Hey!

Well I'm back in the UK now and have successfully moved into my new apartment. I'm still living in Nottingham, but a bit further out from the city center in a bit more of a chilled environment. I'll miss my balcony in my old flat, but so far I'm enjoying seeing a bit of greenery and not hearing sirens outside my window every night (lol shottingham!). I've also made a pretty big purchase since being back, that is buying a 5 year old VW Passat! After driving in Vegas and moving slightly out of the city, I decided it was definitely time to buy a car again. I really enjoy driving and without trying to sound like a snob, public transport is so tilting. I get my new wheels tomorrow and am eagerly awaiting the incoming freedom :)


I've also got my net set back up again and my set-ups looking pretty good. If I can be bothered I'll take photos of the flat to put on the blog but at a later date. I've been back playing for a week now and I have to say, I'm really enjoying it!

Other than an epic fail of a Sunday yesterday, it's been a good week back with good volume. Highlights include shipping the Stars midnight $100 6max for $4.5k and a couple of turbo binks including a €20 hyper for €2k :)

This forthcoming week I'll be playing online a couple of days before getting ready for my first live tournament back on UK soil. This weekend it's the DTD £330/£100k gtd multientry that I'll be playing from Friday. Suprisingly looking forward to it and hoping for my first DTD deepstack cash ever. Will it ever come? :p

Anyway, gl on the felt everyone, til next time..

Hey!

Well unfortunately the Vegas trip is coming to a close. I'm flying back to the UK shores on Thursday. I'm kind of meh about flying back, sure it will be cool to play some online poker again and I'm missing my girlfriend, but damn this is Vegas. I love this place!

The lifestyle out here is really awesome and something I'll definately miss. Bar the past couple of days, every day has been bright sunshine, the food out here is incredible and not too pricey and it's just a lot of fun hanging around with the house mates drinking, gambling or doing whatever. Shame it's not sustainable, but hey, I guess that's what holidays are for!



So far on this trip since the last blog post we've been helicopter riding over the Grand Canyon, seeing Cirque Du Soleil, out for some incredible meals including some of the best fast food in the world. Nom nom nom, fat times. God bless America :p


It's also just been nice chilling and relaxing with others as normally at home I have little time to just put my feet back and relax. This might seem surprising to most readers given my current line of work. But normally I'm grinding for 12+hours a day 5 days a week and my off-days are usually spent away from the house with friends/girlfriend or doing chores. So to sit back and watch episodes of Arrested Development without feeling guilty about slacking feels pretty nice too :)



But it's not all good news. The main event has arrived and for me has gone way way faster that I would have liked. Just so you guys have slightly longer to think of burns, I busted in the second level! Fail!

I made it to the first break just above average grinding my 30,000 starting stack at 50/100 up to around 32k. Then things went tits up. Big time! I ended up putting my money ahead in a couple of spots with 2 pair vs one pair hands including with AQ on an AQx board vs some old guys AK who then managed to bink his king on the river after all in on the flop.

The rest went in when I was dealt AA , opened with 3 calls, got squeezed from the small blind and I just 4bet shipped it. He couldn't snap me off any faster with QQ, which turned out to be a fantastic call after the first card on the flop was a queen.

Moral of the story, never trust the ladies in Vegas ;)

So now after a very disappointingly short run in the main, I've got two tournaments left to work my way into some more profits for the trip. After my bink in the Venetian $500 I'm not back to around even (frickin main event, fastest $10k I've ever spent :p). So it would be nice to get going and have one final score before heading back home.

But if I can't get anything going in the two remaining tournaments, I won't mind too much. This summer has been amazing and I'm definately going to miss the Vegas lifestyle.

Hey!

We're over half way through the Vegas trip now and I've played 14 out of my 24 tournaments. So far so good as I've managed to luckbox my way to finally getting a live score getting the majority chop in a $500 Venetian tournament for $25,500. Although the score itself somewhat embarrassingly doesn't pay off my trip in itself, it's my first live tournament win in a very very long 0time and as you can imagine I've been over-the-moon since :)

Other than that, I got a deepish run in a WSOP $1500 coming 91st/3kish runner something for $4300 and a few near cashes. I feel like my live game has improved a lot since I've been here and I'm actually enjoying the live grind quite a lot. Surprisingly I haven't even thought about playing online again while I've been here.

 When I'm not grinding tournaments I've either been chilling by the pool, various adventures up mountains, eating way too much nice food and generally just having good times. I really like the lifestyle out here and having a car with the freedom it brings here is really good.

This coming week I'm playing more of the same in terms of tournaments. I wouldn't mind next year learning some of the mixed games though just to break up the constant no-limit holdem grind but the fields seem really soft this year especially at the world series and I think I would feel bad missing out on some of the juicy fields.

So this coming week I'm kicking it off with a $500 caesers heads-up tournament that the majority of our house is playing then a few more NLH tourns spread between the Venetian and at the Rio. Then the build up to the main event will start which from what I've heard will be the ultimate grind and a great way to finish the summer off....especially if I can run good enough to cash!

Hopefully the run good continues and I can manage to get another really good run before the trip ends.

GL at the tables all!

Hey!

Well a lot has happened the last week. I've arrived in Vegas, got a car out here and settled into the house we're renting for the Summer. It's really nice with a big pool, big living area and I've even got a 4-poster bed. Balla!

I haven't got much time but I'll give you all a quick update:

Tournaments:

I'm so far 0/5 bricking every event pretty hard. In each event so far I've gone semi-deep in everything but yet to make a cash. Many more to come though!

One time?


Food

This is Vegas, you got to talk about food! Well I've had some incredible meals already since being here including some amazing Sushi, Steaks, Burgers. They really do good food over this side of the pond. Probably why everyone's a tad bit larger over here too! One of the highlight meals has to be going to one of the local breakfast-diners which serve so much good food like omelettes, pancakes and eggs. Mmmm, I wish they had diners like this in England in Nottingham. I'd probably go every day.


Fun Times

We've also been doing quite a lot of fun activities outside of gambling which is awesome out here. It's far too easy to over engross yourself in gambling or poker in this town, yet it has so much more to offer. Highlights have to include driving over to Nevadas adjacent city an hour away. The place is called Boulder City and is host to Lake Mead. A huge lake in the Nevada Desert apparently bordering 4 states. We hired a powerboat for Chud's birthday and one of those tube things on the back and spent the day drinking on the lake and throwing each other into the lake at top speeds. Highly recommended tilt-buster :p

I met up with a couple of other friends as well and after a somewhat disappointing start to the tournament schedule without a cash yet, I went around the massive shark aquarium at Mandalay Bay with a couple of friends. Not only does it bring back memories of nightmares I had when I was a kid, I was actually really impressed. Normally at aquariums they have a bunch of boring fish or colourful little things no one actually cares about. This place just has the biggest and the best, pirhannas,  giant snakes, jelly fish, alligators, and of course a huge shark reef.


I may not have picked anything up from the sharks in the tank, but it really was a great trip and I'd highly recommend it to people visiting Vegas.

Anyway, I've got another $1k WSOP event in an hour so got to get ready to crush it, or get crushed, as the case may be :p



Best of luck at the tables all.

Hey,

In the end April turned out to be pretty fail on the poker front. Check it out below:

 (dark red line not the lighter pink one at the top)

As you can see it was a pretty swingy month. I missed by target buyins of $30k by about $1.8k but I'm not too fussed about that as I played a fair bit live going to Spain, DTD and Walsall for tournaments. Unfortunately I have nothing whatsoever, not even a deep run to brag about. But so it goes. Saving all that run good for Vegas, I hope ;)

Online the month was pretty rough and my lowest profit month in a while. I'm cool with it though. I had more than my fair share of biggish FT bubbles this month in the larger buyins on my schedule. What probably is noticeable though is that my ROI for the month is still pretty solid. I know sharkscope ROIs have a tendency to be pretty inaccurate but I think this shows I ran good in my small stuff and bad in my big-buyin stuff. Afterall, that's why you play the smaller stuff too, to help off-set the bigger buyin MTTs. Let's hope in May I run horrific in all my $20 freezes and ship all the loot in the $100s this month then!

One other pretty catastrophic bad beat that has affected me pretty badly this month is the dealings of Black Friday. When I say pretty badly, let me just point out that I am in no way as badly affected by this as most, but still it kind of sucks. I won't go into the specifics of what happened on April 20th as most people reading this blog will probably be pretty clued up about it. But basically my WSOP $10k package that I won with AP looks like it's gone for good. I guess that's karma for depositing on the crooked site in the first place!

After the Americans have been kicked off the site for good, AP which focused heavily on the US market has pretty much become a ghost town. Not only has the site got pretty much no traffic whatsoever now, but with rumors and articles circling the internet about it's shareholders having disputes as well as the fact that even Europeans are having trouble withdrawing $250 every 2 weeks I think it's fair to say that there is a pretty good chance the site will go bankrupt. And I don't think you even need a top-notch Economics degree to figure that one out. I've got a lot of US friends with a lot of money locked up on these sites, so fingers crossed for everyone. As for me, most likely losing $10k sucks pretty bad, but c'est la vie. Treating poker like a business it's one of those things you have to cross-off as a bad debt and change your plans accordingly.

So despite the amazing weather we've had this month, April to me would have seemed more fitting with black clouds and thunderstorms! But hey, I made profit on the month so I can't complain!

Onto May and it's a long month of online grinding ahead of me. I've won a seat to the DTD Deepstack for my monthly £300 donation this coming weekend before SCOOP starts on PokerStars. The schedule is pretty damn awesome and I wonder how badly the SCOOP-high events will be affected by the lack of US players now. On a good note though, the times for a lot of the SCOOP events have been moved to more euro-friendly time patterns so we don't all have to stay up til 11am if we get a deep run. It's nice to be considered sometimes ;)

I'm not sure exactly how much SCOOP I'll play as I do like to steer clear of large field MTTs like the plague. But they don't come round too often and a sucker does win the lottery every week. So who's to say I can't be next weeks winning sucker? In reality I'll probably play most of the low events and take some shots in the medium events, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Other than that I'll be grinding a lot on iPoker this month trying to maintain myself in the top 20 in the tournament leaderboard to win a $1k seat in Vegas next month as well as playing the PKR £750 main event in London much later on in the month.

This is also the last month before I head to Vegas for the Summer, so a good one to get my hopes high would be nice. I wouldn't mind getting $40ks worth of buyins for the month under my belt, but at the same time I think with so much stuff to sort as I'll be moving out of my flat at the end of the month too as well as getting everything ready for Vegas, my volume might suffer a little as a result. We shall see. I hope this is a good month....

Gl at the tables all!

Hey people,

Since my last post, my online suck seems to have turned a little and I've managed to get myself unstuck from the whole I got myself in at the start of the month. Since returning from Spain I've put in a lot of volume and have managed to luckbox my way to 6 wins in just over a week which I'm really happy about. Most notably winning the iPoker $100fo, iPoker $30r and OnGame $10r :)




As for Spain itself, the trip was amazing. I was really impressed by Seville itself. The weather was amazing and the town itself is really architecturally stunning. On top of that San Miguel on tap was cheap and the food was surprisingly good for Spanish standards! Overall an amazing trip. I made day 2 in the $3k main event but didn't last long reshoving my QQ into AA. I then proceeded to donk out both side events with QQ too. Them damn bitches. To tell the truth though, a tiny part of me was happy when I did bust the events as I knew I could then spend the rest of the holiday grinding on the sun-tan and hustling fish like pillow100 at Chinese whilst drinking plenty of San Miguel.

There are quite a few high buy-in live events going on at the moment such as the Irish Open, EPT San Remo, Everest Poker The One. I was very very close to pack up my bags and do a circuit of the events. After much disheartening persuasion from my sensible side I realized it probably wouldn't be the best to risk such high proportions of my roll chasing the dream when Vegas is so near anyway. So maybe next year guys :(




Instead I think to get my live-fix I'll head to Walsall this weekend for the GUKPT. I expect to go on the Thursday to play the £200 6max side event and then play the main event on Friday. After that I'll be playing the DTD £300 deepstack in Nottingham the week after. My sharkscope subscription has died on me a little but I'm fairly sure with the Spain trip and the sunny weather outside I've slacked a bit on volume this month, but I'm hoping to pick it up for the last few days to push this month into good profits :)

Hey!

Well the month of April has left me feeling somewhat of a fool (OK, last bad joke I promise). The month had a promising start but I've proceeded to lose $6k+ in my last 3-4 sessions which isn't too great as I've practically not cashed a tournament for a whole week. Yikes!

I think it's probably borderline karma due to my insane month in March and was well due. One good thing about downswings though is that for me anyway if I have a couple of really horrific sessions in a row it motivates me even harder to study my game. Especially playing as a professional as I start to almost panic that everyones got sick good and I suck! Confidence is a big thing in poker and it's probably why some of the top players are often such cocky douche bags. It definitely helps to go over hands and spots with friends and in poker forums just to get yourself back on track and to help identify any leaks that might be emerging.

Anyway enough of the downswing dribble. So I was having a really crap week and a crap Sunday. I swapped 20% in the euro majors with my friend Pillow100 who I was grinding with last night. Obviously he went and spewed his way to the final table of the OnGame $200/$200k gtd with a huge chip lead. He then proceeded to knock out 2 players on the final table with QQ>KK>AA but couldn't find a close. Regardless, he picked up $24k for finishing runner-up which banked me a solid $4800 and wiped off a lot last weeks losses. Sick Sunday saver too as despite building a few stacks nothing seemed to materialise.

So after a pretty horrific week on the tables, I'm really looking forward to a break from online poker. Which coincides pretty well with the fact that in a few hours I'll be heading to the airport to fly to sunny Spain for GSOP Seville, $3200 buy-in tournament. It's the biggest buy-in I've played for about a year and I'm really looking forward to it. I also can't wait to just get some Sangria and Paella down my throat and relax as well. It's been a pretty hardcore past couple of months. I'm not too sure of what to expect from the town, the hotel, the tournament or anything. But it should be fun regardless.

I've also pretty much finalised my schedule for Vegas in the Summer. I'll be playing a ton of the $1k and $1.5k WSOP events as well as some bigger Venetian tournaments. It should be really fun. For those interested, here's a link:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkaN5CySIIj9dC1xQW9aUmoxV0ZrQzhvejRZcnVsVHc&hl=en#gid=0

On that note, after I return from Spain hopefully feeling refreshed and significantly wealthier (well the last part would be nice anyway :p ) I'm really going to get my head down and grind hard for the last few weeks Pre-Vegas. Although I'm playing a lot of tournaments, I'll be chilling a lot too in the evenings and if there's one place where having a lot of money buys a lot of happiness it's this city. That is some motivation right there. I'll also be really pushing myself hard on the health and fitness front too. I know I won't be some Men's Health cover model by the time I get there, but it would be nice to be a little leaner and fitter for the Summer season.

Anyway, I'm leaving in a couple of hours and need to get packing. Best of luck at the tables everyone!

Hey!

I think it's best to start of by saying March has been very kind to me. This was one of the big months before Vegas where I can really get my head down and grind, especially whilst the weather outside remains relatively poor and everyone else seems busy with University etc. So that's what I did! I don't keep track exactly how many days I did but it was a fair few which resulted in me buying into around $47k worth of tournaments this month smashing my $40k target I set at the start of the month. I also managed a small cash in the UKIPT Manchester making me go 1 for 2 in live tournament cashes on the month. Woo Woo!


So as you can see I ran pretty hot this month which is always really nice and just what's needed pre-Vegas. Now I just need to keep this run going for a while longer!

You may notice a pretty significant blip in the graph at the end of the month. Well I managed to luckbox a main event package last night in a $500 sat! I'm pretty much over the moon with happiness at the moment. I tried really hard to sat in last year whilst spunking off around $5k in sats with no luck. Literally since I first started playing home-games with friends for £2 I've really wanted to play in the main event. I know it's pretty cliche and a fishy attitude but words can't describe how excited I am for Vegas now!

One issue which is kind of in the back of my mind is that I qualified through AP (boo, hiss!). I don't regularly play on the site and I guess from an ethical standpoint I probably shouldn't at all based on their history. Similarly I haven't really given a lot of thought in depth to how I would feel representing the site if I did get a deep run in the main event. The thing with satellites on AP, Stars and FTP is that due to some legal reason they can't actually buy you into the tournament. Instead they credit your account with the money expecting you to go a long and play the tournament. As added incentive to actually get the punters to come down to the main event and play the give a $1k bonus for showing up, cash in hand. Then they give $1k per day and a $10k bonus if you reach the money. Which is pretty damn sick all things considered. Now you've got a soft $10k tournament with a mincash effectively of ~$30,000. This is a pretty similar deal on AP and FTP at the moment, and I guess Stars will join the crew too or maybe even offer something better.

On the other hand the European sites are starting to offer satellites. But sites like 888 and party poker are must-play seats without any extra monetary incentives for turning up or cashing. Similarly these packages are about $3k-$4k more including hotels and random parties (lol nice markup guys) making them even less attractive. I mean I think the satelittes on party for instance will be softer, and there's a fairly good chance if I grind the sats hard I could win another seat via Party and then keep my $12k from AP as cash but the added incentive of playing with them is a lot.

I think what I'll probably end up doing is try to grind the WSOP sats a fair bit as they do seem to be fairly soft and try to also qualify on Full Tilt or Stars (whenever they eventually run them) and go from there.

Anyway, enough of that jibber-jabber. So I've noted a pretty mammoth schedule for Vegas which I expect I'll sell action to in the next couple of months. I'm really not sure how many 'shots' I should take this Summer with my own money. A good part of me wants to do bi-weekly packages whereby I'd put up a package for the first 2 weeks I'm there. Then a separate package for the next two weeks etc.  This would then allow me to alter the % of action that I sell as my bankroll fluctuates. I mean say for instance I had a really lucky start and managed to bink pretty early but then was tied into still selling 50% for say the main event 6 weeks later, that would suck a little. I'll have a good think about it. I'll also blog about my schedule before I post it incase any readers want to buy a % or two for a bit of a sweat this Summer. It should be fun :)

Progress on the bankroll front!

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





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

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

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

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

Until later, gl guys!