NoCash - Literally

2012 Plans

2012-01-04T10:47:00.000Z

Word up

I was going to do a 2011 review, but it's a bit pointless - just read back the last 5 or so posts and you'll get the jist of what I achieved :-)

2012 is not going to be that big a year for me poker wise. I'm getting married so I need to save all my leave for a big fuck off honeymoon somewhere. Most of my annual leave goes from travelling to various comps etc so can't do too much of that.

Having said that, my first major comp of 2012 is this weekend at DTD - playing the £500 D/S. I won 4 or 5 seats to the £300 D/S last year, but never actually played. I had one left as added value from my APAT win and I binkend another in November so combined the two to play the £500 event and took the rest in cash. Expeceting a decent turnout and would be an great start to the year to get a nice cash under my belt.

Later in the month I'm of to Brighton (Cog's homo enclave) for the APAT Euro Championships. This will be my first APAT event since winning the WCOAP so will be good to catch up with some of the people I met there. Bit far to travel for a £75 comp, but making a w/e of it with the missus (if I bust out that is). Travelling down on the Friday and stopping at Crowne Plaza Heathrow in the club lounge. I've stayed here when working away and it's a nice gaff.

I may play a few sats to the Genting Poker Series event next month in Birmingham but won't be busting a gut to qualify or anything.

In terms of online poker, my goal for this year is just to make a profit. Last year was pretty turd for me. Currently playing PLO cash, but after a good start I'm now in the red. Still working on my game though so we'll see how it goes. Everything is being tracked via HEM this year.

Off to look at stag do options.

Laters

APAT WCOAP Trip Report - Part 4 / 4

2011-11-01T13:00:00.004Z

The Adventures of NoCash and Hutch

Apologies for the delay. I cannot actually be arsed writing much for this one so I won't.

Cliffs for the day were:

Got up
Felt rough as shit
Played super aggro
Flipped well
Almost fell asleep
Hangover-puked on every break
Got the the FT with 2m of 6m chips in play
Got comedy railed by Hutch (World Champion Railtard 2011)
Knocked out 7 of the 8 other finalists
Won £12k and the title and went top of the APAT money list (No chops / deals / bubble bursters any anything else equally homosexual)
Masturbated

A fuck load of chips

Easy game

The End.

Laters

APAT WCOAP Trip Report - Part 3 / 4

2011-09-28T09:47:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the delay - been on holiday but that's a whole other blog post. Gonna keep this one short as I'm still knackered not having been back long.

The Adventures of NoCash and Hutch

Day 3 - Sunday 28th August

I awoke feeling ok at about 9am, but the previous night I got up for a piss about 20 times. Dunno what that was about but just couldn't seem to empty the tank. Anyhow, Hutch was quite chipper as well after only 6 hours sleep or something. It then dawned on me that he was actually smashed the previous night.

I forgot to mention this in my last post, but I remember going for a tricky dump when we got back and he asked if I would like to listen to Lighthouse Family to help ease me through the situation. WTF? Next thing I know, fucking 'Lifted' is banging out of his iPhone with him singing along and presumably dancing outside the bathroom door. It was a surreal moment to say the least and I wasn't sure what to do. I give it a big push to try and end the situation asap but that hurt my arse somewhat so just had to grit my teeth and play through hoping he would fuck off which he eventually dead.

[ ] Good taste in music
[x] Weird dude

So we are up for 9am and again for 0.001 seconds we decided not to drink all day as I had to play Day 2 the following day, not to mention we had the 6-max comp in the afternoon. By 11am we have polished off brekko and Hutch (who is turd at flips) pays for it again. Free breakfast tastes so sweet.

Note to Hutch: Breakfast would be cheaper if you didn't have everything on the menu you fat fuck.

11:33 sees us in a pub by a canal doing in a few liveners before the afternoon's comp, although a cheeky arse wasp decides to finish mine for me. What I way to die though, smashed of your face is a giant glass of Guinness

Gay

We dick about at the hotel for a bit then I drive us across to DTD where we have a good two or three more before the start of the 6-max. I have a pretty uninteresting table and I'm done within about 2 levels after firing a world class three-barrel airball into a station who rivers a set with his low pair. wp me. I go back to the bar to get some munch and a few spins on roulette before I tackle the cash games again, but take a break to see how Hutch is getting on. He has played 12 consecutive hands and is pretty fucking smashed at this point. I go to get him a pint to a loud shout of "Bring me my nerd pwning juice you Twunt".

He lasts about 30 more minutes which is about 25 more than I thought he would

I find myself getting merrily pissed whilst donking roulette and watching footy with CCTV when I ask if we should go out to town? He says he already has plans to go to Hooters with Maylis Boardman and her pals and that myself and Hutch are welcome to come along. I agree and go play cash for a couple of hours before we leave. I had managed to find a good table and with beers flowing and money rolling in I reluctantly leave for my first Hooters experience. We are waiting for a cab outside DTD for ages when a young lad asks if we are going hooters. I said yes and fuck waiting...and proceeded to ring three different cab firms with 3 different names (one of them being 'Tracey' for some reason) and we jump in the first one that arrives. Bit of a cunts trick, but I was pissed and we had been waiting nearly half an hour

Quick review of Hooters:
Food = Shite
Tits = Awesome

Not much more to say on that subject. After food we walk into the city centre and it's a bit of a dive tbh. We end up paying 8 notes or something daft to go in some shit club with terrible music and a PA by some survived miscarriage of a Reality TV show 'star'. All was not lost however as I got to witness, first hand, the single most ludicrous dancing I've ever seen a human being do. James 'CCTV' Roberts....what the fuck mate!!! It was like watching a spastic having a stroke whilst being electrocuted and best of all he wasn't taking the piss. That's his actual dance. Jesus wept. Dancing is supposed to be a form of foreplay so I think I've found a wanker for life. Sponsor him for just £2 a month.

It's getting on a bit and at about 2:30 - 3am, Myself and Hutch give it billy big steps out of the side entrance and go back to DTD.

We are both ball bagged by this point, but amazingly Hutch ends up with a small profit and I make about £450 playing on the same table. We decide to call it a night at around 4:30am.

[ ] Good prep for ME Day 2

APAT WCOAP Trip Report - Part 2 / 4

2011-09-06T12:12:00.001+01:00

The Adventures of NoCash and Hutch

Day 2 - Saturday 27th August

I wake up at about 9am to a majestic sight. A half naked science teacher giving me shit for snoring and banging on about the cricket 20/20 semi final. I'm surprised I managed breakfast after this...

No caption required

We got showered (not together) and went to find some munch. I needed some pain killers as the dentistry I had undertaken 24hrs earleir was hurting like a bastard so we popped over Sainsburys then to a pub next door. The Holiday Inn we stayed at wanted £13 for breakfast whereas it was £8 all you can eat at the Prem Inn 20 yards away. A credit card flip later and I was munching a free all you can eat cooked brekko. It tastes than much better when it's free!

We agreed on no drinking for the day and this lasted until exactly 12:33pm when we ordered a pint at the hotel bar and settled in to watch the cricket for an hour or so before our main event campaign began. Quick drive to DTD and we are at the bar for 2pm and decide to have '1 more'. The table draw is done and I'm on table 12 seat 9 which is a totally useless bit of info, but I have typed it now.

There's no one I know on my table but it seems friendly enough and I have a decent view of the screen for the Liverpool game which was nice. Table seems pretty soft apart from one or two seats which is good for me. I did, however, decide to drink throughout the match and this didn't really do me any favours. By the end of Level 3 I'm down to 6.5k from my original 15k starting stack. I'm not even going to use the lame excuse that everyone uses of 'running bad' because I was playing like a wanker and the beer was kicking in. I decided I'll lock up for a level then either chip up or get on the cash tables. Fortunately the former happened and I got into some good spots against the fish. One particualry nice hand is when I doubled with QQ. Oppo flatted my 4 bet OOP and flop came QJJ. He checked to me and I fired straight out. By the time I'd looked up, all of his chips were over the line and I couldn't get mine in quick enough. He had AJ. Q on the river sealed it and I was right back in it.

I continued to play really aggro during the day, but not overly so and I was timing it well. Not sure what time Hutch busted, but it was prob about 8pm - 9pm. Another mate James Robers (CCTV from Nutz.tv) was going equally well on the table behind me be he took a sicko beat and headed out around midnight. My stack was yo-yo'ing like a fucker, but I managed to win a few big flips - my favourite against Ant1966. His 2nd hand on my table he opens UTG and I look down at JJ and jam it in his eye. He snaps me off and knowing the nit he is I think I'm in trouble. He flips over AK and I hold. A few more hours play sees me end Day1a 3rd in chips with 225,000.

This was a proper grind and I'd hardly eaten all day. When I got over the 60k chip mark I'd slowed down on the drinking and had a few coffees which helped a lot. There was no dinner break at all and only a 15min break every 4 levels so it was pretty intensive. We started at 2:30pm and finished at close to 3am and I was cunted. Had a pint in the bar with Hutch who'd been ripping up the cash games. I listen to some story about him doing a fucking horrible slowroll and then asking me if I thought it was a slowroll - haha dick, it was the WORST slowroll ever mate.

Back to the hotel an in bed for about 4am.

Myself and Hutch and been fucking about on Twitter all weekend and having the piss out of each other so here are a few samples which should give you an idea of the tone of the weekend:

_NoCash_ Dave Garden

@Awesome_Hutch you fucking suck at flipping for breakfast.

_NoCash_ Dave Garden

@Amatay @Awesome_Hutch I'm getting the fucking lot today. Hutch is queer. I'm where it's at.

_NoCash_ Dave Garden

@Awesome_Hutch got a bird on my table that looks like worzel gummage with his ugliest head on.

Awesome_Hutch Ky Hutchinson

@big_mikky fucking loser - refused 100 side bet so fuck him.

Awesome_Hutch Ky Hutchinson

Sigh @NoCash_DG Gged the no alcohol agreement at 12.33.

_NoCash_ Dave Garden

@Awesome_Hutch you are a fucking twunt. You cunt.

Awesome_Hutch Ky Hutchinson

@_NoCash_ @big_mikky @amatay @19ant66 fuck off. I am beautiful and awesome.

_NoCash_ Dave Garden

@Awesome_Hutch you are miscarriage. #andacunt

Awesome_Hutch Ky Hutchinson

@_NoCash_ spunk everywhere

Awesome_Hutch Ky Hutchinson

@_NoCash_ you are a cuck and a gunt (gay cunt). The prosecution rests your honour. # twunt

[x] Childish

Laters

APAT WCOAP Trip Report - Part 1 / 4

2011-09-02T15:28:00.006+01:00

The Adventures of NoCash and Hutch

Day 1 - Friday 26th August

I started the day with a dental appointment which was a bit shit as I had to have 2 fillings. The dental nurse was pretty fit though so I showed her my dribbling skills. I did a spit rinse into the little sink and left a jizz like arc between my mouth and the edge of said sink. It was one of them spits that just wouldn't snap and it followed me all the way back to the chair as I leant back, before snapping back to my chin like an abandoned cum shot. The nurse was very professional and didn't say anything but I bet she was wetter than October when she saw that.

After this wonderful experience, it was time to go and pick up The Hutch who was running late as him, his wife and kids decided they wanted to nose-bag some breakfast. He eventually finished and we got on the road at about 11am for the lovely drive to Nottingham. The 6 was fucked for traffic and we ran into a bit on the A50. It was closing in on 2:30pm and we were worried about missing the start of the HU comp that we had both regged for. I needn't have worried though as it didn't start until 3. "Do you fancy a beer?" was the shout from Hutch? "Do you take it in the shitter?" was my response.

We had a beer.

I got drawn against a fat Harold Shipman in my first round HU match. Ky got some supposedly good player and was playing on the table next to me. Within 5 mins Ky was done in true Crash Bang Wallop (CBW) style. My match lasted two levels before I sent the granny killer to the rail.

The next round was a bit weird. My opponent managed to make his 1sr round HU game last 6 fkin 20 minute levels so I was waiting for ages before my match. Hutch had already crushed his second oppo and was playing his third round before my second had started. The second round was a joke for me. I was pwning within the first few hands then the guy decided to get it in with some shit vs my worse shit and took a 2:1 lead. I eventually got it in with flopped 2nd pair against an open-ender that got there. gg HU.

Hutch was crushing in his matches and I turned up to rail just as he dug out a call with a K9 no pair FD and SD against his oppos turn shove. Oppo had K7 and was drawing very thin. By the river, the 9 played and Hutch was into the 1/4 final. I pissed off to play cash, but Hutch's next opponent was interesting.

Hutch's Quarter Final Opponent

The guy was flaking skin everywhere and was proper weird. He looked just like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. Anyway, I'm taking a break from cash and getting some munch and a pint in the bar when Hutch bounds over telling me he got through. I asked what the other guy was like and he said "Fucking shit" which, to be fair, Hutch says about most people, but the winning hand was great.

Hutch = QxJx
Comic book guy = 8X

Raise and a call pre (small ball).
Flop = QQQ

Hutch check , Comic check

Turn = 8
Hutch check, Comic shove the lot.

Hutch (should've slow rolled). Snaps his fucking eczema ridden head off.

Comic Book Guy shows an 8 and skulks off.

Must be nice. Hutch is now in the semis and I play the £50 evening comp. Table is shit though and full of nits and I can't really get into it. I make some shit move or other and I'm out after a few hours so go back to cash. I grind up from £100 to around £350 in no time because I'm a fucking cash ninja.

Anyways, Hutch is playing [with] his semi which is best of 3. He scores the 1st game in no time and is looking comfortable. He then proceeds to get it all in ahead 3 timed FTW and gets outdrawn and 2 games later he has lost the match 2-1. Unlucky fish, but there's always the 3rd and 4th place play-off......well not if Hutch has anything to do with it there's not. The only difference between 3rd and 4th place is the APAT bronze medal - the money is exactly the same. He decides to tell the APAT guys that he's not interested in playing this as there should be more money for 3rd than there is 4th and that he doesn't give a shit about a medal. Think the conversation went a little bit like this:

Hutch: Why is there no difference between 3rd and 4th?
APAT: There is. There is a medal and ranking points to play for.
Hutch: I don't care about medals and ranking points, I just want money. If there is no difference and the guy won't do a £100 side bet, then I'm just going to shove every hand. (The other nit didn't want a bet)
APAT: But that's not in the spirit of APAT
Hutch: lol
APAT: It de-values the medals and compromises the integrity of the tournament.
Hutch: It compromises the tournament if you tell me how I can and can't play my cards.
APAT: I'd never tell you how to play, it's just that some people have been trying to get an APAT medal their whole life
Hutch: [ ] whole life / [x] 5 years at the most

Hutch relents and goes off to play the game. The guy turns out to be poo anyway and Hutch smashes him in about 5 hands. He then cheekily runs over to get his medal and photo taken :-) His oppo was a bit of a hardcore APAT player and really wanted the medal and points which made it that little bit sweeter for Hutch I think. Ul nerd.

"Fuck Medals. I want cash or cock"

He wanders up with my 10% (a mind boggling £40) and I got seated on a £1/£2 table whilst he plays 50p/£1 whilst waiting for a £1/£2 seat. He didn't have to wait long.

I have been tootling along nicely and have my stack up to around £300 (from my original £100 sit down earlier in the day) when I manage to get the lot in on the flop.

NoCash = K 10
Villain = 9 9

Flop = 9 Q J

Oppo 5 bet insta jams as bottom set is obv always good on this board (ha like I'd ever fold) and I snap him off and even turn my cards to show the goods. Not even a sweat as the Q smokes in on the turn and I don't remember the river as I'm already standing up. He gives a pointless little slowroll and I consider chinning the cunt and shitting on his unconscious face.

I give Hutch the bad news and go and get a pint to calm down. I was properly pissed of at that shit which would have left my freerolling the rest of the weekend. I even considered unregging everything and going home like a little bitch, but that wore off after about 30 seconds (thankfully). I finished my pint and waited for Hutch to finish up his session before going back to the hotel bar for one more pint before bed. Safely tucked up for 1am and ready to smash into the main event the following day.

TBC................

Laters

APAT WCOAP Champion

2011-08-30T16:12:00.000+01:00

[x] Played well
[x] Ran well
[x] Bink

Too tired to write anymore at the moment but my Hendon Mob entry is looking sweet for the month.
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=107722

Quality weekend and loads of comedy moments with Hutch who also managed a medal finish in the HU comp. Even the wife to be got involved in the on-line rail over on the APAT forum which was well cool.

Thanks for all the congrats messages etc. Two more comps on my schedule (see last post) so lets see if I can have a sick start to September as well.

Laters

Busy Schedule

2011-08-12T14:49:00.002+01:00

It looks like a busy month of live poker....

As stated in a previous post I was trying to qualify for the DTD GP day 2 which I managed fairly easily on my second attempt and I've also bagged another £200 ELE seat for a Genting event of my choice. This is August and Early Sept for me:

6th August - £100 Blackpool Megastack - £10k GTD
Played and failed. Never got going on Day 1a trying to play every hand and win every pot. Even the donks adjusted and I was soon on my way to The G to play cash. gg. I blame positive tilt for the previous weeks score.

12th August - £200 Manchester Megastack - £20k GTD
Thankfully the civil unreset seems to have cleared up so I'll be playing this for just the 2nd time. Busy day though with viewing wedding venues, going to Anfield for the opener against Sunderland then travelling back to Blackpool before setting back off to Manchester. No drinking for me this weekend :-(

20th August - €500 (equivalent) DTD Grand Prix Day2 - €250k GTD
As stated I qualified for this on my 2nd attempt. Looking like there could be a big overlay on this one so would be nice to run good. Everyone who has qualified is gtd €70 which just about covers the hotel room. Sharing a room with Rick 'DoubleBubble' Gilby who qualified in the same flight as me depite my best efforts to send him to the rail. Got a call from the hotel stating that they only have double rooms left so there is a good chance I'm going to lose my anal virginity - or at the very least get my ironing done*.

26th / 27th / 28th August - APAT WCOAP - HU / 6-max / Main Event
Playing 3 events this year along with Ky 'Awesome Hutch' Hutchinson. Again sharing a hotel room, but Rick will ahve probably have destroyed my shitter by then. Not cashed in an APAT even yet so time to change that I think.

3rd September - £100 Blackpool Megastack - £10k GTD
Need some leaderboard points as I've dropped to third. Obviously the only person who made Day 2 this month who could bother my 2nd spot manages to win the thing. FML.

Sat 10th Sep - £200 Manchester Megastack - £20k GTD
Use up my 2nd ELE Ticket

*Rick loves to iron you see - he's the bitch in his household and plays comps whilst his missus forces him to iron.

Around all of this I have to find some time to start helping with the wedding plans and I'm also off on a lads holiday to Zante 3rd week in September.

Will update with results as I get them

Laters

Palm Beach Big Game - Tourney Report

2011-08-03T16:10:00.002+01:00

A few people have mentiond that they would like to see a TR for my visit to the Palm Beach, so here goes. Unlike my knob, it may be quite long

Please note: some hands, bets, counts etc may not be exact, but I'll recreate as faithfully as I can remember so hopefully you get the point. $10 on Stars to the first person to invent a live poker Hand History button.

Discerning readers of this blog (both of them) will know that I won a Palm Beach Package as part of a value added 'Last Longer' promotion that has been running as part of the IPE Megastack series of events. Any player who qualified or even just bought in online was added to the last longer for that paricular comp. The winner gets a £1500 PBBG package (£1080 entry + £420 expenses). As I won Blackpool Megastack #7 with my totally awesome turbo ninja muthafucka mad skillz, I also got this package.

The run good started the moment I went to book my travel. Virgin Trains had an offer on and I got first class return from Blackpool to Euston for the same price as scum class. The run good contiuned when I decided to cancel the flea pit hotel I had originally booked and took a gamble on hotwire.com. Hotwire were offering 5* accomodation for £110 p/n in the Mayfair area which was slighlty cheaper that the rape den I had originally booked, but it was one of them secret hotel deals so you don't know exactly which hotel it is until you book. Fear not however as it turned out to be the Intercontinental, Park Lane. It's a pretty balla hotel with dudes opening the door for you and trying to carry your bag etc and it's only 10 min walk from the Casino. I have actually stopped there before when I got a similar deal with Lastminute.com. I took Kel to see Blur at Hyde Park and we stopped here.

Anyhow the trip in 1st class was cool as I had a big table to myself and not the usual fat fucks falling asleep all over me. I arrived at the hotel at about 6pm and was going to get something to eat, but saw the menu prices which killed my appetite stone dead. £20 for an all day breakfast. For twenty notes I want that served out of Kelly Brook's untrimmed ming e. I decided to have a wander up to the casino and have a beer before the comp starts at 7pm.

On the way up to the casino I bumped into Rob Bright who was trying to decide whether it was safe to leave his motor on single yellows or not and just ended up swearing a bit in his strong Irish accent and leaving it anyway. Rob get's me a beer (£4 a bottle. Cunts) and we have a little wander round. The casino it pretty nice and I all of a sudden feel really under dressed in my jeans, trainers and space invaders t-shirt with all these casino royale wannabes knocking about. Soon though some obvious poker players walk in looking, well, like poker players so I suddenly feel over-dressed. I contemplate bog washing myself then going for a roll about in some dogshit to fit in with the poker guys, but decide there's no time.

There is a bit of confusion as myself and Rob thought that we were already registered, but it appears that you have to let the cardroom know you have arrived as well. I shit it a bit not seeing my name on the list after having travelled and taken time off work etc, but Gary Oakes (Genting online chap) soon sorts it. It appears the only way they can seat people after the original draw is to stick them in consecutive seats on the next available table which seems a bit shit to me and I end up seated next to Rob. After 15 mins or so of dicking about we finally get underway. Table 7 seat 5 is where it's at bitches.

The first thing I notice is that the chips are crap. That place must make a shit ton of money and they could at least get some nicer ones....or maybe I'm just spoiled with the new Megastack chips that IPE use? I start to get busy straight away with a 10k stack on a 30 mins clock - I ain't hanging around. Within about ten hands, my 10k starting stack is not looking too healthy at 7.5k. Most of that went on a ~~terrible~~ brilliantly executed bluff when I fired three barrels on a 2 5 K Q 9 board. Villian tank called with 7 2. Obviously my repect level was high.

The table banter is good with Rob and a couple of locals (on whom I have position) and I'm pretty relaxed - I was freerolling anyway so why the fuck should I care. I'm already in profit as I sold 18% of my action (note to my backers - I did care really). I tone down the VPIP a bit over the next few levels and start to build back up and evetunally get nicely above starting stack. Matey who called me with 7 2 earlier once again catches me at it in a small pot so it's setting up nicely against him. Next hand I flop a boat after opening 78s and take a fairly big pot off one of the chatty locals, which shuts hip up a bit. He claims to have folded a flush on the river and I say "good fold" out loud whilst shouting "bollocks mate" in my head.

The next big pot I play is at 150 / 300 level. I have around 14k, Villain around 20k. I've flatted QTs on BB after SB (7 2 matey from earlier) 2.5x open. Without going into a shit load of detail, I river the top boat and value town his face off taking approx 7k off him when I assume he was calling with A high or something. It was sweet.

I'm flying now pretty much and keep ticking over. Richard Ashby joins our table but I only played a couple of pots with him and nothing major happened. After chipping up nicely a young lad joins the table in seat 4 and looks just like some nerdy Internet kid. I get involved in a big BTN vs BB hand with him just after the break for the chip lead. JJ v AK and he gets there on the turn and I'm back down to 16k. I acutally didn't even think he was as stong as AK but whatever.

The last hand to report on in the early stages is the funniest one. Guy sits down as a late entry. I've raised K4 (lol) and he flatted out the BB. 4 7 J board and call his gay little lead. Turn is a 4 (bink) and I now raise his pot size bet which he calls. Turn is a blank and he bets big and has half his stack in the middle. I jam on him and he says "This was a quick visit" and calls with K7. Lol gg £1080.

I get moved tables a few times and make a few marginal calls against short stacks. One of which I actually get lucky with and must be amongst the chip leads at the 2nd break. I've had 4 or 5 beers at this point so decide to knock that on the head and go for some soft drinks. Rob is still in at this point but is grinding a short stack and may have to grind into Mick Fletcher in a double bed if Mick can't find a hotel room!

Unfortunatly Rob get sickoed for the rest of his stack and I carry on down to 3 tables. Getting a bit serious now with £86k in the pot and I have a decent size stack that has rarely dropped below 30bbs. This table is tough with Nick Persaud and Toby Lewis, but fortunately I have position. I'm getting 3 and 4 bet a lot so I decide that I'm stacked enough to nit up and pick a few spots. If think if I go toe to toe in raising wars I'm probably gonna get owned. I play hardly anything for next few levels, but my plan is to use my nitty table image to my advantage later on. In the mean time, a really weird hand takes place between myself and Nick Persaud....

I flat his in position raise Q 10 and everyone else gets out of the way. I totally brick the flop which is 8 high. He checks to me so I try to take the pot down with a decent sized bet. At this point Nick attempts to come over the top of me but didn't announce raise and accidently drops some chips over the line or something. I wasn't really looking, but the dealer declares this as a call and Nick instantly shoved the rest in before the turn pops out. The turn is a Q so I make the call and it's sick for Nick (fine poetry imo) when he flips JJ. Obviously the hand I insta put him on when he shoved dark :-). He takes it well though and I think he got a bit of stick for it, but it was just unlucky. I was folding my Q10 to his raise.

In his place we get Richard 'Daddymuff' Sinclair who totally ripped up the Genting Vegas games both online and live as well as winning the Newcastle UKIPT. I didn't actually know it was him until I saw the results! Weird cause he was on my table in one of the Stars Bigger $33 comps just the day before and I railed him for a bit after. He came 4th for $3k plus. Serious talent imo. He won a massive pot early doors against one of the chip leaders racing 1010 vs AK when he was already well chipped up himself. As soon as he got these chips he was relentless as I continued being the table nit. He's got the BTN to my BB and I start playing back at him with some success, but he just wouldn't stop raising.

Down to two tables now and I pick up AKs and get it all in with Toby Lewis (who is also chipped up and has me covered) against his 88. K on flop and K on turn sort that one out now I'm only just behind Richard stack-wise. With the bubble approaching and my nitty image well and truly fostered, I get busy and start putting some pressure on the shortstacks, two of which are directly to my left so it's fun attacking their blinds. The obligatory bubble saver question is raised but declined and eventually the unfortunate chap to my left busts on the bubble.

Now down to a 9-handed final table and I'm in decent shape, probably about 3rd or 4th in chips, however, even the shortsacks represnt approx 1/3 of my stack so don't want to be getting it in too light. I know I'm freerolling here, but getting the 9th or even 8th spot would be a big anti-climax. I do eventually get it in after I open in late pos on the shorty on my left insta-shoves. I dwell a few seconds (which is about 3 times longer than I usually take to make a decision) and make the call with AJ. He flips A8. I'm good until the turns pops out an 8 and I miss a gutter and a J. That one hurt a bit and I'm down to about 70k with the avg at 90k ish and 2000/4000/400 blinds about to go up. I plough my way back up over 110k it no time at all though using my nitty image to full effect, pulling of a couple of well timed squeezes.

We are soon down to 7 players after the Daddymuff starts trying to dispatch everyone in sight. My first double up comes from a pretty high varience play by me, but it worked out well. I opened mid position with 88 and btn called. Aggro tard on BB who has recently doubled re-pops it big so flatting is not only horrible, but not even an option. I decide it's time to flip and don't think the btn can call unless he's bang at the top of his range. I jam it in and the btn tank folds. BB says he has to call and flips 77. Delicious and I hold putting me around the 200k mark.

Daddymuff is relentless and we play a few pots together but it's pretty much honors even, but he's opening everything 2nd or 3rd hand and using his stack really well. He eventually loses a fair chunk though, but comes back quickly getting lucky in a 3-qay all-in with 77 vs an overpair and AQ or something. He binked a 7 on the turn and pretty much ended two players and I think I mopped up one of them whilse he took the other shortly after.

The fun starts when we are down to 3 players and I'm chipped up and waiting for an opportunity to play a big pot with the muff. 3rd guy hasn't played too much although he has a pretty healthy stack, most of the play is between myself and Richard b v b.

I peel a few flops against him in position, one being with T9o after his obligatory raise. Flop is a delightful and thrilling 9 6 9. I get two large streets of value before he tank folds to my overbet on the end. Matt, the other player left starts getting involved in some pots now and the comp could easily be anyones here as both Matt and Richard are strong players and I'm just a dick who binked a local comp and got in free :-)

Then the first of two tournament defining hands happen. Richard raised B v B for the millionth time and I look down at 10 10. I 3-bet and he insta-shoves. I call without hesitation and I'm rather suprised to see AK. Flipping for 5k and effictively the whole tourney (Matt was getting short stacked at this point) and Richard has me covered. First card out is a 10 which gets me proper hard, but then the Q 9 board give me a bit of a sweat. I hold however and now have a fuck load of chips.

Theres a bit of back and fourth between all 3 of us and I lose a coulpe of pots I'm still chip leader. Then the second hand happens. B v B again Mr Muff raises and I flat K 7. Flop comes x A 7. Richard C/Rs all-in and puts me to a pretty big decision. I'm struggling to put him on an A much here and it's only for about 1/3rd of my stack. I tank for about 5 seconds (that's tanking for me) and call. He flips Q 8 and doesn't get there. He's very gracious in defeat and commends my call. I'm just glad to be rid of the fucker who had been a thorn in my side for the last 3 hours :-)

Quick break and myself and Matt get on with the Heads Up. First hand and I look down at KK and min raise (note: this was the first time in the entire comp that I had AA, KK or QQ. Pretty sick.). Matt insta-shoves and I beat him into the pot. He flips A5. This is looking rosey as fuck up to the turn with no sweats other than the 3 outer, and I can't believe I'm going to win this thing outright for £30k!....until the cruelest card of my playing 'career' so far hits the river and doubles him up. It's still hurtung now that one.

I now have a 3:2ish chip advantage and after a five more minutes of play we are pretty much even. We both decide that we just aren't sick enough to flip for 13k and do an even chop leaving 2k to play for. This is hard to swallow as I'm an advocate of never doing deals. On this one though I decided I'll have to be a hypocrite and a pussy and accept the deal. 3 hands later we are all in, my 99 vs his KQ and he bricks.

I get 1st place and £24650 for my efforts. I decide to leave £500 behind for the staff but have since been told that this is a lot. I don't know what the etiquette is so thought 1/2 a buy-in was fine?

I orignally posted of FB that I won £22900, but I had added up wrong as I got mixed up with a chunk of money I took out to play cash and I was also partially paid by cheque. I was too tired to actually look at what I had won in the split before I updated my status. Nice little surprise for my backers though as they all get a bit more - I'd told them the wrong % rate. gg maths.

And that's that. If you have got this far thanks for reading. It's tough to make hand histories sound interesting and I didn't really get into too many really head crushingly tough spots so this might be espsecially boring. I think it's a nice little spin-up story though as I satted into Blackpool megastack for about £20, won that for £3320 + added value PBBG seat and binked that £24650 there. This eclipses my previous biggest win which was £5500 last year in the Liverpool £250

It's good news as I no longer have to worry at all about paying for my wedding / honeymoon etc. It's also nice to get a chunky return to my backers as well as be able to treat my mates and family.

Just spotted that I got a mention in the Bluff Europe News :-)

....and the run good continues becasue, as I write this, I have just been give a £4.5k payrise at work. Boom.

/Brag

I've noticed an upswing in traffic here recently so if anyone wishes to trade links etc give me a shout.

Laters
NoCash / NoShoes / etc

£6k month and Engaged (WTF to both statements?!?!?!?)

2011-07-29T11:01:00.000+01:00

July has been a good month :-)

Shipped a Megastack for £3,320
Won the Genting last longer for £1500 (£1080 PBBG entry + £420 expenses)
Shipped £1500 online with a few deep runs

Minus £300 - one drunken homegame

Not too bad for an little hobby. Lets hope August is as good for me. Currently lined up, I'm playing:

Palm Beach Big Game - £1080 comp in London on 1st Aug (yeah good luck with that)

Megastack #8 - £110 - Already satted in so have my qualification points sorted (+30 points for sattelite winners, +10 appearance points per game). It's important that I play all the remaining ones of these now to try and top the table come year end - should be worth about £3k (ish) if I do

As you can see, all to play for as I'll start Megastack #8 on 710 points:

1 Nick Slade 750
2 Dave Garden 670
3 Danny Benson 600
4 Ky Hutchinson 570
5 Jamie Wilkinson 550
6 Linton Holling 540
7 Simon Rimmer 400
8 Alan Barnacle 360
9 Will Mcmurray 350

Nick, Ky and Jamie are my main competition here, but as far as I know none of them have qualified so far this month and I'm not sure Nick plays all of these events despite shipping two. I have the current final table record (3 final tables from 6 games. Only 6 games as I missed June to to Holiday). I reckon two good strong (3rd+) FT finishes could get the job done but even someone in 10th / 11th could shoot right up with a win. Points are very top heavy and it's going to be tough to stay near the top if the other leaderboard players manage a bink.

DTD Grand Prix - Gonna be hammering the online day ones starting a week Monday. Will try to get a few tickets from the €2 euro sats to keep costs down

APAT WCOAP HU - 26th August. €60 Heads up Event at DTD (Crash Bang Wallop eh Amatay?)
APAT WCOAP M/E - 27th August. €120 Day 1a M/E.
APAT WCOAP 6-max - 28th August. €60 1 day event

Obviously - I hope I'm out on Sunday night in Nottingham (after shipping the 6-max) to find a hotel to stay in for Day 2 of the M/E :-)

In other new - I just got engaged (WTF?!?! - gg £2k on a ring). Seriously though it was about time as I've been with Kel for over 9 years. I've just been putting it off as I never thought of myself as being married, but with only a year left of my twentys I decided it was the right time...proper glad I did as well.

Now just need to ship something larger to pay for a wedding as I'm turd as saving. Looks like that's going to be close to £10k and I don't want a church wedding (I have a problem with religion).

Before the saving for that commences though I have another lads holiday to organise. Last year myself and 3 mates went to Malia and got truely smashed - to the point where I almost signed up for a cage fight. I haven't thrown a punch in anger for about 6 years and would have got fucked up. Glad I sobered up in time.

This year I'm thinking either Ayia Napa or Laganas (Zante). Leaving it late to book so we can get a good All Inclusive deal, but its looking like it'll be the last week of the season we go. The lads I'm going with are my best mates, but they are also a complete bunch of cunts and we fuck each other over constantly...but it's all good fun. gg liver.

Leave me some comments you bell ends

Laters

Blackpool Megastack 7

2011-07-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

Satted in the the Blackpool Megastack last week and won it outright. £3320 + a £1500 Palm Beach package for lasting longest of all on-line buy-ins / qualifiers. Think I'll be heading down to Palm Beach on 1st August.

Not really played much online recently so not a lot to report there although I have been deep in the last few MTTs I played and also bagged a DTD £300 seat. I'm going to have to put this off for a while though as I am now 2nd in the Megastack league so really need to play as many of them as possible for the rest of the year to lock up a decent finishing position. Currently I've played 6 and final tabled 3 which I think is a good strike rate (4th / 9th / 1st).

Only blog when I'm winning obv.

16th March Update

2011-03-16T19:30:00.000Z

Tough day today as I only made $11 in 46 games (gg leaderboard for this 100 games). Played pretty bad tbh and didn't run too well. On the up-side I made $50 in 27 games yesterday so can't complain if I don't run well everyday. Also cleared another $10 Stellar reward which all helps

My original staker Hutch also shipped me £60 for a live cash session I staked him for at the weekend. 'Bout time that donko got me something back ;-)

Graph time!
Current roll: $514.53
Total profit this month including bonuses: $756.60

Looking to put in a few hours this weekend and hope the games are softer than usual again

I also have a mini-goal to get onto the Sharkscope 2011 total profit leaderboard on stars for 2-3 table games at my stakes.

My toal profits at solely18 man $3.40s (there's 50 games of 45 mans and some $6.50s as well) is $618.40. 20th on the SS Leaderboard is currently at $859. Not sure if I can run good enough to do it within a month but would be cool if I could considering they have 2 monts headstart

Laters

A Winning Stake!

2011-03-15T12:12:00.007Z

I'm going to track this here as well as on RTR. Recently staked by Hutch and had some success. Now playing on my own and going really well. Solely playing $3.40 18 Mans on Stars atm but will move up to the $6.50s when the roll hits around $700. Did have an underrolled shot which was profitable, but the swings were harder to manage so dorpped back until im sufficiently rolled.

8/3/2011

Ky staked me $110 to play 18-Man $3.40s on Stars. Stakeback + 50/50 profit split

Currently been going around two weeks and already paid stakeback so Ky is now 100% risk free. Roll is now:

$422.30 profit + $10 Stellar Reward = $432.30

Plan is to hit $600 then move up to $6.50s. Hit $1000 ish then cash out Hutch's profit and conclude the stake making him a sweet return. If it starts going pear (say drop a couple of hundo), we will re-evaluate.

This would be over so much quicker if I didn't run awful HU.

Note: first 50 games are 45 mans but sacked them off as 18s are more convenient for me (click for larger image)

10/03/2011

Added some $6.50s to the mix yesterday and insta-downswong hit. I was -$118 at one point, but decidend to play on and finished with a small $25 profit. Just finished a quick session of 14 x $6.50s and cashed 7 of them (no wins though - sigh I run sick bad HU) for $50 up for my morning session. Also got another $10 Stellar reward and got a £10 homegame reload bonus nearly cleared.

Although I'm a bit under-rolled I'm going to play solely $6.50 unless I drop a bunch of $$$ as they do play almost exactly the same as the $3.40s. Also the rake is better is relation to the buy-in and from the 70 I've played there are still plenty of weird donkos knocking about.

Roll is currently $547.30

13/03/2011

Had a bit of a bad run so decided with mutual agreement to cash out Hutch's profits and go solo.

Shipped him just under $220 + Stakeback so pretty succesful. Im now fully rolled to play off my own dime after running well over the w/e. Bit bad that I start to run well as soon as the stake is complete but not much I can do.

Cheer for the stakeage mate!

14/03/2011

Also got a $20 Bonus for finishing 22nd in the High Orbit leaderboard last week and cashed in $25 of FFP value (shipped half of these to Ky as well) so the total profit shipped to Ky is $242.43
Got halfway to Gold Star almost exatly and have 16 days to get there. It remains to be seen if I can do it.

After cashout to Ky etc my personal roll is now (after running like god over the last two days) $444.13

Added Bonuses etc to my graph bringing my total profit to $686.56

Last two days since shipping to Ky (probs looks a bit dodge this, but all my records are in order if Ky or anyone else wished to look at them):

Overall for the month (blue line includes all bonuses etc):

A rare update

2011-02-14T12:07:00.000Z

Today I cannot be fucked doing any work. I work from home and there is a bed in my office - it's just too tempting...suffering from the 2nd day of a 2 day hangover as well which is grim.

Poker-wise I've been playing and running well, but still don't feel top of my game sometimes. Played well in the £100 Blackpool MegaStack and managed a 4th place finish for £620. I also had 10% of Gay Hutchinson who went on to win so my tenner sat entry span up to a sweet £750. I'm also sat around 7th or 8th in the leaderboard. Unfortunately I have to miss the next two Megastacks as March clashes with Liverpool at home to the scum and I binked a DTD Deepstack seat which I'm gonna use in April. GG Leaderboard. The next MegaStack is £10k GTD as well so it's going from strength to strength and quickly becoming one of the best comps in the North West.

This weekend sees Team RPG Events descend on Birmigham for the Vegas Team Challenge live final. As our team's biggest points winner (brag!) and someone who appears to be in some sort of form, the pressure is on for me to go deep. I shall be taking this a lot more seriously than the APAT team game where once again we just got quadra-smashed and ended up hitting town.

NOTE TO SELF: Do not drink 3 Mega Jaegars in a row. It affects balance, stability, speech and rational thought.

Myself, Ky and DoV decdided that this would be a good idea. It wasn't. A 'Mega Jaegar', for the uninitiated amongt you, is a reverseral of the traditional Jaegar Bomb. It's a shot of red-bull dunked in a full glass of Jaegar. Not for the faint-hearted. Don't do three when you have already been on an all day sesh and have about 10 pints swishing around your gut. I literally have scars. Below is an extract from the conversation myself and Ky had in the hotel the morning after:

Noshoes : Wtf........ why am I cut to fuck?

Ky : You were rolling around in the gutter after falling over and refused to get up.

Noshoes : Why didn't you get me up?

Ky : It was fucking funny so I left you.

Nice friends I have. Also this post from Danesh on AWOP made me laugh:

Have to say that I thought team AWOP were an absolute disgrace last night. No Shoes made me do a £100 13 card omaha flip (which he of course won), Ky "I'm Awesome" Hutch was wearing a T-shirt with them words actually printed on it and Kav was wondering round the casino, pint in hand, talking bout how much he idolises Ali Malu. They ruined a very serious game of poker and IMO should be immediately barred from all G casinos. The last I saw of the lads was them heading to the lovely and very classy lap-dancing club "Diamonds". All in all, a great night.

Standard team event imo.

On the non-poker front - today is Valentines. Shit day usually, but my wonderful missus got me two tickets to watch Premier League Darts next month at the MEN. I'm quite a big darts fan but have never actually been (even when it was on in Blackpool) so I'm looking forward to getting ratted and having a laugh.

Liverpool seem to be resurgent under King Kenny at the moment and the last few games have been a joy to watch from a fan's perspective. I was thinking it was kind of shite season to finally get a season ticket, but really enjoying it now. We were v. Unlucky not get take 3 points against Wigan after hitting the woodwork twice, having a stone-cold penalty claim turned down and missing a hat-full of other chances. Next home league game is against United which I can't wait for. I went to the FA CUP tie at Old Trafford were we were cheated then didn't stand a chance after Gerrard got sent off so looking forward to some revenge. We are definetly the form team at the moment which is not something I expected to be able to say at any point this season.

I currently do fuck all excerecise and all the weight I lost last year is coming back. I bumped into one of my old mates on a night out the other night whilst he was working the door and he now has his own MMA gym. I used to do a lot of Mixed Martial Arts back in the day (gained a Black Belt in Atemi Jutsu when I was 19 and a couple of lower grade belts in Ju-Jitsu and Aikido) . It's just round the corner from my house so I'm going to pop in and glove up I think. I'll prob puke my guts first few times, but I used to be pretty good at ground work and grappling (I was flexible 10 years ago). The highlight of my MMA 'Career' was choking out a 20 stone Blackpool doorman when I weighed about 11 stone piss wet through - he got the piss taken out of him something rotten for that! I really wish I'd kept up with it though as I used to love it. The problem was, when you hit Black Belt you are expected to coach and I just didn't have the patience for it. I also took up drinking and partying etc so these things fall by the way-side.
Obv I'll update when we bink the Vegas package this weekend.

Laters

Midgets Vs Mascots

2011-01-14T10:23:00.000Z

Nothing poker related today, just thougt I'd give you the heads-up about a film I almost shit myself laughing at last night.

I really love midgets (not in a sex way) and always have. They just cheer me right up. This film was right up my street.

Midgets vs. Mascots Trailer - Watch more Funny Videos

IPO, DTD GP, Genting Players Champs [PART 2] - and other nonsense

2011-01-04T10:30:00.000Z

FML!!!! Just typed up a full part 2 to this and Word crashed (I use it to spell check as the spell checker on this is shite). That's 30 mins I'll never get back so I'll summarise:

IPO Day 2
Pretty bad hangover
Played and ran bad in both €100 Euro comps
Ran bad at the carvery dinner (paid €14 - got to my tourney table and there was a voucher to get it for €10)
Discovered red lemonade (wtf) and had it with Jamesons. Lovely.
Grew a vagina and went to bed at around 11pm (hangovers and planes don't mix - I learned the hard way) whilst some of the boys were deep in comps. GG Dublin.

DTD GP
Travelled to this on my own and from the 400 player field I knew about 2
Hotel had a green toilet
Donked the comp late on day 2 to a standard beat
Played cash - got bored so started to drink
Got into some drinking prop bets with some Geordie lads
Won said bets
Dropped £200 in 2 mins at cash
Had more drinks
Cashed out £580 profit after moving up to £1/£2 cash (from 50p/£1). Shouted drunk poker ftw and went back to the hotel.
Had a poo in the green bog.
Tugged and slept.

Genting Poker Players Champs
Travelled to Birmingham with the missus.
Stopped in city centre
Took us an hour to find an Indian restaurant. Realised there were about 20 about 30 seconds walk round the corner from hotel.
Picked the best looking one. Turned out it was probably the worst food I've ever had.
Rumpage
Sleep.
Get mightly pissed throughtout the comp, but manage to play a decent game.
Run my 10BB super shove with KJs into AA to bust 6 off the money.
Continue to drink till 5.30am until the gf starts ringing asking where the fook I am.
Head back to the wrong hotel
Head back to the right hotel.
Deffo no rumpage.

I've missed off loads of fun shit that happened, but can't be arsed thinking this through.

First hour back at work an the profound sense of dread is horrible. I really hate my new job, but the one bonus is I can work from home and write this shite.

I used to be an IT Manager which was a 50/50 technical and management roll which was a bit annoying sometimes, but I was good at it and there wasnt too much stress. I just used to potter about and manage my little team which was great. My new job is Technical Solution Designer for IBM. It entails growing IBMs business from existing customers - eg. wants a new Windows 7 build on all their PCs, I go and talk to all the techies involved, put together documents that detail how the solution will work, who will be doing what and how much it will cost IBM to deliver.....and it's FUCKING BORING. I miss getting out and about and getting hands on and fixing shit. Now I just write documents and get chased for deadlines in a job where I haven't been properly trained and really don't know what im doing - and that's after six months.

Poker has been going ok lately. I chopped the final comp of the 2010 at Blackpool G for £640 and game 2nd in the Vegas Team Challenge last night for 5000 points and $799. I've also got a gay little cash roll going online and im playing 6max and HU NLH and a bit of PLO. I'm down about $60 (nowt really), but I have a 50% rakeback deal and have about $300 to come from that which is nice. I'm going to make a concerted affort to track all of my results this year so expect a monthly roundup on here.

Coming up I have the £100 Mega Stack at Blackpool Circus on Friday (new monthly comp) as well as the APAT team event in Bolton at the end of the month. Should be easy.

Happy new year

Laters

IPO, DTD GP, Genting Players Champs [PART 1]

2010-11-23T13:56:00.005Z

Ok so I'm going to finally get off my balls and write something. Where do I start? This is gonna be tl;dr so splitting it up

Please note: Some of the timings or monetary values mentioned in this post may be out by a few seconds / £/€ respectively

Dublin IPO

Day 1b

What a laugh this weekend was. I flew across from Manchester on the Saturday morning with Paul Murphy (Blackpool player, successful online STT grinder and general drinking machine). My missus gave us a lift to the airport for the early flight and we'd had two pints before 7.30am. Pretty standard. However the run-bad started early. We ordered our first pint at the airport bar which set us back about £4 each for the piss water that is Carling (the Grolsch was off) then decided to get a bacon butty. Then nice man then informed us that it's a fiver - and you get a pint with it. FFS!!!!

The flight was pretty straight forward and we landed in Dublin approx. 15 seconds after take-off. We get through security and find a cab to get us to the hotel as I think it's only a few minutes up the road. We ask the cab driver how much it'll be to get to the regency and he says there is a free bus you can get from the other side of the carpark. This turns out to be absolute bollocks, so we end up paying to get on a normal peasant wagon for about €12,000 each.

We get to the hotel and despite getting there early, a room is available for us. Great. Well we thought it was. Paul is convinced the woman said its room 1111 although our ticket says 111. We get to room 1111 and the door is open and the beds aren't made etc. Housekeeping are walking past so we grab them and they tell us just to leave our bags and they'll sort the room. OK no danger.

We head down to the bar and I send out a few texts to find our where the likes of Snake, Rubbish, Amatay, Cogs and Jak are. I'm guessing they are having a big circle wank somewhere, but they turn up just as Paul and I are tucking into a nice expensive pint of Guinness (no not the same pint). The wankers finally turn up and we talk some shit for a while - I need to add, Rubbish already seems pretty hammered at this point and it's not even midday. He played Day 1a and I think he had a bit of a session the night before. His plan for the day is to sit in the bar while the rest of us play and soak up the atmosphere amongst other things.

So the comp is underway and I can see that rozzer snake on the table a few across from me. I made the mistake of blinking and didn't see him again until I went to the bar. I think he busted in about 0.000345 seconds. Feeling a little sorry for him, I decided to stick all my chips in blind for the next 5 hands until I busted (this may or may not be true) as he looked like he was going to cry sitting there babysitting Rubbish. What a cracking mate I am.

I would now say 'slowly but surely' but I'd be lying....within 2.895 seconds of me busting and heading to the bar, everyone else busts and joins me. This is where things start to get a bit hazy so if I can't remember the specifics, I'm just going to make it up.

There was a rugby match on that Snake and Rubbish were watching with vague interest but I was so bored I wanted to glass myself in the dick so some bright spark made up a ridiculous flipping game that related to the Rugby. You picked a time on the clock and a team to have the ball at said time (blue team or orange team, I don't fucking know). This was obv rigged as Snake is a rubgy fan and I think it's homosexuality with an egg shaped love bead. He proceeds to win about €400,000 by winning every flip in a row.

Now after numerous pints (i'd mixed Guinness, Lager and Whiskey by now and it was only about 4pm) we headed off to the electronic HU machine and had a little tag-team game. I don't really know what happened here, but I think Amatay might have won one? Weird.

Next thing I remember was playing some cash with most of the lads and a few locals. I was about €150 in profit when Paul Murphy sat down and I ended up about €100 down. He did buy me an amazing culinary delight though. The Regency Cheese Burger. It was like someone had mashed up some dog shit, put a piece of yellow rubber on it and placed it between two granite pebbles. Not bad for €80,000 including some brown water they were passing off as coffee. The cash game proceeded but I ducked out as you need to get a flight to get to the nearest cash point and I was running low on currency. I think Cogs fingered Snake or vice versa although I don't know if this was at the cash table or back in the hotel room? I think someone cried though.

Ended up talking shit with Jak back in the bar and Paul and Amatay turned up. We decided to hit the city centre, but before that I noticed Jan Molby at the bar. I mentioned that he was one of my heroes then a strange bet came about. Simon and Paul decided to offer me about €40 each to walk up to him, do that thing where you dry your gums above your front teeth and stick your top lip there and announce myself as his biggest fan. Then just turn my back and walk away. I was nowhere near pissed enough for that shit so didn't bother.

Myself and Paul get back to room 1111 to get changed to hit town. For some reason my key doesn't work. Paul tries his and no joy. We head back down to reception to be told we are should be in room 111, however when explaining that our bags were in 1111 the guy on the desk gets really confused. After a good ten minutes of explaining the same story 6 different ways, he finally sorts our room keys.

After a bit of farting about with cabs we hit the Temple Bar area and proceed to get absolutely dry bummed for every drink we buy. By this time, Rubbish is really feeling the pace after two or three (or more - who knows?) days on the piss. He uses the last of his energy to pop open some buttons on his shirt and give us a garbled rendition of a Tom Jones classic before slumping in a chair apparently unconscious. We just leave him for a bit. It's my round and we all decide on Stella. 7 pints cost me €37,000. Reassuringly expensive? Reassuringly bummed in the mouth.

This is where is gets a bit more hazy for me. I can't remember if I dreamt some of this or what but to put it in bullet points, the following things may have happened

Jak, Cogs, Paul and Amatay spend the night dancing with young boys
Snake, for some reason, decides to go fishing
Snake asks me if I want a double instead of a singe Jamesons (textbook error). I say yes and he gets sexually abused for approx. €16,000 per drink.
Paul simulates a sex act with a dildo belonging to a hen party
Paul joins a hen party and fits right in.

After this, myself and Snake head for a kebab and back to our respective hotels. I literally nosebag the Kebab and get some shut eye. I may have also eaten the paper it was wrapped in as I couldn't see it anywhere in the morning.

Part 2 coming soon which includes.....

More run-bad
Red lemonade
Another cheeseburger
An early night for your poker hero NoCash (yes, I'm a homo).

Update Coming Soon

2010-10-28T12:01:00.001+01:00

With tales of online binkage and nearly binkage, drunken antics from the IPO, an update on my latest 'lol live poker' exploits and the general depression of being a Liverpool season ticket holder.

Laters

Liverpool 250 - Boom!!! (blatant brag post)

2010-09-29T13:33:00.000+01:00

I played the Liverpool 250 at weekend (£250 + £25 F/O) at the Circus Casino Liverpool and picked up a nice score.

I qualifed for this at a £10 r/b at AWOP HQ a couple of months back for about £50. I also played a £15+£15+£15 sat at the Circus Blackpool organised by RPG EVENTS but didn't get anywhere in that so this comp set me in at about £95 in total.

I eventually did a deal where the eventual winner, Steve Davies (who was HUGE chip leader at the time) took £9k, Myself and Paul 'Action' Jackson took £5.5k and a local lady took £4135. We played on for a £1300 Palm Beach London seat but my AQ was no match for AJ 3 handed. Ah well.

Thought I played solid all weekend depsite having a starting table with Dave Colclough, Ash Hussain, John Calmar (who I dumped out with a nice cooler) and Mr Shortstack himself, Rick Gilby :-) as well as spending the end of day one and all of the final with Paul Jackson on my table. Only made one real mistake throughout the whole comp (bluffing off half my stack with a missed FD on a paired board) and only got it in behind once and sucked out (for a much needed double up on the FT) - 10h5h I shoved the button after weak player limped. Chip leader decided not to pass 10x7x in BB (weak player passed obv). Flop 10c xh xh turn 5 river x. Lovely.

Got involved in a big with AA v JJ which put me into the top 3 in chips and it was pretty much plain sailing from there. Well done to Steve Davies for taking down the comp along with the Palm Beach seat.

Next up for me is the IPO in Dublin with some of the RTR fish. Please let me run good in that!!!!!

Bankroll Management is for Pussies

2010-09-10T12:55:00.000+01:00

Yeah so I did go busto (thanks for the bok Pud), but then last Weds I spun up from $25 again and got it to $400..... and went Busto. Now I have spun-up from $25 again (starting yesterday) and I'm at $600. I've actually withdrawn $200 though to pay from my flights to Dublin for the IPO next month. Almost cleared the $50 FTP Bonus which is nice and i'm on for about $140 of RB.

25NL Rush started catching up with me and I played my last few thousand hands on tilt. Still have a tidy profit though. I've also started concentrating on PLO50 HU and I'm having a nice little heater (see graph). It's a small sample but I'm riding the variance wave nicely.

My strategy for HU PLO has been to bum-hunt shortstackers or look for people who aren't auto-reloading. My game strategy involves playing super-lag and outplaying the donks post flop. Think I'm seeing about 70% of flops in total with a 2:1 ratio in postion. So far this month I've found about 3 good players who have taken a decent sum off me. The rest has been easy - and I don't claim to be anything special at all at PLO. Recommend anyone who can do up their own shoelaces give it a try (but don't nick my action)

So you may be asking yourself - where the fuck did you lose all your cash? Erm...mostly $2/$4 PLO when I was hungover / drunk or tilting. Note to self: There are good players at these levels. I'm gonna do my best to stay away and just try to have a dead nice graph at the end of the month for once.

Anyway, here's some graphage:

Rush 25NL (from August 27th - where the spinups began)

Here's the HU PLO50 heater for this month

Quick update....

2010-09-03T09:53:00.000+01:00

Im currently steaming drunk after a Thurs night out......however, yesterday I switched to HU PLO and crushed. Bankroll (from my $50 deposit on Monday) is now $966. Fuck me I'm awesome. SPIN-UPS FTW.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Riding the Rush

2010-09-01T16:39:00.000+01:00

Still running and playing well at 25nl 6max Rush. Here's the lastest since the start of my spin-up last Monday

Be interesting to see how long I can keep this going. My first target is $1k. Should get some tasty rakeback off this as well. Countdown to busto?

Is anyone else winning at Rush? Would like to discuss strat etc.

Spin-ups FTW!

2010-08-31T10:27:00.000+01:00

I've been playing a lot lately so I thought I'd update. Think I'll go in reverse chronological order of what I've been up to....

Yesterday was a beautiful bank holiday Monday and the weather was glorious. Obviously I decided to stay in my living room and play poker for the best part of 9 hours - after a full weekend at DTD (more on that later).

I don't have any money on Full Tilt so decided to deposit $50 and play a couple of gay comps. I decided to play the $24+$2 10.5k GTD and that started off pretty sweet with an early treble up. I was looking for something else to play at the same time, but nothing was forthcoming so I fired up one table of Rush $0.10/$0.25 6-Max. This is where things got interesting.

I donked out of the comp after a few hours of ridic play, but the cash was going great. So good in fact that at one point I had over $300 in my stack!

Crushing

I stopped playing late afternoon but put in another few hours before bed and won another 3 BIs. I ended the day as follows:

Running below EV sucks obv

All in all - pretty sick for one tabling (was watching telly, scratching my balls etc).

On Sat I travelled down to DTD with that fish Hutch to play the APAT WCOAP Main Event. I was playing Day 1a while Ky played the Omaha event as he was in 1B. We met up with Burnley Mik and Snake and had some food before the comp and I had ONE beer before we started(!)

Anyways the comp was a proper fucking grind and I couldn't get anything going. I eventually got bumped out by a sick hand that would have put me right back in it above avg stack. KK v A2 AIPF, obv A binks the river. Fuck off. Just before that silliness though, Amatay decided he was after all a homosexual and wasn't coming back on the Sunday so he sold me his 6-max seat which was cool. Ky busted the Omaha in 16th after he ran over a tight field with some maniac aggression, laying some sick beats on the way - but it eventually caught with him when he got it in drawing dead. Wp.

Sat night saw myself and Ky hit the beer and the cash tables. I was a good chunk in profit when this fat knacker who looked like Meat Loaf rivered a boat against my straight to stack me for my buy-in and profit. I had a minor tantrum at his wank play, but when I sobered up I realised I played the turn badly so we were both shit. Ky owned me in a couple of pots (4-1 to him he will tell you, but I'm sure it wasn't that many). Don't mind that though - he's a quality (lucky) live cash player and he even gave me the nod when he flopped the world and we were heads-up so I didn't go bust. Ky turned a nice profit despite also getting fingered by Meatloaf.

Artists impression of Ky

The next day Ky had a similar grind in the M/E whilst I played the 6-max. I ended up busting in 15th (ish) place after doing a stupid button steal that I didn't really need to. Ky lasted until late in the day, but ran QQ into KK or AA or some other such standard bullshit. I played a bit more cash whilst I was waiting for him and recovered a small portion of the previous days losses. Not a great weekend but good to see some of the RTR fish again.

Well played Snake who cashed the M/E after running a hand into the Live Stars RNG for a top 5 stack and wp Ant who FT'd the 6-max.

Last week I played 2 sats to the Liverpool £250 comp on Sep 25th. I won the one I played at AWOP HQ (£10 r/b) which generated two seats, but thought I'd play one at Blackpool Circus that had been painstakingly organised by Rick Gilby and BigBills Dev. Did shit at that, but congrats to both the organisers who binked seats (rigged obv).

Previous to this I played the £50 Friday comp at the G again and chopped it for £650. Such a good value comp that and I have now cashed 3/5 times I have played (chopping it twice).

Next up for me is the IPO in Dublin which several of the RTR fish are travelling to. It gets a redic big field but should be a right laugh so looking forward to that.

That's it.

Poker = Bad / Life = Good

2010-07-19T10:55:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I have blogged due to the death of my laptop and some life shit that I have going on. Frankly, I haven't played a great deal of poker lately and with this being a poker blog, it hasn't given me a lot to ramble about. I am back playing a little bit now so hopefully I will have more to write about.

First of all then - running bad at poker.

I've been playing some $0.10 / $0.25 Rush Omaha Hi on Full Tilt trying to clear the Rush bonus. Alas, I looked at my stats in HEM and I'm 5 Buy-Ins -EV in 3400 hands. So that can fook right off for now whilst I re-think my on-line poker strategy for Rush.

Maylis Boardman, the lovely APAT Hostess sent out a Facebook call to arms last week for a piss-up and a game at The G on Friday night. I didn't drink (WTF??!?!?!?), but I played the comp. It's was the usual £50 F/O with 10k stack which drew in 133 runners. This has got to be one of the best weekly comps in the North West. After fighting off the donks, we were down to two tables. I'd just been in a confrontation for a farily juicy pot with Zahir Aslam which I took down, when the very next hand we get into again. The following happened:

Blinds 6000 / 12000 (fkin crapshoot)

Seat 1 (UTG): Zahir- 220000 (ish)
Seat 2: The Hutch
Seat 3: The Rev
Seat 4: (BTN): NoCash - 170000
Seat 5: Sal
Seat 6: Unknown

UTG raises to 46k. Fold, Fold.
I look down at AA and re-pop to 100k obv commiting myself.
Fold, Fold from the blinds

Zahir shoves and I snap call. He shows KK. Delicious. The board comes down:

Flop 9x Qx Jx
Turn Bricks
River 10.

FML!!! That was for the chip lead as well. I run so bad. Out in 12th for £100. Could have been worse though - poor old Maylis bubbled when she found 99 OTB and ran it into Ky's AA in the BB. Not nice.

I think it was a 5 way chop in the end for 1k each (not 100% sure but I know Ky got a bag). The final standings from the AWOP results page were:

1 Allan Barnacle £1990

2 Zahir Aslam £1410 - luckbox

3 Joanne Marshall £880

4 Ky Hutchinson £550 - super donk

5 Anon £430

6 Kevin Rigby £330

7 David Wearing £270

8 Richard Sudworth £200

9 Steven Walden £150

10 Salim Jangarwala £110

11 John Wood £120

12 David Garden £100 - Awesome but runs bad

13 Anon £100

I shall be playing it again next week though. There is so much value in the field - just need that bit of luck in the crapshoot levels.

Last night I decided to play free online poker. I played the AWOP Players Club points freeroll and binked it for 2200 points which ain't bad. 30 odd runners so good bit of practice.

I've registered for Day 1a of the APAT WCOAP at DTD in August. A few of the RTR fish are playing so it should be a good day. I know I always say this but I'm not drinking. There is a 6-max game on the Sunday whilst Day 1b is on, but it's sold out so (if I make Day 2) I may not bother with hotels and just brave the 3 hour drive home and come back on the Monday.

I think I'm also going to play the Boyle IPO in Dublin in October. Again a few of the boys from RTR are travelling across. It's a €180 F/O but it gets well over 1k runners so should be good fun. I've found cheap flights from Blackpool as well so travelling should be hassle free. Just need to work out where to stay now.

Now onto life stuff where I am running better. I've just got back from 10 days in Crete (Malia) on a lads holiday and it was quality. Some people are amazed that my missus lets me off the leash onto these kind of things, but she's a good egg :-). It was 10 days of pure alcohol abuse. We nearly got booted from out hotel on the first night for fighting in the bar, I managed to get pushed through a huge mirror in the hotel room and almost died several times on a quad bike. Pretty standard.

I've just started a new role as Technical Solution Manager (sort of like an IT Project manager) for a large Blue Chip company. I now work permanently from home (yes it's gonna fall off), got a £4.7k payrise and also work less hours. This is totally sweet and the novelty of working from home has yet to wear off, although I'm sure it will.

My last bit of run-good (or bad depending on which way you look at it) is after ten years of trying to get one, I've finally managed to get my hands on a Liverpool season ticket. It cost me £700 but it's not every day you get offered one so I snapped the guys hand off.

This has turned out to be a bit tl;dr so I'd better get back to 'work'.

Laters

MTTs in the Sun Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiineeeeeeeeeeeee

2010-05-23T11:34:00.001+01:00

Got a little schedule of MTTs/Sats sorted for today while i sit on my newly built picnic bench in the garden.

12:00 - $26 10.5k GTD on FTP
150 / 427
14:00 - $5 12k GTD for RTR Syndicate on Stars
donked after a few hours. can't remember position
15:00 - £7.50 AWOP sat on BlueSq
cancelled
16:00 - $11 CMBPT super sat on Europ
played like a twat
20:00 - £5 rebuy to £50 final for seat at £500 live sat at AWOP HQ - $14k WSOP M/E Package
cancelled

Bit of a shit session really, but covered and my losses with some HU Omaha cash.

Blackpool Town Centre was mental yesterday - I'm not a Blackpool fan, but very happy that they made it to the Prem. Guaranteed 1 point for Liverpool next season :-(

NPF Team Game

2010-04-27T14:21:00.002+01:00

This weekend sees the NPF Team Game at the Grovesnor in Newcastle. I'm playing for Team Raise the River (I'm usually team AWOP as you know) this time and I'm sure we're all going to have a ~~massive piss-up~~ serious and hard fought game of poker.

The last jolly I went on was for Flisby's birthday bash to DTD. After playing well in the comp I decided to go on a little cash mission and left Texas Hold'em behind to play some live cash Omaha poker. This was a massive fucking disaster for me (due to being drunk) and I donked off a fair wedge in no time at all. I am asking, no, DEMANDING that if anyone from RTR sees me go near an Omaha cash game that they glass me in the mouth and confiscate my wallet. I'd hate to come back broke again....but that's not going to be an issue as I'm gonna dominate the shit out of the team comp and won't have a chance to play on a cash table :-)

I'm also not going to be drinking much before 7/8 pm as I actually want to give one of these team games a proper go for a change rather than being mindless drunk. Although it is fun, it's not too profitable and I'd love to get some bragging rights over the other forums competing.

The itinerary for the weekend, as far as I know is:

Friday:
Meet Rubbish at my house after his journey from South Wales.
Go for out for a curry or whatever
Decide whether we go to The G or the Castle for a comp of sack it off and get pissed on the Blackpool tourist trail.
Back to mine for a quick spoon

Saturday:
Meet DOV and Mr O. in a carpark and travel to Newcastle.
Meet the other RTR fish at the hotel and pick up our high fashion T-Shirts / Hoodies.
Have a few beers at the casino
Start the comp
Finish Day 1 as chip leader obviously with all of RTR still in
Get smashed up

Sunday
Kick the 3 strippers out of my bed
Hair of the dog in the hotel bar
Put clothes on
Go Casino
Win Comp
Get smashed up
Doesn't matter what happens next as I won't remember

Monday
Kick the 4 super models out of my bed.
Check out
Get in Mr Os car
Fall asleep and try no to be sick
Get out in Blackpool
Get dressed
Go home.

Easy game.

Just need to give a shout out to Rick who has organised a Sat for the UKIPT Leg at DTD. I unfortunately can't make it (shit head had to put it on when I'm away) but the details are:

Laters...

DTD £5k added

2010-04-14T11:14:00.001+01:00

Following on from my last post, I didn't manage to cash the DTD £5k added event. Played pretty well, but went out about 30th. I'm not going to go into a load of hands but in the end I made an over-aggro push with AK to give me a top 5 stack, but ran into to KK. It was a spot where I was 90% sure it was AA or KK but gambled it up anyway. Really didn't need to gamble at that point in the game either. Cock.

I faired no better on cash either doing my bollocks at £2 / £2 Omaha sacking off £150 in about 20 mins, however, the banter at the cash tables was quality. Martin 'Big_Bills' Devlin who I travelled down with ,was super-duper wankered (the best kind imo) and had about 5 last warnings about his behaviour. Watching his head almost explode when I bluffed him off KK with J9 after he told me his hand was priceless. Cunt got me back though when he called me all the way to the river with bottom pair and hit a set for my last stack. Twat.

Devs was bollocked for his swearing and drunkeness about 10 times and was eventually told no more drink. At one point we had two security guards sat on the table behind us waiting for anyone to step out of line. At this point, Steve Hayley (who I was sharing a room with) was told by the dealer to get his drink off the table. No less than 10 seconds later it was back on the table, horizontal, nicely coating the flop and the pot in beer. Queue pissed of security guards and dealer moving us to a new table (still not kicking anyone out).

To keep Devs in the buliding, The Hutch suggested replacing the word 'fuck' with the word 'pineapple'. This worked for approx 3 mins before Devs got it wrong and shouted 'Fucking Pineapple' at the dealer. Quality. What a lovely change it was for me not to be the most pissed person at a poker table (I didn't start drinking until 7pm to avoid the headaches I suffered in Swansea). After that I made it a little mission to get Devs kicked out (y'know just to watch his head explode), but repeated claims to the floor staff that he raped me didn't seem to have an effect.

Unfortunately, I couldn't play the Sunday comp as I had to drive back to Blackpool at 8am for a christening but I think I would have been too tired anyway.

All in all, a quality weekend.

Freerolling the Weekend

2010-04-09T09:38:00.002+01:00

A couple of back to back wins on Wednesday and Thursday means I'm freerolling this weekend! Not bad for a £5 outlay. BlueSq Comp was a freeroll as I took out one of the bounties last week. I took the bounty out this week as well (there were two and I was one of 'em) so it'll be free again next week!

Tonight I'm off to play the £50 'big stack' at Blackpool G. Good comp that is reguarly seeing 100+ runners. I've played in 3 times and shipped it once so lets see if I can win for the 3rd day in a row today.

Laters

APAT Swansea and DTD £5k Added on 10th April

2010-04-06T14:59:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the lack of updates - I've not been arsed about this blog for a while, but I'm planning on starting to play a bit more so will try and keep it up to date.

Last thing I played was APAT Swansea busting in 25th just before end of day 1. It was a hell of a trek to Swansea (6 hours - 1hour of which was the last mile into Swansea Centre) and not one I'd ever do again for a £75 comp...Anyway.....

APAT Swansea...... I was amongst the chip leaders at the dinner break but went seriously card dead for around 2 hours on my return. The aggro factor on my table had increased a lot so it wasn't long before a lot of other stacks caught up. One key pot which fucked me was at 200/400 level when I opened from the btn to 1350 from a 25k stack with AKs. SB insta-fucking-snap my cock off ships for around 13k. He obv ain’t doing this with AA or KK imo as my raise looks like a standard steal and he'd want value. I figure a range of JJ or less and AK or less so it's a fairly easy call. He flips 88 and I obviously miss.

I win most of it back from another guy a few hands later though when I re-ship on him with QQ vs KK. I bink a Q on the flop and the damage is undone. This is the last real hand of note though. I struggle through the next few hours card dead, missing a few shove spots and generally being a fanny until I bust at around 11.15pm.

I left Aspers at about 11.30pm and walked into a war zone of pissed up slags and drunken slobs. It was like Talbot Square / Queen Street in Blackpool at the height of the season x 10. Fucking mental. I was gonna play the Omaha comp the following day, but gave it a swerve as I was feeling a bit dodgy when I left on Sat night and never regged..

The missus came with me to Swansea (driver FTW!) so we had a nice day out watching the Man U / Liverpool game on the Sunday. Before that we took a swim in the hotel pool which was nice and I was mildly knackered after it, but some decent hotel room pumpage with the missus brought me round.

After the dismal defeat at the hands of the scum, we went round the shops and dicked about in HMV for about an hour without buying anything. In the evening we went for a meal at Frankie and Benny's (always shit) and were back at the hotel in bed in time for the BBC's "Wonders of the Solar System" - Rock and Roll or what! The ride home was long and shit and for some reason I nearly passed out on the M4 so Kel took over driving duty once again whilst I sat in the passenger seat and re-adjusted my life. I was home for an hour then into work (on my day off!) for an 8 hour overtime shift from 6pm until 2am. FMFL! All good fun though.

I also played the APAT Online UK Championship and brain farted a massive stack away after a deep run - taking a huge risk with 22 hoping for a flip for the chip lead. Stupid fucker. Rebuilt my stack quite quickly but then just bolloxed it again with a huge bluff. Eventually the guy made a good call and it was good night me.

Just as an aside - I've decided to virtually eradicate open limping from my tourney game, both live and online and it seems to be working wonders. I had a super deep run in the $11 $30k GTD on Stars doing this the other night coming 24th out of 4700+ runners as well as some close finishes in AWOP comps.

A group of us from the North West are off to play the £5k added at DTD on Saturday for old man Flisby's 40th Birthday. It should be interesting considering it's online qualifiers only or direct buy-ins for those that have raked 250 hands on DTD online site. Obv loads of us just played super micros for a few hours. Fkin waste of time imo although I did play some 0.05/0.10 PLO and pretty much won the full €63 buy-in.

I've not been grinding at all as I currently have no roll to speak of. I’ve just been making deposits and playing a few donkaments and spinning up a little cash. This is terrible obviously.

I'm considering making a significant deposit at the end of April - enough to grind 25nl comfortably (40 buy-ins) and maybe even have the odd table of 50nl on the go....and maybe even a bit of PLO - but maybe not :-) I'll just see how I feel about poker at the end of this month, but I do miss the cash grind and I think I can be a little more disciplined now. I just can't be arsed building a roll from scratch again. I'll find some training vids for a refresher I think and maybe ask Snake and Burnleymik for a couple of sweat sessions being the 50nl fish that they are.

Trip report for DTD will be up next week. Note to self - "Don't lose your shoes Dickhead".

So.......

2010-02-23T16:35:00.003Z

...thought I'd better post as I haven't been arsed for ages.

My last post was about the APAT Team Event. Well, we did shit. I'm not going to give a full TR, but basically it involved me getting super-pissed, going out in Manchester with DOV from the RTR team, losing about 4 hours, ending up in the wrong hotel, finding the right hotel, but losing my shoes along with most of my other possesions, sleeping in reception until 5am, getting all my stuff back from house keeping then having a bit of profit at Roulette and Cash back at The G. GG Garden.

Since then, I've played the Friday £50 Deep Stack at the G twice. First time a chopped it 8 ways for £525 at 4am (which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill), second time was nicht so gut.

YES I AM AN SCOOP TICKET WHORE AND I WILL BURN I HELL!!!!!!

Anyway...I'm pretty impressed with the New APAT Season 4 schedule. I had a go at the qualifier for the Welsh Live Amateur Championship last night and managed to bink a seat, so I'll be off nailing some sheep in Swansea towards the end of March.

The AWOP players club has a lot going on atm. I managed to rake enough on BlueSQ to play a 26 man freeroll for a GUKPT M/E seat. Not bad at all for freemans, but didn't play too well and donked out early. They are setting up some smaller super sats into bigger games to play for trips to Vegas and M/E Seats. There is also talk of setting up a 'steps' like system which will be interesting.

Until next time..

NoShoes

APAT Team Event Manchester

2010-01-22T10:29:00.001Z

Time to take this shit down for Team AWOP. The only thing I can guarantee though is that I'm gonna be absolutely wankered and there's a 75% chance that I'll make a cock of myself. Here's the team in jpeg glory:

WBCOOP time again!

2010-01-08T18:47:00.003Z

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register for to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Poker Download here.

Registration code: 400858

PLO Adventure

2010-01-04T16:53:00.000Z

1st post of 2010. Happy new year and all that.

I've decided to take a little break from NLH and learn PLO. I've got a shit ton of training videos to get through from Deuces Cracked which are really good. Obviously i'm crap and I'm losing atm, but it's great fun and a nice change. Don't think I'll play any NLH until the APAT Event now.

I've got $500 on FTP so I'm gonna grind PLO at 0.05/0.10 level and see how it goes. Actually had my first winning session this morning despite running 5BIs below EV. However, the afternoon session was terrible and I spunked it all and then some. I'll keep at it though.

I intend to work on my record keeping this year as well so I can show all my gay wins and losses every month. thats the idea anyway.

Laters...

Focus, Dedication, Discipline and Talent - 2009 Review

2009-12-14T10:10:00.000Z

These are 4 key attributes that I believe are required to become a winning player. Unfortunately for me, I'm lacking in all of these areas at the moment. This year I've probably broken even across both live and online. This is only due to a couple of decent tournament cashes in the 2nd half of this year (having a $5.5k week helps) but I cannot figure out how much of this is down to luck.

In tournies, I constantly find my self not playing my A-Game. I don't even think I have an 'A' game anymore. Tournaments are becoming boring for me. I'll play well for 5/ 6 hours then just have a mind fuck or get bored and do something so ridiculously stupid that I go broke just before the money then just want to punch myself. The focus thats required to concentrate on a laptop screen for a long period of time escapes me. Live isn't so bad as there is the interaction with other people and your surroundings....but even then I get bored. Busting just before day 2 is a right pain in the arse. Also, when you travel half-way across the country and bust so early, that you don't bother with the hotel and just drive home is really depressing.

Cash is different and I really enjoy it. I think I'm only lacking the holy trinity of Dedication, Discipline and Talent. 'Only'. Okay, maybe not so much dedication as I've put in some massive sessions (for me) this year, but I have been extremely undisciplined, especially with regards to BRM. My game cash game has improved, however thanks to the number of articles I've read, forum posting, videos watched and a little bit of coaching, but I could do more and I still do things just becasue I like to gamble. I'm a gambler at heart and something of an addict maybe. As soon as I gamble and lose I go on tilt. Sometimes I get my roll out in time, sometimes I don't, but this lack of mental fortitude means I'll never be a long term online cash winner unless I start making changes. The amount of decent playable rolls I've gone through this year due to gamble tilt is fucking silly.

However, having said all this, I still ENJOY the game.....God only knows why. There have been some positives for the year. My satellite strategy has improved no-end and I've played some relatively big live comps (for a fish like me) this year:

GUKPT Manchester M/E - Bust early Day 1
CBMPT Teeside M/E - Deep run - FT Bubble - Cashed £1050
CBMPT Notts M/E - Bust End Day 1
DTD £300 D/S - Bust Mid Day 1
Staked in GUKPT B/Pool £500 Side Event - Bust Mid day 1

As you can see by the results though, getting there is the easy part...cashing is the problem. A ran bad in a few of these, but played bad in the others - there's no denying it, but at least I can see where I've gone wrong.

I've realised that I don't currently have a winning mentality and my disregard for money is going to be my undoing.....good or bad though, not matter what, I can never play cash below 25NL. Not that I'm too good for the lower levels or anything (although I can beat it), it's just that I earn enough from my day job not to have to play any lower. I would love to get involved in staking for cash games as I know when it's not my money, the reckless gamble goes out of my game and I become a winning player. Knowing that someone is going to scrutinise my database makes it harder to justify that huge river bluff after you've been 2 barreled. I've looked at Bad Beat and you have to put in 1000's of hands at 50NL first and I just don't have the money barring a spin up.

At the beginning of this year I was a massive fish. Now I'm a massive fish who gets the occasional win so that's progress I suppose. I now know that the dream is over and I'll clearly never be good enough to make a living from this game so I can stop bothering myself with that bullshit and just get on with trying to make a bit of extra beer money every month, playing sats into big comps and trying to spike that all elusive 'big win'.

2010 Goals:

Don't play any online cash games I'm not rolled for (min 20BIs at micros).
Keep playing sats. I'm good at them and if I have to play a tourny then at least make it a big one.
Stop wasting money on crapshoot local comps unless there is a load of us going to get pissed. Even the £100 monthly is a waste of time.
Play fewer tournies online (unless I've satted into something big).
Maybe take a look at the 45/90/180s SNGs that all the RTR boys get moist over....MTTs without the hours.
Maybe take a look again at the Boss 5-max SNGs I was succesful at in 2008 (won $4.5k in 500 stts - proceeded to spunk it one night when drunk - never forgiven myself).
Play more live cash as I'm a fairly big lifetime winner (sober and drunk).
Play more APAT stuff - yeah tournies I know, but I have enjoyed the ones I played this year.
Win a bracelet :-) (see below)

Despite all this talk of gambling, I'm off to Vegas with Martin 'BigBills' Devlin in June! It's my first time there and the WSOP will be in full swing so I want to (hopefully) satellite into a least one bracelet event - just to say I have done it. Also the World Cup will be on so it's drinks ahoy.

I'm really looking forward to it and will post more details once I have everything squared away.

Apologies for the long depressing post.....it's good to get this much off my chest though.

[ ] Good Weekend of Poker

2009-12-07T11:34:00.000Z

No. It was a shit weekend of poker.

DTD £300 Deepstack - KK cracked by JQ. Back home for 9pm.

APAT WCOAP 6-Max Event - Out in first hour. Go it all in with AcKc on a flop of 2c3c5s. Called by 73o (wtf). Miss the 18 outs. He said he was 'bored'.

Bloggerment - got the dunce monkey. AIPF AK vs JQ. JQ hit 2p.

ECOOP V #3 replay thing tonight. Going back with 20BBs. Full of confidence obviously.

Fuck off poker you minge.

DTD £300 Deepstack

2009-12-03T09:31:00.002Z

I've been wanting to play this comp for a while, but I'd only ever played on satellite to it and failed miserably. With one thing or another going on when the sats are running I'd never really got round to it....until last night. DTD Online had a last chance sat with 20 seat gtd and I managed to qualify. It was tense close to the bubble and I was down to 17k at one point with blinds at 4000 / 8000, but a few well timed (desperate) steals kept me afloat. It's difficult to steal when you have a wild gambler on the BB with a HUGE stack.

The deciding hand for me came when I was on around 40k in the SB. It folded round to the button who shoved for 50k. I ponder this for a while and decide I can't pass with my stack and call. The BB (45k) then tanks stating he has QQ!! Shit shit shit. Fortunately he makes the laydown and I'm HU with the button who shows K5o. The board bricks out and I'm up to about 90k and fold my way to a seat.

Well done also to Ky 'TheHutch' Hutchinson who also managed a seat. That's two members of Team AWOP playing. Good practice for the APAT team event.

I'll update on Monday with how I got on (if I can be arsed).

Laters

ECOOP V Event #3 Continued

2009-11-30T14:39:00.000Z

Following on from the fail of this event in my last post, Amatay mentioned that there was a freezout for some kind of fail on iPoker that he'd vaguely heard mentioned over at Blonde Poker. Well after a bit of investiation and fannying about I found the thread and low and behold there is. Next Monday there is a $25k F/O for all remaining players (436 of us) starting with the same stack we had when the tourney went down.

Thanks Victor Chandler for letting me know you bell-ends....still not received anything from them about it, but I've checked and I'm, reg'd. $6.2k + £1500 tag watch FTW!

iPoker Fail = Profit

2009-11-26T09:25:00.001Z

I satellited into ECOOP event #3 yesterday for $11 (ECOOP 3 is 109$ Turbo R/B) expecting to play it is a freezeout. Anyways after an hour and a half I've chipped up without taking add-on or any rebuys and I'm sat about third in chips on 20k. 1100 or so started and we are down to 450 with 150 getting paid.

I take a hit and him down to 12k then all of a sudden the tourney stops......dead.......and doesn't restart. My cousin is also playing so i ping him on MSN and it look like the whole comp has failed. After an hour I ring support and they say its going to be cancelled as iPoker has failed and I'll be refunded my buy-in and a small % of the prize pool. I mention that I satellited in...they say ill just get a tourney token and a little bit of cash.

Looked at my account this morning and there is no tourney token, but ther is £233 ($385 ish) which is probably about 50th place money. If someone offered that at the start I would have snapped your hand off considering my $11 total outlay before the tourney. gg iPoker, gg me.

I Win Bets

2009-11-25T11:09:00.001Z

Last week I decided enough was enough and I was going to actually win something that I bet on. It worked out quite well.

First on all was the CBMPT playoff in Blackpool for a £10k sponsorship package to play the Coral Tour next year. Obviously, I wasn't playing this having not binked a main event or been top money winner (just £1k - sigh) but some of the people I met on the tour were. Coral were running an official book on the event, but in stepped James Keys to run his own book on AWOP with better prices:

Leg 1 :- Jim O’Connell 8/1

Leg 2 :- Tom McDonald 7/2

Leg 3 :- Mark Trett 10/1

Leg 4 :- Chris Brammer 11/4F

Leg 5 :- Steve Holden 6/1

Leg 6 :- John Gardner 12/1

Online League :- John Littler 14/1

Money Winners League:- Richard Lewis 8/1

Having only played against Chris Brammer and Mark Trett the choice was out of those two. Mark knocked me out of the Teesside M/E and went on to win it and I thought his play was excellent. At 10/1, the choice was easy. $20 on. By about 9.30pm that night, Mark had won the event. Ship it Keys! Very well played Mark...I wish you best of luck with your sponsorship package - as long as your not on my table obv.

Next up was the Sunday night 'Mirror Prop Bet' that Amatay came up with over at RTR. The idea behind this was a group of fish all play the same set of Multi-Table SNGs and/or MTTs and everyone sticks $20 in the prize pool. Donk that wins the most money in all comps wins.
There were only 4 of us in the end (Me, BurnleyMik, Amatay and Richeh) which was disappointing, but hopefully if we do this again we will get more. The games we played, all on Stars, were:

$4.40 / 180 Man Sng
$12 / 180 Man Sng
$22 / 180 Man Sng
The Bloggermner $5.50 MTT

I managed a final table in the Bloggerement (outside the money) and 4th place in the $12 SnG which was good for $150. Only other person to cash was Richeh taking 3rd in the bloggerment, but my $150 was good enough to take the bet down. Ship it bitches.

Out of nowhere, I got a little cash roll to start grinding 25NL again. Admittedly I'm a little under-rolled (ahem), but I crushed last time and hopefully varience won't chew me out and I can do it again. With pay day looming I can also top up my roll so I've got 20 BIs. It'll be nice to start next year with something of a BR so I can set myself some kind of challenge or goal. I've decided to try out the Micorgaming network via the Purple Lounge Skin. BurnleyMik has got us a top rake back deal and playing there will help support RTR so I'm happy to give it a try.

Does anyone have any ideas for a year long challenge in 2010 for a 25NL player?? Please post your thoughts.

Coming up this month is the AWOP xmas party which is always a right laugh and plenty of pissed up poker goes down a treat. Last year I sat down at a £1/£1 cash game with £100 and walked out 6 hours later with ~£1800. MBFN!!! Mostly thanks to a very drunk Steph 'The Mole' Boyd....cheers fella :-)

1st thing I'm looking forward to in 2010 is the APAT UK Team Championship in Manchester. I've been selected to play for Team AWOP as I was last year. I also know RTR and NPF are fielding a team so there's going to be plenty of banter and it's gonna be loud! The AWOP (winning) team is as follows:

1. Rick "DoubleBubble" Gilby

2. Dave "NoCash" Garden"

3. Martin "Bigbills" Devlin

4. Ky"Hutch" Hutchinson

5. Paul "Murph" Murphy

6. Phill "Flisby" Gilby

7. Anna "PokerB1tch81" Astley

8. John "Little John" Hare

Laters

Bloggerement Time!

2009-11-14T19:22:00.000Z

GUKPT £500 Report and Rest of the Year

2009-11-13T11:06:00.002Z

<<---This is a long post so here's Megan to keep you happy.

The £500 didn't go great for me and I busted late on Day 1. After finding KK 1st hand (and making a huge 300 chips) the rest of my day was down to some marginal holdings and having to make bigish laydowns. It was a double chance 4000+4000, but after the 1st hand everone on the table took the ticket (which I was going to anyway).

A few hands of note:

I find JJ in EP at the 50/100 level and pop it up to 400 and get MP (solid player) and BB (calling station) call. Board comes down 4 6 8 with two clubs. BB checks, I fire 800, MP and BB call...hmmmm. Turn is a 3d. BB checks, I check for pot control (not sure if I should have fired again here, but MP insta-called my bet and just looked confident). MP fires 1650. I'm not really sure what to make of this bet. It straight up prices me out any flush draws (although there are some implied odds) and stinks of a set value betting, but with 5300 in the pot I feel I have to call and hopefully get a cheap showdown. River brings the 3rd club (9c). I check again and he fires 3600. I can't be good here and I ain't shipping my tourney life on level 2 with one pair OOP so I fold with a healthy 5k behind. Looking back now, I should have probably bet the turn, folding to a raise instead of being a passive fanny, but pot control was my thinking with 3 of us in the hand.

At the 75/150 level I'm still around 5k. I'm on the BB and find JJ again. MP raises to 525, CO calls and SB shoves for 3k. If this was BvB then I snap call, but with two players to act behind me I tank it then fold. Original raiser and caller also fold and sb shows KK! GG me.

Exit hand:- I finally work my stack back up to around 9k by finding AKh with a flop of As 9h 7h. Betting all the way, turn K! River blank and take a nice pot. I quickly lose 3.5k of this in a race against another short stack with AKs vs 99. Dwindle down to 4k and eventually shove at with KQs. Get looked up by Andy Bradshaw with 77. Flop a Q but river is a 7 and I'm off to the cash table.

I did enjoy the comp though, but I don't think I would like to be staked for live tournies again. It just adds pressure which I could do without. Don't get me wrong though....I'm very grateful to my backers for showing faith in me so ...

RickyRosa
Gaz Peck
Kelly
Steve Bro
Rick Gilby
Phil Leddy
Snake
DOV
Chilly
Tim France
Gnashers

THANKS!!!

I had a horse in the £500 (Gnashers) and he managed to bubble. FML!! I also had shares in DoubleBubble in the M/E and he bust out late on last night after a flying start amongst the CLs at first break. He was short, but got another sick sick beat to add to his resumé - All in pre with AK vs Kd4d. Flop = 3 x diamonds. nh.

The following afternoon I played the £30 r/b sat for the M/E (1500 starting chips, 1500 add-on). 96 runners made 8 seats. I dealt the first few hours and dealt my self some belting hands. Down to 26 players and I get moved with 20k (no rebuy or add-on. smooth). I raise the first hand with shite in LP to welcome myself to the table and take down the blinds. I decide to do this a few more times and quickly donk off my entire stack. Some people have no respect! I munched down the sweet chilli chicken buffet before departing and that was the best food I've ever eaten in a G Casino.

Good luck to Clarkatroid, Little John and The Rev who survived day 1a (John 5th in chips at his first GUKPT!).

This post is getting tl;dr so I'll wrap up. Next month I'll be playing at the AWOP Xmas party £40 f/o which was a blast last year as well as the online APAT thing. That's pretty much it. I don't have a roll online at the moment (fixing up the house) so I can't play any cash.....I NEED A STAKE!

I'm looking forward to next year as I'm playing the APAT team event and I'm gonna be trying my ball sack off to qualify for some of the new UK and Ireland PokerStars tour events that have been announced.

That's it.

Laters

GUKPT £500 Side Event

2009-11-09T11:41:00.001Z

Tomrrow night sees me taking on the £500 GUKPT Side Event at Blackpool G. I managed to get together a stake to play this so many thanks to all my backers. I'd love to ship a bit of this as I'm broke atm! I have a couple of horses in this event as well as the main event so there is still hope even if I don't get a good run.

I'd also like to say good luck to Defty (DOV), Rick 'DoubleBubble' Gilby and Martin 'BigBills' Devlin who are all going back today for day 2 of the £150 Side Event. I have 10% of Rick so hope he runs good!

That's it for now. Hopefully include some news on the APAT Team Championships in my next post - both AWOP and RTR have been selected to play.

Laters

APAT Report and GUKPT

2009-10-29T09:58:00.001Z

As per my last update, I travelled down to Bolton last Saturday for the APAT English Championships. Met up with Snake and Krons from RTR in a café in the city centre beforehand (fucked if I could find the place though) and had a good old gossip and got to know the lads as it was the first time I'd met them - sound blokes as well. We headed back to the casino for a pint about 15 mins before kick-off and I handed my (dead) money over the Martin (BigBills) for the last longer bet.....I'm going to really have to stop doing these last longers as I never win! We check the seating and although he's gonna be late, I've got Ant1966 on my table - another fish who came to the RTR Nottingham bash earlier this year.

First couple of levels I find a few cards (best one being 23o when it's limped to me in the BB ad the flop come A45...mbfn?...yeah it is!). I steadily chip up and by the first break I'm sat on 16k. There's a good bit of table banter and I'm relaxed and having a good time. Burnley Mik has finally arrived just before the break and we all take stock of how were are doing. Mik is on fire with over double his starting stack after playing for like 0.3 seconds.

After the break, I notice it's getting a bit warm in the card room and it appears that the air-con isn't working. I start feeling a bit sick so I shut up for a while. Anyway, long story short, I went SUPER card dead. In fact I feel like I've been card dead live for the last month or so! When I do finally find something playable I'm getting 3 bet for fun, when I 3 bet I'm getting 4 bet shoved over. FML!!. I started getting really frustrated, (which doesn't usually happen when I play live unless im pissed) and after being chipped down to about 5k, I shove over someones 3-bet, button on blind with 55, last hand before the 1 hour dinner break. He tables AK. Ace in the door and I'm out the door. I hate the picture APAT took (above). It looks like someone has pissed on my Christmas presents, but I was actually still enjoying myself at this point.

Big shout out to Krons though....this was his first ever proper brick and mortar event and he managed to come 2nd for over £2k and the silver medal! SHIIIIIPP!!! I'll deffo be playing APAT events in future. Well run and a distinct lack of knob-heads knocking about which is always a plus. Just hope I can bag a place on the RTR team for the the APAT Team Event in January!

Onto the GUKPT, and the BlueSQ sat. It started well and I had Jeff Kimber two to my right. I watched his play closely and wasn't that impressed. Even though it was a rebuy he was just too willing to gamble with muck (ok if you can afford it I suppose). I stacked him twice in the rebuy period. After the rebuy period however, I turned into a donk and lost my stack on two big bluffs. First one was fair enough and I lost a 3rd of my stack bluffing into the nuts. The second one was riddic and I knew the other guy was weak...can't remeber exactly what happened, but it involved him calling 3 barrels with 2nd pair, no kicker on a flushing board. Ghey.

I played another live super-sat at AWOP last night, but missed again. That really is it for me and the M/E now unless I get a score in the £500. As soon as Blackpool GUKPT is over, I think they are starting sats for the first leg of 2010 GUKPT so I'll be donating some money towards that.

£40 T/C tonight at Blackpool G and DOV and BurnleyMik are making an appearance so should be fun.

I was going to write some stuff about how much I enjoyed Liverpool battering United at the weekend, but I can't be arsed typing anything else....one last thing I will write though - go check out the new look http://www.raisetheriver.com/. AFD has worked really hard redesigning the site and I think it looks the bollocks.

Laters

APAT Engish Amateur Poker Championships & GUKPT

2009-10-21T15:19:00.000+01:00

I shall be headed down the road to Bolton to play my first ever APAT event this weekend (not including the team event I played for AWOP last year) after getting a tciket on the exchange. £75 buy-in with no reg, 200 runners over 2 days should make for a great weekend of poker. I'm sure the cash cames will be buzzing to so gotta get involved there if I get bummed out of the comp.

It's my first trip to Bolton Grosvenor and I've heard mixed reports about the place, but as this is APAT members only I suppose it'll be a very different experience to playing with all the locals. A couple of fish from RTR are heading there too (BurnleyMik, Ant, Kronsdat and Snake) and Martin 'BigBills' Devlin is also playing so it promises to be a good 'un.

I played last week in the £250 Sattellite final at AWOP HQ - 18 Runners 4 M/E Seats. I fucked it up early doors trying to bet Paul Murphy off his flopped top pair when I held AK and missed. Second half of my stack went slowly, getting churned by the blinds and eventually losing a race for a 9k pot. Missed loads of good shoving spots prior to this though and generally played pretty poorly. GG Garden.

I'm taking one last crack at a GUKPT M/E seat tonight on BlueSQ $100 r/b. I've already binked my first $100 in one of the shitty $5 rebuy sats so I'm $90 in profit already :-). If I make the break I'll take an add-on, but dont plan on rebuying. Last time I played on of these I came super-close to a seat so hopefully I can go one better.

Played a bit online since my Betfair wins but only result was a deep run in the $20.5k GTD 6-max on FTP, finishing 18th for $235 - AJ no match for 77, but I'd bluffed off half my stack about half an hour before. WP.

As a warm up for Bolton I'm shooting down to Blackpool G on Thrusday night for the £40 T/C. This is becoming a very well supported comp with 80+ runners and there is some good value to be had in the field. Just short of the FT last time....becomes a bit of a crap shoot towards the end, but it does have to get finished.

I've enjoyed spending some of my recent winnings on non-poker or bills realted stuff. I don't usually do this and end up either re-donanting or at best paying the bills. I've had loas of jobs pending on my house for ages so I've stuck a grand into getting some of them sorted. £200 goes to the missus for a new pair of glasses (I'll be fucked if she see's what I actually look like) and I've just spunked £100 on a new jacket for myself. I've spent about £300 on nights out as well :-(. Got a bit back to jizz on poker but I'm in no rush. I've just got a little schedule planned out for what comps and sats etc I want to play online. Giving cash games a little break again as I was starting to tilt badly.

Ship the $5.5k+ Week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-10-12T09:52:00.001+01:00

I have had a pretty decent week of poker this week. On Wednesday night I shipped the Betfair 3k GTD for just under $1k

Which I then followed up with a win in the 10k GTD Betfair Online Side Series Game for 4.4k

Add to this the $400 profit I made 6 Tabling 25NL and the £250 GUKPT M/E Sat Final Seat I won at AWOP and we have a fookin solid brag post.

Betfair write-up is here:
http://site.poker.betfair.com/newsandviews/article/itemId/i65780744/index.html

Looks like I won a chipset as well. Just what I needed - my 3rd chipset.

Going for another bash at the £20 R/B super sat tonight at AWOP. See if I can win another seat which I'd cash in and probably play a side event or use it for DTD 20/20 weekend (which I'm doing anyway). If anyone is going, give us a shout and we'll meet up for a beer.

Laters

Winning @ Poker!

2009-10-06T14:09:00.001+01:00

Yep. Actually winning at poker at the moment. WTF!!!

Last night I played another £20 r/b super sat for the GUKPT Blackpool M/E £250 final sat at AWOP HQ and got a seat. Had a torrid time during the rebuy period, but eventually managed to come back after the break with 9.5k after my 5k add-on. 14 runners generated four seats and two cash prizes of £60 and £40. Coming up to the bubble with the Blinds at 1500/3000 I was getting pretty damn short with 12k and eventuall called an all-in from the other shortstack, Gez Hilton. I table A8s, him JQs. 8 on the flop and A on the river did the trick. Now I had some time to fold and wait for hands or other shortstacks to bust. Eventually it was Rick 'DoubleBubble' Gilby who lived up to his name and bubbled the seats for £60.
I think the final is later this month. 18 Runners with 4 Main Event Seats up for grabs. Bring it on. Probably gonna be live on www.thenut.tv/live

Also started playing micro stakes cash online again and it's going really well. I don't want to jinx myself by posting graphs just yet, but I'm just over 13 BIs up (before rake back), playing 25 NL in about 10k hands. solely playing on Full Tilt now...I just find the games easier than iPoker. Oddly, I was four tabling, but I've just started 6 tabling (it keeps me out of trouble) and my win rate has improved. Overall my current win rate is 12.5bb/100. I'm now actually rolled for the stakes i'm playing! First time for everything.

I look forward to writing me next post where I'll go into detail about how I jizzed off an $800 roll.

Staked!

2009-09-23T14:53:00.001+01:00

Many thanks to all of my backers...I'm now staked for the £500 Blackpool GUKPT Side Event (Rick Gilby style).

Let see if I can ship you all a nice profit on home turf. Even my missus has backed me so if I don't then it's life over anyway :-)

Just need to decide wether I take unpaid leave or throw a sickie (hopefully no one from work reads this).

I'm playing the £100 deepstack this Saturday at Blackpool G. I'm due a result in this comp and if I get a decent score I may be able to play some more GUKPT events. If anyone who reads this is there on Sat come and say hello.

It's going to be an interesting few months stake-wise as I have a little piece of Rick 'Doublebubble' Gilby in the BPool GUKPT m/e and also a slice of AWOP member 'Guite' in this Saturdays £100 D/S and a couple of comps he's playing out in Vegas. Just hope everyone stops dicking around and SHIIIIIPPPSSS me something (and I'll attempt to do the same).

Thanks again and laters

Live Donkament Stakeage

2009-09-22T15:55:00.008+01:00

I'm looking for a stake to play the £500 side event at the Blackpool GUKPT in November.
I'm looking to sell 20 x £25 shares (I'll be retaining 4 myself so it's actually 16 for sale). The deal:

Double Stakeback - first £1000 of any winnings go to shareholders
60 / 40 profit split - After the stakeback above, all profits will be split 60/40 in favour of shareholders.
Reg fee - I'll pick up the £50 reg fee.

Cash Example:
I cash for £5k. - £1K straight back to shareholders = £50 per share
Of the remaining £4000 - 60% goes to shareholders = £2400
1 share of that = £120
+ 2x Stakeback (£50)= £170

So for a £5k cash each £25 share would net £170

Tourney info:

This is a 2-day event starting on 10/11/2009. Last year first prize was in excess of £23k.

Live history:

Not much to go on really, but that's why i'm looking at this stake for more experience. Played a GUKPT and 2 CMBPTs this year (1 last year) (Satellited into all of them). Pretty consistent at making day 2 and also cashed in 10th at Teeside CBMPT this year. It's all on this blog pretty much.

Play fairly regular in Blackpool and have made numerous FTs / cashes etc in small / mid range comps. Just to add, I'll be taking unpaid time off work to play this comp and will NOT be drinking so I will be fully focused.

If you are interested of have any questions, drop me a line nocashpoker@gmail.com

Cheers

September Update

2009-09-21T12:53:00.006+01:00

...Sorry for the lack of updates (like it matters), but I've seriously had nothing to update about...played loads of MTTs online but it's the usual shit and I'm not gonna go on about it. I need to get a roll together to play cash again as online tournies are gay and can fuck off (the picture is a clue to this outburst).

I didn't notice any of the comments on my 'Gone Tits' post cause I'm shit. Everyone who requested it - I've linked you back up. Even you Rubbish.

Going back a bit, the last big comp I played was the CBMPT in Nottingham. I made it right to the end of Day 1 but was short stacked most of the day and didn't manage to squeeze through. Had a piss easy starting table though with Rich ' Madasawasp' Whitmore, Sam Trickett and Mickey Wernick.

I actually owned Wernick in a few pots early doors! However, while I was busy thinking I was Billy Big Bollocks though he called my A high bluff on a paint filled board with 3rd pair and got a nice pot back. He then sucked out on me when he had raised with K3 from late position into my 10 10 BB. He floated me on an 246 board then I checked a J turn and he checked behind. River is a 5 and he sticks in a nice 1/2 pot value bet and I make a crying call. Garden 2 - 2 Wernick. I'll take that.

I then got moved and had Ash Hussein on my left as we were in Teesside. Had a good laugh with him again and he eventually knocked me out when I was low stacked. Revenge for the Q9 hand from Teesside no doubt.

Since then I've played a few comps at The G, but no results to speak of although the cash there in the pit on a Saturday is delicious. I must make an effort to play in that game more often, especially during the holiday season.

With the Blackpool GUKPT fast approaching it's time to start playing some sats or getting a stake together (doubtful). Off to AWOP HQ tonight for the first of their £20 r/b super sats into the £250 final with hopefully 4x Main Events seats up for grabs. I have run ridic good at AWOP in the past so this could be my best shot.

Finally for poker...well done to Steve Holden (who I met for the first time last month) for shipping the Liverpool leg of the CBMPT! Anyone who is reading this will at least be aware of Steve's prolific blogging and he's had a tough year or so on the tables so it's well deserved. WP Steve!!

I've just got back from a week in Ibiza with the missus and some mates. It was both 'bangin' and 'large'. Fucking expensive there but what a top place. We stopped at the Ibiza Rocks hotel which has a stage by the pool and they have a band on every Tuesday. We had the closing party with The Klaxons which was really good. Just got smashed in our rooms overlooking the stage then went down to the stage to get in amongst it. Did loads of other holiday shit as well, but can't be arsed going into that. Got predictably hammered most nights but didn't get ill (the first holiday in Spain I haven't been ill) which was a nice bonus. No leave now unitl after Christmas though. Gutted.

Had a nice little win on the footy this weekend picking Liverpool, United, Arsenal and Chelsea all to win @19/5. Liverpool made fucking hard work of it against the shit that is West Ham (get bent Amatay) and bullshit Fergie time salvaged my bet on Sunday.

Dunno when i'll update next. Probably when I ship the Blackpool GUKPT obv.

Laters

Gone Tits

2009-08-27T11:52:00.004+01:00

My blog has gone tits so had to find another template. Lost some of my links and shit so if you want re-linking just drop me a line. I will be posting some kind of an update as soon as I can be arsed.

RTR Meetup @ DTD

2009-08-03T13:13:00.002+01:00

This weekend was the meetup of the RaisetheRiver regulars in Nottingham. I'm still feeling the pain of the weekend even though I slept all day Sunday! What a quality laugh it was though!

Too tired to do a full TR but I'll give my rundown of the characters I met:

Amatay - good laugh and did well to take down the £50 tourney on Sat night....as well as the last longer bet for £90. Asked Cogs a blowy for a cup of tea or something. Pervert.

Cogs - again a good laugh and it appears he likes his MILFs. Did me for a buy-in at cash though. Twat. Also something happened with a cup of tea / blowjob exchange with Amatay.

DOV - Local Blackpool(ish) lad and my driver for the weekend. Excellent laugh although he did chat to the entire population of Nottingham, one at a time. Probably not all there in the head. Led me astray to some hardcore rave club that was both shit and funny at the same time. Also not the safest driver I've ever met, but I managed to sleep through it on the way home.

Mr Origami - My room mate for the weekend. Came with us to the hardcore rave place and got right involved. Nice fella too. He tried to sell me some IT Equipment. I might even buy it.

Rubbish - Token Welsh chap. Had some quality stories to tell and had us laughing all weekend. When the first thing somebody every says to you is "Hello, I'm Rubbish" you know they're gonna be sound.

dD - Token Scottish chap. I think most of the converstations we had were when we were smashed so I can't remember much about them. Being Scottish he obviously kept up the drinking pace and made it to the rave. Also played cash on Sat night at my table for a bit, but don't think I gave him any money (I could be wrong though).

Longy - Quieter type but seemed like a nice lad. Didn't really get chance to speak to him much as by the time he met us on both days I was well on my way to being drunk.

One of the highlights of my weekend though was in the smoking area in DTD. It had been raining a little bit so the floor was wet. Some poor woman coming out of the door, slipped and regained her footing only to insta-slip again and properly stack it. Everyone was showing concern etc and there were plenty of people helping her out and I hoped she was okay (and she was fine after a minute), but I couldn't hold a laugh in forever could I?!

Bring on the next one!

10th Place in CBMPT

2009-07-27T10:59:00.006+01:00

Who's this sexy bastard?

I finally managed to run okay and cashed the British Masters this weekend in 10th place for £1050. I had a great start and was up to nearly 30k by the dinner break! I came back to day two around 3rd or 4th in chips with 65k.

Not a bad effort overall and I played some of my best poker I have for ages. Not to self - quit online poker! Some interesting hands came up over the weekend and may favourite is this one close to the bubble.

Blind 800 / 1600 / 200
My Stack = 65k
Oppo (Ash Hussein) Stack about = 45k

Fold round to me in SB with Q9 and I make it up.
BB Checks (we have already had three blind on blind battles and I'm 2-1 up.
Flop is 2 Q 10 two spades.
I bet out 2500
BB Raises to 6000
Due to the nature of our previous blind on blind encounters I am assigning a lot of his range as air here...he knows I've been aggro in the last three battles and I don't think he's putting me on anything.
I repop to 12500
BB Flat calls
Now I'm wary. I thing he may have some kind of mid-pair and flush draw or possibly mid-pair + overcard with possible back doors type hand.
Turn is an off-suit J.
This is a great card for me both for drawing and semi-bluffing opportunities. Not putting him on a straight here as he never calls my reraise with just a gutter and if he had something like 9 10s I think he would have raised me pre-flop (as he has been aggro with hands like these) Only one thing for it....
I shove
BB tanks and I sit there quietly trying not to do a little poo. He starts asking me if I'll show if he folds. I stay quiet.
BB fold and I show the Q9.
He didn't look happy. Says he folded bottom two pair and should've shoved the flop. I agree.

I played pretty aggro like that all weekend and it worked very well. I was very disappointed with my exit, although now I have had time to think, I don't think the decisions I made was wrong.

Blinds 2000/ 4000/400
My stack = 90k (avg. - 95k)
Oppo stack = around 200k (chip leader)

I'm in BB. Folds round to oppo in SB and he makes it 10k to go.
Everytime it folds round to his SB he sticks a raise in. This has happened now about 5 or 6 times. I've had to fold almost everytime. He did this on the last orbit though and I 3-bet him (with shit - just to see how he reacted) and he folded.
I look down at 8 8. I shove
I have him on a super-wide range here and even if he calls there's a strong chance I'm even money to take the chip lead. That said, I'm fully expecting a fold here and im quite shocked when....
He calls.
Oh shit.
He tables A K.
Ah....not bad at all. Win this one then I'm chipleader and cruising onto the final table.
Flop Qxx.
Fuckin nice one.
Turn A.
Twat.
River x.
TWAT!!!!!!!

That's the tourney for me. I know it's a marginal shove (and it wasn't instant - there was thought before I did it) but the mitigating factors are...

He's been pushing me around from the blinds (which are getting steep)
His B v B range his huge
Aggression has got me where I am now so why stop
I'm playing FTW and not fussed about laddering - I think it only got higher than £2k from 6th place.

So I'm okay with it.....might be a donk play but I'll live with it. My opponent, Mark Trett, went on to win it so at least he used the chips wisely.

Also, well done to Rick 'DoubleBubble' Gilby for going deep. Just missed the money but ground out that short stack like only he can...and didn't get his Aces cracked once!!

Next stop is Nottingham on 15th August. Lets see if I can go one (or nine) better.

Laters

Coral British Masters Poker Tour

2009-07-23T09:35:00.005+01:00

Last night I managed to put my lack of online skillz to the back of my mind and play another live sat for the British Masters at AWOP HQ. Usual £20 r/b with 2 hours / 4 levels of rebuys and a 5k add-on (2k starting).

This game was mental. 11 players generated three £550 Main Event seats plus £90 for 4th place! I just kept out of trouble and with the help of a few big pots late on I made the break / end of rebuy period with a slight chip lead having taken no rebuys (just the add-on).

With a few shortstacks knocking about and the aggression not letting up, we were soon down to the bubble.

I pick up AA utg and limp knowing I have two aggro players behind me. Brian Clarke (2008 GUKPT Blackpool Leg Winner) makes up the SB and BB checks. Flop comes 8 3 7 with two diamonds. Usually I bet out here to make the draws pay, but I know if either of the other two players have any piece of it they are betting. Brian insta-shoves from the SB and BB tanks for a while and then passes (what he later said was a small flush draw). I beat him into the pot and he tables 8 5 for top pair and no flush draw. 4th and 5th street brick and I'm in now second in chips. Chip leader (Mick Fletcher) has about 90k of the 160k in play so I steer well clear and eventually the two shorter stacks get it in and the outcome was pretty sick.

Both players limp and check a flop of 9 5 3. Turn is an A and Tim France sticks out a pot sized bet. Gaz Chatterton shoves in his last 20k and Tim snap-calls showing 9 5 for flopped two pair. Gaz shows A 5 for a bigger two pair and is looking like he's gonna get right back in the game. Unfortunately (not for me mind!) the river brings in a miracle 9 for Tim to give him the boat (the case 9 in fact - I didn't say it at the time cause I think Gaz was pissed off enough but I passed a 9) and it's all over.

As I have already qualified for the Teesside Leg this weekend, I'm carrying it over to the Nottingham leg on 15th August.

Two chances to run good....One Time!!!!

Gl me.

Laters

FML!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-07-20T10:47:00.002+01:00

I'm fucking pissed off. Not only am I poker broke, but I'm also life broke now as well. I had to spend about £900 last week getting my car fully serviced and back up to scratch for its MOT. It's probably only worth about £1500 but I don't fancy getting into more debt getting another car so paying out seemed the lesser of two evils. No problem there......

So I picked it up on Friday and it's running like new. Happy days. However, I got up this morning (not used it all weekend) only to find that some scum-bag, piss-head, fucking mouth breathing, cockface has waddled past and Bruce Lee'd my wing mirror off. What a shit way to start the week. I'd love to find the twat that did this and cut one of his ears off - see how he likes it (I say 'he' and not 'she' as a catch-all reference - you'd struggle to tell in a lot of cases amongst Blackpool locals). Dickhead. I wonder if it was my neighbour though? He started parking on my drive one day so I came home pissed and let one of his tyres down. Also, when I was coming home from Manchester on Satruday night, I puked on his wall when I got out of the cab.

Not my car BTW....can't be arsed taking a picture.

Anyways, I qualified and played in the Sunday Brawl yesterday. Went out earlyish running a flopped set into a turned straight. Not really too fussed about that. Also played the 34k GTD on FTP at 7pm last night and was in the top ten in chips for a long period of the game, but fell just short of the cash with some properly, full-on, hardcore, super-wank play. I'd been out on a stag do in Manc on Saturday night though and I was goosed - that's a decent enough excuse I reckon.

I've got a £20 home tourny tonight which could be an easy £100 ftw and another AWOP satellite on Weds. Then on Satuday it's off to Teesside for the CBMPT. If I could just run good once!

Countdown to Busto - Day 6

2009-07-17T09:05:00.001+01:00

BUSTO

Lost a 400bb stack AIPF with AA. Tilted the fuck out of me. Did the rest in playing .50/1 HU. Back to the Sit n Gays for me.

Countdown to Busto - Day 5

2009-07-16T12:26:00.004+01:00

Well, I did play a bit yesterday and had a pretty much breakeven session. Can't be arsed posting daily graphs now. Here's the month to date one though...1 BI down from starting roll. Not terrible news I suppose. In profit with RB. Sticking with my prediction of 10 days until I go broke. I can feel the tilt bubbling.

I might play a bit tonight. I could do with some win as I'm stuck £800 on car repairs. BASTARD!!!!!!! I'm driving round in my gf's new Toyota Aygo and it makes me feel quirky and gay. Think I'll just have to ship the CMBPT on Saturday 25th in Teesside. If I can be arsed I might play the side-event as well. Ship both of them. Easy.

I won my seat in that Stars UK / Ireland 100k Freeroll thing last night...Qualification was easier than the Daily Star crossword I was second in chips after 5 minutes and never went out of the top ten. 150 got seat from 758 runners.

I used to go on about the pool league I played in on here...not really bothered for a while as we were shit, but were now in a new season and we beat the league leaders (who hammered us last season) giving them their first defeat!....have that one you cocky No.4 Pub twatbags. Anyway....that's the trendy 'lifesyle' bit over with.

Back to work

laters

Countdown to Busto - Day 4

2009-07-14T16:20:00.002+01:00

How do the pro grinders do it? Today was the day of the cooler. I actually ran around EV, but I just got bummed by hands I couldn't fold. 1st 1600-1700 hands were horrible. Set over set so many times and if I run KK into AA once more I'll chop my cock off.

I'm not blaming it all on varience though. I take responsiblitiy for how badly I handled the beats and the second half of my session was pure tilt. I went stupid and started playing deepstack tables which I really shouldn't have done. 1 false move and you're sans 200bb. I made a few.

I've quit for the day now after bustin all of my profit and a buy-in or so of my starting roll. I'm break-even over 10k hands with Rakeback. But I'm fooked. Properly 'pokered out'. Might have to have a break until Friday - Maybe even next week......or until I get bored tomorrow and fire up some tables.

I've played 25 hours over the last 4 sessions which I think is waaay too much. I'm really going to have to play much shorter sessions I think. Not only that but my arse has gone dead and I have a bad neck.

Graphage

Today:

Overall:

I give myself until day 10 before I'm busto.

I wish I was good at cash games. I don't know if 10k hands is enough to gage it. Probably is and I'm just a donk. I know I lack some discipline, but I'm getting better. I really like playing them. The only form of poker I've ever consitently won at is SnGs (until I drunked off my considerable roll.....see the blog post from last October) but I can't stand playing them.

On a positive note, I've nearly got enough FTP points for a Stox membership. Or 5 FTP bears.

Laters

Countdown to Busto - Day 3 - UPDATE

2009-07-13T17:23:00.004+01:00

Today I said hello to Mr Varience. The bastard......

I started the day playing pretty poorly and got tilted early on. I got past that, but everytime it looked like I was about to turn it round some sick beat or cooler came along and kicked me in the nuts. One of the last hands before I quit was deep stacked AIPF in the BB vs SB - my QQ vs his (SB) JJ for a 400bb pot. Don't think I need to go any further with the bad beat story, but it pretty muched summed up my day. Lets hope for a bit of run good tomorrow...

Laters

UPDATE

Ground out a few more hours in an evening sesh and won back most of my losses. The droolers really come out at night. Great session, and the suckouts were both given and received....like good anal....er,,,,no maybe not.

Just about to start my day 4 session. Gl me.

Countdown to Busto - Day 2

2009-07-10T16:41:00.003+01:00

Today I've shat out a 5 hour / 2000 hand session. As you can see from my graph it's started off terrible and I lost >3 BIs in less than 500 hands!. My stop loss is 4 BIs. This was due to some crap play by me - mostly running silly bluffs which just don't work at these stakes. I did slowly recover though hitting a peek of nearly 4BIs profit, but some shortstackers owned the fuck out of me in the last few hundred hands to leave me 2BIs in profit.

It's fooking boring playing at these stakes, but bollocks to it - must learn BR Management.

Here's todays graphage....

and here's the current state of play after two days.....

Running at 17.91 BB/100. Sustainable? Fuck knows.

25NL sucks donkey balls - I deserve to run good for this.

Laters.

Countdown to Busto - Day 1

2009-07-09T17:36:00.001+01:00

Since last months disastrous effort at 6-max cash I've hit the books (2+2 articles really) and watched every uNL video I can get my hands on for free. In fact I've just managed to get myself 3GBs of Card Runner vids that's I've not even started on yet.

I'm using most of the rakeback I got from VC and have moved it over to FullTilt. Reason being is I'm moving down to .10/.25 to build a roll properly and at VC I need to rake at least $500 to get anything back. I probably won't manage that at .10/.25 4 tabling (dropped down from 7) so until I move up I'll play on FTP and get my 27%.

I'm going to post my daily graph on here (not that I'll play every day) and maybe post some hands I found interesting. I'll avoid the bad beats unless they are particularly amusing. I also post my cumulative monthly graph every few days.

I did my first 4 hour session today and IMO played really well. I hit 2 or 3 fairly big coolers and managed to stay focused and get through it. Thinking in terms of making the correct decision instead of being results orientated is really helping.

So here's today's graph.....I win the Internet obviously.

Dunno about anyone else but I'm finding FTP a lot easier than iPoker. At least 2 or 3 fish per table if you select carefully. Anyways, hopefully put another session in tomorrow afternoon.

Laters fish

Hitler on Michael Jackson's Death

2009-07-08T12:54:00.002+01:00

We've all see the poker and football versions of the re-subtitled scene from 'Der Untergang' (The Downfall - great film by the way), but some bright spark has done an MJ one which made me laugh...so here it is

Teesside British Masters

2009-07-02T11:36:00.005+01:00

After bubbling a satellite for this last week (for £50), I went one better and secured a seat last night, playing at the AWOP HQ live sat. I've been to all but one or two of these sats since they started and have so far shipped a GUKPT seat and now a CMBPT seat - no rebuys this week, just the add-on - sweet.

It's a £20 r/b with 2k starting with a 5k add-on. 2 seats GTD. Also if we make the two seats, Coral add a £220 seat to the Friday side event for nowt which is a nice bonus. AWOP have been tinkering with the structure for a few weeks and I think it's now pretty spot-on for a game that needs to finish in 5 hours. There are six 20-minute levels of rebuys, finishing after the 200 - 400 level and the 5k add-on means you can have at least 7k at the break no matter how bad / unlucky you are. 1 double-up and you're right back in it.

All in all, it's a good group of lads and it's very relaxed and a lot of fun. Let's see if I can ship another next week!

On-Line
My rakeback comes through on the 8th so I'll be starting the grind again. Been reading tons of strat and I've got some videos to watch so time to try again and hopefully do better than last time.

Laters

Busto....

2009-06-15T14:37:00.003+01:00

Got drunk....played too high.....busted my roll. Fortunately I raked over $700 in 16k hands so with my 45% deal I can try again next month. Gonna step down to 0.10/0.20 and enforce some rules..

No playing pissed
No more than 4 tables (re-evaluate at month end as I think I'm comfortable at 6 but just want to see if I play better when I play less.)
No playing above .10/.20
No silly HU shots (I'm fairly clueless)

Even when I wasn't drunk I wasn't playing great....I was being very results orientated and was also doing things wrong that I knew I shouldn' be doing. It's quite hard to supress the gambler in me at times. Now I have a bit of time I'm going to use it to watch all the training vids I can and read any decent 2p2 articles.

In the 17k hands I did play I learned a lot about these levels though such as 1 pair is never good in a 200bb pot post flop and that 2 barreling (and more so 3 barreling) light is just not profitable at this level. Any bluffs have to be fairly well contructed and not undertaken too often. Bit 'pokered' out at the minute anyway so I rest will do me good.

Just deceided to attend another stag do in Germany in two weeks time. I really need my mates to stop getting married as it's going be the death of me.

PS....sorry no graph...I deleted my DB in a pissed off rage and I've not managed to recover it. It was just a long break even line with a big dip at the end of it so not really exciting.

$0.25/$0.50 Cash Grind is Underway!

2009-06-03T16:28:00.004+01:00

I've now started my cash grind to see how well (and how long) I can last before busto!! Hopefully that won't happen but I'm cheerfully under-rolled. I was going to do this as a Clarkatroid stakee, but through one thing and another we never got it off the ground so I'm going solo (and keeping all my profits yeaaahh!!!) although Adam has kindly offered to give me help as and when.....I'm sure I can wangle another drunken coaching session if i buy the beers!

I've got a lovely new iPoker VIP deal - 45% for raking $500 and 50% for $1k+. Happy with that as I've already raked $200 in the last two days (5.5k hands). I've had a very swingy start but this is down to me playing poorly and a bit of tilt whilst I've getting back into it. I played some horrible poker in my second session, but two sessions today brought it round and I'm getting right back into the swing of it. I'm using the 2+2 strat forums and reading loads of articles at the minute so hopefully I can transorm this into a nice graph.

Currently, after 2 days i'm + $173. My stats (positional and standard) are looking pretty damn goot. I'll post graphs at the end of the month - hopefully not epic fail graphs. TBH though I'd be very happy with break even for my first month and up the roll with 'loyalty' payments.

Give me a shout if you are interested in that loyalty deal and I'll get it sorted for you.

Tonight it's off the AWOP mansion for 2 Seats GTD Sat to the Coral British Masters in Leeds later this month. £20 r/b. I seem to run good at AWOP so lets hope I can keep it going!

GL.

Bank Holiday Bollocks

2009-05-26T10:32:00.004+01:00

Get in...managed to stay relatively sober (apart from Saturday) so had a nice relaxing weekend for a change and played and bit of poker.

The $100K guaranteed pissed me off....worked up a nice big stack but KK no match for Chip Leader's 22 AIPF. Standard.

Went to The G on Saturday afternoon for want of better things to do for the £15 +1RB +1AO game. Not my lucky day when I run 10 10 into 9 9 for the board to come x 5 6 7 8. Lovely. Didn't recover and that's another afternoon wasted. I couldn't bring myself to play the evening comp and got pissed instead.

Recently getting back to getting involved on RTR Forums. I'd not been on for a while and I'd forgotten what a good forum it is. Easily my favourite UK Forum at the minute. Always loads going on. They are currently running Syndicates for 3 set tournys where a group of you have to play 1 tourny a week for 12 weeks and all the winnings are split at the end. I've joined all 3 syndicates and played my week 1 games Sunday and yesterday.

Syndicate A - Nightly $8.80 @ 9pm on Stars - Mid table finish on this

Syndicate B - Nightly $26 21k or 34k GTD @ 7pm on FT - Early doors exit after a strong start

Syndicate C - Nightly $5.50 @ 8pm on Stars - Cashed! - 73/3600

All it's going to take is for one of us to get one big score and we are free rolling our tits off.

Last bit of poker I played was the DTD Satellite to the £1k Main event on Weds - 15 seats GTD. Fuck me. To say the live donks were out in force would be an understatement. So much fancy play syndrome I had to turn the brightness down on my laptop. I am in no way an expert, but some of the plays I witnessed were just shit. Tons of limping from any position and people getting big hands outdrawn left right and centre for trying to get too clever and trappy.

I was card dead all night struggling to stay around average chips and finally went out after about 3.5hrs with a failed attempt to nick some blinds.

No poker planned for this week. It's the £100 F/O in Blackpool next weekend but can't make it this time as I've got the Blackpool leg of the stag do I was on the other week. Binge time again. Sweet.

100k GTD on iPoker Tonight

2009-05-22T17:02:00.003+01:00

Playing this tonight - $100 r/b and about 20k ftw. Won a shitty satellite for initial BI so might just play it as a f/o and see how I get on. If it's going well by the break it's then I might cough up for the add-on.

GL Me.

Getting a Good Deal (Advertisment)

2009-05-20T09:27:00.001+01:00

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Mid-May Update

2009-05-14T09:15:00.010+01:00

Blackpool £100 F/O

The £100 F/O didn't really go to plan. Think this was the most card dead I've ever been and with beer and town beckoning I decided to get aggressive. That didn't work out too well and I was down to next to 10BB shortly after the dinner break. Pushed it in with 6 6 in middle position only for Clarkatroid (of all people) to snap me off with A A. Goodnight NoCash.

My mate Baz was still in the comp so I decided to wait around for him, get my drink on and wait for a cash table to open in the pit. Did a bit of my old enemy Black Jack and toileted about £40 there. No cash table was forthcoming so I regged for the £25 headhunter evening donk fest....and what donk fest it was. Lasted till about 11pm than got super tilted by a guy who clearly had no idea, but had all the chips. Push K Q on a K Q 9 rainbow board. Guy snaps me off with 8 9. No prizes for guessing what the turn and river were. Gay. Sacked it off and went to town to carry on drinking.

Benalmadena Stag do

What a top bollocks weekend in was! We'd had reports that it wasn't really s stag party sort of place, but it seemed fine to me. Lovely weather, lots (and lots) of drinking and partying and a ton of laughs. Didn't know a lot of the lads there but they were all sound.

Had a right touch on the footy when one of the lads was running a book based on Will Hill odds for all the weekends games. I had Gerrard first scorer in the Liverpool game at 7-1 which came in then I took him for 2nd scorer at 7/2....ship!! €150 profit and it paid for a lot of my drinking.

I got up quite early on Sunday as I had to bail at about 2.30am on the Saturday due to being sick, but we had been drinking since breakfast and all the shitty free shots and fish bowls we had just caught up to me. Went for a dip and apart from a bit of a headache I felt fine. It got to about 12pm and as we were leaving at 6pm (and the sun was burning my pasty face off) I decided to get a Burger King and got back to bed. All is fine until I get up at 4pm and start chucking up...and chucking up and chucking up. I was a right mess. It gets to 6pm and our taxi arrives and I'm still at it. It was fucking horrible. Queuing for hours on end in a hot airport while the Spaniards are working as slow as possible, when I felt like that, was absolute hell. Bit of alcohol poisoning was the general consensus. Don't know if that's right or not but it makes me sound nails so I'm going with it.

Head in a sick bag all the way back on the plane. NEVER AGAIN. Until next time obv.

.25/.50 6-Max

My staking deal with Clarkatroid still hasn't started yet as I'm waiting on him drawing up our contract. Not a legal document or anything, just a bit of clarity on where we both stand with the deal which I think is a really good idea.

I found $50 rakeback in on of my iPoker accounts so I thought I'd give a bit of 50NL a go to get used to it before I'm staked to play there. I started off shortstacking 2 tables and after a ropey first few hands got into the swing of it and hit a bit of a heater although I played the last 1k hands pretty poorly still made a nice profit to take away on my hols with me - just under 7BIs up. As I get better, my stats are automatically getting towards optimum levels - 3k hands is a tiny sample and nothing can be taken from this, but they are on the right lines.

Other Stuff

The Satellite I organised for the next £100 F/O didn't go ahead. Not enough runners in the end so jacked it. I'm gonna stick the the Chorley garage sats I think. Next one is 23rd May so I'll have to go and give them boys a lesson.

AWOP HQ and a £50 F/O last night. Bit of a poor turnout and only got 7 runners. We played it out anyway and after being chip leader for ages I busted out in 4th. Not sure who won it yet, but the two Gilby Brothers were still in when I left. Martin 'Big Bills' Devlin also played but unfortunately was the 2nd casualty of the night. Don't think he cared much though after the United win.

The Oxford Poker League came to it conclusion this week. I finished a disappointing third place. Well played to Gray and Baz. All I can say if they have to have been running above EV to have put me into third!! :-). New season starts in 2 weeks time with a new league format (points equal chips - top 8 go into final playoff game for the title) which I'm looking forward to.

All comments are greatly appreciated and it also let's me know that somone is actually reading this garbage so go on, don't be shy.

Bank Holiday Weekend

2009-05-01T14:06:00.007+01:00

Drinking and Poker

Another Bank Holiday and another full day of smashing beer, wine and whiskey into my head? Not this time son. Lesson learnt from the Easter Bank Holiday where I did the all-dayer on the Sunday and was still being sick at 8pm on Monday night trying to run my pub poker league. That hangover probably cost me a prize place in the league as I stuck it in with nothing and quickly went back home to bed.....no, this weekend I'm keeping in sensible....

...Few quite drinks and a friendly game of poker round at a mate's tonight, who I haven't seen for a while then the Monthly £100 F/O at The G with Baz tomorrow. 'Bout time I cashed in this, but had some shit beats (and played pretty turd) the last few times.

I've found there is a bit of a market for running a single table satellite for this in Blackpool (I usually travel to Chorley garage) and my mate has agreed to let us do it in his pub - no money changing hands on the premises mind. Should be a good chance for some of the newer guys who play in our league to have a pop at a proper casino comp. Hopefully my teachings on etiquette and rules haven't fallen of deaf ears!

Sunday is into town to fetch some €€ as I'm away next weekend for a stag do in Benalmadena....I've booked two days off work to recover! Might have a few quite ones on Sunday night but nothing major. I'm off to see Derren Brown with the missus on Monday night which I'm looking forward to. Don't have a clue how he does some of his stuff and he's a good showman so will hopefully be a good night.

Staking

I'll hopefully be able to post some nice HEM graphs for you to wank over or
laugh at :-).

Myself and Rick 'The Cooler' Gilby met up with Clarkatroid earlier this week to go over our micro-stakes DBs prior to being staked. The coaching session turned into a bit of a drinking session as the United v Arsenal game was on and I didn't get home until about 3am...felt rough in the morning after we nailed a fair few pints, bottles of wine and some champagne! Had a top laugh though.

This was my second database of 10k uNL hands as I took some coaching from Adam after the first 10k hands and started again. My 2nd attempt post-coaching was much better and although I do still have plenty to work on - not playing enough button and c/o enough for example. I put in a solid winning 10k (well 9.4k) hands at 0.01/0.02 lol (bb/100 = 28.76 in case you were wondering or $52 in English). Just waiting for Adam to give my db a sober once-over then if all's okay we may be ready to start. Whilst I'm waiting, I'm hammering the strat section on 2+2 and and will be sharing ideas / HHs etc with Adam and Rick.

Once this gets underway, I'll hopefully be able to post some nice HEM graphs for you to wank over or laugh at :-). I think this is a great opportunity to develop as a player though and I'm going to give it 100%.

Yes that's right...I have just learned how to blockquote an I'm going to
abuse it!

GUKPT Report

2009-04-27T15:28:00.007+01:00

Not much to speak of really. 3 main hands that did me in to bust just before dinner on Day 1B.

This shirt is red...anyone telling you it's pink is an idiot - ->>>>>>

I had James Aikenhead on my table who was very unlucky (didn't really get too involved with him so can't really comment on his play). He amassed a big stack early on (when I went for a piss) only to lose most of it going all in after flopping top two. Guy calls with a flush draw and hits on the river. Same guy who picked up Aces vs my QQ in the hand below........

I was going along steadily hovering around starting stack for the first level. 1st hand of the second level I pick up QQ in the C/O. Its raised in MP to 325 so and folds round to me. I repop to 900 and it folds back to other guy (who has been quite active) who sticks it to 2k. I should have been out of the hand with his strong 4-bet especially at this point so early in the day, but I decide to take a flop with a decent pot in play.
He checks to me and I decide to bet around half the pot on an 8 high un-coordinated board. He flat calls. The board pairs on the turn and he wastes no time getting it in. I fold my QQ face up and he duely shows Aces. Poor play by me (especially as the p/f 4-bet showed a lot of strength and sets his range around JJ+, and I don't have much of a read) and im down to aroung 5k, but it could have been worse and there's plenty of time left.

I grind my way back up over the next few levels and pull off a nice semi-bluff after I raise the c/o with 9 3 suited and get a call from the button. Flop bricks and I cbet 2/3 pot. Button flats. Turn is a 9 and I fire the second shot and he folds claiming a big ace that he'd try to get tricky with. Can't resist showing the 9 3 :-)

The very next hand I find QQ in postion again. Very aggro guy bets out from EP and I reraise him. He has around 6.5k left behind and 4-bets all-in. Pretty sure I'm ahead or in a straight race so make the call. He shows AK. King on the river and im down to 4k.

Play a few hands and try to get it back up but no luck. Finally flop top two on an all club board. Bet all the way against one player then shove river when another club doesn't appear, fairly sure he was drawing. He had nut flush all along and I'm gone.

Next stop is qualifying for Edinburgh Masters.....

Just a Quick Brag

2009-04-20T17:17:00.003+01:00

And why not :-)......

In the last 5 days I have won:

1 x GUKPT Main Event seat
2 x BMPT Final Tickets (playing the first one on Thursday)
1x Stars Sunday Million Ticket

Obviously, it's all well and good luckboxing these sats......The test comes when I have to turn it into a real $$/££ profit. It's maximum value if I do though!

EDIT: Make that 2x Stars Sunday Million Tickets...

April Updates - Virgin Festival and GUKPT Manchester

2009-04-16T09:11:00.007+01:00

It's been a while since I updated this and there has been a lot going on so here goes!

Virgin Festival

I travelled across to Newcastle to the Virgin Festival on weekend of April 4th/5th with Rick 'DoubleBubble' Gilby. After a clear drive through we dumped our bags at the Hotel (rather nice Jury's Inn in the City Centre) and went straight across to Aspers Casino to get signed in and get some food. This was to be the start of a 16 hour drinking and poker session - happy days. The weekend started off well when there was a nice surprise with the bill at the restaraunt - March madness 50% off (even though it's April! Shippit!). The food was class as well.

Started the main event at about 2.30 but it didn't go to plan and I was out early doors (Aces cracked for a change). This was nothing though compared to Rick, who had nursed his 5k shortstack for hours and worked it up to around 30k. He managed to get it into a 90k pot with KK only for one raiser to call and the original raiser to pass KQ face up. The caller showed KQ!

Q on the Flop, Q on the Turn, goodbye Rick. This did get judged the worst beat of the weekend though so he was awarded 50,000 Virgin Airmiles (We ran it through PokerStove and Rick was just under 94% fav on the flop).

I did play a couple of SnGs in the Virgin STT Challenge - managed 2nd on my first attempt and qualified for Sundays final on the 2nd! That was the last thing I won all weekend.

Played some £1/£2 cash on the Saturday night, but both myself and Rick had sunk a great deal of Bulmers, which we had earlier both decided we didn't like, yet we both did about 7 bottles in each throughout the day. Weird.

Drunken cash games are the bollocks imo. I was raising with all kinds of shite and having a good bit of banter on the table....the highlight for me getting it all in on a £60+ pot with 7 7 vs Rick's A K. Before the board comes down I say I'm gonna hit quads. 7 on the flop and Rick said I can't take the pot unless I hit quads as I had called for it. The river duely obliged and Rick got some funny looks from the locals as he high-fived me laughing his tits off after losing the hand! Got back to the hotel at about 6am.

Sunday was rough. Up at about 11 to get ready for Sunday's comps which is never nice. I was in the STT final but decided that by 3pm, if I wasn't getting anywhere I'd shove and run across to play the £30 headhunter event....which I did and registered just in time. Played like someone who had had a marathon session the previous night and bust out just after the break. Watch the Man U / Villa game while I wait for Rick to bust out then as it's about 6pm, we decide to sack the hotel off and travel home. All-in-all a great weekend and will hopefully be back for the next one.

GUKPT Manchester

Last week I played a £20 RB/A sattelite for the GUKPT Main Event in Manchester at AWOP HQ. Around 15 runners. After being chip leader for long periods of the game and on the final table, I fell at the final fence after a standard outdraw when we were down to 3 (playing for 1 seat) and couldn't recover. The seat money was eventually chopped by Clarkatroid and Steve 'Shrewdy' Craig.

Undettered, I tried again last night. This time there were 20 runners + alternates. There was also a ton of added value as Andy Bradshaw (Last weeks Irish Open 8th place finisher) added a seat to the prize pool. After the rebuy period we we playing for 2 GUKPT seats, £150 and £200.

After playing shortstack all game and coming back after the rebuy period with pretty much the minumum (2k starting stack + 5k add-on) I had to bide my time and pick my moments to shove.
I manage to limp to the final table with about 15k with the average at 30k. I managed a double up early doors and didn't really make any mistakes from there. Think I took 4 or 5 people out on the final table and got to the seat bubble as slight chip leader. The bubble eventually burst then Caroline 'CashBiatch' Cove busts out in 4th for £150.

On the second hand of playing 3-handed, the small blind slowplays QQ into my BB 76s. I flop an open ended straight draw and despite a fairly large overbet on the flop I decide to call with the view to folding a blank turn. I hit my 8 outer for the nut straight and after the other guy pot commits himself with a huge overbet on the turn, I insta-shove and get called. I dodge a spade on the river (his only outs at this point) and take down the pot and a seat to my first ever GUKPT!! Andy Bradshaw's brother Tommy took down the other.

Really looking forward to this and I'll be playing Day 1b on Friday Arpil 24th. You can follow my progress on http://www.aworldofpoker.com/ live updates section and watch a live feed at www.thenutz.tv/live.

Online

I have an agreement in principal with Clarkatroid for a stake to play 6-Max cash. Not going to go into too much detail yet as a lot is dependent on me putting in some results at the lowest of low stakes first, but it the deal includes free coaching with is a massive plus for me. We've had a couple of 30 min / 1hr Team Viewer sessions already and Adam has got me thinking about my game is a whole new light. My results improved almost instantly after this. He analysed my database and tore my game to shreds (didn't realise how bad I was). This is exactly what I was after and I'm pretty excited about where this could go as we are both looking to do something long-term.

I'll update next with a trip report from the GUKPT after I ship it of course :-)

NiceCash

2009-03-25T15:18:00.006Z

Not a bad effort. Bit disappointed though. I had the chip lead for long periods in this tourny but when we got 4 handed I had an accident running my top pair Aces into a flopped low set leaving me with <10bbs. AJ no match for A9 after for my last 76k and I'm gone

I didn't play all that well to be honest so probably a fair result.

Come on Red Men!!!

2009-03-23T09:48:00.002Z

What an excellent week of footy that was (for Liverpool fan's anyway!).
United seem to be cracking under the pressure, however two 'shock' results for them doesn't mean anything and the title is still theirs to lose. They are a team that usually play well under pressure and despite their performances in the last two games, I wouldn't want to be Aston Villa next weekend for their trip to Old Trafford. Chelsea's slip-up against Spurs effectively ends their title bid unless something disastrous happens with the top two.

I was at Anfield for the match yesterday and the atmosphere in the Kop was great. Despite the scoreline Liverpool didn't look all that good and gave the ball away cheaply far too often. That said Villa were poor and never really threatened. They have a lot of height up front but they just weren't getting the delivery and Gareth Barry was ineffective. The sending off of Brad Friedle was a little harsh though and he'll now miss the game against United which isn't good for us.

13 Goals in 3 games and we are riding high and have a good platform from which to round off the season. If someone offered me the position we are in now at the start of the season I probably would have taken it, however having to depend on another team dropping points means we could be chasing shadows - especially when that other team is Manchester United. I just hope their hunt for multiple trophies weakens them sufficiently in the league! Although they are bitter rivals, I can't help but have respect for the way they play their football.

On the Poker front, Myself, Rick and Phil Gilby and Baz Mackenzie travelled to Chorley for the £100 Blackpool G F/O sat. Had a good laugh and Barry and I actually managed to bag ourselves the seats (third time lucky). Didn't think Baz was gonna make it! When we got 3 handed he only had about 7k of the 80k in play. He got in a few battles and managed to double up early on. I had the chip lead so stayed quiet just doing the odd maintenance steal to stay afloat. It was just a matter of time before either Baz or Macacacan were eliminated and it ended up with Baz's poket jacks holding against Dave's A8.

Good banter and excellent hot pot - looking forward to the next one! I will be playing my seat at the end of April as I can't make the March £100 f/o.

The League, Staking and Other Blogs

2009-03-17T10:24:00.008Z

I'm not going to bad (in 4th), but Gray seems to be running away with it now. It should all change though if the top four can get some big scores after the 10 week period as the results are calculated from the 10 best scores:

Something I forgot to mention in my last post is that I've bought £50 stake of Clarkatroid's action in the ECPokerTour Salzburg. Adam is an accomplished online cash pro and also has over $100k+ winnings in online MTTs. Only a matter of time before something happens for him live so more than happy to be in on it. See my links on the left and visit his blog - it's one of my personal favourites.

Speaking of other blogs I like, one that is always a good read and updated more often than any other blog I know of is Steve Holden's. It's updated pretty much every day, it's always an entertaining read and he really knows his apples when it comes to poker. If you're into poker blogs then you should deffo pay a visit.

Just one last thing on staking, last month I staked Knightmarenick from RTR to play 10x $12 180 Man SNGs. I got $187.50 profit plus $120 stakeback. This was my first time staking someone and I'm well happy with the results. Cheers Nick!

Back to the Blog

2009-03-16T14:52:00.003Z

I thought it's about time I updated this...not a great deal been going on though really.

Everything sorted for the Virgin Festival on 4th / 5th April. I'm sharing travel and accommodation costs with Rick 'Doublebubble' Gilby from AWOP. Stopping at the Jury's Inn in Newcastle City Centre which looks pretty nice - certainly a lot better than some of the places I could afford by myself. PokerStars SCOOP starts the same weekend so if it does go pear at the Festival, at least I've got something to do.

Still plugging away at the Garage sats in Chorley for BPool G £100 F/O. Got my 3rd visit lined up for this Friday. Few more Blackpool lads going now too - Myself, Baz, Rick and his brother Phil (Flisby). I'm going to drive everyone so they can all get lashed giving me a much better chance of winning - worth a try anyway!!

I've been plugging away online mostly on Cardoza (iPoker). Cashed 3 consecutive donkaments the other day for a nice profit. I actually keep managing to build up a fairly big roll (close to $1k) then giving it all back. STTs hate me at the moment and I'm well below chip EV (HEM tournament features FTW!). Will have a nice chunk of rakeback this month though so I can start building again in April.

The Oxford Monday night league is shaping up well. I'm currently in 4th after 7 weeks, but there's plenty of time yet. Gray is the man to catch though with some very solid scores despite no wins or 2nds!

That's it for now. Laters.

Killed My BR Again and Some Sad News

2009-02-19T11:12:00.011Z

About time I updated this I think...

Played a lot online at the beginning of the month and ran really well in the $0.10/$0.20 games on iPoker. Ran up $200 profit and withdrew my initial deposit. Nice. Then took a few massive short stack shots shots at $1/$2 and $2/$4 for a laugh and was quickly sitting (with the odd bit of luck) on $825 and had a nice spikey graph. Not bad for little over 6k hands.

Then I decided to grind $50NL and had a horrible session which tilted the hell out of me. Took a tilt shot at $2/$4 to try and win back the few BIs I'd lost then lost the lot. Idiot. But I'm over it.

Limiting myself to $100 a month online now I think. See how it goes in March. I've had enough for this month.

Not played much live apart from the Oxford Poker League. After winning week 1 I had a shocker in week 2 and went out 2nd last place for 2 points. Did better this week though and came 2nd for 14 points which puts me fourth in the league. Only 5 points off the leader and 3 weeks in so got ages left yet. Current leader has bubbled all 3 weeks lol.

Myself and Mackenzie are heading to Chorley again tomorrow night for the £25 D/C F/O satellite to next weeks £100 comp at the G. Let's see if I can last longer than last time :-)

March 1st I'm planning on playing in a charity event for a local player, Gerry Doughty, who has fallen seriously ill and requires 24hr care if he is to go home. Never met the guy before (that I know of) but from what I've heard he's a nice guy and a family man so more than happy to help where I can. More details here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=51862382319&ref=ts

On a sad note, I heard the news earlier this week that one of my old school friends from Fleetwood, a Royal Marines Commando, Daz Smith was shot and killed whilst serving in Afghanistan. This came as a real shock. I'd not seen him since school, but had recently got back in touch with him through Facebook and was chatting with him late last year reminiscing about some of the funny shit that went on at school. He leaves behind his girlfriend (who he had been with since school) and a young daughter. My thoughts are with his family.

I have a brother currently serving in the Army who has toured Iraq and Afghanistan and may be due to go back. I worry for him as it's a bad state of affairs over there if the media is anything to go by. It puts things into perspective really in that most of us have it cushy in our offices, shops, building sites, Unis etc. compared to these men and women who go out and give everything, up to and including their lives, for their job. For little reward. I can't help but admire that.

R.I.P Daz. You did us proud.

Looking Fit but Running Shit

2009-02-06T12:46:00.005Z

Thought I'd better update this crap for the benefit of my reader.

£100 F/O

As per my last post I played the £100 F/O at The G. Played pretty solid until my exit hand which was so badly played I was embarrassed (so I'm not posting it). Dunno why I did it, but 9 hours at a poker table getting fuck all hands does something to my mind. I was hovering around average all tournament by bluffing, stealing and outdrawing people and it was a proper grind...eventually bust 29/151. GG me. Not gonna post a load of hand histories as I've been doing too much of that lately and it's a bit boring...but there was one interesting hand which a few players gave me stick for a others thought was great. I was obviously in the latter category.

This may not be exact, but you'll get the idea (I've slept since)

Blinds 200/ 400. I have about 12k.

I'm on the nipple (my favourite new term) with A9 hearts facing a small ep raise (900) from aggressive guy and a call from the C/O. I come along in position and the blinds fold. At this point I'm wary of the small raise from EP, but it's cheap to see a flop in position

Flop come xAx with 2 rag clubs. EP guy checks, C/O bets 600, I call with intention of folding to C/R from EP. If not, re asses on the turn. EP flat calls.

Turn comes another x clubs. EP checks, C/O checks. Now this to me looks like they are both scared of the flush or want a free card to make the flush. However, there is always the case for one of them slow playing, but this seems unlikely based on previous hands and their table images so I decide to go with my read. As no one has taken the initiative, I think it's time to have a stab. Bet sizing here is important as I don't want to overstretch myself on the bluff, but I also want to make it look like I really have it.

The pot is currently 4800 so I bet out slightly over half with 2500, leaving me with around 8k (1/3 of my stack in the pot). Still a playable stack at this point in the game.

EP guy is clearly not happy with this and mumbles to himself for ages before finally calling. C/O states how he hates putting this hand down but knows he was ahead pre-flop (raise then dick head). He folds.

River comes a rather beautiful 9 diamonds to give me two pair.

E/P checks. This is where I think I possibly missed some value by checking behind (although he may have just folded anyway) whereas I would have called a bet. Weird. My inner pussy took over there I think. I had him on the flush draw and should have gone with my read.

After I say two pair he looks at me like I just shat in his sandwich and mucks his hand claiming AK with Ac. Guy next to me says he folded AK also.

I got shit for this by the two others in the hand saying I should never have been there with A9s in the first place, but I disagree with position against such a small raise. They showed no strength on the turn and I pounced. Okay I got lucky in the end, but I wasn't folding the river to anything but a club. So fuck off. Outplayed.

There was a lot of berating of players on the table and I think it's just bad manners. Pisses me off even if it's not me they're talking shit to. Outlasted both of them by about 6 hours anyway....off you pop.

Online

Been running like a dog at $50NL 6 max. Down a fair few buy-ins. Not imported this months hands into HEM yet (been playing on my other laptop) but I'm pretty sure I'm running way below EV.

All the usual bollocks - Cannot with a race to save my life, cold decks, struggling to have big hands hold up and not getting any value when I catch a monster (Must have had AA on the BB about 6 times yesterday and it folded round every single one!).

Thing is though, I'm pretty sure I'm playing well. I fixed a couple of leaks after reading some stuff on 2+2 and my stats are looking pretty sweet at 22/20/3.9 over 3k hands. It's only a small sample, but I'm gonna give it to 20k hands. If my win rate doesn't improve then obviously I can't blame variance and I'll just quit online for a bit and study some more.

Deffo not rolled for this level, but cannot take anything lower seriously so I'm just gonna keep taking shots until I am rolled. Not this month though. All online poker monies spent!

One other thing - my tilt management has been excellent so far this month...dunno how but for the most part I've managed to stay level headed and non-results orientated. Good for me.

Oxford Poker League

This started last week and I shipped the first game for £40 and 12 league points. It's going to look well bent if I win it though.

I luckboxed the fuck out of .Mackenzie aipf from the button with 66 vs JJ. After a tap of the deck I managed to peel a 6 off on the river. Barry showed excellent restraint not to do his usual trick of launching the chips everywhere. Good for you.

Non-poker stuff

The Tuesday night pool league is going well. I've been on and potted match deciding blacks for two weeks running and managed to slot them away. We are now firmly in 2nd place just 2 points behind the current leaders. Our next two games are at home against the bottom two in the league so we have every chance of doing well in our first season the league!

My weight loss is still going well (have to lose 22lbs by June 8th or I owe my gf a laptop). My starting weight was 13st 4lbs. As of last Monday I'm down to 12st 10lbs. 8lbs in two weeks. Not bad. Ain't been easy though. 2 trips to the gym a week (one of which is at work before I start) along with a 1 hour badminton session on a Thursday and 5-a-side Football on a Sunday.

I've also completely sorted out my and have cut out bread and all the shitty snacks I used to eat.

I only have fruit for my dinner now and have a healthy tea every day. I've not had an alcoholic drink for 32days!!!

Problem is I'm off the wagon tonight as I've completed my no alcohol challenge. A load of us are off to watch Russel Brand at the Opera House in Blackpool and going out after. Probably be hammered after two pints. Plan is to limit myself to one night out a week with no mid-week drinking (E.G. At poker and pool) which should be fairly doable. Also going to allow myself one meal of my choice per week (a takeaway or a meal out or something). I think I'd go mental if I didn't have a treat I could aim for at weekend.

Motivation is getting hard to come by now I'm almost in my 4th week but I feel like I'm getting fitter every session and I'm able to do more the following one so this is spurring me one. The thought of not having a big beer gut by my 27th Birthday is always at the back of my mind as well.

Any comments on this shite are welcome!

Laters

Blackpool G £100 F/O

2009-01-27T11:32:00.004Z

Well I've decided I'm going to play the £100 F/O at Blackpool G this weekend. I think it makes sense after I've finished 5th/6th/5th in consecutive games.

As last night was the last game at The Oxford before the league starts next week, I decided to include 1 optional rebuy or add-on which everyone took in one form or another. We only had 7 runners (most people are waiting for the league to start next Monday), but £70 in the pot wasn't too bad.

Myself and .Mackenzie chopped it, originally for £40 / £30 in his favour, as he had close to a 3/1 chip lead, but we both ended putting a fiver back in and playing it out. I ended up winning so it was an even chop on the night. Along with my £10 fee from the landlord for running the game I was up £35 on the night (not drinking helps). Add this to my weekends profits and I'm playing the £100 F/O with my poker winnings rather than my earnings so there's no scared money.

Fingers crossed for a decent buffet and not fucking SOUP!!!

GL me.

Running Good Live

2009-01-26T09:38:00.006Z

I've had another good weekend of live poker!! It didn't start off too great though.

Travelled down to Chorley with Mackenzie to play the £25 D/C F/O in Mr Macacan's garage on Friday night. I didn't last long and was 1st out after two standard river out draws (K10 for tpgk vs OESD - straight hits on the river, KK vs 66 which made a flush). As I was driving I had to stay behind for Mackenzie so I decided to deal. He had a pretty big stack at one point and with 5 left I had a £5 bet with a lad there that he wouldn't make a seat. He busted in 3rd making a move with some shite hand. UL and ship the fiver. We stayed for a fiver buy-in cash game and I donked off my new found wealth plus another tenner of my own. Not exactly a great start to the weekend, but met some new faces, good banter and a good laugh - and had an outstanding hotpot supper knocked up by Mrs Mac.

On Saturday night, me and my home boy Tiffer took on the £25 F/o at Blackpool G - 51 runners. I was surprised to see it was dealer dealt, although they didn't have enough for all the table so I dealt my table for an hour or so until one could be found. Played some steady poker and made the final table without too many hiccups although I was one of the shorter stacks. With 11 left, we lost one from my table quickly followed by two from the other when there was a 3-way all-in making an 8-seat FT.
Special mention has to go to Tiffer for making the FT as this was the first time he'd ever played in a Casino and was a bit nervous. It didn't help that his first table was full of mouthy young knobheads giving him shit for playing tight (non of whom made the money!).

I eventually end up busting in 7th when I shove 77 (with 7 of spades) and get a call from a young lady holding A10off (no spades). Flop comes 8 9 10 all spades but I miss all of my 20 million (17) outs to exit for £60. Not great but profit is profit and I'm happy with how I played. Tiffer came in 4th for £130! Nice one. Whilst I was waiting for Tiffer I donated a bit back on the cash game, but still in profit for the night.

Wasn't gonna play on Sunday, but after a game of 5-a-side and knowing the Liverpool game was on in the casino, Mackenzie talked me into going to The G for the afternoon £15 + 1rb + 1 add-on. This is a self-dealt comp and no one was forthcoming on the table so I once again took it upon myself to deal (FFS!!). Mackenzie failed as I did in this comp last week and was out by the first break whereas I'd chipped up nicely to 18k. I did have to take my rebuy after making a move on a fish to my right who couldn't lay down TP shit kicker, but after that I did fine. With 18k at the break and table chip leader, a £15 top-up wasn't necessary.

Just before the the table broke to get us down to the last two I was involved in a monster hand with an elderly lady to my left who only had about 1k less than me. She'd raised to 3k UTG (blind 600/1200) . It folded round to me on the BB and I have AQ. I repopped to 7k which she flatted. Flop comes Qxx with 2 diamonds. She bets min, I reraise to commit her and she shoves. I call and she shows A10d. no diamonds and I now have a monster chip lead, taking over two racks of chips my new table, much to the surprise of my new opponents.

Quite and easy ride to the final and just picked my spots and bullied the short stacks, but generally kept out of trouble. I take 65k to the final and I'm amongst the chip leaders.

It all goes a bit pear shaped here and I lost half my stack pretty quickly with some dodgy calls which have to be folded to big c-bets. We are on the bubble and I have the button with 88 and decide to make a high risk play by squeezing a EP min raise with two callers for about 35k. It fold round to the cut-off who snaps with A10. My hand holds and i'm up to around 75k.

The CL who has about 150k proceeds to donk it all off in about 3 hands (he was one of the mouthy young chavs from Tiffer's table in Saturday night's game) and I can't help but have a little chuckle at that.

A few more exits but I'm down to 50k. All of a sudden I have a stupid blowup/rush of blood to the head when it folds to me in the sb and I shove with 45o (fucking tool) and obviously the BB has AQs which holds. Out in 5th for £110, but it could have been more if my patience didn't desert me at a key moment.

I'm happy with most of my play this weekend. As poker is a form game, and I appear to be hitting some form with 3 cashes in 4 comps over the last two weekends, I'm tempted to use my profits to buy-in to the £100 F/O next weekend. I've played it 3 times before and I'm very comfortable at this level, on all 3 occasions going out very unlucky fashion - I'll not go into bad beat detail though.

It usually gets well over 100 runners generating a nice prize pool. I'll have to think about it. I'm 50/50 at the moment.

Non poker related stuff I have going on:

My weight loss bet with the g/f is going well. Did my one week weigh-in this morning and I've lost 5lbs! Still 17lbs to go. It's three weeks today since I've had a drink and I feel so much better for it. I've also sorted out my diet and starting watching the calories I take in (fuck me that sounds gay!) as well as visiting the gym twice and playing badminton and football this week. Planning on doing the same this week and hopefully I can shift another 5lbs! Knowing my luck I'll be 2lbs off the day before the bet is up and will have to take laxatives, shave all my hair off and have about 7 wanks just to make the weight.

Crashed out of the pool league cup competition on the 2nd round despite me winning my game. The team we played were pretty shit tbh, but the table was a joke and they were a bunch of spawny bastards. /Excuses

Laters

It's good to have a plan

2009-01-21T12:11:00.005Z

Just a quick note with what poker I've come coming up in the next few weeks (more a reminder for me than anyone else).

Friday 23rd Jan - £25 D/C F/O Sat for £100 monthly comp at Blackpool G @ Mr Mac's Chorely Garage.
Saturday 24th Jan - £25 F/O Blackpool G Sat night donkfest.
Friday 30th Jan - My home cash game (free money night!!).
Saturday 31st Jan - £100 F/O @ Blackpool G (hopefully with a qualification seat).

Monday 2nd Feb - Start of The Oxford Poker League.
Thursday 14th Feb - AWOP VIP Club Bronze SNG Sat for any UK £300 live event.
Saturday 21st Feb - APAT Online Championships Event 2 or NPF Forum Challenge Team. Game (depends if AWOP can get a team together in time - not had much response on the forum).

Wednesday 3rd March - London Poker Masters - I'm not actually playing this festival myself but I've got 13% of 1tripz1 in the £200 HORSE event. Good luck fella!

Sat / Sun 4th+5th April - Virgin Festival @ Aspers in Newcastle.

There will be others as well, but these are the deffo's at the moment.

If anyone can recommend any decent games within an hour drive of Blackpool (Wed - Sun) then please let me know.

inabit

No Beer, Live Cash and Exercise Vomit.

2009-01-19T08:57:00.008Z

It's two weeks today without touching a drop! I pretty amazed about this and although it's been difficult at times (watching the footy in the pub for example) I feel as though I'm going to get through my target of 1 month with no problems. 4 of us were doing this originally, but 1 fell off the wagon this weekend. Wardy - you are weak.

Played some live poker this weekend and had a little result, getting my first live cash of the year (excluding pub poker). I played the Saturday afternoon £15 +1 £15 R/A 'semi-freezout' at Blackpool 'G'. 2x 45 min levels then 20 mins after that, 4k starting stack and about 35-40 runners (can't remember).

It started really well with a double up after about 5 hands (25/50 level) when I found JJ and got 4 callers to my raise to 300. Bingo flop of J66. Played it slow and it checked around. Brick on the turn so I check again only for guy to my left to throw in 1k and it folds around to me. I pretend to mull it over for a while then flat call. He goes all-in before the river is even face up and I snap call for him to show A6. Doesn't river his one-outer. Unlucky pal.

I plod along nicely building my stack but annoy myself by fast playing my QQ on a QA7 rainbow flop and scaring off any potential action. At the add-on break I'm sat on about 18k. I know it's usually +EV to get the add-on, but with the prize structure being what it was (paid top 7 from 40 with £285 FTW), I didn't feel like the value was there.

After the break it's 20 minute levels and it's bingo time. Loads of shorter stacks playing shove / fold silly buggers. With it being a self-deal comp, a lady at my table kindly agreed to deal as no one was chirping up (me included). I'll never knock anyone for wanting to have a go and volunteering - in fact I'd encourage it, but fuck me she was slow. It's a good job I hit some hands early or I would have been in trouble. I volunteered to deal after the break which I've never done before, but dealing the Oxford games has given me more confidence. We were then banging along at a good rate of hands....only thing was I couldn't deal myself shit all.

I finally hit a hand when I'm down to about 9k after being blinded away, getting bluffed off a big pot and some poorly timed moves. A guy has just joined our table and doubles up 3 times in 3 hands ffs!!! He had the best hand going in each time and they held. Anyways, after this he decides to become the table bully so I put him to the test with an all-in with 1010 UTG+1. He snap-calls and I tell him he has to deal if he takes me out. I do a little fist pump when he shows 99 and tens hold.

I make the final table with about 29k in chips which is about average and there are a couple of short stacks knocking about. With the antes at 1.5k /3k I get a rush of blood to the head with 88 on the 2nd or 3rd hand. UTG limps and I shove it in hoping to take the blinds. Unfortunately the limper has KK (very drunk young lad who I later found out has brain damage! Gotta love Blackpool) and I'm crippled down to 7k. Not an optimum laddering strategy.

With one hand to go before my BB I look down at Q9 and think with 7k I have tiny a bit of fold equity with everyone but the drunk guy who is now BB, as everyone is looking to make the money. Folds round to the button who shoves (giving me protection FTW!). SB and BB fold and I'm in better shape than I thought when the button flips 55. I flop a Q and there is a glimmer of hope.

I'm hanging around and keeping my head above water stealing blinds. We lose a few short stacks and its bubble time. We are on the 2.5k/5k level when I'm on the BB with one limper. I shove 33 and get a call from a big stack with JQs. He misses and I'm back up to around average. The very next hand there is a chunky raise from mid-position. I have AK clubs and insta-shove. The guy has me covered by about 10k and calls showing A9 hearts. Two hearts and a club on the flop give me a sinking feeling, but another club on the the turn and river seal it for me and I'm up to 68k.

I proceed to donate half of this back once the bubble bursts making a play with K10s calling a reraise which was totally fucking stupid. Flop bricks out and I have to fold to the c-bet. After a few more orbits we are now down to 5 players with blinds at 3k/6k and I have around 40k (thanks to a guy who didn't want to defend his blinds on my left). Once again I look down at AK. There is one limp from UTG+1 and I shove my 40k. The guy has about 48k. He thinks for a second then decides to risk his tournament on fucking Q9s. It's only a bit worse than a flip though and obviously he spikes a 9 on the river and I'm out in 5th for £80.

It was a good laugh and keeps me out of trouble on a Saturday afternoon. I'm glad one of the regs, Christine, went on to win it outright. She played really well throughout and it was well deserved.....and she beat the villain who took me out HUP :-)

I played it again on Sunday afternoon (same comp two days running). 6 tables to start but I went out before the first break after taking my rebuy. Nothing much to report, just didn't get going. I did spin £40 up to £250 in an hour on the blackjack tables though which was probably more than I could have hoped for at the poker (getting about 7 perfect pairs really helped)!

Online I played a $33 donkament on Stars on Saturday morning but got bummed by some shit hand or other. I also played then $10 R/A 10k Gtd on Cardoza last night and came 150th from 540 runners (paid 80). That was a bit wild and I did $70 in.

I also played the $5 R/A RTR-MAD league game (www.raisetheriver.com). Only spent $15 on a double buy-in and top up and ended up coming 6th after starting the FT as chip lead for $0. Ran QQ in that fish Amatay's KK then tilted off the rest of my stack the next hand with JQo again to Amatay (who ended up finishing 3rd). I did however have a $10 last longer with BurnleyMik who was the 2nd person out...and I took him out! Result. Special mention to BurnleyMik as well as he must have donated at least half of the prize pool himself. I love rebuys. It's Omaha for next weeks game I think which is a fucker cause I haven't played it that much before. I did accidentally sign up for an Omaha SNG on Betfair once though and ended up winning it so you never know.

My poker league seems to have generated some interest (thanks Facebook) so I'm looking forward to that next month. Might be oversubscribed as we can only seat about 16 players, but better that than not getting enough.

I'm feeling properly fooked right now. My weight loss drive officially starts today (have to lose 22lbs by June 8th or I owe my gf a laptop) so I got into work for 7:45 to use the gym. I was fucked by quarter past 8 after some legging it on the treadmill and looking a dick on the bike. Lifted some weights to make me feel proper hard, but quickly found out that I'm not and went for a sick in the bin. Also, I was having a shower afterwards and a female cleaner just marched in and started mopping the changing rooms. Pervy old hag.

Jesus, this is a tl;dr post! As you can tell I am very busy at work today. Healthy breakfast time, but I could murder a bacon buttie ffs.

Monday Night League

2009-01-14T10:40:00.003Z

Cheered up a bit after the last post thankfully! Got a few things going on now which I'm quite looking forward to.

After taking a 1st and 2nd on Monday night at the Oxford donkfest for a MASSIVE £25 profit I decided it might be a laugh to start a weekly league. Full details are on the poster (click for bigger image). I ripped the points system off from the AWOP Virgin League (thanks!) and extended it to 15 weeks. There's a nice little engraved trophy for the winner - me obviously- and a medal for the runner-up as well as cash prizes from the league pot. Should be a good laugh and hopefully get a few more punters into my mates pub on a quiet Monday night.

I've got a home game at mine a week on Friday which is looking oversubscribed. This is long overdue and we used to have a top laugh doing these last year. It's only a 10p / 20p cash games but they get so mental that £60+ pots aren't uncommon and a couple of us have had £100+ profit / loss nights at these (max £20 sitdown lol).

Ever taken a bet and though 'ah shit' as soon as you thought it through properly? I've just had this feeling. With it being New Year and time for resolutions and all that tripe, I took a bet with my girlfriend that I can lose just over 1.5 stone by my birthday (June 8th). If I can't, I owe her a laptop. Now you may be thinking....piece of piss in 6 months....however I'm a lazy fucker with a terrible diet. My job involves me sitting at a desk all day so I don't get any exercise that way and I'm the one of the least motivated people I know....well I get motivated (like now) then I will quickly lose enthusiasm when I realise something is hard work. The flip side to this is I fucking hate losing and I'm not about to lose £300 to £400 on something like this. It'll be interesting to see which side wins through.

I'm willing to take outside action on myself at 2:1 if anyone is interested. I'm currently 13st 4lbs and the target is 11st 10lbs (22lbs maths fans). I'll video my weigh-ins to ensure it's all above board - leave me a comment or email me nocashpoker@gmail.com before Monday 19th Jan if you are interested. Gym sessions start on Monday morning at the work gym - well that's the plan anyway.

Pool went really well last night and I actually won my game!!! Get in! We also won the match with a great display against the joint league leaders, which puts us at least joint 2nd in the league and maybe joint top if the other leaders lost again. I think the problem is with my cue (yeah, yeah). I've not actually won a match with it - I used Wardy's cue for the first time last night and I go and win. My tip is a bit too fine and flat I think. The smaller surface area creates more spin than I want and makes power difficult to judge. That's my excuse anyway...and don't actually know anything about cue tips or spin mechanics but it sounds good.

Er, better end on something poker related....

nah bollocks to it.

Back to Basics

2009-01-12T09:06:00.004Z

I'm officially shit at poker. Well pretty shit. Just not getting anywhere at the moment in cash, sit n gays or MTTs. My best result since beginning of December is 1st in a 30 man $5 SNG. I didn't get anywhere in the APAT event (got done by a fish with a well hidden turned straight against my overpair - standard for me atm). Failed miserably in the RTR-MAD $5 donkament as well.

My plan now is just to sit in 10NL and 20NL 6-Max tables, get some hands in and not play a donkamanet over $10 and just grind away for a bit. If I can get a few results in these games then maybe I can get a bit of confidence back. If I don't see an improvement by the end of the month then February is going to be my first poker-free month in ages.

Full Tilt are doing my fucking head in at the moment as well. They suspended my account when I tried to send over to money to Kev Stevens for a HUP stake. I have sent them all the details they requested (drivers license, bank card and statement showing FT transaction) and they mailed back saying the statement doesn't show the FT transaction. It shows on my statement as 'SIMPLYSELL.NET', but that's the only $120 outgoing I have on my account pretty much ever so it must be the FT transaction and the cash went into my FT account before they suspended it. Now I can't even login to the account at all whereas I could before. If they nick that money off me I'm off to burn their offices down. Bunch of bell-ends.

As if things couldn't get any worse, I got beat by a withered old zombie in the pool league last week (luckily the team still won). This guy looked about 120 years old, couldn't walk properly, hold the cue or even see. He fouled his first shot and then decided to use a yellow as the cue ball a few shots later....AND I STILL LOST!!!!! Fuck me, I just wanted the ground to swallow me up...it was that bad. I put it down to the pressure of trying my best not to laugh at the poor fella and the fact that I thought it was just too easy to win. FML!

Just reading back through this post and it's depressing. Can you tell I've been off the beer for a week?

Slow Start

2009-01-06T08:44:00.004Z

Not had the best of starts to the year poker-wise, but by no means the worst. Played 5 or 6 MTTs on Stars and iPoker and got nowhere. Some particularly bad luck on Stars, but that's variance at low volumes for you. No point worrying about that. Also played a fair few $10 SNGs on iPoker and really getting back into them now, but balanced out those winnings with a bit of a cash loss. Nothing major, only a few $$ down though so not too bothered yet.

I'm looking forward to getting involved in APAT Season 3 (www.apat.com) online events. 1st one is this Saturday. The only APAT event I've played before was the Forum Challenge last year which was very well run and was a good laugh....but I played shite. Looks like a good season though at a decent price so I expect to play most of the online games, time permitting.

I've staked Kev Stevens (www.flipyouforit.blogspot.com) $120 for a HUP challenge...well..I will do as soon as Full Tilt unblock my account!. You can read about it on his blog, but the results for his current challenge are looking pretty impressive and I have every confidence that he can get us a nice return - no pressure Kev! Seriously though, his current results speak for themselves and he has a solid winrate over 750+ games (16% ROI....shippit!) and even if it goes wrong it's not an earth shattering amount of coin to lose. This is my first proper venture into staking and hopefully the first of many.....I reckon there's a lot to be made for minimal effort if you can back the right horses. Maybe someone will be stupid enough to stake me one day! (Stars Sunday Warm Up anyone?...lol)

After the excesses of the festive period (16 hr sessions are not a good idea) I've decided to give up drinking for a month at least. I have probably averaged at least one night out a week, maybe more, since I was 18 so it's time to cut it down a bit. I'm not in the best shape to say the least so might be time to start looking after myself more. Being constantly tired we little motivation for anything is starting to get me down! I suppose everyone feels like this is some way over new year, but I really need to sort myself out so there's no time like the present.

Pool league starts again tonight and we are just coming off the back of two narrow losses so we need to put in a decent performance tonight. We did win our cup game though so are through to the next round to be played next month.

Still running the Oxford Pub poker night on a Monday, but I'm finding it difficult to get enthusiastic about a £5 game and dealing all night round a cramped table. Now I'm not drinking I'm doing it for free as well! Might have to have a word about that.

Laters

2009...CBA

2009-01-02T09:38:00.005Z

Apologies...I've had to change my template again as the other one went for a burton.

I didn't play much poker at all over Xmas mainly due to not being arsed and being quite pissed a lot of the time. Did play a couple of MTTs (about $20 each) but no major results. Played a bit of live cash again the other night though and that was profitable.

Lost a bit of enthusiasm for the game recently. Signed up for a couple of tournys the other night, but unregistered a few minutes later as I knew I couldn't be arsed and it would be a waste of money. Dunno...played a lot in 2008 for a pretty much break-even year and not sure I want to commit that much time for so little return....having said that I do have a couple of things planned..

Season 3 of APAT has been announced and I like the look of the online events. I also have a ticket for the Virgin Festival in April which is always a laugh. I'm supposed to be playing for Team AWOP in the Newcastle Team Event in February, but I don't think I can get the time off work for it so might be giving that a miss.

Probably just need a few results to get me interested again...who knows?? Over the last 12 months my game has improved massively on the technical side, but still not quite there with the mental aspect (hence this post). Maybe focussing on quality rather than quantity should be the way forward. I intend to track every penny of poker profit/loss this year so I can make an accurate evalutation of my performance.

Hopefully the next post will be a nice result!

Fail

2008-12-18T11:39:00.002Z

Played the AWOP Silver sat last night and failed miserably. My bluff frequency got the better of me and I went out in about 6th place. TBH though I just knew my A-game wasn't coming last night, but it was a freebie so no big deal.

Didn't attempt to take on any cash games or anything else after that and ended up watching a few eps of Desperate Housewives with Kel before bed (shut up...it's a good show).

I haven't played any of the WBCOOP qualifiers yet. A lot of other UK bloggers have already got a ticket to the final so it must be easy for a man of my talents :-). I can play tonight, but I'm being tempted with free champagne and curry at my mates pub as well as the lure of an impromtu Thursday night beer session in town. My main worry with this is driving to work tomorrow morning because the filth are out in force at the moment. I can't play the 8-Game tomorrow as my mate Wardy is DJing at one of Blackpool busiest (worst) night clubs. That leaves Saturday...not sure what my plans are for then.

After writing that, I probably will play tonight. There's a bit of value there and it's not costing me anything. Hmmmmm decisions.

Live Cash Shippage

2008-12-15T09:53:00.006Z

I played the AWOP Xmas party at The G in Blackpool this weekend and it was an excellent laugh. Good to catch up as well as meet new people.

The tourny was a £40 F/O (+ £10 to charity). Was actually running okay with a 20k stack by level 4 (6k starting). I knocked out PsycoDave when he shoved blind (for a laugh). I called with AJ, got another caller with A8s. Dave flipped over KK!...Hit my two outer on the turn though and dodged the other players flush draw. Dave also had a £50 bounty on his head which I took along with an AWOP mug which I lost somewhere (gave £20 back for charity though). It all came unstuck though about an hour and several beers later when I bluffed 10 5 off into AKs on a King high board...lol.

I played some cash afterwards and the drink was flowing freely. I was playing £1/£1 NLH and walked away with £1700+ profit after about 5 / 6 hours. Not bad for a little donk like me!

Also playing on my table was 'The Mole' - a 20kNL cash pro who plays on Virgin. He was fairly pissed and donated a lot my way (he sat down with £1K but that's peanuts to him), but I wouldn't like to play him when he's taking it seriously. He was very talkative and was getting on everyones tits I think, but I found it really funny. Had a great laugh with him and his mates though and he officially inducted me into the 'Glenfiddich Gang'. Other players (that I can remember) on my table were AWOP members Kev B, BigbadKen and Gnashers.

Shipped £200 of my winnings to my newest reader...my missus, Kelly! Aren't I just the bollocks of a boyfriend? Gonna buy myself something nice and put a little bit of it online and see if I can run up another roll.

This week is the start of the Blogger tourny on Stars so I will probably play a couple of the qualifiers. I've also got the AWOP VIP Silver sat on Wednesday....it'd be nice to win another of those.

Final Layout

2008-12-12T17:57:00.001Z

I'm keeping it like this now. No more emo shit for me....

New Layout

2008-12-12T12:01:00.005Z

Decided to muck about with some new layouts for this blog. This one is a bit ghey EMO, but I think it looks alright. Please post any thoughts.....and I know white on black makes some people's eyes bleed but as a proportion of the population they can't be that high and as I only have about 3 regular readers including me, I thought it wouldn't matter too much...

EDIT: Please bear with me....things may go a bit weird on here whilst I find a template that I like.

6-Max Cash Donk

2008-12-08T11:23:00.007Z

Started my little experiment 4 tabling 50NL 6-Max, tracking my results in Holdem Manager and trying to get a decent enough sample size to plug leaks. Well, I deffo have some leaks (think Titanic).

It started off really up and down and the theme continued. After 4k hands, from a peak of being up 3 buy-ins I'm now down 4....mainly due to a bad tilt session where I pissed myself off by bluffing into the bollocks out of position with shit all and never looked back. Had about £120 left in my Betfred account so I played some Blackjack (my all time nemesis) while super tilted and spunked that off in about 4 minutes.

Once I'd calmed down a bit a took a look over my positional stats in HEM and found I was losing way too much from the blinds and EP, whereas I was very profitable from mid, c/o and button positions. I'd expected some loss from EP, but my figures were ridiculous. Obviously I'm playing too many hands OOP so when I return it's something I'll look into. My VPIP is a little high too, but hopefully with adjustments to my early position play, this should come into line. One thing I will mention though....I really enjoyed myself, which to be honest, I haven't been doing lately live or online.

Went to Edinburgh this weekend with the missus and had a really good time. It's a really nice city, but I think there are more jocks in Blackpool than Edinburgh. Did some touristy shite and loads of xmas shopping. Evenings consisted of visiting The Stand comedy club (which was surprisingly good) and getting pissed with the sweaty socks. Spent a bucket of cash though so any decent volume of poker is off the cards (see what I did there!) for a little bit. I have an AWOP VIP silver satellite to play on 17th. If by some miracle of Jesus H. Christ (don't be a cunt...it's nearly your birthday) I should manage to win another of these, I'd seriously consider playing the Edinburgh GCBPT.

Already paid in for the AWOP xmas bash along with Mackenzie which should be good. Toying with the idea of playing it seriously and not getting pissed, but I cant see that happening.

Laters

Stars Blogger Tourny

2008-12-04T22:30:00.002Z

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

All bloggers can play in this exclusive online poker tournament.

Registration code: 673891

Excuses

2008-12-02T09:31:00.021Z

Went to the G for the £100 F/O. Nothing much happened really. Was down to 1700 at one point in the 200/400 level. Managed to 5x up though when I shoved with AQ and everyone else missed! Lasted until about level 10 then shipped it with Ad10d on an A5K7 board (2 diamonds). Dinked the 10 on the river, but chip leader woman (who couldn't miss a fucking flop all night) had AK.

Excuses (pick any/all of the following):

Hungover.......out the previous until 4.30am.
Hungry.........the buffet was fucking soup! Had a bag of crisps instead.
Parking tilt...car park was rammed. Had to pay £7 for public parking.
Shit band......fucking shite cover band with a woman singer who couldn't sing. She was showing off a lot of side-boob though so credit for that.

I was supposed to be going to AWOP cash game tonight but can't make it now. Probably saved me a few hundred ££'s. Sacked off ECOOP. Can't really be arsed with tournys at the minute, although I just shelled out 50 notes for the AWOP xmas do.

I was off work yesterday afternoon so finally got round to getting Holdem Manger up and running. I actually bought the full version and it's a great piece of software. I've managed to get to grips with it now and have started looking at some of it's advanced features. It's a lot easier to use the Poker Tracker imo. I particularly like the 3 and 4 bet stats.

It took me a good few hours getting my HUD setup properly as it's a bit of a pain in the arse with iPoker mini-view tables but it's working now and I'm starting to use the live stats effectively. Just 4-tabling $50NL at the minute.

Moved over to Betfred as I have an great rakeback deal as well as a bonus to clear (Diamond VIP so shouldn't take too long). Only problem with Betfred is the table skin and sounds. The table skin is disgusting....it looks like the 80's came in and vomited on the screen. Sounds are easily switched off, but the table skin is a bit trickier. I've bought a piece of software called ipskinner to change various aspects of the table layout including backgrounds, table shapes, card backs chips etc. Was about £13 (not got my license through yet though) but you can get a workable version for free.

Another bit of software I'm using is SpadeIT's Eyepoker. It's used to help with automatic table selection and data mining. I'm only using the data mining aspect off it at the moment. Left it running overnight and got a ton of info on the iPoker fish which it automatically adds to my HEM database. Good shit.

Just got my DeucesCracked.com account sorted as well and have been watching some of the 50NL vids on there. Some excellent stuff but don't think I'm going to be stumping up $30 a month for it....Ill just try to download as much as possible before Thursday when my free trial runs out.

Off up to Edinburgh with the missus this weekend for a short break so no poker shit for me. I bet it's going to be fookin freezing.

POOL League Update
Another great win for the Oxford against a very strong looking team. I played shit in my game though. Excuse: New cue.

Football Update
Liverpool back to the top of the league! Get in.

Pre-Christmas Update

2008-11-25T12:59:00.004Z

Gonna do the £100 F/O at The G in Blackpool this weekend. Hoping for +100 runners. Usually a good comp this (despite the sicko beats I've had the last few times), but I think it would be better if they introduced running antes.

I'm off the the AWOP mansion next Tuesday for the £100 NLH cash game. Shan't be spunking off more that £200 though...my live cash experience is limited to home games (profit) and drunken Saturday nights at The G (loss). It's probably -EV but, fuck it. I love a gamble.

Still planning to play at least 2 ECOOP events, but not had any time to play Sats. A straight buy-in might be on the cards, but need to watch the funds with Xmas round the corner.

The Oxford Pub poker night that I run is getting better. 11 runners last night. The banter is pretty good. Last night topic of conversation was the filthiest porn you could get hold of. I get paid in Beer which is a nice bonus.
It's 7.45pm every Monday - £5 F/O. Donktastic, but worth a fiver just to see the shit people shove with (me included)! Not to mention hearing about every one's weekend exploits and Mackenzie's fucked up taste in porno.

Week 2 of the pool league tonight at home against Pickwick Tavern (shit hole). Got myself a new cue. '57", Black with a rubber grip' was the description on ebay...thought I was looking in the wrong section for a minute (although it did give me an idea for a Christmas present for the missus). Carried over my beers from last night's poker as well so should get comfortably drunk. Get in.

Update next week with my tales of wins and losses. Or just losses.

Dig that one out!!

2008-11-19T09:07:00.012Z

Looks like this will be my first non-poker related post....and I'm gonna try and keep is short as the last few have been a bit war and peace.

The pool league started last night and I'm playing for The Oxford pub. Our first game was a bit daunting as we drew Rileys away! I've not played in a league before and wasn't too familiar with 'world rules'. Anyways our captain elects to play our 'best' players first and they manage to win one game out of five, putting us 4-1 down.

Shitter....not a good start. If they hit 5, they win and take the 3 points.

...just to add, our opponents look like a group of inbreds. Loads of dodgy facial hair, crap shirts, lisps and sister bothering. Wardy said when he first saw them, "8 people, 1 tooth". That wasn't an exaggeration.

Anyways, no pressure then as Wardy took to the table. 3 of us left to play and all of us having to win. Ward was against a fat middle aged woman who was really shit. Wardy duly destroyed her and was unlucky not to get the 7 ball.

Next up was me against this weird boy/girl/cat hybrid thing. Got off to a fairly decent start but committed a few fouls and missed a few sitters (I was about 5 pints in by this time though). Got back into it though and a nicely played, pressure 3 ball clearance at the end put us right back into the game.

Austin was up next and he hadn't been playing well over the weekend and carried his poor form over into this match (against a girl that can only be described as a Goblin). She nearly potted the black which left if over the pocket for the rest of the game and when she rolled her last yellow over the opposite pocket with Aus' last red tightly on the bottom cushion, it looked all over....but no. Aus manned up an went for the spectacular long double and managed to pull it off. Black was a formality and it was back to 4-4!

The match was then to be decided by doubles. Best of 3 frames. 1st one was over in 3 visits thanks to some good potting by Mr Ward. 2nd one was class. One of their players who had won their game decided to start heckling and generally being a twatbag. After a decent shot by one of the banjo players he decided to shout "Dig that one out!". We went on to win the game and the match in the next few visits....shouting "Dig that one out" after every pot. From 4-1 down to win 6-4 was pretty fucking sweet, especially with the cocky arsehole heckler. Went off back to the Oxford for a few pints and a bad head this morning. And to think I nearly fucked it off cause I couldn't be arsed!!

Next four matches are at home. Bring it on!

AWOP's Weebrick ships Blackpool GUKPT!

2008-11-17T10:30:00.006Z

Just want to say congratulations to Brian 'Weebrick' Clarke - a fellow member of AWOP - for taking down the Blackpool leg of the GUKPT. He was down to 4k in the mid stages of the tournament (Qs done by 7s) and managed to grind it back up to make the final. He was short stacked throughout the final table and through a mixture of excellent play and some good fortune, managed to win it. When he got HU with Zach Ford (GCBPT Liverpool Winner) and the chips became level, they chopped it for £75,000 each and played of for the bit that was left and the Champion of Champions seat.

Brian is also a genuinely nice fella and good player. What makes this victory even sweeter is the fact that he was free-rolling in this event as he won his seat through an AWOP VIP Club satellite (in which he took most of my chips!). Well done fella.

I visited Blackpool G myself on the Friday night and the GUKPT was in full swing and the card room atmosphere was great. I used the last bit of my Virgin sponsorship fund to play in the £100 F/O support event. It was capped at 5 tables (due to GUKPT) and had 77 alternates! Eventually ended up with 66 runners in total.

I played very tight for the first two levels (saw two flops in the first hour)...but that was mainly due to be really card dead. Only player I recognised on my table was Graham Morl who I believe is an APAT champion. I've played against him before and he's pretty solid so tried no to get too involved. Only other player of note was a guy (local I think as I'm sure I've seen him before) who was convinced I raised on each of his big blinds (this happens a lot to me) even though I had only done it once before!! It's good when this happens because when you do get a hand and pop it up you get no respect and can take down some nice pots. The guy was a laugh though and thought it was funny that we are both called Dave (lol...uncommon name then?)

It still amazes me how little attention some people pay to how others are playing. After not playing a hand for about an hour, I found KK in late pos. Raised it up a decent amount and got three callers! Cheers for the respect boys! Took it down uncontested after betting out a J high flop.

Few hands of note that help me build my stack:
Busted a short stack's AA with KJ. K on flop and turn with jack on river! Dirty (Karma got me back later - see below).
Catching 2 pair on turn with A6 against a guy who has flopped 2 pair with 64.
Getting a few medium sized pots with QQ , KK, AK etc.

After this I was going along nicely staying roughly 5K above average. With about 30 runners left I made my first real mistake which I couldn't recover from.
I raised from the C/O to 2800 (with blinds at 600 / 1200) with AA. Button called and everyone else folds.
Flop is Q 4 7 rainbow. I bet out 2400 and get a call. My first thinking here is maybe something like JJ, KQ or AQ at best...all easily within his range. I couldn't see him not reraising pre with QQ to define his hand and with two players left to act I'm sure he wouldn't be letting them see the flop cheap with the worry of As and Ks hitting. Turn is a 7.
I have to find out where I am with another bet so stick in another 2400. Again he flat calls and alarm bells start ringing. I still can't put him on QQ but A7 or 44 is my next best guess and would fit the betting pattern. He was only really showing down decent holdings previously but with such a small PFR by me he may have come along hoping to get lucky and could also explain the flop call. Also 77 crosses my mind but odds are against it with two on the board. I've not totally discounted AQ, but again I think he would have reraised the flop. River is a 2.
I check the river pretty certain I'm beat (due to the number of hands that beat my measly one pair) but he prices me in with a value bet of 2.5k into a 17k pot. I make the call and he shows me 44 for the boat.

I think I played the hand fairly bad pre-flop altough I was unlucky. There are arguments for a bigger PFR with 3 people behind. 1) is to make it look like a steal and get the blinds calling or reraising me and 2) not to telegraph the fact that I have a monster. Having said that, if I do raise more, I'm not sure I get the call from the 44 and get no action for my Aces.

Looking back on the hand I should possibly just check / call the turn or even check / fold if it's a large bet. Check on the river was fine and the value bet was good play by oppo as he forced the call with the odds I was getting. Gonna post this on a few forums and see what response I get. Probably get torn a new arsehole but I'm here to learn.

Few hands after that I'm down to 12 BBs and push from MP with 77. Run into aces (obviously) and it's home time for me.

If the G has returned to it's normal schedule I'll be down there Saturday afternoon for the £15 +1x £15 RB/A.

Laters

Cashed - Stars $109 rb/a $70k Guaranteed

2008-11-13T09:07:00.007Z

Decided to have a pop at one of these last night and had a fairly deep run. 23rd from 233 with no rebuy or add-on!

I never intended to rebuy so was playing as a freezeout and ditched my usual LAG style and got back to basics with TAG. Despite numerous distractions during the rebuy period, namely my mum coming round with my neice and nephew and wanting me to fix her laptop, I still managed to get to the end of the rb period about 20th in chips.

I think I played the most solid tournament I have ever played (up until the mistake that ruined me...more on that later) and showed a hell of a lot of discipline (which is odd for me). I even kept tilt at bay the odd time I did get outdrawn. By the end of the tournament a had a VPIP of 19% which, in contrast to my usual LAG 30% - 36%, shows a pretty radical chance of style.

Went card dead after the 2nd break but managed to pick my spots and bluffed a few key pots. For once in my life I had a solid table image and was afforded tons of respect, which I used to good effect bluffing a 25BB pot with 8h9h and an AJT (1h) board to put me in the top 10 in chips approaching the bubble.

Bubble lasted about 30mins with 6 or 7 ppl with less than 20BBs. I was in about 7th place when the bubble broke, but had both 1st and 2nd in chips on my table who were trying to dominate (I looked them up during the break and they were both seasoned online MTT pros). Kept out of their way and was plodding along nicely when disaster struck....

Now for the life of me, I don't know why I did this and it kept me up a bit last night thinking about it. Approaching the 2nd cash bubble, it was folded round to me in MP with A5off. Earlier in the night I'd been dropping trash like this without a second thought, but I decided to try to take advantage of my tight image and steal the blinds with a raise to 5 k....(blinds at 800/1600/150)

I had about 52k at this point. Player directly to my left re-pops to 11kk with about 12k behind so clearly he's not folding. Now this is the weird bit. Instead of folding, I re-raised all-in. WTF!! My brain was screaming fold, but my chubby little fingers had their own ideas.

I knew as I was doing it that it was wrong, but my hands got there before my brain. What a dick end. Anyways he calls and turns AQ (something I wouldn't have risked my tourny life with against a tight player, but I'm just trying to make excuses for my shite play here!) and he flops both the Ace and the Queen. Fk my life.

I'm now left with under 30k and a few jaunts through the blinds leaves etc leaves me struggling on about 24k with blinds at 1000/2000. I finally pick up AQs and get it in against our resident chip leader who shows 10 10. I don't improve and fail to take down the pot that would have put me back in the game.

I really feel like I was playing good, disciplined poker and if not for losing my concentration at a key moment think I could have made the final. 1st prize was nearly $17k which would have made one hell of a Christmas, but alas I have to make do with $765......bugger. Gives me some hope though and I'll deffo play one of these again.

Just as an aside...the guy on my starting table must have had 10 rebuys. 1st hand after the rebuy period ended I bust him....myself and the rest of the table lol'd hard at that...poor chap.

Poker for the Festive Period

2008-11-06T08:48:00.004Z

Since donating most of my roll to the Stars fish, I don't have much to play with over the festive period. With Christmas fast approaching and a recent purchase of some new musical equipment, for the most part poker is going for a burton probably until the end of January.

I do, however, still have €160-odd left in my Virgin sponsorship fund for live events (part of the AWOP VIP Club package) so I will be playing the £100 F/O on 14th November at Blackpool G. I played one of these a few months back and it was was a really good comp....eventually went out with AA v QQ that made a flush after I hit my Ace...pfffft. With it being the Blackpool leg of the GUKPT, there should be plenty of runners although it may be heavily capped as I think the 14th is day 1b of the main event.

Only other things planned are the AWOP Xmas party which is a £40 F/O (but I'll be hammered so don't expect much from that) and to play in a few ECOOP events on iPoker....depends on funds and / or if I get chance to play some sats.

Laters

STT Challenge Update:

2008-11-03T14:52:00.003Z

Ok I don't have a graph to show you as I don't have the correct version of office on my home laptop. Anyway, I jizzed off about half the BR in one session. I went 11 straight games without an ITM finish. Not going into bad beats but I had it in with the best of it at least 8 times...I proceeded to win most of it back playing cash, but then lost it after going on tilt after another bad STT run. Maybe I shouldn't be playing such a high variance brand of poker when I'm still so prone to tilt....

Speaking of tilt....it's an odd thing. I rarely tilt playing live...well I do a bit, but only usually for brief periods and it's not half as destructive as it has been for me online. I also suffer from positive tilt where I go chasing a big win after just having one...again only online. I realise I'm doing it and I recognise it as probably the weakest aspect of my game, along with bank roll management....although I believe these two issues are not mutually exclusive.

At least I've found my next topic of reading to improve my game...any article or book suggestions welcome.....

I've withdrawn the bit of money I have left for now as I'm giving online a rest for a bit (which usually helps with the results)....when I like poker again I'll probably stick some time in on the live Sats and might play some of the ECOOP events on iPoker. Just don't have the spare time to commit to a big BR building session at the moment...I should have realised this before spunking off a fair wedge of profit.

Probably get some live in this week sometime....Saturday hopefully.

STT Challenge

2008-10-28T15:22:00.008Z

I've made myself a little 6-Max STT tracker in Excel to chart my progress. There isn't much choice in the way off STTs on Stars which is why I've been playing 3 or 4 different levels. I'm probably going to shift my roll over to iPoker as I've got a good rake back deal sorted with Betfred.

Did two sets of 3 and a set of 2 this morning and got off to a shocker, but I've now made a comfortable profit for the afternoon. I'll probably post updates on this every 20 or 30 games. My first target is to be in profit after 100 games. I'll then set a new goal...I've already survived my first downswing..lol.

Finding my time for poker a lot more limited than I'd like at the moment as I run a poker night on a Monday, play for a pool team on a Tuesday and do band practice on a Sunday. Between being a world class boyfriend and going out on the piss I don't have that much time left. I'm limited to sneaking a few games in when I'm at work at the moment. Weekend days are difficult as I don't want to play drunk or hungover....I'll work something out though. BR is currently standing at $1236.80

GCBPT Teesside Report and Online Update

2008-10-27T10:34:00.024Z

As promised, I thought I'd give a little report on what I got up to in Teesside at the weekend...

I Set off from Blackpool at about 10.30am and had a straight run through with little traffic. Arriving into Stockton, I couldn't help but notice that it was an absolute shit hole. No offence to anyone who lives there (Blackpool is also a dustbin) but 'kin 'el. I only really saw the industrial estate and retail parks I travelled between, but I was informed that it doesn't get much better.

Arrived at the 'hotel', Teesside Metro Inn, at about 1pm and checked in. I suppose you get what you pay for (£25 a night) as it had a shared toilet and shower. The room was about 13' x 8' and had a bunk bed, a small sink in the corner (with complimentary ants) and a 14" telly with an indoor aerial and no remote control (but it was colour!!).

There was a sign under a light on the toilet door than said 'When light is on, toilet is in self-cleaning mode'. Self-cleaning toilets?? Fuck that. It looked like a portaloo and had no bog seat so I wasn't using that. I baked my shits for the casino (and one in KFC on Sunday morning...finger licking good) and pissed in the sink in my room.

Later in the day I got chatting to one of the dealers and mentioned where I was staying...he took a lot of pleasure in telling me that it was basically a brothel and if I wanted any sleep my car would be a better option. Great.

My bunk bed and sink / toilet combo

Day 1

It's properly cramped in the card room and I'm drawn on table 2 seat 9. I hate seat 1 and seat 9 as I like to be able to see everyone fully, but in these seats the dealer is in the way. Anyway, I've had two pints the limit I set myself (and also the optimum amount of alcohol to play poker or pool) and get to work.

I have a pretty poor start trying to see cheap flops in position with mediocre holdings, only to be raised by the blinds and calling anyway. I end up jizzing about half my 10k stack with donk shit like this, but with 10 mins before the 1st break I pick up KQ in the cut-off and call an EP raise. One of the blinds flats it and we take a flop of K J 10. Blind checks, EP checks and I raise 1 k leaving me with about 3k behind. Blind flats it and EP thinks then folds. At this point I'm concerned that he's calling with a monster here as he knows whatever the next card is I'm going to shove so he's clearly playing for my stack. I send prayers for an A or a 9 and they are answered when a most beautiful Ah lands on the turn. He bets out 1k and I give it a bit of a think then shove the rest of my stack over the line. He thinks for ages before finally calling (which only leaves him with about 6k behind). I flip over the nuts and he tables KK for a set.....unlucky kentucky. River is a blank and I'm back in the room with over 10k.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about every big hand as it's boring and takes ages to type so I'll just gloss over the key ones.

I was up and down all day making some good reads (and one great one) and some pussy laydowns and bad bluffs.

A10 v AK trying to knock out a short stack...nope down from 18k to 14k

22 v KJ against a medium stack. She was pissing me off raising my blind out of position so I put her to the test.....and won. Up to about 23k.

A3 v ?A then two hands later 77 v AQ. Against the same fella, he kept raising 3.5k with weak holdings. He did it on my button so I shoved A3 suited as I was confident he was at it. He thought a while and folded. Few hands later he made the same move so I shoved again with my pair hoping for a call with overs (I'd not lost a race all day so I was happy to go for it). He called with AQ and didn't improve...laters!

AA v K6 the one and only time I saw bullets this weekend. Caught a guy with his fingers firmly in the till and got a big double up to nearly 39k. Not long later he shoved his last few thou in on my BB when I had JJ. Got even more value with a 2nd caller who I promptly chased out of the pot with a big bet on a 9 high flop.

From here I went steady to and was on about 58k going into the last hour when Dave Colclough comes to my table along with the current chip leader.

77 v KJ I 3-bet Colclough preflop with 77 which he calls. Flop is K-7-x. I check, he shoves, I call, he walks after river pops out another K to give me the boat. OYP Colclough. Glad to get rid of him though as he is a dangerous player. This put me just shy of 100k!

Watch a video of Colclough getting NoCash'd here.

Just decide to wait out the level and keep away from the chip leader (who is on about 130k). But I just can't help but gamble and end up spluffing about 18k in the last 15 minutes. I'm coming back to day 2 with 79300 (average is 42k) and 4th in chips. Good day.

Day 2

I was pretty relaxed and feeling fairly confident going into day 2 4th in chips. When I got back to my flea pit I spent a bit of time going over the days play in my head. I concluded that I was maybe getting bullied out of too many pots and was not being aggressive enough.

I knew there were a lot of below average stacks coming back for day 2 so my plan was to get involved as much as possible with them, even in race situations. My pre-match interview is here. Unfortunately this was to be my undoing and I didn't last much longer than the 1st level as the following happened...

66 into AA

AQ into AK

77 into KK (on a blind steal from the button, BB had KK...FFS!!)

and finally....33 into 44 with 10xBB left.

I couldn't even buy a suck out. So gay.

In retrospect I could have sat tight and waited for better spots and got away from most of those hands, but that wasn't my game plan. I think it showed a lack of expericence in a couple of areas of my live game as I haven't played many 2 day events (this was the 1st time I've made a day 2)......this was summed up by something one of the players on my table made to me after Day 1.

He asked what sort of games I play online and I said mostly 6-max cash and SnGs. He said he could tell this due to some of my hand selection and attempts to steal blinds etc. Either he was full of shit or was as astute observer at the table, but either way I think he hit the nail on the head. I think I need more practice at full ring (ring...l0l!)..especially live. Will have to keep going to the weekend comps at The G and do a bit more online.

So to summarise, I think I had a solid day 1 winning all of my races at the right time and hung with the best of 'em. Day 2 I played like a proper donkey and was deservedly back on the good side of the Pennines by 18:30. Disappointing not to have anything to show for 12 hours of poker but I did learn a lot including knowing what it takes to get to the 2nd day of a comp, mentally and physically. Every cloud though...it was a freeroll thanks to AWOP VIP club and I found a tenner on the floor in the smoking area! My costs for the weekend were:

Hotel / ant's nest/ portaloo / brothel (Metro Inn) = £51

Fuel = £20

Food and Drink £10

Found a tenner -£10

So maths fans that's £71 for a few days of decent poker. I would have spent double that if I stayed in Blackpool and gone out on the piss.

Online Update

I was speaking last week to DevilMeat (http://www.flipyouforit.blogspot.com/) about focusing on one particular type of poker and setting myself challenges or goals. He is currently running a HUP SnG challenge with certain rules and targets. See his progress on the UKPL boards http://www.ukpokerlife.co.uk/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=46

This is something I was planning to do for myself, not HUP, but probably something with 6-max SnGs. I was not going to set a challenge as such, just a profit target. I was thinking maybe $1000 to start with, with no set time limit, but just keep an update going on here.

BRAG ALERT!! Well last Friday I stuck £20 ($30 odd) into my stars acount and opened a $.25/$.50 cash table. By about 11am it was up to about $100. I then moved and 1/2 stacked a $.50/$1.00 table. About an hour later I'm over $200 so hit a $20 and a $30 SnG and get a 2nd and first respectively. I then do a $30 and a $50 and win both. Think I cashed one or two more after that (can't remember) but my roll is now just over $500...or half way to my target.

Of course the idea of the challenge was to focus on a particualr discipline which I haven't done and I'm also not properly tracking any of my results or employing any bankroll management. I think I'll try to reach the $1k mark 1st then worry about these trivial details :-)

Seriously though, I think I am going to focus and track results just on STTs once I'm properly rolled for $50 games using the 5% rule (so $1000...well, just over including reg fees). I'll probably play in sets of three (not starting a new game until all 3 are finished) which I'm currently comfortable with and will drop down to $30 and $20 if I drop below $600.

I've been playing on Stars as I love the software, but I also have a great rakeback deal on Virgin, although the software and BOSS Media network are pony and I'd have to track reuslts manually (I use Excel for a living though so this isn't much of a problem). I can also get good rakeback deals and deposit bonuses on iPoker (Betfred) and FullTilt.

I happy to bonus whore so if anyone else can recommend any good deals I'd be interested to hear from you.

Tonight: From £500 in Teesside to tonight's £5 game at the Oxford Pub.....lets see if I can ship it and wipe the smile of fat boy Mackenzie's face!

One thing that did cheer me up this weekend

Chelski 0 - 1 Liverpool.....GO ON RED MEN!!!

That's enough for now......laters.