I’ve arrived back in my lovely London abode greeted by a pile of boxes to unload and parcel receipts to collect from the local post office after a rather wonderful trip to Tallinn where I re-tested the waters in the local tournament there. The trip was going wonderfully I should say until I had a string of busting the main event, the €2k side event, before finally coming down with a bout of some evil food poisoning/Norovirus type concoction that left me in an awful state for a couple of days and results in this current pounding headache.

The main event was tedious for me. I was down to 10k from 30k starting within the first hour after 3b/peeling J7s and calling thrice on JxxxT and losing to tens. Certainly unconventional but he had that look about him and to be honest I didn’t expect him to 4b QQ- but he showed me! Anyway, I eventually bust jamming 6bbs with K9s after a day and a half of mostly blinding down with the occasional thrilling resteal.

The €2k went a bit differently, I chipped up very nicely from the 12k starting to around 30k then I tried to bluff some smashed up Estonian guy (didn’t see he was smashed until we moved table and got put next to each other and he reeked of brandy) then jammed with T8o and lost to AA.

I opted out of the €1k side in favor of recovering from the hangover from the as ever wonderful stars party (most hilarity available here ) before coming down with a dose of OMGIMDYING. My roommate David Vamplew managed to seal the deal though and took down all 60 odd runners for a cheeky €19k score and the ever sought after Estonian flag (got mine couple of years in with €400 cash in €100 turbo…)

Anyway I’m glad to be back home and will be doing no travelling until EPT Barcelona so hopefully will have time to recover, maybe watch a few videos, play some hands etc.

Vegas has come to an end. I pulled out a cheeky 132nd in the Main Event which included spending a day next to the yappy Daniel Negreanu on the ESPN feature table. I think I played solidly all tourney, made a few mistakes throughout and am pleased with the result. I very much doubt people have as high ROIs as they think they do in it, I found I had to play very good players the whole way through and a few massive fish. Timex made a big post saying people should play online instead and he’s probably right but making money isn’t especially my biggest priority and it’s really fun to hang out in Vegas for 7 weeks with some great friends :)

Anyway, plans now are a few weddings to attend and probably pop along to EPT Tallinn and a few other tournies before the years up. I’m moving to London with my mates Jack and George so should be easier to leave the country if need be. More soon!

My best run to date in this country came in the $2.5k 6 max a week or two ago. Things went very well with several people gifting me stacks and owning fools a little bit (coolering the shit out of everyone). In the end I fumbled my way into 18th getting in K9s vs 77 on 976 bvb. I got $25k for the effort which was nice and puts me as a small winner so far on the series excluding staking.

I have taken a lot of action this series, more than I’ve ever taken before. I’m up so far thanks mostly to a $6k cash from Paul Nash as well as Ben Dobson getting the lot at the Venetian. Still a long way to go and the series could still end up very painfully! Somewhat accidentally a couple of my online horses have been doing well so June could turn out to be a very healthy month!

Speaking of my health (yeah, great suegway) we fielded about a 20 minute basketball game the other day. Nearly all of us had heart attacks and as an unlikely favourite, Thayer pulled through to win the survival of the fittest. Plans of indoor football/more basketball have been significantly hampered by buying Fifa about a week into the series and purchasing Sim City 4 has been hugely detrimental to my personal productivity levels. So much so that I sacked off the $1k today to recover from my hangover and climb out of the mountains of debt I amounted for my city in the Berlin scenario that I named New York for some reason.

It’s still all rather enjoyable out here, Andy is winning the most cashes award currently being 3/8 (he’s likely to make that 4/9 tomorrow being 6 away from the money) but I hold the more coveted achievement of being up the most money – or alternatively down the least. Mongy and Jack are the only non-cashers in the house so far, but that’s because they are terrible at poker :D

Had a few very solid lashups so far. Anna and Aaron of Warwick poker fame were out for a few days and although being I’ve been busy with tournaments I did manage to drag Anna out last night for a good old pissup. It was us and the Americans, notably Ricky and Jerry and Jerry’s college friends. I don’t remember some of the night but have distinct recall of stumbling to McDonalds and being thoroughly disappointed to find out that they had switched to the breakfast menu. How I got home is beyond me!

Next event is the $1.5k on Tuesday then probably some other stuff I haven’t really looked at the schedule. Obviously the main event is one of the more exciting events. Last year I was very excited about it then bust in 4 levels. Hoping not to repeat that and get something going this year, a deep run would be super cool. I’ve played badly in about 3-4 events this series but the rest I was very happy with how I played so hopefully the main will be one of the better ones.

My mum informs me that it is very hot in England at the moment. Hopefully it will cool down before I return, I’m sick of desert heat, constant nosebleeds and dry throats.

I’ve been hanging around Vegas for a touch over a week now and despite the usual wire problems/awful Rio dealers/hugely fattening food etc I’m having a very enjoyable time. Had 2 very solid smash ups, one with all the English lads when we had a day off the following day and another for Scott “M0NGY” O’Reilly’s birthday where we had a good laugh at the new Paris club Chateau which was pretty cool. We got a solid round of golf in too and between the 3 of us playing best ball we managed to not be ecliptically over par. Few more rounds and you could probably start to call me Tiger.

The donkaments haven’t been going so well – I’m yet to have a single cash which is pretty disappointing. I got my feet wet in a Venetian $1.6k as opposed to the WSOP $5k that day which was predictably an awful decision as the Venetian was just late regging regs from the $5k bustouts and regs who made the same error as me of thinking that the Venetian would be softer. Nevertheless I lasted 5 levels because busting in what I’m sure was a drastically exciting hand but inevitably as with all my bustouts has escapes my memory. In my previous 2 tournaments (the shootout and the $1.5k donkfest) I was very satisfied with how I played and don’t have that awful puntsville feeling after busting. So hopefully things will perk up and maybe I can get a WSOP tag on my hendon mob after 3 years of trying…

Appallingly the cash games have been going badly too. As I previously mentioned I was having wire issues but was more than content to slum it at $2/5 and even a spattering of $1/3. I’m stuck 3 buyins and not sure if I should even bother moving up to try and get out of it.

The house is gorgeous with a lovely spa that i’ve been making good use of. The pool leaves a bit desired, but we recently discovered it was heatable so might start having a few more dabbles in that. We’ve been keeping it remarkably clean – a lot of that is because of the huge amounts of space we have so it just doesn’t really feel messy but we have been pretty disciplined and the lovely Mexican maid and her 8 year old daughter did a stellar job of taking away our many many beer bottles. We did have one mishap with the toilet but I off’d my socks and waded in while Thayer broomed into a bin. It was all just a good team building exercise really and a perfect morale booster before we obliterate #teamstarlightcanyon in the inaugural football and basketball -off.

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In other news, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying both Geordie Shore and the Apprentice. I had never watched the Jersey version of the former but I thought I would give it a spin and it is utterly hilarious watching these morons behave like absolute animals. The lads have all been watching Game of Thrones but it isn’t so much to my tastes. I watched the first couple of episodes but not really gotten into it too much and now everyone is way ahead of me so I might just skip that for now.

My next event is the $2.5k 6 max unless I give a Venetian tourney a spin. I will try and keep the old updates a bit more regular but you know how it is. My tweets are at least somewhat more frequent and you can check them out at http://twitter.com/#!/ruperte. Other than that best off luck across the baize hope you all play like champs!

I’ve been bored out of my mind since Sunday. Literally just loitering around the house and occasionally popping into the bank to have a good old moan. Sunday was pretty sweet, I came 6th in two of the smaller majors and FT bubbled another so collected about $15k profit on the day. I’ve played about 1k hands since then which have been fairly mundane.

I did manage to muster up the courage to watch a couple of videos, in particular on Leggo where i’ve been grinding aejones series against the elusive IReadYrSoul. I’m not sure about the educational content since I don’t play on that level of thinking/aggression but it’s certainly decent entertainment! I’ll probably try and grind out a few more videos before the never-ending WSOP that i’ve got coming up on Tuesday.

Snoopy found time to interview me for blackbelt so check it out at http://blackbeltpoker.com/articles/read/Interview-Rupert-Elder

As a bit of a slave to the grind I had a pleasant week of answering what my parents thought of me playing poker for various media outlets (ITV, BBC etc) before on Sunday finally getting my game face back on and attempting to make money.

Things got off to a cracking start when I day 2’d the SCOOP-19-M (AKA Sunday Warmup) on Stars and ended up coming 6th for 28 beans despite playing a bit miserably at the FT. I blame recovering from tiredness/illness! Anyway, played my first cash games in over a month today and booked a cheeky $1k win. Hopefully i’ll find enough time to pursue cash games further to ensure I stay nice and sharp for all these live donkaments!

Current plans are SCOOP on Sunday, chill for a week maybe play some cash games, then VEGAS for 6 weeks of 40 degree heat and bad food. Oh and multiple attempts to win jewelery i’ll never wear! This life…

Bluff kindly asked me to blog for them, so if you like reading the same thing twice check it out at http://blog.bluffmagazine.com/author/rupert-elder

http://www.itv.com/anglia/students-big-win12948 for the ITV interview

Madrid was cool. I bust at the end of day 1 after playing a 108k pot KQ vs 99 AIPF vs Jason Mercier and losing. I was pretty happy how I played and I got to chat with Barry G and bust durrr so all very exciting. I made a deep run in the €1k side event too but lost a huge KK vs AJ vs Michael Eiler so whatever. Tournament of champions was pretty meh too.

Went out 3 times over the course of the week which was pretty banterous and was great to meet all the Canadians who I didn’t get a chance to in San Remo. Got pretty drunk all 3 times and had a good time!

I’ve had my face spammed on my behalf in various newspapers/online blogs etc with my face since winning San Remo. It’s pretty cool, lots of friends said they saw me in the Sun/Mail etc which was nice. I’ve got an interview going on the news tomorrow at 6 so that should be nice and embarassing. I’ll save a link for you guys!

So yesterday I won an EPT in San Remo. That’s a pretty sweet feeling and if you’ve never done it before I can definitely recommend it! I’m sure a lot of you knew this already from updates/live stream etc so i’ll spare the details of the actual tournament. Afterwards it was about 1.5 hours of media interviews and photos which was fairly tedious to be honest then myself and Andy headed back to the hotel to shower and get changed etc. We went to a BBQ at Xuan/Spinks/Vamps/Andrew/probably left someone off this list awesome villa tucked away in the San Remo hills. A couple of hot dogs and a few beers later we moved on to a bar/café place opposite the casino. Many drinks were consumed but I actually ended up getting a very well deserved (imo!) nights sleep crashing pretty early.

I’m back home now and the winning feeling is starting to sink in. I’ve got lots of money stuff to sort out what with paying backers (I had 34% and we chopped HU for 826/704) but also I am now going to Madrid since 1st place included a package which starts on Saturday. So it’s very hectic, i’m very tired and it feels like the poker journey is never ending at the moment, not that that’s a bad thing at all!!

I’m sure a lot of common questions can be answered in pokernews/various other interviews with me on the web but feel free to ask me anything in the comments here or email me.