Hey!

After my trip to the Bahamas for the PCA I decided to make a slight de-tour before coming home by chilling in Vegas for 8 days. This was my third trip to Vegas. Previously I've just visited Sin City during the WSOP in the Summer for extended 6 week stays primarily with grind-on-the-mind so it was quite refreshing to come to Vegas just to relax and enjoy everything the city has to offer outside of the abundance of card-rooms.

I was staying with one of my American friends, Kenny, who had relocated and moved into a pretty sweet bungalow just south of the strip with a big pool, garden and huge rooms with an impressive looking kitchen. Unfortunately over the "festive" period some local pikeys burgled him when he was back home in Miami seeing family so the house was looking pretty bare. My other good friend Zach made the flight down from Michigan for the week. Our trip was probably quite good timing as it would allow us to give Kenny a good moral boost and have fun Vegas-style.

One of my favourite things about Vegas is the food. Being a fat bastard this is always pretty much a highlight of the trip. If anyones interested I can recommend a whole host of restaurants/bars/fast food places I could recommend and I'm no way near sampling all the city has to offer. The thing about Vegas food that I think a lot of tourists don't realise is that in my opinion just a short drive off the strip you can get some incredible restaurants/diners/fast food joints and everything is so much cheaper! I won't actually go on too much more about the food as it's literally making me hungry as I type this but here's a photo below. Mmmmm :)



I decided to hire a convertible Ford Mustang for the week which was on offer by Hertz rentals for my stay so inevitably couldn't wait to get out of the city and try this piece of all American Muscle out on the desert roads. Just a side note, after a whole week of doing wheel-spins and bombing around from place to place my fuel bill for the trip was only $40, must be nice to be American! Alas, back to the story. One of the first trips we did was making the 50 minute drive-out to the snow-capped mountains just outside of the city. Our destination was mount Charleston where you can actually go skiing and snow-boarding. How weird is that? Just outside of this incredibly hot desert there are ski resorts within an hours drive. Pretty cool regardless. The hike up to the top of the mountain is incredible. Dark blue skies with the sun shining off the icy snow patches. Really scenically beautiful and most likely the best hike I've ever had. At the end of the walk which took us to a great frozen water-fall which flows in the Summer months there's a huge frozen icicles hanging from the rock face. It didn't take us long to start sliding down the ice until we almost got crushed by some falling ice from the cliff face above. Ooops :p





We also had another great night out seeing the dubstep group 'Skrillex' at Surrender in the Wynn. Lot's of pre-gaming beer pong with hidden shots of various liquors and an awesome atmosphere at the club resorted in an amazing night out. I've not actually had that many nights out in the past on my Vegas trips. I used to do a lot of clubbing as a student at uni, but since graduating other than on holidays I really very rarely go. In Vegas in previous years we've always stuck to the bars rather than the somewhat pricey clubs but after seeing Skrillex I really think I've got to try hitting the clubs again especially on my next Vegas trip in the Summer.

Now to the gambling, what the city's famous for. I did very little pit-gambling just spewing off a couple of $100 messing around having drinks playing video poker. We did manage to get a few sessions in at the poker tables though. In total I played 3 sessions of $1/$2 and predominantly $2/$5 coming out with a $1000 profit on the trip. Unfortunately this could have been a bit more if I didn't lose a $2400 pot spazzing queens into Aces in a $2/$5/$10 game with a missippi straddle but what do you do. I enjoy playing cash in Vegas way way more than in England. I'm not sure why, maybe the lower rake, nicer scenery, efficiency and softness of the games. Who knows. Maybe it's just I like to sub-conciously gamble in Vegas but feel retarded if I spew money at the craps or roulette table. Anyway it was nice to run good over this short sample and book a tidy cash win. Zach and I also decided to flick it in for a couple of $1ks happening at the Red Rock casino a few miles off from the main strip (awesome casino btw I really liked the vibe in there). It was a $1k/$250k gtd re-entry tournament with 3 flights. My day 1a table was hilarious. I was the youngest guy on there by 30-40 years and the play was a joke. I guess it was mainly just old locals as there seemed to be almost no advertising for the tournament series and obviously no online satelittes and I feel that most of the sicko tournament guys that live in Vegas were in Australia or in LA for their respective series. The table talk did get very interesting though and with the addition of Dave Sands (Doc_Sands) I found out that 3 of my 8 table mates had played the PCA $100k super-high roller a week earlier. Sickos! 2 of them were 60+ billionaires that were both planning on playing the $1m WSOP 2012 tournament too and Doc_Sands the very good tournament pro that managed to get 2nd in the PCA $100k. Why he didn't make the trip to Australia I don't know but he certainly made the table tougher. I didn't get much going in either of my entries running AK into Aces and doing my stack off to Doc_Sands with AhTx on KhJh7x flop in a 3bet pot. #OntoTheNextDonation right?

So overall I had an incredible time. It's kind of weird seeing Vegas not in the peak of the Summer, but even in their winter-time it's just like a British Summer. Blue skies and you can get away with a t-shirt/shorts combo in the day and wearing a jumper at night as the temperature drops. Although I'm just at Vegas airport at the moment, I'm already looking forward to my next trip over in the Summer for the world series. I think this upcoming trip will be shorter than previous years. I aim to go up to Montana for a few days prior to the WSOP trip hunting/camping/fishing and enjoying the great natural outdoors before plumetting myself in the Artificial wonderland that is Vegas for a couple of weeks. First priority though is to bink another WSOP package, and hopefully this time get the money for it :)

GL at the tables guys.

I'm currently sat in Miami airport waiting for my connection to Vegas from Nassau in the Bahamas where I spent the last 9 days donating in live tournaments, relaxing by the pool and eating mediocre food! It still feels weird for me to be sat in this airport now and to not be allowed to fire up any of my poker skins and play an online session without fear of getting my account frozen. But that's a different matter. Sort it out yanks!

In the end I really enjoyed my time in the Bahamas. Despite what seems to be the ongoing trend in the poker community the Atlantis resort is, in my opinion, a great getaway and a great place to spend a week in the sun especially in January whilst most of Northern Europe is grey, wet and horrible. Sure, the food in the Bahamas is very bland and expensive but what can you really expect? It's an isolated group of Islands in the middle of the sea without any farms or ability to grow fresh crops. On the food front I wish there was more fresh local produce like more fresh-fish and fruit as opposed to lot's of over-priced burgers and pizzas but whatever, no-one comes to the Bahamas for the food anyway! I think people like to complain a lot more than they probably should, so I'm going to focus on the positives and point out the factors that resulted in me having a great week.


I've never actually been to a resort like the Atlantis, but the hotel pretty much occupies this massive island just off the main Island of the Bahamas. The Island the resort's on is called 'Paradise Island' which probably leads back to a lot of peoples criticism of the place. It is pretty artificial in the fact that this Island is custom built for the hotel and the entertainment complex that it holds. But in my opinion, it does it really well. Throughout the Island there is a huge network of pools, hidden coves and river networks all interwined and surrounded by really well kept tropical fauna and palm trees. What's more the beaches on Paradise Island are incredible. Picture white sands and clear warm waters. It really doesn't get much better. Throughout the island there is also some amazing sea-life. Not only are there the very well trained dolphins and sea-lions which do tricks on demand (artificial blah blah blah whatever a dolphin  running 20 meters backwards across the water like a Jesus-style Micheal Jackson moonwalk impression is cool enough regardless!) but there are also other bad-asses like hammer-head shark pools which you can view circling below you as you clamber across swaying rope bridges. As well as a range of other sharks, starfish, tropical beasts of various shapes and sizes the animal that most impressed me was the stingrays. Some of them were literally monstorous in size about 4 meters long. I always thought they were pretty small on the whole but a few of these were absolutely massive. They were so elegant swimming past each other too and they look so alien I was pretty amazed. I guess it's the little things that count :)

One of the best times I had on the Island was on the lazy-river. The resort somehow also doubles as a massive water-park intertwined with various slides, shoots and waterways all designed to be accessible by plonking your fat ass on an inflatable tube and just lolling away to wherever the current takes you. It's also pretty awesome how they have massive conveyor belts that once you've looped around to the end hoist you up to the top of another slide so you can start all over again. A perfect way to spend an afternoon in the sunshine.



Now onto the poker. I played the main and had a pretty good table draw. The only recognisable names on my table was one of Moormans horses Chronic420 (pretty aggro, spazzy) but he was to my right and Mike Leah (GoLeafsGoeh online, a very good solid TAG) but he was to my left. Other than that the table just had your typical live setting of button clicking tards and old nits. I played a solid style, picking on the weaker players on the table and chipped up relatively variance-free from the 30k starting stack to 55k.

I got a kind of lucky donation on my way though. At 75/150 a bad older guy from the States who obviously had far too much money and was being super-splashy raised in early position to 450 and I made it 1100 on the button with AKo expecting him to flat almost his entire opening range which for an old guy from his position was pretty wide as far as I had seen so far. He was talking to the guy next to him, pulled in the 250 and chucked 2 5k chips out there making a raise to 10,100. I looked at him and I was almost entirely sure he hadn't meant this which was confirmed by his face going bright red and him looking like he just shit himself really bad. I shoved and he snap folded so that was a nice little chip-up. I think if he hadn't had been chatting to the guy next to him and didn't look like he genuinely just shit himself it could be a closer spot as people definately like to fake mis-click live and everyone falls for it. I guess it's kinda douchy and angle shooting but whatever if it works it works!

My downfall started at 250/500/50. An active player opened from early position to 1500 and got a flat. I flatted behind in the cut-off with JJ. 3-bettings certainly an option but we both had over 100 big blinds and I really didn't want to get it in at that point or get 4bet bluffed so I elected to flat. It folded to the big blind who was a young kid but really wasn't that good. He was from Canada and I'd seen him mess up a few times, not value-betting when he should and just doing stupid stuff. He had 16k to start the hand and 3bet to 4300. I'd seen he was definately capable of squeezing light before and 3betting. I'd got the better of him 3/3 times so far on the day and felt he was getting frustrated being down to half stack. Still I think with that sizing out of position and given the early position of his raise I should fold my jacks if it comes back to me. As happened, it folded back to me, I thought meh he's enough of a spazz and clicked it back/called into his aces. I think for most people it's a clear fold given his sizing pre and that there's a fairly good change he just peels with a hand like 2-8s and probably sizes 9-T's more as my table was pretty hood to 3bets and I expect he wouldn't want to play a pot OOP with a hand like 9's or T's that flops pretty badly with more than a pot sized bet behind in his stack.

In the end I accumulated a little more, made it to the penultimate level of day 1 and got in kings v QTo in a 3bet pot on a TTx board with Chronic420 when I was a little too shallow to be getting away from my hand vs. him specifically.

Other than that, I played a few of the side events in the later part of the week as the weather turned a little more sour. I felt like I played well and had deep runs in 4 out of the 6 tournaments I played. Unfortunately that didn't mean a whole lot as I only cashed for $640 mincashing a $300 turbo. I came 10 off the money in the $1k side getting coolered near the bubble. I got deep runs in 2/3 of the ridiculously soft $300 turbos I played and came 9th with 5 paid in the 2p2 HORSE event. On the plus side, I played 4 live sit'n'go's on the trip. 2x$220 and 2x$430. I managed to win one of both buyins for $1k and $2k respectively and had a $400 bonus in the $430 after 5 of us got involved in a $100 last longer at the table. So it wasn't all fail :)




I'll just explain the 2p2 HORSE event now as it was honestly the funnest tournament I've probably ever played live. I would love it so much if the UKIPT could spread it on their stops. The basic rules are that every player gets dealt 3 cards face down. THe button then looks at his hand and chooses which variety of HORSE he wants to play. The games that those don't know are all limit: holdem, Omaha 8 or better, Razz, Stud Hi and Stud 8 or better. So for instance if the dealer chooses holdem, the blinds are placed and every player discards one card. Similarly if it's omaha every player gets another card. The limit games were really fun and the mix was great. Most people chose razz/omaha/holdem which are by far the funnest games in the rotation. In the stud games when they were chosen there was also the added strategy of choosing which card you want to put face-up. For instance in razz, the highest card has to bring in so based on what cards other people show affects your decision for what card you should show. Not only due to blockers but also due to your position on 3rd street betting and not wanting to bring-in if you've got a bad hand! I'm not very good at mixed games but after playing that really really wish there was more low-buyin mixed games on the poker tour. It was such a fun change to just grinding NLH full ring which can get so so boring. There was a really fun atmosphere at the tournament and everyone had a great time. Please stars, more of this at your future tournament stops!

So that was my week! I had a great time and enjoyed seeing the sun again. Now it's onto Vegas. I'm going to probably chill a few days doing the usual vegas stuff of eating out, a bit of pit gambling and just enjoying life. And then later in the week there are a few $350 side events for the WSOPc at Caesers and a $1100/$250k gtd tournament at the red rock casino which I might donate in. Should be fun!

Gl at the tables all.

So the year's coming to a close and I've pretty much finished the poker-grind for the year. And I'm happy to report it's been a good one :) I'll go into more detailed specifics in a blog post nearer the new year reviewing my goals of 2011 and collaborating some New Years resolutions and goals for 2012. A little more thought is needed on that front in the meanwhile.

December's been a pretty low-volume month on the whole. What with a lot of visiting of family and friends, drinking and pretty much enjoying life I've hardly played any sessions. I'm fine with that after a really heavy volume month in November. I've been playing on the new modern warfare game on the PS3 this month which I'm loving grinding online, especially in domination mode. I've also been catching up and finishing off some really good TV series lately. I would thoroughly recommend people that haven't tried the following series to give them a try, TV really is amazing these days.

-Breaking Bad
-Homeland
-Board Walk Empire
-The Wire

In terms of actual poker in the few online sessions I did play I (finally) binked a seat to UKIPT Galway. It's a €770 seat and I'm sure I'm in for about €600-€900 in the sats so it's not really a massive discount but it'll be a fun tournament. I love the UKIPTs. I think they're great tournaments with great value and it's really fun meeting up with all the UK circuit regs on these stops. Drunken times ahead I'm sure.

Other than that I had a few smaller final tables and a second in a $100/$25k gtd for just over $4k which was nice and pretty much saved the month :)

Oh, and then I had a little Sunday bink!

I logged in as usual to Pokerstars on Sunday and for whatever reason I decided not to auto-click close to the welcome message that pops up. This past weekend it was a big PCA qualifier promotions on Stars. I decided to flick in my last 25k FPPs on Stars into a qualifier to a 125k FPP qualifier to the PCA in January. Without also realising that 125k FPP is ~$2k I managed to bink one of the 10 packages guaranteed. There was a nice little overlay in the sat and a massive sweat on my side when I was sitting 11/11 with 10 packages available. Got to love Zackattack for running like god and getting there versus another shorty. Gonna have to find that guy and buy him a beer I reckon.


So new year's looking pretty epic! I have 9 days accomodation at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, $1000 food expenditures and a $10,300 tournament to win! I decided to sell 50% of my action to the tournament which will give me a little pocket-money for some side events if I fancy playing them. I then decided, well now I'm over this side of the world I might as well flick in a trip to Vegas to catch up with my US mates that I stayed with over the Summer. I'm hiring a Ford Mustang for the 8 days I'm out there and cannot wait. I genuinely love Vegas. No idea what I'm going to do out there but expect it will be something a long the lines of drinking lots, eating at some amazing restaurants and possibly playing a bit of Poker! I don't think I'll be treating this short trip to Vegas as a "business" holiday but I'll probably grind a little in cash games when I'm there. Caesers is also hosting a WSOP circuit event while I'm there so I might donate to the prizepool of an event or two.

So exciting!

After that I've got to dash back to the UK so I can play the latter part of the TCOOP which is going to be very fun. Thanks Stars for listening to what your customers want! Then a big family meet-up party for my Granddads 90th birthday rounding off the month with watching the Scotland v England rugby match in Edinburgh later on in the month.

I'm not sure if this will leave much time for online grinding but it certainly looks like 2012 is going to start off in an awesome way :)

GL at the tables all

ps. I've found this awesome blog the last few days. It's pretty much the ultimate degeneracy story of some guy trying to grind it out in Vegas in the small stake cash games whilst borderline being homeless and living off comped rooms and comped food. An entertaining read nonetheless, check it out here.

Hey!

Since my last post when I was just leaving San Remo after a somewhat disappointing stretch of live poker I've been back and on the online grind. And I'm very pleased to report that I had a great month in November.

I managed to play over 1000 games this month, which for me playing across multiple sites, is a lot. In fact I think it's the most I've ever played in a month. I normally end up averaging around 600 games. And with great thanks to a $50r bink and a $50 cubed final table I can report a solid +$24k month :)


After coming back from my Italy/Ireland trip I was a little pissed with myself. I felt that I played some spots live really quite sub-optimally and wanted to go over some spots. I've worked on my game a fair bit this month a long side the pretty heavy volume and feel like I've ironed some leaks and feel a bit more comfortable in a few spots I might have been struggling in before.

As far as live poker goes. I've not really played at all this month. I've just been cutting out expenses, grinding hard and hitting the gym. December though I'll try my hand at a couple more tournaments but just local ones. I seem to get into a bit of a habit of building a pretty solid roll online, taking some shots at some bigger live events, bricking, spending too much money IRL then having to drop down stakes again and rebuild online. It seems to be a bit of a pattern forming, so there's certainly something I'll be putting on my new years resolutions this year.

To bring that resolution forward a little, I've managed to blag 2 seats to the DTD £300 freezeout this coming weekend and 2 seats to the DTD £1k monte carlo in 3 weeks time. Both tournaments are re-entry tournaments where if you bust day 1a, you can re-enter and try your luck again on day 1b. I fully intend to fire every bullet I have to make a run in either of these comps!






As for the rest of December, I'll be heading back down South to spend christmas and the preceding days leading to it with friends from home in Dorset. I'll then be spending the xmas->new year period visiting various family members around the country. Oh and I'm sure I'll be able to squeeze in a session or two of online pokers at some point as well :)

Hey,

My EPT debut is coming to a close now and it's been a really fun trip. I was totally ready to get away from England for a bit despite not actually being in the country for that long since my Vegas trip. But the joys of blue skies, great food and some live tournaments to donate some money in is always something I'm up for.

Unfortunately on the trip I don't have anything to report on the poker side of things. The talk of the Italians being really bad and offering a lot of value is true but alas I didn't get much going in any of the 5 tournaments I played.

My main event table at the start of the trip was really really soft. Much softer than I thought it would be for a €5k tournament. I probably ran good on getting a great table draw despite not actually get much going. You start with 30k chips at 25/50 but that still didn't stop some of my table mates trying to get all 400bb in with top pair no kicker and getting far too attached to underpairs to the board. From my (somewhat limited) experience of playing with the Italians, they are the kind of players who cannot stand ever being bluffed off a pot but at the same time love to run really illogical bluffs themselves. I found the best strategy versus these players is to just try to make hands and take them all to value town. In the end I busted the main event in a slightly frustrating spot running my KK into AA for just over 100bb which was made slightly more annoying given at the time the big blind and the button was sat out. But c'est la vie!

I also played all of the freezeout side events. On the whole the fields were pretty polarised between having tournament pros who had traveled over from around the world for WSOPe which was just down the road in Cannes, France the previous week and a lot of very bad and spazzy Italian players. However, I did get the feeling there were some circuit grinders who had been out travelling in London doing EPT London, then Cannes and now playing this who were obviously getting really frustrated with the live tournament grind and punting stacks off in really unnecessary spots. In the end the best run I got was in the €2k side event on a pretty tough table when I managed to run my stack up to 42k before eventually making the second best hand in a few close spots and busting in a pretty big flip.

You'll just have to believe me when I say there are worse places in the world to brick a tournament series; San Remo is really an amazing place. Although there's not too much to do in terms of night life, the whole area is very scenically beautiful and the food is incredible. Mmmm...lobster spaghetti..

Socially this trip was really nice as well. I met and talked to a ton of poker players with far more experience in these events and with far better results than I have. It was really interesting especially in talking strategically about hands that people had played. I feel like it really goes to show how deep this game can go and how much better some people are at poker which on the surface might not be obvious. I've got a really long way to go to becoming anywhere near one of the best in Europe.

What I've found that really differentiates the greatest professionals from the mediocre professionals is their ability to just constantly put you in tough spots. In good structured live tournaments especially when the average stack is often pretty deep, good players have such an edge in the way that they can just constantly apply the pressure in spots that make it really really tough for you to play back against them. I think this was highlighted as I was speaking to a few people who had played with Erik Seidel a fair bit and I was inquiring with them what made him excel so much in the super deepstack formats that he plays. Of course he's bound to have ran pretty good, but to assign all of his success in the past 1-2 years down to this alone is just being naive. They pointed out that while he's not a really laggy 3-4bet monkey like a lot of younger internet style pros he really puts the pressure on a ton post-flop where inevitably he has the biggest edge. For instance, one thing that he seems to do well by putting people in horrible spots really deep is his relentless check-raising on flops. He can check-raise really thin and then apply a lot of pressure on turns/rivers after he picks up the initiative in the hand. Similarly, because he doesn't open as many buttons as say a typical player might do when folded to them on the button his %s when 3bet for either 4betting or flatting the 3bet in position are significantly higher than most peoples would be in that spot and as such is going to put a ton of pressure on you and just put you in some horrible spots post-flop. Someone else mentioned that if he is 3betting he's doing so to 5bet a lot of the time which is just a great adjustment to the games he plays and working off his image.

That was all a pretty round-about way of getting to the point that although it's probably a bit unnecessary in the current games I play online, if I do want to start playing higher and more high-stake live MTTs against some of the best in the world it's a skill worth acquiring. Being able to analyse someones range and put that range on different board textures in a lot of spots that aren't easy to play back against. It's not a particularly easy skill to develop and requires a good amount of thought and work away from the tables as well as a lot of practice at the tables. But it is really what differentiates the great regs from the mediocre regs.

Anyway, that was all pretty long winded. Today I'm going to just relax in the sunshine in San Remo, have some nice food and maybe a BBQ with some drinks later. Then tomorrow I'm crossing the border into France and flying from Nice to Dublin for the Irish Winter Festival. Hopefully I can do a little better on the poker-front out there than I have here, but anyway I'm sure it'll be a fun trip.

GL at the tables guys!

Hello,

Well the start of October hasn't gone too great online. I've been playing mainly live so far this month and as such have missed quite a few of the mid-week sessions I might put in online. As a result most of my sessions have come on Sundays in the higher-variance and higher-buyin majors all of which I've managed to brick. Oh well, can't win 'em all! I did have a bit of a saviour session though yesterday when I put in a solid 16 hour mid-week grind coming out on top almost $3k which was a nice confidence booster and means I'm not down too much on the month anymore.

I have had a few deep runs lately, I got a 9th in the Sunday $8r on stars for $650 which kind of sucks besting the $2k+ field when first is $10k, but hey, at least it's not a final table bubble! I did manage a few other deepish runs which unfortunately did result in me final table bubbling including in the Sunday big $100 fo on iPoker getting $300 for my efforts when first is $9k and a couple of other $100 fos on different networks. Again, not going to whine too much about these as theoretically for every final table, you're most likely to be making an equal amount of final 2 tables especially if you're willing to put you're money on the line to build a top 3 stack and put pressure on those slightly more nervous about making the final table.

I've also had a relatively good start to the month playing live. I managed to win a seat on the online Wednesday qualifier to the GUKPT Coventry, a £1070 buyin tournament, for £250. I went down on the Tuesday and Thursday to play their midweek prelim tournaments with little joy, but on the plus side after busting the £200 6max turbo on the thursday I jumped straight into a £50 with 1 rebuy satelitte to the main event and managed to blag another seat. I'll probably transfer this one across to GUKPT Blackpool in a month or so's time. As it happens I fear that I used up all my run good in the satelitte as I didn't get much going in the actual main event eventually busting on a flip with a lot of deadmoney in the pot nearing the end of day 1. Regardless, I really enjoyed the tournament and I'm kind of pissed off with myself that I've not put more effort in the past to play the GUKPTs. They offer great value with a great structure and maybe just because the WSOPe was going on in Cannes, but the field was suprisingly soft. I also think they have a good side event structure and I'm looking forward to playing Blackpool later on in November :)

In other live news, I finally managed to beat my long-spree of not cashing in the DTD £300 deepstack. I think I'll be making an increasing number of deep runs in this now that the tournament is multi-entry and I'll be firing 2 bullets almost every month aiming for that top £30,000 prize. Unfortunately this time I managed a still (for me) somewhat respectable 12th out of ~360ish runners but just missed out on the big money. It was quite funny actually. As soon as I busted both tables tried to organise an equal money chop for the remaining players. Thankfully (as thats so boring not even having a final table!), the tournament director disallowed this but they still did a pretty much even chop 9 handed on the final table. How boring!

I got another deep run in the £150 6max "highroller" at DTD last Saturday too but fell just shy of the final table. As you can tell, I've been playing a lot live lately. Partly because I'm desperate to get as much experience and practice in before my EPT San Remo debut and also because, embarrassingly enough, I'm genuinely enjoying it. I do like the slower pace and trying to think through every hand and build reads up on opponents based on game flow and history. It is slow and at times can definately be tedius but at the same time getting deep runs in live MTTs is really exciting. Bring on San Remo!

I'm just at the airport now waiting for my flight to France where I'll board a train across to Italy. I'll update the blog again when I'm back with a trip report and hopefully, internet permitting, be updating about my tournaments/experiences via twitter in the meantime.

Until then, ciao and gl at the tables!

Hey!

Wow, I have really been getting slack at updating this blog, I've been really busy lately but I guess that's still no excuse.

September in the end turned out to be a great month for me. The highlight by far being I actually managed to final table a major tournament on pokerstars! I didn't play many of the WCOOPs as I didn't fancy putting a package together and I can't justify playing any of the non-NLHE tournaments as well, let's face it, I suck at mixed games.  So the tournaments I did play were a few of the $200 NLHE freezeouts and a couple of the $300 freezeouts. Somehow I managed to run like Jesus himself and final tabled event 52, a $320/$400k gtd freezeout eventually coming in 5th for $25k.


So as you can imagine I was beyond happy with this score. This is actually my biggest online score so far and my biggest score overall given the % I had of myself. I did sell 30% to a mate as online $300s are still a slight strain on the bankroll and I'm a nit but adding a juicy $19k to the roll is something I can't ever imagine myself growing tired of.

I actually had a pretty big volume month (for me) putting in 700 games in the month making a further $8k on the side which was nice and with the WCOOP bink resulting in my best month yet as well. Thinks are certainly looking up :)

Despite the boost to my roll I'm still going to stick to roughly the same stakes especially during the week. It's all about the bread-n-butter games. I will be able to take a few more Sunday shots though which is nice and if October goes half as well as September I might try adding a few more tournaments to my roster such as nightly $50 rebuys and a few of the bigger high variance turbos like the Stars $200 turbo. I enjoy playing them, but edges are small and they are swingy as fuck so I'd like to be comfortably over-rolled to them before they become a regular part of the schedule.

Onto this month and the OnGame GSOP series has arrived and is pretty much drawing to a close. I've had no success yet in the higher buyins but have had several deep runs in the lower part of the series. I somehow managed to build 2x average stacks pretty deep in both the $50r and the $5r 6max. It was pretty funny and kind of lame though as within 5 minutes I managed to win QQ to AA for a monster stack in the $5r but busted just before the money AA to qq in the $50r. Ooops, better selective run-good needed I think! This Sunday there is a big $500 freezeout to pretty much mark the end of the series which I'm going to take a shot in, so hoping for a good run there. It'll get a lot of runners and hopefully be a softish field with a great structure so should be a fun tournament regardless of how I finish up.

Other than that, I'm starting to get a bit of post-Vegas blues and I'm itching to play live and get another good score to add to my somewhat lacking Hendon Mob page. So I'm going to be getting my live-pro/donations on this month. First off this weekend is the DTD £330 re-entry tournament. I've managed to win 2 seats online for this so I'll be giving both day 1a and if necessary day 1b a shot to make a deep run in this comp. The guarantees up to £100k now for the tournament and with it only being a 5 minute walk from my apartment it would be a crime for me to miss this one.

Next week the GUKPT is hitting Coventry. I love this casino, it's probably my favourite (other than DTD) in the country. Of course it doesn't compare to the US counterparts, but for British standards it's pretty much the cream of the crop. I'll likely play the £200 6max on Thursday and the main event £1070 on Friday. I don't think there will be that many runners what with all the action going on in Cannes at the moment. But perhaps it will be a softer and smaller field and maybe that will give me a great chance to get a deep run in and earn some moolah! I might play the £330 side event on Tuesday too but that'll depend on how I feel.

After that, and probably the highlight of the month, I'll be flying out to San Remo, Italy to play my first ever EPT. I'm really excited for this one and I've wanted to visit Italy for a long time. I hear the games are good over there and if there's one time to save and use that run-good up it'll be for this one. I'm playing a healthy schedule over there so it could get pretty expensive. I assumed like most Pokerstars events you could buy-in via the client for the tournaments but alas apparently this isn't a possibly for San Remo. So I'm in a bit of a dilemna trying to work out the best way to get my money off the sites, to my bank and register for the events without getting too royally fucked by exchange rates. Hmm, might need to think this one over. Any suggestions are welcome!

To finish what will surely be a very hectic month I'll be heading to Dublin, Ireland for a nice cold pint of Guinness. Oh, and do my best in the Irish Winter Festival of course! I won a package to this on iPoker a month or so ago in one of the first qualifiers (run good!). I'm sure even if the poker on this trip doesn't go to plan it'll be a fun boozy weekend. But hopes are I won't be drinking too many pints as I'll still be building castles of chips in the main up to day 3.

So that's whats happening for me in the next month. Plenty going on and I'll try to keep up with good exercise and grinding online in-between events if I can.

Until next time, run good people!

Hey!

August was a weird month for me. Outside of poker it was incredible; I went to Amsterdam with a few friends for a few days, managed a great trip up to Scotland and went hiking in the highlands and spent some really good time outside and chilling with friends.

But, on the poker front, things weren't so great. In fact it was probably the worst month I've had since going pro last year. I've had a pretty solid start so I guess the inevitable downswing of doom was due. Kind of frustratingly I'd actually been making pretty deep runs in a lot of tournaments but getting repetitively screwed over late can grind you down. I had 6 big final tables with between $10k-$25k this month which I bubbled. So it could have been great! But this time round it wasn't.

So as far as I'm concerned bring on September! The downswing probably wasn't helped by the fact I spent an absolute ton this month what with buyin a new car and getting my flat sorted. So this month it's going to be a big month of getting my head down and getting my grind on and fingers crossed winning money!

I'm starting the month off at DTD for the monthly £300 deepstack. Without trying to make this post sound even more pessimistic I've still yet to cash in a live £300 comp despite playing them semi-regularly for a couple of years now. It has to come this weekend right? Let's just hope :p

Other than that the WCOOP is starting this weekend, I'll dabble in a few of them but won't be getting too carried away this year with making a big package. I'll be sticking to the $200-$300 NLHE events mainly and as always going in with a naieve optimism. One time!?

But yup, the Summer's over. I'm settled in my new place, now it's grind time. Time to get back on track and start crushing some MTTs.

Gl guys..