Tournament Poker Blog

On a New Grind Until I Learn More

2011-11-24T18:02:00.002Z

Hey

I am now going to only play turbo style tournaments and the ones that have rebuys in particular because i like to have a deep stack but with a shallow structure and that plays into my style perfectly and i have noticed this is where i have made the most of my money over the years.

I am limiting my grind to this because i need to improve my game in the slower structured tournaments because i have many a leak on them. I am getting increasingly frustrated in them and am just uncomfortable so decided to drop the trouble tournaments completely until i can get to the bottom of all my problems.

From the top my problems lie in:

LACK OF A HUD: This is the box that can appear next to all of the players at your table with the amount of hands you have played with them along with aggression factor and other stats to help build a picture of how you should play against this person. I haven't set one up for myself yet and feel that i am at a disadvantage if i continue to neglect using one.

FULL GRASP OF POKER MATHS: I obviously know a great deal already but i am not 100% on the optimum strategy for what to do with a particular stack in a particular spot with a particular hand, the likelihood of my hand getting there on the flop, if it is clever to go chasing it on the turn and so on and so forth. I have to make sure everything i do is working towards me having the best possible opportunity towards winning the tournament in question.

GRASP OF DIFFERING TOURNAMENT STRUCTURES: What it says on the tin really. Have to know how slow and fast the blinds rise as well as the starting stack and the steepness of the blind increases and to know what strategy i should have on each level with whatever stack i have.

Ultimately i have to be ridiculously comfortable in any grind i play. At the moment i am only like this in the turbo tournaments as i feel i have a good pre flop game. Need to develop my deep stack post flop game however, as i am definitely too tight and i get abused too often. Need to exert my chips a lot more.

So i think it is clever to carry on playing what i am adept at and in the meanwhile learn how to better myself in the games i am less comfortable in. How to do this?

READ AS MUCH FORUM HAND HISTORY MATERIAL AS POSSIBLE

WATCH AS MANY TOURNEY VIDEO TUTORIALS FROM GOOD PLAYERS AS POSSIBLE

HAVE SOME FUN WITH POKER CALCULATOR TO KNOW ABOUT HANDS IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.

That is about it at the moment. I am looking forward to taking responsibility for making my poker game as good as it can be and to stop burying my head in the sand to my problems and to address them and increase profitability in the process. This is the start of the process of me playing as optimally as i could possibly can for the rest of my days.

Only then can i properly gauge if i can make this into a consistent £50k+ a year salary.

East Dulwich hit in Riots.

2011-08-09T02:23:00.000+01:00

Well they hit my hometown tonight, and in true journalistic fashion i just bopped down to have a look at what was going on. They smashed the glass doors to the londis and ransacked the place, apparently not getting away with too much money from behind the till when i asked the bemused worker about what happened. He said around 20 of them rushed in and took all sorts of things. Maybe they did take the money behind the counter and this guy was just trying to hold some pride that he held them off, i don't know.

Beside it is a pharmacy. This was in a much poorer state and hopefully below i can attach some pictures of it. Massive pane of glass had been kicked in, they went in and made a lot of mess and assume that a lot of them went into the drug section at the back where most of the expensive prescription drugs are. When i got there to take pictures apparently the shop was left bare for anyone to walk into for about an hour, but when i got there to take pictures, there were at least 5 police officers there orchestrating workmen who were putting up makeshift windows. Oh how those guys are on to make a lot of money tonight. The police were also pretty casual as i was taking 3 pictures, instantly thought i would be told to f off or that my phone would be taken if i was to record this mess in anyway but if i would have asked one of them to move for a better shot i think they would have!

The third place which was across the road and i didn't get a very good look at was a post office which the bottom half of the doors were caved in through i assume excessive kicking and ramming. What did they think they were honestly going to get in there? It is like a bank with all the safes around the back well guarded, was a complete silly move and i didn't take a closer look as i was actually pissed off that these rioters weren't even thinking properly there. Obviously i know they may not generally be the brightest bunch but this got to me.

On the way home i passed a less saturated spot in terms of shops where there was really a very small chance that any rioters would be interested in looting, but found my local newsagents donning a pretty powerful sign. So much so it did take me aback quite a bit as i took a pic of it. I think the shop closed and a disgruntled regular of the place might have put it on as a big statement to any potential idiots.

I think that the trouble in East Dulwich involved only three incidents as i had a good look around and many bars remained open but would be interested to find out if anything else happened. Anyway the pics are below (hopefully), if you can't see them i had trouble uploading them on here and you are welcome to see them on my twitter @antgaughan

Plans for the weekend.

2011-06-02T15:37:00.002+01:00

Today has been full of procrastination for a 3000 word essay i need to do by tomorrow. I need to do 50 pages worth of reading, plan an essay, locate quotes and formulate my arguments by about 14.00 tomorrow but i am lost in a spell of online episodes of the US office and listening to music. So i am using this as making a clean break from that to get on with things. After i finish this post of course!

I think tomorrow is going to be a poker night for the first time in a while. I did have a day session yesterday that ended in me being a little bit above break even, but i was unlucky in spots so never mind. Tomorrow the emphasis is going to be on confidence building, so i am going to count the bankroll and then play lower than i normally would so that i can experience better results from poorer players just so i can start to feel good about myself again, building up slowly until i start laying down some wondrous plays to nail the biggie tournaments online.

Saturday is my birthday and i have a leicester square get together planned at a weatherspoons then a move on to the clubs around there. Should be a blast especially as a few faces are gonna be there that i haven't seen in a while. The day after is going to be the more formal meet up for lunch with the family and that will end that weekend and another year older.

On monday i start my routine for success. It is going to be to get up in the morning, have breakfast, wait an hour, then go to the gym for an hour, then come back and grind for about 12 hours and do that for 5 days a week but if i am in the mood, for as many days that i can get away with doing just so that i can get my bankroll going and that i can get my confidence up because it has taken a hammering recently with ill prepared grinds and obvious subsequent failures of nights.

So looking forward to the days ahead and hopefully will get into this essay now and hand in something decent tomorrow. Will post up on here again probably on saturday morning after tomorrows grind. Cheers.

Coursework to finish, then hardcore grinding! + Birthday!

2011-06-01T11:12:00.004+01:00

Hello

I need to hand in the last of my courseworks for friday, but then i have to do 3 re-submittals for august which i have to make sure i don't put on the back burner too much because to start up again with two weeks to go i might be cold so i might get all those three done and handed in before the end of June. They make up 23% of my final year grade, so not to be taken lightly at all and with the amount of time i have to do them with only poker as the other pressing issue i should be looking for top grades here to consolidate for some of the not so good grades in the other assessments.

There is the boring stuff out of the way. I feel like i haven't played poker in about 2 years even though it has only been 3 days. I think its because it feels like two years since i put in a well prepared and well played session and that actually happened about 3 weeks ago and because of the ill prep i have been on a tough losing streak. However, i am happy that this fall is really because of my own demise in not being disciplined with sleep or fitness rather than being well prepared but just not being good enough at the tables. This said that means that I am a joke to be a pro poker player now and still take these things for granted. I think it stems from me not having urgent expenditure pressures of bills and rent and what not because i still live with the parents who have me on mates rates. I need to create that pressure so that i am never waning on the concentration front and to feel like i am playing for something rather than for the hell of it.

So I am going to first get back on the winning streak and once i feel i have my routine set, whereby i go gym daily and sort of social hours for the week, i can then think about putting a percentage of money away each week. If i was to set goals in how much i can put away it will give me that fight to play every table as serious as the last and to never give up despite the harshness of the game. That is what is missing, that will to fight to the very end. It will come with better fitness more steady success and a goal to make the money for. My distant goal is to buy a property in cash from my savings, my short term goal might be to put away £2000 a month. That is provisional of course, but hopefully when i am up and running i will get there. I also have to be more careful with my spending because i can be quite ridiculous with the amount of watches i buy and the amount i lose on takeaway food when preparing myself is the healthier and more economical option.

Also i will need to live life a bit more and with the freedoms of no university and just poker i will be doing that, and with that i should be having much more interesting stories to share on here other than the self turmoil battles with myself that can get repetitive and boring! So i will leave you with that. I will be playing again full time and near enough on a daily basis from the 6th June onwards. I would also like to note it is my birthday on saturday the 4th and would like to think i always give you a healthy reminder of when my birthday is through my website name!

Good luck to everyone playing and I hope that you get the luck you deserve. Also I would hope you guys appreciate the daily updating, it's pretty awesome don't ya think?

Shame I go for quantity over quality hey!

cricket + follow me on twitter!

2011-05-31T09:38:00.000+01:00

Just to update you guys on how the cricket is going I got 1-15 from 3 overs of bowling before the rain came in and washed the game out.

I am doing a promo on my Twitter today that if you follow me and put up a run total of what you think I am going to hit today, you get a cash prize. @antgaughan. Have a golden duck, 37 and 87 so far.

Should have just not played this Sunday!

2011-05-30T08:03:00.002+01:00

After promising myself I wouldn't play I am about 1400$ down for the night and went against one of my rules of only playing when fully fit to. I was pretty tired throughout because of my sleeping pattern. If I am going to be honest I haven't had a good session in a while now, always playing when I shouldn't out of boredom. My roll is now close to $10k which is not good. I need to be pushing on but am faltering by not being properly prepared for a grind, but from now on I vow to do something else with my night if I feel groggy/tired instead of lose money.

Like Cos (Greekstein) now I have to treat this lark like a profession, and when I do I see positive results and when I don't I hemorrhage badly. Need to find where I mislaid the jared tender book, read it and start applying some of the philosophies in it.

The one thing I am doing well recently though is going to the gym and actively losing weight. I will have a beach bod for the summer and I hope by the time my hols comes I am a well oiled machine both mentally and physically so I can make a killing on life in general. I know I can, just fucking hard to use the stringent discipline required.

Btw, If you did think of me topless and oiled when I said the above, It's only natural and I advise you give in to your lustful urges.

poker suspended, cricket awaits.

2011-05-29T08:42:00.000+01:00

Playing two days of cricket tour tomorrow. I'm hoping that I open in both and that I get 150 runs. The standard is normally piss poor and I'm good at dispatching woeful bowling from my back foot. On my front foot I am a retard. I'm talking a propa terrible player. I can't generate any power from a forward drive whatsoever and it is frustrating because I have good hand eye coordination and can smash on the back foot but nuthing on the front so I may be paying for some coaching soon and see how good I could get. Already play for Dulwich 4th XI with loads of runs last year but I wouldn't mind knowing where I could be if I wasn't just using one dimension. In the poker front I really haven't been playing because I am trying to sort out my daily routine first without getting bogged down with tables and this has meant for the past two days I have gone to the gym and it was depressing. Never have I been in this bad a shape. There is a hill on the way to the gym I have to walk up to get there and I am panting hard. Can't jog for more than two mins without a walk and I have a huge gut, but I am determined to have a beach this for July/August when I go on a lads hold to Magaluf. Where there has already been side bets on who can what the most birds in the seven days we're there. But I have always been a romantic you see and think that I might fall for the first bird I get with so the bet has been changed to how many times you get it. Who thought chivalry was dead?

Plans for tonight and tomorrow

2011-05-28T10:20:00.000+01:00

Righteo.

I am going to be playing tomorrow night and hope for a winning session for once. Been a while since i have felt one of those.

Now i have my manic i need to play 24 tables right now all the time phase out of me i will resort back down to 16 tables tomorrow and hope i get lucky.

As for tonight i will be watching the game and feel annoyed to say but want Man United to win, mainly because i don't like the hype surrounding the Barca team and i wouldn't mind it if they were given a good hiding and from the looks of things Man united might be one of the best teams in club football to actually do that.

Today i go to the gym for the second day in a row and i am making sure i am making a routine of it. I have been told by Coggy to download a sort of exercise regime from online but with no offence i am going to follow the things i normally do in the gym and it is effective but i just need to keep it up. I firstly go on the cross trainer for 10 mins as a warm up, 10 mins of stretching at the mats, then i do my pilates while i am there for about 15 mins. This looks pretty gay but it don't half work! After that i go on the jogging machine for 15 mins, jogging for 2 mins and resting for one and alternating. After that i go to the leg weight machines, all four of them doing three sets of about 10 on each. I then make my way to the dumbells and blast my pecs, shoulders, biceps and abs. So that about covers every area, i then do a 10 mins continuous slow warm down jog, then make my way to the mats for a stretch down and then hit the showers where i rub my balls and make sure my crack is clean.

Will be posting on twitter tomorrow during the grind with updates of how i am getting on @antgaughan follow me if you haven't already you will be exposed to some awesome mundane tweeting.

24 table setup at the ready!

2011-05-27T08:42:00.002+01:00

I played 24 tables yesterday tiled across 3 monitors. I found that it was definitely bearable for about 30 mins and then i got auto tired because it is so draining on the concentration to be playing at that intensity for so long. So i have decided that getting to 24 tables will eventually be profitable for me, but not at the moment. I really have to hit the gym hard to help with stamina for that sort of mental grind, so for now i will be staying with a 16 table grind whereby i am already sort of in my element. Not flustered by that many tables and find that i am playing my optimum game (whatever that is) across all tables even if i am short handed across a few of them. I actually enjoy playing 6 max's the most tbh and it is my strongest game.

So plan is to play on 16 tables and go gym daily. Then when i find myself improving physically i would assume my mental capacity will be improving also so then i will attempt the incredible and go for 24 tables, but maybe that won't even help and i will have to accepts 18+ isn't going to happen. Meh

Yesterday i was experimenting and my form went out the window dealing with all those tabs. So that might explain the $800-$500 loss, was very unlucky as well anyway not to make a massive profit on the night as i final tabled bubbled two huge tourns but not to be. Looking forward to future grinds as my set up is nearly now epic. Would ideally now needs a more comfortable chair and a modified desk but would get on fine without that.

Good damage prevention

2011-05-10T09:19:00.000+01:00

I lost about $100 yesterday as I was very very tired and therefore completely useless. So I unregistered as fast as I could before the main bunch of tourns came in before 8 and I would like to think now I could become a.master in tilt control from this bit of work.

I was saved by a 5th place in a $8k Gtd for $500 as my only cash btw AK<1010 stopping things there.

Been having big trouble with sleep recently only getting about 6 hours in at a time and am sure its due to the amount of caffeine and lack of exercise, so today onwards I am off fizzy drinks bar special occasions (that doesnt include when I feel like it!) and exercising everyday. I need to take this slow from the beginning because I am a fat bastard atm. So bad that when I break into a run my knees ache afterwards from the unnecessary pressure they are receiving and I am also panting from walking uphill. Ladies form an orderly queue!

So probs just best to lay off crappy foods and get into walking more than buses to lose that bit of excess weight and then when I feel I am fit enough go to the gym. Ahhh swimming is a good idea from the.get go actually.

Not playing tonight as I am playing in a messabout fiver house game with friends that I always like to lose in to keep em sweet. Normally go in with shit, then make a spiel up to them saying how bad their play was and.then sit down and watch telly away from the table. they then think they are superstars beating one of the bestn There is no way I'm spending my spare time grinding fiver games, you can have the money. I just want my sky box on my days off

So right now its brekkie then off for a swim. Will report bak on here if this thread gets lively otherwise I need to start posting on other threads.

Back! Will be regularly posting from now on.

2011-05-09T06:57:00.002+01:00

Hello

I have been mainly blogging on blondepoker.com, under the sub forum of "the rail" under the thread entitled "the diary of an MTT grinder wannabe". So if you would like to talk to me about any of the posts on here, that forum is the place to do it. So here's my first entry for a while....

Round up on the night.

Up $4960.

Won a $2k gtd, a $1.5k gtd, and a $3k gtd. Came 4th in a $2.2k gtd, 10th in a $3.5k gtd. 7th in a $1.5k gtd.

Came second in a $15k gtd as well

cashed in many other tournaments including some biggies that i sattellited into for a nice profit

So i was in dominating form all night. Had a very close call for that second place. AJ beat my 77 all in pre to win it all but i still had a decent stack but i made a mistakeso i didn't win the $2k extra for first.

With the other tourns i was playing relatively flawlessly. Was multitabling 16 at a time through the night with no hassle. I am thinking about buying a desktop so i have the capability to have two external monitors working for me to have 12 tables each on them for 24 tables in total. I hope I would be able to handle that and i think with a bit of practice that will feel the same as playing 16.

Life Roll is up to $13500 and from having but $800 to my name last month its a great achievmant. I said by the end of June i would have a $20k roll. I am hoping now by that time i have a $30k roll. Here is to hoping and to finally let this be the final push into the big bucks and into insuring that i could possibly pay for a house outright in the future. That is the dream.

good day two days ago crap day yesterday

2011-02-25T10:18:00.003Z

Hello

Two days ago i won two tournaments. A 10k gtd and a 5k gtd and some other final tables for a $5.2k up night. Yesterday had me final table bubble three biggies and i am down $700ish for the night. Not too bothered about that though as i am getting deep into the tournies i just need more of that lucky tp propel me forward to getting to the last three and ultimately winning.

Really enjoying the game at the moemnt. I need to be careful to do my uni work too now thought cos that could get easily ignored.

Argh

2011-02-21T04:53:00.000Z

really frustrating night. I got unlucky in a good few tourns and if only i had run better for longer in some spots i could well be financially well off now :(

Anyway that isn't my real concern now, even thought that was a $1000 losing night. My main greivance is that sharskcope has me up for about $12k for the year, but i couldn't honestly tell you where those profits are in reality. It is as iss they have made them up because i would say that i am $8000 short according to my bank account and poker site cashiers. I am going to leave the game for a week just to let all withdrawals get into my bank so i can have a real look at what my financial situation is and then apply a 200 buy ins rule because unfortunately i may not be rolled to be playing as high as i have been anymore. Even though i am a winner in the games.

I guess it is patience though and being able to wait my turn for the spot to crush, so i will have to do that. Plus i have about 5 assignments for uni all due in next month so i really have to get a move on in starting them and poker will only serve as a distraction, so i am going to give it up until all my work is completed. So much easier said than done but i really need to be disciplined to make sure that the three years invested at uni isn't a complete waste and that i hopefully get that 2:1 (it's history i take btw for any of you that care!). So that is that going to come back feeling refreshed after the long break and i will be roaring to crush again.

Big Sunday Grind!

2011-02-20T16:51:00.000Z

Im playing 21 tournaments across the euro biggies today probably a $3000 grind tonight. Bring on the huge binks! Gl to everyone else!

Going to put up a review on monday night. I hope i win something massive!

End of month review

2011-01-30T20:50:00.003Z

Hello

I wont be playing another day of this month and i don't think i will be playing much of february as i thought i best get my last ever education assessments out of the way early and then enjoy the rest of the year as a potential poker pro, until the money dries out!

Got a graph up of my month and i think it reads i am up in the region of about $9k which is lovely. One site in particular i killed on and another where i got killed and still haven't got the measure of it. If i eventually do sometime in the next two months it would be one of the biggest accomplishments of my poker career. Seriously! It has been plaguing me for years now this site and to start a run up on there would be awesome.

I am thinking about playing live this month instead of online to accompany my studies, because if i really wanted to i can bring reading material with me to the tables and also when i get on the computer at home i just play poker so no chance of work! So to play live would be a healthy way to push on this month as i study i feel, but we will see. I am thinking about playing the £560 UKIPT £200k GTD in Nottingham in two weeks time, also the fox poker club £330 deepstack tourney on friday as a prep for it and also possible the weekly wednesday £220 at the old vic for a £10K GTD. Done my research!

I would love to play the DTD monthly next week but as im in London without a car its too awkward and the fact i have football sunday morning is swinging it for not bothering along with my terrible time at the DTD with tourns! Still i am intent on a live poker/uni revising grind for the month of february. I have won enough in January to pay for a bad time live and also playing tourns n bigger than £500 a time makes it so my £5.7k prof won't deteriorate too quick!

So i am looking forward to it and hopefully some binkages too. I know i am lacking massively on the odds maths needed in poker whereby i don't know them well enough to be super confident with them. Like should i be calling a 3/4 bet on the flop with a flush draw with implied odds thrown in there aswell? Also shoving ranges, i am not 100% with those. I do some crazy shit on the open raising all in front and think sometimes it has been my downfall.

On that front i would say that i am competent rather than fantastic. I always can't be bothered to develop that side of my game which i believe is the easy part to know. The other part i know better is timing and knowing quite well when to bluff and when not to and to recognise a bluff with a nice call, or to put in a cheeky value bet on the river to a man clinging on with 3rd pair. That side i am much better with.

Bring on the month of february and hopefully in my end of month review for this month i can say that i have all my assessments completed and i am free to play poker for march and most of april before i have the end of year tests in may. Ideal outcome come mid June would be for me to have a 2:1 degree in the bag and about £40K in the bank, and to be a fully fit specimin. That is the ideal. The main aim is the 2:1 though, as that would be a lovely back up to the real world WHEN this poker lark falls through, because it will, eventually.

Ant

Two binks

2011-01-29T05:29:00.004Z

Hello

Very nearly had the night off but started at 8.30 tonight and registered through until 12.00am and played until 4am. I won my last two tourns of the night for $1540ish and $2300ish Which has me up at least £2000 for the night so i can't complain. Tis a bloody awesome feeling especially as i was down a vast sum of money if those hadn't of come in. Gotta keep this roll going.

Ant

A session of nearly got theres

2011-01-28T08:49:00.003Z

Hey

I lost in the region of about £400 but i was very very close to haveing another $6k bink to add to my collection. I came within the last two tables in a $25k and a $30K and in the last 3 tabs of a $40K. Final tabled a $5k and came 6th but my layout of like £1200 nightly makes it tough to break even or profit without a win or a top 5 finish somewhere.

I am confident thought that i am primed for the toughest tournaments on the euros sites and will continue to play 50rs and higher. I am reconsidering my view on HUD's thought as i did come up against some marginal spots that is i did have any more info on the player i could have made a more guided decision. So annoyingly i will be comitting today to trying to sort my holdem manager out.

I will also be mapping out a typical prep day for a massive grind i did yesterday in the region of a 18.00-03.00am job and this must consist of a lot of fibre, no caffeine and at least an hour in the gym to have me buzzing. If i put in the hard work with that discipline it nearly always brings out positive results. So i will have to just put the work in!

I feel that my shoving range might be a little suspect and know that i may still have some flaws in my game so i am going to purchase sngwhiz just to go through some hands and see if i am going wrong, but i am not too far off the optimum i would say. Just have to keep it up and keep on making the monies.

Ant

I'm Butter right now because i am on a Roll!

2011-01-27T11:24:00.002Z

Hello

Won a $6.7k score on monday which was my biggest online score ever which i was happy about and followed that up yesterday with some more profit in the region of $1.3k. My hopeful nightly layout is of about £1200 across about 15 tournaments on the euro sites and it means that i can concentrate on the higher standard of play instead of mixing in some $22 freezeouts or whatever. I hope my run continues and my approach stays as positive because i like where i am now and i know if i continue at a rate of maybe £500 a night that i would be laughing all the way to the bank and i think i need to fill my boots before this game gets any tougher.

Still pride myself in not using a HUD but it may well be causing me to have less profits but i don't think so so that is the end of that argument. I will leave you now, but hope all is well and the best of luck to you all!

Ant

Update - Long boring post alert.

2011-01-09T08:46:00.005Z

Hello,

Sort of going to put poker on the backburner for a while until i get my studies and general life back on track. Will need the gym happening, will need to be regularly going out with mates, i will need to make sure i don't get all obsessive compulsive about making loads out of money out of poker and really just neglecting the rest that life has to offer.

This sounds deep and meaningful but its not supposed to be. I sort of need to make poker become a secondary thing that supports a much better life that doesn't involve general sloth and inactivity. It is sort of a warning to myself that last year was basically exactly that and that really isn't what i want. I may also find if i start living a little bit more of a varied lifestyle it may reap benefits on my poker returns because i may be more relaxed.

This sounds too general to say lead a more balanced life but i really need to go against deep grained habits that have me play a lot more poker than i should be at the disadvantage of going out more. Eventually i will get a balance but i will need to see what exactly will work for me. Whenever i feel as if i am just residing back to poker day in day out, without a balance, i will give myself a slap and realise there is more to be had. It will probably mean i make more money so i would be silly not to go for it.

Unfortunately nothing to report on the poker front in terms of play besides me actually losing about £3000 over the xmas holidays because i played agitated and was sort of unable to accept losses when i should have! It is sort of why i am making this post. For me to be more stable against tilt and obsessing about how well i am playing, i need to not care as much about each session in a sort of worriesome manner.

For that to happen i need to first be always revising how the game is developing and feel comfortable with the ever changing dynamic always being one step ahead and secondly i need to have a developed life outside poker so the former is not the be all end all. With this formula achieved soon, if i don't turn consistent winnings on a bimonthly basis with the amount of volume i will be putting in i will probably see that taking poker as seriously as i have in terms of a career prospect was just silly and this would add even more impetus about me striving hard to get a wage job.

However for me to accept that i will really be pulling out all the stops to develop my game and my mentality towards it, and considering i have made tens of thousands already i know i have what it takes to win. So i will need to start developing all the qualities that had me winning regularly, a stable temperament, a comfort with the amount of tables being played and feeling a real sense of enjoyment. Adversely i will need to negate the damning qualities in my game. Mainly agitation due to the discomfort at how many tables i am playing, losing grasp of how certain tables are operating and making the wrong plays as a result and feeling a little clueless at times about what to do in marginal spots that are hard to judge. I mainly have to become quite obsessive in trying to make things as easy as possible and then reaping the rewards of such good preparation.

There is a difference between thinking and doing though, so it will be a test of me to go out and actually try to quell all the unease i have with the game and see what happens.

If you have read up to here fair play to you, i probably wouldn't have, cheers for reading and i will try to reward your support by posting up some more success stories!

Btw, thought i would put a picture up of a man juggling life, quite happy with the cheese aspect to this post now with that picture nicely reinforcing that!

Ant

$100000 goal for 2011

2010-12-24T14:46:00.002Z

Hello

Well as the title says i am going for this goal by the end of the coming year. I have not thought about the reality of such a goal, about what i would have to make in a week or month or whatever. I am just a man with a dream and a decent approach to the game every time i play and if i bog myself down with too many immediate goals in what i should make in a week or a day i would find myself putting myself under undue pressure.

I will tell you what though i will be finally documenting my ingoings and outgoings financially for the sole purpose of seeing if i do make that much this year, the fact that i am still this lazy on that front is frightening. I think with more control with organising my finances and actually seeing how everything is going i can push on with poker with more dominance knowing how much of a gift i do have with such a money making machine and not holding too many moments pondering on anything else other than pwning hardcore, not letting any doubts set in that will always have a negative affect.

I have noticed that variance isn't what has made my income in this game a little varied (i play enough hours and tables to iron this out) it is more my own confidence and somewhat susceptibility to irritability lol. What a phrase. If i combat my own demons of restlessness over such long periods of time playing by being very disciplined and stop the mantra of WHY ME? Why am i getting so unlucky, why am i feeling so stressed about playing today? Should i be playing today? All i seem to be doing here is losing (as i go all in with 72 on an unnecessary bluff). I think that i will be a fucking machine of making money and will be making it look easy.

I am not letting myself easily make money because i never make anything easy for myself so how can i expect to? Hmmmm. This is more a personal trait i have to get to grips with and i am happy to be sharing this mental breakdown with you lol.

For me to have no excuses and i can swear to you that is all i have come up with at any given point, i need to list all of the things that i think will make me ready to win at poker and then go about in winning without unnecessary overthinking.

This includes trying out holdem manager for a change. Will the insight of knowing a players history really affect my play against them or will the added screen presence of these irritating boxes prove much more detrimental in tilting me? That is a question that can be solved through actually bothering to set this all up and to stop worrying about it. Another question is if i went to the gym today will i be buzzing and more up for this grind? Yes it would. So instead of playing while thinking fuck i should have went to the gym, i go to the gym. There are other things that need to be noted as well but i notice i just need to get on with doing things rather than not and then obsessing about them.

As you may see i over analyse things until they are crushed. This is a great thing if you can hone in on this but a nightmare if you let your mind run riot.

So i have my end goal in $100,000 for the year set up. I have my finacial records ready to find out if i am going to be making that, and i have a daily routine for when i do put in a tournament shift. I am going to abide by all of them religiously so i can be content with the preparation before i start each session.

I am sorry about the length of this post, i felt i needed to get this out of the way before all of the next posts that will hopefully show you my uprise in fortunes. I have over a $20K br to play poker with at the moment and have shown a poker record in the past weeks that has made me think i can really get down to some serious business for this new year, but i have had some blemishes in the last two days of tilting that just need to be eradicated now so i can become a machine and can think about how to invest all of the money i am making without any tilting urges ever coming across me again. If i do feel like i may tilt on a certain day after i have gone to the gym, have eaten healthily and done everything right i will listen to my body and just avoid poker.

Going to see what its like to be properly prepared everytime i play poker, i think the confidence will result in unbelievable plays and even better wins, but we'll see.

I wish you all a good xmas and if i don't post again before the year is up a happy new year.

Ant.

Accidental Binkage

2010-12-07T02:00:00.002Z

Hey

I wasn't feeling too good today. That is why i unregistered from my normal grind for damage limitation. Started at 5 and cancelled regging for all tourns up until 6 knowing i was tilting all over the place. I duly went out of every tourney but had accidentally remained in a 7 o clock 109f 18k gtd.

Was gutted when it popped up as i wanted an early kip and a film or summin. But it turns out i go on to win it for $4.7k. I was down $1.6k the last night i played but now this has me up nicely for the last two days. Long may this run continue.

Ant

In top form

2010-11-19T04:52:00.002Z

Hello

Have only put in four nights of poker mtt grinding since the 16th of october as i am at university and taking it pretty seriously. But i have won over £3000. This has made me think that i shouldn't really do anything else other than work towards uni and play poker, and i am very much looking into the philosophy of one day on and one day off to keep things fresh.

So yeh. I may be a serious baller if things continue but i doubt they will something will have to go wrong. What i have noticed is that i have reduced the amount of tables i am grinding to around 9 and this has helped me concetrate more and made me get better results.

Also i have noticed i have no real fear near the end of the tournaments and am getting good at seeing them off. Tonight in particular was a sign of my ruthlessness. I was in the last 4 in a $5k GTD tourney with $1350 for 1st and $350 for 4th and i was joint chip lead, and then two other medium stacks. The other three guys all called for a deal. I remained quiet revalling in the fact i was against scared players and i was abusing them with a sense of sadism. Eventually i had an insurmountable chip lead and took down the tournament despite cries, as each player bit to dust, to have an updated deal proposal. NO! I'm gonna take this down instead brooo.

Going to Sheffield for the weekend today to watch Crystal Palace FC playing tomorrow. Also my mates 21st so it should be a great weekend.

Will let you go anyway. Just to say i expect my downfall to come soon, but while it doesn't i will continue to fill my boots. Take it easy.

Ant

On the Uni Grind

2010-10-18T23:14:00.003+01:00

Hey

I have a lot of work to do for uni and will be doing that now. I am going to be concentrating on this mainly and play poker whenever i have time. Doing this just so i can live with myself next october when we all graduate and i can be truly happy with the grade i get. If i don't get a 2:1 then i will be content that i did all i could, and whatever grade i got is what i deserved. However, i am a relative perfectionist and if i don't get a 2:1 I will be dissappointed, so i need to assure now that thats not going to happen. So while i have loads of time before all of the deadlines I am going to prepare the work properly for the deadlines set and then see where i can fit poker in.

As i find if i have any nagging thoughts while i try to play i lose loads. When i am content and eager, with no other worries, i often have eye of the tiger like concentration levels and make a serious killing. Like the run i had recently of having £500 nights was made because i was playing with a inpenetratable swagger on the tables. I just followed my instincts and wammo i was pulling off some great calls, some great bluffs and it was like i was in a boxing match bobbing and weaving with superior confidence.

However if i have anything else on my mind at all that day that will annoy me, it all goes to pieces and i needn't have started. So the lesson here is to only play when i feel comfortable doing so. I have been talking a while about preparation for poker and along with the general knowhow of the game (mathematics and stuff like that) you are nothing without your temperament. I am noticing now how strict and disciplined i need to be to play poker for a living after uni and i won't play another hand until all other things in my life (uni mainly) are in place, so then this will allow me to enjoy my poker, the success that it brings and play with a long lasting confidence. Which in the past i just haven't had.

This may sound negative but my bankroll is healthy and i am keen to get back into the game as soon as possible, but i just won't rush myself. Uni is first as it is the backup to the "real world" so it will ease the pressure on me having to sustain only poker for the forseeable future. I will also be looking into getting a part time job to help the CV tick along.

So thats it for the meanwhile i hope to come back to you with news of a big win and eventually next year with my uni success, because if i am being honest the latter means so much more to me.

Ant

oh no beaten by sweets!

2010-09-15T05:57:00.005+01:00

Hey

I spent sunday night going for a relative gamble. I had a massive uprise in profts previously which had my roll at about $19K so i thought i could lay about $1k on the line and just go for it!

Didn't go to plan but i really was on track! I had started at about 8.30pm and was looking to play until about 4am. I started in dominating fashion getting big stacks early and playing aggressively whenever i could. Raising most pots in position and eventually taking it down either pre flop, post flop on turn or on the river with complete bluffs always knowing when to stop when there was no chance of winning the hand. You could say i was in the zone.

And what a time to be in the zone i was doing great when i was playing tourns i am not bankrolled for. A result right? Well yeh i assume it would have been if not for my complete indiscipline on the eating front! I will explain now.

I had eaten a glorious roast dinner cooked by mum at about 6.30pm, twas lovely, then i decided i wouldn't prepare any food for the rest of the night. By 12.30am i was starving but still doing great in these tournaments. And i saw these packets of sweets i had not opened. These 39p midget gums. I opened them and let loose, eating the whole packet very quickly. There was another packet and i did the same.

2 mins later and i am off my face on some sort of Sugar Rush! It lasted about 45 mins and had me go out of nearly half my tournaments. I couldn't concentrate, felt ill and it was just the worst timing! In the tourns i had left i was just too tilted to play properly even when i had decided to go get a sandwich quickly from the kitchen. It was tough knowing how much money i had squandered and i was too disgusted at myself to see the remainder of the tourns through properly. Opting instead to just play hastily and load up some more episodes of The Wire.

Also i decided to tell everyone on msn what had happened and every which one of the replies i got from people were of shock one even pronouncing he was "scared" of my convo antics. As i was talking so fast in a crazy rage i didn't let anyone get a response in, plus i was talking complete nonsense. But when you do say that you have taken some "sweets" and it made you go on a trip i doubt they are going to think of the situation as innocent!

O well. I lost $700 for the night as i had binked a third in a small 100 person sit and go to recoup some losses, so i think i got away with it a little bit on sunday. I then proceeded not to play poker until i felt fresh about going back on. I have noticed, with me anyway, i normally always win, barring ridiculous bad luck, if i am mentally and physically prepared for a 12 hour grind. When i am not i often tilt and lose money. I still havent, after 3 years, got the perfect discipline for this game. However getting that may be impossible. Day in and day out to do the same routine to enable perfect concentration levels, meh, it just wont happen!

I guess it will be about damage limitation whenever i have a grind started and feel off by unregistering for tournaments where i can and stopping early. But if i want to be a true soldier of the game i need to give myself the best chance of playing 12 hour days for as many days as possible. So gym, healthy eating, having food prepared during the grind at close proximity to the computer to make it so i don't have to sit out of all the tourns as i rush to the kitchen, a lot of drink at the ready, and a good music playlist lined up. If i get the perfect formula i should be able to rake in loads of money as my game is pretty tight now.

I had the right idea for the last week when i made the £4000 by playing superb stuff on a consistent basis, but sunday just showed that one hiccup in preparation and you can be sent flying into a world of pain and a spot where losing money will just happen!

Wow this has been a long post but i just felt i would let some frustration get out! I don't know if i will be playing again this week as i am going to the Isle of Wight on friday and Malta next wednesday. But rest assured i will only play when i feel right in doing so, and with poker i think that is already half the battle won!

Good luck peeps

£4000 in 7 days, could get used to this.

2010-09-11T04:12:00.002+01:00

Hello there

I have been rampant recently on the mtts across a lot of sites. Mainly focussing on the tourns that have less runners to start maybe 500 or less and i then commence in 12-16 tabling them for about 12 hours a pop. I try to keep it to 12 tables but if i am running well in more tourns than anticipated i can just about manage to take on board 4 more without completely oblitorating my chances in all

It is the regularity of the profits that is so nice to see, its nearly as if i can say before i start playing that i will be making £300 or more today. I play lots of tournaments on a nightly basis, probably in the region of 40, and normally get some good luck in at least one to secure a profit for the night. It keeps me at ease if i am running bad at any one time because i know i am likely to bink something or another. Just ridculously, supremely confident about my game.

Recently i have been making about £500 a day but for only the last 7 days so can't say that is my regular wage. Probably should be looking at £300 for every 12 hours played which is a great hourly rate and if i can maintain that then happy days.

Be interesting to see what i do when uni starts later this month. I am going to get a feel for the written work i have to do and see what best suits me. How am i going to incorporate poker and uni? I guess i will have to see. Whatever i do i will be going for a 2:1 and to maintain a steady wage throughout my studies.

Also i feel like if i am going to be hard at poker and writing i might as well try for more poker holidays! These would be a great escape from everything and i know my uni isn't the best in keeping records of attendances or being too bothered about it all so hopefully if i just get my work handed in on the deadlines to a good standard then perhaps i needn't bother with the lectures and instead strive for one 4 day abroad holiday a month haha. I could try and make this year the most hectic and enjoyable of my life and if i somehow get poker, work and 5 holidays in with a nice steady profit then that is lovely.

I am in a weird place right now as i, for the first time, have no doubts in my game, the money keeps pouring in on a daily basis and i am seemingly utterly unphased by it all. Which i think is key because i can deal with final tables better where i am not too concerned about money jumps as long as i make the right move and i know that being aggressive is always a plus.

So there you have it i am doing great and i really think this will continue at the same steady rate for months to come. However i would be lying if i didn't think its gonna go wrong somehwere!

Loving it

2010-09-08T10:49:00.002+01:00

Hey

Finally got a sort of grind pinned down for myself. Have been playing most nights for the past two weeks with great success. On about £300 a night avg with winnings happening pretty consistently each day close to that number, just in case you thought i have had 13 losing days and then one huge bink.

I just know i have got to carry on with what i am doing and see what it will be like when i finally allow myself to play 22 dolla rebuys and 109f's, i wonder if my winning rate will go up. Not sure as of yet but i think it would.

Sorry for the short and pretty uninteresting post, i haven't had much go on recently and not really been in the mood to blog but i am desperately looking forward to Malta in 2 weeks time. Got a 1100 euros entry in the Malta Madness main event which i assume will have around 100 runners so its about 20K for the win. That would be nice!

Also had £120 on France to be Bosnia & Herzegovina at 6/4 whcih came in so things are on the rise for me atm. Just need to keep on winning

Ant

The last tourney comes through again to save the day!

2010-08-28T05:56:00.003+01:00

Hey

Mental proceedings tonight. I really wasn't playing at my best and my results were showing this. I was getting very close to the big monies in the tournies up until i spazzed out and didn't quite receive the massive prizes. I really am too tired to explain everything that happened but it was truly eventful.

I had played for 13 hours non stop and eventually won a little over £500. I was £200ish down before my last tourney of the night, which from 9/10 i went on to complete another great escape.

I am worried that i have not been able to say once in my poker playing that i have ever had a faultless grind. This meaning that i did the best possible move in any given spot according to the info i had in front of me. I would say that i make on average 6 mistakes a night. These mistakes aren't tilt persay, this is normally a rarity, but instead a move that is marginal but is just the wrong thing to do. I have a habit of calling these spots acts of tilt by me when they aren't really its making marginally wrong decisions

Regardless i am going to grind again tonight and hopefully have another £500+ night. I am sitting out of playing on sunday to play in a five a side tournament as a mate was in need of a goalkeeper and to be honest any excuse not to feel the pressure of a big sunday was always going to be welcome!

The real test for me now will be to see what sort of monies i can hold down in a 40-60 hour week for a number of months. Just so i can get an idea of my rate to sort of normalise things and be able to tell people that want to know how much i really do make in the average hour as opposed to what i have done at one time, because any poker player could say yeh i go at £1000 an hour if they have had just one big win once!

Feeling happy at the moment and looking forward to the grind that will start again in about 12 hours. Man i love this shiz.

Ant

Quick Update

2010-08-26T10:46:00.003+01:00

Hey

I still haven't completely settled on "the grind" to play but i have basically got it down to a certain amount of regular tournaments and i chop and change only a few now. It's been going well. Yesterday i made £460 but had some very near misses for much bigger scores. I have also had to deal with a £2000 downswing on one site as i push on in all the others i play on lol. It's painful to deal with that really just nothing going right when i play on it but not to bother if i am up overall.

I am yet to play a whole month or possibly even a week of a grind as if treating it like a job and am curious to see what i could make on average in a week/month over the course of 6 months to give me some sort of bearing to if i should do this as a career after uni. Would be great if i can. Also looking forward to uni in september!

Things look on the up i am nicely rolled for the games i want to be playing and am a nice winner at them and i really just need to push on now into the big time.

Ant

Knew this was coming

2010-08-18T06:28:00.003+01:00

Hey

I had the session from hell on tuesday night. I got unlucky but also really just didn't play that well. It resulted in a $1300 loss and it was because i didn't listen to my own set guidelines of only playing when in a fit condition to. I started the grind because i had nothing else to do that day but i knew deep down i just weren't up for it. Would rather have been somewhere else but just played out of boredom.

I picked up an injury from a football match on sunday which prevented me going to the gym which would have probably have given me the motivation to be focussed and crush like i know how to but on tuesday i was just poor. Afterwards i was in relative shock. Wtf was that was my immediate reaction. It's never happening again. FACT. I will no longer play massive grinds when i am not in tip top shape to do so.

Regulation for doing a massive $1000+ nightly grind

I have to be buzzing. Now this can come about in so many different ways. It could be that one day you wake up and just think yeh i am in the mood to crush but a lot of the time you will just feel normal and eventually once one or two bad beats hit you you can be quick to fall off the tracks.

To defend against this i can have a daily preparation schedule to have me primed to win loads of money on a daily basis. I will be repeating myself now but it includes 1 hour of the gym and no shitty foods or caffeine. Let the endorphines kick around the body and it will also give me the stamina to play 12 hours if needs be.

This won't defend against short term variance but what i do know is that i only ever really lose money in this game when i let myself do this. It is sort of a constant battle with myself to maintain the steady temperament needed to deal with the horrid/amazingly beautiful swings of this game. It is like you are experiencing what it feels like to be bipolar on a nightly basis and if you haven't got the physicality and mentaily to deal with it you will lose the plot and your money.

In the past i most definately haven't prepared myself properly for playing poker. Tuesday being one of those days! However, it has served as a welcome reminder that for some players like me that know how to beat the game and are pretty comfortable with their knowledge and capacity to learn new stuff, the main battle about attaining poker profits is with yourself. If i get in a stonking good and healthy routine and i could well be a big dog in a year to come. However if i stay on the beaten track of being volatile and an on/off player i think i will get burnt out, i could well barely make a living in the game but it would be one hell of a depressing life.

This last week i have seen the results of having a great prep and a bad one and i know it is only on the short term evidence that i am basing a huge amount of my faith but the logic would suggest i am talking sense and i am genuinely intrigued about how well/bad things will get for me following a strict healthy lifestyle.

My prediction is after this post i won't be looking back.

Bring on the binkages imo.

Ant

Jeeeeez that was close!

2010-08-16T13:54:00.002+01:00

Hey

Had a torrid time playing tourns yesterday. Should never have started because i wasn't feeling right. I nearly quite at around6.30 a couple hours into the grind to prevent more losses as i just weren't on it, but the gamble in me just couldn't let a big sunday go past.

So i proceeded to lose 800 quid over the course of the night playing like a complete fish. Like beyond belief, the nonchalence was amazing. I deserved to face the brunt of the pain of losing that much but i got saved by a 1.4k bink which had me up about 400 quid for the night.

So today i plan to start a routine that i will be able to maintain. It involves 1 1/2 hours in the gym and then whatever i want to do after. This just means i am in good physical and mental shape going into whatever i want to do. This is most important for poker of course and i think yesterday i missed the discipline to play well and just got plain old lucky. I know most days this won't happen so i just need to prepare better. Bring on the next grind!!

Ant

7500 dollars in 3 days

2010-08-14T06:26:00.004+01:00

Hello

Well as the title says i have pretty much been killing tournies all over the shop. The 6000 prof includes a $3K package to Malta which includes a 5* hotel and 1100 euro entry into a main event. I believe its four days in all over there and it will be a nice break in late september, just before uni starts!

Erm not much really to say apart from how lucky i have been in a lot of fifty fifties late on in tournies and how i have did well to maintain a stack from 100 odd runners down to a final table. Been really improving my game by just obsessively self evaluating my plays and experimenting. The chancy plays i have been trying of late have shed sum light on how abc i have been playing over the years. ABC is fine if you a decent enough winning player because you can always live off that wedge however i believe the real money is in trying new stuff out and just dominating a table.

All of this would be pointless though if hands hadn't held up and all that jazz but from memory i am going to give you some of the results i have seen in the past few days. 1st in a 5K GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 1st in a 6k GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 2nd in a 5k gtd, 2nd in a 7k gtd, 2nd in a 10k gtd. However i had sum horrible form on one particular site that had me cancel out the true profits i should have been seeing!

This still remains a problem i still play too many tables! I think with the new style i am adopting i need to be playing a maximum of 9 tables. As i find it hard to keep track on 12 tables. Mainly because the tiling is too overlapping. I think i would like to get in another big 24' monitor to have beside the one i already have to see what 2x9 tables is like playing on. It may just be that i am fine with playing loads of tables, its just that it needs to appear on a certain way per screen.

If i do get comfortable like this on 18 tables then i can finally play a fuller grind without the annoyance of knowing i played too abc on a particular table. It could also mean a rapid rise in consistent winnings so i think a trial is necessary next week.

I'm loving the game right now and feel very comfortable in the knowledge i have for the tourney game. I think before i was very pessimistic and down on myself always overthinking hands and wondering if a play was bad or not. Now i just accept i can only play according to the info in front of me and my instincts. Throughout loads of hours of play the instincts will get better and through winning more and more i should get used to it and start to dominate poker and life in general.

I must have already lost about a stone in the Gym and the added fitness has helped with concetration. I have stopped drinking soft drinks with caffeine in it where possible. I tell you though they are hard to find. 7up free is the best, honestly. Although it may sound it i am not a health freak prick who has a go at people for eating "empty calories" or is constantly wary of what i eat, i just go with the flow and try to stick to a loose guideline. Mainly the mantra of eating when you are only hungry, not to over eat, and try to stay away from crisps and chocolate. Ewwww i am so gayy.

So there you have it i have a BR rivalling Fenix35's now which is great as it will spur us both on to try and out do eachother. We soon will be basically playing the same tournies as well so it will be interesting to see who will persevere over the coming weeks. I will not reveal my BR to you anymore in fear that i will be adding pressure on myself to keep telling you i have a higher one each time, so instead i will just tell you the general shiz and let you sort of work it out for yourselves.

I am going to let you go now.

Sorry for the length of this *That's what he said*

Ant

The secret to success with poker, well for me anyway!

2010-08-10T04:52:00.002+01:00

Hello there

Well the title is already very alluring and i believe what i will next write is only setting you guys up for a fall. For starters this could well be written after a massive winning night where i met absolutely no variance and now i think i know it all. But regardless i will say what i will have to say :)

Today i managed to get up at a decent hour and get a good breakfast in before having a mad 2 hour session at the gym including a solid 60 mins on the cardio machines, the rest would be recovery and i walked to the gym aswell :). This had me buzzing walking out of the place. Decided to not rush into poker when i got back home though and just chill watching tv until i felt the time was right and i heard the feint sounds of my name getting called out my various poker rooms on my laptop.

Basically played 10 hours tonight and won a lot. The sorta victories that feel good, mostly it was a combination of a lot of final tables instead of one massive bink which can feel like you have cheated. Felt in control throughout apart from i would say two plays that i undoubtedly overthought at the time and didn't remember the guys i am coming up against may well be mentally not all there.

I lay my concetration levels to the gym sessions. Healthy body is a healthy mind and that. Also i would have to say that playing without music was great for the 12+ tables aswell. I could hear myself think and it was as if i was back at school again in a test room figuring out an answer and i just felt like a it was a whole new me. Yes that last line was intentionally supposed to sound gay and what im feeling good right now! The boredom u may think might be unbearable just playing poker for that long without music, but i enjoyed the games i was playing a lot more and felt more involved and excited by proceedings. Mainly because i felt like i was doing well on every table i played.

I also had 16 tables up at one point! This was mental. I wasn't opening as wide as i would have liked to just because i wouldn't have had enough time to play the flops on all the tables i would have to play. So was playing ridiculously abc for like a 2 hour stint, but oddly i found that i was doing well during this time. I may well have been saving myself from my stupidly loose plays!

Just thought i would put down the law and say going gym and not listening to music (perhaps classical though!) are a lot of help to play your A game. Tonight i pretty much did and am now basking in a gloat blog. Need to keep this all up now and for once continue some sort of dominance of online tournies!

Ant

binkety bink

2010-08-03T13:27:00.002+01:00

Hey

I had a grind last night starting at around 4 and ending at about 1am so relatively mild for me and found that i was dancing around the edges of some big wins but it really didn't go my way.

One in particular was a 12k gtd 10r with the prize pool at about 15k where i was on the final table in about 4th with 14 bbs and i get AK opening in mid position. I obviously jam it all in and get called by a 40 bbs chip leader thinking im in for a race here i am screwed. Best case scenarion was obviously AQ but even that would have been a relatively loose call.

Cards get turned over and he has AJ. I'm shocked. I think everyone in the room was shocked. We're playing for $3k first place monies next out gets $200 and i take the latter as i am axed on the headpiece after a J10924 board.

the night was ending as a £60 loss up until one last tourney i played on a euro site. It came in and i won 1100 euros which was bloody fantastic. Big hand there HU was i had Q2 the other guy 10Q both had about 15 bbs. we both limped pre flop to see 2Q9 board, he checked to me i raised 3/4 pot he rr me i rr all in he calls and i take it down not long after that basically.

It just shows you the fragility of tourney poker that i was so close to being 60 quid down but am now actuall 1000£ up. I guess that is why its such a rush to play as well though. Bittersweet you might say.

Anyway i am playing tourns now that are few in runners and i have a high success rate on to keep my sanity and i am really enjoying playing. I am a little iffy on some plays but i think i will be fine tuning things shortly. Hopefully onwards and upwards from here hey!

cheers

Ant

Looking forward to recovering.

2010-07-28T16:56:00.004+01:00

Hey

I am just now arranging my e mail to full tilt to prove my worth in the battle to reclaim the $1600 that was removed from my account. I cannot finalise it today as i am a little hungover and i am gonna write the bulk of it tomorrow. If i get positive feedback from them after i send it, happy days. If not then i will have to do with what i got and stop bitching.

I have a big enough roll to play $22 and $11rs if i wanted to and i am looking forward to binking some big tournies.

I am a little fucked today because yesterday i played cricket and opened the batting, staying out at the crease for a full 40 overs on a very humid day. I swear to you i nearly keeled over. And then when our team fielded, our captain decided to put me in positions that involved the most running. You couldn't write this sort of script. And to top it all off i went out and had one too many drinks in Crystal Palace before coming home and sleeping for 12 hours :)

I am out again tonight for a mates 21st, out tomorrow to the Epsom races (making sure i don't mess about with too much money!) on friday i have another mates 21st to attend. Then saturday and sunday is both cricket days. This is an amazing schedule for someone so reclusive to sitting at home stuck on 12 poker tables and ordering pizzas. The only real spice of life i did have was using different pizza outlets, will it be Pizza Go Go or Dominos today?

Might get a taste for the busy life and really restrict my poker play to sit and gos when i can fit them in rather than time consuming multis all night long. We'll see though.

It's very likely that i am going to have a full week off from poker with me being busy and i think this will be great for my game. Will come back fresh and much less tilty than i was on sunday. Will try also not to be as moany as my last post but only to have the odd occasion where it boils up over the course of some months and i lose the plot all over my blog space, on like some big massive fuck off tirade against everyone and the world. As long as it is not coupled with a mass murdering spree all would be cushty. My psychiatrist said that using a blog to vent the pressure of my stressfull life would be a good thing :)

Will see all you guys probably on monday. Hopefully with some news back with full tilt but primarily about my plan to get back on track and completely crush whoever gets in my way!

Ant

FOOLISH GRIND!

2010-07-25T23:37:00.002+01:00

ARGH

not often i feel like writing in caps but i have a loss nigh on £1000 tonight. Mainly because my internet couldnt handle 15 tables on two monitors. I feel if i am going to do this in the future i will have one computer per monitor to help with the computer memory. Could also be because my laptop can't handle it, so i might need to just use a desktop pc. But whatever it is i was on loads of expensive tables and it was taking me 4 seconds per tab once i turned my attention to it to get the action to happen. Which is way too long and had me sitting out of a lot of tables. This tiled me also and it just went wrong.

Also have news that full tilt may well be taking $1600 from me but more on that story when it is finalised. And if it remains i am $1600 out of pocket i am going to let loose on them in my next blog and explain the full story.

I even ended early tonight so as to not completely lose the lot. So aggrevated right now. I am going to be taking a break of about 3 days and in the meantime trying to sort out things with FTP. If i don't get my money back from them my roll has been decimated tonight and in no way shape or form should i have been playing so high.

Have to break for a while so as to keep my cool and come back winning. I have At least £3500 left of my roll if all goes badly with FTP, so i can still grind that up nicely.

O well.

Ant

Brave or Foolish Grind?

2010-07-25T14:31:00.003+01:00

Hey

I am playing across 12 sites today on what is likely to be a 15 table grind at any one time. I am prepared for this mentally and with my two moitors up however bankroll wise its a little gambly. My bankroll permits me to play $44 dollar tourns and $11r tourns only. I have those on but also a lot of $100, $150 and $50f's on the go. Don't get me wrong though the average buy in for tonight wouldn't exceed $70-$80 so i am playing with only 100 buy ins effectively, so it's not ultra bad.

Mainly this is as a one off as i am normally rather considerate of my roll nowadays, but i am feeling good, my last grind on friday secured £1300 profit and i am buzzing. I am looking to ride the crest of the wave today and bink huge. However, i am a realist. A stark one in fact. I am committing my buy ins today as a loss and anything more comes as a bonus. It is just lotto time. An opportunity to cheat bankroll wise by winning in a tourney i should never have been in.

Feel composed and am reacting well to beats, i hope not to have too many tonight but will make sure it doesn't act as too much of a detriment to my other games, and i guess that is all you can ask for.

Will report back at the end of the expected 13 hour night to report on what happened. Cheers for reading

15.4 inches is just too small oi oi

2010-07-10T09:33:00.002+01:00

Hello

I did a massive grind last night involving many a $10r $5r $10f-$100f and was dissapointingly break even. Got late on in a lot of tournies but found myself only min cashing or being whittled down too low due to inactivity of playing too many tables. The problem was i just couldnt see the action sometimes!

I have a 15.4' monitor for my laptop and if i grind just the one site i find i can grind 12 tables at once easily because its easier on the eyes, and the table sizes are the same. Yesterday i was playing 5 different rooms with varying table sizes and found myself sitting out all over the shop, which would tilt anyone! Some of the tables just appeared too small.

I have a 24' external monitor with me here but have found everytime i use it that the internet stalls up to a snails pace and i find having to act on every table at once in a matter of seconds to save a sit out. I am going to try it again tonight playing 0.02/0.04 cash tables, mayble up to 20 tables just to see if the lag is still there.

Another problem i have with the external monitor is that its not pumping out at its max res becos my laptop doesn't recognise it as being able to which is so frustrating. In laymans terms it means i can't fit as many tables as comfortably on the external monitor becos the wrong resolution makes the tables appear too large.

Going to ring dell in the week and finally get it all sorted and hopefully also work out a way to get 2 external monitors up on this laptop but i believe by definition you can't have two external monitors on a laptop? Would prefer 2 so i could just have 2 big screens which would help my eyes a lot, and i could also take pictures and pretend to be some sort of baller television watcher to my friends who will be like wtf he has two big fuck off monitors here. I will be like yeh one is for porn and one is for sky sports, what of it. You see i want to experience that, so Dell pull your finger out and help me here!

The grind yesterday ended at a very little loss i believe after i binked a second place in a $3k GTD that saved my ass. Had me only like $100 down but could have been so much worse. I am happy to have paid that to prevent myself going under the same routine really and now i am only going to play on one site if i ever just use my laptop screen.

Yesterday was frustrating, but i feel for the first time i am getting close to some sort of decorum with tourney grinding whereby i shouldn't have any more excuses. I am playing heavily overolled, (will soon be) playing a comfortable amount of tables and should be making loads of profit. One thing remains that i think i will just never bother with and that is having HUD stats up on players as when i have tried to put them up in the past they have been too large and annoy the hell out of me. I still use the Holdem manager to help review my game after hands though but the HUD tilts me hard. If anyone can help me configure it so i have less stats and be able to sort the layout a little bit then please do tell.

Anyway thats your very boring rant over. Will see you in a bit.

Ant

Not much happeneing here!

2010-07-09T05:25:00.003+01:00

Hey

Sorry about not updating this as much as i should be. Experienced somewhat of a transition month getting a feel for the euro mtts as a change from the american sngs and it took me a while to adjust and only in the last week of the 4 since i last posted can i say i have posted positive results. Have had to adapt my game. Mainly just had to calm the fuck down and appreciate that not all players are on the same deep thinking process of playing poker. They may well make rash plays, i needn't regard it any higher than that. Have found myself making calls or plays thinking surely he can't be this obvious he's gotta be bluffing/telling the truth.

Soon after my last post i transferred a lot of money to euro accounts and in the first two weeks lost quite a bit of money, then the third week broke even, and the last week got some good results in. I think i am on the up now even though i have only made $2000 for the month ($1000 of which is added to my BR so it's now at around $9000, the other $1000 wildly spent :)).

Future should hold some decent results on the euro sites, and a lot less on the american sites, mainly as i don't hold rakeback on Full Tilt and this kills my soul when i play on there and can lead to tilt and before you comment, i have tried rakebackpros but i am already under a non RB affiliate so it's a no hoper.

I am sort of only going to use FTP for their big tournies for a shot now and again. The same with pokerstars really and try to make my main bread with the euro Mtts with lesser fields and lesser variance and i think more value. Most importantly now i feel, is that i am enjoying my poker again, have a very strict game going and am quick to stop playing for a couple of days if i feel frustrated on the virtual felt, so i am always constantly in a perpetual state of happiness towards the game. That is unless i start losing or get some horrid variance!

Aside from online i may well play some live tournies now. Have two cashes live in $1400 and $7500 but that was a long time ago now and i need to build on those. Feel i have a good live game and i just need some run good and more volume to prove my real worth.

Cheers for reading anyway guys and GL!

Ant

3 final tabs and with one Victory

2010-06-12T01:39:00.003+01:00

Hey

The ipoker grind went appalingly. I am not going to play there again in a long while i managed to lose £400 grinding their tournies. Tonight though i cleaned house on other sites and made $2700.

Brings my bankroll up to $8000.

I believe i was on $500 in early may so i am extremely happy atm.

Will give a better review of things in my next post, for now bed. Gl all but not against me :)

This is probably where it all goes wrong lol

2010-06-07T17:18:00.002+01:00

Hey

Been running consistently on a certain american site at about $200-$400 a day for 6-8 hours work which is great. However as i am never satisfied and how i am addicited to euro site mtts i am going for a trial run across so nice "local" sites. Ipoker and ongame are the main target with a touch of partypoker thrown in for good measure. I tell u one thing though i am shocked by the lowered guarentees across these sites. As soon as i leave see what happens?

Still playing $10rs and $30fs across these sites and the odd $50f aswell. My BR is at $6000 atm so i shouldn't really be playing $10rs with my 200 buy ins rule as well as the odd $50f but i will get off the euro sites tonight if things don't go well or just play the $10 and $20f's.

I am really looking forward to this as i can see some familiar usernames and say high to them aswell as some mates being able to rail me if they would like that normally play on ipoker. Just need to give them a final table win to rail hey!

Some people would think i am crazy to be changing up a winning formula and that i am silly to not be happy with what i have got, but i am just trialling new areas to see what the perfect grind content would be so i can incorporate these euro mtt's with the american sngs i am already playing to try and work out the best way to increase my hourly rate. Also there is an undoubted buzz to be playing at old stomping grounds and i would love a great start tonight to really set the foundations for a meteoric rise up the ranks!

COME ON!

Was i gay eye raped yesterday?

2010-06-03T16:19:00.002+01:00

Hey there

So there i was just minding my own business in the gym. I was on the bench press leg weights and i see this guy staring at me and i am like alright that is a little freaky. Especially the look on his face, it was sort of awe. It was quite unnerving.

I then closed my eyes for about 20 seconds as i was getting some serious burn on my legs crunching the last few reps and then when i open my eyes, the guy is standing right beside me and looking directly at me. My intital reaction was to say fuck off but i thought no there could be some sort of reasonable explaination to this. I could have something on my shirt or something but no he was just pervy. I was followed by his glare all the way around the gym and i was fearing for my arse.

I tell you what though, other than the eye rapes that are normally directed from fat men towards very fit women other strange stuff goes on. All i think comedic unless you are on the wrong end of it.

Picture the scene you go onto a treadmill and start running on level 7 of 16. It's a fast tempo and has you're getting a sweat on. Another guy goes on the treadmill next to you. He starts on level 5 and you and fist pumping in your head that you are undoubtedly better than he is in every way. But o no. He has had a glance over at the level you are on and bumps his up another 3.

You see this as an evasive action and putting your manhood into disrepute so you think fuck this i am going up to level 10 surely he wont top that. O no that is 11 he has raised his to.

You are both running at full speed.

You because you are a prick decide to go the full whack of level 16, last 4 unbalanced strides and then slip off the treadmill smash your face against it and get propelled about 6 feet away. Matey boy looks at you in pity as he then reduces his level to 4 and is basically doing a leisurely walk. Adding a swagger as he knows you are looking as if to say you don't mess with me fool, look you see what happens!

The egos on show are also amazing. You get the beefed up arnie's just prancing around with an air of self importance looking down at the rest as if to say what is taking you so long to look as beautiful as me. You have a barrier mostly between the fit people and the not so fit. Normally its new not so fit people each week to feel bad about themselves and then not come for another 3 weeks before again delaying their embarrassment.

If i win enough through poker i think i would come up with the idea of fat gym sessions. Where only a certain weight bracket can join and feel comfortable that they are not competing with people than outclass them. And yes i feel strongly about this because i am indeed a fattie! lol May have to lay off the gym detail, but i am trying to go every other day to achieve some sort of decent physique for next years footie season.

Aside from the overthinking on the gym front i had my birthday celebrations last night in leicester square. Was thoroughly enjoyable and involved a bit of clubbing at the Zoo bar before heading into the empire casino for a little bit of fun and games. Now i have made it a general rule never to really play any table games again as they bring so much pain if you lose that it is just not worth it. I laid a stop gap of £200 and said if i lose that i have to stop playing. I lost that pretty quickly, with some silly red/black bets that were just not going my way, so i stopped playing.

However spurred on by my mates decent winnings for the night i thought i would have one last shot. So i took a tenner out split it into two fives and thought i will put a couple of numbers on. So i went for the number 23 and i missed. I then went for the number 17 and i hit and subsequently won £180 hehe. Only £20 down and i would have definately have paid that for the buzz of a 1/37 chance of coming in. Gotta Love it.

As you may know because of my website name its my birthday on friday. If you fancy making any donations to my poker fund as it is my 21st you can find me as "anup returns" on pokerstars. Will accept anything as little as $1 and i promise you it will give you some run good in one big tourney within the next 2 weeks. You have my word.

So thats your lot. Will be posting more after my birthday about how poker is going. At the moment i am getting around $200 a day when i play which is a great. Need to start playing more though but as its birthday week i don't think i can be blamed for not putting the effort in. Next week onwards will be poker addiction and hopefully mass success.

Thank you. God Bless you. Goddnight.

YES yes bloody hell yes.

2010-06-01T11:14:00.002+01:00

Hey there

Brag warning. Got a 3rd place and a $4K win on an american site and that has basically tripled my bankroll. I am now rolled to play $24 sngs if i would like. I am already a winner at the stakes half of that, so i would hope my skills can transfer to the higher game. Hopefully this is the kick start win that will lead way to the life i should have maintained last year after the £5500 win.

Always gotta do it the hard way, but if i was to make mad G's now i will appreciate it that much more better becos i know what its like to be at the bottom of the barrell and it would make being at the top that much sweeter. A lot of talk atm i will need to actually get there first!

I do have supreme confidence at the moment though and finally i think i can safely say i am back on track to hunt Ben's (F3nix35) BR down and finally get back in the lead. He definately has had it easy for months now and would love to see him sweating in front of me (that sounds sexual). However i am improving my BR nowadays with a sense of realism. A sense i didn't have in any of my previous ascents previously.

I am prepared now to crawl up slowly instead of mad dashes up and down with the BR. Slow and steady wins the race. I will continue to play sngs and throw in the odd multi, maintaing a 200 buy ins rule and going up or down in stakes accordingly. The joy of including multis in the mix is that you can have serious excitement now and again when you make a final table to deviate slightly from the somewhat monotonous sngs. However i am not complaining with the way i am running at the moment.

The game now with me is to maintain my composure and build the BR steadily and hopefully play live more when my br says i can. I have noticed i have a good live game and its annoying i have played much. Anyway i will leave u be i am really tired at the moment and am not even looking back at the post to check for mistakes. That is how on the edge i am living my life at the moment, o yeh.

safe.

Carnage

2010-05-27T09:38:00.000+01:00

I have never been as drunk as that before in this country. That is all.

Just what the doctor ordered!

2010-05-24T19:03:00.003+01:00

Hey

I am seemingly content at the moment so i don't really feel the need to whine on about bad beats or bad luck or anything like that because things are going well. Had a $340 up day yesterday and now today a $440 profit, so i am absolutely flying.

Not much really going on otherwise, but i am going to get some pretty nifty headphones to make my grinding experience that much better.

http://beatsbydre.com/products/Products.aspx?pid=B3808

I am getting them from my parents for my bday, which from my blog name isn't very long away now! The section about extreme comfort got me all wet and has made my mind up for me instead of getting a £200+ pair of Sennheiser's instead (another reputable brand of headphone maker). Figured if i am going to be spending so much time playing poker wearing headphones listening to music i may aswell splash out on a top of the pair of headphones. The ones im wearing now can make my head a little hot. I do hope these new ones are big enough cos my head is huge.

I am thinking of some other pressies aswell i should be asking other family members to get, so comment ideas if you want. I know i can fleece a £100 pressie from one of my sisters so i just need to figure out what i want!

So thats your lot really. Hopefully the money keeps pouring in and i can start playing on the euro mtt circuit again.

Cheers.

Doing well

2010-05-21T13:52:00.002+01:00

Hey

I am playing $3 $6 and $12 tournies, i would say about 50 a day 12 at a time and averaging around $150 a day so thats around £100 a day. I am enjoying things atm and the consistency is always a great feeling.

The link below is to a great show on the poker show that i would like to mention talking about the G casinos, the Brighton Party and an interview with Stuart Rutter.

http://bit.ly/GCasino

Cheers people.

Brighton Grosvenor Trip report and Palace staying up!

2010-05-04T14:42:00.006+01:00

Hey there.

I was invited down kindly by people representing the Grosvenor Casino in Brighton to come down to the big unveiling of their newly decorated casino. I would be put up for a night at the Hilton Metropole, have my train tickets paid for and have some gambling money on the house to play with. So a result! Thrown in was also the great company that i had. The organisers were very nice and were good conversationalists which is great considering you don't know them before this but it was easy to feel at home with them.

The night started with walking into the casino and being greeted by 4 scantily dressed women prancing around the floor of the casino and free glasses of champagne, so it could have been worse! Then we got some money to play with and i decided to play a bit of blackjack and roulette to about a £5 loss, highrolling hey! I then went to spend the rest of the free monies in a £15 rebuy tourney they had running and was shocked by how bad the play was. I saw one or two good players that were effectively cleaning up and most of the rest were waiting for AK, KK or AA, so it was quite laughable really.

What was nice was that while i was playing i was greeted with a bit of a cheering section which was nice. Hopefully a sign of future poker greatness to come hehe. Soon after getting unlucky in the poker when i shoved A4 suited in the cut off with 10 big blinds late being met with two calls of A10 and JJ, i had a little scout of the casino room to see if i fancied playing any more table games, i decided not to as i had been drinking most of the night and i am a bit of a lightweight! The casino was lovely though and reminded me a little of other london casinos with how glamorous it now looked. A good choice of games and a very good party atmosphere made it a quality night. If you want to learn more about G Casinos or their online alternative visit www.gcasino.com

A big thanks to the organisers for arranging all of this as Brighton the next morning was really sunny and gave me the opportunity to catch up with my cousin who lives down there. Also got the chance to meet two guys from www.gamblingexclusive.com with talks of maybe having my blog up on their site which would be very nice. All in all a marvellous trip!

Now onto the business of Palace's survival on sunday. YEESSSSSSS! What a nervy game to be watching! I honestly thought we had the game lost when they scored to make it 2-2. They had about 10 mins to get just one more goal and with us sitting ridiculously deep in defence i thought there was every chance of them getting it and sending us down in the cruelest of fashions. With that said i thought we were cheated in the game with their first goal being a definite foul on one of our players who was trying to clear but got clipped by their striker Leon Clarke who went on to score. He then celebrated by kicking the advertising hoardings and thats a broken ankle right there. Real clever. They didnt really have a striker on the bench and to have him go off was a relief for the palace fans especially as he would have been buzzing.

When the final whistle came there was absolute hysteria in the palace contingent with the fans effectively going berserk. Some fans felt it was necessary to go onto the pitch even though we are at the ground of the team we have personally just relegated. I thought this was a little bit out of order but if the going was good on the pitch and it all look friendly enough i would have gone on too to embrace the players, who i think did a great job. I finally decided i would edge closer to the pitch to have a better look at things, finally deciding i was going to go on and then i saw hundreds of Wednesday fans coming onto the pitch to beat up our fans and players. When i saw Neil Danns get punched in the face i knew i wasn't going to bother!

There was a huge debate about what caused the furore but it was blatantly down to the lack of police presence in the palace end. We could just walk on with no problems as we were secured by only relatively inept stewards who weren't going to try too hard to stop a mob of palace fans running on the pitch in celebration. More police at our end and there would have been no trouble. O well. It doesn't really matter to me anyway i got the result i wanted and to see this historic game in the stadium with the crowd as fantastic and vocal as they were was amazing.

It was the icing on the cake to a great extended weekend and i am looking forward to blogging on more palace success and hopefully more poker success also!

Ant

Up the Palace! Up the Poker!

2010-04-28T10:23:00.007+01:00

Hey

Playing on full tilt and stars has helped my bankroll out a lot especially at the lower limits. 12 tabbing is always fun when the tables are relatively easy and i made $150 yesterday from my first serious grind which you gotta love!. If i keep that up i will be dancing in the streets before too long!

Going a little eskew now i would like to mention crystal palace football club. Why do we always deem it necessary to put the fans under the most immense pressure going just to feed some sort of lurid sadism fix it has. We couldn't nick a goal against WBA to make it all so easy after having a shot cleared off the line and Stern John going so close in the final minutes both of which i know most the fans thought were goals!

It felt like having 66 versus JJ all in pre flop and getting a 629 flop but then having it dramatically taken away by a J turn and an overkill J river. Massive game on sunday against Sheffield Wednesday. Both literally playing 90 mins for our survival in the league. Only a win is sufficient for them to stay up while we need a draw or better, but the game is to be play at Hillsborough, so the game is really up in the air.

The question is will it be like 2001 for us when we victoriously avoided relagation with a Dougie Freedman goal at Stocport or are we going down in dramatic fashion like we did in 2006 from the premiership like we did at Charlton. I am going up to Sheffield anyway to watch the game.

My record of watching away matches consists of 14 non wins. One of the most elaborate being watching Ireland against France at the Stade de France when Thierry Henry decided to play a bit of gaelic football. Absolutely devastated. It was more the hope that was raised with the Keano goal being quashed so qucikly in that fashion when we had chances to win the game. Ah i was inconsolable. I hope that this isn't the case on sunday. I don't even care if we don't win either because of this annoying away day jynx i have. Just please can we stay up?

On another note i will like to draw all of your attention to the new Gcasino website. I had a little spin of the games like Deal or no deal and thought they were pretty good. The poker site though i liked most. Its on ipoker and the design is quite alluring to the eye in dark and light blue colours, but trying not to sound like a big advertisement, the main reason i am saying all this is because they are doing a freeroll promo where they are giving away £500 a day from now on in daily freerolls. And on some days even giving away £1000 or £1500 in freerolls, they guarentee at least half get paid as well which is odd but it still keeps enough of a heavy weighting up top to make it all worth while. Think you should all give it a look esp if you are a freeroll specialist. What i would do is press this link sign up and enjoy the freerolls. If you play them all you will get a free roll there (see what i did :)) and who knows what could happen next.

My outlook is good for my new tyoe of game i play and realise that i should have played this for a lot longer than just the last week or two! But whats the most important thing about all this is that i am enjoying my poker again and can't wait to be playing again. Cue the grinding!

Ant

Loving it

2010-04-15T18:41:00.002+01:00

Hey

Well i have changed the type of sng i am playing and all of a sudden eveything is looking up. If you want to know the specifics i used to be playing double your money games to limited success. The games have got alarmingly tight and tough in those and my profits were definately limited. It was good for getting rakeback though in a very low variance way but i just wasnt making that much money.

Decided now to play 45 mans down to 9/10 mans and to 9 table them religiously for 10 hours a day, preferring to stick to the slower versions of the game as the turbos go too quick for me and i can never multi table them well. The rush of coming first in any form of tourney is great and these little mini rushes i get when i take one down really is a perk for me that keeps me content to play for long hours. Previously in my cash or double your money forays i was left bored and may well often start playing poorly. I hope now i won't be as i am studying my game a lot more, watching training vids and learning the exact maths of when to push or fold. Found out what i was doing previously was near enough the right thing to do but i have needed to tweak a few things and i have noticed there are some anomolies that have been left unanswered for me that i will post up on here to try and get some answers from you.

All i would like to get across in this post is that the fire has been relit in me. My enthusiasm has sky rocketed and i just know now that i am on course to make the big bucks and really enjoy the cushty living that playing poker well can give you. Roll on the big scores and steady winning!

Ant

Calm Before the Storm

2010-04-07T05:08:00.003+01:00

Today i feel really good. Not about my poker in the past week or two because i have hardly played and when i have i have been slightly idiotic and loose, not really caring. But its dawned on me that i just havent been enjoying the game as much as i used to.

Scared in ways that i am not good enough to keep up even in the lower sngs and multis. Always wondering whether or not i did the right thing and always assuming i didn't. Because of this i'm getting bored very quickly with proceedings and opting for a more inane thing to do like ps3 or watching a film. Noticed that when i feel confident in my plays and self assured that i normally kill whatever game i play, mainly sngs and multis (self proclaimed fish at cash, but maybe i might give a fuck about improving myself in that?). My lack of confidence is because i am beating myself up about not being rolled enough to play higher multis and what is happeneing is i am winning loads one day and then the other i can tarnish all the good work when i feel shitty about the low stakes situation i have put myself in.

It's a sort of vicious cycle but i know there is only one way to get out of that and that is to face this shiz full on. Change all my bad habits and i mean all of them. I'm going to go cold turkey on everything i feel may be detrimental to my poker play. No booze, no junk food, more breaks in between poker sessions, more exercise and making sure that i leave myself no time to be completely bone idle. With this i will generally feel better. A healthy body is a healthy mind. Never had a healthy body. So does that mean all other fat people are as insane as me?

Going through a slight transition period now. I have realised that i am really looking forward to going back to uni for my final year in september and that i am going flat out to get the best grade possible and with that guarentee of a degree i then, hopefully, have avenues open to me to pursue if poker doesn't work out for me.

ATM i'm stuttering like Gareth Gates but i can't honestly say i haven't made any genuine efforts to pull myself out of the hole. Today i am going to grind sngs in the way i know how, to make enough money to buy the services of an online training site. With the added education should come assurance in that what i have been doing in these sngs was altogether correct but needed a little bit of fine tuning. I could live with that. If i find out i am a fish from some self important dude narrating over his plays in a mock up sng, i won't be best pleased. I wouldn't know how to tell everyone else using the site that he is wrong :P

So plan is. Go to the gym every day. Eat healthily = increased capacity to maintain concetration levels for longer. Gotta also learn from pros online through these training vids = more assurance in my own plays = more money = the want to play longer hours = when was the last time you got away with mixing maths and english through the use of a " = " sign?

Anyways i just think now this is the calm before the storm and all of a sudden this blog will turn into cringeworthy brag reading over and over and hopefully over again.

Laters

Ant

Run Good + Hard Work Needed!

2010-03-30T14:22:00.002+01:00

Hey

Just an update to say that i am somewhat struggling at the moment to get out of the small sngs that i am playing. Been spending my profits as i make them because my br is quite low so im dealing with smaller profits. This just means that in the hopefully short period of playing these sngs i need to limit my spending to protect my profits so i can re-stream them into playing bigger sngs and/or small multis.

I havent been playing too much recently which has been another stumbling block for why i remain playing low limits. I haven't bothered playing my 8 hour+ days because i have been out a lot and just been generally putting it off. It may be my sub conscious saying im scared about how long it will take to get out of this rut but im just gonna get on with it before more weeks pass by and i am not where i want to be bankroll wise.

Gonna be interesting to see what my hourly profits are when i start grinding a lot and in a weird way i am looking forward to it.

Ant

Warning computers are harmful!

2010-03-17T13:57:00.006Z

Hey

Recently tried an Anti-Glare Protector for the 24' monitor that i have but annoyingly its just a little too small on the width. A phrase i have unfortunately been noted on before :)

If you are wondering what one of these are, its a piece of plastic film that goes over your monitor that protects from glare and other harmful UV rays that can have an adverse effect on your ability to use your computer properly. People with CVS (computer vision syndrome), which i unfortunately have, can have bouts of migraine, blurred vision, fatigue, eye strain, dry, irritated eyes, and difficulty refocusing the eyes when using the computer. For people suffering from this at any extent i would suggest buying an anti glare protector for your monitor!

I had been suffering with these symptoms for the past year and have got on with playing poker regardless and found that because of this i was never really playing my A-game and that i was never far away from a tilt tantrum. I think anyone with regular headaches and blurred vision as a direct result from using the computer too much would also not be in the best state of mind to play poker.

On the Wikipedia page for the condition, it says that a lot of the symptoms are temporary. However i would imagine that if you use the computer for 8 hours a day daily that these "temporary" conditions would seem a lot more long lasting. To be honest though, i never helped myself with the way i was using the computer in the early days of playing poker. I used to lie down in bed with my back arched and the laptop on my chest literally inches away from my face. I would probably say that i was sat like this for a good year at least and near the end of that tenure i started experiencing eye problems and headaches.

I reacted by buying a 24' monitor and using a desk for it with a comfy chair, thereby being able to sit far enough away from the comp for it not to be a danger to my eyes. However i found that i was getting headaches just as fast from concentrating at the screen for too long, and no question this helped in fostering my bad poker play, through my edginess.

I didn't know what the problem was so i thought i should go to the opticians, and he told me i need a slight prescription but nothing too untoward. I don't need glasses for walking about with (that would be a walking stick, im here all week!) and when i do put them on for computer use or reading i don't notice much of a difference. I still got the headaches, blurred vision and dry eyes.

As a sort of last ditch i bought an anti-glare protector for my monitor. Apparently it can get rid of 99% of the glare that is emitted from your screen and i would have to say that it has significantly helped me! I know it doesn't exactly fit my screen perfectly but it covers most of it and when i look through the filter my concentration levels are improved immensely. I no longer have to look at the screen for a minute a time without having to turn away because i just couldn't take glare.

This alone won't combat the problem i have with computer screens. I think its a combination of a lot of things that i was told to do by the opticians. There is an apparent 20-20-20 rule, whereby every 20 minutes you should look away from the computer screen to an object 20 metres away for 20 seconds.

Obviously i will need to do some sort of an altered version of that because i am not exactly going to look away from my computer screen religously every 20 mins. Could you imagine it. Playing 9 tables having Aces on 3 of them and noticing on my watch, ahh shit its time. Then turn away, stranded by the slow ticking of the 20 seconds on my watch before i can look back at the screen, aghast to find that when i return i have been sat out of the AA bearing tables and hence forth being strickened by an unsurmountable grief :)

The altered version will be to notice when there is a lull in my multi table grinding and you guys know when that is, when you have those few precious seconds to yourself where you can just sit back, smoke a cigar and not worry about playing for a while as you have just auto folded all your tabs dealing with the 49 suiteds or the K2 offsuit. In this quiet, I would just need to look away from the screen, close my eyes and relax, hopefully this will soothe my eye muscles and thus keep them in shape. Then the dreaded reminder beep will have me scrawling back to some sort of poker situation i have encountered a million times. O the Joy.

So hopefully within the next few months with the basics of workstation ergonomics mastered i can finally relax while playing poker and experience the sort of upturn i was so akin to in the early days of playing. I would like to think the only reason i started losing was because of my reaction to the frequent headaches i would get from the comp and not knowing why exactly i was getting them, which added to the frustration. Poker was becoming ever more bitter sweet as i could only experience smaller spells of greatness when the effects of CVS were on an unexpected holiday.

There are only a few other things i need to do to be perfectly prepared for computer use but these now may appear more anal. Desk height, chair positioning/your position in the chair so as not to get back pain, the monitor being at eye level so you don't have to get neck strain from looking downwards. These things i will only combat if i need to so i can maintain some sort of laziness.

On the subject of hamful computers i will lay a worrying link up to those of you who still use their laptop on their bodies ie. on their chest or lap while using, because people who do this and have done for quite some time can be at risk of the adverse effects rtadiation exposure! The link itself has an initial article that is quite vague but the comments in response to it hold more info.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/green-girl-blocks-laptop-radiation.html#

So i think that is the lot on my bearing of bad news in terms of computer related illnesses haha! Food for thought at least and hopefully this sciency advice will help those suffering from similar problems to myself. I wince at the possibility it was CVS that made bad players bad and now i have given them the cure to be playing stable-mindedly, if i have done i forward my apology to all those pros now out of a job. Bye now.

Ant

Things going well!

2010-03-03T12:20:00.002Z

Hey

Really can't complain at the moment. On a trend of about £500 a week which isn't the best i know but its very good in correlation to my starting roll. The sit and gos have been becoming more alluring, dare i say it, because they are convenient.

I can start up 7-8 of them and be over in an hour and a half, meaning i can fit it in around some sort of life if i ever decide to get one. However, i am riding high on the wave of optimism and industriousness so i am dedicating most days to poker and gym only. So that would mean 1 1/2 hours getting to and from and in the gym and the rest of my day playing poker and taking nice breaks in between.

In the breaks i can get away from it all and watch cash in the attic or an inevitable re run of sky sports news (that stuff repaests itself every hour i tellsya). When i am at a comfortable roll then i will look into the development of a more well rounded life. However i feel that that would only happen if i manage to have enough in the bank and have the capacity to further my funds nicely, to rent out where i feel i could branch out more with that independence and shit.

I feel that i will have to have a very nice amount to think about renting though as i wouldn't mind taking advantage of such kind parents who ask for hardly any rent from me.

So the plan is. Get cracking with playing these sit and gos. Maintain or better the £500 a week goal and with a comfortable amount in the bank i will re assess and see if i should start playing multis again. Life is simple atm, just waiting for some tilt carnage or summin to mess up this nice little bit of decorum im having here!

On the Crystal Palace fc front. Is Paul Hart really the man to lead us away from relagation? I think so, but am surrounded by pessimists who beg to differ.

Anyway gl peeps

Ant

Not going to Plan

2010-02-23T19:15:00.002Z

Hey

Have spent much of the xmas period up until now just about paying for all the things i have been getting up to through poker instead of pushing on into the higher stakes which i know i should be in right now. But i need some more application to even think about it.

I have been playing a lot less recently through lethargy and just wanting to play the playstation 3 instead with no real great will to carry on playing. The main reason for this is that i am not liking poker right now as much as i used to. This being as i am playing much lower than i would like and the lack of the profit i was once used to starts to aggrevate me and sometimes this leaves me playing a break even game through tilt.

I am writing now to try and address the problem and calm down a little, set myself a gameplan and stick to it. The end goal is to have £10000 in the bank so i can play all the the euro tournies (10e-$100) i want and feel ultra comfortable with every play i make knowing that i never have to be results orientated because i have so much money to fall back on. At the moment i am banking on lower limit sngs to get me through the struggle i find myself in, and its going ok. However i find myself getting bored and putting in no where near as many hours as i used to. I used to do 10+ a day easily loving every minute of it, but now im struggling to piece together 4 hours and with that i am not even playing that well.

Have had quite a few things happen to me over the period i was absent from blogging that i will shed light on within the next posts, nothing serious, but some quite funny all the same. Was tempted to do a mega post with all i shud have posted in the two months i wasn't writing but thought i would like to save you guys lengthened boredom.

One reason i wasn't blogging was because i thought i wasn't doing it right and im not. All so random and unorganised, no real planning involved, just a sort of stream of poker-related conciousness. I never know what i am going to write in the next sentence i just sort of scribe and see what happens. Will address this in later posts but for now i would like to relish in the laziness that is my current writing style and look forward to feeling better about all future posts. No idea why i thought i should share that with you and my insecurity here must be blinding!

Anyway, i think my approach to the game is what is most at fault at the moment. I am remembering the days of my former relative glory of having a £10K+ roll and taking it easy, pretty much crushing life along the way and its this that makes me remain in the doldrums of false starting with any roll i try to build. I think back constantly to the mistakes i have done and this aggrevates me and therefore affects the poker play i am doing currently.

Just an issue of manning up really, learning from mistakes and examining what i need to do to avoid the "i could have made it" tag i am placing on myself as if i have no chance of fully recouperating. I see my mate F3nix35 pushing on with his tourney success and knowing i could have been in the same spot if i was equally careful in bankroll management but c'est la vie i wasn't and i am where i am now. There we go again another thought that has me slightly agitated! lol.

I think its a matter on getting into a daily routine to crush the online lower stakes sngs that will help me push on. Go gym an hour a day, take regular breaks away from the comp, feel good about the profit i am making and be safe in the knowledge it takes little steps to make big goals. There is a rushing element in me that wants everything now and its in that i have in the past made so much money so quickly but the pitfall of doing things too fast is that you can lose the money just as quickly.

Lesson really here is to just enjoy my poker within the comfort of good br management and hopefully with my skill (if i have got any or if the games are so tough now that its all break even stuff lol) i can pussh on slowly into the promised land of going back to the multis, where no one can say anything against, that i am an above average player.

Cheers.

Tourney Update

2009-12-13T05:57:00.002Z

Hey

Experienceing somewhat of a turn for the worst recently dowswinging on three of the main sites i have been using recently. This is slightly annoying as well because tourney variance can damage your bankroll very quickly. I wouldn't say that much of my play was at fault for this because on the sites i have resorted to at the moment my ROI is averaging around 80% with profits clearing the $5K mark across all of them. Just experiencing a nasty downswing of late, but i am definately looking forward to the upswing that should ensue soon, and hopefully with this some more xmas money to use for my family. This is just a little update really to say i'm alive and yet again pledge an empty promise to start blogging more on here!

cheers

Deal or no Deal?

2009-11-07T06:35:00.005Z

Hey

Just won $2.8k on stars making my weekley earnings on there around $5K, which ain't bad! lol. I think i might just start grinding on here for the rest of my life if this continues. However, my sleeping pattern is adjusted with American time so i have no life really, just money making seems to be the only thing going for me lol.

Back to the tourney anyway. I just played my usual game and found that i was ripping guys to shreds. It was only a $5.50 2R1A ($20.50) tourney so this is probably why i found it so easy. However, the final table had no play in it because everyone was in or on around 10 bbs apart from a runaway chip leader. With 8 left it soon became a lottery and by this time i was showing my yellow belly and frantically e mailing pokerstars support for a mod to come on and arrange a deal. That was with 8 left!. One thing led to another and we're left with 5. The mod decides to turn up and the shit gets sorted and i dealt from last position with like 6 big blinds left lol.

This was fine, don't think i had another alternative but to take the money, but it was the request of the mod to play out the tourney that annoyed me, while he watched. Apparently we need to play out the game so that afterwards the money situation can be sorted. So an idea came to my head. This is our very own deal or no deal poker version! Should he have taken the money, should he have played on, there is only one question deal or no deal! I got everyone on board with this concept and we all seriously played for an hour afterwards for no apprent reason really but just for curiosity's sake. It was a beautiful sight really. This was poker at its finest. Not for the money but just for the love of the game

So Should i have dealt?

Congratulations on your finish in tournament #209010675! You agreed to a deal at the final table to adjust the payouts as follows:

When the tournament ended, you were automatically credited with the official place 2 payout of USD 4,049.10.

The difference between this amount and the amount to which you agreed in the deal is USD 1,257.05, and this amount has been debited from your account. You will find this transaction in the cashier history at this time.

NO!

I came 2nd, and not only do they let us play it out to beat ourselves up about it, they place the money you would have won in your account and then take it away from you once they sort out the proper, agreed payout. I was staring at the balance in my cashier thinking you want to stay here don't you, you beautiful $1257.05 yeeeeeeeh you want to become a weeks intense driving lesson programme don't you, maybe then i can buy a car and drive on the road and shit, yehhhhhh. But not to be. It was taken out and i was left disgusted with the world.

Meh at least i am cheating on my sharkscope hehe, i believe i will have profits showing of $1200 more than i should which is fine by me lol. Makes me look more menacing to the fishes but maybe will make it harder to make use of my premiums if they always think i have it. O well hu knows.

Well i am off to bed now but as a parting gesture, Fenix35, if you're reading this, be very afraid, my br was at £500 two weeks ago but im coming for you. You and ure $50K bankroll aint safe from me. Once i pass you im gonna first mooney you, then do the Jay Z dance towards you. Then runaway into the hundreds of thousands just like on an ice cream cone. So tasty.

Gl peeps

BOOM! Back Baby!

2009-11-04T20:57:00.003Z

Hey

Well after my last post it probably looked all doom and gloom for the Antster (and yes i will assign myself in the third person while putting a cockney twist in it for good measure) but since my bankroll was at a measley 800 euros i have had two very big wins. Both coming in 2000+ minefield pokerstars tournies where i placed a third and a fourth for $2K a pop wagering $11 in the first and $15 in the second one, both results coming 3 days after eachother. I was so busy transferring that money onto softer euro sites that i had no time at all to gloat on here but here i am :)

My record across three euro sites in particular is great, with a standard positive roi of over 80% and 100's of games to boot on each one hopefully means that sorta result making isn't luck. I'm just going to be ridiculously stringent now with my bankroll and abuse these euro sites in particular because i find them more bearable than the massive fields of the american sites. With a

I also learned a major thing in the past few days. Never mix euro site mtts with at most around 300 runners with full tilt or pokerstars tournies of 3000 odd runners. This will just lead to annoyance over how many you have left to conquer on the american sites and just aggrevate you enough to play poorly too on the euro sites. That is why i am playing the euro sites during the peak times of say 5-m - 11pm and then when those tourneys are done and i don't want sleep lol i can play on the american site tournies out of those times. Particularly the mtt sngs they have going the 90 mans, 45 mans, and 27 mans. I know when combining these with the 3000+ mtts it won't be pretty but it sorta feels right when ure only playing on two sites and know what to expect.

Revelations here as i write, i have had a downspell since the wins on pokerstars and realise that if i dnt cash in one tourney tonight my life bankroll will be at £1600/1806 euros/$2500 dollars. After being at a peak of say $5000 dollars. Easy come easy go right. Just shows you talking about br management doesn't make you utilise it! Been playing 10rs and $50 freezeouts since which i guess isn't horrendous but i may need to be a lot tighter.

To be fair as well since the win i have spent around £600 dealing with some other shit. Also, i need to stress that I have taken into account all the rebuys i am likely to spend in the tourneys tongiht and i am playing about 20, so would be unlucky for me not to add to that proposed BR stated above.

Anyway i am in a great mood approaching the Slovenia trip having been quickly backed for the 30% i eventually decided to giveaway, and i feel that i will be bringing a good game to that tourney. A bink here would be amazing as i think the estimated prize for first is between 50-100k euros so that wud be a win of a lifetime. I will be playing for first and if i get the opportunity to play the bubble i will be doing so aggressively avoiding other likeminded people and those with AA! hehe.

Really need to start reading other blogs, apart from the ones on my list and should get my networking shoes on but i guess it's something i am unlikely to get around to too soon, saying that though i could start tomorrow if i was bored!

A big thank you to the new guys that are starting to follow me on this blog along with the older ones, it's real nice to know that you appreciate this, and don't forget to leave comments. I'm pretty sure that is why every blogger blogs, well that and advertisement money, *cough*Amatay*cough* :)

Cheers guys

Relapse!

2009-10-30T06:51:00.002Z

Hey

I am dealing with a small bankroll at the moment and with this you cannot play underolled. Tonight i did out of frustration of me being completely able to combat the 10 euro/dollar rebuy tournies that most sites offer and being annoyed of playing the smaller sngs which are a hell of a grind for smaller profits. Started with 300 euros in my account and now im left with 100.

I enjoy playing mtts out and out but obviously i have put myself in this spot so im going to take the fact i only lost 200 euros tonight "gambling" my roll, and carry on playing the smaller games.

The big bonuses are due in soon which will double my br of around 400 quid so that will be nice. I am probably going to spread my roll and try and target 2 to 20 table mtts which i wud have to say i am an expert in for the lower levels of say $5-$50. If i just stuck to these i would be a wealthy man eventually. This basically limits me to playing full tilt and pokerstars which i won't mind doing if i am winning loads. Need to sort out my rakeback on FT though cos i know they offer 27% but at the moment they aren't letting me have any.

If anyone knows of anymore sites for good low level mtt sngs leave a message, haven't really checked the sng section on ipoker or party poker so i shud have a check there but anywhere else?

Its a sad sight to see me on less than 1K of a bankroll but with every downfall comes a lesson and i feel i am on the right road now. Mainly it's to stick to a strict br management scheme where i can play my poker without fear of going broke. With this i will definately prosper as i am a great mtt player, so in time i should be hitting a £10K br again and still have my heart set on having £25K by June of 2010 by just being a robotic mtt mastermind with no tilt. Will see how it goes. Should seem farfetched to a lot of ppl that i think i can do this in my current spot but i have always been ambitious and never totally deluded. So Gl to me i guess :P

gl peeps

Well, that went shit!

2009-10-29T00:33:00.003Z

Hey

Tried to 16 table grind cash for a whole month and live off the rakeback but turns out that i am shit at cash poker. So many things that i am just not suited to on it, maybe if i got a poker tracker it would help but at the moment i just seem to tilt on it or find it disastorously boring. I started the rake chase with 3500 euros and ended before i lost it all on 1000 euros. But at the moment i only have 200 euros becos the 1000 total comes when i have received all of my bonuses by the middle of next month.

To add a little spice to the proceedings, i won a 2K trip to Slovenia. Included is a 1100 euros tourney that has a 4 day structure for around 200 runners i believe. First takes home around 50K. Im selling 30% of my action for this if anyone is interested in taking a piece, im selling it at 5% = £50. So get in touch if you are interested.

Atm i am just concentrating on my bread and butter which is the multis and low level sngs (6man turbos and 20 mans). Low buy ins tho annoyingly because of my situation but however i have such an edge on the games here that i shud be looking at 100 a day profit in just the fiver games. Would love it if the tenner games were just as fishy wen my br increases. Running at 10% roi for these sngs which is nice, but infortunately not running too well at the multis but these results dnt affect me because of the nature of how i am exiting the tournies. Bad beats left right and centre which i can't do anything about, perhaps tho i am getting too low before pushing and tht is affecting my longevity in a tourney, maybe i shud be accumulating more non showdown chips but this is always tricky in the lower levels when you get perennial calling stations that don't know a cat from a dog.

It's gonna be a tough old grind now to get back to my heyday of a £10K+ bankroll but its a sure road and i am a capable tourney player. Cash games aren't for me atm tho. I think i have the perfect grounding to become a great cash game player (capabale of playing up to 16 tabs well and quite good at reading trends) but i just don't know whats what there. I am not confident at all about what certain raises mean in certain spots and i just need a helping hand there in cracking the enigma that is the 6 man cash game.

All in all im in a disastorous spot compared to what i really shud be on but i have no doubt that i have enough to be well off from this game so i just hope my hands hold and i get lucky when going in from behind.

Peace out

P.s get in touch about backing me in Slovenia

Jay Z Calls me out!

2009-10-12T08:59:00.002+01:00

LOL a different sorta post today. Scrolled youtube and found the clip i was longing for. Proof that Jay Z had a little chat with me and went as far as emulating my dancing in front of the whole crowd, even had the opportunity to go on the big screen to show everyone else there what i was about. So if anyone has some disputes over me not being able to dance i can always show them this without having to actually pretend as if Jay z (one of the biggest names in the music industry) said he liked the way i danced.

Pretty immense night and without doubt one of my favourite artists. Here's the link, btw watch from around 1.50 to 2.20 and also notice right at the end of the vid he points towards me as he exits the stage :):):):)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQzqGwwATrs

Laters.

13 table cash grinding FTW!

2009-10-03T14:02:00.003+01:00

Hey

I am looking to grind £3000 rake for the month from 13 tabling 0.25/0.5 . This is after my BR getting dangerously low, and i need a sort of less variance filled venture to get me picked up again. I have just over 2.5k to do this with and i know it sounds risky (because it probably is) but i think i will be fine and for some reason i won't be listening to nay sayers about this strategy. All they will do is aggrevate me. I'm gonna go ahead with this, play the odd tournament to suppleament the winnings and hopefully all will be well. tbh i have 50 buyins at this level and will be playing with 13 of them at any one time, i think i should be ok to get through just the first month break even and if i can it should be plain sailing because the £1500 ish in rakeback bonuses should have me in a good way

I will be back on later to look at everyone elses glorious posts before i lock myself away from humanity and 13 table for 8 hours a day 6 days a week. I'm determined to do well and this needs to be done for me to play tournaments only in the future with a much much safer roll. The switch date back to tournaments i wouldn't mind advice on, what roll should i be looking at to play them safely if i am thinking of 12 tabling $20r - $100f ?

Cheers ppl.

Total Change Of Plan for Now!

2009-09-15T15:06:00.002+01:00

Hey

Well i decided that i hadn't a big enough roll to play cash games at the levels i wanted so i decided to go back on the tourney grind with the exception of not playing a tourney over 50 of any currency apart from one tourney where my roi is ridiculously good. Had a great day yesterday securing £2000 for my troubles mass multitabling 12-15 tables across three sites where all the buy ins where low, and i cleaned up. One particular heads up game in a 2000 euro gtd sticks to mind however when we were playing for 400 euros first getting 800 and second getting 400. I got it in good as a mass chip leader 4 times and lost all of them, getting rivered each time. I got lucky back at him once however but when it was his hand that decided to hold i was aggrevated to see i would get scond place.

There was only really one move i can remember that i believed to be an atrocious one on my part yesterday, well not atrocious but i got played like a flute. This was in the early stages of a 50 euro tourney where i had 99 and raised it up pre to get one caller. Flop came down 7KK and the guy bets out pot to me. In most cases now, the guy will have A7 or 87 and wants you out of the pot to take it down where he knows its good. However this guy was a tricky mofo, and decided to bet out with sevens full, i then decided to re raise all in and he tanked called to rub it in. I put vwp in the chat box and tilt was never a factor there for me.

I am sort of free from tilt now i must say however that is only because recently i have been running quite well and my decidion making has been rather good. Normally what happens is that i make one donk move in a tourney and the other 12 i am playing suffer as i am playing more aggressively to try and make up for that loss in that tourney immediately, which is never a good idea!

My scores last night included $700 for a 6th in an 8K 400 euros for a second in a 2000 euro 400 euros for a 4th in a 3k, 700 euros for a three way split in a 4K, and loads of other min cashes which i am rather happy with.

The future of the plan now is rather shady. I don't know what to do. I have a good tourney game and at the moment i am reaping the benefits through clever bankroll skills where i can be comfortable playing the games i am without getting scared of being broke. I need to take a monthly balance check over 3/4 months to get an idea of variation and my profitablity. I may decide to just head towards the 10K i need to play 0.5/1 and just grind at that but i definately won't if the tourney game is treating me well because i feel i have an edge in it. I hope all this bigging myself up won't result in a calamitous collapse anyway and i hope i continue my form as i have plenty of work to do to catch up with f3nix35!

GL.

Learning Quick!

2009-09-10T12:57:00.002+01:00

Hey

In these cash games you really can't fuck about. Played 3 one and a half hour sessions 9 tabling 0.5/1 6-max cash and noticed that the games are noticebaly beatable and at the very best break even worthy! However that is if i can maintain the mindset of a freakishly stable human being that can only play when mentally fit to do so (not drunk, tired or in any other negative mindset). Because in one of those 3 sessions i was sort of not on my game, i was slightly dazed and never felt right, and this resulted in a 200 euro loss, which had me down 250 for the 4 and a half hours i played. The previous two sessions were pretty sick tho.

The first one consisted of me getting setted on like nobody's business. I realise i played two hands in this spot rather carelessly. One of them consisted of when i had AA i was in mid position and utg popped it up to 3.5 and i only re popped to 11 everyone else folded until it got to the BB who called the extra 10 along with the UTG raiser. Flop 479 rainbow. Gotta be loving that right? BB checked along with UTG and i bet 24 into the 34 pot and instantly got pushed all in for my last 65, UTG folded and everything in my gut told me he has a set he has a set there is no way you can call there is no way you can call, but part curiosity and part he could well have JJ i make the call and shockingly he has 44 for the set. I was in relative disbelief tbh that he had 44. Who flats 10 pre with a 100 stack at 0.5/1 with 44, even though i know he knows the UTG initial raiser is coming into the pot behind as well it still doesn't make this play profitable. What i thought he could be making that flat call pre with was JJ-KK and at a push AK. 99 wouldn't be out of the equation but so many people fold that there in that spot!

The other situtation i don't even want to get into. I would just like to say that pre flop on the flop on the turn and on the river the guy bet into me healthily and i called all the way with QK os out of position on a K high board thinking he was bluffing. Weren't my finest hour when he showed me his dominating hand, but you find some guys bet all the way on a bluff right? hehe no is the real answer to that. Well maybe on a real dry board but honestly it wasn't and i was fishing it up big time.

However, in the two first cash sessions i found i was playing well and dominating but i was getting really unlucky in spots as well but brushed it off as variance, there were also tricky spots that i was never sure how to deal with and this mainly rotated around getting 3-bet pre flop. I am never quite sure what these guys are doing it with and find myself folding the AQ-AK in these positions but in time i will get comfortable as i will have seen eventually what these guys are up to when they finally have to showdown a 3-bet pot and then i can see what they were doing it with.

The overall dynamic of playing 9 tables at once seems manageable and i honestly quite enjoy it. I did loads of maths yesterday as well and figured that i would rake in the region of 30 euros an hour so if i was to play 216 hours in a month, which is 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, i would rake in 6500 euros. Which would translate to receiving around 700 in an affiliate promo for raking that amount, 2000 in a rake chase and around 2000 in actual rakeback. So if i round that up i would be getting £5000 a month which would be bloddy tough work with the hours i am willing to put in so if i receive monies in the region of that it would be fair play. This would be ofc on the back of a break even game only and barring the first 3 months where i will allow myself to play a break even game as i am transitioning from the tourney scene i would fully expect to start turning a profit eventually to add to the 5K a month. I have no idea what a reasonable turnover on the tables would be. I would imagine somewhere in the region of 50 euros a day perhaps? which would add 1500 to my earnings which would culminate in a 6500 turnover monthly which would be bloody fantastic! However a slight tarnishing of this is that the site operate in euros and that this in reality is £5700 but i will take that! Could have been worse, the site could have been in dollars!

Have another issue with the cash games and tht is i am sort of completely underolled for them! I have a diminished bankroll which i have alreadt stated in a previous post and currently in my poker account i have 970 meaning 70 left for rebuys across 9 tables haha. I initially started with a little over 1200 but as i sed i lost 250 so i need a little bit of luck now for my BR to go up instead of down in this crucial part of my bankrolling history. I still have about £2K in the bank however as back up with more monies in transit from other sites but i would really like to keep that in there and only use these monies. Even with 2970 tho i would be underolled to play these games! However all i need to do is to get through the first two months on this shoestring budget and i will be laughing all the way to the bank rudeboy!

By the way i was thinking quite fervantly recently about what the future holds for me in poker and decided that i will stick to this hopefully until my BR is at crazy limits. Somewhere in the region of £100K and them transfer monies into full tilt and pokerstars and once and for all rape those sites for every penny in their tournies with no fear of being underolled, so i can really let my skill factor take centre stage. The thought of murdering these American sites is what is keeping me going as they have pummeled me recently.

Sorry for the long post but felt as if i should let u guys in the know of whats up with me. The next few days i will be having a break from the game as i don't feel up to it to be quite honest, so gl with all you guys and i will update here again asap!

Laters.

Cash games it is!

2009-09-09T11:45:00.002+01:00

Hey

I am gonna start gambling a little with my roll i have around 5K left in the bank after i have been spending loads, I was in relative shock when i saw that number tbh, but its enough to recover! I am going to be 9 tabling 0.5/1 limits 6-max cash from here on in, well maybe i will play some more tournies to build the roll a little. But the hope is to grind 160 hours in a month at those limits and take in the bonuses and rakeback with a break even game, so much for aspirations! I really don't care if i can't win any profits on the table just that i get the hours in and the bonuses stay huge. Would be nice to think i could be a profitable player tho! So there is the little update on whats happeneing with me, i am going to see how this cash thing goes and if i can get anywhere near say £3000 a month. I am going to stick with it. I am probably going to play 3/4 tournies daiy anyway so boredom just shouldn't happen. So up the cash game and hopefully up the bankroll aswell!

Gl.

Cash or Tournies??????

2009-08-31T20:30:00.002+01:00

Hey

Got a dilemma at the moment and as the title suggests im not sure what to do. I love tournies and have loads of time for them but have concluded that they may not be the most profitable route for me as well as the most sinsistently profitable either. The fluctuatuions found in tournies is jarring and if i am to want to take up pro poker after uni i will have to have a deep bankroll to think about playing tournies full time and paying rent and other bills.

That is why i am thinking about playing 0.5/1 cash games, 9 tables for around 50 hours a week. Calulated that if i do this i get a little over £1000 weekly in rakeback so all i would need to do is show a break even game. Now this is a hard prospect to not go for as its guarenteed money at the end of the week and i will have to be unlucky not to be at least break even. However, it may turn out that i could make just as much or more from playing tournies so it is confusing for sure.

This is why i am thinking that i might trial the cash game thing for the next week or so to see if i can maintain a break even game or better, and then have an equally long stint in tournies to see if that is working. If both are working then i would possibly integrate the two playing them at the same time or having days off one and days off the other, possible playing each one of them at their peak fishiest times if this time varies from both fields. It's gonna be an interesting few weeks for sure for me and i hope that my profitablity in this game can just grow and grow.

On an intriguing note, my dad's mates with the mate of a pro Millwall footballer and he revealed to my dad that the starting striker at the club is on £1800 a week wages, which are most probably halved because of tax to £900 a week. It's quite a pleasing thought to think that if all goes well that i can be earning more than a 3rd tier professional football player lol.

Gl at the tables but not against me.

Crushing!

2009-08-25T21:41:00.002+01:00

Hey

Had been playing non stop for about 6 days recently for 10 hours a day and found myself averaging around £500 a night which is incredible. Been targeting what i believe to be the weaker euro tournies to achieve this goal and i have been having relative success with this. I particularly love any 6-max tournies going on because shorthanded, i am rather a better player because i find that people really don't appreciate the often deep stacked nature of these tournies and play a lot looser so i just sit back and wait for my spots, because you are given time to wait! This gets me on to another point in that the ultra long structures in online tournies suits me down to a tee! This is for the same reasons given above and that i am beginning to have the patience of a saint in slow playing these fools and maximising profits from the legitimate hands i get.

Starting now to dislike the 10-30$ freezeouts on sites because of how quick the structure rises and how hard it is to maintain a stack when you often get played back at all the time. So i have just given these up on many of the sites in favour of rebuy tournies with slower structures, and also in the rebuy periods the potential to get huge stacks from going all in with AQ-JJ pre flop and getting an ace-rag call is great. In these tournies it is much easier to maintain a stack as you often get more respect for raises as you are often playing much more deep and you also then have room to bluff flops in position that you have missed. It also gives you the opportunity to guage your oppenents liking/disliking of the flop/turn/river and gives you the chance to play accordingly. So safe to say that i am often playing only rebuys nowadays! However, i do play the occasional high value freezeout with lower starting fields, as i believe that people play tighter in these because they think they have a higher chance of success because there are less people to go through which is true and isn't true because i am sure there are expectant sharks that enter these tournies waiting to prey on the nervousness of some of these players.

Have given up for the meantime on full tilt poker and pokerstars on the general conception that they are tougher games, however i am starting to think i have made a broad stereotypical labelling of how good the American player plays and should really back myself in certain tournies. But i was talking to Fenix about this and i said that i plan to load my bankroll up on the euro sites first so that i have a comfortable bankroll to face up to the full tilt and pokerstars high limit tournies from 20r to 100r/300f which could have big value if i learn how to adapt quickly. Will probably set a target of how much i am willing to lose so i can play the tournies relatively care free and hopefully it could be the start of something special. But at the moment i find that i am enjoying playing the 10r, 20r, 25r, 50r and the higher freezout tournies from 25 euros to 100 euros on the euro sites too much to give it up with a massive preference and pretty sick success rate at the 6-max rebuys and the double stack freezouts.

Also incredibly i can say that i am somewhat im my element across 12 tables at a time and feel fully confident i am playing near to my best game on every table. I do have one leak though that i will testify to and this is often in the rebuy tournies mid-late on where i don't open raise enough pots in position with looser holdings to try and play flops and win them without going to showdown, also to develop a slightly looser persona to make it easier to maximise value on the legitimate hands i am likely to get. To be honest i am capable of doing this but i am rather lazy in pressing the auto fold button to make things easier for myself in certain spots and so will look to get more involved where i feel i am at my weakest. The importance of playing 12 tables is HUGE because it enables you to tackle variance on a nightly basis where i have to be really unlucky not to final table anything when i am grinding 12 tables at a time for a 10 hour stint. Normally i get thoguh around 30 tournies in this time and its great to say i am able to play these at a high level at the rate i am, many people can only play a tenth of what i do in a night! Gotta thank Will Hill for my 12 tabling ability really because those small view versions of the tables were great (Pro View) and made it so easy to start on 4 tables and add one daily until you found the comfort zone.

Took a break tonight because i am not feeling quite at my best but i will leave you now with one of my proudest sharkscope graphs, i hope the rate on this bad boy continues! I'm quite liking £500 a day tax free! ROI below at 100%.

GL.

getting on swimmingly

2009-08-16T18:25:00.003+01:00

hey

Im loving tournies atm! up £2000 from the last three days of play and i have been on good form. Some shoddy moves have prevented me from better results, and some bad luck also. What i do know is that when i get my resits out of the way i should be killing the games and making in the region of £200 a day. It's a lot to do with the fact that i can 12 table and still play to a high standard. Which is great because you can dispell the nastiness of variance by getting the volume in.

I am a sharkscope shark across 4 sites now but have lost thousands on three sites as well which tarnishes the good work. Ongame has been particularly nasty to me recently in administering really bad luck to the point where i am questioning whether or not i am ever gonna play there again. Saying that i will probs bink a huge win to put myself back into the black on that site anyway so i will wait for my time.

The gym sessions have basically stopped in the past 2 weeks with me being a lazy bugger. I don't know why this has happened really, i am not one to shy away from exercise if needs be. I like to run and do weights but i treat it like school, you don't want to go in the morning but once you are there it ain't half bad. That really needs to pick back up so i can get the bod i deserve and can be physically fit for my football team on the sunday.

Speaking of which i was told that i probably won't be selected because of my fitness. You should see this team! A lot of them are spastics with no technical finesse at all, they are fitter than me but i would be seleceted in front of most of them by any other manager! O well life is a bitch but i just need to get fit really.

Got an exam on tuesday which i hope i get well prepared for (day before revision obv!) and i have four courseworks to do by friday which will be tough and only when all works are done will i return to poker. Couldn't have had a better incentive really, i am bloody addicted to this game!

Btw above is the graph i am generating on one of my favoured sites.

Back on the grind

2009-08-07T14:06:00.004+01:00

Haven't really been playing that hard recently, but i will be from now on methinks. Gonna be grinding some different euro sites to see what i should be playing on the regular and am starting to feel that i have my touch back and should start to dominate. Time will tell hey.

I have been playing a bit recently and am starting to feel that i can start to crush online tournies again. My graph listed above is from one if the sites i use. I think i will be able to make even more money on there in the near future, which is exciting.

Plans remain for me to crush my uni retakes and for myself to remain relatively tilt free and to enjoy myself which i feel will be easy to do. But could just have jynxed myself!

New Plan

2009-07-20T23:08:00.003+01:00

Hey

Just a quick note to say that my last few days of online grinding haven't gone well. Mainly to do with the nonchalant attitude i have towards playing across 6 or more tables for a long period of time. Finding it hard to keep concentration and this may be to do with not having a good routine going. Probably should go to the gym before grinding online to help mellow me out and increase the focus necessary to play for such a long time without fidgeting. So i have decided to give up the grind online for the forseeable future (hehe probs will only be a week!)

Instead i am going to fill up my days with three things. Gym in the morning, Uni during the day (need to study for retakes) and jump on the train from uni to play at the empire casino to hopefully destroy what i hope will be fishy games. That is going to be the routine from wednesday onwards and will end as my retakes are sorted at uni. Then i will keep the morning gym thing going, then try and do summin of interest during the day (involving me getting out of my room) then hit the online grind from 5-7pm onwards until about say 3.00am that will mean i will be in bed my 3.30am and can wake up around 11.30am get brekkie in and then leave for the gym at 12pm. That seems like a solid play on life really. And btw yes i do realise it wouldn't be a morning gym session if i leave my house at 12pm but at least its in keeping with my body clock anyway!

Apart from that piece of boring information i have nothing really else to say except a big congratulations to Ben for winning the 1000 euros ladbrokes package to Killarney with a seat for the 550 main event. Really envious of this as i am going to be trying hard to win the same trip and perhaps another festival in Ireland through qualifying on Ipoker. The latter event being called the Irish Winter festival and is held in Dublin i believe.

I hope to get back on Grind with success when i do start to play online, but that will only come with a focus, and that focus will only come with a strict life regime which involves regular exercise and as much time as possible away from my room of work. Good luck people.

Laters.

$12kGTD Win

2009-07-15T05:01:00.003+01:00

Hey

Just took down the $12K GTD on party poker. The 109$ entry one. Cards went my may royally throughout this but i can't remember putting a foot wrong tbh. Very happy with the $3360 prize money considering i had a 0 balance during this tourney as this was my last punt before i sorta gave up on the software for ipn and ipoker but now i might look to develop that roll and look not to take a lot of it out. Just skimming profits off the top.

I had two other final tables tonight in a $12.5K gtd on ipoker and the $7500 GTD double stack on ipoker as well. The former i played very tight and eventually had to push with 97 in the cut off with 7 big blinds left, got called by Ace rag and lost getting out in 10th for $250+ ($109 entry). In the latter i went out in 5th when i found A9 on the big blind with 10 big blinds left. The cut off raised all in for 8 big blinds and on previous history with him i knew he had less, or was likely to anyway so i called. He showed 10K and binked a 10 on the river. Annoying because first in this tourney was paying $2000+ . With the pot won i would have been second and comfortable in chips. Probs would have weaved some magic to win the whole thing but will never know now! I won $600 in the tourney. This only had me at just above even on ipoker because i played a lot of tournies on there inc. trying to qualify for the irish winter festival in the $50r tourney ipoker had running. Misplayed 99 in early position and got my just deserts in that one.

In the 20K 30r on ipoker i went out as a 30/70 favourite for a pot but lost with about 40 left i believe. Lost some coin flips in that that were pivotal also. Came 17the 10r $10000 GTD as well getting a little too aggro pre flop and getting caught out. That was especially annoying because i only play that tourney to final table as all other prize monies are rubbish in comparison, but it weren't to be this time.

Before the party poker win, which was the last tourney of the night, i was bemoaning the nature of tournament poker and thinking i wasn't cut out for the game because its not a reliable income and can make u feel like shit if you keep losing money without winning. After the win i still have that taste of loathing for tournies, but my love for them can be described as bittersweet. Winning one is an amazing feeling, especially for the amount i won tonight. I guess i just need to keep records of how much i win over a certain period to see if i shud continue with it.

But back to win, what was best about it was that i didn't really get overly excited by it. Just sort of closed the room and looked to surf online as if nothing happened lol. I think this is a great mentality because i use it across the board even when i get the worst of beats.

Like the one i got late on in the 10000 10r on boss today when i get it all in for 20 big blinds with KK against 1010 and the opponents hand makes quads by the end and after hours of playing im sent crashing out. I just shrugged it off, but i have to be forgiven for exclaiming a "fuck off" to myself lol. I then carried on with the other 8 or so tournies i was still in making sure my temperament remained.

It would be fair to say that the win has been a confidence booster and has shown me i still got game, something i was questioning during the drought of wins before this. I hope this is the start of some nice wins to come but also hope these aren;t the last words of a fool who has just jynxed himself. :)

Gl people.

Taking a break-Gym membership

2009-07-09T00:52:00.002+01:00

only played around 7 tournaments tonight many of which were on average around the 100 dollars mark to play and i didn't cash in any. This has pissed me off. Mainly because i don't really know what my whole bankroll is at now and am scared i could be getting close to not being fully rolled for 100 tournies. I am going to add up all my monies and then plan from there. I also don't want to continue playing because i feel i have a massive leak in my game and that is i don't play enough hands when i have 30 big blinds or more in a tourney i normally keep waiting for a hand, and if it doesn't come i am forced to push all in as a short stack.

So after my break tomoz i am going to come back on friday trying to vary my game and see whats what. Even though i am a profitable player i still think that this flaw in my game is hindering me from making more. That and the bad luck i get sometimes!

So yeh i am just gonna leave you with that and that i have joined a gym for 6 months in an effort to get fit and perhaps take my football slightly more seriously. Perhaps semi pro level stuff might result but we will see!

GL

Willie Tann the Man?

2009-07-07T02:37:00.002+01:00

Hey

Decided to travel up to the Grosvenor Victoria casino London to try my hand at the £330 NLHE freezeout with 100ish runners. Found myself seated at a table with 2 familiar faces and one other that i knew as Willie Tann. His record speaks for itself and he is a great player but boy does he get hands at the right time!

Started my onslaught when Tann raises from mid position to 300 (blinds 50/100, 6000 starting stacks) i get QQ in the Cut off and re pop to 800, folds round to him and he calls.

Flop A Q 9 two hearts, one spade

He checks to me and into the pot of 1750 i bet 400, to emit weakness, of which he re pops to 1500, and i flat call to try and induce a bet out from Tann on the Turn.

Turn - 8 Spades

He checks to me and i bet 2000 into him scared of the possible 10 or J river or perhaps a possible flush. In hindsight i probably should have checked behind because betting 2000 here is just showing raw strength, but at the time i was so scared of the 6 outer 4 to a straight coming on the river that i felt obliged to bet at it. If the turn brought a 2 i would have checked behind all day long. 8 spades was one of the worst cards i could have seen imo, that or the 8 of hearts, but others cards could have scared me like a K J or a 10 which could have made him a straight. He folds to the 2000 raise. This ends the first of three meetings with the Tann-Meister.

Soon after this hand i get AJ os in mid position and raise to 1000 with a stack of about 9000, blinds at 200/400 with a running ante of 50 i believe. Folds all the way round to the BB who pushes all in for around 5000 total. I dwell and make the hero call in the knowledge that i saw the same guy bet all in with K9 when he was short stacked from the dealer button into the blinds when he had 15 big blinds remaining. Gave me the impression that he was an impatient mofo. One that would perhaps get the same impatience when one attacks his blind with a seemingly weak bet of 2.5 bbs. i believed his range included A7-AK, 66-JJ, with QQ-AA i would think he would get slightly more tricky. anyways with the edge in my mind tht there is enough value in the call as i believe i could be a 70-30 against an ace with a lower kicker, i call and he has A10. I take the pot and his chips. Willie Tann comments on what an exceptional call it was and by his expression and everybody elses at the table they wouldn't have had the balls/stupidity to make the same call. I was slightly taken aback by this from Tann, to have impressed a wiley pro like him i must be doing summin right. He would soon teach me a lesson anyway.

Soon after i misplayed AQ by flatting a raise pre, where i should have taken the initiative by re raising or folding.

Soon after tht i find willie tann raising 3 x BB in mid pos, i have AJ on the dealer button and flat his call, everyone else folds. Flop

10 5 5 Two Hearts

I think he has missed and he checks to me, i check behind thinking my Ace high Jack kicker is good. Turn

7 Hearts

He half pot bets me and still thinking i am in the lead i flat call. River

2 hearts

4 to a straight out there and he tank checks to me and knowing now hes unlikey to have a high heart if any i steal the pot away from him with a 3/4 pot size raise.

Change tables soon after and find my first hand is JJ. UTG+1 raises 3x BB i re raise to 1200 blinds at 300/600, i re raise to 4100 with a stack of about 17000 and it folds around to the dealer button who goes all in for 13000. UTG +1 folds and i go into the tank. He must have QQ KK AA here right if he so confidently put all his chips in after a raise and a re raise? But i eventually call and gobsmacked but equally relieved he hasn't got me crushed by holding KQ. He misses when the community cards fall and i get a comfortable stack.

The next hour and a bit involved me stealing pre flop uncontested now and again getting re raised once when i open raised with A7, the guy was a rock so an easy fold to his all in. Eventually i have around 23000 blinds at 1000/2000 ante of 200.

I have QKsuited on the dealer button everyone folds around to me and i make a standard 5500 raise to hopefully take the blinds uncontested. I am immediately met with Wille Tann in the small blind pushing all in for his last 20000. Now before this spot i had see Tann go all in pre holding JJ JJ 1010 AK. And nothing less than those bad boys. But for some reason i felt that he can't always be blessed with premium hands and this does look slightly suspect that he is re raising a dealer button raise, which he can rightly presume is relatively weak so could, in essence be re raising with a lot less than QK suited. But it wasn't to be. For some reason i felt inclined to call 14500 to win a pot of 10000 to leave me with a little over 2000 if i lost the pot. If i decided not to call i would have had around 8 bbs and a decent enough stack to get fold equity pre flop if i wanted to open shove with any two to receive the blinds and antes.

He has AK suited hearts i have KQ suited spades and the board comes A J 3 5 7 was hoping a 10 would come to save the day but wasn't to be.

I utterly misplayed this hand but it taught me a valuable lesson to take a breather and properly evaluate tough decisions in live and online poker, and to take my time to avoid spazzy calls like this, and not to let my aggro side reign, the one that allowed me to call with QK suited becos "i am just not gonna take that sorta shit from Willie Tann" you know. It was a definate call against this player as he exhibited tight as fuck poker in terms of re raising so strong pre flop and i think he was raising equally as strong open raising, because the deck was hitting the man in the face!

Oh well i am happy with my performance. I think i did very well except for three glaring mistakes that i can remember that will now be mended for the next time i play a high limit live tourney. Really enjoyed it despite the fact i played 5 hours to get 16th, when top 10 pays and first was a cool £10000+. In many ways i am happy i didn't win the money because invaluable lessons were learnt tonight by me losing my chips, but ofc i would like to have thought that i was gonna learn those lessons even if i took down the £10000 but it wasn't meant to be!

Now it is to the online grind and to make some real money so i can hit the live circuit with a vengence properly bankrolled. Loving life at the moment and loving the way i am reacting to a mistake that could have effectively cost me £10000, well one thing is for sure anyway it cost me the £330 buy in!

Big respect for the Tann meister as well, he was getting it in good constantly tonight and hunted me down as if i was a fishy gasping for air. Gl to him tonight. Hope he doesn't win it though, give it to someone less rich than him!

Gl at the tables.

Multitabling

2009-07-05T05:58:00.002+01:00

Hey

Just a quick update to say i am getting some good results in with a 3rd place in a 10K GTD for over $1000 and some other lower ones, that i am quite pleased with. The big wins are, however, tarnished by the buy ins of the tournies i enter and don't cash in. I can't expect to cash in them all by the age old problem with me is that i play too many tables and don't seem to concentrate well enough on each of the tables to play as well as i could. I got up to around 10 tables today and i have to admit i was really uncomfortable there. I am lowering the amount of tables i play to 8 now and will lower it again if there is still no improvement.

Sorry about the ridiculously boring post but for now i really can't be arsed talking any more so until next time laters.

GL.

update

2009-07-03T04:38:00.003+01:00

Hey

Haven't been playing well and been getting unlucky in spots to prevent me from deeper runs in tournaments. I notice more and more now how tournaments hinge on coin flip situations. I think my style of play has it that i am so tight pre that i eventually dwindle down to 10bb or around that and i have to push all in to make a coin flip or worse happen. My mid-tourney game has to improve. I need to open up more without being too loose to make my card holdings less important if i abuse position. This said every time i try to do this i get into awkward situations and find myself thinking why the fuck have i done that. I just need to develop a flair instead of the robotic pre flop stance i currently hold.

However the very tight strategy does work on some sites, boss media for example, the play is so bad on there that you just need to wait for a semi decent one to get all your chips in good. This being said i could still open up a bit more on there as well

Looking forward to the next few days of poker online because i will be experimenting a bit more with plays, but i will need to make sure i can hold my patience throughout the massive slog because i am yet to record one night where i haven't made at least 3 glaring mistakes in a session. That needs to be reduced to zero.

Gl.

Manning Up

2009-06-27T05:39:00.003+01:00

Hey

I feel i have turned a new leaf in terms of playing poker. No longer are my emotions completely intertwined in with getting a bad beat or winning a huge pot. I am starting to feel like a mercenary, and in keeping with this, one that is only interested in the money. There are probably better ways to get money in poker than to play in MTT's but i just love this form of the game too much to give it up. Also i'm not fully in the know of the optimal strategy in NLHE cash games 6 man or 9 man to ever steer away from what i am doing currently. I have said that i would play sng's more often but i hardly do this (this will change).

In the last 2 days i am up over a Grand sterling from mtt's but for no less than about 24 hours work (yes that is bordering an obsessive amount of time playing, but i love money!), so life is good. No more posts will talk of any bad beats in a "i hate my life" fashion. I might mention some but only for entertainment value and in a matter of fact way. Being too affected by the turn of a card is really bad for you and in seperating your emotion away from the parts of poker you can't control (when you are all in pre flop for example) you can study more on how to better the skill aspect. The variables under the "skill" aspect are quite vast for a game that a lot of people play all the time and you see guys doing different things in the same situtation and both of them can have correct reasoning.

This means that when most pros play day in and day out they always feel they have made a mistake and that they should have done things differently, unless this is a glaring mistake, they are probably beating themselves up unjustly. I realised this tonight. I always come off a session despite being up hundreds of pounds and thinking wow i played crap today i should have done this and that differently (thinly veiled brag). If you have opened your eyes up fully to all the information given to you at any one time and made the best decision you could given the circumstances than you can't do anything else. It's only when the results come in of whether that particular decision was right or wrong do we berate or congratulate ourselves. If it's a negative result we seem to think we did the wrong thing, but this may often not be the case in the long run, just for that given moment.

Sorry for this gibberish but i am just laying out some philisophical shit to help people prepare mentally for the slog of poker. I feel i am grounded enough now to really buckle down and make some money over the summer, and in winning tonight, i can see that i could do this more often, but only with the right temperament.

Laters.

Clawing my way back

2009-06-24T16:38:00.002+01:00

Hey

Had a 14 hour shift yesterday and put in some massive ipoker and boss media volume to mixed results. I was up overall by about £400 but i had a 2nd place in a 7500GTD that should have been a 1st when i got my money in heads up with 88 against his 8K, he rivered the K, that cost me $1000. Another situtation where i was on the big blind with 10 bbs on the 7500GTD on boss where there were 7 left and a short stack goes all in for 3 bbs the mega big stack flat calls, then folds around to me, and i see 88, i realise that i could be beat by the short stack who let himself get that small because he was waiting for a monster, but i knew that 7 big blinds of my all in raise would normally be good as the mega stack was prone to calling with weak cards. Turns out he wasn't as weak as anticipated, him holding A10 (if hes holding A10 he would have made the same call with A7 or 77-44 imo so my all in raise was good) when i pushed all in, the short stack had AQ. Nothing hit for those guys until the gin card on the river which was an A and that saw me flying out for a measly 280 euros in comparison of what could have been 2800. O well.

Another situtation saw me lose with QQ all in against 66 with about 50 left in the 25,000 10r on ipoker i had about 15 big blinds at the time which had me middling the field and i ran into a guy that was one of the chip leaders, that was all in pre flop and he turned the 6. Annoying more for the fact that this field has a ridiculous amount of runners and i did well to get this far and be nicely placed in chips before this travesty, but wasn't to be.

In the $12K GTD on ipoker 100 entry i was stung quite hard when i thought i won the pot but to my dismay had seen someone make a runner runner straight flush on me. had AQdiamonds raised it up got called, flop 10s9d8d 2 diamonds, i was getting a little restless and shipped all in to a guys bet out on the flop, he called with JD10H, turn was 10d, which i loved thinking right, just need to avoid a J and a 10 and i will be fine with the Ace High flush, unkowing that a 7 diamonds would give him a straight flush. Amid a victory dance when the 7d came i was shocked to see my win percentage of the pot at 0% and was duly grounded when i realised what happened.

But i would need to mention three times i got lucky yesterday won with AJ vs JJ in an important pot, won with 1010 vs. AA in another important pot and in the most shocking of the night and the last one i will talk about in this blog, something amazing happened.

11 people left in the 7500 GTD that i came second in im on the BB with 86 spades with about 20 bbs so i am doing well, folds around to the SB who shoves all in for around 17 bbs, i snap call obv knowing my 86 was the nuts, he has 1010. Flop 445. i am drawing to 4 outs (any 7) and a perfect runner runner of either two eights or two sixes. Well two eights came didn't they. Twas luvverly to inflict that, the poor guy must have thought i was an ipoker cheater as if i knew what cards were coming, but i just accidentally pressed call to my horror as i was flicking thorugh tables, hardley ever happens, but this one will be hard to forget.

I am going to do another 10 hours tourney shift tonight, in the absence of anything better to do cos all of my friends have jobs during the week :(

gl at the tables

Disaster

2009-06-23T14:11:00.002+01:00

hey

Sunday went terribly with myself tilting for the most part, meaning i need to re evaluate what the hell is going on. I gathered that playing 12 hour days without break can make the best of men tilt and that if i want to have a 12 hour day i shouldn't have one the day after too, so whenever i have a tourney day, the next day will be of sngs and cash. So that i can break away easily from them and do whatever i want.

I'm scared to look at my BR now by looking at what is in my bank and in all the rooms i play but i hope i won't need to look just yet and can do after i get a really good run going. I am limiting myself to playing ipoker and boss media because this is where i am most comfortable. It's annoying i am not more comfortable on party poker because this is arguably the best out there for tournies (out of the european sites) but the software takes some getting used to. In that transition to adjust to how that site plays i don't want to lose anymore money so i am sticking to my two fav sites.

Ipoker and Cassava are the only sites i play on where i am up on tournies which is worrying, but this is almost certainly down to the amount of tables i have played and how it can be difficult to use different servers at the same time. If i solely play on only boss and ipoker i think my bad form should end, barring ridiculous bad luck. Even if i get the latter though i won't complain because i would have my really good A-game back and it would only be for bad luck that i haven't got what i deserved.

It's terrible going through a bad run, even more so when it is of your own making. So it is just about maintaining composure and getting some results under my belt where i find it most comfortable to play. Also, even when i get some huge monies coming in i need to learn not to spew like this again! Especially in times of recession when no one will have sympathy for you when you say you have lost £2000 in two days because you weren't "up" to protecting your investment. However i may just not have the temperament to ever not tilt and if this is the case i will have to bow out of poker, and concentrate much more on my studies.

Shout out to Ben who seems to be doing what i should be right now and is killing me in the BR challenge we had set up! When i said GL to you at the beginning of this i never meant that much luck! OJ. May more come your way.

peace.

update

2009-06-21T16:59:00.002+01:00

Hey ppl

Annoyed at my play of late. Been loading up too many tables at once and see myself playing on all of them nonchalantly, because i am on auto-pilot on all of them. I am now only playing a max of 6 tables where possible and i will try to get a "feel" on each of them. Hopefully with this will come better results. Quality over quantity after all.

Tonight i am playing the 140 euros 100000 GTD on boss media, the 300000GTD on ipoker along with some others there. the 250000 GTD on ongame the 150000GTD on microgaming and the 300000GTD on party poker. They start at different times around sort of 6pm tonight and already realise i am bordering 7 tournies i may be playing at a time, i will bow out of 1 or 2 though during the onset of the night if it is getting a bit hectic. Looking for comfort tonight, and hopefully only 6 tables will provide it. Maybe the high buy ins of these tournies is the problem of why i am tilting, but i don't think so. I am generally unphased by any amount of money being put towards a tourney because i back my abilities well enough to think i have an edge in them. Most fish would say this but i would like to think i am not one. Definately not the finished article by any means, because there are some simple maths with poker i haven't even got a hold of, but there are some tricks i like to deploy that i feel aren't used by many ppl that give me an edge.

In terms of BR management what i am doing tonight is ludicrous, but i am doing a low risk gamble. If nothing comes in tonight i still have a big enough BR to rebuild to its former glory, if something does come in tonight, i could well be laughing. This sorta gamble won't happen after tonight, this will hopefully be the best send off possible to my old gambling ways.

Peace.

Tilt and DTD Monthly Tourney

2009-06-06T03:39:00.002+01:00

Hey

I'm gonna be trekking up to notts to play the monthly £330 tourney 80K GTD with Cos to try me luck. Played it before and was surprised at some of the poor standard being played. So much so it actually annoyed me and despite knowing the other guy had sucked out on me in the fishiest way possible i still gave him my chips on my exiting hand, so he inadvertantly had the power of making other people just as bad as him. Will need to watch out for that again this time.

I am going to play a solid game at first to see how the opponents on my table are playing and then try to adapt suitably, so as to get the most chips as possible from them without them realising. Perhaps some pre flop bluffing when the blinds are at a juicy level, or just playing my position to make the value of my hand not so important and only pretending to have one. Thing is with this though you're not playing children and they will quickly adapt to how you are playing so whenever i feel that someone has got onto me in that they have latched onto the way i have been playing i will flip-reverse it (cheers blazin squad) and play the game that will most abuse their perception of how i am playing. So basically a COMPLETE MIND FUCK.

This just shows the importance of preparing properly for such an event and i am making sure i am only going to be drinking water or orange juice for the event (gay i know and what) and eating nothing that will make me too sluggish. Also wanna make sure there is no tension before hand as i am still not too used to playing live, so i might have a walk outside or something to try and sort that out. Otherwise what else can i do but hope hands hold up and if i am chasing, i catch up. Happened at the empire for me in that good cash (well we split the top 4 monies) albeit undeserved, but i don't care, i just want the money, and if it means i play like a fish to get there then by all means. Loving the contradictory nature of what i am saying already, in how i am berating fish getting lucky on me but i wouldn't mind winning in a fishy way, i guess what it all boils down at the end of the day is i wanna win some money.

Played online tonight and i am not going to go into too much detail because i lost £300 but what i will say is that pizza is evil :P My bro chose the takeaway tonight as i paid for it as his treat for mourning the loss of our pet dog of 15 years (silently greiving). I otherwise, wouldn't choose it because it makes me too tired. It had the knock on effect of making me uninterested in playing in the middle of very big tournies and i regret eating the lovely tasting, Italian Based meat feast with 5 toppings, becos even though it tasted great, it makes me lose money. Some coin flips weren't going my way either but on the whole a bad day at the office on my front and definately myself to blame. Probably could have just had a sandwich, but when the pizza is getting waved in front of your face, you can't not eat it right? :P

Well i am looking forward to the trip anyway and maybe saying hello to a few familiar faces, mostly to my main man Ben whose blog is very interesting and listed on your right. Hope Cos, Ben and myself make the final table, and if i take it down by beating them, well that would just be sweet wouldn't it haha.

Laters

Birthday today!!! Ant 04/06/89

2009-06-04T08:21:00.003+01:00

Any guesses for how old? :P

I'm feeling great today, i had a winning night on ipoker securing another $4000 GTD tourney win and two other final tables that i should be happy about. I know there were definately mistakes made but i made less than the average winning player does, so i can't be too pissed.

On review of my game though i am definately seeing leaks, my pride and laziness means i don't seek to learn from other sources apart from my own experience on how to improve my game, which is bad. Many people have said i should sign up to some poker training sites or read up on strategy in forums but i can never concentrate fully on them because they bore me. I already feel i have a good understanding about how to change my game to suit the dynamic of the tournament i am in, but maybe i should learn from others to see their viewpoints on the same situation, because not everyone plays like me.

The three biggest leaks in my game are that i occasionally tilt, i don't fully know in certain situtations whether i am getting the right pot odds to call or not (a matter of not knowing the specific maths) and playing too many diff sites at the same time.

Tilt is the hardest of the problems to solve. So i just tried to break down the reasons why i get it and deciphered that it's because i play for too long. 6 or 7 hours straight most nights, which is tough to do and still be on ure A-game across loads of tables. However i don't want to stop the amount of hours i play, i just need to somehow make them more interesting so that i enjoy playing poker more during it, and maintain concentration. Aside from actually playing poker itself the only way i can stay amused is through listening to songs, and maybe 2/3 different albums a day to listen to while i play will help. Also a bad diet is a reason for my tilting. On pizzas, i felt sluggish and really tired which made me play dire poker, as i was just trudging through the hours of play with no real intent to do well, so i would just fuck about in essence. Coca-cola is also very bad as the caffeine doesn't help. So from now on i am making sure that on the same day as a tourney grind i am eating healthily and only drinking water.

With the second aspect of my game that needs improving, its simple enough really. I just need to put loads of different poker situatuions into a holdem calculator online to give me the odds of different situations, and if i do it often enough and study it, i will be able to have the odds pop straight into my head as soon as a decision arrives in a game. How quickly i can get an outcome is important because i play so many tables.

Thirdly, I'm gonna talk about playing across different sites at the same time. There is definately a problem in doing this. Many rooms are so unlike eachother that when you play them simultaneously you always have to adjust to the different layout meaning you have not got a great "feel" of any table because you are so confused by the ever changing layouts. This might just be a problem with me, but this has meant that i have lost loads of money as i desperately try to cram in the best tournies from diff sites at the same time and it just wont work. There are sites that are similar to eachother in layouts and i am happy knowing which ones these are because they will couple nicely, but i guess its regrettable to say that i may well give up playing on more than 2 sites at once :(

If i get these three things under wraps and maybe branch out into poker forums to read up on strategy then i may well be on my way to being a good player, i'm already ok but whenever a player thinks there is no way that they can improve, that they can't be any better, than perhaps that person is a fish.

GL at the tables.

p.s my graph so far on ipoker is pictured.

A quick round up of whats happening.

2009-06-01T01:07:00.004+01:00

Hey

No real reason as to why i have't posted in recent weeks, just haddn't felt up to it. Have developed some real lethargy out of nowhere recently, feeling really tired even though i have had loads of sleep and my concentration is completely shot. I might get a check up from the doc to see if it is anything serious because i have had an incredibly poor diet and hardly any exercise in the last years and im hoping there is nothing wrong. This has distracted me somewhat to concentrating fully on anything i am doing and same goes for poker.

Might seem i have some bad news to say to you on the poker front because of the downbeat start but that isn't true. Have had great success on ipoker recently started playing on my new will hill account on the 5th may this month. Had just under 100 multis with an average buy in of $36, roi of 187% and profits of $4520. Weren't the best of starts but i think i am finding some form.

On the live front i need to change my game completely. I find myself getting a little too nervous of my surroundings with everyone eyeing you up when you're in a hand and yesterday it got to me. I lost £400 at a 1/2 table to a drunk fish who goaded me into calling with the worst of it on 3 occasions. I wasn't feeling right to be honest, was a little tired and never felt too comfortable, but these are no excuses i should have realised this and stopped playing, so I could come back on another day rearing to go. This is an experience i am taking on board to avoid doing in the future and again i am happy to have felt it. Almost as if losing this £400 will pave way for much more than that to be made in the future. Instead of approching the live game with relative trepidation, i'm gonna go out to enjoy it, and when i say enjoy it i mean make some "John Houblon's".

My volume of late has been pretty lacluster and this is down to how lethargic i have been feeling and has prompted me to start taking better care of myself. Wouldn't be feeling great while playing tired, obviously, so i am doing the right thing in reducing my volume until i feel a lot better again. To be honest i have been getting these good results in while not feeling my best so i would like to think i could be ridiculously profitable if i was feeling more energetic.

Will get back to you guys about more of whats happening and hopefully more brags about how well i have been playing. Would love to be able to see the gradual progression from lowly part time player to full blown poker proffessional in these blogs and i have a good mindset now to make this a real possiblity.

Cheers for reading.

Cash Game revival

2009-05-05T15:18:00.002+01:00

Hey

I am going to be concentrating now on my cash game to try and generate loads of rakeback and keep a consistent win rate. Something that is very hard to do even for the best players in the tourney scene. So the plan of attack is to grind 9 -12 tables of 1/2 playing at a just above break even game and live off the extensive rakeback. Planning on playing 40 hours a week of this after my exams next week so i should be getting something in the region of $4000 RB a month.

I say i want to play a break even game, but atm i would be happy to do this because the step up to 1/2 from 0.5/1 is quite a big one in terms of how the games are played out, much more 3 barrel bluffs to call down, and many more non believers to your c-betting. So i need to adjust to this, and try to adjust to the regulars and try and beat them up in the mind fuck that often ensues at this level, well for the slower ppl like myself anyway! The plan is then to actually be turning a nice enough profit without rakback from playing 9 tables and if i can do this consistently i am looking at a lot of money to be made.

No need to get caught in the headlights of monies to come though, it is a distant entity as i try and mend holes in my cash game and stop spewing as a calling station and instead know what to do to support my really good calls, and my profitable plays.

I will be playing cash on and off this week, as i am still revising, but when my exams are done i may turn into a complete animal. Thing is tho with so much money on the line at one time, one slip up in terms of tilting and i will need to move down limits and grind the very nitty 0.5/1 so i can't afford slip ups and i am gonna make sure that my maturity as a poker player stays from here on in.

Gl at the tables.

Museum trip, o joy.

2009-04-21T17:12:00.003+01:00

Hey

Today i had to go to two museums today to write up 1500 words reviews on each for my History course. Not many pieces of work as boring as this as the other courses are very interesting. We can get to look into football hooliganism if we want to and stuff of this sort so i am always engaged with this, but this museum trip was as boring as it sounds, and even worse, I doing this on my own. But saw the funniest thing today.

Was walking through the park on the way to one of the museums and i saw a couple walking on the grass, the bloke had brought a ball with him to give himself some entertainment if the other half was giving him greif or whatever. Anyway shit went down here!

The guy was trailing the girlfriend by some way and i noticed he saw the football just in front of her as she was walking with it, kicking it delicately. The guys face then turned into a fit of raw, animalistic determination as he went on a dash towards the girlfriend. I'm thinking hes not attempting what i think he is, is he? He gets closer and im thinking, he's not slowing down here he's going through her to get the ball!

The saving grace here would be that he would come in at some sort of angle to make a hook sliding challenge so you take less of the man and more of the ball, but no, hes gone straight through her!

I think what started as an aggressive joke turned into heartbreak as the girlfriend was wheeling on the floor, screeching, and the guy got very apologetic all of a sudden. I had to turn away to stop laughing as he just weren't thinking straight the poor lad.

I guess this could be related to the world of poker. The guy (average Joe losing poker player) was hypnotised by getting the ball (first prize and the glory) without taking into consideration the poor girlfriend (the rest of the playing field). He should have really just carressed the girl and took the ball with some style, keeping everyone happy.

:(

I clearly have too much time on my hands.

take it easy.

Poker break

2009-04-20T17:07:00.002+01:00

Hey

I will only be playing poker on and off until mid may and my exams for uni are all done with. Might as well put in the effort with the books for this short burst and then appreciate the massive holiday until september to get more serious with poker and my £11K roll. Annoying though because my roll should be more like £14K if not for silly tiltages that i had straight after a big win. This involved not giving a damn about losing over £500 a spell because i was always comparing it to the big payday i had before.

When i come back i am going to be playing more cash games, more sngs and less multis. Wanna mix it up and see if a solid cash game can fund the variance of the multis (where i am best at) or maybe sngs will be my calling ground from now on as it ties in a multi into a quicker timeframe. Maybe its the fact i have good patience that multis have always suited me, but i need to exapnd myself to see where i can make the most consistent wonga.

The bet with amatay was called off as both of us lost our bollocks completely quoting how we thought the other was out of this world. So $50 is staying with me!

Lucky Grind

2009-04-12T07:36:00.004+01:00

Right then

its 8am and as of the last 16 hours i have had £3500 in winnings. Not sure how much i am up since my last post but i have been putting huge volumes in. I think its the reason why i am always talking about a decent final table because any muppet can reach one if they play hundreds. It's all about profitability though and at the moment tournies are treating me fine.

Today i got the most monies from a third place finish in a $10K GTD for $1000 and a 5th place finish in a $100K gtd for $5000. I cashed in some others but i had a lot of dud tournies that i feel are dud because i am playing too many tables. I can finally hold my hands up and admit to Cos (my friend whose blog "10 buy ins" is on the list to your left) that i should be playing less tables. It's hard for me though because there are a lot of tournies that look so appealing around the same time! If i was to not play on so many tables i would probs be more profitable, but we shall see what i do in later posts.

By the way, all the recent positive results you have been hearing have all been played on what i call the "baby-maker" (My Dell XPS M1530) laptop which has seen me put in much better performances on a screen that makes all the tables appear smaller, and therefore more manageable to tile while multitabling. £1500 it cost me, but it has paid for itself already, and hopefully it will pay for a few more things (house, holidays, protection money etc. etc.)

Have to admit i can hardly keep my eyes open. Was playing the $100K GTD for 9 and a half hours and it started at 9pm. I blame that time frame where i should be asleep for me not coming first as i was second in chips at one point but i was spazzing out as i am prone to doing. Not fair though when you can hardly see the screen in front of you as you have been playing for a combined total of 16 hours in one day!

Would like to metion also i met up with Amatay and Cos on friday night for a session down at the empire casino. Cos and I were around £200 down and Amagay was up £55 lol So technically making him quite possibly the greatest player alive, but as im not content with this i have offered him a small wager to see who will rake in more tourney points in the pocket fives leaderboard from tuesday for two weeks.

I will update this blog with details about this even if i am getting spanked and should be interesting, was nice to see amatay was getting his excuses in early saying "but you play more than me" but sounds like gruffnut talk to me as Platonic would put it lol. I think it will be close anyway as i will be playing less as i have revision for exams, so probs about the same volume. There you go gruffnut talk from me as well.

I am going to love you guys and leave you for the time being but next time i blog which could be in the next couple of days i am thinking about proposing a "Blog a day Guarentee" to stop this from stagnating and to keep the adoring fans on board daily. Would have to concur if i do this the content may not be as exciting but my artistic approach to writing and keen eye for entertaining stories should keep you all coming back for more :P

Gl peeps.

And so the torture begins.....

2009-04-07T13:06:00.002+01:00

Hey

Down about £500 since that magical friday night, which is annoying but its mainly because i have been getting real bad tiredness spells while playing. I get enough sleep but the diet of pizzas and other take away meals has meant i am not even fit enough to sit at a laptop without wanting to sleep. Pretty dire i think you would agree. But i can't be bothered to exercise. So a little problem here lol.

Had about 12 tables open of quite high buy in tournies, started really buzzing and up for the occasion, playing well. Then it hit me and i was in dire straights bowing out of 10 of the tournaments without cashing and having to take 30 mins to have a nap before returning to the 2 i had left open. Obviously now really short stacked but managed to be only down about £200 because i cashed in both. Then went on a mental cash game session this morning and tilted.

Remedy is to start exercising and eating better, and everyone can do that right? lol nahhh much easier to spend years learning how to play poker in a decent fashion than to spend 2 weeks to get into shape. But its a battle and i will have to do it to maintain profitablity in poker.

I'm writing this now sprawled across my bed with laptop on chest having not moved for the last two hours, and it feels good, but one must change dammit!

peace.

$20K GTD win, $5K GTD 2nd place and Betfair $20K Bubble

2009-04-04T02:58:00.004+01:00

Hey Ho

Bit of an upswing day you could say lol! I won $5000 from a $55 entry $20K GTD by coming first and came second in the $5K GTD for $755. Also bubbled the betfair biggie for just double my buy in annoyingly, so around $240. This was against the losses of playing about 13 other tournies and losing in them. I shouldn't have been playing as many tournies as i did and i am disgruntled i did it. Lesson learned not to play when you don't have control and i didn't tonight. So profits for tonight then stand at around $5500. in the past week i have also won over $1000 on ongame and took down $1250 in the $4000gtd on ipoker but the latter only broke me even on network.

Lemme describe the big win. I was a complete luckbox again. QQ>KK KK>AA 36>10K JK>A6 and three other flips i all won. I think there are more even that i cant remember lol. I am thinking that even though i have been having good success, it hasn't been done in a completely reassuring nature. I have basically been lucky in all of the times i have hit big scores. This even goes back to the Empire win. Thing is though i have taken lots of pots down unopposed by being coy and aggressive minimising the gambling element of the game as i was trying to avoid showdowns. I normally accrue a lot of unopposed chips so that when i do get into a tricky spot the loss in chips will only be a partial blow to the stack. This means that i keep pushing other players late on in a tourney with marginal holdings when i know they are likely to fold. When they don't i am holding a hand like 87suited which is normally always live to call down their re raise all in of say AJ or something. So i get in lots of spots where i need to suckout and when i do i normally play well enough to take down that tourney or at least get heads up, when i don't i play the waiting game with a shorter stack to pounce when a big hand comes along to go all in and then go on to win the tourney lol. So i have been lucky when i have won a tourney but you could say that is just mys style? I dunno.

The massive thing i have learned is not to play your cards in the latter stages of a tourney but instead the other players, the blinds and the chipstacks. There is so much dead money out there to be stolen that it just has to be done and i go for it if i have a 20 big blind stack or above and look to start accruing unopposed chips with marginal holdings as i know the spots where i do put a raise in i am more than likely taking it down. Problem with this is that you get a reputation. But what can people do against you if they don't have the holdings. You could raise sumones blind with 72 and they call with QJ looking to defend because they know i am full of it. Flop A83 he checks, i pot in a continuation bet in position and then geronimo i take the pot down with no worries. It's all about guaging your opponents and the situtation and the importance of position is fucking crucial.

I will go on tomoz to try and dominate some more tournies but maybe try and play less but play better in them, maybe a max of 12 and see where i can go from there. I don't know what buy in range i will be playing either but one thing i do know is i normally excel in the tournies with less than 500 people because i can often get really restless if i am involved with anymore, so i might look to have that as a rule, meaning i am not playing anymore full tilt or pokerstars tournies for the time being. I am thousands in the red on those sites for spazzing out in them because of how weighted their payout structure is towards the final table and if there are 5000 runners it can be distressing if you come 20th for only 5x the buy in or whatever.

Btw a big thank you to yorkshire pud for giving me a shoutout on his blog :)

Good luck people.

Multi-Table Madness!

2009-03-31T14:12:00.004+01:00

Above is what my laptop is capable of doing with full tilt poker and pokerstars tables. I am certain i will be able to play on 30 tables at a time. Problem is will i be able to profitably? I will play 2 dollars games to find out on each and try and make a profit from them, to get a feel of the tables. I want to do this because if i can freakishly familiarise myself with 30 tables and i decide to play cash, then i am in for a ridiculous amount of rakeback. But this will be very tough as other players will know i am a multitabler and will be re raising me more and more knowing i will likely be playing ABC. As well as the two sites pictured for another respected, reputable online poker site, try this for multi-table madness. Party poker has been beginning to grow on me with their soft tournies and even softer cash games, so i could easily be seen playing there at any one of the mad hours i stay up until!

Anyway i got the laptop today and have to admit that i am very pleased with it. I think that the resolution is its beig selling point as being able to fit 30 rooms, tiled, is an amazing feat. I also like the keyboard as i am typing this as it is quite chushioney but the touch pad has a little too much friction which will hopefully fade away.

I am going to have a sleep in a bit and when i wake up i am going to see if playing 30 tables is reasonable. I think the fact that the screen on my laptop is only 15' makes it a lot harder for this to be a reality so if i am having problems i will refund this for a 17' laptop i could have bought at a cheaper price that i found after i purchased this one. It's not as good with other aspects so if i can deal with the monitor size then this comp is deffo a keeper.

Looking forward to playing later and curious to know whether or not i can multitable hardcore on this thing. I hope i can anyway!
Laterz.

I'm a Fish......It's Official

2009-03-30T23:44:00.002+01:00

Hey

I have depleted my bankroll to a pittance through just being ignorant to how much i actually had altogether and playing too high a buy in tourney. Also not playing a low variance form of the game to build the br slowly, so i will be doing that when the new laptop arrives.

When my online barclays account has fully updated only then can i see what damage i have done. But i am always one for the challenge and i feel i am going to do well in whatever form of nlhe i take up. In the next few days i will have a better idea of what the plan for building my bankroll can be because at the moment it can be done in a number of ways.

1. Low buy in sit and gos 9, 18, 27, 45, 90 and 180 runners
2. Low buy in multis of 300+
3. Low level cash games 6 man
4. Low level cash games 9/10 man

I'm thinking that the first option will be the most fun for me as i will have that competitive sense of competition in wanting to come first instead of the slog of cash games where sometimes you think, why the hell am i bothering?

The trouble is then to find out what type of sng i will be most profitable in, in terms of runners. I think i will be starting off playing the $20ish dollar ones probably 12 tabling them to get a feel of the game and how i need to adapt to win. I also think i will start by playing the 45 man one on full tilt.

Looking forward to the laptop now. It's coming between 8am and 1pm so i hope it wows me, if it doesn't i am getting my money back! Too much to spend to not be satisfied and i hope it does in ways i can't even imagine.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Good luck and God bless.

Awaiting My Time....

2009-03-30T08:09:00.003+01:00

Hello,

Only a day now seperating myself from the baby maker that is my new £1000+ laptop. I hope we have a good relationship and get off to winning ways online. I think i will take to this computer like Maggie Simpson takes to her dummy. Should be a match made in heaven and yes you all would be right in saying i am extremely sad, but hopefully a saddo with loadsa money.

I will only be playing one tourney today on this laptop (borrowed my bros) as its a 2500 euro freeroll with under 30 runners, so lots of value. But it is on Boss Media though so i may have committed suicide before i play my second hand!

Peace.

How many tables is too much?

2009-03-27T23:51:00.002Z

Hey

I was just wondering what everyone thought about this. For everyone that reads this blog, how many tables of poker do you feel you can play without it seriously effecting your performance?

I am coming to realise playing 12+ means you are limited to playing very tight and are not maximising profits by being a skilled player, who can play more hands than just the premium ones. But there are players out there who seem to play quality on many more tables so i don't know.

When the new laptop arrives i will be running some gay tests into where my comfort zone is trying to squeeze out as many tables as possible. Maybe this will vary for cash and tournies, but the idea is i want to be playing as many as possible, very well, to make it easier to make money.

What do you guys think about this?

Back through Popular Demand!

2009-03-25T14:19:00.003Z

Well in reality that was non existent but in my dream world i had thousands asking for a new post as they were growing tiresome of not having some insightful revolutionary poker writing to fill up their dreary days but i am here to soothe again.

Lots of things to talk about here dearies. I am now playing in a post Cryptologic world and at first my reaction to it made me lose money. My frustration at having such software be put away made me furious with what else was left to play within the poker world, which obviously made me tilt. Ipoker will grow on me however because there is potential. But what i am starting to find is that there are a load of other sites i was ignoring that i really shouldn't have been. I am now playing ongame network which is good because i am winning on it. Boss media will take an age for me to start winning on because the software really does tilt me beyond belief, their small view is hurrendous and makes multitabling very difficult. B2B is alright but as i hadnt got a nice run going on it i have decided to not play it as much, fickle i know.

Pokerstars is a site i will be using more regularly particularly the sit and gos which i think i have a superior edge in and will love to dominate them. I feel all the crytpo grinding of multis was great prep for my now new found quest to dominate the sngs on full tilt and Pokerstars, and i will document my upward ascent for you all. Bodog and ultimate bet have good softwares but they are letting me play for security reasons and want me to fax them ID which i cant be bovered to do so that is on the back burner. Cake network is in the same boat as boss media in that the software is bordering dire but this is more to do with the size of their smallest screen which is too big. And i can't quite think of any other notable networks. Cassava will be one for the future but has the same problem as cake in that their smallest room size is too big but these won't factor too largely when i have the mammoth laptop that i just ordered from dell.

It is the XPS which set me back £1500 which will be delivered to me in the next two weeks. The reason i was prepared to pay so much was the fact that its resolution is 1920x1200 which in laymans terms means compared to my current 1200x800 res laptop i will be able to fit in fuck loads more tables making my profitability sky rocket when i get used to playing on 20+ in a good way. Also was willing to buy one because the one i am using now is cancerous, its literally falling off its hinge and the monitor keeps on flicking on and off which was really annoying yesterday while multitabling.

But that didnt stop me from coming second in two $33 200 man multis for a combined profit of $2000, which was lovely. Basically paid for my laptop. But i am still behind in terms of my BR because of the tilt i had post crytpo. Still it is in the region of £7000 so i will be alright with getting that up (wahey) very soon. Got a Irish open satellite as well tonight for the main event, its a 1/16 chance i believe. I won a caribbean cruise with will hill at a 1/20 shot last year so i know i am capable, all about luck though, and if i will have it.

Plan for the next week or two before the mammoth laptop comes........I will 4 table tournies all week at a casual sorta rate taking it easy before the madness with my new laptop begins. I fear your other players' safety when i do have it because i may cause suicide attempts and getting people to cry because i will be hurting people that bad. Not that i have a big ego here its just truth innit :P

GL peeps and i will look to update the blog at a much higher rate.

Peace.

Getting along nicely, Bankroll Update!

2009-03-16T14:11:00.002Z

Hey

I had a break even day on saturday being really annoyed at my play and giving up the opportunity of winning bigger by being too tired and irritable. Should never play under those circumstances and yesterday i wasn't tired but just annoyingly irritable. I think it may have a lot to do with my glasses prescription because the screen is looking increasingly blurry and that may be spurring me on to play worse. So i have decided to book an appointment for another prescription and will see if that makes a difference.

A little worrying though because before i started playing long hours on the computer i had 20/20 vision and as i like to play football its a little annoying that i may not have the best of sight. But i guess it's a small price to pay if i make a fortune.

I am having a break from poker until i get my essays done which are due in on thursday. Uni is open until midnight on each day so i am not quite sure when i will get em finished but what i do know is that i am finding it so hard to concentrate and get them done. Just so easy to stray away and make some money online instead of doing actual work for a change which poses a much greater challenege. I need to defeat my laziness towards this before it is too late and i no longer have the opportunity to get a good passing grade. I know it is possible to couple poker with uni but i have been showing a tendency to disregard the latter as its a lot harder but from now on i will show discipline to have uni as a bigger priority over poker. At least for the next year and a half anyway. By then i will have a good degree and a nice back up qualification if i, get bored/become shit at, poker.

A bankroll update for all of you who care. I am now up to £10000 which is lovely. What i will do with that roll i am not too sure. I am quite skilled at playing 0.50/£1 and may multi table those cash games until i have enough confidence to move up to £1/2. I quite like the idea of having 100 big blinds in reserve while 12 tabling cash because you really aren't worried about a downswing as you are able to take the hit. The profits would be a little small each session compared to my whole roll but i can't forget what i have come from and if i have a positive 0.50/1 session i could be looking at £200 profit. Aside from that i will be grinding low limit tournies £10-£50 and looking to dominate the new forums i am entering, which will be focussed primarily on Boss media with Parbet and Ipoker with William Hill.

Good Luck one and all, and my next update will be when i am destroying Ipoker and Boss Media!

Peace.

Up another $900

2009-03-14T12:41:00.001Z

Title says it all. Short post today. Half and half as a part of the 4th place finish in the £6K GTD on crypto for £350 and with playing various limits of NLHE on crypto as well. I'm expecting the slump to happen soon.

The £220 Empire Success!

2009-03-13T08:17:00.002Z

Hey Ho

It has taken me a day to realise just how increadibly lucky i was to get as far as i did because i sucked out more times than Michael Jackson has had a face opp. Well. To start from the beginning i suppose.

Turned up at the Empire casino with £500 in pocket and about 3 hours ahead of the event start so i thought i would sit down at a cash table. Not a good idea. I got dicked for £300 from plays that i thought weren't made at the stakes i was playing and to be fair a part of the loss was to do with my own idiocy in not recognising the retardedness and in increasing the pot size when i could have played small ball. So not a great start. After the session i had an hour to spare before the event started so i rang up a mate who i know has time for my bad beat stories and for some reason he has patience with me. Some would think he revells in my poker bad luck as if to say get a real job you fucker, im on nigh on min wage and you think ure phil ivey, but i don't think he's like that anymore as he realises i might be a decent player. He gave me his best wishes for the tourney and off i went into the tourney room to get going. And get going i did!

Second hand in i am dealt 33. I try to raise but i didn't announce it and only put in a single chip, rookie error but i will get there. 3 more people call and i see a flop. A 3 8 rainbow. I am loving this and get a raiser into me i re raise he calls. Turn 8. He checks i bet out he calls. River 3. Quads!!! He checks, i bet out he folds an ace. So i nice little introduction.

I soon realise from looking at the clock and after playing an hour that this tourney doesn't allow for much play and our stacks according to how many hands will be played and what the chip sizes will be meant i was taking marginal spots to get a big stack or bust, because i wanted a final table to make my time worthwhile.

A7clubs. I raise 3x bb and get one call. Flop K 8 2 two clubs. I check, he bets out a quarter of his stack and having the same stack i re raise all in thinking i am live on my Ace and the 9 other clubs. He dilly dallys and calls with AK no club. Drawing to 9 outs so around 35% to double up i think. Turn is a dud and the river is a club.

Blinds are getting higher and i find AJ of spades. The big blind is short on chips so i elect to flat call as i want to keep it small in case i get a re raise, whereby my AJ shrivells up. 5 other callers i believe behind me, and then the short stack big blind pushes all in. I am on a stack of 9000 hes pushed for 3000 blinds then are currently at 150/300. I gather that the big blind has recognised weakness with the limps and is pushing with a marginal hand for value so i re raise all in to get the undoubtedly weak limpers behind out. And the showdown is AJ vs KQ, he hits his queen and i am hurt. Blinds get up to 200/400 by now and i have a stack of 7000 and see 52 on the button, everyone folds to me, i have a tight SB and BB so i raise 1200, both call, eeeeeek. Flop 2 10 7, both check to me and i fire 2750 to try and save myself, but sb pushes all in and i fold. So after that misplayed hand and some few hands later i am down to 2850 with blinds still at 200/400 and i find A9 in early position. I push all in. Everyone folds up until dealer button who stalls and folds, then the sb stalls for even longer and starts asking me questions, i'm thinking he has worse so i am enticing him to call with statements like my hand is pretty good wouldn't mind a call, and the honesty in my voice was natural he sensed this and folded A10, BB folds as well, so i take it down. The dealer button folded 77 which shocks me but hey ho.

Next hand after the break i find AQ on the big blind, the button raises me and i push all in he shows A8 and i win it. Some hands later a very shortstack pushes all in, i re raise all in to isolate with A10 and everyone else folds, he shows 108diamonds and i win that. So by the table change i am on 10 big blinds.

Second hand in after table change i find JJ on the big blind everyone folds to the dealer button who raises me 3x BB i move all in and he calls with 99 and it holds. Move table again and second hand in someone moves all in from utg with a 12 BB stack and i find QQ i push all in to isolate and hes done it with A6!! It holds and i have a very nice 30xBB stack. It gets whittled down however when a bluff utg raise with 7 on the table is called by the SB who thinks about shoving but doesnt. Flop Ace high when i have only 7J and he bets out all in and i fold. Annoying. It wasn't too much of a bad play but in hindsight i should have just waited for a nice hand to push with, but if it worked i could have started stealing some chips pre flop. As it stood i had a 12 BB stack which was soon to be a 9BB stack with the blind increase soon coming. I find 44 from the cut off with all action folding to me, i thought i should push and did, get insta called by a 5BB stack and the sb Folds AJ. Showdown and i am up against QQ and don't improve. The SB would have won the side pot against me if he played so i would have been out. Next two hands i fold with a 4BB stack which is odd but had to be done, then on the SB i get 85 and all action folds to the dealer button who goes all in, i call figuring i am live and the BB will fold and both were true. I was up against A9 and hit a 8 high flop which holds to double up. Next hand on the dealer button i get J9 and decide when all action folds to me to push with my 10BB stack, hoping for folds from weak hands. The BB calls though and he has A9, i am truly fucked. But a KQJ flop helps, the turn was a Q which makes a King Ace or Ten as an out but they miss and now i am sort of back in contention.

Next hand funnliy enough i was not involved in but it involved two relatively big stacks going all in pre flop, one donkey 10Khearts play and another with AA. Flop Ah Qh 10c turn 6c river Jh by which the AA guy shouts yes thinking his Full house is good against the flopped straight, most of the table agrees then everyone thinks wait a second that other guy has a Royal Flush hasn't he? lol

Table change happens and we are down to the last 18, i have a 11.5 BB stack with 70000 with blinds at 3000/6000. I look down and see QK suited from mid position with all folded to me i raise to 12000 as a steal more than anything really and the next guy to act pushes all in for his last 17000, folds around to me and i call. He has AA with one heart.

Flop A 7 9 two hearts. Pretty much has the biggest stranglehold possible with two more hearts giving him the nuts.

Turn J hearts so i am drawing to 3 outs now 10hearts no good

River 10 clubs

THANK YOU! lol

Soon after this i make a steal and it goes through. Then two hands later i get QQ i raise it up to a suspicious 11000 and get two callers, flop Q 4 8 rainbow. The SB and BB both check and i check as well. Turn A. SB shoves all in for 60000 more i have him just covered and call he turns over AK and is out.

Final table.

6 people left when the first big hand comes in i get J10 hearts and limp from early position, announcing "i want to see how you guys react to a limper" the dealer button then announces raise soon after and it folds around to me. He has a lot of chips but under my count and has put 1/4 of his stack in, i dwell and call. Flop 3 10 K, i check and he pushes all in for the rest of his chips leaving me with 40000 if i call and lose with blinds at 4000/8000. I think pre flop he is relatively weak because i thought he was picking up on my speechplay, but even if he isn't my 10 holds up against a lot of deserate looking all ins. AQ AJ, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55. Plus i have a read he's weak and make the hero call. He shows 77 and i win the pot by the river. not much else happens really. I make some good steals and re steals post flop and play well but i see that with 4 remaining everyone is holding a fairly even amount of chips.

i was on 194000, second was 192000, third 180000 and fourth on 120000. Blinds were at 10000/20000 by this stage so i settle on a slightly unfairly weighted deal in terms of how much the small stack got in £4200, 3rd got £5300, second £5500 and i got the same. It was 5am in the morning i felt my game slipping through tiredness and had no balls to continue with such short stacks. I took the money and ran. If the blinds were lower though i would have undoubtedly stayed because i felt i was much better than 2 of the other players and on equal level with the 3rd. But i am happy with the result and know that i got lucky many a time to win this money. But i am not complaining!

Note to self though in never playing another tourney with a structure like this unless i have to because it was crapshoot city for the most part.

Peace.

Deal made in the £200 at Empire

2009-03-12T08:12:00.002Z

Made the top four as chip leader, and we decided to split it four ways weighted on our chip stacks. So i walk away with £5500 from a £220 investment so ain't half bad. Details to follow but right now i need sleep from playing for 10 hours through the night

Playing the Empire tonight

2009-03-11T10:20:00.002Z

Hey

I am taking what can only be said as a gamble tonight in playing the £220 tournament at the Empire Casino, as there is no way that this is a comfortable investment. I have been using a lot of the money i have made recently, and have a usable bankroll of around only £3K so a £220 shot is a little unwise, but as its rare i am going to go with it. However if i don't feel up to my best later on today maybe a little tired or can't be arsed i just won't play it. Don't want to give people dead money.

On another note crypto is closing this sunday and i am going to be really sad to see it go. It basically weined me into being a decent player from what i can only say was a crap player and i have come out better for it. I have taken a lot more money out of the site than i have put in and would have to say the tournaments there are ideal for the low stakes tournament player. With loose players, you really could earn a fortune from grinding the twenty and tenner games they have and the odd thirty and fifty also.

I fear now that Ipoker and boss media (where will hill and parbet are going respectively) will prove a tougher challenge with harder games but hopefully after acclimatising i can get back to winning ways.

Also more importantly i have to make sure i am a uni student first and a poker player second at least for the next 1 and a half years so i can get a 2:1 degree and have a lovely safety net if poker is getting too boring or if i all of a sudden become absolutely rubbish in it. Going in today to finish some work off and get some started, and will have the tournament starting at 7 in the centre of london as a lovely thing to look forward to. Well i hope so anyway!!

Good luck to all of you playing tonight, and most of all i guess good luck in life! (cheesy i know but fuck it i am in that sorta mood)

peace.

Recap of the weekend and yesterday

2009-03-10T14:31:00.002Z

Hey ho

I am currently in uni so cant relay the exact hand history of the travesty that happened to me on sunday night in the sunday 35K, but i assure you its fresh in the memory for me to tell you quite accurately. First of all i need to set the scene. I was around 40th of 80 at the time when i decided to go completely crazy in opening every single pot i could with any two cards from two gapped connectors upwards so as to try and accrue as many non-showdown chips as possible. This was spurred on by the fact i had made the money in this competition 3/4 times in the last month essentially only getting double my buy in, so i didn't want to go out unless it was in a hail of bullets!!!!!

It started so well. I was on 25K in chips and had it as my goal to get to 40K without a showdown by stealing chips pre flop or if i do get a call, by outplaying them post flop, and you know what it worked! Had 69 suited coming in to save the day on a stone cold flop bluff and had many other crap hands becoming goldust. However this wasn't without getting re popped around 6 times of which i had to fold each time because i had nothing. I was literally opening 100% of the flops i could.

I had gained the maniac image of the table with people obviously praying to get a hand against me and milk me dry, they obviously didn't know i had a method to my madness. Problem was i wasn't getting any genuine hands to capitalise on my reputation. regardless i was now on 50K in chips and in 2nd of 25, so i had made the money, and then finally i get a genuine hand!

I get JJ in mid position and all the action folds to me, so i did what i did every other time this spot came to me and raised the pot up 3X big blind to 6000, everyone folds to the big blind who is on 40K in chips and around 5th place. He has obviously been becoming increasingly upset that i have been stealing his blind and he puts in a bizarre re raise to 22000, which is half his stack.

I had to think for literally a nano second to realise that if he had a genuine hand he would had re raised much smaller to try and entice the call from me, or even to just flat call as he knew i would continuation bet the flop. But no, he raises me massively, which shows massive weakness in my eyes. I don't have him down as a player of relative intelligence to confuse me with such an odd bet knowing i will find it as weak, so i re raise him all in with the Jacks. He stalls for a while, as if knowing he is beat but because he has been a spaz in his re raise he is committed tcall the rest of his 20K in chips and turns over AJ. The flop brings an Ace and i don't spike my one outer by the river so i am crippled on chips. With less than 5 big blinds soon after i find A* and go all in and for good measure get dcalled by the same guy who takes me out with AJ lol

If i had won that pot i would have been dominate chip leader and i feel that i wouldn't have given anyone else a chance to take me off that crown with so many chips to bully the others that just want to move up in the prize money, and to the players that were good and wanted to make moves i would just outwit them and put the pressure on them like never before. So it was a little disturbing to receive that beat because there is a part of me that thought if i didnt play that hand, i may well have found it safer to just steal pots pre flop and move up without showdowns. But i was there to win and found a spot to nearly double my chip stack as a 70/30 favourite so i am fine with what i did. Just annoying as it was in the biggest tourney i enter on a weekly basis and would have loved to take down the £10,000 first prize. Yes you heard me right, £10,000 smackeroons.

The day sunday on the whole was a £400 down day which wasn't good but was by no means the end of the world considering my last two days of play where i was up £1400.

Yesterday brought back the heater whereby i was back to my best as i was well rested and felt on top of my game. I had entered 7 tournaments and final tabled 4 of them the $1.2K GTD the £1400 GTD, the £1000 GTD and the £6K GTD of which i came 5th, 2nd, 2nd and 5th respectively. The two where i had lost heads up i was very frustrated with my play, as i wasn't showing it the necessary concentration because i was showing too much attention to the £6K where i was chip leader with 6 to go, first place getting £1700. Again with the bad beat story lol. I get it all in with second in chips with QQ against his JJ, i found his call very loose and was very happy when he turned his hand over. The Jack on the flop though changed matters and i didn't improve so i was crippled in chips and managed to sneak 5th place. Rather annoying hoever i have to be happy with another up day to the amount of £600

I am having a break tonight to go out and get pissed so crypto tourney regulars can breathe easy :) and it will be a well deserved break to meet up with mates.

good luck people!

Up another $700 today!

2009-03-08T03:42:00.002Z

Hey Ho

I won the NTX £1400 GTD by luckboxing my way out of a paper bag heads up to take the title and £442.20. Apart from that i made a couple of final table appearences that would have had me just a little over break even before the NTX result came in so the latter was a pivitol result.

My tourney game is coming on leaps and bounds but i still notice that i am sometimes ill prepared to have a tourney stint, sometimes being too hot in my room aggrevates me and i steam both literally and in poker terms. Sometimes i look at the screen so long that my vision impairs (i think i need stronger computer glasses)(Yes i have computer glasses and WHAT!) Also the trips back and forth from the toilet makes me lose my trail of thought, which is never good. When i am on my game however, i make logical moves most of the time that have to get unlucky for me to get out. But i do fall privvy to some information i think i have on a player, like say i think he bets out on flops very weak, i would take that info and throw caution to the wind sometimes, when really a lateral play would suffice.

Hope the heater continues as i would like to think i am good enough to say i am good enough to be a full time poker tourney pro. I don't think this is the case, but i am getting there.

Peace.

£742 Profit today in tournies

2009-03-07T04:32:00.002Z

Hey

I am chuffed with how things went today. I won a 1500 euros GTD on parbet and came second in the £1400 GTD NTX midnight on crypto along with other cashes that helped as well. I feel in the zone at the moment with my tourney game but am getting increasingly restless about my cash game.

I definately need to sit doen and map out where i am going wrong with it because it seems to me at the moment i am doing nothing glaringly wrong but i bet at closer inspection there are big leaks. I know some already but would have still thought i ould be making a sizeable profit but at the moment i am only up a small bit, bordering on breaking even. Which is ok i guess because i do get rakeback but still i definately need to see whats going on in that front.

I hope tomorrow i make more money in one day because if i can maintain £500+ days, i will be rich i tellsya! I kno it won't happen but somewhere in between break even and what i did today will be fine! Gl at the tables.

Peace.