at:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2343987

This got me the chips back and managed to use them to get heads up with 250,000 v 500K. At this point we did a chop with me getting $5.2K and him getting $6.05K which was fine with me.
Just a quick word on the good old television. The WSOPE is on pokertube which is cool, episode 1 is phil hellmuth at his very best,i couldn't stop laughing the whole way through and am really looking forward to see the final table cause watching the whole thing live i thought the standard was amazing and most of the time i was struggling to put the players on hands. Also good to see the Apprentice is back,one of the best shows on t.v. Glad they kicked out the guy they did cause he was such a prick! Such an arrogant toff and he wouldn't shutup about how clever he waseven though he was unable to correctly price fish, despite being given the wholesale prices and being surrounded by competitors MORON!
Just one final note on my plans for the future. Think i'm going to go back fulltime at the end of July and have a few live tournies i have my eye on for August and the rest of 2008. I'm going to make sure i have the cash to do so and am certainly not going to take this decision lightly.

Running like God, playing like Jesus.

2008-03-15T05:27:00.000-07:00

As you can imagine this blog is going to be mostly about what a sick luckbox/genius i am. Having taken down the $33 rebuy on wednesday for a cool $3500 i havn't really left this sofa (i'm still lying on it as i write this). I've had to get up to piss and get food and drink and stuff but apart from that its just been me and my new best friend, hey when the doctor says rest who am i to argue? My sleeping pattern is a bit fucked up cause i keep sleeping for a couple of hours then waking up but apart from that i'm very happy. The television hasn't let me down (mostly paramount and mtv) and the poker gods have certainly looked after wendyx25 over the last couple of days.
Since the rebuy played another 6 tournaments on party and managed to cash big in two of these. First nice reult was in the super thursday which is a $150 buy-in comp. A few hands from this one:

The usual sick start:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272356

This might look like a stupid overbet on the river but my read was that he had a 4 and the average player isn't good enough to pass so not suprised it worked.

Since the early double up had been grinding away waiting for a good spot and man did it find one!:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272352

When your running well this kind of thing just happens i guess, cashy was on the table (we also had 10% swap) and he was giving me some stick about what a luckbox i am, think he has a point.

Managed to make the final table when this hand came up early on:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272346

I have 0 fold equity in this spot so to move in i must think i have the best hand. It was really marginal because i can't put him on an overpair and thought that if he had J10 - A10 he would flat call to see what i did on the turn but maybe not, in retrospect think i got bluffed but i could have 2 outs so its not a terrible pass.

Didn't really get any good spots to steal and didn't find a hand for a while but a few palyers were knocked out so that was cool. LUCKBOX SHOVE:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272340

This was the last piece of luck for me in the comp, ran AQ into AK soon after and ended up 5th for $1.4K. Played a good comp and was card dead for long periods so no complaints from me, it was good to be back on the final table so soon.

A couple of power naps, lots of television and a takeaway later the cards were back in the virtual air and i was off and running in the $20K gtd last night. After the standard donkey double up early on played this hand soooooooo bad:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272324

To all the kids out there this is not how to play AA, at the time the 2 guys behind were playing quite loose so was preying having gone raise, call it might go raise call again and i can jam it but as it turned out this was wishful thinking. Make a standard fold on the river but if i play the hand like i should i get it all in pre v KK and win a huge pot at that stage.

This sucks:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272320

Awesome turn card for my hand so of course we get it in, i hadn't done much swearing until then but i took off after that river.

Won a couple of flips after the bad beat which got me back on track then i had enough chips to show off:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272315

Do i have to move in here?:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272312

Not sure about this one, knew the min bet was weak but i think with the players behind i should just call, lucky i'm running like god or i might have been worried when he flipped AQ.

Onto the final table now:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272310

How dare he raise my big blind! Even though i started the final as chip leader it was a shit start and i thought it was just gonna be one of those bad days when this yukky one happened:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272306

Another dream spot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272302

Shame about the result, 2outs and he hits them both which was nice.

Won a massive coinflip to make it 3 handed but then lost a huge one with AQ V 33 to give mr quads a big chiplead. The standard of poker was relly high 3 handed with loads of stealing and re-stealing going on and thought that the skill level was about even. Darkhand won a couple of massive hands against ripcurl and either side of those i gambled it up and of course came out on top:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2272279

After this darhand took out ripcurl and we had the same chips so was more than happy to deal and take $5300 to round up a couple of great nights for me online. 3 Final tables from 8 comps is awseome and have ended up winning about $10K in 3 days which is about as good as it gets. Been running great obviously but more than happy with my game and amazingly havn't tilted much at all.

My mate Alec 'the boy' howard was watching the final table from his uni house in Norwich and we were having some good banter over the phone which was cool. After the final we had a look for a juicy cash game to muff around in, omg did we find one! $1/2 6 max game, average pot$180! Basically just this one belgian dude who was one of the biggest donkeys i've ever seen. He was making it like $75 pre, then he would limp, betting $2 into a $100 pot then $150 into a $5, calling bets with jack high on the river, oh it was sweet!! wish i had saved some hands but me and A lec were to busy weeting ourselves at his antics. At 1 point he started getting lucky and got up to $1900 but soon spazed it off! The thing is with players like this you need to make some hands cause bluffing is not an option. Lucky for me i did we got it all in pre with me AK v 33, AA v AK and JJ v kk so the one time he had me crushed i still won, so sick! ended up winning $900 net profit which was cool and he spewed $2000 ish all over the table, the waiting list got up to 5 but he left after an hour and of couse i left the hand after, well done to Alec for a good spot! And well done to the poker gods for making me an absolute Luckbox! time for a power nap.

injured victory

2008-03-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Had an operation on my in-grown toenail this morning which was about as fun as it sounds. The doctor started by injecting a massive needle into both sides of the toe which hurt like hell and then once it was numb bassically hacked half the nail out. It was quite sick to actually watch it but he seemed to think that it went well; will find out for sure when i go back tommorrow to have the bandages removed. The doc said that the recovery time is about 4 weeks and to rest it as much as possible, he also said to try and wear flip flops which as most of you know will certainly not be a problem for me. I don't think working on my feet will help with the recovery time but am just gonna have to wait and see.
Between my last blog and tonight poker had been quite slow, a few minor cashes online but nothing serious. Once again went quite deep in the 500K gtd on stars and was in a massive pot for a top 5 chip position with 300 left. Wasn't to be though as i continue to run bad in the weekly major online comps. Think i may also be guilty of spending to much time looking at the lobby with the realisation that i have to beat 2000 + players having an adverse effect on my game.
Anyway given strict instuctions to rest i certainly wasn't going to being doing anything productive tonight so i fired up the laptop and decided to play 3 of my favourite nightly comps on party: $55 18K gtd FO, $33 10k gtd RB and the $109 20k gtd FO. Was playing these comps about 3 times a week last year but with a lot less time on my hands these days havn't been able to put in the hours.
Between 8pm-10.30pm the poker was on autopilot as i watched the mighty spurs take on PSV. Was very dissapointing to get knocked out on pens and over the two legs i think spurs were the slightly better side, think i'm more annoyed however with the shit rule that when u finish 3rd in your champions league group you get a place in the UEFA cup, it makes the competion a joke and should be scrapped. Great goal by Berbatov by the way, he is truely world class and hope we can keep hold of him for next season so i can stick £200 on us finishing in the top 4!
Anyway was unable to make the money in the $109 and $55 freezeouts. Played fine in both and just wasn't to be; things in the rebuy however (as the title of the blog suggests) went slightly better. I rebought right at the start to increase my stack to 6K and was pretty quiet for the first 50 mins until i managed to win a massive 3 way all in with JJ v 1010 v A7 for a 20K pot and when i took the add on had myself a very nice 25K stack having spent a total of $93 playing 150/300 blinds. For the next 2 hours thing went along very smoothly indeed, saw a lot of hands and was never all in myself whilst busting short stacks all over the place. At 200/400 donk shoves all in UTG for 10K! I insta call with KK v AQ and the donations kept coming.
By the time i decided to start saving hands there were only 15 left and i was 2nd in chips when this happened:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260479

This was a fucking dream spot for me, The only palyer who could double me up in the whole comp and it was very nice of him to do so (think i fold JJ in his spot).

Revenge is sweet:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260484

This hand was the first piece of bad luck for me in the whole comp and for some reason it tilted me for about 5 mins. I started slagging him in the chat for calling with the jacks and tbh i thought he seemed like a dangerous player so it was a shit time to take a shocker.

Great start to the final table:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260493

All in on the flop when he is dead, sick turn card but its no fun unless its a sweat lol. This got me back in the zone.

I just like to gamble sometimes:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260500

wooooooooooooooooops, well i could afford it and once i flopped the flush draw i was shocked that i missed!

sick:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260508

This hand is soooooooo sick! At the time i was pretty sure that when the guy flat called the raise he would lead the flop cause he seemed like a strong player. I call the flop hoping to hit obvioulsy for cheap or more likely bet when he checks the turn. When the scariest card in the deck hits the turn and he leads out i straight away thought bluff. 2 pair is a no no cause he wasn't calling raises out of position an i think a set would check flop like 90% of the time. Obviously even if he is massive i still have a fuck load of outs and i think i would normally shove here. I call with position just to see the river and hope that he wills hove into my made straight or flush. So when i miss and he shoves i guess i have to fold? NO WAY! 4th gets $900 and 1st gets £3.5K great bet by him considering stacks and the other two chip positions but i make what i believe to be a truely world class call. Looking back at the hand i think i should shove the turn but so happy i went with my gut and made a massive call that i'm so so proud of.

Bit of a wobble:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260518

Was quite a tight player but i don't see how i can pass, his play = terrible!

Get all the chips:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2260525

Was 100% sure he had a 10 and a was shit river. lucky he is a shit player as well, awful river bet from him but making quads and geting paid is always cool.

Had a 6/1 chiplead Hu and soon finished it with K4 v J8 for his last 6 bb's. Took $3.5K for first which is very nice. Moving out of camberwell soon so had to cash $1800 just to pay for some shit and to make sure i stay well out of he overdraft. Have $5K in my party account now and am not planning to cash any out for a while so hope to build up in the next few months.
Just a quick note on my stt results, had a look on sharkscope.com using a free search and the results aren't accurate at all. They said i was up like $7K in total but had me down as having played 190 stt's when in reality i would say its more like 1000. From the 80 games i recorded i was up $1500 so they are defo a wortwhile investment i just don't enjoy them as much as mtt's so am only gonna play about 10 a week or so safe in the knowledge that i'm making money in the long run.
Anyway its now 4am and i have another appointment with the doc at 1.30pm so gonna get some rest. Think i'll play a few more comps online over the next few nights and might hit the gutshot on saturday for the £150, last time i played that got called for my whole 5K stack playing 400/800 by J2! i I only had K8 but still it was like 60% of his stack so i know there is plenty of value in that comp also like the structure.

Hot Streak

2008-02-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

In my last blog i posted my schedule of the tournements i planned to play over the last few weeks. To a large extent i was able to stick to this whilst managing to avoid to many cash game sessions at the same time. I also wrote that i would hope to either win money or learn a lot and thankfully both of these expectations came true.

ONLINE REPORT:

Very happy to tell everyone that i have had a fair bit of success in online mtt's over the last week or so. I played 7 tournements, had 2 minor cashes and 1 big pay day in the super thursday on the 14th of march. On the link below it says that i came 2nd for $4.5K but in reality it was a 3 way chop and i took home another $300 on top of this: http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/partypoker/Wendyx25/poker/results/F4DE92F9A291412A8156389C9FD4E9B4.html?t=2

The first time we discussed a deal i was actually chip leader and would have made $6K but one of the other players refused. The very next hand he gets his 10 bb's in the middle with 9 2 V my A5 and of course hits the 9 on the river to stay alive and by the time we dealt 10 minutes later we had the same size stacks which was a little frustrating.
I've saved a lot of hands from all the tournements using pokerhand.org and plan on going through them all and blogging the best/most intresting ones in the near future. I've also stuck to my plan of playing a lot of $55 turbo stt's and plan on getting to 100 and then putting the results up. At the moment i'm up a bit but running very badly in crucial coinfilps and general showdowns, i'mtrying hard to concentrate on them by not playing to many at the same time cause i really want to find out how much money i can make from sit and goes. I would certainly say that i don't enjoy them in the way that i enjoy mtt's but i think i have a long term edge and i need to see the kind of financiel return that brings.

LIVE REPORT:

Now we get to the fun stuff the good old live poker action!! I got to play all 5 of the live tournements that i was planing on participating in and i think its only fair to go through them in the correct order. First up was the £75 FO at the gutshot last wednesday. Starting stack was 4000 and i had built my stack painfully slowly to 7300 when this rather sick situation came up. Blinds were 300/600 when its folded to me in mp. The bb has a totalof 2000 chips and has told the table he is going to be all in this hand. The co and button both have 4000ish and the only player that has me covered is the sb with 10K. So anyway i look down at AQ and make it 1300 to play with the following logic, if the Co or button move in i call. If the sb moves in i cry and in an ideal world they all fold to the bb and i'm in 1 4K showdown with what will 9 times out of 10 be the best hand. Also made it 1300 so if the sb calls and the bb moves in i can re-raise isolate. Co folds, button folds, sb calls and bb CALLS! Leaving himself 700. Flop 7 5 2 with two clubs and they both fucking check! WTF! So 3900 in the pot and i have 6K left what the hell do i do? After a while i think about the sb's range and decide to shove. After about 2 minutes he calls with A8 of clubs and the bb calls with K9 so i'm in an 18K showdown with ace high and i'm in front! obviously the club hits and i go busto but even now i'm still confused by the hand. My bet pre flop is weak but i think the logic is there and my shove onthe flop is ballsy but its hard to put the sb on a hand he can call with and ace high is probs good against the bb. Any advice on this hand would be welcome and it was certainly nice for me to play a hand in tournement that could cause such confusion.
Anyway the next day i jumped on a train to Reading for the second annual Reading series of poker. Met the boys at the union about 2ish for a few games of pool before event 1 the £20 PLO, lost about £40 playing pool which is pretty standard for me tbh but the beer was flowing and we were all excited about the w/e and the inevitable stupid side bets that would follow. Event 1 was a bit dissapointing as we only managed 10 players for the PLO. Think quite a few of the guys this year are just holdem players and the people from other uni's were gonna focus on the main event. Despite some nice deep stacks it was an early exit for me with a very dissapointing 9th. Played like a drain and was feeling quite sick with the combination of beer and whisky along with the drugs i had been taking for my in-grown toenail. Made 1 very nice fold with middle set but couldn't ever make a hand when i needed to and made a shit play when i got busted bluffing into top set wooooooooops!
Thankfully was feeling much better the next day. Mike, cashy and ben decided to go and gamble it up on the golf course but Ant and i thought we would just hang out and relax in the 4 star hotel. Had a swim, sauna and a steam so by the time the next comp started at 6pm felt more than ready to defend my iho championship against a slightly larger field of 21. Despite a nice early double up witgh AK v KK all in pre flop in holdem against cashy (lol) i once again was unable to make the final table.My timing was off and even though i really wated to win i just kept getting caught bluffing and made 1 or 2 shit calls. Also i thik it's time to give some credit to a few of the boys from last year who have improved a lot. I thik a number of them have got a lot better and as much as it pains me to say it sometimes i had no idea what they had. Josh Igoe was really aggressive and even though i think he can give away a lot of info with his speech during a hand thought he palyed very well and his mate Martin has got a lot of game these days.
So it was not a good to start to the RSOP for me. I was down £30 on poker and about £80 ish on side bets. Six of us also decided to put £10 into a bet on overall player of the series with double points for the main event, I only had 4 points after two events and Ant was winning with 12 so was gonna have to get the best result of the six in the main event and hope Ant had a shocker to have a chance (thankfully this had a very good chance of happening).
Day 1 of the main event was another big dissapointment for me. I had quite a tough table draw and lost 2 big hands early with JJ v AA and then 44 having to fold on the turn on a board of 4 5 6 8. So in the 100/200 level when i finally got my last 2700 in pot with K6 v AK i thought that a very dissapointing RSOP was over for me and i could concentrate on the far more important issue of getting drunk. Six on the turn and i'm back in bussiness. Lose most of it back again over the next hour before finding myself all in again with AQ v KK for my last 3000 chips. Once again i suckout and its happy days. Finally play a hand well by trapping my opponent and getting him to bluff his stack off to me with king high against my top 2 and end the day with average stack of 18,500 with 42 of the 80 starters left to come back the next day. Saturday night was an absolute classic! About 20 people from last year were out in the union and everyone was having a good time. Drank far to much including 4 aftershocks in a row which was not a good idea. Hangover of the century and wasn't expecting a great result the next morning but things actually went very very well for me as my outrageous luck continued. First was all in with 77 v J10, i won. Then i find KK on the button and find a re-steal from the sb with Q 10 and before i know it am up to 40,000, still hungover but feeling a lot better. By the time the bubble came round was in full steamroller mode and had 120,000 playing 1000/2000 blinds. Was chipleader on the final table with 200K playing 3000/6000 blinds thanks to a lot of aggression and winning two more coinflips against shorter stacks. Was certainly nice to see 7 from Reading on the final table and by the time we were down to 5 it was just Readig left. Ended up splitting it 3 way for 900 each and playing for 100 and the title. Only managed to finish second but by the time the chop was sorted we all relaxed and started calling all in with utter filth, well done to Paul for finishing third and Steve Windsor for winning. Think they both played well all tourney and even though i feel i had a decent edge 3 handed think the cash was a big deal for them both so was more than happy to chop. Overall was very happy with the weekend, the hotel was great value and the piss up on saturday was legendary. My poker wasn't great the first 3 days but i played one hell of a final day and won a lot of big showdowns at the right time.
By the time i got back on sunday was totally exhaused and had the best sleep of my life. I was tempted to skip the the £100 at the gutshot last night but felt like i would go for one more big win. Only 23 runners but i managed to chop HU for £700, very nice!!!!!!!
Wow that is a very long blog! long story short, I LOVE POKER! Up about £4000 over the last 10 days which is way above expectation. I'm going to take a few days off poker now until sunday when will play some of the big online comps. As far as going back to being a full time poker player goes i'm doing some thinking at the moment. Certainly made a lot more money in the last 4 months playing than working but is very nice to have a guaranteed income and working at the casino is still ok. Think the best thing to do is work till the summer and then make sure i have a big enough roll not to have to worry about living expenses and rent and can focus on playing and staying fresh.

downswing/schedule

2008-02-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

Things have been pretty slow on the poker front of late. Been mixing up my game selection between live 10 handed cash games and online tournies with a little bit of six max thrown in for good measure.
Down about £1000 in live cash games over the last month which is quite painful to actually write. Lost a £600 pot at the empire on sunday night with 64 V AA against some American twat on a board of 9 6 4 all in on the flop, turn 3 river 3 OUCH! Lost another £300 at the gutshot last night with a very sick run of cards, played about 5 big-ish hands and lost everyone. Looked back at the hands on the way home and am pretty sure that all the hands were played correctly, just a sick run of cards i guess.
If anything online has been more frustrating than live. Been going quite deep in a number of tournies but just can't make the big money. Lost a couple of big coin flips at the wrong times and taken some ugly beats which have cost me some serious $. As far as my game goes think that i have been a little bit tilty at times and maybe been pushing a little to hard at the wrong times. Also starting to think a few of the regular players on party have started to work out my game a little bit so it could be time to make a few minor adjustments to my game.
So poker has been a bit shit and think i'm gonna give the cash games a bit of a break and try and concentrate on my tournament play for a while. Got quite a bit of time off work coming up so decided to make a poker schedule and keep track of my play/results with the aim of blogging the damage when i'm through.
Poker schedule feb 2008: wed 13th - live- £75+5 Fo at the gutshot 8pm.
online- 5 $55 turbo stt's. $109 FO 12am?

thurs 14th - online - 8pm $162 Fo. 10.30pm $33 RB.
12am $109 FO. 5 $55 stt's.

fri 15th - online - 5 $55 turbo stt's. work.

sat 16th - work.

sun 17th - work.

mon 18th - work.

tue 19th - $33 RB 3.30pm. $162 FO 8pm.

wed 20th - online - 5 $55 turbo stt's.
live - cheeky 10/20p cash game?

thurs 21st - live - RSOP event 1 £20 PLO. followed by piss up.

fri 22nd - hangover? piss up? silly gambling?

sat 23rd - live - RSOP main event £50 FO day 1.

sun 24th - live - RSOP main event day 2? (£500 for cash games
and silly side bets).

mon 25th - live - £100 FO at the gutshoy 8pm.
online- $109 FO 12am?

tue 26th - online - $33 RB 3.30pm. $162 FO 8pm. $109 FO 12am
5 $55 stt's turbo.

So thats the plan for the next few weeks and as you can see its pretty much all poker. Will record all my results and plan to blog at the end of feb. I'm sure i will either win money or learn a lot, i hope to god its the former.

Heavy weekend

2008-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

Just got through a pretty massive weekend and a very enjoyable one at that. The fun started at myn on friday night with a 10p/20p cash game at the flat with 7 players. Amazingly i managed to lose 32o pounds in the game playing very badly indeed. From around 9pm to 6am was actually up around 50 quid and playing well, lots of action and was winning a lot of pots with a combination of strong bluffs and made hands.
In the space of 2 hands however things took a turn for the much, much worse. First lost a 120 pot against blubbs with 97 V 1010 on a board of 6 7 10 7 all in on the turn. He played the hand very niceley and i had to make a decision on the turn to raise him all in or fold, i made the wrong one. I had been up since 11am friday morning so the fact it was 6am on saturday didn't help my thought process. I get away from the hand quite easily if anything but a 7 comes on the turn and it was a bit of a cold deck but not to worry. The next hand i played was one i will not live down for a very, very long time indeed. Just a bit of a backround on ben 'big cheese' warwick': i've been friends with ben since the first year of university and lived with him for all 3 years. He learnt to play poker in the first year and fell in love with the game early, adopting a tight stratergy with the ability to pull a big bluff atthe right time. He plays for very low stakes online and has always made money but could have made a lot more $ if he was playing at the level he should be. Anyway ben raises to 80p in ep and cashpoint calls on the co. I lookdown at AJ sooooted in the sb and make it 2.6 total only for ben to re-raise to 6 poundish and cashy to fold. I should fold here and would have if the hand before i hadn't lost a big pot. So i say outloud that i think he has KK, make the call and check in the dark. Flop comes JJ3! BOOOOOM! To my suprise ben checks behind but despite this i still read him for an overpair. We both have over 100 infront of us and i think he wants to half disguise his hand and half keep the pot small. I hit the ace on the turn to make a full house and bet 10, ben thinks for 3 secs then calls. A king hits the river and for some reason i bet 20 quid, Ben raises to 60 and i pretty much insta fold face up sayingthat he has KK or AA. Ben flips Q6 and i can't believe it! The problem was i made up my mind what he had way to early, Ben also likes to make his moves on the turn or river and not pre flop. For this reason when he 4-bet i just pressumed it was a big pair (making my call even worse). Anyway the hand bought a lot of laughter from all the boys and i had to take a lot of banter then and no doubt in the future will have to take a lot more. For Ben's take on the hand check his blog http://www.benwarwick.blogspot.com/, well played sir!!!!!!!
After this hand went on mad major monkey tilt and lost another 220 in about an hour, with 10p/20p blinds that is quite impressive. Was just playing awful and i made sure that Ant won all his money back by trying lots of dumb dumb bluffs. Then i lost 100 quid on a game of pro evo going down 6-3 with Bayern Munich V Bayern Munich. Despite the tilt and the money was still in a good mood and having a good laugh. We went for breakfast at the local cafe then came back via the bookies (-50) for a cheeky pro evo tourney that i did not win (-5). So i was stuck an impressive 475 quid on the weekend that i managed to win back in about an hour online. Ran really well winning $800 at $2/$4 nlh then another $200 at$0.5/1 PLO , poker is such a great game.
At 1pm on saturday Mike, Ant and i headed off to Reading for an all day piss up with a load of the other guys from uni (still no sleep). Got to the hotel at about 3pm, checked in and went srtaight back out again on a pub crawl that ended up at the union. Was tottally shatterd but got through the day somehow and had a great laugh. Four of the lads are going travelling for a year so was good to give them a good send off and by the time we got back to the hotel at 1.30am on Sunday was out on my feet.
Am working the next three nights and thursday day but Alec is coming up friday so gonna hit the tables on friday and saturday which should be fun and hope to make some more money then.

Let it Ride

2008-01-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

Very sick night on friday involving lots of drinking and gambling, ending in one hell of a hangover!
The fun began at work with some low stakes backgammon, managed to win 3 pints despite only having been playing for a few weeks, but there is enough luck in the game to beat better players, thank god. Also won a tenner cutting for high card, when your running good life is so much fun lol.
Went to a pub in covent garden after work called sulleys bar, quite small but a good atmosphere and a few girls around to perve over. Stayed for a few hours but after a few free beers and a couple of rounds of black sambuca moved on to planet hollywood where the real fun began. On arrival found out that we get half price drinks ( because of work) so bottles of beer were 1.50, very rare in london so made sure i took full advantage.
Now for some reason the conversation turned to then ancient art of ro-sham-bo to the un-educated amongst you thats what we call paper/scissors/rock. I have always maintained that this is a game of skill and seeked to prove this in a 6 man drunken tournament. As usual i was in the zone,crushing my opponenets with some cruel jedi mind tricks. I knew what they were gonna throw before they did and after destroying a Spaniard came up against a southafrican called jason in a best of 5 match for the undisputed championship of the world. As a general rule most players will throw a higher % of rock than anything else, if they are tricky your gonna see a lot of scissors and some well timed paper. Jason throws paper to my rock, paper to my rock and then scissors to my paper for a crushing defeat! I didn't even get one draw! paper, paper, scissors are you serious! Having decided that this was a total fluke we up the stakes and play for some cash, i lose 30 quid and learn a very valuable lesson,no matter how good you are at something there is always someone better. Very good laugh though and after some more gambling on arm-wrestling and thumb wars we moved into the empire casino at 3am (had to be at work for 1.30pm).
Blackjack is certainly not a game of any real skill,i'm a realist and know that even if you play perfect the house has a 2% edge every hand. I still love the game however and will continue to play for fun and the occasional win. Played for about an hour and was about to leave having lost 150 but then i decided to stick my last 20 quid on and let it ride for 4 hands. Won them all and was soon sitting with 320 and a big drunken smile! Am i smart guy? did i cash out? hell no! i did what all decent gamblers do and ran it up to 600 before losing it all back. Once again i was about to leave, this time at about 5.30am but i then found a 50 note in my pocket and stuck it all on. won that hand, stuck it all on, won that hand and stuck it all on again; after about 2 seconds of thinking (having won again) i decided to go for it all again, 200 pound in 5 pound chips and by that time about 12 people round the table all on one box! first card queen, 7 for the dealer and then BOOM! ACE OF SPADES THANKYOU VERY MUCH! Blackjack of 200 for a return of 500 (including the bet). I jump up, knock my 8th pint of the night onto the floor and celebrate with some high fives (most of which with people i have never met before. Went on a nice run after that and ended the night up 500 before the casino finally closed. I get back at 7am just about make it into work the next day and despite the hangover just about make it through a nice easy day shift.
Looking forward to some serious poker on my days off. Gonna paly some sunday tournies online tonight (300K gtd on party and 500K gtd on stars) then on monday gonna play the 00 FE at the gutshot and probs play cash all night after.
Finally just wanted to mention that the dates have been set for the second annual Reading series of poker (RSOP II). The main event is on the last w/e of Feb witha couple of tournies on the thursday and friday. Booked four days holiday off work and am looking forward to it very much, can' wait to defend my iho tourney and hope that everything goes as well as it did last year, been a lot of intrest on facebook and 100 players in the ME looks likely.

Big swings

2008-01-10T23:48:00.000-08:00

Obviously it was gonna be tough to continue my fine run of form for ever and last week i had my first losing live game session for a while. I lost 750 with a pretty bad run of cards and a few bad beats but also made a few bad plays that i wasn't happy with at all. Played again the day after and lost again (300) but ironically for the 6 or so hours i was playing felt like i was on top form and couldn't play any better. Des;pite being up 300 in the first couple of hours the poker gods then decided to have some fun with me. First with 55 V 67 on a very pretty board of 3 4 5. Then with 44 V 86 sooooooted on a board of 4 5 7. On the first hand the other guy only had 150 so that was ok and i managed to lose the minimum on the second hand by check calling two bricks on the turn and river. After these two ugly ones i managed to get away from an ace on a board of A 10 10 10 6 when he raised my river bet, he had limped in utg then called my pot size raise pre flop with 10 5 sooooted! Also had to muck 10 10 and QQ on 8 high and 9 high boards both times V rocks with KK. So i lost over 1000 in two days whick sucked but thankfully poker is a great game and i didn'thave to wait long for the glory days to return.

Glory day number 1:

To be honest this was a pretty standard cash game session. Played well and got lots of action from some massive donks sitting with more money than sense. One guy turned up pissed and i won an 800 pot of him with AA v Q9 on a board of AKQ!!! Ended the session up 500 and was very happy to be back to winning ways.

Glory day number two:

This day started as all the best ones seem to, getting up at 5pm following a phone call from Ant telling me to meet him at the gutshot at 5.30pm. When i stroll in at 7.30pm he doesn't look to annoyed and instead is sitting on a nice 300 profit in the 1/2 game. I manage to convince him to play the 75 tourney upstairs so we both sit down with 52 other warriors and battle it out on the felt. As usual i felt like playing 80% of hands in the first two levels and manage to get it all in early with KQ v AJ on a board of J 10 3. Thankfully i hit the 9 on the river and was up to 10K from my starting stack of 3.5 in no time at all. By the first break i'm chipleader with 15K when i make the nut flush on the river against some total chump who played AK about as bad as you can imo. The stucture wasn't great but i managed to pick myspots well to steal and built up an ever increasing chip stack over the nxt few hours. Also managed to bust Ant durig the 300/600 blind level when i raised Co and he shoved button. I was getting a nice price with my K6 and had the stack to make the call but wasn't loving it when he flipped K10. 6 on the turn thankyou very much! The clock was 20 mins and with levels of 300/600, 400/800, 500/1000and then 600/1200 really enjoyed the middle stages with plenty of play and some pretty weak players to steal from. At the second break we were down to 13 players and i was still chipleader with 38K but blinds were up to 800/1600 with average stack around 15K. Third hand after the breakcame the best momentof my night when 2nd chipleader (worst player left) shoves all in UTG for 30K!! i look down at AA in the big blind, shippppppp it!! He had AK and hit the panic button but good news for me as i started the final with 71K and was massive chipleader. Played very tight early on the final in a desperate attempt to get a nice image back and busted a couple of shortstacks when i had to call there all ins from the bb. By the time we got heads up was even on chips with anothe player who seemed quite strong so with only 15 bb's each decided to chop it for just over 1000 each. Was really happy with the outcome and my play throughout but mostly was a massive confidence boost as far as live tournies go cause i havn't made a final for a while or dominated at tournement at gutshot like that ever.
The night however was to get much better as i ended up winning another 1300 in the cash game. Most of this was at 10am when i limped in early playing 7 handed with KJ . The rest of the table limps and we see a KK5 flop, rainbow. The whole table checks and we see a nice J on the turn to make me the nuts (was also a second diamond. I bet 10 and the button (aggressive internet type player raises to 35. To be honest a this point i thought he had total air and he thought i just had a jack. When the rest of the table folds i smooth call and hope he has a draw that hits the river. 6 of diamonds on the river, i bet 25 and he insta raises me to 125. I hope he has the nut flush or at worst a King and after 15secs raise 325 more. He dwells and dwells and eventually calls with K5. Very sick hand for him even if the only hands i'm gonna 4bet the river with are KJ or K6. So after that pot was up 2300 total on the night. Lots of other pots to talk about but its now 9am and i am fucking shagged. Got in from the cash game at 2pm slept for 4 hours then had to work till 6.30 am this morning, really need some fucking sleep. Probs play again on saturday night and hope to keep the rush going.
Not been playing much online apart from some $2/$4 six max stars and party. Up about $1000 on the month. Came 84th in the sunday warm up on starts for another $1K but was very fucked off cause when youmake the top 100 of a big tourney you need to get the job done, least i beat 3000 players though so not all bad.

The tiltmonster

2007-12-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

Since my last blog have played a couple more live sessions and am up about 500ish in total. A few funky hands here and there and my first shocking beat, basically got it in on the turn with AA on a pretty safe board, he had 5 outs and got there for a 620 pot, ouch!
Blogging the beats is no fun but blogging the hands i win is much more painless to write about. Last time i wrote about the call i made with 4th pair V busted flush. The next hand involves the same player and is arguably the sickest call i have ever seen or heard about. I limp the CO with 10 7 soooted, my buddy limps button and the guy in the bb (total gimp donk) raises 5 more. He could have anything so i call as does my buddy. Flop A 6 8 and the donk bets 10,he has about 150ish back and i'm very deep stacked so decide to make a loose call and the other guy calls to. Turn is a King and we go check, check, check. River is a queen, donk checks i think about a stab but opt to check and the button bets 30. The donk thinks 20secs and folds and its on me. After 5 seconds i announce that i think he has 75 or 97 and i'm going to call with a 10. He says 97 and i proudly table 107 for a very nice 100ish pot, very very very sick indeed.
So live poker has continued to go well. Have decided to use some of my winnings to play the main event of the london poker masters at the gutshot, 500 buy-in and 50 charge. Its a 2 day event with an excellent structure so should be a lot of fun and am looking forward to it, january 5th-6th.
Finished being staked by jambon online. Have about $1800 to play with on party which is nice, tilted very badly last night and lost 2 buy-ins at $2/4 NLH in under 10 minutes. Was really pissed off when i bubbled the sunday million on stars, took a very bad beat and would have had 120,000 chips with 15% of the field left. Instead of beating up a midget or having a wank (2 very standard ways to get off tilt) i loaded up the six max on party and the rest is history. Thankfully it was mainly profit i had been grinding out all day playing 0.5/1 PLO and NLH so not to bad. Tilt is so much fun.

great poker week.

2007-12-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

Have just finished my 4th and final cash game session of the week and thankfully it was another profitable one. Its been my best poker week by far, as live play goes and i'm delighted with both my play and my luck.
Just a quick update on my third session which was a bit of a funny one. Went to the gutshot after work on friday, arriving at 4.30 am and not to my suprise there were still three games going so i jumped straight into a 1/2 game for 300 total. The game was quite active with 2 aggressive players on my left who seemed quite strong, 7 players in total. Lost 100 early with 3/4 hands that didn't quite go my way before winning a very nice pot with K8 V 77 on a 8 8 6 board, got paid on flop turn and river. Then i palyed a big pot with the player on my immediate left. Folded round to me on the button with a 5 straddle on the game, had raised this spot last time and had folded to a pot size re-raise, look down at AA, not folding this time. So i make it 16 and not to my suprise all 3 call. Flop A Q 3, 2 clubs and i bet 30 when is checked to me. First guy calls, other 2 fold and my man checks when a red 10 hits the turn i bet 60 and once again he thinks for 2 secs and calls. River was a nice fat 2 of diamonds and he checks again. I dwell for 10 secs and then bet 125 and he calls with AK, shipp it! Think he played the hand quite poor and was check guessing, was quite sick when the case ace hits but by the time the river comes he only beats a bluff, think he should try and define his hand earlier but not to sure. Got the first tube back at 6.30 when the game broke and they moved it to 1, 10 handed game, ended +300 so nice short game here and just nice to find a couple of good spots, made 1 shabby bluff but gave up before the river and 2 barrel bluffs tend to be a lot cheaper than all 3.
Was back at the gutshot at 8pm Sunday for the 50 FE, 5000 chips and 15 mins clock. Got a nice double up early with flopped flush and really tried to concentrate and play my best throughout, my tourney ended on a sick beat with 30% of field left, 35,000 chip pot 86 V 10 9 on a board of 10 9 7, very painfull 9 on the river but happy with my game and if i win that pot think i'm chip leader and very very confident at closing so think a top 3 would have been on i hope.
Wasn't to dissapointed and was soon back in cash game action sitting with the standard 300 in the 1/2 game. After about an hour was up 60 and going along very nice indeed until this hand came up. 4 limps into my bb and i pot with KK. 2 calls and a board of 2 5 6 with two clubs; i check (guy on the button is a bit of a donk who likes a bet) next guy checks and donk bets 25 ( leaving 125 back) i make it 80; first limper folds and donk shoves, don't love it but i can't fold. I table KK and he shows 87, with 1 club. Turn is a nice fat 4 and i take an ugly hit. Got my chips back 30 mins later with K2 v his 4 2 on a K 4 2 flop, unlucky for him but another nice flop for me. After this went on a nice rush for the next 2 hours, table was quite weak and had it worked out niceley, 2 total calling stations who were calling very light on the river so when i hit big and bet big they came along for the ride. Thought i had them pegged most of the time and was disgusted when i called a 50 river bet with AA on a board of 3 9 10 10 j and 1 of then flipped Q 10. His game was so obvious this was the worst play i have made in the last week; 0-2 with AA and KK; kind of call that is the difference between good palyers and average ones and was not happy 1 bit. Next hand was very sick, folded to me on CO and i bump it up with the 9 6 sooooooooooooooted. Huge granite like rock calls button and other 2 fold. Flop 2 2 5 and i bet 20, he thinks for 10 secs and raises to 60. Was pretty sure i was folding at this point but the more i thought about it the more adament i was he had 99-JJ and was looking a little un-easy, i decide to hope he hasn't noticed that i raise 15-20% of hands pre, say 'jeus have you got a 2' lol and then i make it 100 more, stacks are quite deep with about 300 back each so was also thinking if he calls i can shove the last 200 in if a ace, king or queen hit the turn; thankfully he folds JJ face up after 2 mins and i'm happy to show the 9 high, the donks look a little confused and sure enough 1 pays me off with middle pair 4 hands later for another 100. The play is a bit fancy and a little stupid but i was pretty confident it would work and i couldn't ignore my fucking instincs.
Next hand was one of the sickest i have ever played; 3 limps and i limp button with 75off. No action in the blinds and we see a flop of K 8 6 with two spades, check round to me and i bet 8. All fold round to the last limper who raises 20 more, he's quite aggressive and likes his chip tricks so i call with the up and down (wasn't sure what he had at this point). Red Q hits the turn and he bets 50 leaving 150 behind. At this point my first thought was to obviously pass, i'm not getting a good price and he's palyed it very hard representing 2 pair or a set. For some reason i call (think the plan was to shove a action card if he checked the river) and a red 7 hits the river, not the card i want and when he bets 80 i'm about to fold. Then i start thinking about a hand an hour ago when the guy checked 2 pair on the river and my stupid brain decides that he either has 66 or a busted flush, i call, he announces 'busted flush and i turn over 4th pair for a nice 250+ pot, very very sick call.
The final hand i will blog was sick for another reason. Folded to me on the CO with 42 SOOOOOOTED so i make it 7, button calls and bb raises to 24, he hasn't re-raised me for 6 hours but he had been playing very very weak post flop and i felt pretty sure it was AA or KK so i call to bust (he has 350 back) button calls as well and when we see a juicy J 4 2 board i'm in heaven and lead out for 75, button folds and not to my suprise donk insta raises to 150, i insta push, he insta calls and i say, 'i know you have aces, i can beat aces, no pain thanks dealer', he looks horrified when he flips AA and can't believe its not still the nuts, bricks on the turn and river and i win a huge pot with 42. More looks of horror from the table when i flip it but i have a good laugh after the hand with the 1 guy on the table that was a very good player who seems to find the whole situation as funny as i did, ' i knew you beat his aces but i thought at least you had a set'. Just a quick note on this guy called Ian, thought he was a standard donk when he asked me what a squeeze play was after being at the table for 20 mins, turns out that was a joke and he was a very good player indeed. He made two world class laydowns imo and think he was one of the best cash players i've ever played against (much better than me).
Ended the session +900 and ended the week +3.6K , VERY SICK FOR 1/2 FULL RING GAME. Long may it continue but i'm a realist and i know this hot streak wont last long. Its now 9.30am on monday morning and i'm gonna go put some cash in the bank and have a nice full english in the local cafe, I LOVE POKER!!

Running hotter than the sun!

2007-12-06T04:33:00.000-08:00

Poker is going very well indeed at the moment and i'm not going to take it for granted, i'm going to celebrate the fact. Having won $3.2K on Saturday for coming 2nd in the 20K gtd i had my biggest cash game win ever (see below) on Sunday when the poker gods guided me into the empire at the same time as some rich donkeys who were more than willing to just hand me their money.
When i sat down for my next cash game on tuesday i had no idea how long do i'd play for or how much i'd win. The answer to the first question is 11 hours, the answer to the second is 1440 pounds. As before the deck was more than generous to me, the difference this time was it wasn't 4 or 5 big hands it was 30-35 smaller hands each between 20 and 100 pounds. The biggest pot i won was about 350 but most of the money came from good reads and lots and lots of well timed bluffs. The table was quite weak and i was was running all over it, the players weren't really donkeys they were just quite weak and i felt totally in the zone and able to read most of them very easily; most were also afraid to bluff and had i no problems laying down some big hands. Folded QQ twice pre flop and was shown AA and KK so very happy with those laydowns.
Sickest hand of the night was this classic; had 87 in the bb and when 6 people limp i check my option. Flop J 10 9 (2 spades) which was hot hot hot, i get the ball rolling with a bet of 10, guy next to me makes it 35, next guy calls, shortstack pushes for 60 and finally the guy pushes on the button for 180 total YIKES!!!!! I fold, first raiser folds J 9 and the next guy calls with Q 2 of spades, shortstack has 10 9 and the button has KQ; phewwwwwwwwwwwwww.
As I've already said not that many huge hands but lots of nice size pots. My favourite; 2limps and i raise to 11 from the CO with KQ. BB calls as does first limper. Flop 9 2 3, both check and i c-bet 19. BB calls and after the first limper folds he bets 25 when another 2 hits the turn. The way he had been playing i thought he was quite weak and probs just had a 9 so i raised to 80, after 3 secs he calls, wooooops. I was done with the hand at this point, don't think he wanted to believe i had the overpair and i wasn't gonna fire another shell......... until a nice K hits the river and when he checks i get paid off for a cheeky 100 pound value bet, his fat face was not happy when i turned that one over muttering the words, 'i'm so sick', long may this golden rush continue!

sick cash game

2007-12-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

Live cash games tend to be a bit of a grind, especially when your playing self-dealt 7-9 handed no limit holdem. Good cards and good bluffing situations tend to be hard to find and in general i'm happy when i look back at a live session and i can say that i got the big decisions right and ideally have a nice 50% return on my initial buy in; if i'm running bad sometimes its even just nice to break even. Last night was somewhat different to the usual grind; went to the pub after work, had a couple of pints and just i was headed home i decided to nip into the empire to see if there was a game going on. Tourney was well under way but spotted a 1/2 game going on so i jumped straight in for 2oo with 6 complete randoms.
Not long before i was playing a big pot with the 32 of hearts. 3 limps and i complete from the sb. Flop 10 8 3 with two hearts and i check. First limper bets 10 and button calls, thought about raising here but was out of position and didn't feel like these guys were folding so i flat call, as does the bb. Turn is the jack of hearts so i make my flush and bet 20, bb insta calls and the flop raiser then makes it 60 yikes!! Didn't love this situation cause i know someone could have me out flushed in a multi-way pot but there is a lot in the middle and i've never played these guys before so i push for 90ish more, bb dwells and folds 2 pair, good fold then the raiser (who later turns out to be a full time live pro) thinks and folds Q 9 (no heart), excellent lay down but i'm up and running.
Next big hand was based on this smaller hand before: Ep makes it 6, 1 call and i call from the bb with 10 9 of spades. Flop K 10 2 rainbow and i check, raiser c-bets 10 and other player calls (as do i). Turn is the 10 of hearts and i bet 15 both call; river is a total brick and i bet 25, raiser insta calls and other guy folds. As i show the 10 9 he shows KQ for top 2 and moans in danish to his hot girlfriend about what a fish i am, lol think he has a point. So my carlsberg drinking buddy is not in the best of moods for the next hand when i look down at KK in the sb, folded rounded to me and i bump it to 8 and the dane insta calls. Flop Q 10 6 and i bet 20 just hoping he has flopped a pair and is ready to play a big pot. Not to my suprise he raises to 60 and seeing he has 100 behind, i think for about 10 secs then set him in. Looking like he might explode, the guy once again reverts to his native tongue before calling it off with A10! My hand holds and i'm now sitting on a big fat 200 profit.
As my danish friend exits 2 rather young looking indian boys sit down for 100 each and it becomes obvious very early that they have very little idea what they are doing. Love this hand: 5 limps to my bb and i check Q5 of diamonds. Flop A 6 7 with two diamonds, 2nd limper bets 9, young indian kid calls on the button and i calls as well. Turn is a black 3 making me a straight draw but still not 2 happy when the guy bets 30, when the kid calls i was sure i was getting the right price and am loving it when the golden 2 of diamonds hits the river. I make a sneaky check and the raiser blocker bets 15 (the kid calls again) and i raise 50 more, first guy dwells then folds his ace and the donkey calls with JJ!!!!!! The table looks shocked as he turns it over and says the following 'was sure you were bluffing again', the hand before i had shown a 6 pound bluff! ship it!
For the next 3 hours i ran hot, hot hot! Twice i had K 9 and the flop came K99, got paid 100 both times. Won another 130 with 10 3 when it came 10 3 3 and another guy had A3, LOL! It was simply ridiculous i was running good and playing good. Was about to stand up and leave at 2am when the game was 4 handed, que a young chinese couple entering the cardroom and once again struggling to get to grips with the game, 2nd hand of 6 handed play and i find 33 on the CO. Two of us limp in, sb completes and bb checks. Flop is 9 8 3 with two hearts and the girl bets 10, bb calls, as does the limper. Lot of draws out there so i make it 50. The girl calls and the other 2 fold. Turn is a black queen which is quite safe but she bets 50 and the j 10 got there so seeing as she has 250 behind and i'm a bit of a pussy i flat call and see the river cheap, 8 pairs the board and i have a rather pretty looking full house, she bets 100, i raise 150 more and after 10secs she calls with AQ. That's right 50 more on the flop with ace high! TY VERY MUCH!
After a bottle of champagne (bought by my new favourite couple) the game breaks after some more fun hands and i'm up 1350 quid, sick sick, sick! Think i might be back at the empire soon!

long update

2007-11-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Havn't posted for a while so i thought i would write a big fat blog, the main reason is i just busted out a tourney and i find writing usually helps me calm down and hide from the tiltmonster.
For anyone reading this that doesn't know i have been recently employed as a croupier by those nice people at the G-casino in leicster square. Have been there for a month now and its quite a lot of fun; the people are cool and i'm used to the hours so on the whole think its going quite well. One guy who works there went to the same school as me and he seems really sound; not sure how long i'll stick it but to be honest its quite easy and the pay is ok, only have to do 35 hours per week and have allready dealt to a couple of spurs players (Antony Gardner can't count to 5) so think it could be a while. On the down side i'm not suppossed to go to card clubs but i can play cash in the empire which is ok but it doesn't quite feel the same as the gutshot.
On a poker theme i hardly played for a while but have started to log some serious time of late. Jambon shipped me $5K for 50% of any profit which was nice of him and have already had some good reults, am +$4000 for the first month ($2000 is mine obv). Came 3rd in the 10K gtd rebuy last week for $1.5K, was very pissed off for 2 days after. 3 Handed had 60% of the chips and had both the other players all in on seperate occassions as a 4:1 favourite, arghhhhhhhhhh! First was over $4K and think i left some serious sugar on the table.
The tournement i just finished was the same kind of thing $30 rebuy, $10K gtd with 175 runners, this time thought i would post some hands that seemed intresting at the time then try and analyse them when i was finished to see if my play was correct or just to laugh at donkeys(1 great example coming up).
As usual i went for the rebuy straight away so was up to 6000 chips, rebuy period was a drag and was just watching tv and giving the tourney around 10% concentration. Blinded off a few hands then got the standard donkey double up, took the 4500 add on and was sitting pretty with 16K (just above the average stack) at the end of the rebuy. Think the structure of the rebuys on party are fucking awesome, you can insta rebuy, 50% extra on the add on and 15 mins on the clock, plenty of play in the middle stages; love it!
Won a few hands after the rebuy and was building the stack nicely when this happend to me:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742369

I don't know why people like me so much, guess its the girls name, ty sir. Next hand is a bit of a weird one, i'd been pushing this guy around for a while and as you can see had built my stack nicely, being very active pre flop and felt in control of the table (around 35 players left). Felt like he really wanted to play but he had position and the other player calling left me in an ugly spot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742380

From what i had seen from this guy was quite sure he didn't have a jack on the flop and he could have a draw, lower pair or ace high. Very happy he checks turn and river but had decided before he acted on the river that i would call any bet cause value betting a 10 in his spot would be tough, he wimped it, continued to play weak for the rest of the tourney and gave up his bb frequentley tomy 2.5 x's raise. This next hand was just awesome:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742386

This cold deck gave me the chip lead and put me on the finl table. Well thats what i thought until this discusting hand went down:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742395

The hand is very sick but two things saved me $75K, first it was bubble time and second the turn killd the action. I thought he may have 2 pair wwhen he called my 3 bet on the flop so this slowed me down. If he re-raised me on the river i think i might pass, the guy was playing so weak would have put him on the house, not a nice hand though. Managed to rebuild over the next hour but was getting annoyed with the fact that the shortstacks were winning 90% of the showdowns and the average stack was getting closer and closer to 12 bb's reducing my edge as we went. This hand was a nice start to my final table (notice stacks v blind size):
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742404

In a big tourney you need to win the flips, this player had been quite acive from mp so felt like the raise was the right play:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742408

NICE RIVER!!!! Yelled NOOO at the top of my voice real kick in the balls methinks. This hand got me back in the fight, not sure about calling off my stack with 55 but think when looking at my opponnents stack sizes was a pretty good time to gamble:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742413

This hand sucks:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742420

My standard raise had been to 50K but had lost a few pots so wanted to steal for the minimum, plus the bb was very short so was more than happy to commit myself to a showdown with him, if anyone moved in out of the other playrs my planb was to pass and pick a spot to resteal after i took the blinds. Villans raise to 80 was very annoying, i could shove and hope he folds or could fold and save some chips.I called because i felt i had enough to take a flop and because i thought he had me crushed (his raises had been rare) i didn't think a push would work. The flop was ok and i knew from past experience that he might slow down cause he was weak post flop, his flop bet was very weak and looking back i think i should move in right there, i called cause i was still unsure what he had and hoped he would slow down, he didn't. With 180K back his bet on the turn would commit me to the pot, looking at it now the way he played i think he had AA or three jacks soi was drawing dead, very annoying hand, he probs had 6 high.
Once again i dragged myself back and then;
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1742427

Only so many hits you can take at this stage but this was the big one, the Q was just a sick card to seal the deal. Ended up 3rd for another $1.5K. Felt like i couldn't do anymore and was very happy with the mid-late stages of the tourney where i rn things and was robbing the nits blind, just need to work on my showdowns.

well done john

2007-09-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

I first met John Tabba when he rolled up to the Reading uni poker society on behalf of pokerpanthers.com. He sat in the 10p/20p cash game with a wod of $20 notes and proceeded to donate about 300 quid to the rest of the table in about an hour. I knew he was a sponsored pro and i knew he was muffing about (in his own words; 'this is a lot cheaper than tilting $5/$10 online'), but i had no idea that 9 months later he would place 2nd in the WSOPE and pick up 570K.
When i turned up at the empire half way through day 3 i was star struck, Mel Judah was just leaving when i got there and Johnny Lodden was one of the first faces i saw when i got in the door; this was just the start!! The top pro's were all over the place and the great thing was that 90% of the people in the empire had no clue who these people were! Over the next 3 days i got to play cash with Todd Brunson and Marcel Luske and thanks to the limited amount of fans watch John play some awesome poker right up close. Although he was really cut up after he lost John can be so proud of the way he played; he got through 1 of the toughest fields ever and gained the respect of some of the greatest players in the world. When we asked Gus Hansen what he thought of John at the end of day 4 he replied, 'he was super aggresive, he got the better of me today', now thats a fucking compilment.
For me the highlight of the day was after the final table when John orderd a bottle of vodka and a rather impressive 27 bottles of champagne!! Seeing as there were around 15 of us celebrating getting through the vast majority of this was quite an acheivment itself. John is certainly the type to spend his money in a flash and seeing as he only had 40% of himself and 5% of Oyvind (the 4th place finisher) i hope the money lasts until the next big win; if he plays as well as he did in this tournement he wont have to wait long.

sunday bloody sunday

2007-09-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today was very annoying indeed. Been lying around in my underwear playing online, i turn on the t.v and i find out that the sky box isn't working cause every time i try and put a new channel on it says 'no signal is being reieved'. I look out the window to discover that the neighbours have erected their own giant sattelite which is blocking ours. I'm a bit scared to ask them to move it cause thier our 4 of them and they are black and scary. I'll wait for Ant to get back and we can formulate a plan to get our much needed sky tv back. The even worse thing is that the normal channels aren't working so i've been stuck on my own ripping up the tables.
By 'ripping up the tables' i of course mean dropping $1K playing every type of poker i can get my hands on. Had a go on the steps on party but been stuck on step 4 for a while and am about -$100. The good thing about the stt steps is that you get to go back a step or stay at that level once you make the top 7 and you can usually make this without playing a hand. Played the $300K gtd V 1600 Runners and crept into the top 500 with 19K in chips, then ran AK into AA and KK into AA within 30 mins and that was the end of me.
Also played a little bit of NLH cash .5/1 but dropped two buy ins quick and decided i didn't want to tilt off another load so i quit. This hand was fun:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1463187

I like his check on the end.

I've always said that when it came to PLO i was a bit of a retard but playing online has made me feel a lot better about my game. The swings are pretty big and with no real bankroll to speak of at the moment its pretty much gambling and hard to be frustrated. Despite this i feel that players are so bad at the lower limits that i should be crushing this game and the bad beats have been really annoying. Start with this gem:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1463197

I know i get lucky on the turn but only $3 has gone in by this point. When he chek raised the end i had allready started swearing cause i just knew, i still can't fold though. 1 outers are great fun.
Classic example of a retard:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1463207

Think the lesson is that people play so bad you should only get all the money in when they are drawing dead, i hate poker!!!!!!

poker marathon

2007-08-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

Its coming up to 2pm on tuesday afternoon and i'm sat in the gutshot reflecting on an extremely long weekend of poker. The fun started on thursday night and ended on monday at 7pm, apart from that annoying thing called sleeping i was basically playing non stop. I'm gonna run through the varios sessions/tournaments in order but gonna start with some much needed good news on the online side of things. On tuesday i played my first online tournement in the new flat; a $22 rebuy on party with 250 runners. With a bit of skill and a nice run of cards i managed to take the tournement down for a healthy $3.9K. The final table was without question the weakest i have ever played either live or online, at times it was as if my opponents were just insta folding pre flop without even looking at their cards; i got away with murder and thanks to the constant stealing i could even afford to run KK into AA and JJ into KK for 2 of the biggest pots in the whole tourney and still managed to win.

Now onto the fun part; the poker marathon!! This started on thursday with event #2 of the GSOP the £100 FE, the event reached a capacity 100 and featured a number of the warwick poker greats and Ant even donated to the prizepool as well. Busted out quite early when ran 88 into QQ with only 11 big blinds in the 5th level. Wasn't to happy that the guy took so long to call with the queens especially as he was the initial raiser and was clearly never folding but technichally its not a slow roll so can't be to upset. Was good to hear that Dave Lu and Tommo split it so well done to them. Mike and Cash point arrived at the gutshot about an hour after the tourney had started so when Ant went busto soon after i did the opportunity to go back to the flat and play a cheeky cash game was to much to turn down. The game was 5p/10p and in true Reading Uni £400 was on the table. I bought in for £100 and bluffed it all off against Ant when i played the 5 3 off like a hero on a A 9 6 4 board and ran into A6, i still had outs though. Then i lost the second £100 to cash point when i had middle pair and he had a flush draw, what a cold deck, tie in this loss with a 3-2 defeat on proevo to Ant for another £50 and the 'weekend' was of to a bad start with a nice £350 invested back into the gambling community.
Ant had to work on friday so Mike, cashy and i thought we would have a productive afternoon by going to the pub. 7 pints and 15 games of killer on the local pool table later and i was down another £50. Mike is a much much better pool player than i am and for some reason i still play the bandit for money, this has to stop!! At about 8pm Ben 'big cheese' Warwick turned up for the 2nd late night cash game and the action lasted until 5am. Ended up winning £150 back thanks mainly to a full house when Ant and Mike both had a flush and the fact that big tone has no idea what he is doing when we play omaha. On a very good note the local chinese takeaway was bloody excellent and i'm sure that Jd and Lu will be happy to hear that Mr lodger will be a regular customer.
After about 6 hours of trying to sleep whilst cash point was kicking me and snoring at the same time we headed off to Luton for the APAT; £75 buy in with 300 runners over two day 1's. The drive took us 3 hours and we arrived just before the start. It was my first trip to Luton and the cardroom was excellent, shame about my cards. Despite the excellent structure and 10K starting stack i had a horrible day and will be the first to admit that i played like a retard. My reads were all wrong and i seemed to run into so many hands it was just sick. Although the standard of play was quite poor i had quite a strong table and at times i felt like the entire table could see my hole cards. Finally went bust with A9 V 55 having lost most of my stack 3 hands before with AQ V 88 all in pre with blinds at 400/800 for a 20K pot, was left with 8k. Cashy had gone busto 10 mins earlier and the cash games had just started so we jumped into the £1/£2 game to try and improve our luck. The game was a lot of fun, great banter and a lot of action. Bought in for £150 and got £120 of that all in pre with AK pre v QQ, hit an ace on the river and was off and running. Was a bit of a card rack for the most part and managed to get 2 guys who both had £100ish all in pre holding AA v KQ and Q 10!! Caspoint had a really tough decision when he raised it t0 £25 after a limp when the strddle was on, the sb called then the guy who put the straddle on (a mainiac) raised £111 more, leaving himself £100ish back. After a while of thinking cashy stuck it all in with AK and the sb called with QJ sooooted!! The maiac had 55 and obviously the QJ made a flush to scoop the main pot. Cashy got £200 back in the side but was still a big hit. Looking back at the hand i'm still unsure if i fold or push. On the push side the raiser was a semi-maniac and the AK was always gonna be at worst 50/50, you also cant expect the sb to call off his last £120 with Qj even though the guy was quite drunk and had clearly come from the blackjack table. Despite this is still feel like the right play was to fold, its such a big amount to risk with AK and even if he has 2 unders your not better than 2/1, you could have the guy dominated but with a player behind there have to be better spots, an hour or so later the same player called an all in on the turn for £120 holding 33 on a J 10 9 6 board saying that he put his opponent on AK (he had QJ). I ended up £400 mainly thanks to some big hands pre that managed to hold up, also managed to fold aces on the river when a guy re-raised me on a K K Q 8 6 board, he had KK and had decided to slow play them pre flop, thank god he did or i go busto.
We got back to the flat at 2am and decided to go straight to bed (hope that sounds as gay as it was). Ant and Mike both went to Luton for day 1B (with no luck) and Cashy and i headed off to the gutshot to sit in the £1/£2 game, When i took my seat at 8pm i did not expect to still be there at 7pm the following day but i really enjoyed the 23 hour session like the sick son of a bitch i am. Bought in for £400 and was as low as £80 and as high as £920, ended on £670 for a nice £270 profit, not sure what that is an hour but was very happy with the result as i seemed to spend most of the time getting myself out the hole. Trying hard to remeber the big hands but is a bit of a struggle if i'm honest.
So i ended the weekend up a little bit and had a lot of fun, gonna be playing a lot more online over the next weekend and hope to blog in a couple of weekends.
Bankroll:£3,000 (LET THE WAR BEGIN)!!!!!!

Quick update

2007-08-06T10:23:00.000-07:00

London has so far been a mix of the good and the bad for me. Unfortunatley on the poker front it has been very bad indeed. The internet has still not been sorted yet and my opportunities to play online have been very limited indeed. When i have played online its been squashed into small 2-3 hour long sessions in crowded internet cafe's. My results have sucked and for some reason i've even been aware of what i'm doing wrong and not changing this stratergy (main problem is playing to fast obviously). I decided to cash $3000 out for food/drink/rent/rent boys etc and leave myself $1K to gamble with. Like the genius i am i stuck this on 2 tables of $3/$6, closed my eyes and hoped for the best; result = busto in 1 hour!! Played 2 $1200 pots and they were a lot of fun. First i got all in on a board of A Q 9 with AQ and ran face first into a total idiot with 97, 9 on the river tyvm. Next i'm all in with KK on a board of 2 4 5 10 with 2 clubs. He called my last $250 on the turn with AJ of clubs and made his flush on the river. So that was that. Think i played fine and 2 rather bad beats have left the account on a nice fat 0.
Live has been much more enjoyable, but about as profitable. Been playing the 1/2 game at the gutshot and despite making some good friends i have been running as normal . Few examples of the last session: Bought in for 200 and was up to 450 after 2 hours, had made 3 nice bluffs and managed to bust a guy for 100 with QJ V K 10 on a board of QJ8. Also won 80 with 10 9 v 10 x on a 10 6 7 9 9 board, bet on every street and the facf i had flipped 4 high the pot before after a nice 55 bluff on the end helped me get paid. At this point i was really happy with my game my reads had been right in every pot i played and i was trying to force myself to pay attention when not involved. The sad thing was this didn't last and things soon went tits up. First 5 limps in2 my bb and i check with Q 10. Flop 228 and i fire 8 into the pot of 10. 1 caller and i know he has an 8 so when the turn comes an ace i bet 16. He thinks for 30 secs then calls. The river makes 3 clubs on board but is still a bit of a blank 4. I know he is a bad player but i also know he has an 8 so i bet 40 and he calls quick with 86. My read was spot on but the bet was still a huge mistake cause the guy had been at the table for an hour and i knew he was a calling station who didn't know when to fold. This was only a small dent but it seemed to mark a change in my night. Next up was a huge hand, long story short action all over the place and i had to call 150 to win 520 total with A9 of diamonds on a board of K J 10 with 2 diamonds. Was up against KJ and Q5 of d's and misses obviously. Got the rest in with 56 of clubs on a 774 board with 2 clubs, having raised in early i put my opponent on a big pair; he had 8 10 of clubs arghhhhhh. So went bust again at the gutshot and chose not to rebuy. Intresting fact on the night was i had 11 pairs between 2's and 9's made a set 0 times. Would have made a set with 77 if i had called 45 pre flop but my opponnent had 200 total so would have been a bad call; he made a set of kings on the flop anyway LOL!!!!!!!!
Going home next weekend can't wait!!

LONDON BABY!!

2007-07-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

This is the first post for a while and the reason behind this is long and boring so here is the shortest version possible: no Internet cause former tenant is a moron and bt are a bunch of cunts! So i havn't played online for ages and i'm writing this blog from an Internet cafe on tottenham court road. With any luck we'll sort the Internet soon but for the mean time i'm happy playing live at the gutshot; my new spiritual home.

The flat is awesome and so far myself and Ant 'big tone' yousefian have been getting on as well as ever. We have got sky set up and i find myself drawn to the junk on MTV more and more; hogan knows best and made have rather embarrassingly made it on to my daily viewing list! I'm also a huge fan of Dog the bounty hunter.. arghhhhhh i'm turning into a twat. Also got the ps2 running and have a £50 bet on with Ant on who gets to 50 wins first, i'm 3-2 down and know i'm a slight dog on the bet but we are playing regular heads up matches for £10 each which is a good laugh and evens the score, i'm currently 3-0 down lol.

As far as poker goes i've been at the gutshot 7 out of 10 days and i'm down about £350 which is pretty standard variance i guess. On the first night we both played the £100 FE and Ant chopped it 3 way for £1500, lucky i had 20%. In the same tourney i busted 14th of 72 with 9 getting paid. I thought i played well and i had the chip lead with 30-25 left but lost 3 showdowns in a row, with the final one resulting in my elimination. 1 hand of note from the tourney was with 21 players and 3 tables left. The blinds were 500/1000 and i had 12K in chips, gets folded round to the button (a chav who is quite aggressive and not very good) who makes it 5K leaving himself 14ish. The sb dwells up for ages and looks soooooo weak but sticks his last 10K into the pot, i look down at 99 in the bb; Oxford flashback lol. This time however there was no doubt in my mind that i had the best hand and i shove for 7K more. Now its on the chav, he needs to put 7K in to win 28K and knock out two players, he has to call, but he starts to dwell. So i know he's got gash and obviously i want him to fold so i start yapping away when a guy on the other side of the table, who is not in the pot says, "you have to call"!!!!!!!!. I go mental!! "you can't say that, your not in the fucking hand, shut the hell up!" i believe was my response, i get an apology and in the confusion the chav folds Q8. The sb flips A9 and i win a very nice pot, Q hit the flop btw. The hand was interesting because it showed my advantage in live play, i'm loud, big and get angry and ironically i think the chav was gonna call before the argument. Another saving factor was the fact that i had saved the lower value chips and my shove looked a lot more than what it actually was, i saw Daniel Negreanu do this in the wsop one year and its stuck with me since, once again if i had just 12 chips in total at the start of the hand i think he calls. Although this tactic may only work in 1 tourney a year this alone makes it worth while, your opponent may not ask for a count thinking that you have a lot more chips than you actually do.

On the cash tables I've been playing the £1/£2 game with an unlimited buy in. I've been buying in for £300 and enjoying some major swings but alas am down in the game. Although the standard of play is hugely varied in this game (with around 40 regular players) on the whole it sucks ass!! people limp soooooooo weak its scary, there must be 5-6 regular players who are playing over 60% of hands which is ridiculous!! Although i'm not gonna blog any specific hands i will say that i'm pretty happy with my play; i've not been limp calling with marginal hands and have been trying to play the button and cut off as hard as possible. The thing that works against me in a full ring game is that its very slow and i find myself trying to make things happen rather than waiting for good situations; i've also made some dumb calls on the river when its been obvious that i'm beat.
Gonna play the £75 Fe at the gutshot with Ant and Mike Alp, who is staying at the pad for a few days. Hope we sort the internet soon cause i'm poor.
Bankroll:$5,250