blonde poker forum

This is my log/blog diary. It's intended to run for just 2014 but I didn't want to be a copycat with thread title names, we will see.

This year, I want to continue grinding as hard as I was last year and to continue studying on my game. My biggest weaknesses are lack in motivation on a downswing and focus during bad sessions. After 10 years of playing the game now, I've still not really sussed this one out. Towards the end of last year I felt a bit of a eureka moment in my game. Continuous studying can really help with focus and motivation but you also need the motivation to study. Vicious circle though when you're not in the zone.

I never used to have monetary goals, but since I feel like I am not a slacker with hours I put in I feel that it's a bit of fun to do that. This year, I would like my sharkscope to have an upward trend of $100,000 over all sites. I'm currently backed by MC (James Atkin) where I get to keep a generous percentage of my winnings. I start the year in very little make-up, either 1 or 2k. I give a rough figure because my PC died the other day, and I have details of make-up on there. Last year I felt like I under-achieved, you probably hear this from all poker players, but I've had a lot of big sweats that have crumbled away with victory so close. My biggest miss was 8th in the $215 sunday second chance with $50k UT after being 2/9. Last years graph (April onwards, stars):

(http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1086/olgn.jpg)

I'll also try to post some stuff about outside of my poker life. I am currently living in the Netherlands until the end of March, my girlfriend lives close to a city called Nijmegen and I drove over here with all my gear just before Christmas. Long distance relationships are incredibly difficult but in in this day and age of technology, we make it work.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the Dutch culture, I love culture myself and find it all very interesting so am willing to share some of the differences in this part of the world. Feel free to ask me about anything in this thread, I will do my best to answer them honestly.#


Goals:

• $100k year
• Continue working hard (approx 160 hours a month)

Stuff I'm doing in the next month:

• Building new grinding machine
• Playing winamax series
• Playing full TCOOP schedule

-Dan "lucky_scrote" Carter

Good luck Dan

160 hours a week could be fairly difficult but good luck regardless

I really enjoyed your staking thread which showed  the ups and downs of a mtt player.So im really looking forward to this Good luck :)

Whoopsie. I have been known to set the bar a little high at times.

Good luck though sir ill be sure to follow your updates/progress

Best of luck mate!

Nice

gogogogo

Only met once but loe the way you post on here and think you come across great. Think your pha contribution is very underrated too, nice and honest stuff.

Gl for 2014

good luck, lots of fun blogs around, will be reading without doubt :)

Good luck in 2014, Dan. $100k would be a great result.

Could be a tasty start to the month. This to put me 1/10 in the 33 cubed. Certainly contender for hand of the day:

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6699653_690620F260

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azziWE8BFUU


(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/5234/nigw.jpg)

grats bro

blog rungood is alive and well! wpwp

Oioi!

Do you mark yourself as a shark just in case you forget when multi tabling?

Nice start, and best of luck for the year!

GL crushing this year.

Grats on the good start to the year.

Day 2

Profit: $1725
Hours played: 7

Good luck this year - Sunscribed.

Thoughts on Sambal?
Favourite?
On toast for breakfast?

Holy shit I had a tea spoon of that Sambal stuff a few months ago and it was the hottest shit I've ever tried. I've tried some reall y hot sauces in my time too.

Out here I love cheese on toast drizzled with Apple syrup mmm.

gl Dan

Oh man I wanted to win that comp

Day 3

Managed just a 10th in a $27KO and 16th in the 33 cubed.

Hours played: 7

Profit/loss: -1021

Day 4

Took Saturday off because of the huge grind I've got ahead of me (more to come). Me and the missus have a tradition where we buy each other our Xmas presents for each other in the sales during January, so we did just that. After, I stuffed my face with some delicious all you can eat sushi followed by some beers and a blissful 10 hours sleep.


Today is the start of the winamax series, winamax has always been amazing and I'm going for the almost the whole schedule. I'm backed for everything but I decided to sell 40% of my action in the €300's as they pose a bit of a risk bankroll wise. Most of the tourneys start around the 8pm mark which means I'm set for staying up until the 4am mark for the next 9 days. This isn't a problem, but I hate it to be my normal routine. Work is work. Pokerstars.fr also have their huge sunday million today which I won't be missing. I think I am going to keep my table count a little lower for today to focus on some of the bigger stuff.

Best of luck to all the grinders out there today, I'll post any huge hands/sweats as I go.

Day 5

Took some shots today as I'd been on a good run but as usual it went tits up. Felt pretty frustrated playing on winamax as everyone goes utterly bonkers so felt a bit tilted half way through my session when everyone kept showing me the nuts. Not going to bore you with anything but I don't think I played my A game today and this was magnified by not running too well.

Profit/Loss: -$2364

Hours played: 10

I do however have a decent sweat though, made day 2 of the winamax series event 5 which is the €100 4max. Currently 44/61 with €20k UT, go back with 40 bigs.

gl tonight dan, get this year off to a flyer

Day 6

Utterly disappointed to last all of 4 minutes in day 2. Bluffed a ton of them off then got it in good to bust.

Completely bricked stars today, winamax was a bit better. Will have to drop down stakes a little bit so that my make-up doesn't pile up.

If there's a silver lining, I made it to day 2 in W Series #10 which is a €100 but with multiple re-entry days it's not much of a sweat yet, not even in the money but sitting in the middle of the pack. I also save €200 not re-entering, booya!

Hours played: 7

Profit/loss: -$779

Hey Dan,

Looking forward to this diary. I've known you for a while and you've variously specialized in various forms of poker over that time. So a few questions...

- Do you think tournaments suit your specific skill set better than cash games?
- What gives you the bigger rush, a massive pot in a cash game or reaching a final table of a big tournament?
- if you could only play one form of poker for the rest of your life what would it be & why? e.g live cash, online mtt's etc
- If you could go back in time and give yourself one bit of poker advice when and what would it be?
- In terms of importance (in improving) how do you rate: 1on1 coaching, posting hand histories, watching videos, chatting poker to mates, other methods.
- Please tell the story of getting more than 1st place in the Sunday $500K? on Stars when you chopped it.

x

Day 7

I think these updates are starting to hurt, I had to wait until today to post yesterdays update after another poor session. I am still enjoying the game and not tilted away from the computer but I think this is the fastest I've burned through money in a long time, I think I must be in around 4.7k MU after 4 big losing sessions on the bounce.

I played the €300 HU event on winamax as a part of a package I sold. Around 40% of the field got a bye (obv not me) and I had some kind of reg in the first round that I feel I bashed up pretty hard. The second round I played a fish that was down 30k and managed to flop top pair every hand. It reminded me how frustrating HU poker can be.

Profit/loss: -$1171

Hours played: 8


Another €300 event tonight, it's 6max so fingers crossed this time. I will answer the questions above very shortly...

I've made this drive a couple of times, this time I used no tomtom or map as it's so easy driving in Europe (as long as you know the big cities to go via).

Sight seeing in the Netherlands? Hmmm, well I've already seen quite a bit of the Netherlands. I wouldn't exactly call it a schilderachtig (picturesque) country being as flat as a pancake but I do absolutely love Amsterdam and I spent a couple of days there after Christmas.

Spacious country, yes. It's as densely populated as England but so spread out. Everywhere you drive you just see canals and fields. Everything is so linear.

Maybe 6 or 7 years ago people were better skill set to whatever games they preferred to play in. Now, a professional poker player will be better suited to whatever he puts a lot of time and study into. For me it's mtt's for sure although I do think I'm very good at sngs but I don't care too much about them. They are very stale and you have to play a lot of poker with no excitement of ever really 'winning' much money.



I definitely find tournaments more exciting, from a money point of view I shouldn't have stopped playing cash games as I did win quite a bit of money at them around 2008/2009. I was playing euro sites though and the games were really easy. Who knows if I would have adapted sufficiently to beat the games like some of the decent regs do now. Probably not.


I don't think this one is close. Online mtt's.


You are terrible at poker, and everyone else is going to get good real soon...


I think a general willingness to learn is the key. Talking poker with mates and posting HH's is the way to start though, from there I think 1on1 coaching is better than watching videos but that is only if you have a really good coach. I've been coaching for around 6 months now and I've gotten a lot better at it. It really does take some practice, especially when you are coaching people who are a long way behind of your own skill set ability. If my student(s) read this, I don't mean this a bad way because you've all improved so vastly!


Oh my. I shall tell this one.

I hadn't long turned 18 and I was mainly playing $2/$4 cash for a living as well as going to a couple of poker festivals in the UK. This is when poker festivals ran very rarely. I managed to go to the Walsall midland masters in October/November (I forget which) and then the Luton Christmas Cracker in December. The tournament you are referring to was very shortly called the Sunday million, but I am so old school that I played it before it was called that ;). Early hours on a Monday morning I had gotten 3 handed when the tournament was paused and we discussed a deal. This chat is such a long time ago that I am not embarrassed by my rather youthful and cocky manner. Please excuse me...

The chip counts were something like:

papoorboy: 45%
danistheking: 30%
karen19: 25%

Sunday 500k. January 2006


 ;ashamed;

Any FT deal I've ever been part of in any situation ever since I started playing poker back in the Stone Age, one phrase has been uttered at some point on the negotiations.

danistheking: imagine papoor, 1 hand, u double me up, u go on tilt and go  out 3rd

epic. how'd u celebrate after that win?

Day 8

Things turned around quickly yesterday. After my quickest downswing in a very long time (possibly over a year) I booked a nice score as well as making day 2 of the €300 6max on winamax.

(http://imageshack.us/a/img13/4591/i4qp.jpg)

Whilst being HU for 2 hands I typed "ICM Chop" because I am always happy doing a chop against another winning player. The guy wasn't excellent, I definitely had a small edge but I had other stuff to focus on. We both had exactly 50bb each when we both clicked "Deal" and one more hand was to be played. I was dealt AQo on the button and opened as usual, got 3bet to 4.5bb so instead of making a standard 5bet size, I went for around 16bb. Huge yes, but it gives him the option of jamming. I was hoping he'd be greedy with this as he'd get a few extra bucks in the chop if I fold. He jams 87s and gets there. Oh well.

I didn't play many tables after this because of the 6max on winamax that I was focussing hard on. Even though I put the hours in yesterday, I didn't necessarily work really hard because I had less than 4 tables for half of the night.

Profit/Loss: +$1986

Today, I play day 2 of the winamax €300 6max and the €100 full ring where I have just below average chips in both with the 300 being fairly close to the money. I finished 34/68, 48 paid.

I got to bed at 6:30am and had to get up at 10am to go to center parcs with the family. It was a trip I paid for because I had been once before and loved it but my family didn't exactly have money floating around at the time. I'd only been on holiday once with the family before so since I had won a tourney a month previous in Luton for £10k or so (I forget how much exactly) I thought it'd be nice for me to treat them. Being January it was really cheap anyway.

I actually got ill the next day for the whole trip. I don't know if your immunity becomes week after a huge rush of adrenaline and being thoroughly exhausted afterwards but I felt like staying up till 6am winning 100k did that. #firstworldproblems

This can qualify for hand of the day: http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6824038_06CD613A79

mbn
mbvfn indeed

Day 9

Pretty crazy day really. I kept my table count low when I started at 3:30GMT because at 7 two of my day 2's on winamax were popping up as well as 4 other tournaments on there starting at that time.

On stars I managed a 3rd for around $700 in one of the 27ko's and not long after I finalled a $55fo with pinchop:

(http://imageshack.com/a/img27/9130/m1fe.jpg)

Got the guy down to 5bb and a 15-1CL but still couldn't finish him off.

Over on winamax I busted the €100 2 day event fairly quickly, but the deeper more exciting €300 6max event I managed to go a bit deeper in, busting just a few moments ago in 19th for a ~€1k payday. Not quite the €27k UT!

Profit/loss: +$3343

Hours played: 8

Tomorrow is a day off before getting back on the grind pretty hard for another few more days.

Day 10

Planned day off. Decided to play my very first game of golf in the Netherlands and my first game of golf in a couple of months.

Scored very poorly, it felt like I was putting with a rope at times.

I started on the "Noord" 9 first so the 9's are in reverse. The course was actually decent, the "Zuid" 9 being a much much better 9 holes that was more picturesque and tricky. The "Noord" 9 was fairly plain and easy and I don't think I've ever played well on plain easy courses. They just don't inspire me!

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/7/2qyr.jpg)

I have unsubtly squared my eagle 3 on the effective 14th hole. Considering I was playing fairly crap, a decent drive with a crushed rescue wood to 6 feet really made my day when I followed it up with an eagle 3.


Looking forwards to my grind today that I will start with shortly...

Felt a bit under the weather towards my session yesterday so cut it a little short. I also did pants.

Won a seat to the €320 Saturday super KO on stars but busted in 22 minutes. Boooo.

Profit/loss: -$1717

Hours played: 9

Hey Dan,

Just seen you had a thread yesterday.

Good luck with the year!

Must say your chat transcript around the chop 3 handed was one of the funniest things I've ever read on a poker forum.

Loved the "wiiiiiii i'm going to buy a car" from 3rd chip leader. For them 2 seconds later 2 drop 5k lol Brilliant negotiating and a great deal.

Also echo what Pleno said, always love your feedback on hands in the poker analysis section.

All the best for the forthcoming year.

Day 12

Hours played: 9

Profit/Loss: -$1344

I managed to make day 2 of the winamax main event. I've got about 1.5x average which is tasty. Day 2 is on Wednesday and I expect to see a tasty €200k UT!

I'm currently averaging a buy-in of $38 and 28 tournaments a day. The amounts you see are daily profit and losses, not running totals.

I'm currently on schedule for the 160 hour month I had hoped for, I'm not getting tired often either. My new surroundings are a lot better here in Holland, for reasons I can't be bothered to go into here. I think after Wednesday I'll decrease the hours I'm putting in for a while until TCOOP arrives in which I will probably catch up with the 160 hour monthly target!

Thanks for the kind words. I received quite a bit of criticism (understandably) for how I acted in that deal, but it's a long time ago now so I don't care too much.

Such a boss, <3 that chat.

Day 13


Managed to make it 3 losing days in a row after 2 decent winning days. It's been a really swingy year so far, and even with some decent results I'm losing on the month. Today I managed once again some decent runs in some of the bigger stuff but things are frustratingly not going my way. I actually managed to make some horrific plays too, some proper school boy stuff.

Hours played: 9

Profit/loss: -$1211

It's evident that the evening schedule is creating a lot more variance. I definitely know that it will make me more money in the long run though, there are so many games on offer in the late evenings.

Day 14

Day off, was lazy and watched some Game of Thrones and played my favourite video game of last year: Age of Empires III.



Today I have day 2 of the Winamax main event. Got a decent stack and there is a massive €223k UT. Pretty insane. Going to keep the table count down and put all my focus into winning €223k.

Oh My, AOE, then you said III though, hmmmm, AOE 2 abs incred, possibly greatest ever PC game.

Used to play this a ton, s'all about the Byzantines

Hand of the day already http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6928847_5CAF647E7F

It's a cracking game. I wish they would consider making a new one. It must be about 8 years old now.

this! still have the game and the conqueror's expansion pack!  ;djinn;

Figured I'd give a quick yet boring update, just so that there are no gaps missing.

Day 15

Today was the 2nd day of the winamax main event, I was pretty pumped but unfortunately folded for 90 minutes and ended up knocking it in with JTs for 13bb once in the money.

Profit: $4 (winning day, you can't take that from me)

Hours played: 7.5

Day 16

Missus been nagging me about all the poker I've been playing in the evenings so I reluctantly took today off again. TCOOP coming up and I don't mind working extra hard on the weekends.

Hours played: 1 (On the phone, in bed, trying to get to sleep)

Profit/loss: -$68


I feel like writing some fun posts about the differences between the Netherlands and England in all ways. Possibly a top 10 type running article, anyone interested in this? Would love to hear anyone else's opinions on the differences too as I imagine if you have only ever spent a few days in the Netherlands then you will be picking out the obvious ones.

hup hup!

Day 17

Dabbled in a morning/afternoon session today and remembered how bloody terrible the schedule is at this hour. Stars really need to sort it out.

A couple of 10ths and 11th type finishes and I was on in for a little bit. Cut the session short because of the schedule tilting my tits off. Played a bit pants at times and didn't enjoy the session in general

Profit/loss: -$74

Hours played: 3.5


Day 18

Had a great day today all except from the profit/loss thingy. Played really good all day and really felt in the zone. Felt like I only made 2 poor decisions. Had a couple of awesome sweats but alas, I fell at the last hurdle. Stars account starting to show the negative variance I've been suffering a couple of tables out.

Profit/loss: -$515

Hours played: 9.5


I've now made just 1 final in the last 10 days, and I came 9th in that. Managed 9 final 2 tables in that time, so beginning to be a frustrating period.

Need some music for today. Seems like I've gone through the entire of youtube now.

Like: Alternative rock/anything with decent guitar riffs pretty much. Always liked White stripes/Franz ferdinand/keane/coldplay etc

Dislike: Rap/Hip hop/use of the n word in lyrics. And pretty much anything that MC listens to.

Might be a bit heavy for you but give Volbeat a try.

Does it need to be current?

If you like Franz Ferdinand, try Roxy Music.

Falling in Reverse
Glamour of the Kill (Some alternative rock some heavier)
Every Time I Die (Heavy)
Trivium (Getting on towards the heavy end of the market)
Twin Atlantic
Foo Fighters (always worth a revisit)
The Fratellis (always worth a revisit)
Electric Six (pretty much anything off the Fire album)
Arctic Monkeys (AM album, recommend by Ray)
Hoosiers (Worried About Ray, to go along with the above suggestion)

Thanks all.

No it doesn't need to be current. I like a bit of rolling stones, stone roses or the kinks sometimes.

I'll add a disclaimer that stuff I don't think is that heavy often turns out to be everyone else's idea of Bring Me The Horizon / Slipknot.

I also wasn't aware that the MC had such a fine taste in music (worth it for the video if nothing else):

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6od4WeaWDcs

Electric Six was one of the best gigs I have ever been to. Did not expect that at all.

If you like heavier stuff without going too far off the deep end, I'd suggest the Korn dubstep album (think it's called Chaos Lives in Everything, although that might just be one of the songs).

If you want to expand your horizons, listen to BBC 6Music. Any show there has a smorgasbord of stuff, but most have a guitar-indie-base. Bound to be something you hadn't considered before.

As for riffs, Slash albums any good to you? Some cracking collaboration tekkers on there. Velvet Revolver also, with mixed results.

If you want a new band, try Phoenix. Reckon that could work for you.

I have seen Electric Six and Sheffield Academy and confirm they are extremely good.


YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwCHbFwqAo

Radiohead marathon?

I used to be really into the sort of guitar-driven alternative stuff but have moved away from that into more electronic stuff though so I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to this genre. Any albums released post-2007 that I should definitely give a listen to try and relight the fire?

The Who - Live at Leeds

tyty this is perfect

What sites do you play on most often?

In the past 12 months nearly 100% on pokerstars.

I've dabbled on pokerstars.fr, played a winamax.fr series recently and played a few tournaments on party. Stars.fr is incredible, but over a small sample I've dumped a ton of money there so I'm kinda over that site for a while.

Hey Dan,

No idea if you play cash at all, but just wondering (if you do) how you feel your play differs between the two.

The reason i'm asking is, in cash I feel I have a lot more scope to play hands, play a wider range, and play a lot more through out the streets.

In MTT's, do you think it's best just to generally play a lot tighter then say in a cash game?

It seems in cash I play LAG, but in MTT's it falls more on the TAG side of the line.

Any shout for playing LAG in MTTs?

Cheers

Day 19

Put in a fairly normal Sunday session. Overly played quite poor I think, I had zero motivation and was trying to find things to distract me. Terrible. I think it's down to doing no study this year. Before, I was very good at regular study but because my computer's power supply blew up when I arrived in the Netherlands I was using my laptop and was too lazy to download all the programs. Shocking.

Profit/loss: -$945

Hours played: 9

I have treated myself to a months subscription of RunItOnce, I think this can help me get all my motivation back and hopefully fix some leaks. I doubt I'll renew the subscription because $100 is quite a lot, but if it helps a lot then I will probably do it every few months. TCOOP is also starting in 3 days so I will also run through some hh's using ICMIZER, a fantastic piece of software indeed

I don't play cash anymore, I've not done for years.

I recommend to anyone that has to ask this question to probably stick to the tight side. Playing laggy isn't really easy any more at reasonable stakes. Everyone has a hud if they multi table and if they aren't then they're paying attention. The decent regs will adapt quickly if you're getting out of line a lot.

I rarely play LAG because I'm playing a lot of tables. When it gets to the later stages and everyone has 20bb's then I really open up, most people play too tight at the later stages trying to ladder or just being a pussy in general. At finals I just play my best and if there aren't any capable regs then I will go pretty mental.

Not really an easy question to answer I'm afraid :(.

What is ICMIZER? What areas of your game does it improve?

Day 20, 21 & 22

I'm not sure if it's discipline or not, but I took 3 days off in preparation for TCOOP. I've watched a couple of videos on runitonce and am about to go over some hands from some turbos I played on Sunday using ICMIZER.

I'm really excited for TCOOP. I'm playing the first 44 events in which I sold a package privately with a hope at a shot for the leaderboard. As I approach the final couple of days, if I have a chance then I'll sell a package for the final day. I left it out for now because the final day includes some big stuff.

For any of you who are playing a large proportion of the TCOOP and fancy a little prop bet, I'm doing $100 a man here http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=63096.0. Currently just me, Bram and Tom Ambler. The last two are enough to put you off I guess.

Best of luck everyone x

Day 23

After the 3 days off I jumped into TCOOP and had what I consider a really good day. I had a deep run in the Courchevel H/L. I think I under-estimated my mixed game ability as I rarely play them online but I played well and everyone was so so bad. Can't wait to take a shot at these games in SCOOP. I managed a 35th in the end which is pretty close I guess. I think it was $15k UT or so.

I didn't cash any other TCOOP events but late at night I had really deep runs in the $221R1A, Big $55, Big $11 and $3r 2xt. Varying $5k-20k UT in those but I seemed to fall at the last hurdle in all of them. For once I felt really good after a session even though I didn't win.

Profit/loss: -$10

Hours played: 10

Day 24

Into the second day of TCOOP now and I managed a number of big stacks in the TCOOP but only cashed one of them, the $27r. I was incredibly tilted as the internet has been really bad the last couple of days and I still can't figure out what it is (I just executed an N64 cartridge blow technique on the usb wireless stick and I have a feeling that it's worked).

Didn't play so good in the end but didn't run particularly great either.

Profit/loss: -$746

Hours played: 7

Day 25

I kept the table count reasonably low today because the first tourney was the $215 tcoop zoom event and I wanted to get as many hands as possible to increase my edge. I managed to accrue a gigantic stack early doors (I think about 24k chips after 8 minutes from 5k starting) but didn't cash. The $11r 3x I got about as far as the previous tcoop event, just a few hundred short of the money but the following event was decent. It was the $215 HU event and I have to say I ran good with table draws. Most people got a bye in the first round but that has never happened to me. The first 4 rounds were vs people that like to play the game for recreational purposes and I breezed through those. The 5th round was vs someone who was a lot trickier and I eventually busted the 6th round for $1k vs a break even reg who was winning a lot more at showdown than me.

The day also had my biggest bink of the year to date. I managed a 2nd in the $8r 2x turbo:

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/20/wwhp.jpg)

Profit/loss: +$5862

Hours played: 9.5


Pretty huge day today with probably one of the most exciting online tournaments I've seen for a while- $320 Progressive Super knock out.

GL Everybody!

Nice score mate. Danger0us seems decent, played a bit with him yday. Progressive SKO going to be a lot of fun but whats with 2 nlhe hypers on the same day?

It's funny, I had him as a fish tag but from years ago. After this session I took the tag off and will probably replace it with decent reg.

The 2x HT is a big joke IMO. I try not to think about it because I know how small an edge you have in them, I'll just try to be luckier than everyone else and play my best.

Hand of the day: http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7124930_BE01599B2F

Day 26

Day 26 is the 4th Sunday of the month and I made it 4 bad Sundays in a row. They really are like marmite at times and even though I kept my table count low, it was always going to be big with all the TCOOPs and joke hypers.

I managed to cash no hypers and otherwise made 4 bowl cashes. [_] Ideal.

Profit/loss: -$2163

Hours played: 10

Day 27

Was so deflated from the previous day that I decided to just play the 4 TCOOPs I sold a package privately and wanted to see how well I could do at the leaderboard (so no days off).

I played 4 tournaments over the course of 8 hours but I'll just consider it 4 hours work. Managed zero cashes.

Profit/loss: -$406


Day 28

Had been a couple of days since I'd been out of the house so decided to play 9 holes. The sun was out and was about 7C which is pretty ideal in January. Over 9 holes I managed 2 birdies. I can't seem to make a birdie the normal way, I chipped in on the first and stuck it to about 8ft for eagle and 2 putted for the other.

Today went much better, I cashed 3/4 TCOOP's which is excellent for the leaderboard/bankroll and had some other deep runs including a 4th in the $55 ante-up. In the final TCOOP though, I managed a record amount of 13 rebuys + addon in a 2x turbo. Always frustrating when that happens.

Profit/loss: $1050

Hours played: 10

Day 29

After a recent tournament review I noticed that although the sample is naturally small because of the ample $55 and below tournaments that are available, for the past year my $100+ tournaments have not been a success. For every $100+ tourney I play, I play 10 $1-55 games. The result of this is my results having a heavy emphasis depending on how the bigger stuff goes.

Here are my graphs since Apr 2013. First $55+ then below $1-55.

(http://imageshack.com/a/img542/2892/fkwg.jpg)

There isn't a lot to learn from this other than what I have said, and it's regard to sample size. The games are naturally tougher at higher stakes but they still offer excellent value. Once TCOOP is done I'm not going to neglect the small stakes stuff as it really is an mtt players bread and butter. The elite few can afford to spread their large bankroll over a multitude of sites and fill their screens with $100+ tournaments and I hope to be in that situation in the not too distant future.

I think a lot of non poker players or even anyone that doesn't grind an awful lot of mtt's doesn't appreciate or understands what variance is. A 700 tournament sample size is minuscule and anything can happen. For example if you look at the upward blip at around 620 games that was where I finalled the $215 2nd chance 2/9 with $45k-ish UT. It doesn't matter that I got brutally unlucky at the final as there are so many other factors of luck in every single tournament, and quite frankly, nobody gives a shit.


Anyhow the poker was decent yesterday. I cashed 0/4 TCOOPs this time but I managed a victory which has been quite a while- possibly 3 weeks now. It was the $11r Action hour which is a decent tournament to win as it's pretty deep stacked with large antes and it's one of the tougher fields you'll find at mid stakes in the afternoon.

(https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/883x573q90/706/bi8p.jpg)

The final was a bit of a silly line up. You'll often see an easier 100r or super tuesday final than that, so I'm proud to post this one up.

These tags are half mine and half James (hence why I'm tagged as good, I'd never do that!) but it was fun watching all the orange/red tags cluster together at the top as the final 2 tables came to a close.

Profit/loss: +$1345

Hours played: 7.5

WOW what a ridic final 2 tables. VWP to get a win in that mate!

It's been a while since I updated because I was approaching a complete burn out with TCOOP. Once it was over, I didn't want to be near the computer any more and I didn't want to think about poker (and how much I'd lost in the past few days). Needless to say, I'm going to do a January wrap up.

Day 30 + 31

Even after my recent win in the $10r action hour I wasn't really happy with how things were going, tcoop had been pretty rubbish so far with accumulating a lot of chips then things not going well just before the money. Nothing changed here and I made the money by the skin of my teeth in the PLO 4max. The following day showed the exact same results except I managed to go pretty deep in the $82 FLHE but bust 42nd. Feeling pretty over poker at this point but I have 2 days of TCOOP left to play and since I'd sold a package for it I figured it's not too difficult to give it one last go.


Profit/loss:

-$1049
-$451


Hours played:

7.5
9


January

The month has been so so swingy. I've not really enjoyed it towards the end and am a bit bummed to have made no money even though I worked really hard. I don't think the swingyness should come at too much of a shock considering I played quite a bit of bigger stuff this month and the average field size was huge in most stuff.

Total hours played in January: 189

Profit made: -$719

Average field size: 2922

Days played: 24

Winning days: 7

(http://imageshack.com/a/img854/9584/2rew.jpg)

I think those statistics are pretty depressing. Played loads, lost a bit of money, didn't have many winning days.

Day 32 + 33

The first two days of February denotes the end of TCOOP and at this point I was totally over poker. I was still prepared to play my best but equally I wanted it to be over. I had sold a package privately and wanted to complete that but it seems the chance of a leaderboard prize was getting more difficult. I bricked every event on the weekend which meant a fairly heavy loss.

Day 32 profit: -$1242
Day 32 hours: 10

Day 33 profit: -$1443
Day 33 hours: 7

An utterly rubbish start to the shortest month of the year and feeling a little frustrated. I needed some time off to recharge my batteries so:

Day 34 + 35

Boring house chores and lots of eating unhealthy food


Day 36

It didn't take long for me to want to play poker again and since the girlfriend was away working for a couple of days I figured I could crack on with a meaty mid-week session. I kept the ABI down because it's quite important that I start a winning trend soon since it'd been a poor year so far. There were many deep runs and I managed a bink again:

(https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x589q90/801/wihd.jpg)


Such an incredible final table, very soft. The regs were all low ABI players with low ROI's and the rest were huge fish! At one point I was pretty hand tied with the CL being a huge fish playing overly aggressive. Probably not the worst strategy for a fish to take but it meant that I had to fold and ladder a lot whilst he kept taking 30%'ers AIPF vs the others and busting them. I'll certainly take a 3rd as not a lot of the tournaments I played had more than $3k UT today but overall I am delighted with this turn around.

Out of make-up so some dollar in my pocket again and I'm going to continue with the mid stakes for a while whilst I build my confidence again.

Day 35 profit: $3889

Hours played: 10

February running total: +$1204

Sweat: 1/15 Hot $33 $8k UT.

Choice of music: The doors

Glgl which song?

Oh dear. That has changed things a little. 3bet jammed 7's for 23bb into TT.

7/11.

No idea what song :P.

Ahhh, a lovely 9th for $400 after being 1/11.

Day 37+38

After the 3rd in the $8r 2x turbo I managed 2 losing days (Thursday and Friday) before taking the weekend off to keep the balance in my life. Something I rarely do tbh!

Coming 9th in the hot 33 was a right kick in the teeth as I was 1/11 and a tasty $8k up top.

Profit/loss:

Day 38: -$559
Day 39: -$594

Hours played:

Day 38: 6.5
Day 39: 9.5

Day 40+41

Weekend off!


Seems 95% that I'm going for a last minute decision to come to england to play the sky event. I don't normally look at certain poker events and think "That's unmissable" but I think this is one of the rare times that this applies. All the people that represent UK poker well are going to be there and I think this is going to be a prestigious event. I do however which I'd decided upon this earlier as flights and what not have become expensive.

A lot of blogs can go like this when you aren't winning so I've summoned the motivation/courage to make a new entry.

I worked very hard in January and was pretty disappointed with making just a few k. I'd grinded about 180 hours and had a lot of swingy days. Coming into February I managed a few deep runs in some big turbos on Stars only to be shown the door in 9th and 8th. Apart from the money aspect, I'd most certainly rather come last. I took a week off and flew home to England to take part in the festival at Nottingham run by Sky poker. Although a little late, I have to say it's one of the best if not THE best poker festival I've taken part of in the UK and that is saying something with the big dog Pokerstars spreading their tours and reputation around the block. I had a good week and finalled the £500 turbo as a last chance saloon. Since I had won a seat on the Wednesday in a live satellite and had a decent chunk of my mate (willrobrobu) who finalled the 6max it turned out to be a profitable week for me. I managed to get a catch up with friends and family whilst home before setting back off to the Netherlands.

The online scene didn't change too much closing out February and I managed a losing month (excluding live and % swaps) which after a weak January has knocked the morale level down another few notches. It seems that when this trend starts to happen it only ever gets more difficult. The only positive I can pull from the month was how I managed to discuss a bit of poker with Mat Frankland whilst in Nottingham as I roomed with him for a night. I feel like I've now managed to take away some of what I've learned and applied it to my game now. Unfortunately there are peaks and troughs when studying and applying new stuff and I managed to hit some decent troughs. This combined with a lack of confidence has managed to really bring frustration levels to an all time high.

Enough of what is going through my head with poker in the past and I'm going to focus on the future. I've decided to set myself a little challenge for the next few and grind small stakes really hard. The good thing about playing lower stakes is that I can play a lot more tables and if I put my mind to it, make a really good return on investment. Often when I include things like the big 5 or a $10 turbo I am happy taking a very low edge risk because I feel that the money doesn't matter, lowering my edge somewhat. For Thursday-Saturday I'm going to try and put 30 hours in and 12-16 table the whole time. I'll be playing all mtt's from $2-$33 buy-in. Confidence is massive in this game and that's what I need. The micromillions starts tomorrow too, they are always fun to include.

 
February round up (online only):

Hours played: 101
Profit: $362 (I thought I'd lost in February, result!)
Hourly: McDonalds



Min-motivator challenge:

Play 150 or more mtt's in 3 days
Buy-ins: $33 and less
Average ROI target: 50% (I know this is beyond my control, but it's a bit of fun).

Dan

Bump.

I miss this diary, always been an interesting read.

ditto :)

Thanks mike and Rob.

I just came to the conclusion that when I'm not winning I find it hard to update, therefore I feel silly to "Sing when I'm winning".

I think we all do. But the "Winning" Posts lose credibility if not balanced by reports on the losing days/months.

Personally, I quite enjoy reading, "losing" reports. Here we see our character & mettle in adversity.

that was interesting
thanks for sharing your stats!

 :)up

Any chance of an update m8? I see you've been grinding very hard this month! gl! :)

Whoops!

A lot has happened in my poker career since my last post. I was still backed by James Atkin until January where I was lucky enough to have a $42k score in TCOOP. It's pretty comical looking back the fact I was in debt due to a failed business and it took me so long to get back into the game, yet a bink in a $200 turbo just flushes all the debt away. I had been working hard at my game and always improving, and I was earning ok money at poker at the same time.

The improvements in my game actually began in August 2014 where I was diagnosed with depression. I won't go into it here, you can find the articles about it on pokernews as I am happy being open about it. For a while that was holding me back, but I've been crushing since.

October 1st - January 31st. The end of the backed by Atkin era.
(http://i.imgur.com/qOVawMt.png)


I then learned something once I left Atkin, but it wasn't until afterwards. Don't try to run before you can walk. I got ahead of myself and tried playing poker off a very low bankroll. I also learned that playing lots of tables is really bad for your game. I had the argument that every tourney I booted up I would be making $x amount, so just boot up as many as possible to improve my hourly. I couldn't have been more wrong.

February 1st- April 30th. End of the small stakes mass tabling.
(http://i.imgur.com/0jeZoPf.png)


I decided to get backed again. I wanted something a bit different, I wanted to play higher stakes and for what I wanted, Atkin didn't want to give it to me since he had himself to look after. He's really looked after me in the past and I am massively grateful, however, this time I went with Mat Frankland and John Eames. They have experience at beating high stakes mtt's and I wanted a little guidance. I ran insanely hot and won the big109 as well as some other turbo for $6k.

May 1st- June 10th. End of the Eames and Frankland era.
(http://i.imgur.com/9CbdCmQ.png)


It was June 10th where I made the biggest jump of my career. I had already a good year of poker, the best for many years, but I decided to take a leap of faith and join Plenos stable. I used to always wonder how some of the online mtt players could do it. Playing day in day out and constantly crushing. I used to always find that I would regularly unregister from a schedule in frustration, or play badly too often. I do have to give some credit to myself of course, I have worked my nuts off and strived to be the best, but I have learned a colossal amount working with pads and the other coaches in the stable. I have never enjoyed poker like I do now. I would say playing higher stakes and less tables has definitely given me that spark. It's so much more interesting using your brain!

The BitB era. June 10th- Current day
(http://i.imgur.com/rvDMAZG.png)

I just came back from Amsterdam playing the master classics of poker festival. I skipped the main but decided to play the side events. Mr James Atkin himself joined me and later on in the week one of my horses who is also a good friend came by for the weekend. I was really loving the game and I was so fortunate to win an event- the €700 8max. During the first hand of the 2nd level I managed to lose 80% of my chips!
(http://i.imgur.com/bqwqtOB.jpg)


Finally, I have also been given the exciting opportunity to manage my own "small stakes stable" with Robbie Bull (AKA Adreny) as part of the BitB stable. They are going to be recruiting 10-12 for me and Robbie. As well as a private 1-to-1 coaching session a month you get group coaching with us as well as being able to join the group coaching sessions with the sickos that run the main stable (Pads, Crownupguy, European, omyg0t and Elmerexx). If anyone reading this blog is beating small/mid stakes online and wants the chance to become a sicko, move up the stakes and make a load of money, then apply. The stable will be going live in the next 2 days. I couldn't recommend jumping on board enough.

Hope this hasn't been too dreary and I hope to not be so lazy in regards to updating my blog (and perhaps discuss how the new stable is going!)

Dan "lucky_scrote" Carter

Great News and well done

Well done on the results, looks like quite a year!

Glad to hear you're doing so well, good stuff.

Congrats!

That's a cracking read, & I'm delighted for you Dan. Think I used to refer to you as a David Gower lookalike back in the day. Not so much now.

Amsterdam MC  apart, do you play much Live poker these days?

You mention how much you enjoy poker these days, which is quite something after so many years, but I absolutely get that, & I am the same, poker has never been more fun. Course, my stakes are about a zillionth of yours, but it's all relative.

Once we get our head in the right place, (in some cases, simply removing it from our arse) poker is so much fun.

Post more often, that was good stuff.

The very best of luck going forward.

I enjoyed the ups and downs of the staking thread here. Always thought your work ethic was excellent given it seemed such a grind. Good to see things taking off for you

Great read Dan, inspiring. well done

Amatay

Congrats Dan, keep crushing

Great read, put a smile to my face (: gl in the future

lucky scrote is back! 
;kneelsucker;

Congrats Dan ;tightend; ;tightend; ;tightend;

Thanks to everyone who gave me the well wishes, including the people who sent pm's.

I'm playing tonight and I don't often play Tuesdays, however I am not playing because the games are softer, but because I barely played last month and the second half of December is often a write off.

I'm deciding not to strike along with quite a few regs and I have my own reasons for that. I DO believe that amaya gaming are a complete joke and that it seems they aren't as good at running the site as the previous owners. I feel that they have already set the tone on what we have to expect in the future and what a joke of a company they are. If they are a shit company (which they seem to be making us all agree on) then striking isn't going to do a lot. If people get angry further down the line and begin to vote with their feet (leave pokerstars) then players actions will have a consequence. I don't believe that the strike will do a thing.

Why is everyone so mad? Well, pokerstars used to be awesome! A lot of peoples living is being jeopardised because they used to squeeze what pennies they could out of weaker players. Some people are also worried about mtt's getting tougher because cash game players joining the field. Well tough titties! Pokerstars are offering a service and if you don't like it then it's just tough. Head down, grind on and get better at poker. Stop acting like you are privileged in some way.

What are my future predictions for pokerstars?

I think a few of the grinders that were making close to an acceptable amount will vanish if their games get tougher and the rake gets higher (Boo-hoo people can't make a living from hypers any more). I think this will be balanced out with a few cash game players joining the mtt player pool but given the high volume of recreational players this won't effect my bottom line much. I strongly believe Amaya will keep upsetting players who make money out of poker as that is not who they care about. I do think the flow of new sign ups and recreational players will keep rolling in, but the general enjoyment out of playing on pokerstars will go down. I don't think anything too dramatic is going to happen any time soon but I also expect some other poker sites such as party and 888 will enjoy a slight boost in customers. It would take a lot for recreational players to leave pokerstars for another site because they are light years ahead in games on offer, software, promotions, security and dare I say it customer service.

Congrats on the turnaround. One for the good guys and those with work ethic!

Fair play to Pads for letting horses decide. I thought stables supporting the strike may try and police the horses into compliance.

Very good post.  That is the business reality of the changes.  Betfair (exchange - sports betting (not poker)) users had exactly the same years ago when they introduced the premium charge on big winners.  Survival of the fittest.  It makes no sense for stars to keep letting people make an easy living.  If you are not good enough then you will have to move on.  Stars realise they have been giving too many people a soft living for too long like betfair did and costing their shareholders a fortune in the process.  

I don't understand what the pro's think this strike is going to do.  Stars clearly want to get rid of 'pro' business from their business model otherwise they wouldn't have made the changes they have to their charges.  Why do you think going on strike is going to do anything?  They don't want you.  They have changed the charges to tell you that (whether they are right or wrong long term who knows but i imagine they have done the maths on it to a very detailed level - much more than the average grinder has).  Going on strike helps them make more money in the next 3 days because that is what they want for the ongoing future (according to their long term business plan).  I am confused why you think the strike will make any difference.  I think at stars HQ they are probably sitting there rofl'ing around saying 'we priced them out in order to make us more money and they are doing us a favour and opting out themselves for 3 days - happy days'.

Whilst I totally acknowledge your point and can understand what a shareholder is. Do you have no grievance with the methods Amaya are using? Clearly it would be naive to expect to get the same level of player centric awesomeness that we got from Isai. But just out of the blue reducing the value of VPPs?!? waiting until the last minute to mention that actually their forward reaching bonus schemes will be scrapped and actually positioning yourself with a view to your grind for the next year has been sabotaged. Is that an acceptable way to treat your customers?

You state they still have good support, yet their support budget has clearly been absolutely slashed, they respond with utterly generic emails much slower than they previously managed. Their customer service now involves lying and misleading players, political style spin on their communications (claiming to be helping the 98%... when no one benefits from the higher rake and lower RB, chromestars being the only level to go up and only getting circa 10cents more essentially means every level loses). Is that something that we should just accept? the only reason we even found out about the RB changes was a leaked document....

none of these things can fill you with confidence, I really dislike even talking about it as 'pokerstars', everything we associated with pokerstars in a positive manner has been destroyed (have you noticed the scheduled lag on the servers, and the inability to handle sundays anymore, ie another department who has had their budget absolutely slashed beyond recognition). Do we really imagine they will bother investing in security when they don't benefit from stopping people playing in games paying rake?!?  imo we should be discussing things in terms of amayastars to give the job that Isai oversaw it's proper respect. The player base and software is the same the product is absolutely not.


I can totally see how a strike in and of itself is not necessarily going to achieve much, but at least if it gets some more focus on the matters, some more people discussing/looking for information then that can only be a good thing.

I think I should have re-worded some things better. The support isn't good at all but it is probably the best compared to other sites. Can make exceptions for DTD as you will probably get looked after well there.

Stars is definitely a crock of shit compared to what it used to be, but they offer us a service and if they wanna shove it up our asses then just don't play there. I can see where everyone is coming from, there are a lot of unhappy people especially people that have been loyal in the past and shortly after betrayed.

I feel like Amaya are in too deep with this.

Not to single you out, but i also think there's abit of naivety on some MTT'ers behalf. Just because rakeback isn't a major source of income the sheer influx of mid/high cash game and SNG players into mid buyin MTT's will probably be greater than the number of pro's who leave the game. Everyones bottom line is getting cut in a roundabout way and that includes pro's who play on alternative sites

A bit melodramatic but fairly apt  :D

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Man standing on the sidelines mocks those for trying. It would be that tiny bit more effective if you'd have joined and whilst I think it's wrong to call out the regs who played, it's going to be incredibly boring watching those sat on the sidelines make comments on effectiveness.

I was ashamed to see so many UK grinders not involved.

they are still good yes. but that's only because everyone else is so dreadful, that's not a good thing lel.


if your bank announced they were reducing balances by 30% would you be saying man thank god they provide this service i'm so lucky.

much of what they have done is literally stealing, mis-advertising that other industries would get punished for. they really deserve all of this criticism, even If I agree with you about the limited impact a strike will have.

The run good just doesn't stop. On Monday I managed to ship the $55tko on stars for $2.3k and just now I won the croc on 888.

(http://i.imgur.com/2ec0n8h.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/6rZtJif.png)

I have until this week to win a tournament on ipoker or partypoker with a 10k prizepool for the triple crown.

Insert games must be soft joke here.....   ;whistle;

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmnL4x2jwm8

Unfortunately the problem with most people (including the old me) is that they only update their poker blogs when they are winning. It's easy to do, when you're crushing morale is high and you feel motivated to do so.

My year so far has exceeded all expectation, I knew it was possible, but everything had gone against me in 2011-2014 so that if things didn't go well, then I wouldn't be too surprised. Don't read into this that I had given up hope because I worked hard very often. August 2014 was obviously the big turning point for me being given diagnosed with depression. I know I bang on about it, but it really has been the turning point in my life. I seem to remember briefly having a little TLB side bet with mondatoo and Atkin in November 2014 and wiping the floor with them because I could play such long sessions day after day and morale would always be in place. Good morale and motivation is the most important attribute to being a succesful online poker player, of course you have to find motivation in the first place. My motivation most certainly comes from previous archaic times. I had a good run in my youth and from the age of 17 I was doing very well at poker and life, the biggest stress in my life up until the age of 21 must have been booking flights and hotels, I had it way too easy.

My motivation comes from the above because going from having it your own way to being extremely miserable and broke is not a good experience. If I had been conditioned like a normal person going through uni and learning how to deal and dealing with different types of people then I wouldn't have gone through such tough times after. At this point in my life though it has all worked well. I've learned a lot about myself in the past year and I am more focused than ever in being dominant in the online MTT "circuit".

This weekend (Friday and Sunday) I grinded really hard, a part of me wanted my triple crown but I also got into a great routine of putting in long hours. The more poker I play and the longer sessions I put in, the easier I find it to work harder thereafter.
(http://i.imgur.com/4yDvU6C.png)


I set myself some goals in the middle of this year. I feel a bit daft because I made a document on my desktop but recently deleted it, but they were something like this:

• Continue studying hard- check
• Make top 10 on pocketfives in UK- currently and very likely unsuccessful
• Continue ridiculous run of closing out tournaments- check

I thought it would be possible to make top 10 this year, but equally I have had huge gaps of not playing poker. I set these goals in July and in August I played UKIPT Bristol, then I spent almost 2 weeks in Rhodes- a fabulous place, I couldn't recommend it enough! Followed by a family emergency in which I missed some of WCOOP, a golf holiday to Portugal with John, Eames and Mat Frankland, another trip to England and then finally a week long poker festival in Amsterdam.

I'm going to set myself some high goals for next year. I want to be #1 in the UK on pocketfives next year. It will involve me playing higher stakes which I am capable of. My backers set the stakes I can play. If I maintain my current form and effort I will be there in no time. I think it's a pretty high bar to set, but equally I will satisfied with a top 3. Another goal of mine will to be to spend 3-4 weeks in Vegas this summer and have a professional approach to tournaments. I've not been to Vegas for a very long time and I used to frequent myself there. I never did very well over there because I was young, naive and got caught up in the place. Lastly, I would like to work on getting good routines. If anyone has recommendations I would gladly take them. I am a terrible procrastinator that spends far too much time behind my computer. The reality is, I would love to have a routine of working on my fitness or physique. Whenever I have tried in the past I end up slipping up and getting into a lazy routine of getting up late, having a small breakfast, lounging around, playing video games and then starting a session of poker. I'd like to stop that. My last goal for next year is to complete a meteorlogy course that I signed up to a few weeks ago with the open university. It is not a creditable course, but I have always had a fascination in meteorology since I spent a lot of my youth checking the BBC weather forecast before playing golf as a teen. It's a good start towards educating myself in something outside of poker, if I complete the course then it is a step towards getting creditable courses that I can eventually put down on my CV, because, poker isn't going to last forever.

-Dan "lucky_scrote" Carter

Last Saturday I was very lucky to go to Prague with my girlfriend. Incredibly no poker was involved, it coincided with her birthday so we decided to have a 4 day city trip.

The timing of the trip was pretty good, I had what might be a record losing streak for me since joining the stable with pads in June- I think 5 or 6 losing sessions in a row, this is certainly not abnormal by any means, but it goes to show how well I have run this year. I felt like I was playing a B game throughout which is acceptable I guess but I was losing a bit of hunger for it. I think the strongest part of my game is being hungry and determined with 2-3 tables out and through to closing the tournament. When I was really busto and feeling down I used to get nervous in these stages and definitely make mistakes. These days I find sticking my chips in the middle lots of fun and putting people under pressure, it comes naturally. Since being backed by Pads' stable (June onwards), in the final 3 I have managed seven 3rd's, three 2nd's and sixteen 1sts. I think when I lose a bit of hunger for the game I can downswing pretty hard since I am making more mistakes than normal.

Prague is an awesome awesome place. I have been many times before but always for poker so I had only spent a few hours each trip doing touristy stuff. This time I had 4 days of being a tourist! I did the typical tourist stuff of visiting the busiest areas first that everyone knows about- Wenceles square, old town square, Charles bridge and so forth. This doesn't massively excite me. Well, it's nice, but when I travel I like to be places that most people don't go. I know that you never get the real feel of somewhere in these crowded places where everyone is speaking English and around 35 photos are taken every second. It's also the reason why I can't imagine enjoying somewhere like New York.

On the second day in Prague (Sunday) I booked a segway tour for me and my girlfriend. It was a private tour for the two of us and we spent 3 hours going around the outskirts mostly. It was hands down one of the most fun things I have ever done. I'd never been on a segway before and they are bloody awesome and very easy to use. After just 30 minutes of being on one you can just step back on and move without thinking, it's easier than riding a bike! After spending 3 hours speaking with our tour guide (A czech student, mid twenties) we took every opportunity to ask questions about Prague and to get recommendations on where to eat and drink. I ate out with two other friends Benedetto (DaMatrix), his and my girlfriend where we ended up in a Czech restaurant titled "LOKAL" in which they only served Czech food and some staff didn't speak English. PERFECT. The grub was quite good there, czech cuisine isn't exactly going places though. We ate out as a four the previous night in the Corinthia where it came to 4400 Czech Krona (£200), this night it came to 1100 Czech Krona (£50) and we had more courses and drink!

We did plenty more sightseeing throughout the trip, I find myself constantly fascinated staring at all the buildings in Prague, the way they use two different types of stone to give the buildings beautiful patterns and design is breathtaking. There was certainly an era when Prague was very wealthy.

Back on the grind yesterday and I made it a short one. Whenever I take a week off I find it incredibly difficult to focus for any decent length of time. I luckboxed a 1st in the lightening 6max on 888 for 2.5k or so to book a little profit.

I'm going to set myself some targets for the upcoming week of poker: I need to work on my early game. I notice my win rate on HM2 is greatly affected depending on how I play early game as it calculates how many big blinds you are making. I think I can be lazy sometimes. Currently my investors of the stable mainly look at profit, work ethic and win rates when deciding on stakes. It's a pretty fair course of action. To continue climbing the stakes and bettering myself I believe that early game is where I need to put more focus at the moment.

A solid EV adjusted win rate at the stakes you are playing is 5.00-5.99 bb/100 and 6.-6.99 is crushing. Mine is currently at 6.83 since October. Crownupguy also noticed a few weaknesses in my game that he believes can improve my win rate (notably from the blinds, it's probably from laziness). If I can get this over 7 then I know myself I am ready to begin including some of the biggest regular stuff online.

-Dan "lucky_scrote" Carter

Love the positivity, Dan,

This was awesome, too....

in the final 3 I have managed seven 3rd's, three 2nd's and sixteen 1sts

What did you feel about the graffiti tags which seemed to be everywhere in Prague, found them a bit dispiriting tbh.

Poker is a very tough game to be good at

I've not really been winning since my last post, but hardly been knocking it in. On Thursday I had a lesson with Tomi (elmerixx) and it was great. We focused on my stats and went over a few of my leaks that I'm really working on. They should in theory be easy to adjust but I've found that quite often in poker, it's never easy. My biggest weakness is probably folding a little too often from the big blind (one of the easier fixes) and not constructing a better flop cbet or what to do after skipping a cbet. In the last 2 sessions I've played I've been trying to put in 110% by working on these leaks and I can't seem to get things going. The problem is, it's far too easy to be results orientated in poker. In most things in life, if you do something with a certain method and it doesn't work, you need to try something different. Einstein's quote doesn't apply to poker so much: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.". So my hard work the past few days has had no positive feed back. During my session yesterday I was almost thinking about trying to forget anything I had learned in the past week.

Outside of actually playing poker I have worked really hard on a new hud. I shamelessly modeled it on my coaches HUD but I had to make it from scratch at least. I remember CambridgeAlex making a funny video a while back where he was commentating whilst playing and correctly guessing his opponents hole cards just because his HUD said so. It's bloody difficult to use a HUD correctly. Just because I own a book on Quantum physics doesn't mean I know anything about it.

Here is what my current HUD looks like:

(http://i.imgur.com/uz5eTIu.png)

Hopefully I can close down a little of my makeup before I am done for the year, I'm not in much ($6.4k) but I'm probably only going to squeeze in two more sessions before I'm done for the year.

I should hope one of those sessions is going to be the $5milly milly!

Nice read Dan. Best of luck for the new year!

Good read Dan.

$6.4k in make up?

I absolutely get why MTT-ers are staked, & why they are, by definition, always in make up (I don't necessarily agree with all of it it, but that's a different story), but even though, in relative terms $6.4k is not much......in real life relative terms, that's a great deal of money.

It would scare me to bits.

Have enjoyed the revival of this Diary, hope you keep it up.

Season's greetings (ugh at that corny phrase) to you & yours. 

I've been playing much higher these past few months and I would say $6.4k is nothing. I have been EXTREMELY fortunate that I've not been in 5 figure make-up for around 5 months now. Of course the bigger edge you have the harder it is to accumulate make-up but poker can mess with your head when things aren't going well and make you play awful.

@gaggle I'm not sure if I'm playing yet. My sister is coming over to Holland for 4 days so it seems a bit rude to play. We will see.

I hope everyone had a fantastic christmas and new year! Mine was full of friends and family and very little poker. I managed to sneak one session in just after Christmas since some guests had to delay a visit by a day giving me time to do something on my own.

I have played 4 sessions since my last update and managed to win in every single session, quite a feat when playing online mtt's! I've been studying pretty damn hard on my own game using what resources I've got. Since my last two lessons with CrownUpGuy and Elmerixx a lot of things have clicked into place. I've been working really hard on my style of play and exploiting the field. It is beginning to feel that I am getting further ahead of the curve and that I am starting to notice a lot more of my opponents mistakes and ways I can exploit them. A year ago I used to look at certain fields and think "what's the point" or "That comp is a dick swinging contest" but that couldn't be further from the truth. There are some great MTT players out there, but the biggest games online still consist of regs that think they are just as good as the rest if not better. I think it's easy to fall into this trap though, you get complacent and confident of your own abilities so you stop studying as hard. I imagine I will go through a phase of this if I decide to cut down on my studying.

My session yesterday was fun. Sundays are obviously the biggest day of the week and I feel really good about them these days, winning what felt over 50% of the time last year. The session started so badly, I was busting early stages in most of my comps and making a few mistakes, I was also pushing my table count and doing so I found myself not playing my best (and playing slightly tighter). Eventually I managed to get on a roll and had huge stacks in the Sunday Milly, Big 162, Big 11, a $55 freeze and the ipoker major. I didn't do well in any of the biggies, but the cashes managed to just about make me have a winning session and given how the session started I was really pleased.

(http://i.imgur.com/YEOKCgQ.png)

I also managed to make day 2 of the ipoker major. I'm 20/29 with €14k or so up top so it's a nice way to start my grind today.

Outside of poker I'm looking to improve my health and fitness this month. Definitely not a new years resolution but after copious amounts of food and alcohol over December I'm repping a mini gut that I'd like rid of. I also decided to completely stop my anti-depressants that I've been weening off for some months now. Two reasons for weening off them are to see if you still need the extra serotonin (I don't) and also because the side effects can be pretty bad. For me they really suck. Previously, every second day of not taking my pill I would feel dizzy for a couple of hours in the evening and sometimes have stomach cramps. I've already accepted that I am probably going to feel ill in the forthcoming days, but it has to be done.

The past week I've been busy at the tables. Since my last post I was enjoying crush mode just without any of the closing. Without being results orientated I was running well and making lots of good decisions. I've been trying to bump my table count a little but I've been finding it difficult, every time my table count is above 9 I start making auto-bot mistakes and old habits keep creeping in that I've been working on. I will keep toying with this, since if I can play optimal with 12 tables then I should be doing that as I can make a lot more money that way.

I've managed to follow up my 4 day winning streak with a 4 day losing streak. I mentioned in my last post that I was also coming off my anti-depressants for good and that I might feel slightly sick; I really underestimated this. I thought I would get just flu like symptoms as I had something similar before but it was completely different. The most prominent side effect I have to mention is the dizziness. Not normal dizziness but it feels as if there is a drunk gyroscope in my head, every time I move my eyes it makes me feel a bit nauseous. Secondly it feels like my brain is plugged in to a power socket. Constant head zapping. I thought that the side effects would stop with just being physical ones but two days ago during a grind the pokerstars servers were lagging and it was really making me feel on edge. I've not experienced much irritability since being on the wonders of anti-depressants but I was really feeling it. Then this happened:

(http://i.imgur.com/DYXFjXb.png)

11 left in the Big82 and I was timing down here. I couldn't do anything but watch my aces get folded because of the shitty stars servers. I was 10/11 at this point so was obviously a very pivotal point. To make it worse the blinds ended up in a big 3b pot that didn't go to showdown. I kinda flipped at this point, I could feel my heart pounding much harder and I felt very tense in my chest. I think my girlfriend walked in shortly after and I snapped at something she said that wasn't remotely annoying. After this happened I tried to compose myself, but for the remainder of the session I struggled to play my best.

The following day I booted up another session. Weirdly, I still felt down about the previous day. I haven't felt like this for a while. I normally have a good nights sleep and wake up feeling like this:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RM7cQCC4sU

The grind went south pretty quick, my focus was poor and approaching the end of the short lived session I was feeling pretty terrible. I would say at 11pm yesterday I was feeling the worst I have felt in over a year. I had to do some research on what was going on. A slight fear was in my mind that I shouldn't have stopped the medication even though the doctor gave me the go ahead. I had even weened off as best I could, down to 1/4 of the originally prescribed dosage. I remembered that many months ago I found a very good website about anti-depressants, there is a lot of nonsense on the internet, if you google a lot of symptoms it often gives you the worst case scenario. The website was from the royal college of psychiatrists and this page was most useful: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/antidepressants/comingoffantidepressants.aspx

After reading all the information and watching the video I then realised that I felt depressed, I had just been suppressing these feelings (as depressed people often do) to protect myself. I think there was possibly some denial too since I really really don't want to be depressed again. Once I was done with the site it was soon time to go to bed, but I was just staring at my computer screen not wanting to go to bed. I had felt like I had lost the will. I thought "what is the point in anything". Don't read this as suicidal thoughts, it's just a complete lack of self worth (Another common effect of depression). I ended up opening 2 beers which is a complete no-no since I shouldn't be relying on alcohol to make me feel good- even just a small amount can make you feel a lot worse the next day. I ended up falling asleep on the sofa downstairs and the missus woke me up at 5am asking what was going on (I always go to bed).

I'm not seeking for any sort of attention or help with this in my blog, I have just learned two ways that this is beneficial. One is that writing these things down makes you feel better, not to mention it's always good to look back on. Secondly is that it's this sort of openness that helps lift the stigma of mental health as well as anyone who is struggling with any sort of mental illness who is reading this. I've felt pretty indestructible on the tables the past 6 months and this has been the first real hurdle for me in a long time.

In some slightly more uplifting news, I played golf today for the first time since October. My friend was aware I wasn't feeling well so I might have to cut the round short, but we played 9 holes and I felt great, it really helped my mood! I was pretty confident that I wouldn't be playing poker today, but here I am currently 1 tabling the big 162 in 9th with 27 left and still feeling in a good mood.

Thank you for sharing the link, and even more thanks for sharing the experience.
It's a process that I will have to go through at some stage and, well, just, thanks.

Hope the Big162 ended well for you.

That's a tremendously insightful & interesting Post, Dan.

How did you get on in the Big 162?

If you want to know anything then drop me a PM. The doctors in this country don't prepare you whatsoever with coming off anti-depressants. I have had to learn a lot myself as well as from my GF (Psychologist).


It went well :D

(http://i.imgur.com/NwfV6dr.png)

5 handed I had half the chips and lost a flip to have 75% of the chips in play. Regardless, I'm happy with the results.

Very nice. If that does not make you feel better, nothing will.

I followed up my decent score yesterday with an impeccable day today. Playing great and running great once again.

(http://i.imgur.com/di58rAv.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/uWxSp2A.png)

As well as a 4th in a $33 turbo for 1.3k.

Sunday can't come sooner, would love to have another day of crushing :D.

Great days mate, make it a hat trick :)

Good work Dan

Hey Dan, having known a few people coming off anti-depressants I know it is tough. Just wanted to say hang in there, keep playing good and keep writing! See you at the tables, hopefully not on my left.

Massive thanks to all support people have been offering. I think it's about 10 days I stopped taking my medication and at the beginning it was tough. After the first few days I thought it was going to be a lot tougher than it was. I am definitely very snappy at the moment. I find stress quite overwhelming and as a result I seem to take a lot of this out on my girlfriend. It's not all that bad though, I'd say on the happiness scale I'm about an 7-8 at the moment which is fairly solid I guess. I've really noticed myself being less jolly if you like, a little less exuberant with my day to day activities. My brain has to get used creating it's own serotonin from now on as well as coping without a fairly strong medication that I was relying on for 18 months.

On the tables I've been performing well. I have played Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday since my last post and even though the first three sessions were not succesful I managed to have a 1st and a 2nd for 3k and 2k to just push me in to profit for these sessions. I've had a pretty good start to the year (Currently +13k) and I don't see why this doesn't have to continue providing I strive to be the best. I think in onlime poker at mid and high stakes mtt's I am currently the fastest improving/improved player in the past 6 months. I've not really climbed in stakes TOO much in that time but next month my backers have agreed to add new games to my schedule. This is probably a pretty arrogant to say, but my results back it up and I am now looking at poker players who I used to really look up to before now looking at them noticing how many flaws in their game they have and how I can exploit them. Considering poker is quite tough now, there aren't that many great poker players in the online mtt circle.

I expect to make around $150k this year. Last year I made $130k profit and for the first 6-7 months of the year I wasn't really that good, just trying to keep up with the game rather than staying ahead of it. My ambition is to make $200k this year in online mtt's, I'll need a little help with a decent bink somewhere along the line because I can't expect a steady $17k a month every month.

I just booked Dublin for next month. I'm going for a pretty long time for me- flying there on the evening of the 9th and leaving on the 18th. I've planned a schedule that includes a lot of nice mtt's including the ukipt main, ept main and a 1 and 2k side event. I've not gone away to play such an array of large poker tournaments for a very long time for one main reason- I just couldn't afford it. Another reason that I just couldn't handle the pressure nor was I really good enough. It's definitely hard work going away for such a long period for intensive live poker at quite reasonable stakes because in such a short time I have around €10k in buy-ins ahead of me. The backers have agreed to buy quite a chunk of my buy-ins but naturally they have bought the smallest percentage of the EPT main event. I'm gonna do this! I am going to go and play an EPT, I've not played one since Prague 2011. Dublin is definitely a good festival to go for too, there is a great recreational pool there.

I booked a nice house on airbnb last night and I'm staying with airdraken (Thomas Clack) for the duration. We can play online if need be and maybe even have a day off or two :).

Naturally, I have to sell some of myself. I can't afford to whip up the rest of the action since it's including a €5k. Hopefully this time next year I don't need to this, hell maybe I won't need to do this after Dublin if I'm really lucky :).

Here is my schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tZ-15VHMlY0h_Zo6Bf5Yo47CjdIHYeCCyfKVGAnET2c/edit#gid=0

I will be selling the four tournaments as a package. To sell out I need to sell 100%, the relative % of each tournament I am selling is in the spreadsheet. For example, I am selling 25% of the €1k on the 14th. If you buy 10% here then you have 2.5% of that tournament and so on.

5%: €257
10%: €514
25%: €1284

I will post this officially in the staking forums tomorrow with fancy graphs to show off, but for now if people want to buy a piece then feel free to post.

I will take 5% pls Dan

5 please Dan, good to hear its working out for you

gl in Dublin

Took Thursday and Friday off this week. I normally just take Tuesdays and Thursdays off since they are the toughest days online but the stable I am a part of has gotten so busy that I realised I had to get some work there done. They have a "development" stable that I posted about a couple of months ago and I doing the coaching with another chap.

Yesterday I had an absolutely absurd heater. Two wins a third and a fourth. One of the victories came in the saturday 50cubed on 888 which I came 2nd in last week so that was nice to close that one out. Another was in a tourney in the bottom of my buyin range but its a turbo and has 1500+ runners every day. Very happy.

(http://i.imgur.com/axf4YOG.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/LQiRHWa.png)

I decided to scrap the package I made for Dublin. I think it was too complicated. A few loyal buyers in me offered to buy pieces but that was about it. I've decided I'm just going to sell for the EPT Main for now at the previously advertised price and sell a slightly less % because I feel pretty good about punting at this event.

Absolutley crushing this year already and have been for the past 6-12 months.

This year:
(http://i.imgur.com/WHjXn3E.png)

Selling around 20% (reserving 20% for original investors) @ 1.19

€315 = 5%
€630 = 10%

Will take in euros on pokerstars, in person or via Sterling bank transfer.

Becoming a habit updating on a Saturday since I crushed again yesterday.

Struggled a little bit with myself and poker this week. My motivation was slightly hindered and the killing instinct just wan't there. What I mean by that, is when I had a decent sweat a few tables out I didn't really pay attention or care. I've also been struggling with sleep a bit this week, and when I'm low on sleep I get grumpy and feel quite sad. I've never had problems with sleep in my life. Go to bed, head hit pillow, sleep for 8 hours. I took it for granted. Well, it was coming to the point where it was 1am (1 hour before bed time) and I was feeling extremely alert and end up lying in bed until 4-5am feeling bored. Equally in the morning I feel super lethargic and don't want to get up. Turns out, it's another common side effect of coming off the pills. This blog seems a bloody broken record regarding these meds but every week something new is happening. Glad that it feels this is almost behind me though, the dizziness has almost completely gone and that was the worst part.

TCOOP has just started and the backers have been generous with what I am allowed to play. Normally they are a bit on the nitty side (I understand) but this time they have happily thrown me in the TCOOP $700's without me asking. 888 series also on and there are some great value tournaments for sure.

TCOOP is a pretty shit series really. Edges still decent enough especially with a lot of dead money about but ROI is obviously lower since I have less opportunities to exploit my opponents. It also feels higher variance because everything is so fast. Still, you won't hear me moaning if I bink something. Skill game I tell ya!

So early hours this morning I made the final table of the Saturday $320SKO on stars. It's a very good value tournament that has plenty of fish, but the line up of the final 2 tables was pretty reggy, predominantly full of winning players. I couldn't get a great feel of their abilities since I was a little hand tied 3 tables out with 20 big blinds but once it got down to 2 tables and was much deeper I noticed that I had a great shot at this tournament since I was definitely the best player remaining.

(http://i.imgur.com/bksPdj5.png)


So I went in to the final table with a fairly comfortable chip lead. It wouldn't be the easiest final since I knew 2 of the finalists were prepared to come 9th if need be which meant it was harder for me to put pressure on them and control the table. I still played pretty mental though. At four handed the 3 remaining players requested for a deal, we were fairly even in chips at this point, and I declined. I stick firmly by my beliefs that I won't deal in MTT's (and haven't for 18 months) since my results are much better this way. I fucking love winning and once a deal has been made I feel my thirst for victory diminish as a win would feel somewhat hollow. It was about 530am at this point but I didn't care.

I got it to heads up around 6:45am with a slight chip lead. I stretched this lead to 2-1 when I got it in with 5's vs AJ for victory but he rivered a Jack. I think the villain played quite well despite making a few of the same mistakes. I felt like I made a lot of really really big folds to him vs the tournament. Of course I could be wrong but we will never know, it felt right at the time.

(http://i.imgur.com/jnDwrDu.png)

It really has been an outrageous start to the year with profits pushing $42k now. There is zero pressure on me to perform during these expensive series and there will be even less pressure on me to perform in EPT Dublin in a couple of weeks.

Lovely job Dan, well done.

Enjoy reading this. Hope the hot streak continues!

It's been a while since my last update but for once I haven't been playing much poker.

At the end of January I went to the  APAT team event. It might be something that people wouldn't expect me to visit but for a long time I posted on a forum owned by Matt Dale and made a lot of friends. About 3 months ago I was drunk one night and booked flights over to go. I met a lot of people there and I always forget how nice of a community it can be sometimes. A few people mentioned they enjoyed reading my blog which I really like to hear. Our team did not win this year but where we lacked in chip accumulation we made up in beers.

I had a problem with my stars account so I didn't get a chance to play immediately on return so I have actually only played one session in two weeks.

I'm now in Dublin for 10 days to play the UKIPT/EPT and side events. I've not played an EPT in four years because I was just nowhere near bankrolled nor good enough. Yesterday I played day 1a of the UKIPT and I managed to have the chip lead on a couple of occasions, a really swingy day! I was up to 60k within four levels (25k starting) and within the next two levels I lost a flip to get me from 80k to 100k to being knocked down to 10k in chips at 300/600. I've not posted any hands in this blog for a very long time so I will share a good one.

A guy two to my left who is youngish and has the demeanour of a good player was anything but. He was giving me a bit of a headache because he was trying to be a hero all the time and putting people in really tough spots. You might say that this is a good strategy but he didn't understand the game too well. There was a hand where someone raised to 600 at 150/300 and a shortstack off 4k peeled, he then proceeded to squeeze the button with 68o to 2.8k (dumb, little fold equity).

Anyway the hand. A fish opens MP to 600 at 150/300 and I peel 88 otb. Sb also peels and the guy trying to be heroic makes it 2500 from the big blind. OR flats, I call and SB folds. Flop 778r. He leads for 3300 into 8300, OR folds and I think a bit and call. Turn is 9c bringing a flush draw, he checks and I tank for a bit and check back. River is a 6. He checks and I go into the tank and eventually bet 2500 into 15,900. He takes a minute and jams for about 20k effective. I knew there was a chance he would erupt. I make him show AJo and take the big pot down. I honestly had to try very hard to not laugh and be professional, it still tickles me now.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I actually wrote this blog over a week ago, but since it wasn't finished I had to save it. Instead of re-writing the post and changing tenses and days I will just continue where I left off.

The next day was 1b which also meant Trampoline dodgeball. Jake Cody talked me into it but secretly I really wanted to go anyway. So in case the rules of dodgeball if anyone is not familiar with them. You have a team of say 5 people that stand on opposite sides of a room, in the middle is no mans land (very small area) where balls are placed. At the start of the round you must run to the middle, grab a ball and return to the back wall before you are allowed to throw. There is one ball for every two players on the field. If you get hit by a ball, you're out. If someone catches a ball you throw, you're out (and they get a player back). You can deflect balls with the use of other balls. The only difference between this game and normal dodgeball is that we are on trampolines, it made it very exhausting indeed. It was mostly the high roller guys that were playing for some reason, I remember Jake being there, Jason Mercier, Timex and some other high rollers I don't know the name of. To cut the story short, my team won and I got a mini pokerstars spade trophy to prove it :D.

I went in to day 2 of the tournament fairly confident, I had played really well day 1 and was up for the task. The day started well and I had played some hands pretty aggressively. The day seems a bit of a blur since it was such a long time ago, but I was yoyoing pretty hard without dropping too low. I remember getting moved to a new table once we had made the money and I felt that even though I thought I was playing well, I was unsure of myself at times since I was being put in lots of spots where I had to play passively and it just felt like I was bleeding chips. Without too much detail, I made one of the worst folds of my life which was a pretty large pot, and I managed to receive some great donations in the money as well. I ended up busting 50th right after Pads bust but wasn't too disappointed to the start of the trip.

Saturday was a day off for most people so I met up with €urop€an, pads, Adam Picken and Tom (airdraken). After a few drinks at a respectable bar called the Church we headed to the not so respectable Temple bar. At one point me and Pads walked in to a bar that was very crowded, we had in fact been turned away from there an hour previous. The guys attempted to follow us but didn't get let in. Apart from being like sardines it was fucking awesome. Me and Pads were forced to double park our beers since it was so busy. After getting to know Pads much better this trip I would say he is definitely say he's one of the good guys. Much fun to be around even if he does ask more questions than Socrates.

Something happened around 2am that might potentially change how I do things or think forever. Despite having the time of my life, at around 2am a switch flipped in my head and I felt awful. Not just too much to drink awful, but just awful. I rushed home and just cried my eyes out, I felt so depressed. Not this all over again for fuck sake. I had nothing to even cry about, but alcohol just doesn't seem to work well with me, certainly not in large quantities. I have decided to stop drinking for the time being. I have never drunk much, but I've always been partial to 2 or 3 beers after a session about 5 times a week. I think it definitely lowers my mood and energy levels. So, I've knocked drinking on the head until April when I go on a little golf break to Cyprus.

I barely played much more poker whilst in Dublin, I'm not going to go in to full rant mode since I have already gotten it off my chest a few times, but I had to share a house with someone who was the most inconsiderate and dirty person I have ever met. It ruined my mood and a lot of time was spent cleaning after said person.

Hopefully along with no alcohol for 6 weeks I am going to improve my fitness, my diet and my happiness. I am also planning to play a ton of golf as I have also had a couple of lessons. With a bit of luck I can play to 7 again.

Fascinating stuff Dan, some amazing insight there.

Good luck mate.

Poker has been slow going the past 6 weeks but I've made a lot of changes in that time.

I lost my mind in Dublin a little bit, I will never know what it was, but I do think that I have struggled a tiny bit coming off my meds at the start of the year. I had an "incident" in Dublin that I handled pretty poorly involving another poker player, to who I have apologised since.

Since my last blog update I've not drunk alcohol as a bit of a challenge to myself. I was drinking a bit too regularly after a session online even if it wasn't in copious amounts (2-3 bottles of beer 4-5 times a week). It's pretty addictive stuff! I've managed to join a gym too in hopes to give myself a better mindset. I have to say, just two weeks into quitting alcohol/beer I find myself a lot less bored and feeling fitter. I also need less sleep for some reason. I don't plan to keep this up though, I go to Cyprus in 10 days for a golf holiday and expect to increase my calorie count somewhat :).

Hoping for a bit of sympathy here but I had a wisdom tooth out last Friday. A 10 minute appointment to drain an abcess turned into a much longer one when they decided to remove the tooth. It took 9 injections and 2h10m as it was being stubborn. Tools used included a chisel and hammer. Shock ensued once I got home and a few days later I developed dry socket.

Slightly inspired by "TommyPlus" and his blog. I love culture and it's certainly interesting living in one other than your own. I will post up what life is like in the Netherlands in some of the following posts.

On the poker front I've been working fairly hard despite not earning much wonga. For those of you that read Patrick's blog we have a little competition within the stable involving points awarded for tournament wins and what not, but it has only been a curse- I've not closed a single tournament this month!

Hopefully some more exciting posts can follow shortly, an update was just long overdue

Dan

I am mildly obsessed with Dutch snack food.

There is a shop, which I think is only in Amsterdam but I could be wrong, called FEBO.
http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/article/febo-amsterdam-2.htm
This is a place where you have all these suspicious looking items of snackfood in little hot cupboards. A giant wall of vending machines. Then you put some money in the slot and you can get the food. A friend of mine who grew up in Amsterdam told me about 'The Race' where you each pick a row of these unhealthy mostly deep fried snacks and try and purchase and consume your row a fast as possible.

What is your view of Dutch food in general.

Have you eaten many/any of these?
http://netherlandsbynumbers.com/2013/10/31/10-things-to-eat-you-will-find-in-dutch-snack-bars/
(apologies if you are vegetarian!)

Hello mate, what is cost of living like there compared to the UK? I've done a few road trips to Rotterdam and have been thinking of the possibility of staying there a few months

I've eaten all of those haha. I was going to do a post about them myself, but you've ruined it! I will still do a post about dutch snack food though.

FEBO is all over the Netherlands and they are the McDonalds of Dutch snack food. They do the lowest quality food but it's still decent (and very cheap). You can get Dutch snack food wherever you go and IMO it's bloody brilliant. It's obviously unhealthy but it is just soooo good. My favourite of all time is something called "Frietje oorlog" which literally means "War fries". It's called something slightly different in that article however (4.Patatje oorlog/kernoorlog/open been). No idea why it's called Patatje (must resemble the English word for potato). Dutch language and dialect is really weird and changes from one town to another.

My second favourite is called the Frikandel. It's actually made of multiple meats (one that includes horse) stuck together with breadcrumbs. My favourite variant is "Frikandel speciaal" which just means it has speciaal sauce with it (Curry or ketchup with mayo and onions). They love their mayo here. It's very different to our Mayo since it is a lot sweeter (compared to our sour, vinegar rich mayo). Interestingly they have just launched Hellmans out here, we have some in the fridge but I've yet to try it.

I've not heard about those races, but I would definitely be up for that.



I think overall the cost of living is no different to say, the South of England. Major cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht have fairly high rental prices but the fact that you don't need a car and that public transport is excellent means that you can forget about the running costs of a car. Parking is ludicrously expensive in city centres too. Expect to pay €35 a day in Amsterdam. Food and alcohol is a bit cheaper in the supermarkets but if you drink in the pub regularly it can get expensive since beer is considered more of a luxury there and therefore is more expensive (Expect €5-6 a pint). Dutch people are very nitty when it comes to spending money, they are actually very generous people but they always try to get a discount or find a cheaper way. Try to get paddy with some over here and you will find yourself saving money in various ways.

Out of interest, why Rotterdam? I have visited so many cities in the Netherlands and love them all, except Rotterdam. It's like when someone says they are visiting England but are going to stay in Birmingham for 3 months. The harbour is definitely fascinating but since Rotterdam got annihilated in the war, all the buildings are big and new. People are very Londonesque too and are generally quite rude. If I were to suggest places to spend some time I would say "Maastricht, Utrecht and Amsterdam".

Moaning it in.

I definitely should moan more. After my last blog post I played a 15 hour session where I managed two victories and six finals of which included the Big 11:

(http://i.imgur.com/IicRYKt.png)

Most probably the biggest field I've ever taken down.

On a completely different subject I've come completely obsessed with the Sparks. I had never listened to them until they collaborated with Franz Ferdinand last year. Since then, I have listened to their albums over and over.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FN_excjbAQ

Nice result Dan, well done.

Any ideas on best part of Holland for walking/camping?

Geo

Yes I can definitely help you with that. Is there anything specific you want to include or exclude? Do you want to stay away from any busy areas or what?

Oh my, well done in the Big $11. Dan is the King.

Sparks? Crikey, proper retro, that. Ron Mael is the real deal.

Ron Mael is my hero!!!! Absolutely love it that he is still going after all these years (he is 70 now!)

Love Sparkes

Good afternoon Blonde.

Last week I was very fortunate and was able to have a weeks golf holiday in Cyprus with the company of three other poker players (We were together In Portugal last October too). I knew very little about Cyprus before going and I can say I was pleasantly surprised what a lovely place it is. We stayed for a week in the Paphos area and were greeted only by very polite people (mainly ex-pats from the North of England). I found the place to be clean, cheap and extremely safe. The weather was astounding too (too hot for golf really) at a toasty 26-29C each day, which was about 3-6C above the average for time of year.

(http://i.imgur.com/tAxrC7q.jpg)

After having a rough time in Dublin in February I decided to not have a drink until I went to Cyprus (A total of 7-8 weeks). I felt like I needed to give myself a chance to feel at my peak and to stop my habitual drinking of 1 or 2 beers 4 or 5 times a week. Now I am not going to advocate that people should quit drinking alcohol, nor am I going to be shouting from the rooftops about the positives I have felt in this time from not touching a drop but I will give you the run down on how I felt different abstaining from alcohol:

-You sleep so much better. My body was used to having a small amount of alcohol in my system before visiting the land of nod, but once I got used to not drinking I could get to sleep much faster and the quality of my sleep is MUCH better. I generally sleep about 1 hour less a night now and feel better. I can also get away with a 4 hour sleep and only feel groggy for 20 minutes. Can't escape the sleep debt though, you can't just sleep 4 hours a night (not if you're me anyway).
-A general feeling of greatness. I feel a bit better about myself on a day to day basis, my mind is slightly sharper and I have a hard time getting bored.
-Weight loss. The pounds absolutely flew off, and they came off round my gut which is good. I'm not big by any means but underneath the clothes there are no muscles in sight below that film of fat over the stomach :D.
-Fitness. Naturally, my fitness improved slightly
-Sugar cravings. Unfortunately, this is a down side I guess. I've never really enjoyed eating chocolate or sweets or even having desert but the past couple of months it's all I think about. I did some reading, and it's because of how the reward system in the brain works. The break down of alcohol and sugar triggers a similar reward system in the brain. Still, a small bar of chocolate is still considerably less calories than 2 beers.

For anyone who finds alcohol a little too routine, it gets easy pretty quickly. I have no decided to quit drinking when at home and only drink when with friends, at a special occasion or on holiday.


In each blog post I am going to post something about the Netherlands. Today I will start with food. There will be many posts about food since they have a rather interesting cuisine when it comes to short meals or fast food. Below is something you will see Dutch people enjoy regularly. It's a krentenbol (currant bun or hot cross type bun) with sliced Gouda cheese. One of these has an addition of Appelstroop (Appel syrup) which is a popular addition to sliced cheese with anything.

(http://i.imgur.com/SgyCBFx.jpg)

I expect most people to wince at the food I will post in here and I will say that it's just because it's a bit different to what we are used to. This is definitely one of the more normal things that I have become accustomed to and I have found myself enjoying almost every variant of Dutch food with the exception of Haring (Herring). Dutch people are mad for it. It's a cured hearing and is often stuck in a bread roll or otherwise just eaten in one go. You can also have it sliced with some diced onion to match. The taste is quite nice, but the texture for me is foul. If you imagine what eating slugs feels like, then you won't be far wrong with this one.

(http://www.omroepzeeland.nl/sites/default/files/2015/07/25/haring_986ABC3D79D7BEE4C1257E57007025B2_4.jpg)
(http://media.nu.nl/m/m1nxhfea8p6n_wd640.jpg/nieuwe-haring-jaar-heel-vroeg.jpg)

Poker front has been quiet since I've only just started playing again this month. I expect I'll have some tasty scores to post in my next update :).

Dan

Having a read of your blog, so many Brits I've never heard of under the radar making squillions lol. See you binked 100k before hitting 100 games in 2006 ha apt name brah ;)

3rd in the Million last night

Back in June I managed a tasty chop in the SM for ~$120k and parted with the BITB shortly after since my contract had expired and it felt to be the right thing to do. It wasn't easy though since they have a good thing going on over there full of great minded people. I decided against posting about my SM victory here and also not participating in an article for P5 because I've really started to realise it's important to be a bit modest.

Since quitting the stable I had struggled with my volume for a long time since after catching up on real life (and realising how hard I had worked in the past couple of years), it felt a bit daunting "going back to work" again. I decided to contact Elliot Roe for some one to one sessions and they did wonders. For those out of the loop, he is the poker hypnotherapist/psychologist that everyone raves about.

Outside of poker I've spent a lot of time playing golf. I've enjoyed golf my whole life but I found in the past 10 years I never dedicated time to practicing. At the start of this year I decided to get some lessons, it's been really nice having something else to work towards that I'm passionate about. Currently my handicap is 7 and I've set a target to be down to 4 at the end of next year. I'm very confident I will smash that with the progress I've made this year but whenever I've said this in the past I've given up and forgotten how hard it is to be good at golf! A couple of swings from the range a few months ago: https://vimeo.com/183013052 https://vimeo.com/182195754


Coaching

I've been coaching here and there for the past couple of years, spending quite a bit of time coaching some of the smaller stakes people of BITB whilst I was there. I really enjoy it and as well as it being a second source of income, I find it helps my own game too. I am restricted to how much I can coach because I play poker full time and also run a small stable on the side, but I am looking to take on around 5 students.

I am going to advertise on 2+2 once I am back from Punta Cana, but for now here is my listing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FXkaA9BElACqa68u71uNnrhNsKlN-EAGP6s_QQsYnPQ/edit?usp=sharing

If any blondites are interested in coaching, contact me here or on skype (lucky_scrote)

-Dan

Golf - Not sure if its the camera angle on the first one but you have an interesting forward press in your set up.  All correct as you start but an interesting address, did you have a high fade prior to the lessons? or when you started?  History of cricket?
Second vid is beautiful, a finish to die for.  I would suggest you have found a very good teacher.
Good luck on hitting your goal.

Nice post, Dan.

When you say this near the top of a piece....


"I've really started to realise it's important to be a bit modest".


...you are always going to be better appreciated. Not sure there is anything less endearing in a human being than misplaced arrogance.

I am set up with a little too much weight on the front food. I'll address that at some point I imagine. I always seem to have something bigger to work on every time I have a lesson although my coach does point this out every time. He also points out that my club face is a little shut at takeaway.

 
2016 is coming to a close now and in order to prevent this from becoming a poker blog post like any other I will try not to focus too much on my results. For me it's been a great year, I've seen a lot of people posting negativity on the internet and on FB about how people are dying and how miserable 2016 has been in general. I am definitely not just noticing it more than before, but if people want to keep focusing on the negatives and how dreadful their lives have been then I guess their future isn't look prosperous. If you're in a rut then you need to do something about it. Even when you work hard things can still go badly, but I am confident that if you feel negative and keep doing the same old shit day in day out then shit ain't gonna change.

Poker wise I have exceeded my expectations in terms of results. I've run above EV but I've also worked hard. The only area I am lacking in is motivation. The problem with me and poker is that I play poker for the money these days. I've been playing for a living for over 11 years now and lots of stuff that was exciting to begin with isn't there anymore. Don't get me wrong I am still very grateful for what poker has given me. It's a bit like a relationship these days, trying to figure out what is best, how to make a transition from the honeymoon period into something that is just "there".

I've had some sessions with Elliot Roe and they have helped, but I think I need to change it up a little bit. I've played a lot of online poker in the last few years but neglected live poker. I am certainly going to try and do a bit more travelling around Europe for 2017. I think I will try and blog a little about that in the future, giving an insight on the best way to maximise enjoyment as well as working on ways to stop expenses eating away into the bottom line. Live tournament poker has always been a tough way to make a living because generally only the younger population are able to do it, and the younger population are also dreadful at handling money. I have been there but times have changed. If I can get 10% off a hotel booking I am over the moon!

Time for a little brag. I'm supposed to be more modest but this is worth it. The Dutch poker Open was held in Breda just before Xmas. It's a type of Champions of champions event. I didn't quite meet the prerequisites to enter but I sent a nice e-mail and they allowed me a wild card. Well, I bloody won didn't I! Absolutely love this live poker malarkey.

(http://i.imgur.com/5lgxq4B.jpg)

I also had a little victory outside of poker. I closed my golfing year by winning the final competition of the year. We were only allowed to use 3 clubs and a putter and I shot my best round of the year (73)!

Have a prosperous 2017 blonde

-Dan

Hey Dan,

Well done on the live win, nice going and fantastic finish to the year.

11 years in poker that is quite some going, it is so relentless (poker), it's no surprise that it's all about the money now, compared to starting out when it was all about fun and the challenge of improving.

With poker, or life, it's good to mix it up and keep it fresh so defo get stuck into the live scene where it will be a lot more personable and "real" compared to online.

Look at Alex G, he loves live poker and seems to do very well too.

All the best for the NY