I haven't blogged in a while as I have been busy taking some "paternity leave" over the last couple of weeks. My wife gave birth on February 2nd, 3 days overdue, to our beautiful baby daughter Alaina Julie Atkin:

I was definitely less panicked this time around than I was with my son Clark. I heard Liz get out of bed at about 4am and I mumbled something along the lines of "you aren't going into labour are you?". She said "yes". I did the natural thing that you would expect in this situation, and snap went back to sleep :-)

She woke me up at about half seven, and we got all our stuff ready, took Clark to my mum and dad's house and drove to the hospital. Of course there was no-where to park and we ended up having a fair trek from an outer car-park. This especially sucked for me as I had to carry all the bags. Why do us men always have to do the heavy carrying. It took a long time to walk there as Liz was lagging behind and had to stop occasionally, which I thought was rather inconsiderate given that it was about -2 degrees or something.

Alaina Julie Atkin

Turns out the hospital was pretty rammed with other people in the same situation, so got a bit of a poky room in the hospital. Liz was a bit bummed that there wasn't a bath as they helped her through the last time she was in labour. But meh, it was fine, and we got a really nice midwife assigned to us.

The next few hours were basically me trying to help Liz through her contractions, and her telling me to GTFO and not touch her! I just about managed to talk her out of having any drugs, which she had been adamant about (until her contractions started). I'll give her some major credit though, she did the whole labour without any drugs whatsoever. What a hero(ine).

The whole process was a lot quicker than last time, and the actual birth seemed insane. She was 'measured' for only the second time at about 1.40pm, and it turned out she was fully dilated. About 90 seconds later, there was a screaming baby on the bed! The mid-wife and student doctor were still trying to put their gloves on! It literally fell out lol. I can see the hea...oh she's here!

Brother & Sister

I've been pretty busy since then, it seems that having two children is a lot harder work than one. Liz is basically taking care of the baby whilst I take care of Clark. He's dealt with the change pretty well so far, aside from trying to feed her from Cheese and Onion crisps when he met her for the first time, and trying to bosh her on the head with a wooden giraffe ornament (and being adamant that he wanted to do it, when he was sternly told no, lol).

Liz had to have a few stitches as a result of the hyper-turbo birth (poker references ftw) so she found the first week pretty tough going, but I think we're getting into the swing of things now, and hopefully I can get back to working full time as I rather need to earn some nappy money!

Me & Alaina

I only put in a low volume week this week in SNGs, which was a result of me dabbling in the TCOOP, and taking a bit of time off to help my wife out who is now very heavily pregnant. I had some positive TCOOP results, which I will write about in my next blog post where I am going to review how MTTs went for me in January.

After what feels like months and months of running bad, I am currently running really good. Dropping down in stakes, forgetting about SNE and avoiding STTs has worked out really well for me so far. Although we're dealing with small samples here, this graph still paints a telling before/after picture (I quit SNE, STTs and $60+ 18-mans somwhere in the red circle).

My 6-man to 45-man SNGs Jan. 2012

Although I'm running above expectation over my last 1000 games, it is definitely the confidence booster I needed. I was feeling pretty miserable about poker and questioning myself as a poker player over the last few months, but this has been a catalyst to regaining my confidence, which I think is important as I believe you tend to play better when playing confidently.

It's a shame that results are the only tangible gauge that we have to measure how we are playing in poker.
Results are riddled with variance, and therefore provide unreliable data over the short, medium and occasionally even the long term. I think it is so difficult not to be affected by results, but the consequence is your mind-set is going to be hugely affected by variance.

I'm just hoping this positive variance continues :-)

I ended up being quite busy this week, and I only managed to put in about 2 and a half days work so my volume was rather pathetic. I switched from playing 6, 9, 18 and 45-mans to playing 18, 45 and 180-mans. I also dropped down in stakes, avoiding the $60 18-mans that I have been doing so terribly in, and playing $15 18-mans in their place. I felt a lot more comfortable, managing the number of tables better, and being a little more sure of my ranges.

It felt kind of ironic that I earned 3 times as much as I did in the first 11 days (~75 hours) as I did in these measly 2.5 days (~20 hours), but that's poker/variance for you. It was a relief to go on somewhat of a heater and definitely a boost to my weathered confidence. I will be trying to put a decent amount of hours in before my second born arrives sometime in the next 3 weeks!

This week essentially left me break-even after rake-back of hard grind which inevitably led me to quitting my SNE chase as I have already written about. Yes this could just have been variance, and in some ways it might have seemed a melodramatic decision, but I felt like I was going to find the grind required too difficult.

With the games so full of regs, and my game seemingly not at it's best, I felt like game selecting and not having to play 6-mans and 9-man SNGs, (which I am less familiar with) was a good decision.

I ended up taking the second half of the week off to "recharge" after a gruelling 11 days.

I have been in a bit of a quandary over the last couple of days. I have been going all out for Supernova Elite this year, and as I type this I am on pace with 31,700 VPPs. Unfortunately though my results have been very poor. I'm actually losing over the games I've played so far. This might not be such a concern over as short a period as 11 days, but my results have now been poor for several months. Consequently I have been unsure what direction to take.

My "SNE schedule" requires me to mix 6-man, 9-man and 18-man SNGs together. With different strategies this is quite a tall order, and my results started to downward trend not long after I started me playing a mix of these games last year. Maybe I'm just not capable of playing all games well, or cope with the required amount of tables.

I also question whether the schedule I have been keeping is sustainable for a whole year. Yes, I've been coping well with keeping on pace without it being too much of a a burden, but I have been working very hard, getting up at 5.45am and playing all day almost every day. With Liz due to give birth in 3 weeks time, I think I was being overly optimistic that I could stick to this schedule for the whole year.

My game seems to need a lot of work, it's hard to imagine that this break-even run is a result only of bad variance. I've been reviewing my play and had some review sessions with a SNG hero, but it perhaps hasn't been enough, and a SNE schedule doesn't really leave me a huge amount of time to work on my game if I expect to be able to spend time with my wife and son as well.

Consequently, I have made the early decision to forget about SNE. Right now, becoming a winning player again is more of a priority, and I think not having the stress of needing to stay on pace will help me.

I might not make as much money for the year this way, but I think I've gone for a quality of life option here. It's nice to think that I will be able to take a week off when the baby comes, and that I can perhaps venture out for the odd live tournament, which would be pointless when going for SNE.

It feels like a bit of a cop-out to quit after only 12 days! So I'm a little embarrassed, but meh. Now I can concentrate on playing slightly easier games, perhaps play less tables, and make things easier for myself by mixing less formats. As long as I can keep myself motivated to put in decent volume, and actually start winning again, then I'll be happy enough.

January 1st - 7th
This first week was pretty disheartening, only just about managing to break-even after rakeback. I don't really want to be one of those guys who works their titties off to make Supernova Elite but only breaks even. Okay, it's still a lot of money, but I don't think the hourly rate I would be earning would be enough to warrant all that hard work.

The only real positive to take away from this first week is that I managed to stay ahead of SNE pace and set-up a nice steady routine. I just plan to keep my head down, review when I can, and hope things turn around next week....

2011 was a very good year for me all in all. In poker, I had my most profitable year so far, and in my personal life I moved to a much nicer house, got married and found out I would become a father for the second time. However I can't help but feel, poker-wise, it could have been even better than it was. Both my results and my volume in the second half of the year were very disappointing, and I am really motivated to make up for that in 2012.

There were many stages I seemed to go through in 2011, so that is how I am going to format this review...


Stage 1
Going for SNE
1 January - 14 April

This stage was great for me. I was going for SNE and consequently was working very hard. I was doing very well in the games I was playing (almost exclusively 18-mans at this point) so I was being rewarded very nicely for the time I was putting in at the tables.

I did allow myself to slip away from SNE pace in February and March, but had accumulated 240,000 VPPs by April 14th so was within reasonable distance to still achieve my year long goal.

I can't remember a whole lot else going on at the time, I guess I was just too busy working!

Related Blog posts:

• "Wrestling to stay on pace" + Jan Review
• February Review
• March Review

Stage 2
Black Friday & aftermath...
15 April -  8 June

Black Friday unfortunately put paid to my Supernova Elite attempts. There were a few days where there was a lot of confusion about what was going on and what was going to happen. I didn't want to work hard for no reason, and the traffic in all the games I was playing died to a point that staying on pace would have been insanely difficult. So after working very hard for the first 14 weeks of the year I essentially took the rest of April off.

Unfortunately May was hugely disrupted by the changes that PokerStars made to SNGs. They started off with an absolute botch job, but over the next couple of weeks they fixed many of the problems they had created/ Unfortunately in this time they were somewhat insulting in their attempt to pass off a rake increase as a rake decrease, and I further disappointed that they had chosen this direction (increase instead of decrease), especially in games that were already barely beatable. Nevertheless by the end of it all, order was restored, and for me personally, things virtually went back to how they were before the changes, just a little more organised.

On the plus side, the games were the softest they had been for a long time in the post Black Friday world, although this didn't last for too long, and games are back to being as tough as ever before now.I'm not sure how related it is to the best American players gradually relocating, but imagine this is a factor.


Related Blog posts:

• GG Supernova Elite
• Summary of the finalised SNG changes on PokerStars

Stage 3
Trip to Vegas & aftermath...
9 June -  28 July

I took it upon myself to have the most ridiculously short trip to Vegas during the World Series of Poker, just 6 days. I really wanted to go, having not been since 2007 and not really enjoying myself then and wanted to do it right. However, I didn't want to leave my then fiancée and son on their own for too long, so this was sort of a compromise. In reality it was too short, I was on my way home before I knew it, but I had a really good time whilst I was there. I only played four poker tourneys, and it would have been nice if I didn't get a ridiculous beat to send me packing in the 1 WSOP event I played, but nevermind.

The highlight of the trip was the sickest night out I had after me and Longy, who I was staying with, bumped into lil Dave in the Venetian. We went back with him to his sick pad where he was staying with Stu Rutter and other heroes, and proceeded to have an hilarious night out ending up in Surrender at Encore.


My play for the rest of June and July was sporadic at best. I did have fun being a guest analyst on Sky Poker in their live 4-hour show on a Thursday evening. I think I came off pretty well, and I'd say it's quite possibly the first time my parents have been proud of me job-wise. Hopefully I'll get another chance to do that again soon as they have said I'd be very welcome back :).


Related Blog posts:

• Vegas Trip Report!
• Television Appearances...

Stage 4
Moving House, Getting married & Honeymoon...
29 July -  5 September

This was undoubtedly the most hectic time of the year for me where I decided to fit two huge life events into little more than a month. Literally the perfect house came up for rent very near where we were living, and we had to go for it. It has a double garage that has been converted into my 'grind-station'. and is just a really nice and big house with plenty of room for our family to expand. It's nice to know we're pretty set-up in this lovely house for the coming years.

Unfortunately, it was a rather stressful time, as moving house tends to be. On top of that it took me a ridiculous 6 weeks to get my internet sorted, so that put paid to any chance of me playing poker during this time.

Me and Liz got married on the 27th August after being together just shy of 4 years, and having got engaged in December 2009. I really can't envisage the wedding being any better than it was, it was exactly what we both wanted and it was a really special day. Having complained quite a lot about the expense of "just one day" in the lead up to the wedding, I am so glad that we did it and did it right, it's a day we'll never forget.


If you'd like to see the pictures from that day, they are all here: http://www.tinyurl.com/atkinwedding  worth a look if you like hot bridesmaids...my wife didn't look too bad either ;-)

After the wedding me, my wife and our son, who was just about to turn two, went on a family "not exactly a honeymoon" hoilday to Salou in Spain. We had a really great time to begin with, but unfortunately Clark got tonsillitis 3 days in which kind of ruined the holiday. We actually took him to A&E at midnight because he had such a high fever. I have to say I was impressed with the health care we got, they saw us very quickly and with the help of Google Translate (lol) they diagnosed him and he did get better shortly after we arrived home (standard sods law!).


Related Blog posts:

• Moving house & internet woes
• My Wedding Day

Stage 5
Death run in SNGs
6 September -  10 December

After a long absence to the tables, it seems I was rather rusty upon my return. It was my most testing time as a SNG player so far, as I endured something like a 7,000 game run of SNGs where I did little more than break-even. Much of this was attributable to running like death in my higher buy-in SNGs, with my very good return in lower buy-ins doing nothing but cancelling out those losses. The rakeback I accrued just about got me through this period without going completely insane, but being an FPP Pro is definitely not for me if I can avoid it.

As I'm sure I've mentioned many times in the past, understanding variance in one of the hardest things I think poker pro's have to combat. It's impossible to know exactly how much of a factor luck plays in your results, not only over the short term but the medium term as well. Trying not to concentrate on short term results is definitely something I intend to work on in 2012.

• Struggling
• Dear Father Christmas

Stage 6
Calm before the storm
11 December - 31 December
With my plan to go all out for SNE in 2012, I ended up taking a Christmas break a few days early. It was good to not be too stressed about poker, and felt like I reset myself which I think is good for my mindset going into 2012. I was able to spend lots of time with my son which was nice.

I went to see Liverpool (who I support) win at Villa Park which was cool, and I even saw a second consectuive home Aston Villa game as me and a bunch of other British Poker Pros had our "AGM" in Birmingham, going to watch the evening Villa vs Arsenal match and going out into town afterwards. Needless to say much drunkenness and hilarity ensuing, and it's always nice to meet up with the guys like this and get away from the computer monitors.

Christmas was very much a family affair as we pinged between my parents and my wife's parents houses but everything went really well, and Clark got lots of great presents and had lots of fun.

Me and my wife went out with 2 of our really good friends who are a couple for New Years Eve for a posh meal and a disco. It was actually the first time both of us had spent the night away from Clark as he stayed at his Grandma's! Aside from the fact we were the only people in the joint under the age of 40, it was a really nice evening, and although going into my SNE pursuit in 2012 with a headache wasn't the best start, it was well worth it.


Results for the Year
I was rather pleased to ship my first platinum stars on Sharkscope, especially being the most profitable $16-35 SNG player in 2011. I was obviously very pleased with my overall results for the year, if only I'd worked harder in the latter half :)

I've been keeping this under-wraps for quite a while, but think it's about time I mentioned it to everybody! Me and my wife are expecting our second child at the end of January.

I'm not quite as terrified as I was the last time around, but there are a lot considerations I have right now. How will we cope with two children? (Considering how much of a handful just one is!) How will it affect our little boy Clark? Is it realistic to attempt to go for Supernova Elite in the same year as having a newborn baby? Although I do worry about these things, I think it's simply a case of taking them as they come.

Preparing for our second child whilst still only 26 years old makes me think about how unorthodox my path in life is for a professional poker player. Of all the twenty-something poker players I know, I can only think of one other that has a child. One out of many.

It does have a certain impact on my on-line play that other on-line grinders wouldn't have to contend with. I tend to play during the daytime, out of peak hours, to make my working life more normal. After being someone who could never wake up in the morning for much of my life, I actually like this schedule though. Getting up at 6am feels like a much healthier lifestyle than waking up after 11am.

It definitely eats up a majority of my spare time, as the time I spend away from the tables tends to be with my family. This does make it harder to see my friends and go out, but I still do my best. And it's not as if I'm losing out on enjoyment here, I love spending time with Liz and Clark.

However with all the success in British Poker, most recently James Dempsey's recent bink in a WPT, I do occasionally give a thought to all very successful young British guys that go out on the circuit, like Flushy himself, Jake Cody, John Eames, Toby Lewis, Sam Trickett, Rupert Elder, Stuart Rutter, Dan Carter, Dave Nicholson, etc etc. All these get to travel the world playing poker, and it's hard not to be a little jealous of their lifestyle and their success.

Dempsey wins WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic

With few responsibilities they seem to be able to go where they want when they want, but I'm pretty much restricted to staying at home for the most part. I would just miss Clark and Liz too much. My trip to Vegas for 6 days in the summer showed me I just wouldn't be capable of going away without them on anything like a regular basis.

However I always come to the same conclusion. It's silly to be jealous, even fleetingly. I am very lucky to live the life I do. I've found the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, and have a child I love more than anything in the world. Becoming a father was the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I can't wait to have two under my wing.

My apologies if this announcement. has turned into a glorified brag post by the way. I'm not even sure I could hack the poker superstar lifestyle anyway.  For a start I don't profess to have anywhere near their talent in poker, and it's very possible I wouldn't even be able to do what they do and be particularly successful. Also, being the variance nit I am, as well as someone who likes being "home" (I live 5 minutes away from where I grew up ffs!), it's probably not the life for me. I should just be thankful that I am able to make a solid living at a job I somewhat enjoy, and that suits me well, allowing me to spend plenty of time with my family. I've managed to find my niché in poker, and I should just be pleased to have one!

Being told of Liz's first pregnancy was the spark that led me to be a disciplined grind-horse, and I think the responsibility of being the sole provider for two children might help give me the motivation I need to make 2012 the year where I work the hardest.

It was quite interesting reading through an old article I wrote a couple of months after Clark was born called "Poker and Parenthood". In that I wrote:

I'm just happy that the missus didn't go into labour whilst I was playing a SNG session, and me having to tell her "Not now dear, you'll have to wait until I've finished all these games!

With labour taking much less time in your second birth, I'm funking pretty hard for her not to go into labour whilst playing :)

I couldn't help myself posting up a little home video of my son Clark. He's only two and a quarter and he's the brightest little boy you could hope for :)

It's been a while since I updated. About a month ago I decided to move over to 45-mans and 180-mans after having my soul crushed in 18-mans. I've gradually been weaning 18-mans back in for a number of reasons.

1. I think they are my best game
2. I am currently #1 in the 2011 Sharkscope leaderboard for "All games $16-$35", and would like to ensure I ship the platinum star
3. I am at almost certain I am going to pursue Supernova Elite next year, with 18-mans being the main game I plan to play.

I belatedly came across a prop-bet that occurred in October where SNG grinder Martin Phalaz, from the Czech Republic, had a sick task on his hands. Under his PokerStars screename 'phasE89', he had to play a massive 24,000 SNGs in one month and make a net profit (not including rakeback) during that time. The odds were 3 to 1 in his favour (if he was successful he would win 3 times his bets)

To date, I myself have played 23,000 SNGs in the whole of 2011, so playing this amount of SNGs in just one month sounds completely insane to me. When I first heard about the prop-bet I assumed he must have been playing Hyper-Turbo SNGs, but it was actually all done playing Fifty50 SNGs. I was surprised that these games were popular enough to allow this kind of volume, especially at high stakes, but with an average buy-in of $51 over the course of the bet, apparently they are!

He ended up winning the prop bet with just a couple of hours to spare, playing 24,035 SNGs in the month of October, profiting $2,898. Over the course of the month he played around 750,000 hands!

Actually though his winnings were much more sick than that. He had wagered approximately $5k on completing the bet at 3 to 1, so won $15k in bets. Factor in roughly $25k in accrued rakeback, and we're talking over $40,000 in winnings. Not bad for a months work (albeit a ridiculously hard months work)!

However it wasn't all plain sailing, phasE89 got off to a horrific start, and at the halfway point of 12,000 games was $16,000 in the red, and running badly below EV. Fortunately for him, and to the chagrin of those who bet against him, he proceeded to go on a sick heater and pulled it out of the bag. You can follow the highs and lows of the prop-bet in the 2+2 thread. Below are some graphs and stats that phasE89 himself provided:

Games played total: 24.035 games
Number of hands played total: approx 750k hands
Total cashes: $1,277,676
Total profit: $2,898
Rake paid: $54,998
Rakeback (46%, based on 600k Milestone): $25,299
Total profit including rakeback: $28,198
Average duration: 27.2 min
Average Buyin: $53.10
ITM %: 51.2%
Number of hours: 385 hours
Hourly rate: $7.53
Hourly rate including rakeback: $73.24
Total bets made: $4,563 mine vs $13,689 bettors
Total earned (profit+ rakeback + bets): $41,889
VPPs earned: 302,558
FPPs earned: 1,058,953

phasE89 SNGs October 2011

Stakes - Games played / ROI / profit:
$15 - 3056 / 4.17% / $1.864
$30 - 9399 / 3.1 % / $8.754
$60 - 7524 / -0.6 % / $-2.463
$100 - 3158 / 1.5% / $4.669
$200 - 898 / -5.5 % / $-9.925

The Poker Gods were partially responsible for the prop-bet victory, based on that red line!

After earning 300,000 VPPs in one month, and holding 667,000 VPPs for 2011, phasE89's next aim is to make Supernova Elite by the end of the year, which requires him to earn 1 million VPPs for the year (or raking just over $180,000).