Seb Saffari

The Poker holocaust of 2011

2011-04-17T08:31:00.001-07:00

Autumn 2010 to Spring 2011

2011-04-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

Not that this is much of a blog but I guess I better keep updating it given I have 30 odd posts already.

My new phase as a 'backed' poker player has been of mix emotions but mostly concentrated around the 'siiiigh' and 'yawn' mark.

After making about 4.5k in my first couple of days playing it took me over 4 months to make any money of my own again :(

Even though I had won some good tourneys in this time and made a mini-FTOPs final table with 70k up top, I found myself stuck in annoying amounts of make-up (the amount of money I owed to my backer before I could earn). I reduced it too as low as 4k just before final weekend of WCOOPs but with a 5,000$ buyin etc etc it ended up being about 25k and then through the next month or so that figure had risen to about 40/50k rising as high as 60k.

I played 2 live events before 2011 was up. First was the Russian Poker Series in Eygpt. Real soft tournament full of Euro donks. I made day 2 and really should have done better but unfortunately I bluffed off my stack in a big pot and so the only victory I had on foreign soil was winning the 5-a-side football tournament that pokerstars had put on. To be fair that was some grind also. 3 day event, at noon when the desert heat was just ridiculously hot. 100T$ and a certificate ceremony which embarrassingly out shone the poor guy who won the actual poker tournament. I say poor guy, I did get to meet him as his son was on our football team and he took and paid for the night out in Pasha, and he did later on offer some Russian girl 500euros to come back to the room with him and his son (pretty funny), so maybe not that poor after all, poor Russian girl I guess. Well actually she did come back with us ( Son and Dad had left after being threatened by her) and she did call one of the Dutch kids we were with a 'monkey' and 'monkey boy' (he was from Singapore) so maybe she wasn't so poor either. We obviously told her to leave. We later agreed that the decision to do so may have been a lot closer if she was an 8/10 but really we can't be standing for that behaviour. I doubt she knew any better though, the Russians really don't seem to have much standards when it comes to racism.

But yeah the trip was a success, a title had been gained and for my mate Dan he may have set a new record having won 2 5-a-side tournaments in 2 continents within a week after his team were crowned champions back in Cambridge. Some life that boy has!

Theres some real funny stories from that trip and I had started writing an article on it sometime ago but I doubt it will be finished.

Left Sharm el Sheik just in time to avoid the shark attacks and the revolution so good timing all round. Although I enjoyed the break away from the grind I think I really should have made more from the soft side events really. My backer was a little pissed off that I hadn't played any because it does devaluate the point of making these journeys. Had 2 weeks in LA with him to come so I'm sure he'd put me to work.

.... I got back into Gatwick Airport on a Sunday and had to go straight to Heathrow Airport to catch a 12 hour flight to LA. I'm not going to lie, I had started to get Diarrhoea from the Egyptian Ice cube so I had started to prang i was gunna shart myself. I suppose it didn't really kick it till I got to the States but the consistency had loosened up notably. It was anything but textbook.

Me and Frankie spent a few days at the Commerce Casino where I was grinding FTOPs and he was crushing the cash games downstairs. I did play some cash also, was crazy how many poker tables they had in that place, all running 24/7, now i know where I;ll come if they ban online poker.

We then hit some hotel in downtown LA where the ghostbusters film was filmed and where Pokerstars were putting all their players. The place hadn't been renovated for over 30 years but for me any charm that this neglect had perhaps aimed to serve wasn't scoring any points with me. If I'd wanted historical feel I would have crashed out in a Museum. Plus they fucked our room request so Frankie was sleeping on a pull out bed.

The NAPT tourney itself went pretty well. 700 runners at 5k a person and 725k for the win made it pretty juicy though I thought the field strength was pretty tough. My table on day1 was ridic, no one over the age of 25, everyone basically an online reg.

I managed to make it through to day 3 and played several interesting pots. My stack starting small on day 2 as i grinded a long for the first few levels. But then I got a rush and became a top stack before getting in some annoying spots that left me going in shortish on day 3. I ended up cashing that day and then busting soon after in 60th place. 12500$ reduced some make up but it was inevitably a kick in the teeth. Worse was yet to follow as I went back to the hotel and played the 1k FTOP and painfully exited that in the final 30. So in a 10 hour gap I had come within touching distance of 2 x 500k+ scores and just been deflated twice!

The next day I grinded some more online before rushing to the Bike Casino to reg for the 2k PLO event. The reason I was so late there was because I was deep in the DNG with 18k for the win but had done the old bust in 12th in that fucker so was pretty pissed off to find out the event only had 10 runners. I was trying to work out whether I should even have the addon stack as 2k total buyin to win 10k seemed kind of pointless. I did it anyway. I played really well in that, felt I had a considerable edge over the field and then bubbled in 4th spot. Was pretty gay really, I had the 3rd stack at the time and the short guy opened (I think he had been limping a lot) and I called the button with a speculative hand, hoping to take him out and move into the money. I flopped trips and elected to just flat his Cbet. Turn was an Ace and he snap shoved on a T-6-6-A board. Really should have been looking to fold but there was so much money out there already that I just called hopping he had ATxx or some kind of pair+SD combo. He didn't and I went home completely drained from a really brutal couple of days.

The trip in general was cool, though two weeks in LA with no car was tough to get around and the taxi expenses were rife. I did like the place though having only been once before when I was a kid. I saw my school friend Keith who has recently got divorced and he offered me a room at his to go live there. I'm still pretty set on the idea to be honest but with no driving licence its not really feasible at the moment.

So back to UK and trying to get out of makeup. The biggest letdown of 2010 was still yet to come as I came 12th in the Full Tilt 1 mil. 225k ftw and I decide to make an aggressive 5bet shove with AJs which got caught and couldn't outdraw QQ. I was a good chipleader at the time and played a pot for 30% of the chip in play but couldn't get there and busted the next hand. You get let downs in poker the whole time but that really ranked up there as my most disappointed. Started to feel like I would never get going in this career path...

I moved in with 2 friends up in Newcastle just before Christmas which is where I reside at the moment. I was at my Mothers for Christmas day, where later on I sneaked off to grind my first xmas session, pretty desperate times. Had a 2nd in the 215PLO8 (5k) that day making it back to back finals but funniest of all was my friend calling me telling me I still had 1bb left in the 100RA when I thought I had bust. Obviously with that I not only went on to cash but took 4th for 5k, merry christmas!

We properly moved into our new house just in time for New Year. I had another funny experience in a tournament on the 30th where I was lying in bed 1 tabling the 129ko and I ended up falling asleep with about 110 runners left. Somehow when I woke up an hour later there were 40 runners left and I had still an ok stack considering. Again, given the circumstance, I was destined to do well and took 4th which usually would have annoyed me but was obviously happy to take!

So new surroundings, grinding area and actual people to talk to during my session and I was feeling positive about a fresh start. January 2011 was to be my best month yet. On the 5th I took down the 75$ 40k guaranteed for the second time for 10k. Then on that Saturday I took a 3rd in the 100 rebuy for 9k and a first in the Stars 215turbo for 15k, before winning the 75$ 40k guaranteed for the 2nd time that week this time for 18k! Was kind of disappointed that I couldn't better my 7th place finish in the Sunday DNG that same day as there was 44k up top but I ended the month fairly consistent throughout January. Took 2nd in the Saturday 109 rush for 12k and 2nd in the PLO8 (again) as well as some other big finals. Looking back I can say that I was probably finishing in 2nd too often and that throughout my career Saturday have been by FAAAR my most profitable day of the week and probably credit 50% of my total profit to this day. This is a day I had recently been given back due to me no longer playing football early on Sunday morning.

So to finish this off swiftly, as good as Jan had been the next few months proved to be my worst ever thanks to a little something called Multi-entry week on Full Tilt Poker. Everyone in the poker world expected this format to be trouble but I don't think anyone quite new how bad it would be. In these weeks you have the 'luxury' of being able to buy into EVERY tournament 4 times (some even 6!). So lets use the first day as an example which was a Monday. I buy into the 163 as usual, now x 4 = 652$. The 1k event now becomes 4k!!! etc etc. So if 1 week usually costs you say 15k$ in buyins, Multi Entry week is gunna cost 40,000$ minimum! The plus side is of course that if you win one of the tournaments that week your talking huuuuge firsts. The 1k for example is usually 80k for first, this week it was 350k. But the problem with the concept is that it really only favours the top top elite. Like a group of 50 players and it actually hurts them in the ling run too because too many of the mediocre regs will go broke which is really bad for the game.

The week went real bad for me until Saturday where I had my shot at 35k in the Saturday 109 rush. I actually had 2 stacks left with 50 players left, one of them being a monstrous chiplead, but had the fun time of running AK into Aces for the absolute world 4 handed and ended up in...you guessed it....12th! Sunday was the last shot at saving a horrendous week and for the 2nd time that weekend I had people partying around me which was kind of annoying. Anyway I found myself final 15 of the 100 rebuy turbo with 3rd stack. These turbos are probably my favourite tourneys and I really do rate myself as one of the best at them. My QQ couldn't hold against JJ and A3 (actually ended up coming 3rd) to deny a big chiplead. And then TT

The next morning me and Ed began a spontaneous journey to Deauville France to go and rail Jacobson in just his 2nd EPT final of the season. He paid for our trip, even though I declined anymore hands out after a successful team session of chinese poker. Was a bit annoyed we arrived at 10pm and had missed the whole thing but we still had a cool time hanging with him and Sam in Paris afterwards.

FTOPs- Lost. ANOTHER Multi-Entry Week (Full Tilt really took the piss with this) LOST. Found myself in about 75k's worth of makeup after all this. More deep runs, more rape. I was pretty demotivated I can tell you.

I took a trip down to Leeds last week to see my backer and other friends. I played one full session and FINALLY won the 215$ turbo on Full Tilt for 15k. Have been moaning about not winning this one for ever. Think I'm still 15k down at it lifetime but the win felt good and coupled with winning the 109 turbo the day before I was revitalised. Was really good to go grind with other players, something I've always missed out on.

Given all this, don't think anyone was prepared to what was going to happen to the poker world the next day.........

The Autumn Season

2010-09-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on what is effectively the beginning to the new poker year as we say goodbye to WSOP.

The summer has been very fun but it has taken a toll on my finances and I kind of find myself not moving forward in this respect. Thankfully I feel like I'm on top of my game so having the money I want is just a matter of time.

I went to EPT Tallin with Jacobson which was a good laugh but annoyingly I should have made more of the soft field. Thats the last time I take these things for granted, going to be 100% focused for every live event I play from now on.

Then I battled with 10 day long MTT cram in which I was getting in 39 MTT's a night at my busiest days. I am very proud of myself for being able to have the stamina to play these 15 hour sessions and still feeling relatively fresh by the end. Although I final tabled a lot of things I didn't really get that 10k+ win that would have set me up nicely for WCOOPs so in the end I just withdrew all my funds and took up a backing offer from a friend Mat Frankland. I have in the past been sickened with the idea of giving away 50% of my winnings but I tried it out one Sunday with Jacobson over the FTOP's and it wasn't all that bad. The fact is at the moment I want to play as high as I can and with total buyins for WCOOP's being 70k+ then it is going to be an struggle for me to play the events I want. Also I see that guys that are in Moormans stable and I think if they do it then why can't I.

So my first session was about a week ago and of course I win one of the first MTT I have ever been backed for. It was the 4pm 75$ KO on FTP, I took 5.5k for the win. So after the day was done I cashed out 1600$ and it was mine to keep! I could do what ever I wanted with it! Felt really weird, almost like working. Then Saturday was my 2nd session and I was actually a nice 1k$ down for the day with several min cashes and a gay 15th in the PLO on stars to keep the day cheap. 3rd cash in a row in that MTT, I really feel like I'm one of the best PLO mttiers around because the game comes so naturally to me that I don't have to think much about spots like the other MTT regs do, so I have an edge on them here. I then feel like I have an edge on the better PLO players as I have better understanding of tournaments (but I think this point is less valid as learning MTT's is easily done).

Sunday and the start of the WCOOPs. Woke at 8am to play football, first game of the season. Was good to see my fitness held up, but kind of annoyed that my crap sets in after 70 mins. We had no subs so had to play through it. Bit shit that everyone was so hungover, can't blame them as they have only 2 days a week to get lashed, but once one or two players die then the whole formation goes to shit. I'm in charge of organising the team this coming Sunday with the captain away, so got a few things to say.

Anyway I got back, showered etc and tried to sleep and I just couldn't, so for the first time in over a year I started a Sunday with what I would call inadequate sleep. This is something that in the early days I do a lot and literally throw sessions away. I see a lot of guys do it. You got to know you've got the energy to go right to the end otherwise your fucked if you do manage to make an FT. So it was an abysmal day that hit a low point when I was 12 tabling and a short stack shove the CO for 9 bbs. I have 50bbs and obviously call with my KK. Now I'm chatting on skype somehow at the same time and end up timing out when the BB wakes with QQ....!! FML, 100 bb stack? No thanks. This was in the 50RA on FTP and about an hour later I pure bubbled it, but it was the 28k up top that really pissed me off. I was going to say that I had 0 cashes for the day, but I did make the final 100 of the 6-max 2nd chance. I was 1 tabling and tired enough that I actually tried to have a nap in the 10 minute break. Despite this I actually played pretty well. My exit had was a bit bad but at least it was for the chiplead. I opened A4dd UTG and bad but creative player 3bets from the BB. I just thought I'd peel as we were about 60bbs+ deep and out play him in position. Board came AsTs9d and I called his C-bet. Turn was another Ace and I wasn't really in much mood for folding even though he was committed with his 2nd bet. He had AQo, GG. Was now 3k stuck in makeup which was starting to build up. Even Jacobson couldn't convert a final 50 player run in the brawl and net me 11k. Congrats to him by the way for making 2nd in EPT Villamora, nice 300,000€ payday for him putting him right up there with the best live players in his 2 years as a pro!

Monday was the first PLO WCOOP and I was pretty pumped for it. Again, early wake up at like 11am so I was knackered by the end again. I ended up busting this one early in the first hour. I had chipped up nicely to 7k and then got my money in really nicely on 2h Jh Js 2s with AAJ9 vs KJT9 so had the guy drawing to 6 outs when all the money went in and he got there, sigh. Then I made a squeeze a few hands later with QTJ9 leaving myself just 1 potsize bet left that I would either shove or c/f if the flop came really bad against whoever decided to peel. Bruno GT was one of the callers, calling off 10% of his stack pre with QQ72 (what a legend) and getting rewarded with a Q45r flop that obviously had me committing my money, just amazing how retarded some people can be. Anyway I tried to get over it and focus attentions on the 215 PLO 2nd chance. I chipped up well again, and all though there were a few scares I made 3rd for 9.5k.

My exit hand was standard. Limped sb with x789. Flop was 256r and I got it allin vs 347x. Kind of shit to have a lot of my outs blocked by him, but even so my equity to at least chop was still very live. I actually had like 8bbs back at atcually made a mistake by raising my SB with AKxx and then checking down a TT65J board where his 5xxx took to pot....really I should have jammed flop.

O well, out of makeup again and have made 4k$ in 4 days so thats useful money. Also Weez has started to get on a winning streak so thats more income coming in....

So the Summer......

2010-09-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

...... I recently wrote a magazine article for the first leg of the trip which I spent in Washington DC with my Dan, a non-poker playing friend. I must post it up here at some point.

He had some accommodation sorted through work so I was free-rolling those costs as well a lot of the food. I always talk about how much better my life would be in America, emphasising the disadvantages of the timezone here in the UK. Although my sample size isn't massive, I've played in Miami, Toronto, Las Vegas and DC this year and the results are pretty impressive, especially if you work out $ per hour.

So mid May to early June:

Most of this profit was from a good last week in DC followed by a pretty insane Sunday where I made the final of 3 of 7 MTT's with a 3rd in the 162$ 6-max and a 2nd in the 50RA.

On top of this I took 64 buyins of one Russian fish at 100PLO over the space of 5 days and then haven't seen him since.

Next stop was Las Vegas where me, Jacobson and two Canadians named Mark Radoja and Ryan Mackinnon all shared a house for 4 weeks. Martin had been friends with these guys for a few years now but I'd never met them. Anyway they were obviously top lads and whilst being different in their own ways they loved gambling, drinking, women and golf.....and also cheeseburgers, so right up my street.

Unfortunately this led to us going out much more than playing poker, with me and Ryan ballering about with money we had only earned through Jacobson being good at live poker.

To be fair it was my first time in Vegas and I know people say that 1 weeks enough in that place but they are wrong, I could live there and someday I plan to.

Jacobson took 4th in the 1500$ event which he FT'd last year too (sick life) and me and the boys all had 5% so it was a sweet rail. It would have been made better if Ryan had been drinking or if Swede had won and he would have been in more of a mood to party afterwards but in the end we had more of a quite one. I had been drinking all day with Salfi anyway and was getting a bit tired, plus there wasn't that much a buzz on the rail as there was the next day.

So yes the run good continued as Mark made the 5000$ 6-max tournament the following evening, which had Eric Lindgren and Men the Master on. This time Ryan was definitely drinking, with the frequent cry of 'Mark!' which confused me as it seemed to be in between a rallying chant and a question, but it was hilarious and it seemed to jack Mark up a lot. In the end he finished 3rd losing a monstrous flip against Jeffery Papola who was the eventual winner. Mark complained about the fact that he hadn't made a call against Papola's 5bet jam with 5d Xx the day before, and had eventually folded his JJ. But as we'd discussed it was a super marginal call give his reads at the time and his chip stack, plus as we all know that wouldn't have mattered as I suspect Jeff had A5dd so still over 35% equity there either way. Hopefully he will look back with content even though it must suck to come close to the bracelet but from what I saw he played awesome and both the boys performances over that weekend inspired me a lot.....even though I played only one event since!

The next few weeks involved a lot of partying, I had semi earn't it anyway as my online results for vegas were also pretty good.

One night we got a suite at the Rio which was pretty cool as it was all comped for. Was like 4,000 sq and pretty balla, though Jacobson predictably pointed out that the hotel as a whole was in need of refurbishment. I agree with him somewhat. That night was a typical example of how I had such an amazing time in Vegas this summer but also spent a shit load. Room comped, sure. But when I went to get Jacobson from the highroller room I somehow managed to dust of 2k on blackjack, drunk as fuck, being reckless. Then later, when the guys were sleeping and the girls had left, me and Mark were back in the pit for another 1k losing session. In all honesty I'm actually not there cos I'm hooked. I never play when I'm back home. Its just when I'm drunk its really fun and playing high stake action is like getting mashed on drugs. Sometimes just being drunk isn't enough.

There was another night where I had spun up the 1300$ cash I had into 5k and we all went out and partied. I hooked up with some Russian girl almost instantly in the club and next thing I know I'm back in the highroller room of a different casino throwing the whole 5k into 1 shoe of blackjack, then borrowing 2 more and going off for that before home. At these times I feel lucky to be a poker player and so I do not have to work out how many weeks wages that will be as we all live in the hope that every new week will be a good one. It does however feel better to roll out of a Casino in Vegas with the boiling desert sun on you compared to rolling out of Aspers in Newcastle to a chilly breeze and drizzly rain.

Angelica, Martin's girlfriend, came out for the last 2 weeks in the house so there was even more reason to go out as she was going to just watch us play poker/blackjack/craps the whole time, even though she often would. Poor girl. We all spent a lot of time by the pool, which seemed to get in worse condition with the stay, with a few more WSOP events played but not much to report. Mark went deep in the 10k PLHE tournament but effectively bubbled it and Martin had a cash in a 1k.

Then was time for the Main Event, and having decided to keep the 10k in my pokerstars account I had a sudden change of heart at around 2am the night before Day 1-D. So I rallyed together all the cash and set my alarm, unfortunately I hadn't got to bed till 7am and when my alarm went of at 12 I just threw it against the wall. That was my Main Event experience.

Ryan had had enough and left early that morning, so we all decided that we would evacuate our house and move to hotels. Me and Mark went to the Rio in a smaller but free suite, and Angelica and Martin went to the Aria. I was meant to be on a flight back to England about 5 days before this but had decided I wanted to stay longer and just forked out for a new one.

Mark ended up bubbling the Main Event which he was screwing about and then just left to catch a plane. Martin and Angelica left the following morning leaving me in Vegas for a week by myself......wiiiiiiiiiiiii!

I was in pretty good spirits about it though as I had just won the 109 6max for 8k and also I was excited about experiencing Vegas on my own and was interested to see how I would cope. I felt a little like Don Draper/Tony Soprano, only smaller.

First thing I did was check myself out the shitty Rio and into the new Aria hotel. They comped me 2 rooms in the end and charged me 100$ a night which I thought was pretty awesome value. I spent my first few nights counting cards sober and that put me a few k up. Then the next nights I drank more and eventually undid all my good work at Craps and what not. Fucking 15/15 losing sessions at that game, so ridiculous, I was probably down more at it then blackjack for the summer. Must be a jinx.

The weekend came and I met up with Jack Ellwood and those boys in Pure nightclub as they were celebrating one of their guys winning 100k which they had staked him in. Didn't think much of the Pure mainly because it was so busy (I guess it was Friday) but with the final bill of 8,000$ the host service was absolutely shocking. With that kind of a bill you expect them to be throwing girls towards the table but the guy just took tips and did fuck all.

I had been to some amazing night clubs in Vegas, Martins friend Matt hooked us up with loads of buy-1-get-1-free deals on bottles, so in the end we got really good tables and the bill was like 40% cheaper. So we were averaging 800$ a night between the 4 of us, and even though we were out almost every night, worked out pretty reasonable considering they give you 2 litres of Grey Goose and a pretty cush table. Our favourite was Surrender at Encore Beach Club. It was a new place that had been done up really well I must say. Loads of space, tables with beds, a pool in the middle and Cabanas all the way a round the top of the club, plus an outdoor Casino that was like something of James Bond.

My last night out was on Saturday when I met up with Benji and his crew who had been travelling around the west coast for a month, all of them celebrating finishing their 5 year medic courses as Doctors. We had a fun night out, going for some cheap table service at The Crown and then up to Voodoo for some cocktails. I woke at 6pm the next day in my dark air conned room and drew the curtains. Vegas 2010 had been one of the best times but after 5 weeks there, and 3 in DC, I was ready to go home!

2 years on

2010-09-02T04:09:00.000-07:00

Its been roughly 2 years since I started this blog and sadly since I started playing professionally I haven't updated it nearly as much as the days that I was still working.

Looking back at old posts its funny to compare my WCOOP's schedule of 2008 to the likely one of this year. They say that you need 71,000$ to play every WCOOP event this year. Well back in my 'working days' I must have hit close to 25k in buyins that included the 10k event..... ah the folly of youth.

These days I am some what shrewder, or at least not crazy enough to play events that = half my net worth. Though its easy to see that with experiences like this in my early days of poker why I have no value for money and still possess an addiction to spending it. In fact I even pulled out of the Main Event this year, which I do regret, but it was good to see that I could be sensible about money. My decision to do this was also partly because I wasn't happy with how I was playing Live Poker and also because I had large blackjack and craps losses, factors that others may not understand as well.

The Spring - After screwing myself around Christmas time I had bounced back with the roll and had done well at the mid stake MTT's. My most notable finish was in the Sunday 1/4 Million which is a 11$ tourney with about 29k for first. I had beaten a field of 31,429 players only to finish 4th to 3 retards. Looking back I think I made a mistake when I was down to 18 bbs and jammed 33 over a tight guys open. Its usually standard 4 handed but given my skill edge and that his range was tighter than most I really should have waited for a better spot. I did hold the chiplead quite a few times but got screwed over by setups and badbeats. They asked for a deal 5 handed and I made another mistake by not looking at the numbers. You see on Pokerstars, what I didn't know, is that the system is a little messed up and they offer near to first prize for the person with the chiplead so I could have taken near enough to 29k without playing another hand with the likelihood of my weak opponents happy to take any deal offered. O well, guess it was a lesson learn't and 11k wasn't too shappy, plus the feit of lasting through such a monstrous field. This was probably the highlight of my poker for the Spring as I started to get back on my feet.

Me and my housemates moved out of our house in Putney which turned out to be tough work. Even after all our efforts our landlord was disgusted by the state the house was in. He said we were not getting any of the £4000 back but after some arguing he agreed to give us £500. Unfortunately for him we later learnt that the repair bill came to £11,000. He said we should be ashamed but in all honesty he has to take the blame for a lot of it. He rented out the house for 18-months and didn't come round for a single inspection. If I was letting an £700k+ house to 4 young lads I would want to see what was going on every now and again. Then when the boiler went off he took ages to fix it. This meant that the place got messy. As a result we got rats and mice that bit through the piping which caused a lot of the damage, and then it was downhill in a major way from then.

Anyhoo, I moved back in to my Dad's in Wimbledon, kind of a step backwards but after living with those 3 guys for so long it was a god send. Clean house, nice food, guaranteed toilet roll etc not having to do massive cleaning jobs every other week. Its also nice to be around my family, adds some normality to my life, my brother and sister are often about which is cool.

The fact is I will never rent a house again, the £700 a month does burn a hole in your pocket that could otherwise be spent in the Casino, the pub or buying £300 sweatshirts that I will inevitably shrink in the wash (has happened 3 times and counting, and if you do know anyone who is smaller than me then you can give them to him).

These days my plan is to spend that money on paying of a mortgage and my Dad and I decided that it was a good idea to go out to Florida to get a place ASAP. Really I should have left Vegas when I had all the doe locked up, but that obviously not the way I like to do things.....

I'm on Twitter

2010-09-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

http://twitter.com/Bassysaffari

Just a quick post to say that I'm now on Twitter. Doesn't really mean much but I keep live tourney updates and may start doing it for online sessions as I get more into it.

The New New Year

2010-03-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

To fill in some gaps that definitely derailed 'The Golden Months" for me.

Back in December I went up to my Mothers house in Northumberland. After a few days on the lash with my friends up there I eventually made it to her house. Having not slept well the night before in Arctic conditions I woke up early and proceed to go to her Office to start a session. It wasn't to be a happy day as I managed to dust off 13,000$ at 1-2$PLO(antes) and 2/4$HU. Then must have a lost a fair old amount at PLO HU SUPER TURBO SNGS, making me an equal 8k loser at both PLO and NL SUPER HU's, (16k down!).

Again, one of my lowest days in poker, months of careful BRM and good work just pissed down the drain. yeah I ran like crap, by I was obviously in no state to be playing anything.

Then later we had a christmas dinner as me and my siblings were actually going down to my Dads for Christmas day, so I had to tell all the relatives who asked me"How poker was going" either "Shit" or lie and say it was great. To make things even worse I was struck by the flu and had to miss the dinner and actually stay in Bed for the next 3 days, not able to go down to London to my Dads. Miserable.

So I went out to America quite low on funds, but binking the 129KO for 11k helped alot! Thing is I was out in Bahamas and theres a fucking Pokerstars bank and then Blackjack tables so it wasn't all good.

Instead of going home from Miami when me and Eddy came back from the Bahamas I actually ended up going to Toronto, Canada and left Eddy to travel back alone. The reason was that i'd met this girl in Bahamas and we'd decided that i'd come straight up and see her, rather than going back to london and never doing it.

So I went up and stayed with her for 2 weeks which was a little intense seeing as I hardly knew her and I was living in her apartment. Out there I felt like I was going to start binking shit loads online but I think I struggled to concentrate and just went on a huge cooler at MTT's.

Nevertheless I was very relieved to take 2nd in the 55$ Super Turbo for 8k in FTP's doubled guaranteed week on my last day, even though I refused a deal with inferior chips and then went about, barreling a bricky turn and a over-shoving a complete blank on the river the very next hand!

So i returned to England, having had an amazing month away. It was strange because I'd hardly been away in the past 2 years and just felt so numb to be back in rainy Old London.

A week or 2 past and I went to Spain with my Dad for the weekend as he wanted to look for houses. He's been looking for over a year and still hasn't really found anywhere. So it was a fairly enjoyable trip away in the Altea, which is near Alicante, in a pretty nice hotel with as much sun as your likely to get anywhere in Europe in early Feb.

I grinded PLO on the second day inbetween sunbathing and was very satisfied to be 1k up at 6 tables of PLO100 (deep) and ended the session. Now this would have been a very nice day for me apart from instead of taking a nap before I went out, I decided to play more. After a small small loss at SNG's I decided to play some, yes you guess it, PLO HU SUPER TURBOS! And once your in the mode its hard to quit. I mean I know I'm not doing anything wrong! But I go and lose 20 buyins which is over 3k and I'm just hating life. I mean I'm 8k down at them life time from 1300 games. So I guess I've won 550 and lost 650 which doesn't sound too bad, but mad it tilts the hell out of me. I'm not sure whether i'll ever know if its just variance or bad play?

I went out that night with that shitty feeling of just hating myself for what I'd done, mostly because there was no need! I could have just not played and been happy to go out and enjoy myself.

Back in London and I spent a week of breakeven sessions at cash, or maybe slightly losing. Sick because I was putting in 6 hour sessions of 6 tables of PLO. I know I have enough to crush that game but I guess my whole poker psyche is just not cut out for cash. I mean lifetime I have to be down because I can recall one 10k losing session at 25/50 and there has to be more, though I was probably a good winner on stars playing 5/10 and 10/20 about 18 months ago. I guess grind is even more important in cash games as the table environment is always the same, that is that the blinds don't go up and there aren't money bubbles etc. So I must spew badly like 60% of the way through my session. I need a 3/4 bet gauge that starts bleeping when I'm just getting too aggressive.

Anyway eventually I gave up on one day and just went for it at SNG's but it wasn't to be and busted my last online money. So i was more or less back to the drawing board which was annoying, and becoming pretty boring, but can be necessary in taking bigger steps forward.

I took a couple of weeks break (more or less) and have gone back to grassroots, playing mid-low stakes MTT's. This is something i have never done properly or consistently, but after taking a look at some low stake nits profit charts on OPR I was inspired.

I've but in 3-4 sessions so far, have PT set up on my Mac at last and am managing around a 20% ITM money ratio. It also means I can wake up at normal times and just start which makes life a lot easier. Though most of my days have been losing ones, its like 200$ down instead of 2k down so theres a lot less stress. It is annoying to have so many min cashes after beating big fields, but the times you do get stacks together you can really crush the weaker fields. I've found the 4-max MTT's particularly good as you are isolating yourself with 2-3 donks and just getting paid off really light. I was annoyed to have one nit shove 40bbs with KK over my AA open and river a King to KO me in 8th and deny me the chip lead.

This week I took down the 33$ PLO for 1k for the 2nd time in 5 attempts so far. usually i wouldn't have battered an eyelid at this score but not only does it still feel great to win an MTT but also its usually 1k profit for the day, and probably week because day-to-day costs are so much lower now.

I took a very frustrating 10th in 15$ turbo, 3000 man field and 6k up top, crushing CO's A7s with my AJ in SB only for BB to wake with TT. Board was a heartattack: KQJ T K! So that was fun.

Today I made an even more annoying 8th in 22$ 20k with 6k up top also. I held CL with 11 left but refused to gear down on bubble and my 3bet/cbets didn't get through in 2 particular occasions and I hit FT with a meagre 20bbs and was therefore victim to variance with my JJ

So all in all positive about playing lower and I'm able to get tons more hands in which, although mostly against donks, is meaning I'm exploring more spots pre and post. I am however questioning my end game a bit now. Wondering whether I could tone down aggression a bit, especially when I'm deep in 3 and look for 40bb+ stacks or to bust as I feel I can use my edge to a great effect with chips. I am noticing that a lot of the lower stakes players are so much more 3bet capable which sucks late on because with good stacks I know I can 4bet easily, but I also know that I don't have to do this to win and so there's a dilemma there in which I'm open to getting owned a lot.

PCA, Miami and the New Year.

2010-02-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

Ok so I wrote a blog on this trip for the magazine GX - Gambling exclusive where I have a column. Didn't think there was much point rewriting it so excuse the story mode format:

Since EPT Budapest, about 14 months ago, I have played just one live event, a £500 freeze out at the Vic, which ended in a friendly 5-way chop. I’ve been trying to explain to myself, and others, why I don’t play more live poker, at least in London where a lot of the games are much softer then they are online. Is it because I am lazy and that I can’t be bothered to leave my house to go play more poker? Or that I find it difficult to avoid the blackjack tables and other pit games when I visit the cashier? I think over the last year my whole style of poker has been tuned towards playing on the net and so I, like others, miscalculate the importance of factors that are unique to playing live poker, and therefore I am less confident about it. The most annoying thing about live games is that you can’t multi table, making busting hurt so much more than online and all those hours/days not even good enough for a min cash. I had planned to play every EPT last year when the STEPS satellites were juicy and qualifying was a lot easier, but now you need to negotiate tough fields of HSMTT regs and so the incentive to put a lot of time and money into winning seats has diminished. Having said this, I was putting in a special effort to get a PCA package having heard so many good things about this stop, and also the 30 turbo rebuys satellites are pretty good fun so an easy grind. It wasn’t too long before I ran like god in one of these things and I was chuffed to be on course for the Bahama’s, not just because of the 10k event, but more because I could partially trade the confines of my house for the tropical Caribbean beaches.

Due to my old habit of leaving everything to the last minute I was unable to book myself a direct flight to the Bahama’s, with return tickets starting from £1200. As a result I planned to break the trip up with 3 night stops in Miami either side of the 10 nights in Nassau. With the first visit to Miami starting on New Years Eve this had all the promise of being a great couple of weeks. Now to find a friend who doesn’t have work, and has a fondness for EPT breakfasts and miscellaneous freebies. Of course, my good friend Eddy, who has been to a couple of stops with me, can be expensive but is good company nonetheless, definitely worth the money.

We left London at 9am on the 31^st. I hate flying so proceeded to drink a litre and a half of red wine, which being a short, skinny guy went far in curing my anxiety – and over to the point where I was attacking Eddy with my headphone cords in his sleep. Four episodes of the Soprano’s, Bear Gryll’s, Battle’s BC, Eminem, and one hours sleep later we were in Miami.

The hotel was nicely situated in Miami Beach. I would have preferred to be staying in South Beach but we were talking 500$ for NYE – if any were available – and I found this an unnecessary expense for a night we would probably be out for most of (I know – nit). We were meant to have booked tickets for the night but we felt a bit mugged off that we hadn’t got tickets for the Gansvoort Hotel party that was at their rooftop pool club that had gone from 200$ each up to 400$+ in a few days and that was without table service and an early finish. On our earlier walk down the beach we had come across another amazing party being setup at W hotel and we asked the doormen on the beach about it. Tony, who I can only describe as the nightlife’s answer to David Brent, told us that although it was sold out at 500$ a piece he’d sort us out for 300$ total and sneak us in the back- ‘cheers Tony’. After sleeping a bit and getting out late for 11pm we hit the town sober. Of course Tony turned out not to be the ‘in guy’ he’d portrayed and, having been stuck on the door at some room inside the hotel for the night, he proved helpless to get us in so we had to think of something else.

This part of Miami is really incredible on New Year’s. Very smart bars and hotel parties, amazing cars pulling up everywhere and just tons of rich men and ridiculously hot girls. Boxers, NBA pros- I was happy just walking around looking at it all. I even bumped into bloody AJ Soprano who had featured quite heavily in the episodes I had watched earlier on the plane, weird. We hit a glitzy bar/restaurant to reign in the New Year. Instead of having a group of girls to celebrate with at midnight, we had of course made only one addition to our party: a wasted, gay New York bloke who probably thought he had dropped the jacky with us 2 Brits and proceeded to cock-block all our advances towards the opposite sex. So eventually we paid the bar tab, told him we were going for a cigarette and ran away.

By now the party in W was in full flow and some people were spilling on to the beach. I gave one of the guys on the door 250$ and he let us in- Kid Cudi was just starting his set so it was pretty good timing. There’s generally a good crowd of people out in America, they’re all pretty friendly plus the girls really dig the English accent to the point where they just make you say words like your some kind of dancing monkey – fine by me. “Oh my god, are you like, British or something”? ‘Yes I bloody well am’.

Surprisingly we managed to man up and get ourselves out every night we were in Miami, which is something I haven’t done since I was 19. The weather had turned a little shitty (which sucked), but the club nights were awesome so I didn’t mind that much. Although it was now time to leave for the Nassau and I wasn’t feeling that pumped, I was having too good a time in Miami and pondered that if I could bink something in the Bahama’s then I would definitely look to moving somewhere like this in America.

After a 35-minute plane ride we arrived in Nassau. The weather wasn’t much better than Miami; we later learned that this was the worst they’d had in years. FML. After an equally long taxi ride we got to Paradise Island, which is separated from the rest of Nassau by a bridge. It did seem that the better hotels were in this part, but on arrival it was clear that the resort was very American and it felt more like Vegas that the Caribbean, though that could have something to do with the Casino they’d built in the middle of the place, which you were forced to walk through every time you needed to go somewhere. This in turn made walking anywhere pretty damn expensive!

The hotel rooms were ok, though definitely not by the standard of European hotels charging 400$+ a night, but whatever, good balcony. Ed was ill, so me and my other room mate Will (who had met us earlier) went to eat at Nobu which is the best restaurant they apparently had in the resort. It was Teppan Yaki, which I am pretty fond of, and generally I was impressed by the meal, even though I do feel that they use too much salt in the cooking that side of the Atlantic.

The next day I went to rail my pal Martin (M.nosbocaj) who I hadn’t seen since we were in Budapest a year ago. Me and boys hung out with Martin and his girlfriend throughout the trip which was good fun even if mine and Martin’s team blackjack/craps efforts went almost as bad as our poker efforts seeing us both stuck an annoying 4k apiece. I did manage to take down the 120KO on Full Tilt for 11k on the second night, although it’s surprising that anyone could win a dime in that place online with the net being as awful as it was, cutting out once an hour for as long as 10 minutes sometimes. I felt this was ridiculous for a hotel that was charging 400$ for its most basic room and still had the audacity to charge every poker player 80$ extra for the privilege of a shitty connection, its enough to tilt even the steadiest of poker players. I hope they use the 100k they made of us guys to sort that out for next year.

Day 1B was my starting day which I guess meant there were going to be the majority of direct buyins on so I was imagining plenty of open-limping and 4xing going on but I was wrong. I guess I was grateful for at least being on the immediate left of Issac Haxton and Harrison Gimbel rather than their right but in general it was going to prove to be a tough and frustrating day. 30k starting stack meant the whole thing was super deep and I was going to have to do more than coin-flipping my way to the final table – damn! My first big pot was when I opened AK of clubs UTG and I was 3bet by a young unknown guy (who I felt may have been getting out of line here), but nevertheless I didn’t feel like there was any value in 4betting since I could never be comfortable playing for stacks if I did make top pair, the two of us still over 100bb’s deep. The flop came down A Q 3 with two spades that I felt was a fairly good flop for me even though this was always going to be an ugly spot given that I was out of position. I check called his continuation bet and the turn came a 7 of spades putting a 3flush up there, an awkward card that I was hoping would slow down the action but he bet again. I guess this was a spot where I could have found a fold but there shouldn’t have been too many flushes in his range, with AQ often checking back too. It seemed like he may just be double-barrelling me given that I had been quite tight/straightforward so far and I would give up a hand as strong as top pair here and that he would still have an option to fire a 3^rd bullet on the river. I called and chose to revaluate on the river, still feeling I needed to be calling a 3^rd bet given my read on the situation. River came the Q of spades which was really an awful card for my hand. Thankfully we both checked and he showed the 86s so he was probably more relieved then I was. I don’t really see how I could have played the hand much differently apart from possibly making a lay down on the turn.

The rest of the day was one of the worst I’ve ever had. My attempts to get something going were hindered by opponents always waking up with hands or just owning me with aggressive play preflop. I was mainly upset about the rags I had to put up with for 8 hours. I hate sounding like a whining donk but after getting AA and 99 earlier that were good enough for the blinds I failed to pick up anything I could begin to make a defence with. In hindsight I wish I had anticipated this sort of trash and tried to be more creative earlier or towards the end. The thing about these deep stack events is that you can take the starting stack quite happily into day 2 so there’s no need to go crazy especially since there’s a load of equity in cashing to most people who enter a 10k. There were 13 minutes left in the day and I was feeling more comfortable as a shortstack with 22bbs as I knew I’d start cramming ATC against all Gimbel’s raises. He had just been destroying what I knew was a tough table full of good NL cash players, and if it wasn’t for some Brazilian Team Pokerstars Pro and a random 80 year-old I would have really felt like the fish at that table. I did read Gimbler’s post on FCP later that day and he said he had like AA twice in 5 hands with loads of action so I could probably attribute a good part of his day to run-good. He also made a nice set to bust the donk that had replaced Haxton so I suppose he was loving life. Either way I am not surprised to see that he went on to win because he really played great with the stack he built and was relentless in his aggression. I really felt schooled when I flatted his EP raise with AQ which he totally shutdown on a 2 8 Q flop, and then turn, once I’d decided to slow play 1 street to try and induce some action. He just soul read me probably because I was smiling so hard at the fact I’d found top-pair top-kicker!

My penultimate hand came when I opened KJcc UTG with 22 bb’s. I knew this spot kind of sucked because I should always be folding to a 3bet and no one should really be calling given my stack size unless they have KK+ but I just decided to do it anyway. I had forgot that old guy, who was acting out of turn most hands, was in the big blind and he quite happily saw a flop, not caring if I had 200bb’s or 5. I decided not to cbet a 6 6 9 two diamond flop against this calling station, so when the J diamonds hit the turn I felt like I just couldn’t fold, despite the lunatic betting 10k into 6k. I got the rest of it in knowing I was dead when I heard him say “yeah I’ll call that” and tabled 67 of hearts. I always say good game and good luck but on this day I just left in a rage like a stroppy teenager. I went and told the lads who were disappointed for me, especially poor Eddy who realised he may actually have to get a job now after I apparently agreed to give him a 1.25% stake when I was drunk. With shitty weather but pretty good nightlife we went about getting smashed for the next 7 days with the likes of Scotty Ngyuen and the two younger Mizarachi boys who were all top guys. I was concerned that Scotty was still in our hotel room partying 6 hours before the day 3 started but hey what do I know about playing drunk and sleepless. The guy’s had ridiculous success so maybe I may turn up to the next 10k event pissed out my skull, at least then I may not be such a rock at the table!

I didn’t go to the Pokerstars party because I needed a night off. They changed the venue from an awesome place to an awful place and the till-late just meant 12 so I really didn’t think I missed out on much. Even with Kelly Rowland and David Guetta headlining the event, and the likes of Nelly and Vinny Chase also in attendance people still turned up in their white PCA hoodies which I found funny because me and Martin were going to have a bet on this before hand. Eddy managed to have a good time, going out with nothing and still managing to be in and around the VIP tables and partying back at people’s suites, while me and Will were watching I Love you Man back at our room.

The next day was Sunday so I was nice and fresh to grind online and Martin and I went and met some of the other Swede’s at the Hilton downtown where they had booked a conference room to deal with the shitty connection back at Atlantis. It was quite a chilled environment to play and was nice to grind with guys like Eisenhower1, Mendieta19, G8vemylifeaway and Antesvante. The rule was biggest winner paid for everything so I was in no danger, even though I was ecstatic to break even on a Sunday. Antesvante took a cheeky 90k for his first in the Sunday 500 on stars, probably one of the top 5 toughest tourneys of the week, a nice end to his trip.

So PCA 2010 had ended, even though Eddy and me still had to do 3 more nights in Miami. Will went straight back to UK and Martin prepared for a 29 hour flight to Australia. Even though I was disappointed with my performance in the Main Event I was still nicely up from online. Being an online player in the UK its really hard to go out a lot on weekends with the schedule being the way it is, and despite only 2 good beach days in 15, it was definitely refreshing to get away from the office for that amount of time.

1 Year Ago

2009-12-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

Since it has been roughly a year since my last post I decided now might be a good time to update my blog. I feel it has definitely been a leak, not writing here, because it is such a good tool to get things off your chest, as well as discovering and analysing other weaknesses.

So, since Budapest, things have been swingy to say the least. I can definitely pin point this summer as being the low of my career, though the weather was pretty good so it didn't hit me as hard as it could have done.
I had blown quite a considerable roll by around March and although I had made good comebacks through the following months, my in ability to accept Bankroll Management as the fundamental ingredient for winning, had made it impossible to hold on to anything for too long.
The major event away from the actual felt, had been that I had been scammed in Budapest by a fellow poker player and EPT Budapest participant, a Swede who for confidentiality reasons I will name only as Bobert Andersson. He took me for 18,000€ in events which you can read here:

http://www.sickbluff.com/2009/04/unbelievable-story-about-2-poker.html

I was luckier than others before me in that I was able to obtain a legal contract, with his Father as a trustee to the repayment which gave me a good chance at seeing my money again. Unfortunately, Bobert's Fathers word meant less than his sons and I was forced to seek council from a lawyer who took on my case which went on in the background while I tried to keep my poker afloat.

By the summer I was totally broke. My usual trick of using a credit card and binking 20k hadn't worked and I was unpressure, angry that I had put myself in such a bad position. Luckily one of my greatest strengths in poker, and in life, is my continued optimisms, and the believe that things will be ok (though tis can often be a weakness too, hence the situation I was in). It is hardest thing in poker probably, that most outsiders don't appreciate, to carry on playing good when you don't have the comfort of a bankroll and money to live off. Eventually I got fed up of scratching around for funds to play with and went to look for a loan for the first time.

Although I hated borrowing money from a close relative, who could barely afford to give it up, I was forced for the first time in my career to follow strict bankroll guidelines. I told myself that if I ever went broke again I would quit poker and find something else, so this was really my last shot. I used a very small amount of the money to live off and spread the rest equally across FTP and PS. I then used the 100 buyin rule to SNG's and MTT's PER site, so despite having a total of 9,000$, I treated each as a seperate 4500$ playing nothing bigger than 45$ initially, that in turn meant I was using a 200 buyin rule.

Things were pretty tough at first, I was winning, but I was also doubting myself when I hit downswings. It was easy to question my game, having taken a notable absence, and found myself going to bed wondering whether I could beat the games anymore which pranged me out a bit.

As September hit and the good weather started to pass I got back into sleeping late and playing more MTT sessions. I was able to get myself through the WCOOPs thanks to my run good in the hyper turbo sats on Stars:

But obviously I did nothing in the WCOOPS, managing only 2 cashes from I don't want to think how many events. I did go deepish in the 6 max PLO finishing 34/2700 and holding a big stack for most of the event, but hindered by our timezone, I began to peter out, with my aggression factor that made me a threat completely diminished.

Thankfully I didn't have to wait too long for a break through, as i took first in the daily 80k for 16,000$ almost a month since I had started. What made this better was a horse of mine, Weez4004, took down a 1st in some 11$ mine field for 6,000$ so it was a sweet 20k night. I took a lot of it out and paid off CC's and most of my loan. It was nice not only to take some of pressure off but also to get my confidence back up in the MTT's.

October was similarly fortunate to me as I took 2nd in the Sunday 216$ HU, getting owned hard in the final and thus taking 7,000$ home and not 14k. Earlier to that I made 7th in a Sunday 109$, but managed to F up the final table. I tried complaining to stars, because my loss in timebank, thanks to the site crashing for 2 hours, had resulted in me only min 4 betting my KK v QQ and thus playing the hand 3-way with deep stacks. This ended in me pot-controlling a JJx flop and letting an Ace coming off and subsequently losing. More importantly than losing a relatively small pot was me not getting stacks in against the QQ, who despite being a nit, could not have gotten away from his hand being the button and me the Cut Off unless I made the misclick that I did. So it cost me a 150bb+ stack with 8 left, which given my history at final tables, would have made me a massive favorite to take the 35k first prize and not the 7,000$ I ended up with.

My memory is slightly hazy, but in between late October and early November I may have started to relapse a little. Not only because I had been playing a little too high at HU PLO (around 6,000$ in one session), a format that I had only recently felt more comfortable with as a CG, but also general spending and other gambling. I had ran some swingy sessions at BJ both pissed and sober, ending up with some unfortunate spots on Betfair where my luck had run out and I couldn't run back the losses. I think since I closed Betfair casino account there I had lost over £4000, though this was partly due to me having withdraw restrictions that stopped me from taking £5,000 out one Saturday and instead playing sports and then more BJ with it. If only my good friend and housemate had told me that all I needed to do was send in age verification. O well.

It was then in November that I had three good spots to help me bounce back from minor hiccups. I took a 3 way chop for 13,000$ in a 75$ mtt on FTP. I also made a 5 way chop in my first Live tournament since Budapest (exactly a year in fact, weird) for £4,500.
Then when I was rolling along nicely, and I thought my bankroll had in its lifetime been hit by everything there was, Full Tilt decided to introduce 164$ Super Turbo HU. I played 1 or 2 to cap a winning day, then stupidly I got into a session when I was in bed and had a football match in the morning. In 2 hours I had played 300 of the little fuckers and was down over 4,000$, running like aids, but maybe getting owned by some regs and basically not understanding how deep you have to be for these things. The next day I ran similar figures and really fucked my mind with these things. Basically in around 24 hours I had managed to lose 9,000$, mostly through these things, and I didn't feel good. I had been fucked hard when I was least expecting it and I felt a bit sorry for myself in all honesty. The next day I got up with that old horrible feeling of thinking the previous day was all a bad dream but then the reality of the beat you have just taken hits you. It happens at your lowest in the gambling industry, I also remember it from getting kicked out of school and of course breaking up with a girl. Its shitty. I started playing again, 100PLO deep HU but got raped by some ridiculous variance and beats and took a break. I told myself there was no way I was busting my roll ever again (I still had some back up but this was my roll). I went out and did some food shopping and tried to gather my head. I came back, ate and started grinding some HU SNG's and other stuff, keeping my BRM and made 1,000$. I decided that even if it took me a month i would grind this mother back and I felt good again. Me and 2 friends went to see a film and when I came back at 12 I actually felt fresh enough to play some more. It was getting on towards 1am so that meant the 24$ 35k and the 163$ 75k. Anyway I was lucky enough to run good and took down the 163 for 24,000$ which was also my biggest online cash. Even though I played great I felt like a little bit of a luckbox for fucking myself up to the point I had and then getting out of jail so quickly. A weird 48hrs but while I concentrated on never playing high in the CG's and MTT's I had overlooked SNG's. It was like the pokergods had created these fucking HU things to test me some how and I had failed miserably.
Novemeber also brought a settlement between me and my Swedish opposition which was another positive. Although I could have definitely taken the thing to court and stood a good chance of winning all my costs back too, I was mostly happy that they incurred the same total costs that they would have if they had just paid up originally. Going to court could have gotten messy because we were no longer fighting over whether the money had been given to the Swede, but whether his father should have to pay. It also in meant I had to cough up more money for the trail and possibly pay ALL their fee's too if I lost which was still a possibility. Therefore the Math's dictated that I should probably settle given that I didn't know what % of the time I would win in court.

I will be heading to the PCA this January after booking a seat via one of the 30r. I am excited with this prospect mostly because I will be on a beach for the first time in years! Though it will be sad to bust the tourney I'm sure it is one of th best places to do so. Bit gutted about flight prices. It has meant that me and Eddy (yes he's come back when things have got better) will be going to Miami for NYE and getting a cruiseliner to the Island and then doing the same on the way back. But now BA have gone and had a fucking strike so its yet to be seen how this screws things up.

EPT BUDAPEST

2008-11-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

After the disappointment of London I was off to Budapest in late October. Seeing as everyone I know works or is broke I had real trouble finding someone to share my room with. Thankfully Eddy "There is such a thing as a free lunch" Eyre was available again to abuse the free Breakfasts of another 5star hotel.

I arrived alone the night before the tournament started, traveling in style via Wizz Air. It had been a while since I'd left England and on my taxi ride from the airport to the Hotel I began to remember how much I enjoyed being abroad in Europe and how exciting it was to travel. I have a real thing for European cities (they make up 97% of the cities i've ever visited so its no wonder) despite their similar characteristics there is something about the Architecture that makes me feel weird inside, like I've gone back in time or am Jason Bourne.....one of the two, i'm not really sure which one it is. It could also have something to do with the amount of alcohol i'd consumed in the airpot/plane (I wont lie, i'm not a big lad, one pint usually does the trick).

The Sofitel in Budapest was probably the nicest hotels I've been in, located on the Danube with a spectacular view of the Parliament on the opposite side of the river but more importantly a Casino inside the building so there is no need to go outside and risk getting mugged. I met up with Eddie, who'd already become accustom to the room and Mini-bar, and we went to check out the Blackjack tables.

We sat and played. I spent more time trying to work out exactly how many froutiers (money) I was betting in £ than I did trying to count the deck and Eddy just chained smoked in the chair next to me until the novelty of smoking in a public place wore off.....it never did.

Next day we got up ate the breakfast which i'd probably rate an 8/10. I think Londons was better quality but I liked the porridge/rice pudding thing they had so I reckon i benefitted more from it. Eddie liked the champagne that you were apparently allowed to take by the bottle and drink around the hotel which he had scummed to by the 3rd day.

We went and hit the town later and looked for somewhere for lunch. We hit some Japenese trendy restaurant and had Sushi that seem to be a 6/10 but that might be because I had eaten it a lot recently. I paid Eddie 20€ to eat the massive one with Orange eggs, he didn't enjoy it so it was worth the money apart from he felt ill and that knocked the wind out of his sails, so we went back and I played some 10/20 PLO (o the god old days) on FTP and chatted to Annette who was apparently in the same hotel and playing DAy 1B also. Eddie managed to perk up later in the day when he entertained himself for 2 hours watching the street hookers from our hotel window. I think I offered him 50€ to go and do the 'Monkey Dance' in front of them but then decided it would be cruel/weird for all parties involved.

Day 1B. I looked forward to the tourney and felt a lot more relaxed. I guess the rate I was winning EPT packages I had guaranteed a seat at every spot on the tour so this had become more of a routine than a yearly highlight.

I was seat 7 on the table on which I had Danny Stern (Ansky) in seat 3 and Luca Pagano in seat 10 as well as a SNG reg on my left whose name SN escapes me momentarily but he's from....some where in Europe. Play was standard for me as I shrunk into my live poker shell and spewed 0% pre but then again won fewer pots then I would have online as a result bluffing 0% and finishing the day on a modest 27k. No dinner break meant we were finished early which I like because eating makes sluggish and I'm used to playing 10 hours of poker+ with no breaks online, usually pissing, shitting, eating and doing whatever else you can think of whilst balancing my laptop in my free hand.

Day 2 was interesting for me as I became more shortstacked and felt comfortable shipping 15-20 BBs as resteals and value 2,3,4 bets etc and was able to soul read a LAG euro donk for a light 3bet from the BB and happily ship AJo for value.

I then probably made my biggest mistake of the tourney even tho I stood by my rationale. A youngish Hungarian opened OTB making it his 3rd consecutive LP open in as many orbits and I decided to cram ATo for around 16BBish over his 3.5x. My reasoning was that although I felt he liked the look of his hand his bet sizing gave away his range. I scrubbed JJ-AA out on a feel basis and that there was no reason for him to make such a large raise against opponents who had shown no tendencies to defend their blinds or splash around generally. I also felt that he would fold AJ alot of the time and that I was value shoving the times he called with AT or worse and with TT unlikely and smaller pairs a flip I felt that this was a +EV shove with AQ+ and some AJ's the only threat. Online this reasoning is factored down to mathematical ranges but in this live setting the feel factor requires an explanation of my thought process. Well he snapped AK so I guess I'm a donk and on an K T x flop my chances were looking very slim indeed. That was until I binked another TEN on the turn, ooops! He was not happy. I told him it was standard. ***stack sizes are a little blurry***

So with my stack I kept snug for the first 3 or 4 hours of the day. My UTG KK open got 3Bet by Tristan Clemencon on the CO. We were both about 30BBs deep and he had just outplayed the previous hand so I figured he must have a big hand. I did contemplating flatting to look as if I was steaming but felt a cram here was my best line as he would be making less mistakes than others post flop. Anyway he tank folded to what he said was QQ and I do believe him cos he did look in agony as he did it. I don't think many online regs would fold there, I know i'd have trouble as I felt I was stinking of AK. Having said that in my attempts to polarize my range to one specific hand I ended up stinking of KK+ AK+ and so folding QQ was not that difficult for him. I had planed to exchange 10% with him because I felt he was playing well but fortunately I didn't because he busted before the money.

I later made an error once I had spewed a little in that I raised QT from the sb with the intention of snapping BBs 10ish BBs. Instead I was faced with roughly double that (if i remember correctly) but thankfully still called and won a flip versus 33.

The bubble then burst and I had made my first EPT cash in 3 attempts which was nice.

EDIT: 22nd Dec/2009

To finish this off:

I ended up busting the tourney in 10th place when I got coolered for the chip lead, raising k8o on the button and bet/calling the BB's shove on Ks 8s 7 flop and losing to 77!

Even though I took 30,000€ in the end I was fortunate to have swapped a piece with Will Fry who took down over 400k. So in the end I made more out of his finish then my own.

EPT LONDON

2008-11-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

Its been along time since I have written anything so I can't recall hands as well I would like but here goes.

Day 1B. Very good table draw. Only notables were Timex who is a fairly solid online MTT player aswell as November 9 Finalist Ilan Schwartz as well as an online friend of mine, Adam York who was weirdly sat on my immediate left and probably the only person I had said "See you there" to prior to event. Play for me was pretty straight forward for the first 6 Levels, I picked up enough small pots to ensure my confidence was high which is a very important factor for me in live poker. I was able to snap of a double barrel bluff by Ilan with 4th pair that gave me a strong enough image to ensure i could play with some comfort on this fairly weak table.

Unfortunately it is now January the 4th and I have forgotten many keys hands but I still want to tie up some lose ends.

Before I moved to my 2nd of 3 tables for Day 1 I was able to flat a 3bet from a new donk with QQ. Unfortunately I was unable to extract anymore (even with 40BBs+ Eff) on a Qh Xh Xh flop and my bet on the turn ended the hand. Soon after this I was moved table which really sucked because I was very comfortable.

Having no reads on my new table proved to be costly. 2nd hand I pick up QQ and open UTG+1 with a 22k stack (300/600). A young online player (who turned out to be Fatal Error) with a similar size stack called in the CO and a tall, slap-head Scandy 3-bet (with a stack of about 27k). This was a spot that you always dread in these big live buyin events, especially since your tourney life is so much more value than your standard daily donkements. What is sicker is that given first impressions and the way this guys chips were stacked (and the mixed denominations) he seemed like he had been very active and that this was just an obvious squeeze. I felt that he was testing my resolve and knew that his FE pre/post flop was increased given that I was new to the table and wouldn't want to go to war readless and OOP for my tourney life. I did consider just folding, predicting that it was always going to be a nasty spot. I also Considered 4Bet/calling or even just shutting my eyes and shipping but came to the conclusion that seeing a flop with a good intention of CR was the best line. I think mostly i wanted to avoid racing pre v AK.

Anyway the flop was As 3s 3 and it went Chk Chk which i was pretty pleased with. The turn was the Ks and now I picked up the Nut flush draw. I did consider betting and on reflection maybe made a mistake not half potting here but felt like he was calling a lot of the time so this was rarely a semi-bluff and never a value bet and so I just opted to check given that I was never going to fire a second barrel if I missed river. So i check and now he bets something close to 5k which is now nearing 1/3 of my stack. I think I can call here but evaluated that I will be check/folding to any non-spade/Queen river so I left myself open to getting bluffed by air, so as I result I just fold with no money committed post.

Other than that I am fairly card dead and play fairly tight once my momentum goes. Phil Ivey joins the table which I predicted would be -EV on my blind stealing. He stayed for an hour built up his shortstack, got a beat and then horribly limp called 55 from the sb v Fatal errors standard K6 push. It was odd from Phil as I couldn't see the value in slow playing a small pocket pair with 10BBsish.

I was allin and chopped with AJ v AJ on A high flop and then later 3bet shoved 88 from SB v bald Scandy and ran into AA in the BB FFS. Luckily I spiked one of my 14 outs on the river and so I was able to join my final table of the day with an around average stack (tending to be between this and lowish for the remainder of the day).

My new table had Isabelle Mercier, Andre Akkari and Johannes Strassmann (who was impressive). I 3bet-shoved a bit in standard spots to try and gain a good stack for day 2. In the end i was like half average when the lowest nittiest player in tourney raised UTG and by mistake I caught a glimpse of one of his whole cards which i thought was an Ace. Now i'm not a cheat and am the first to tell some when they are flashing cards but given the fact that I had extra info on Villain I decided to call ATC and assume that he has raised AJ+ with the intention of taking the pot away from his. Anyway the flop came Q 8 x and I had A8 so I just decided to CR his half stack Cbet for value rather than a bluff given that AQ was s small enough part of his range. Anyway he tanks and starts cursing and now I'm very comfortable predicting he will fold leaving 3-5BBs lol. So I ask him what he has and he says TENS!! and so now i'm shitting it with only 6 BBs more than him. Anyway to my relief he makes the worst fold ever explaining that I have to have a Queen and I avoid this weird beat even though I deserve to get felted for my sneakiness and unethicalnessness.

I Finish the day 40/150? stack....something like that.

Day 2 was simple. i play nitty i make it to final 90 top 55 paid. I shove 25 BBs pre with KK over Vanessa Roussos open after 3 levels of play. She snaps AKhh and spike Ace on turn after a no heart 7 high flop and i miss the chance to take a stack that would have taken me into the money and maybe beyond.

O well, Michael Martin won it eventually and he is a FIFA fan so I guess thats OK. Now that he has a Million £ I need to play some HU FIFA games against him and not lose. I did offer to play him and Ansky in Budapest Versus me and Eddie (=dreamteam) but it was FIFA 08 on the PS3 which was probs -EV and I was still in the ME.

SNG finishes for last 4 weeks

2008-10-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

Some graphs from the 315$ and 525$ SNGs I have been playing recently on Stars

I'd like to increase my sample size for November but want to post this now so that I can hopefully show similar results on the 23rd-10-08 and will post them every month on this date.

Hopefully by next month I will have a better grip on ICM, i'm not sure what edge i'm losing by not fully understanding it. I feel like my idea on ranges is getting me through but I don't naturally know how to use them perfectly i.e when knowing when I have a calling/shoving hand but no evidence of whether it is mathematically correct to use it because of stack size/money (ICM). So at the moment I am just using my poker logic and stuff I have learnt from others but I'm way off where I want to be where by I can do all this stuff as naturally as I can call an Allin with Aces.

315$

525$

And also some from Full Tilt

Total excluding Heads Up matches

Total

A summary of the last few weeks Part 1.

2008-10-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

I can honestly say that I have been so busy the last few weeks I have not had anytime to write on my blog so I just want to take this opportunity to apologies to all my fans worldwide and reassure you all that this will not be happening again.

The fact is I was visiting the casino a lot during the WSOPE and the EPT London and did not have enough time.

As a result I am going to recap on my 4 live tournaments:

WSOPE Event 1, EPT £200 Rebuy and Main Event and the satellite I played to the WSOPE Main Event.

1. WSOPE Event 1

This was scheduled to be my first of 2 WSOPE events but unfortunately I did not make it into the PLO which was upsetting due to a combination of reasons: £5k, No Sats and Blackjack tables but all come to the same reason: not enough money. I kind of got over it after my poor poor performances in the WCOOP PLO events.

Anyway the £1500 had a very large field and was a whose who of poker which for me was nice because I didn't get to go to the WSOP in Vegas this year and for the record still haven't been.

The clock was an hour and starting stacks were 6k.

For some reason I was ultra confident in this event, not that I shouldn't be but it had been a while since I have played live. Anyway with protection from my Raybans I proceeded to chip up at a good rate through the first few levels.

Too my right was Ian Frazer, Ian Woodley and some other local who I think is quite well known but to me they were all unknown at this point. One thing is for sure they all pretty much sucked yet all have better cashes in their lifetime than me...even tho mine is only 2 1/2 years but still!

Ian Woodley raised an early hand and checked a J high board down with this very shaky, nervous nit where the river paired Jacks, the nit bet and Ian folded AA face up. I thought this was a ridiculous fold by Ian with no reads on the nit and can't ever imagine there is any positives to gain out of showing the AA even if you think you are beat. Its surely only going to encourage people to try and pick spots against you not just because you were bluffed off a 2bet pot by a single river barrel but also because you played the hand shit and should never be folding AA there. Fair enough if Villain bets turn and then river there is a case for folding but I imagine Villain was value betting some kind of 2 pair, we know he didn't have a jack because we overheard Villain talking to a friend about it.

Anyway Ian continued to play bad including calling in preflop with AK and then checking a 4 way pot then calling my big bet on turn of xxTsQs and I failed to fire a river once it had bricked for me convinced that he would snap/tank call with some sort of KQish type hand.

He then proceeded to limp-call for 1/3 of his stack against me and for 1/2 his stack against BarryG and fold the flop both times when his probable QJ suited missed.

Before BarryG and the Scandy whose name escapes me joined our table, Fraiser, Woodley and the Mel Juddah lookalike had played pretty fast in the first 2 levels. Once the other half of the table which was myself, an average online player and some well known finnish youngster had got going and BarryG had joined they didn't really have much game.

I had AA v average online kids QQ and chipped up to 10k with average at around 8k and I was feeling really good. My biggest regret and perhaps only mistake was that I didn't 4 bet shove JJ UTG once the Finnish L.A.G-Star had 3bet me to 2k. He later told me he had A9dd here. At the time my instincts was to shove but I kind of felt I would have to make a big laydown at some point so it may as well have been now. Really tho I shuda shipped it to kingdom come and sat back and admired my 12k stack going into the 2nd break. As it turned out I lost a race when i 3 bet AKcc v Woodleys 99 and then he managed to deny me of a triple up later with his QTss intercepting my AQ with a Ten on the river.

Though I left feeling a little bit anti-climaxed I was happy with the way I played and knew that I would have to get lucky more than once to win a bracelet in that event.

Ian Woodley used my chips wel it would appear as he finished 8th in the event so well done to him. He can add that to the £200k he has cashed in his life and to the £1mil he won on TFI Friday that made him the first TV millionaire which I found a very interesting fact.

I beat myself up by playing the 500r and 1k PLO that night in the NEW gutshot which by the way is a bit of a dive. The internet connection was blank in some areas which disgusted me and it feels more like Teddy KGBs place than the old place in Farringdon.

I think I dusted off about £1k at BJ that night but this would not be first time. I was playing lonesome on the £100 Min. table so this was not a unlikely result. I withdrew £3kish from my PS to compensate but this was to be instance which was to be repeated and but alot of strain on my roll.

2. £200 EPT Rebuy Event.

The £200 rebuy followed the WCOOP Main Event for me at the VIC on Tuesday night. I took £1k for rebuys but found myself only needing an Addon. I managed to go in with 15k total to the freezeout. I was a little annoyed that the last hand had been my QQ v a young Scandy who had called for half his chips which I perceived as odd but later realized that this was because he probs wanted a rebuy and then an Addon. Anyway I checked a Q Tc 3c 6 board to him twice and then stacked on a 4c river only for him to show the fucking 25os! Had it been online i wud of typed LOL!

Anyway, after being smashed by the deck in the rebuy period things soon dried up. I was gutted that in a hand I was c-betting a flop I started to blush quite alot. I had no Sunglasses on and was quite tired but once I felt like i was going red it probs got alot worse but the fop was like 6 8 9dd so it was a horrific spot to Cbet and probably my bodies way of telling me to sort my shit out. Nevertheless I felt pretty gutted and it was a huge bruise to my Ego and current confidence.

Things got worse when I moved to my 3rd table where the 25os Scandy kid raised up utg+1 and I 20kish and AJdd or at least thats what I thought. I decided to flat as our stack were pretty awkward as shove was rash with AJ and a fold a little nitty.....and 3betting was folding to a 4bet so this seemed a little spewy.

Anyway the pot turned out to be 4 handed and I proceeded to bet the x 8d Qd and then snap a minish raise shove from a shorter guy behind. I proudly turned over what I believed to be AJdd but was in fact AhJd!! What was even funnier was that the guy tabled A4dd just before me so I was actually flipping with the guys 11 outs. Dam Raybans!

I did reply instantly with AQ v AJcc B v B with 25os Scandy Kid. And then made a squeeze against GUKPT Final winner whose name I forget and Aspers Hamid with AQcc but unfortunately Hamid snapped me with 55 and it held...I wonder how well he did with all those chips.

Anyway I went downstairs and left the night up after a little session on electronic shuffled BJ table.....I later realised there was a High Stakes Area with dealer dealt!

Funny Cash Hand

2008-09-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

After shot taking went wrong and I was left to grind the rest of the day a cheeky little pot took place at one table. God knows how we both managed to get 2400$ in by the flop. Don't try this at home.

ACES ROYAL- ON THE NET!!!!!

2008-09-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

<

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Follow this link below:

£200 bonus – Poker

or text SEBPOKER to 80729

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WCOOP Discontent continues

2008-09-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

Despite winning my first EVER MTT on a US site (i think) - Tuesday came and went without any WCOOP cashes.

A friend had started playing a 270 man 20$ PLO8 mtt which I proceeded to bust myself out of. In the process I ended up with 30k when average was 4k and 2nd in chips had 12k. Still I proceeded to crush the field and take down a well earned 970$. It was nice to play in an MTT where people where making so many more mistakes than I was used to in 100r and it raised the thought that perhaps I should be playing lower stake MTTs if I am going to Final table a much higher percentage of them Maybe I should at least play the 50$ 80k at 8pm when I do play full time.

Realizing that I had never won an US MTT made me really focus on FT and made the money irrelevant so I was essentially playing for pride.

It was too be a good day for me as I also won an MTT sat to the 2-7 NL event to practice (or learn) my play and made the money in 1000+ plus field in the 100r where I decided to take what i read to be a cointoss with AQ v 99. I was gutted when I didn't hit and failed to make the top ten stacks but I guess I took the +EV option with the dead money and an above average stack to give me a good shot for FT.

A 3 day break before Tuesdays 500-500-500$ and the 500$ 2-7 WCOOPS did hep me regain focus and get some rest from the laptop.....even tho it new sleek Macbook pro!

I spent a lot of Tuesday studying 2-7 and playing Matt HU on stars.

The 500$ 1R+1A meant you effectively started with 16k in chips and looked to be a 1pm finish and it was pretty uneventful for me for the first 3 hours, giving me enough time to bust out the single draw.

I felt in the 2-7 that 5k starting stacks were quite short. The game is pretty active and I can't imagine this one went on for long. There were some strong players at my table who chipped up very quickly. I felt I was pretty card dead like I had been all day in the game and in the end I got pretty coolered.

My first sickner is when I limp called from early pos with a 8632 draw in an attempt to disguise my hand. I drew a 7 which I was prepared to broke with for my remaining 2k. I decided to lead out for half of it and got snapped by a fucking 86! The guy seemed to be a very strong player and I couldn't understand why he had decided not to put me in. Maybe he assumed that because I limp-called and then lead I had either a BLUFF or an 86+

Anyway more BS was to come after my first 8 of the day as I got it allin predraw holding a 2347

I drew a 9 he made an 86532 and seeing as he was worse than me he it seems very possible that he was drawing to a 86 or worse an 2356 which given straight blockers as well as the one in my hand makes that kind of a bad beat. Mind you I only had to draw bad and he will win there alot anyway.

The fact is that I love this game and I was gutted to bust out plus there was a 50k overlay meaning 1 in 6 cashed and I still couldn't convert.

The 500 1R+1A had a similar structure to the 10k event. I picked up AA 5 times and still managed to finish 200 out the money, with a lovely 260k for 1st place.

Despite having both Aakarii and Lee Nelson at my table (both who got owned by my AA) I missed to spots to become double average as i was surprised with how weak my table had been all night and became more convinced by the importance of paying attention to these players.

The first was when I called a midpos raier with ATdd. Maybe a 3bet here would have been better but I felt like I could outplay these guys post flop to the point whereby if I hit I would stack them.

A flop of T 8 2 seemed like it could have trapped me as I reraised his C-Bet and then snapped his shove. I felt like he has been pushing his draws hard and sure enough he had 97ss.

unfortunately for me it came 7 then 9 and I was crippled down to 6bbs. We had discovered that Villain was a low stake losing sng donk but had recently cashed in a WCOOPS event for 42k so that shits on my record.

I did manage to double up 3 times, thanks to Aakarii giving my AA a spin with his 33.

It was AA for the 5th time which was to be my downfall which I guess is mathematically probable.

I played it cute, calling UTG+1s raise (with few reads on Villain) knowing that one of the table donks had just been crippled down to 5k and would be most probably shoving anything and hopefully induce an isolation shove from the UTG+1.

It worked perfectly, I snapped, he had KQos and made 3 Queens. Bed time

2 More EPT seats

2008-09-12T15:38:00.000-07:00

2 hard weeks of online poker have come to a semi-successful end.

My Friday night session followed Thursday nights with another top 80/350+ finish in the 100r although this time instead of losing a top 3 stack, I grinded an average stack before running k8cc into BBs ?? (can't remember) but I was behind. I simply shoved allin on button for 20 odd bbs and was snapped, thankfully he only took half my stack but its not like I can consider myself as UL as Thursday when I ran my 3bet AK into a cold 4bettors AA and then one orbit later managed to achieve the same feat with AQcc!

Anyway alot of my focus had been on my 3 step 6 tickets, one of which I had lost on Thursday and the other 2 which I played on Friday.

I found myslef at one point doing well in the rebuy, then an hour later 5 tabling the PLO and HU WCCOPs aswell as these 2 fucking steps.

Anyway the London Package was an important win for me because it gave my bankroll a much needed boost. The EPT Budapest was a nice bonus as I took down one of the 2 seats in a very very soft field of 10. I have never been to Budapest and now I have an excuse to leave the country....I wonder how much sunbathing I can do in November?

The HU WCOOPs was a little bit of a fustrating end as I managed my 4th bubble of the series, 2 cashes in 11 is pretty fucking horrible even if 2 were in 5cdraw and 7cSud.
I played DBL_J_22 and managed a huge spew of chips as I spoke to a friend on the phone. Then left with half my stack and facing a 4bet in my attempt of a 4th successful 3bet I decided to stack of with Q9os still with loads of play left in me and almost no FE. My genius thinking was that I may as well gamble here because if I could hit I would tilt him enough to win the match easy and thus make the money. I don't think my read was awful and Villain did have AK but if I had just started the match not on the phone then I would have had enough focus to play properly and not spew. If your ever on the phone in poker....get of it.....its -EV for definate!

A Great Laydown by Romanello?

2008-09-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Undoubtably one of the best ever televised laydowns, and pleased to see it done by a Brit. I guess this truely is a testament to the differences between live and online poker, and possibly the difference between most tournaments and the WSOP Main Event.

Folding JJ's full in this exact spot online is not only near impossible but i'm not even sure that
it would be considered that good?

I wonder if Roberto (who is a very good player) considered laying it down for the cameras? If its wrong its not such a big deal, if he's right everyone in the poker world will remember it for a longtime to come. It will go down as a memorable "play" in WSOP history rather than a memorable "blow up", arugument or drunken display that currently dominates the WSOP top 10 moments to remember.

What do I think? I think he layed it down because he definately thought he was beat. Villain is a bit of a donk so his reads are likely to be strong. I think even if Geller doesn't show he knows that he will "see it on TV later" but I also think that live players are more used to making these big folds. Online players play multable tournaments in a day and don't have to travel far for each one. Also they are averaging between 100-1000$ where as live players average 1000-10,000$ so theres more reward in doing so.

I bet if Geller did NOT show and the HH was posted on 2p2 90%+ would be advocating a call.

With about 4 live tournaments under my bet this year and 3 big ones coming up I should be looking to once again adjust my game to these sort of tests....

I am having flashbacks of last years EPT London where I was unable to fold KK against AA on a 5 high flop when Villain smoothed my 4bet preflop in position. I was able to check to him but unable to believe that I could ever lay this down against the Online LAG kid. A big lesson for me and hopefully this laydown will act as a timely reminder.

September: Rescheduled

2008-09-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

A few adjustments have arisen because of clashes in WCOOP and WSOPE events.

I have decided to play the PLO event as well though I will concentrate from now until then on either playing live satellites or raising funds myself.

The WSOPE Main Event would be a very tight squeeze in between the PLO and EPT and would also require a satellite however I can safely say that I will add it in if I manage to get a good cash somewhere in the 20 million$ worth of prize pools! Having said that I will probably find even more ways to blow up before/just into the money.

I have decided that tomorrow night and next Wednesday will be late nights so may as well try and donk my way through the Stud games. Hopefully small field but then everyones chasing those illustrious WCOOP bracelets......??

I won't be surprised if the HU and PLO tourneys get scrapped this Friday, as i may be forced to board the Lash Train; destination Drunken City and no doubt stopping at Charlestown and hopefully no where else.......RESOLVVVVE!
Mind you work on Saturday (Steps) so will be forced to go and seeing as its a party in Hackney I may have to change the destination to Backstabbing Central....hopefully not.

Anyway heres the Schedule.

13 11-Sep Thu 14:30 $215 NL Hold'em w/Rebuys $1,000,000

14 11-Sep Thu 16:30 $320 7-Card Stud $100,000

15 12-Sep Fri 14:30 $320 NL Hold'em [Heads-Up] $500,000

16 12-Sep Fri 16:30 $215 PL Omaha [1R1A] $300,000

17 13-Sep Sat 14:30 $530 PL Hold'em [6-max] $400,000

23 16-Sep Tue 14:30 $530 NL Hold'em [1R1A] $500,000

24 16-Sep Tue 16:30 $530 NL 2-7 Single Draw $200,000

25 17-Sep Wed 14:30 $320 PL Omaha w/rebuys $500,000

26 17-Sep Wed 16:30 $320 NL Hold'em [6-max] $500,000

WSOPE SEP 19 - SEP 22 Event 1 : No-Limit Hold'em £1,500 + 75

33 21-Sep Sun 16:30 $5,200 NL Hold'em Main Event* $10,000,000

WSOPE SEP 24 - SEP 26 Event 3 : Pot Limit Omaha £5,000 + 250

October 1-5 EPT London £5,200 + 200 500

WCOOP event 5: 10k NLHE Final Table Highlights

2008-09-10T08:38:00.001-07:00

Watch WCOOP Highlights: Event 5 - $10,300 NL Hold'em on PokerStars.tv

Event 9: a lesson in trash talking

2008-09-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

9-Sep

Tue

14:30

$215

NL Hold'em [4-max]

$400,000

I played this event similtaneously with the 100r.

My starting table was very soft so for the first 3 levels I was able to really run it over.....something which I have not been able to say for a while on Stars.

Anyway i felt like I played really well in this one and I had a top 100 chip stack as we approached the bubble.
Then some suernitty 19 year old comments on how he is just trying to hold on for the money and this starts up a bit of friendly banter between all 4 of us. The nit says "come on you guys must have known what it was like at one point", me and multitummen2 agree with him and say we are only joking, Grunter321 seems incapable of being anything but an arogant twat and disagrees. Up to this point I felt like multitummen2 was a bit of a LAG and had caused me one or two problems when I had opened up UTG but eventually i did get him in one pot that i got him to bluff twice at. Grunter321 had played very very oddly I must say. Judging by his profile pic, which was a standard live pose with chips and cards of some tourney victory, (which did hit me as APPT or some EPT event because of the shirt which I assumed was a Pokerstars one) I gave him some credit. But some of the odd plays, including floating alot of flops OOP but never applying any pressure on later street apart from the time he spiked his horrible 6 outer and even then he was lost.
Anyway to get back to the story; I remarked on The Nits comments by saying that I had been able to sympathise with him recently when I played the 10k$ event as I was sort of concerned with making the money first before I even thought about the win because I was pretty tired and getting beat up everytime I opened up light due to my horrific table position. In this scenario I had made it an aim to chip up but also concentrate on making the money as it would be a great feat for me because it equals my biggest cash on Stars (which we know isn't amazing) and add to my growing confidence that has been building over the last 2 months that I have been playing highERstakes poker.
multitummen2 asks me when I mention the 10k event, which I know may sound like a brag (lol that I played not won a tourney) but which was said because I found it amusing that I had been in a simillar situation to this kid, and I told him that I had sattelited in on Sunday.
Anyway Grunter being the fucking cocksucker that he is starting quizzing me on WHY had I played it and that I was a losing player on stars (which I think I am by 700$, a buyin FFS, in MTTs but which I am quickly rectifying these past weeks).
And it was funny because since playing more in the daily 100r and other events, as well as steps and 3-6 to 25-50 cash games I have not heard any of the Bullshit chat from any players that I was so used to on Crypto in the shitty little multis.
So I ask him if I am actually a losing player still and he and his even twatier railbird are giving it all the chat, all the LOLing, and I have Matt railing me who is quick witted (he is a pro in this type of chat, even when we started 3 years ago) keeping my corner.
Anyway without boring you with the details there arose 2 significant finds after all this Bullshit.

1. I was playing a volitaile 4-max format and completely lost my game even though I was trying to tell myself not to. I busted out 20 mins later: firstly trying to crack this arseholes AK with Q9 when he 3-bet shove and I called with like 5k-8k pot odds and secondly having 77 v KK in which i limp-raised allin B V B so kind of a cold deck. However whilst I was getting trashed by this prick and his rail buddy it was obvious that the other 2 players were quite rightly taking advantage of this situation and stealing our blinds, where as I was alot more passive with theirs. I should have been focused to regain my chip advantage after making a questionable call with Q9 against a guy who was not going allin against me without a hand....but still probs mathematically close.

2. This Grunter321 has the kind of results that you would not be ashamed of as a poker player.
Firstly he won the Aussie Leg of the APPT in December last year for 750,000$ which is a great score. And secondly since then he has around 150,000k in online tourney winnings which is a pretty standard score for any good "online tourney pro", a score which I would like at the end of the WCOOPs or as soon as possible, but then again wouldn't we all LOL!
http://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/grunter321
So this guy has had one brilliant tournament....something most of us just dream about and wonder when ours is going to come.
So the question is: since he has had a good score and can consider himself a pro, is he an arsehole to still be commenting about people losing players and being an arrogant bastard for thinking just because he won an event that he has earn't the right to do this?
I'd tell him one thing, and that is the reason he did not play the 10k$ event is because he is actually more -EV then I am. Its funny these fuckers who have one good score and thus the bankroll/sponsorship to have repeated chances are actually just average playing Aussie Meatheads who are so fucking cocky they will never have good banter with anyone cos they are so stuck up there own fucking arse and therefore detatched from everyone else.
I hope that when I win my triple crown this season I do not become like this.

Apoligies for that rambling, I may have to edit it at some point as, like most my posts, I am writing on my laptop at late hours with no spell check.

Anyway my 2nd cash from what should be seen as a positive WCOOP.

I did make a questionable play 40 out the money in 100r today when I tried isolationg tilting shortstack (JJ) via cold 4betting out the UTG opener with A8dd!
Just one of those things that in theory was ok but in reality I just knew knew knew I was a. getting called and b. by AK so annoying "radar swtched on but do it anyway things" that we all do.

I have started 4-tabling 3-6$ in an attempt to start taking poker as a proffesion more seriously. I have dusted off my 12-16k$ (varying, spun up roll!) on Full Tilt Poker and seeing as they won't let me deposit for some reason I will not be playing the crazy 25-50$ cash games anymore on there.

So my main aims are to grind from now on and continue to improve my MTT game via studying videos and also analysing my own hands.

I have also realised that the WSOPE event 1# is on September 19th so I will be "hopefully" missing the 500r and 1000PLO WCOOPs if not more. It just shows how much of a 100% online freak I have become. The thought of sitting through all those hands in a casino is putting me off. Also because I have played live poker about 10 times this year which should really be like 50-100 if I am to improve the "live" aspects of my game.

Events 7 and 8.

2008-09-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

Monday night saw a predictable early exit from the:

8-Sep

Mon

14:30

$215

PL Omaha [6-max]

$300,000

I started real well but the temptation to play a big pot when my hands were drying up got the better of me.
I had 4kish and took a decision to gamble with a wrap against a set even with scary 2flush on board. My read was right and I was well live but I didn't hit. The fact that supper was ready and that I could eat without a laptop was a big part of my decision given that the break was a minute away.

Either way this event does not have deep enough stacks for my move ever be a blowup.

8-Sep

Mon

16:30

$320

8-game Mixed Event

$200,000

Thinking I was playing this for the novelty and that my fatigue would soon get the better of me could not have been more wrong.

Not only do I think this is an amazing tournament format but I even found myself fresh and eager at 2.45am.
Despite coming 290th out of 1128 with 168 getting paid I still exited with a smile on my face and mainly dissapointed I wasn't playing anymore because I was having so much fun.

The reason why the format is so good is that everyone knows their stregnths and weaknesses and so no one player can just run things over without splashing his stack around or just running like God.

Given that I rarely made a hand the whole tournaments and that I was forced to play some big NLHE and PLO rounds I can at least give myself credit for playing a solid game.

I only really want to touch on one hand which is my exit hand in RAZZ (pictured below).
Just it was a sick beat in that on 5th street the Villain had to catch runner runner on me. He improved to a 8-7 low on 6th but i now had 4 of his outs to in my hand leaing him with just 8 cards!! sure enough he did indeed spike a 5 and correctly bet it and i was left with just 600.
Hey....at least i got my money in real good. I think if i 3bet preflop he may fold when that Jack hits on 5th street because he can give me credit for a near lock. Or maybe he is just a tard.

So to sumarise my series so far I have cashed just once busted early twice in PLO and 5 Card Draw and finished just outside the money in this one, the 10k and Limit Holdem.
I'm not exstatic about this record but I am happy with the way I have played and the form I am showing and so I want to continue this momentum into my remaining 12+ events.

I think the good news is that the smaller events are out the way and that the bigger prizepools are nearer the end of the championship so the big money is still to play for. I'm only one event a day till fiday so good rest inbetween.....bullddOOZer ONne TIMMMmme!

WCOOP Event 5. 10,000$ NLHE with Video Highight

2008-09-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

So the tourney started fairly well.

With 25k in chips and a 30 minute clock there is obviously no need to go crazy.

The thinking behind this first pot was that I had previously been 3bet out the blinds and had to lay down 99.

Villain played AK awfully, bloating a pot with just TPTK so when he did make 2 pair on river he had to stackoff and thus lost his early chiplead.

I lost the videos of the other 2 hands which i felt my opponents misplayed but here are the Hand Histories.

PokerStars Game #20228730925: Tournament #200800005, $10000+$300 Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (400/800) - 2008/09/07 18:13:35 ET
Table '200800005 33' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: TillerMaN (17235 in chips)
Seat 2: TiltMeBig (18841 in chips)
Seat 3: TheTakeover (11350 in chips)
Seat 4: driverseati (14150 in chips)
Seat 5: Bassysaffari (59974 in chips)
Seat 6: MrSweets28 (28480 in chips)
Seat 7: TIJO (46375 in chips)
Seat 8: AMAK316 (14470 in chips)
Seat 9: sappy123 (45200 in chips)
TIJO: posts small blind 400
AMAK316: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Bassysaffari [Jh Qh]
sappy123: folds
TillerMaN: folds
TiltMeBig: folds
TheTakeover: folds
driverseati: folds
Bassysaffari: raises 1150 to 1950
MrSweets28: calls 1950
TIJO: folds
AMAK316: folds
*** FLOP *** [8c As 3h]
Bassysaffari: bets 2890
MrSweets28: calls 2890
*** TURN *** [8c As 3h] [2h]
Bassysaffari: bets 6750
MrSweets28: calls 6750
*** RIVER *** [8c As 3h 2h] [Ts]
Bassysaffari: checks
MrSweets28: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Bassysaffari: shows [Jh Qh] (high card Ace)
MrSweets28: shows [Td Kc] (a pair of Tens)
MrSweets28 collected 24380 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 24380 | Rake 0
Board [8c As 3h 2h Ts]
Seat 1: TillerMaN folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: TiltMeBig folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: TheTakeover folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: driverseati folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Bassysaffari showed [Jh Qh] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 6: MrSweets28 (button) showed [Td Kc] and won (24380) with a pair of Tens
Seat 7: TIJO (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: AMAK316 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: sappy123 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

So what do we really think about this hand??

.........?

And the tournament "make or break" Badbeat:

91k pot with Average at 30k!

PokerStars Game #20228844713: Tournament #200800005, $10000+$300 Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (400/800) - 2008/09/07 18:17:57 ET
Table '200800005 33' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: TillerMaN (16035 in chips)
Seat 2: TiltMeBig (18041 in chips)
Seat 3: TheTakeover (11350 in chips)
Seat 4: driverseati (15350 in chips)
Seat 5: Bassysaffari (49584 in chips)
Seat 6: MrSweets28 (41270 in chips)
Seat 7: TIJO (47175 in chips)
Seat 8: AMAK316 (13270 in chips)
Seat 9: sappy123 (44000 in chips)
TiltMeBig: posts small blind 400
TheTakeover: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Bassysaffari [Qs Qh]
driverseati: folds
Bassysaffari: raises 1150 to 1950
MrSweets28: folds
TIJO: calls 1950
AMAK316: folds
sappy123: raises 5550 to 7500
TillerMaN: folds
TiltMeBig: folds
TheTakeover: folds
Bassysaffari: raises 11700 to 19200
TIJO: folds
sappy123: raises 24800 to 44000 and is all-in
Bassysaffari: calls 24800
*** FLOP *** [Tc 9s As]
*** TURN *** [Tc 9s As] [Kd]
*** RIVER *** [Tc 9s As Kd] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Bassysaffari: shows [Qs Qh] (a pair of Queens)
sappy123: shows [Ad Qd] (a pair of Aces)
sappy123 collected 91150 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 91150 | Rake 0
Board [Tc 9s As Kd 5s]
Seat 1: TillerMaN (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: TiltMeBig (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: TheTakeover (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: driverseati folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Bassysaffari showed [Qs Qh] and lost with a pair of Queens
Seat 6: MrSweets28 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: TIJO folded before Flop
Seat 8: AMAK316 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: sappy123 showed [Ad Qd] and won (91150) with a pair of Aces

So in the end I got a little tired and was nitting around with an M of about 12.

I did well to come back and made some good moves along the way.

I can't help wondering what could have been had I won that first pot but I also felt like I had a massive disadvantage playing so late. Hard to make plays when you start to tire.

Had I known I was playing this today I would have prepared whole weekend for it.

I went out in the end by just shiping 50k from sb with KJs v Inactive button who had just more.

Thankfully he showed 99 when he called and I just knew i wasnt going to hit a 17 outer on:

[Ts As 2s 6c Ad] Board and was gone.

WCOOP: Day 1

2008-09-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

5-Sep

Fri

14:30

$215

NL Hold'em [6-max]

$1,000,000

6-Max NLH Mtts are fastly becoming my favorite and most successful tourney genre, stars WCOOP opener had 7,217 players but to my shock 30 minute levels! I guess I shouldn't be suprised and I have played them last year but still i was expecting a Sunday Mill type thing and instead it was very well structured. 3k starting chips tho and 5 hours till the money meant it went fairly quickly. 6-Max tourneys do seem to go quicker because you are forced to be more active than full-ring.

What made this tourney a pretty easy ride was not just the time my 88 stacked JJ pf or my a6 donk over shove stacking ATss bvb but also the large field meant there was as much dead money as the Sunday Warm-up....if not more given that more US donks may make an effort to play it.....whereas the Warm-up may too early on Sunday morning for some hung-over beer-legend donks....(thats just a crazy theory but probably true).
Anyway thanks to the above point and my frequency of playable hands and boards I was able to get into a good grove from the start and felt like my pace was pretty consistent all the way through.
I did have alot of interesting hands but the one that stuck out the most was the beat I received just before moving table:
I had 25kish which was above average and we had about 800 left, 1080 cashed.
-A weak Spaniard who had been fairly nitty and weak post flop (rarely stabbing or even raising pf!) did his standard open-button-limp. The blinds were 200-400 and although BB was on 50k I felt like he hadn't been out line to warrant folding any 1 gap connectors, in this case 24os.
Flop was 358ss: we all check.
Turn: Ad BOOM!
>I bet 1200
>Spanish button reraises 2.5xish

I feel like he's too bad to guarantee he will bet river for me, and I don't want any scare cards to come that will prompt me to lead river and thus risking only a call from villain:

>so I raise another 2.5xish
>Villain stacks....
... shows A3os and sure enough hits a river 3!

I get moved table and am a little soar because I'd let him limp that button all day, only once putting him in with T8os only for him to show TT.

Anywho I won 2 tosses on my new table and was back up to 30k in no time.

Another spot that was interesting was when I had a mini card rush and took down blinds a few times, then raised button to 999 with AQos blinds still 200-400.
Even stack of 30k 3-bets to 3999 and I'm basically ready to snap-4bet/Shove when BB comes in for a 4-bet shove of 12k.
I really still want to get it in here regardless because the sb has created enough dead money for AQ be a profitable call against BB range. Had BB had more chips this spot becomes an easier fold because it is a bigger proportion of my stack and the dead money becomes irrelevant. Also I feel that an average player has to have 99+AQ+ with a larger stack. In this instance BB has a perfect stack size to shove plus an ideal button2bet>SB-3bet scenario to squeeze.
However despite all this analysis I opt to give up my 999 on the grounds that I do not close the action with a call and that I do not know enough about SB to make it definate that he can't have a hand. Also AQ is still pretty sick because now the times I am in a 2/3way allin AK,QQ+ become a significant part of my opposing hand ranges.
Either way I feel like I have a headache with this spot and I now have lost all my FOLD Equity which was a good part of my insta-4betting line that had originally been planned for the SB Villain.
2-1 odds are obviously too short for SB Villain who elects to fold and I am left feeling a little annoyed that I hadn't gone with it but just feel that AQ is number 1 hand players are going to give up easiest because it is crushed so much and needs to catch to win the times that it isn't.

So my final hand was a couple later. I decided that with the blinds now 300-600 I was going to 3-bet a button opener.

PokerStars Game #20176128738: Tournament #200800001, $200+$15 Hold'em No Limit - Level X (300/600) - 2008/09/05 19:40:27 ET
Table '200800001 645' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: roeveld (21163 in chips)
Seat 2: horryclutch (5805 in chips)
Seat 3: Showtime1603 (44455 in chips)
Seat 4: BBQbowser (16565 in chips)
Seat 5: Bassysaffari (28939 in chips)
Seat 6: dinidani (26878 in chips)
roeveld: posts the ante 50
horryclutch: posts the ante 50
Showtime1603: posts the ante 50
BBQbowser: posts the ante 50
Bassysaffari: posts the ante 50
dinidani: posts the ante 50
BBQbowser: posts small blind 300
Bassysaffari: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Bassysaffari [Ks Th]
dinidani: folds
roeveld: folds
horryclutch: folds
Showtime1603: raises 1000 to 1600
BBQbowser: folds
Bassysaffari: raises 3000 to 4600
Showtime1603: calls 3000
*** FLOP *** [9h 4c 2h]
Bassysaffari: bets 7600
Showtime1603: calls 7600
*** TURN *** [9h 4c 2h] [Ac]
Bassysaffari: bets 16689 and is all-in

I maybe didn't take enough time to think this through....(even though c-betting seems standard).
Showtimes call on flop seemed like a draw or a weakish 9x. I was probably done with the hand until the Aces dropped and I see an opportunity chip up to 40k with a shove. Also I'm not devastated if I bust here as the $ I want is a good 700 players away and i will need to find some better spots than the one I'm faced with to double up again.

He snaps and shows Deuces for a set.

post analysis of the hand would suggest that this is a rash shove. At the time I felt like my C-bet could be floated by Showtimes stack and that it could be draw/9x. However if I'd taken more time to think I could have perhaps realized that he was more likely to shove all of his value/semi-bluff range here. He should also know that a good player probably isn't going anywhere after putting in 30% of his stack and I should have seen this as strength, even though at the time I took this to be hearts that he wanted to peel the turn with before committing against my pair+ and thus the reason I had initially shoved the turn.
As usual the sick thing in this spot is even though I can't put him on 22 my instincts still tell me I'm behind and that I am going to get snapped, weird ay?

I felt calling 22/44 was a little bad here if he assumes that I will bet most flops and that he can only play back against me 12.5% of the time when he does make a set. So thats 87.5% of the time i win in theory and the times I flop massive I can maybe check and induce him to commit more money.
I don't really feel like he can have 99 here, I reckon he has to be shoving over a lot preflop, maybe I'm wrong, but my 3bet doesn't look a lot like AA/KK and I am have been active enough for 99 to be a 4bet every time.
Perhaps I should just be folding my KT>then calling>then 3-betting, i.e my line started with worst decision.

Anyway a cash 1/1

or 1/2 cos i did play:

5-Sep

Fri

16:30

$215

PL 5-Card Draw

$100,000

But seeing as I had to ask someone at the table about strategy (which he declined, cunt) then I think this was more for fun. Weird game, I did do some in-tournament-research on 2p2 and I can already see that there is an interesting dynamic that seems to be simillar to NL-Single Draw which I will deinately have to study up on. Still PL 5CD has some very interesting poker aspects but i busted with 777xx 2-draw to a made flush allin preflop which was my bad. I drew 2 which I think is identical to holding one and drawing one (unless you put ur opponent on ur pat high card such as an Ace or King and thus some outs are dead, im not sure) either way it looks like its about 9-1 to fill, something like that...anyway fuck it. I doubt i'll play that again.

But despite my Bluff-out of the 6-max its a positive start to the WCOOPs, I have already cashed more than I did in whole of FTOPs (0$)!

Limit Holdem and Triple Draw tomorrow, yuck, sleep till Sunday? hmmm

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

2008-08-31T15:18:00.001-07:00

Brief-

Played only 5 tourneys on Sunday:

Warm-up 1 mill garunteed!: Double chance which had a 2 hr rebuy period really changed the structure. I decided to play LAG with first buyin and then TAGier with 2nd.
I built up a 35k stack and think I may have been top 20 stacks at one point so the first part of the plan went right.
I could have nitted up a bit but decided that its the wrong tournament to do it in due to the mix of players and that I was running the table over.
I somehow managed to lose like 4k in a 6-way pot (400-800) when I had KJ on button v Cutoffs 44 and he lead 1/3 pot on KJ4 rainbow!
Did i know he had 444? No. But I'll pretend like I did. It came running T 9 so little damage.
I did semi-spew in my attempt to build but I guess that was the plan....i really wanted to take advantage of the double chance.

Anyway i rebought and stacked-out pretty soon after.

EPT step 6: My 2nd attempt of the week yesterday had been a little UL. This time I was playing for a Barca seat.
With a 15k to 10k stack against busto_soon HU I could actually taste victory when:

I peeled his standard min bet from BB with Q7os. Slightly strange line i prefer fold/shoving but my momentum was up and I had been outplaying him on flops.

It came QQThh. I donk lead and he called. I check-shoved a 9h turn and he tanked. I was preying for call and he did with 75hh...ouch.

Sunday Brawl: I played well in this one, standard stuff the wholeway. Amassed a good stack halfway through and maintained a top 20 stack for the most part.

11 left:

I had nothing but a real nitty table image. I 3bet shoved 200kish v LAGTARD buttons min bet.

He called. Me 49os v AJdd. Spike a 9!

I now have 2nd stack. Till some Brazilian Whore decides to do this:

Full Tilt Poker Game #7882492995: The Sunday Brawl (58656031), Table 161 - 8000/16000 Ante 2000 - No Limit Hold'em - 20:43:41 ET - 2008/08/31
Seat 1: MrsESPN (531,866)
Seat 2: SlimFreakie (111,706)
Seat 4: thereal_bandito (604,952)
Seat 5: LeoEleven (208,219)
Seat 6: rubenrtv (434,137)
Seat 8: I CaioPimenta I (516,040)
MrsESPN antes 2,000
SlimFreakie antes 2,000
thereal_bandito antes 2,000
LeoEleven antes 2,000
rubenrtv antes 2,000
I CaioPimenta I antes 2,000
SlimFreakie posts the small blind of 8,000
thereal_bandito posts the big blind of 16,000
MrsESPN: sick beat deserves a lil love :)
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to thereal_bandito [Th Tc]
LeoEleven folds
rubenrtv folds
SlimFreakie: lol
I CaioPimenta I raises to 40,000
MrsESPN has 15 seconds left to act
MrsESPN folds
SlimFreakie: from wuda been chip leader 2 out the door
SlimFreakie folds
thereal_bandito has 15 seconds left to act
thereal_bandito raises to 120,000
I CaioPimenta I has 15 seconds left to act
I CaioPimenta I has requested TIME
SlimFreakie: lol minute u say chaity
I CaioPimenta I raises to 514,040, and is all in
thereal_bandito calls 394,040
I CaioPimenta I shows [6s Kd]
thereal_bandito shows [Th Tc]
*** FLOP *** [9d 2c 9c]
*** TURN *** [9d 2c 9c] [2h]
*** RIVER *** [9d 2c 9c 2h] [Kh]
I CaioPimenta I shows two pair, Kings and Nines
thereal_bandito shows two pair, Tens and Nines
I CaioPimenta I wins the pot (1,048,080) with two pair, Kings and Nines
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1,048,080 | Rake 0
Board: [9d 2c 9c 2h Kh]
Seat 1: MrsESPN (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: SlimFreakie (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 4: thereal_bandito (big blind) showed [Th Tc] and lost with two pair, Tens and Nines
Seat 5: LeoEleven folded before the Flop
Seat 6: rubenrtv folded before the Flop
Seat 8: I CaioPimenta I showed [6s Kd] and won (1,048,080) with two pair, Kings and Nines

I busted soon after and did not take the chiplead to final table.

She's HU now with 4-1 chip lead. Nice move!!!

Of course I'm putting 1/3 of my stack in with a hand I will definately laydown to your Tard-SHove, you Tard!

having said that she was probably off her nut on coke. I guess she will donate that back, hopefully to the poker community and not anywhere else.

Monkey Off Back!!

2008-08-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

On one of my most successful days in online poker and my best ever week in poker I was finally able to make a Final Table of the 100$rebuy on stars, a tournment known for being the toughest daily comp. in the world.

I was going to say more about it but after a 13 hour day with no breaks I have forgotten everything.

I felt like I played really well and ended up coming 3rd for 13kish$. I lost a monster pot 5 handed with AKhh v JJ: 229hh flop but didnt improve.
HEMIpower: the run away chipleader took me out with JTdd v my AK, I wasn't nitting around or the extra 4k, but i wud have had to do alot to win with my 200k v his 1.2mil, the other foriegn Icelandic nit had like 130k.
He won for the 3rd FUCKING night in a row, what a feat FFS. I dunno whether anything like that has ever been done, ridiculous!

I went deep in 300$ 6-MAX on Full Tilt but only 9th this time. But i'll take 9th and a 3rd from 2 attempts ever in this one, can't remember what I got this time.... 4k$ i think.

-Major pot came when there was 9 of us left.
I raise button with AQ and Ram Vaswani who is a real LAG 3-bets me. I Jam and he calls with JJ.
He's 3rd stack I am 2nd and we play the biggest pot so far.

The board is 885-J!-x and I lose the crucial flip. I bust soon after.

I am happy however wit my two results. My primary aim has been to play bigger MTT's and improve my MTT game via studying more.

I feel like I have improved a vast amount in a relatively short-time but am still aware I have also ran well. Nevertheless I think I am pulling the trigger with greater acuracy and timing then before and this is all contributing to my confidence....I only hope I can continue this into the WCOOP!

EPT London Seat

2008-08-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

So I managed to bag my first Live Seat this Season. Each Season being post-pre WSOP.

Funny because the feeling I have now is very different to when i won the same package last year.

Anyway I'm pleased because I foolishly entered the Step 6 in the evening which is always full of sharks namely JohnSmiley1 and Jorgi, as well as Londoners RiverManl and Steve444.
I guess I ran well, though I'd have to against this field. I can't say that I ever had worse than 35% equity in any pot. In the end I 3bet shoved a small chip deficit with Q4ss (this being the best hand I'd seen in 15mins to play back with) he had AK.....guts!

So thats 4 step 6s now: a 2nd in WSOP (2k$) an EPT blank, a WCOOP ME Seat (5200$) and an EPT Package (15k$)

-EV? You must be kidding!
Am I the best SNG player in the world?
YES

FTOPS FINALE: 2500$

2008-08-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

So I decided to leave London for a bit and take a weeks holiday. Unfortunately the destination turned out to be Newcastle which was still as grey as ever despite it being mid August. Anyway fuck it, as long as there is a bed and good wireless connection i'm game. Was also start of football season so I wanted to be around other Geordie's for our opener.
My main concern was that I had this big FTOPs Event on Sat/Sun and I needed to readjust my body clock to deal with the possibility of lasting 8 1/2 hours for 2 days in a row.

Friday turned out to be a crappy start to the "holiday". I managed to dust off 10k over breakie which put me in a bit of a shitty mood. I followed that up with a £1k losing sesh at Aspers just moments after arriving in Newcastle at 1am.
My plan had been to stay up till 6 am then sleep at my mate Eds house who had managed to extract £10 out of me as a deposit for sleeping in his bed. Of course when I actually got there someone else was in it. Plus Ed never seems to understand that he needs to return deposits if the service isn't fulfilled.
So without getting to annoyed I grabbed one of my friends and we booked into a hotel with decent wireless for the weekend. It was on Osborne Road (nice) but the room stank of actual shit (guts). Worse still was that i had borrowed Ed's new laptop (£20 deposit lol) and he had already forgotten his password so I couldn't even download Full Tilt.

Anyway after panicking on Saturday evening I finally managed to get setup at Toms house. If only I had rang him before I came up I would have saved like £1500, o well.

Event #23 Saturday August 16th 16:30 ET	Eric Froehlich	$100 + $9 PL Omaha Rebuy	$350,000	1,058

Event #22 Saturday August 16th 14:00 ET	Patrik Antonius	$2,500 + $120 NL Hold 'em Two Day Event	$2,000,000	942

942 runners, 30 minute levels, urrrrrrrrg! Can't we just make this a turbo?

I also had 2 Mtts on stars just to ensure I can not concentrate on any of them properly.

I must have played 1000 hands in all of them before i picked up a pair bigger than 99!

I did however win 2 crucial races with AK v TT. The first being against a Laggy European and the other one against FoxwoodsFeind and this managed to keep me near enough av. stack for the first half of the field.
30 minute clock was crazy.....along with 5k starting stacks. On stars it wouldn't have been so long but FT usually has 12 mins and more blind levels so we're looking at comparing it with a 1.30hr clock in a LIVE event....maybe more. I felt like I had to adjust to a play a structure I would only usually play if i was playing the WSOP or WPT Main Event. I made 1 or 2 mistakes early on which probably showed my lack of mega deep stack experience: open limping hands such as AJ/AT suited UTG on strong tables are going to cause more problems then not. 7 7 J A flop v button was a little brutal after a check/pot/call and then another check/pot/shove brought me straight back down to earth which was gutting after doubling through in previous hand.
After these missteps i felt like I played a lot better, i really enjoyed the tournament as a whole because I was forced to bring out my best game that unfortunately only ever comes out in big live events. I enjoyed opening JJ UTG and getting 3-bet, mucking and have the guy show me AA: a standard line with my hand I know but still good to see my radar was on.

It was however JJ which was to be my downfall in the end. I opened from UTG+1 for what was probably 1500ish. Had a shortstack shove for 3k and then the BB shove for 5kish I called to see the shortstack have me beat with QQ but more importantly the BB show TT so I was in for making a small profit on the sidepot. Anyway the Ten hit on the turn and I was left crippled to like 1 BB!
I did in fact make a mini comeback and then played a 3.5k pot with 66 v some maniacs 69ss but he made a straight and i was gone in 250th. Despite it being a losing weekend I was left feeling happy with the way I had played in all my MTTs.

The 100r PLO was unfortunate because I amassed a massive stack off no rebuys. But although I was not short of adequate starting hands I was v.v.v flop dead and I ended up bluff folding flop, then PF stacking-off with K8xx DS against Julian Gardner both times. I play a lot of cash game PLO against him on tilt so he probably knows I capable of some crazy moves.

So FTOPs ended and I made zero cashes but I felt like I highlighted a lot of weaknesses in my MTT game which I will look to sort in time for the WCOOP.

As far as the rest of my poker goes, i took a downswing before I came up in the PLO games. But i felt this was due to not only running badly but playing at unfavorable times ie. When I was in a rush or drunk.
I am please that not only had I broken even but I have added a little profit as well including a 5k$ seat to the WCOOP 10mill Main Event.

However i'm sick to see that FT have a 25k$ PLO HU tourney 64 man Capped! People will probably argue that I am neg EV in this event and I guess I will have to agree but I have played a load of 200$ PLO HU sngs, a fair amount of 500$ and about 6 1000$ matches against Josh Arieh who I am 4-2 down against ( a score that is maybe fair but which i am definitely confident of turning around).
I learned a MASSIVE amount playing against Josh in just a few hours not only about how he plays but about how some of the older heads are likely to play the game. IMO he played pretty badly in a few situations but then very well in others. He's a bit of an action player and bluffs so much that he may turn out to be very light in some showdowns. A good player anyway and one who seemed to finish deep in every FTOP I was in so well done to him.

Wed

2008-08-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Event #11 Monday August 11th 14:00 ET	Andy Bloch	$200 + $16 Limit Hold'em	$200,000

I decided to take Monday night off entirely (really, WTF?!) But got Rich to play this event for me. He's as good a limit player i know with 10,000s of more hands played then me so why not? It wasn't to be though in the end...stupid limit.

Event #13 Thursday August 14th 15:30 ET	Max Pescatori	$200 + $16 HA (half PL Hold 'em, half PL Omaha)	$200,000

Was really looking forward to this event but Full Tilt crashed and it will be the only FTOP that gets cancelled.
To make matter worse I blew a 21k stack after the rebuy period, convincing me that big stacks after rebuys effects my focus. I go from very hot with all the action to very cold in the next 4 (non ante) levels. You then have to get yourself moving again which can be hard.

Actually shit i've just noticed its been rescheduled to Thursday so i'll still get to play it. 8.30pm start but i'm off for a week so thats ok.

Event #16 Wednesday August 13th 14:00 ET	Scott Clements	$200 + $16 Omaha/8	$200,000

Ok so Wednesday has been good in general but could have been better.

1. I made it to EPT step 6 Final but busted like 10th hand. I had Q9ss in pos....maybe to a min raise. flop T87ss.
I 2bet early pos only to get 3 bet by blind. I decided that I have enough equity to gamble here....its basically a winner takes all format so I think thats a fair attitude....alot of scared money in there so I can exploit that with chiplead if i do double through: giving me a strong chance to win the seat.
It sucked a bit cos I'm stacking off here and expecting him to show me J9.
He shows me 8T which I am shocked and pleased to see.
I don't hit obviously and I think i cud of played a smaller pot but for the reasons above I'm pretty happy with my line.

2. I had a good session at 10-20 and felt I played very solidly for 3hrs on a table containing one very good player. I was never allin and found I was gambling less, just playing the player more than the cards. Although I did hold the deck for the first hour so i was definately playing the cards too!
My most interesting hand was a hand where I made Aces full when I just flat called preflop:

PokerStars Game #19584394786: Omaha Pot Limit ($10/$20) - 2008/08/13 - 10:24:23 (ET)
Table 'Porzia' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: < ($2000 in chips)
Seat 2: jessica88 ($1660.50 in chips)
Seat 3: JohnSmiley1 ($3928 in chips)
Seat 5: Bhoth ($2638 in chips)
Seat 6: Bassysaffari ($4245 in chips)
Bhoth: posts small blind $10
Bassysaffari: posts big blind $20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Bassysaffari [4c Qd As Ad]
<: folds
jessica88: folds
JohnSmiley1: raises $40 to $60
Bhoth: folds
Bassysaffari: calls $40
*** FLOP *** [8h Ac Kh]
Bassysaffari: checks
JohnSmiley1: bets $100
Bassysaffari: raises $180 to $280
JohnSmiley1: calls $180
*** TURN *** [8h Ac Kh] [8d]

I cut off the rest of hand to post in a thread but I ended up betting turn and 1/3 pot on river which I first saw as too small but it was also to induce a value reraise/call against my opponents trips/FH range. My opponent had KKxx for 2nd nut house. We discussed my best line wud have been to flat both flop and turn and CR river to stack him. I felt like 90% of my opponents would stack off with KK in that spot seeing as my hand was a little unrepped. I think CR is the best line with my hand if I'm looking to win maximum in longrun. He's going to have draws alot of the time which I have to protect against/make him pay for.
Thing is we are both 200 deep and if he was the type of player to stack of with QJThh then we are playing an 8,000$ flip. Looking at it now I could have slow played the flop inline with my preflop call with AAxx.
I wonder if he is good enough to fold KK on 8KA8 turn to a CR given that I had played solidly infront of him for 30 mins and he can only beat A8???
A real interesting hand given that the way i stack him is by playing a small pot and hoping that turn fills/blanks so that the trap is set for turn/river. Like i said most players at this limit play pretty bad and I would take them to value town as soon as I put them on KKxx. I may CR river EVEN after I have took a betting lead on the last 2 streets.

3. The 2 MTT's I played on stars went well. No cashes but I left each one thinking I couldn't have played much better. I am going deep in the 100r now but more importantly wth Average+ stacks. So when I have busted out it has been in good positions to actually win the thing.

It was a real shame however that I did not make the money in the FTOP event. $ wise its fine but I played so very very patiently before getting a run of 2-3 pots which left me on 17k to 11k average.
I discussed in an earlier blog that I thought FLO8 is a better game than PLO8 and I stand by it. I could actually go as far to say it is one of my strongest.
Is that because I went deepish in a tourney?
Probably Will I ever play it again? No

The sickest hand was when I had A43xdd on a 259d flop. I 2 bet flop and then flatted a Jd turn in pos. Needless to say I missed every Diamond, 3,4,A,6 or Diamond not to mention any 7,8 as extra outs to my nut low draw.....just the 24 cards to hit. The donk probably sccoped with KKT9....so sick.
Thats shit thing about all FL limit games is its totally about playing cards....yeah bluffings important...but the real skill seems to come in extracting maximum value from your hands. You have to stay very patient and not lose your head when your miss every fucking flop.

Week 1 of the FTOPS on Full Tilt Poker

2008-08-11T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ok so my schedule went pretty much to plan which was good, I was restricted to playing 14.00ET tourneys unless I wanted to finish at lunch time the next day. I guess I was thankful that I had signed up to most of the events I wanted to play before my losing session on Thursday night.
But that didn't matter too much cos i played like shit in most of them.

Event #2 Thursday August 7th 14:00 ET	Martin Kläser	$240 + $16 PL Omaha/8 Knockout	$200,000	1,138

Strange because I used to really enjoy this game and now i pretty much hate it....
well maybe thats not completely true: the fact that 60% of the poker I play is PLO and 0% is O8 may have something to do with it. I think I definitely prefer FL O8 than PLO8.
What happened here?
played reasonably tight then got it in from blinds with 34hKhx on A 5h 9h board.
was against 235x and i couldn't hit....o well.

If that wasn't bad enough i then proceeded to lose 14,000$ at PLO which was stupid because I was so so knackered. 5-10, then 10-20 and then 25-50 got my last 6k$.....o well.

Event #4 Friday August 8th 14:00 ET	Dag Mikkelsen	$300 + $22 NL Hold 'em 1 rebuy and 1 add-on	$600,000

Spent full amount in this (900$) and actually found myself playing really well. I went deep in it and was average stack until the following hand occurred. I had busted deep in 100r on stars in a 60k pot (av. 20k) with AK v AQ who made 4 to the flush with his Q....ouch. Then 30 mins later this happened:

Full Tilt Poker Game #7565059110: FTOPS Event #4 (1r+1a) (54557558), Table 62 - 300/600 Ante 75 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:09:25 ET - 2008/08/08
Seat 1: The_Dean221 (5,620)
Seat 2: mx4ever (8,400)
Seat 3: johnnykran (10,914)
Seat 4: hikkespett (22,184)
Seat 5: aZeg (15,519)
Seat 6: tedsfishfry (12,880)
Seat 7: busto_soon (31,283)
Seat 8: Ijin (10,672)
Seat 9: thereal_bandito (13,580)
The_Dean221 antes 75
mx4ever antes 75
johnnykran antes 75
hikkespett antes 75
aZeg antes 75
tedsfishfry antes 75
busto_soon antes 75
Ijin antes 75
thereal_bandito antes 75
Ijin posts the small blind of 300
thereal_bandito posts the big blind of 600
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to thereal_bandito [9d 9s]
The_Dean221 folds
mx4ever folds
johnnykran folds
hikkespett folds
TheDestruction (Observer): HELLO ALL,CAN ANYONE PLEASE SEND ME SOME MONEY??
aZeg raises to 1,500
tedsfishfry folds
busto_soon folds
Ijin calls 1,200
thereal_bandito raises to 13,505, and is all in
aZeg has 15 seconds left to act
aZeg has requested TIME
aZeg raises to 15,444, and is all in
Ijin folds
aZeg shows [6h 6s]
thereal_bandito shows [9d 9s]
Uncalled bet of 1,939 returned to aZeg
*** FLOP *** [2s 6d Jc]
*** TURN *** [2s 6d Jc] [3c]
*** RIVER *** [2s 6d Jc 3c] [8c]
aZeg shows three of a kind, Sixes
thereal_bandito shows a pair of Nines
aZeg wins the pot (29,185) with three of a kind, Sixes

So that kind of sucked. My squeeze was right and Rich seems to think the maths was right for him to calling with 66 there against my range (if i am squeezing optimally) . I guess i did focus on this one and just the beat got in the way.

I went and lost 8k$ at PLO on stars. Thank fully i won some of it back that night playing on. And on Saturday morning i managed to turn it back into 4k$ prof so that felt nice.

Event #6 Saturday August 9th 14:00 ET	Robert Williamson III	$500 + $35 PL Omaha 6-Max	$300,000

PLO 6-MAX? Probably my strongest game. Well i managed to bust out before the first break. 5k starting stacks were generous but I didn't adjust to tourney play. I got real excited when i realized it was just like my cash game.....only problem is you can't reload!
I went up quickly to 8k playing hands in pos, no big hands, just a few bluffs, pick ups in pos. etc.
I remember i drew in one pot when i was drawing to the nut flush...limped pot i'm on button 4 handed with blinds. I have Kc6c4x and the boards J Ac 7 8c and i get CR for the pot. It isn't till i've called that I realize that theres a made straight out there and then a 5 rivers and I tilt call with like worst straight out there.
I bust out when the same guy 3 bets, i get it in on flop drawing to a split.....well played bassy.

Saturday wasn't all a miss tho!

Whats that you made your first "decent" Final table on Stars/FT in over 6 months? Surely not.

Yes, Yes I did. I played the 300$ 6-Max 90,000$.

I think these 6-MAX structures suit me cos i like to play a lot of hands and theres more flop play involved for some reason, probably because your defending against wider ranges of hands so it is safer to take flops drawing live. Or maybe because this one was very well structured.....i'm not sure, maybe someone can tell me.

Anyway i started well. I then flatted 90 with KK in pos v (1k shortstack) and we got it in on Q J 8 flop where he has the 9T off suit so that brought me back down to average.
he then out played in a few SB v Button hands before like the Hero I am I came straight back at him with a Hammer. This being a CR allin on a 5JJ board with KQ. He had KJ and it came T and then 9. ONE TIME BABY! I decided I had to win it after that.

I won't bore you with hands, it went on for 6 hours. I thought I played my best poker in a long time. I made a few hands which was probably a key factor in it, but i also made some good ballsy play. My best hand was when I shoved with KQ on a bb (lagtard) after he had donked on T high flop. We were both dead even on chips, around average and I felt like after that I was going to go all the way.
My main obstacle came to my immediate left. He called a lot of my raise in pos. and probably had the better of me. He took pots of me when I had air and folded when I had hit so he was tricky. Apparently he was a losing played in MTT's but that didn't hurt my respect for him as I too was a losing player on FT and stars in MTT's....he must play a lot of cash. Anyway I got the little fucker when I 4-bet him with 44 on the bubble to final table. He had AK i flopped a set, i ran well with coin flips, woo.

Final Table I had 400k and was chipleader. With an M of about 40 I had good play. Others were on 100-280k.
I called out of SB with 79dd V UTG raiser who's name I will get.
Flop 4h 8c Th. I check called.
Turn 6c. Now I guess I could have donked here with the nuts but I wanted to feign a flush draw and for him to make a big 2nd barrel with his range, especially air. He does and I think CR looks V. strong and elect to just call again.

River is Jh which is going to kill my action but I bet 98k and he calls with AA. This leaves him with under 100k. I think he can only beat a bluff on the river so this was probably a steam-call. It is hard to laydown AA always. Maybe he thought I have a flush or air because anything else I would have to be weary of the flush myself hence my river bet is too big. But i know that I have the nuts because it is unlikely he would barrel against the chipleader on turn with Flush Draw and risk getting bet off it.
I double him up with AK v QQ and then I take out 250k stack with AQ in pos v BB on KKJxT board when it has gone CkCk/Bet-Call/Ck-BET-Shove-call and he shows KQ.

Anyway 3 handed I held 700k in chips to like 500k and 400k. I get card dead and get chopped down a little by this same guy on my left whose name escapes me but he is a top online pro. he starts ripping us both apart. ME-who is card dead and recognizing my M of 40+ trying to stay patient. And THEYID who seems to be holding out for 2nd which is 23$k compared to 17$k and 35$k.
I get 3-bet a bit, I call once or twice and lose pots. Then my hand come. KK on button, with blinds at 5-10k i make it 24k. Good player 3-bets to 86K, i decide to call and cripple/bust this guy here.
Flop 8 9 A.....pretty ugly. I grab the bin and am sick in it.
He bets 126k and I look at my stack which is around 400k now with an M of 19. I can only beat a bluff which is very much in his range but so is a lot of aces. Its a very tough spot because he probably figures I can't have hands that don't contain Aces a high proportion of the time. If I shoves and am right he will fold so I guess I take down 300k to add to my 400k but don't ever really stack him here unless he has a draw or maybe QQ and cant fold. The maths is probably weighing towards a fold, the feel? well he's pretty tough and his bet is hard to read as a result. I fold and bust with 55 CR allin b v b against his 77. Good game, pretty gutted but will take it I guess.

Roy Winston

$240 + $16
NL Hold 'em
6-Max Knockout

$500,000

Thought I'd entered it FFS but instead mistakenly entered the:

Event #10 Sunday August 10th 18:00 ET	Erik Seidel	$300 + $22 NL Hold 'em	$1,500,000

Which was never going to get finished. Although I had 10 7 on 689 flop v AA and it came 8 A! lol!

Event #9 Sunday August 10th 16:00 ET	Kenny Tran	$500 + $35 NL Hold 'em Heads Up	$500,000

Bad tourney selection with over 1300 runners in that I would be up all night and had already played 6 tourneys that day.
ONE BYE. ONE WIN.
Then I crushed my 3rd round opponent till I limped 77 on button (had started limping weak once I had 2-1 lead this time I was strong. He raised 266, i made it 666. He called. Flop Q T x.
He checked with one pot size bet left and I felt it was either Bet and hope he hasn't hit or check and let him bluff pot ....(he was that type). So i put him in and he had AQ so the hand probably played the only way I may have not stacked off...yet i still did. After that he held the match and i busted soon after. In those structures going from near the win to being near the felt is very demoralizing....I'd had a very hard week...including 5 days of work and I think busting may have been the best thing.

So overall how do I think I played?

I'd probably be happy that my MTT game has finally caught up with the US sites.
Having played on WillHill all those years the transformation was hard and the players are the best in the world.
I'd say quitting work would be a good idea if I didn't work for my Dad.
Soon I will need to either make a decision to play less or to play full-time.
Now is probably not the time as i have gone from being a winning player to an income winning player. I have managed to BANK £11,000 this month comapred to July where I must have won then lost around £20,000 in 5 spates of ONLINE MADNESS (PLO).
I just need more focus in MTTs, more consistency in quality of play and more never DIE attitude towards them.

Lets hope I do better in FTOPS this week!