blonde poker forum

Hey Everyone  :hello:

Happy New Year to all!

There is some fantastic diaries on here, from seasoned pro's, to those moving up the ranks, long standing ones and everything in-between. Love Blonde!

Decided to start this for motivation in 2015 focussing on MTTs.

2014

I've been playing about 4 years now, first 2 were very infrequent and was a slight losing / break even player. 2014 has been a phenomenal year for me and game is totally different to where it was at the start of the year. Most of my volume was at cash.

2015

Hoping to play more tourneys> Cash and have sessions where I only grind tournies, which I've hardly ever done before! With Cash nowadays it's mostly autopilot but with MTT's quite often there's spots i'm not 100% sure of the best/most optimal line to take.

These are my stats for 2014 to do with MTTs up to 27th Dec

http://gyazo.com/c92b32be78b2293109bcef6442a9fc72

The ROI is quite decent but the average buy in is really low.

Goals for 2015


- Put in more MTT Volume
-Spend more time analysing MTT hands / working on my MTT game
-Increase the Average Buy in
-Increase my score rating on Sharkscope >76.

I'll be posting hand histories on the thread, discussing certain lines I took, and why I took them also looking at strategy.

Cash game style: LAG
Tournie game style: TAG early, LAG later on.

Players that have inspired me (for tournies): Tommy, MB, Gazza, Batkin88, EvilP, dohh as well as many others.

That's where I want to be with MTTs:)
[/list][/list]

Good luck sir!

Good luck Larson!

Remind me, did you do a 24 hour "pokerthon" v Slippy in 2014, or was it someone else?

Thanks Alex and Tikay. It was me and slippy that did the 24 hour pokerthon

Thought so, amazing stuff, that, I seem to recall I railed you guys for a bit.

Ah got a feeling about this!

Look forward to seeing all the hand histories you put up. I'd probably drop the £5 BH's altogether if you really want to take your game up a notch. Get in the mains, gotta be in them to win them. 4/7 mains every week are bounty hunters so if that's your favourite form of tournament play you should be looking to nail them.

GL sir see you at the tables no doubt :P

Thought so, amazing stuff, that, I seem to recall I railed you guys for a bit.
[/quote]

You certainly did, the rail was buzzing the last 30 mins, everyone was brilliant cheering us on to the finish.

Tried to get the last hand of the 24 hour pokerthon to post up, but hand history only seems to go back 3 months! Was a really interesting one.

It was a 4 way all in pre flop, I had about 500 BB Slip had a lot a bb, plus a couple of others came along for the ride. My AQ triumphed - was never in doubt, not even against slippy's 88 lol

Cliffs: Slipwater (sky reg) and I decided on doing a 24 hour pokerthon to raise money for cancer research, in the end over £1000 was raised for the charity through the generosity of the sky poker community.

 

 

Yeah, HH need to play bigger buy in's for sure. I'll need to get a decent schedule together that work's for MTT's.

I certainly will Young_Gun, maybe not as much as before now tho:)

Gl...let us see the schedule when you have worked it out!

Cheers Chris,

Tonight's going to be my 1st proper night. Going to just play on sky for the time being to see if I can get enough games to play and also how I do muli-tabling MTT's.

Tonight i'm going to play the:

£1000 18:45 £5.75
£350 19:15  £5.75
£1000 19:45  £11
£33 Main BH 8:00
£1000 20:15  £11
8:30 £5.50 MINI ?? Maybe
£3000 BH 21:30 £11

There's a £55 game too @ 9:30 / 10:00. might try and sat into that.

Tonight was poo lol

Got a £50 bet on with Lambert: Most profit on Sky MTT's 1st 6 months of the year.

Gl Lambo!

Hand 1, first level 10/20, we have 2k.  Jd 2d in the BB. 3 Limpers SB folds.

Flop.  6d 9h  3h. Checks though.  Qd. We bet 67.50 into 90. 2 calls.

River   8d  We bet to 220 into 290ish. UTG Calls. UTG +1 Jams and has us covered. I was a bit concerned about A or K Flush, but felt he'd prob play a lot of flushes this way.

I think given this action against certain players we can fold. I called,  he had 10j o/s

Hand 2,

We have  2s 2h, blinds 20/40 OTB

Cut off limps - we make it 160. Both small/ big call. Pot is 640.

Flop:  3c 5c 6c SB donks 80. We call to raise turn, bet a lot a rivers. Or bet (any non club turn and river)

Pot= 800. Turn   Ah. Villian bets 120 into 800

We  to 440. It's quite a small raise delberatly. Pot 1680

River  3h.

I wanted to bet small but not 2 small. Went for 1k. And are called by  Ac 7.

I thought he was pretty weak with a c in his hand. Something like Kc6, 10-Ac x. That kind of range.

I quite dislike my line OTT, just because his Ace c( if he had that just got there). I suppose when he continues to put in an lol bet on the turn, I was thinking he didn't have the A c.

Felt it might be more like 10-K c. OTR don't feel he's ever folding an ace.

As soon as he made the lol flop donk, I decided I was checking raising a lot of turns, Ace h actually looked like an ideal card, but totally overlooked the Ac, which clearly is going to be the most prominent C he's doing the min donk bet with.

Overall, I don't normally make these plays so early, think it's defo better to make these plays later on when blinds are decent and should have just folded the flop.

I just had a look at hand 2 again, I really dislike my line here with very little to no equity, think he calls even wider with Ace x maybe as far as 6x club x.

3 Wasn't an ideal river either, if he has 77, 88, or a hand like K6 Q6.

Fold Flop, As played, check back river with our limited show down value.

 Bit spewy!

Can you explain why you bet 1k on the river in hand 2, when you say ''he's never folding an ace''?

Not keen on a single street on hand 2 in all honesty.

The start of the month and the last few days in December have been poor.

I read a post elsewhere about a month ago, the person was moaning about variance and how bad they ran. After reading it my reaction was that people over emphasise the impact of variance at times, in particularly when they are playing badly/ making the wrong decisions.

To me negative variance (at cash) is like 1 or bad session sporadically in-between winning sessions, eg very short term - never sustained periods of constant losing.

I made priority on Sky in December (and November) I put in a lot of volume to achieve this and both months were really decent profit wise. December was my best month ever.

Post Chritsmas day, I have been playing badly, havn't ran particularly well, but mostly it's just been playing terrible.

That 22 hand above just reflects how I've been playing.

When I made my op was planning to play a lot more tournies, which I will for sure, but will also need to keep up cash sessions at times as well.

Won't have great internet access over the next week, so it's actually worked out really well. I'm going to chill and have a good few days off from poker and come back wanting to play, not play because i'm forcing myself to.

Got Moorman's book before Christmas going to have a good look at that too.



 
       

Dunno if that person was me or not but I think if anything people underestimate the impact of variance.

Hi mate, nah it wasn't you, it was a random on another forum.

Hand 1 looks pretty standard, rarely folding unless you have a perfect read on the opponent has A/Kflush easy call as played

Hand 2 is a mess bro, pre flop i do occasionally will squeeze IP with pp so that part isn't too bad but post flop just get out really no need to be fancy

Been painting the last week so haven't been playing much.

First thing that got painted was the hall carpet lol knocked over a tin of white gloss (it was sitting on top of a larger paint pot) it falls down up side down, go to pick it up, lids comes off, white gloss everywhere lol

Poker: Played the last few days, MTT's have still been poor. I would say it's my worst run in tourneys in a long time, but to be fair it's a really small sample size.

Pretty confident run good is on it's way!

Momentum

Confidence and momentum is so important for me in poker.

Played a few MTT's tonight, was a mixed bag of some good and bad play. I bricked everything apart from a £5 MTT coming 2nd for £50. It's not a lot, but importantly it was a deep run and a FT. I went to the FT chip leader, went kinda card dead 3 handed. Got to HU a 2:1 dog. Managed to chip up and take the chip lead. Against the villain all I had to do was win lots of small pots - not bluff - and bet big with my strong hands. As in he'd limp pretty much every button. But, well, it's me, and I do silly stuff. Ended up doing a ridiculous bluff which put me back to a 2:1. Chipped up a bit then lost a flip to GG it. Normally getting to HU, i'm gutted to come 2nd. But the opponent deserved to win.

Stats for the month so far (MTT's), games 24, avg stake £8.17, profit minus £156.

Really low volume so far. Bit diff to my op, i'm going to stick to low stake MTT's for the rest of January just to build up a bit of confidence and hopefully get some momentum going.

If things go decent over the next few days might have a go at the MTT promo next week, with the winner getting a UKPC seat + accom. 
 

Couple of hands from that game.

Hand 1, 4 handed, blinds 200/400.

OTB  6c 8c. Min raise to 800. 9s 5s 9h. We have 20800 chips. SB has 15k, BB has 23k.

Reads SB is a regular, good decent player. He plays a lot of HU sit and gos. BB is pretty inexperienced.

Both players call.  Flop  9s 5s  9h

It checks through. I didn't continuation bet. HU easy continuation bet, I think the SB has a reasonable ranger here, like pocket pairs, Ace x though couldn't be that great an ace I guess, only hand I think i'm  getting him to fold is like KQ type hands.

Turn  7s. SB= Check. BB= 1200 bet (half pot).

I raised small for value and we can just fold if he 3 bets. I expect him to bet all 9x hands, some 7 x hands, Certain spade x hands.

I raised  to 2800. Really small raise. (8000)

River  Jh

I bet 4800. He calls.

FT Bubble (98 players started). 7 left. 3 Handed. Other table 4 handed.

Blinds 600/1200. We have 25k at start of the hand in the BB.

SB Raises to 4200,they have us covered.

We have

 Ad Qh

We jam.

There is only 1 player that was reasonabley short. And they've just doubled to 20k.

Reads, the player is doing this with any Ace X pocket pair etc, they are not folding - they've never raised like 3x or over, and folded, but their holdings have always been pretty poor raggy aces, pocket pairs.

Just standard I have to get this in here. Lost to 77.




 

don't we have enough to 3bet/call here? Not sure about mtts as don't play em that much but allows us to have a wider range if we can 3bet/call or 3bet/fold here. Might be risking too much though

No choice but to jam AQ.

86 is wp too. Could make the turn bigger.

86 is an easy cbet because the sb has to play tighter due to it being multiway and having to worry about the bb thus folding ax. bb whilst having more 9'sthan the sb will still not continue a huge amount and we have no showdown value. if we had a3ss then maybe i would consider checking, but still cbetting will have a higher ev. as played i would flat the turn and raise a river bet depending on sizing. this way his range is more defined (if he bets big hes probably polarised between hands that beat you and bluffs and we can call, and if he bets small hes probably not bliuffing and has a wider value range and we can potentially raise.

having a turn raising range when we check back the flop is pretty bad though i think.

Cheers everyone for the comments.

Really interesting when I looked at the 68 hand, as per my post, wasn't sure about the fact I hadn't continuation bet. Really like what you said about continuation betting pads.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tonight I played 5/6 MTT's, made 1 FT, coming 3rd. I was the chip leader 3 handed, although we were all reasonable deep.

This hand happened.

In SB with Ks Kc

Blinds 1/2k. We have 80k, button has 60k, other player has 65k.

Button is a reg, other player is pretty inexperienced.

He min raises button to 4k, we 3 bet to 8k. He calls (18k)

Flop  Ac 2c 2s

We bet 8k. Call. Pot 34k. He has 45kish behind.

Turn  7h. We check, he bets half pot, 17k, and we fold.

He had been playing pretty snug (versus me) and generally avoiding me. He could have floated and bluffed, but given the stacks, game flow, it's just one of those ones I have to fold. If he's floated bluffed with 101099JJ then well played!

Lost the next hand, where I played a draw aggressively and bricked. Exit hand was inexperienced player 3.5 xes it (his standard open sizing! if not limping), I jammed AQhh he calls with 99s and lose the flip. AQ's my bogey hand of the day!

Was playing a lot of cash games too, ended up having a great night at cash.

Really happy with my play over the last few days. And am getting back to a bit of normality with poker!

Thanks for that insight ;)

Don't like the effective clickback with KK. And villain almost never has 10s or Js.

Just seen a message saying the 3 bet should be bigger.

All interesting stuff, glad I started this thread!

That's been my normal 3 bet sizing (value/ bluffs) doubling the initial raise - When a tournie is late on and stack sizes are quite shallowish like 30-40 bigs.

Unless it's a player like the other player at the table, we don't have to be balanced at all as he's only looking at his own cards.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What a goal for Matthews  against Hamilton Accies today, total belter!

So you don't adjust your raise sizing according to your table position and where the initial raise has come from?

Started playing about 10:30 tonight, cash plus the 10:40 £5 BH, 11:30 £10 and 12:30 £10 BH.

Nothing in the 1st two, got a decent run in the 12:30 BH, eventually getting knocked out in 7th Place. Everything was pretty standard.

Delighted to be getting a bit of momentum going, just need to book some wins now!

------------------------------------------------------

Had an interesting hand the other day on cash:

WE have pocket Aces 3 bet pot. Flop QQ5. We bet call. Turn Q, we bet, massive raise comes in (we are 200plus bb deep)

I've played tens of 1000s of hands against the opponent, my decision seemed very easy:) 

Poker

I was thinking for a while about putting some money on stars to play about with the 45/90/180 Sit and Go's, for a bit of practice with MTT's. Not to put in any great amount of volume on there, just to have sessions now and again, and also at some point in the next couple of months, to play some larger runner tourneys, like $11 ones.  

Today I played about 8 or so games on there, I got pretty lucky and managed to come 3rd in a 180 game. It was a turbo, as were all the games I played, pretty sure they must have normal paced games, will defo be playing them the next time.

Know your strengths and weaknesses


I used to mess about with HU Sit and Go's - they are great fun, I love playing them and the HU dynamic. There is a player on here when he started playing HU sit and gos a lot he used to play me/ watch me play,  to see what I was doing. It was his perception my game was really aggro. Today he plays on stars and is a regular at the $15 games (I think). He has a fantastic understanding of the maths, and jam folding ranges and all the intricacies of HU Sit and Gos.. Basically, his knowledge of HU Sit and Go's would put my knowledge to shame! If I now played him HU he would have an edge most likely.

That was just an example of HU, the exact same applies to MTT's.

For MTT's i'll need to spend some time looking at shove / fold charts, ranges, ICM,  that kind of stuff, which will really help my MTT game. I just need to become a bit more solid, in standard situations.

Basically, there's a lot a stuff I need to do with regard to tournies.
 



 

  

"Know your strengths and weaknesses"

wtf is this, dr phil? lol

Hey

Going on a blog holiday, will return when I win my 1st tournament of the Year:D

Really happy with how things are going, it's all good.

Lambo is ahead in the prop bet. But plenty of time left  :)

Glad to see lildave's blog back, more pls! A genuinely nice guy, http://www.lildaveslife.com/2015/01/happy-new-year.html

In other poker related news, great to see srslysirius back on youtube!

Run good everyone, see you soon!

#Invalid YouTube Link#

 #Invalid YouTube Link#

take the s out of the the https mate.

its a good one that vid lol

Yeah his stuff is awesome, total quality:D

Came 4th in the prio freeroll tonight for £220

This was the payoutstructure

1st      £800
2nd      £500
3rd      £300
4th      £220
5th      £180

Lost 1010> AQ to GG it, flipmeister wasn't working :(

But reckon that takes me out of the MTT hole for the month/ year, so delighted with that.

Defo last post until I bink!

Nice result mate

Thanks Alex.

January

Been a bit of a crazy month! By the 13th/14th Jan I was in a (small) hole, hadn't played much and when I was playing it was MTT's. Tbh, I was seriously concerned if  I would actually make a profit for the month.

The last 10 days have been fantastic (cash). I've been playing a lot more cash and it's been going really well. Profit for the month to date is less than my monthly  avg, but my volume has been less and I've spent quite  a lot of time on MTT's. Overall, i'm really pleased with the month.

I defo think my MTT game is better than it was at the end of Dec, and am just looking to keep improving/ build up my knowledge.

December for MTT's, will be about breakeven.** Have ran pretty bad for the most part in them.

I've also been playing some 180/90/45/18 man Sit and Go's on Stars just for a bit of practice, reckon these will defo help improve my mtt game.

Looking forward to February, it's all going in the right direction, and am planning to get some more live cash in too.

**I'm not a member on sharkscope, if anyone is a member would it be at all possible for you to scope me and post up a graph for my MTT results for JAn1- Present. 

Thanks:)

here is sharkscope as requested

Thanks ironside much appreciated.

90 games is such a small sample as not to be relevant going 90 MTTs without decent cash or a FT isnt much to worry about

some of the big grinders and winners would of gone alot longer without a cash

It is a pretty small sample size, but gonna smash it in Febuary.

Had a couple of results tonight:

26 Jan '15 at 18:44 Poker UKPC Freeroll £48.00 £0.00 Poker AIR client Hand History  
26 Jan '15 at 18:44 Poker UKPC Freeroll £0.00 £0.00 Poker AIR client Hand History  
26 Jan '15 at 18:43 Poker £1,200 B/Hunter £31.60

Took the cash from UKPC freeroll for £48 and 10th in the 6:45 BH out of 300 + runners, was a bit frustrating was 1/24 at one point. 200 plus FTW plus bounties.

Will be back in profit for the month at MTTs after 2 night, but UKPC cash prob won't show on scope cause it was a locked event.

There's another priority freeroll tomorrow night, 2 seats for the UKPC/ Team Sky Poker. Should only be about 30/50 runners, so a wee bink would be sweet!

Yoyo January

That best describes January for MTT's!

Since I last posted, I've not had a winning day with tourneys. Today I was 1/12 in a 300 plus runner tournie and managed to finish 11 lol was 1/8 in another and finished 7th.

In Febuary i'm going to mostly play £11 plus games, and will also start playing more sats for the £33 and £55 games.

After January I would say my roi for tourneys ever will still be above 30%. So can't complain.

Goal for February is to play 100 £11 MTT's.

For a bit of fun/ to keep me focussed/ if anyone wants a sweat in February, i'm happy to sell up to 30% for these 100 games at spot, somebody already has 10%.

It's for £11 games only starting on Feb 1st.

5% = £55
10%=£110.

It's just a bit of fun, so if anybody want's 10% of 10 games, or 50 etc that's no problem too.

Eg 10% of 10 games = £11.

 











 

 

I'm going to do a sweat thread tonight in here.

Hopefully it should be interesting and I can get some deep runs going.

Will be starting about 7.

  

This afternoon went up to the gym and then for a swim, had some scran. Ready to go!

Going to play 5-7 games, will update this thread as the night unfolds, hopefully get a few deep runs going and do a win.

Confidence at start of session, 9.5

Grind Music: Scooter

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijXGSw4sYXU

Decide to late reg a game! Start with just over 30 bigs: pick up aces the 1st hand

Raise a bit big pre, but expectin atleast 1 caller

Player   Action   Cards   Amount   Pot   Balance
katiebaby    Small blind       30.00    30.00    5845.00
Denbo1956    Big blind       60.00    90.00    1970.00
     Your hole cards   
A
A
          
chrisx2525    Call       60.00    150.00    5303.75
LARSON7    Raise       300.00    450.00    1700.00
mumbles115    Call       300.00    750.00    900.00
POCKETME    All-in       740.00    1490.00    0.00
katiebaby    Fold            
Denbo1956    Fold            
chrisx2525    Fold            
LARSON7    Call       440.00    1930.00    1260.00
mumbles115    Call       440.00    2370.00    460.00
Flop
         
9
Q
3
          
LARSON7    All-in       1260.00    3630.00    0.00
mumbles115    All-in       460.00    4090.00    0.00
LARSON7    Unmatched bet       800.00    3290.00    800.00
LARSON7    Show   
A
A
mumbles115    Show   
7
A
POCKETME    Show   
3
K
Turn
         
8
          
River
         
7
          
LARSON7    Win    Pair of Aces    3290.00

Good start!

GGd 5 games, just need to win 1 of the last 2!

Only made the cash in 1 game tonight.

Lost this pot to gg it with about 10 left.

LARSON7    Small blind       500.00    500.00    13785.00
pimmsno1    Big blind       1000.00    1500.00    11117.50
     Your hole cards   
8
8
          
MAXSHADOW    All-in       785.75    2285.75    0.00
INTHEDARK    Call       1000.00    3285.75    44745.00
apr1965    Fold            
banana10    Call       1000.00    4285.75    25498.50
LARSON7    All-in       13785.00    18070.75    0.00
pimmsno1    Fold            
INTHEDARK    Call       13285.00    31355.75    31460.00
banana10    Fold            
LARSON7    Show   
8
8
MAXSHADOW    Show   
7
A
INTHEDARK    Show   
K
Q
Flop
         
7
9
5
          
Turn
         
3
          
River
         
Q
          
INTHEDARK    Win    Pair of Queens    31355.75   

Going to start only playing £10 plus games from now on. The rake on the fiver games, 15% is pretty steep. It was good for January tho, gave me  a bit of practice of multi-tabling tourneys.

Next month, i'm going to play 1 or 2 tournies alongside 5/6 cash games, which is what I've always done in the past and seems to have worked well.

Started the £11 games today.

1)28/124 £3.75
2)6/118  £69.16
3)5/85 £46.39

Total Spend, £33, Winnings £119.30. Profit £86.30

Nice ROI mate, keep it going.

Great start, now keep it going.

Really enjoy this diary,

Thanks Alex and Tikay

Getting a bit of momentum going and have finished January in a positive, i'll get a scope graph posted up for my January results.

Also managed to book my 1st win of the year tonight, which i'm delighted with.

£11 Game 4) £7.50


Total Spend, £44, Winnings £126.80. Profit £82.80* £11 MTTs only

I played 2 other games tonight, £5.50 £200 GTD which I managed to bink

LARSON7   112000   1   £103.60
Also came 4th in the £8.80  £400 GTD for £45.76.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Going to the football tomorrow, was really pleased when I heard Celtic had been drawn against Rangers for the semi-final. Expected it would be a great game, but with everything that's gone on with Ranger's in the last month or so, losing Ally McCoist and the constant financial problems, expect it could be embarrassing for them.  

Well done so far, Kev. Enjoy the game :)

Cheers Vince. How's the live games going?

Me and Lambo's S/S for January:

http://gyazo.com/db4e79dc270f3641827f095c11a760be (http://gyazo.com/db4e79dc270f3641827f095c11a760be)

Lambert's ahead in the £50 prop bet, for just now :)

Goals for February

- Make Priority
-Finish 100 £11 MTTs
-Got 2 win a MTT!

From middle of February, also going to be playing 16 BH Mains (4 a week). Bigger picture is to be playing these regularly by about April.

Won't have a lot of time to play before Friday, but going for a big grind over the weekend.

Game 5) 0
Game 6)£4.50
Game 7) £15
Game 8) 0 Tuesday Main
Game 9) £105.46, Came 2nd, really disappointed got to HU 96K Versus 66k. Ended up gettinga  split pot with AJ>Ace 8 aipf. Didn't get much better. exit hand was 46hh all in on 4 xx board, 2 hearts. Opponent played really well.

Total Spend, £110, Winnings £251.76. Profit £141.76* £11 MTTs only

Going along nicely, keep it up.

Don't be fretting abuot the odd reverse or bit of bad luck, it's a long road, & it'll all balance out over time.

For sure it does Tikay.

Wasn't meant to be a moan post if anything was just frustration and wrote the post immediately after the game had finished.

Was just frustrated I had blown a chip lead heads up.

Always feel a bit disappointed coming 2nd, like you are so close and just fall at the last hurdle, but that feeling soon disappears:)

evening!

Need to try and record a session sometime this week, previously used capture wiz when I had it ona  free trial.

Anyone know any decent recoding software that's free, something similar to capture wiz?

Just google 'free screen recording software', there are tons that are either completely free or will give you a 30 day free trial. Off the top of my head, I think CamStudio is free and does the job.

RE: the prop bet, I'm basically just relying on you losing money atm (which is unlikely) cos I'm having a complete mare with Sky. There's some issue with EE (my ISP) blocking access to Sky between 7:30pm - 10pm so I've played about 5 MTTs on there so far in Feb!

Played a lot today, result = Minus £10 lol

Have a new bogey hand for tournies AK.

Busted pretty much every tournie today with it haha

Had fun at cash up a load, breakeven, down, up again lol

Hand of the night was calling a 4 bet with 48suited OTB, flopping a flush and getting paid for it ;D

Guy said I was playing wild ::)

Cheers Paul, tried camstudio and it wouldn't work for some reason, something about an exe file or extension or something. They might as well be speaking French!

Got this other programme, Flashback pro - 30 day trial - which is awesome but a nightmare at the same time, you have to edit it and other techie stuff, again might as well be in French, would probs understand that better!

Managed to get capturewiz again, says my freetrial is up, but for some reason seems to still record.

With the prop bet still a long time to go and nothing in it, starting racking those wins up when your back on sky.

Gl!

litecam HD is decent. GL in the tournies

Thanks KP.

Ended up recording my play from 8 tonight, 4 tables (MTT)

Best run of the night was in the main.

I've managed to compress it, so atleast I can view it on my own comp. It's like a Java webpage that comes up??

If any MTT boss would be interested in doing a review or looking at a part of it for me, that would be awesome!
 

 

Reviewed the session from last night with a few different people today - different stages.

Wasn't sure how it would go, but was absolutely amazing.

I picked up a lot, especially on the latter stages, stuff i should / should not be doing.

Most importantly I picked up on some something I was doing, that i didn't even realise i was doing - a massive leak.

Phenomenal, delighted i made the vid, going to be making another one tonight.

It's put into perspective where i am at with MTT's.  

Was just reading King Push's thread re live poker.

I keep saying i'm going to play live, really will need to get round to it.

Was talking to my friend about it the other day, hopefully going to get some live cash in during March.

The first time I went must have been one year ago, or even more than that. I sat down with £200, was expecting it to be 100nl, only to find out every place in Glasgow was 1/2.

Was £100 plus £100 in case I needed to reload. Was a bit reluctant at first when I knew it was 200nl, but decided to give it a go.

Ended up playing the biggest pot I had ever played at that time.

2/3 O/S in the BB. UTG Straddled. 6 players limped, we made up from the BB.

Flop was 2, 3, 8. We checked?? Old boy raised, we reraised, he jams and I call flicking over my cards.

He keeps his cards face down, dealer puts out the turn and river. Old boy says "you're good son" before mucking. I'll take the patronising, we have the money!

About an hour later, won another couple of small pots, I cashed out for £450-£500. Going home at 3 in the morning I was terrified walking about with that amount of money in my pocket lol

I've set aside 1k for live cash, only 5 buy ins.

Maybe totally naïve but I don't ever expect to go busto with this 1k though I fully understand it could happen. It's money that's coming from online.

I also played live cash just before xmas. There was never a spot I wasn't sure about / or put in any tough spots. There was no player at that table I would have been worried about. iirc there was only 1 player at the table who seemed decent. Of course that could just have been an especially soft table.  

A big roll is more worthy of protection than a small roll. Most people get this the wrong way round. Honeybadger

Profound and definitely resonates with me.

When it comes to online, I can't comment on 5 years ago, but in today's world cash games definitely seem to be getting tougher than when I first started, and that's not even that long ago, in the last 2 years. And that's at really low levels, no idea what it's like at 100nl plus.

The number of "regulars" has just increased and increased.

It's interesting bankroll and moving up.

For players starting out today, I expect it will be a lot harder to break through to 100nl plus and to be a great success at these levels.

I've lost count of the number of times I've lost more than £1k playing in soft 1/2 games without even running especially bad.

#Naïve.

Better just run golden first few times I play then.

I'll update on here how the live adventure goes.

<3

Was a bit fool hardy saying bankroll of £1k for live, I was thinking it's 5 x 100bb over 5 sessions.

First time I go i'll just take 200/250 BB and see how it goes and take it from there.

For live cash players, do you normally just sit down with 100BB or 200BB?

I much rather having 200bb in a cash game. In saying that I don't know if it matters that much? Could have been a one off, but the last time I went iirc 2 players had approx 100bb or just over, 1 player was really deep, and the rest of the table had 50-70 bb stacks or less, few sitting with the minimum £40 and just reloading to £40 again when they bustod.

I guess a decent bankroll for live cash would be about 10k.

If I run good could soon spin it up, if badly, then its worthwhile having a go. Certainly don't think there would be any players at the table I would be scared of and expect to have an edge over the vast majority, if not all, of the table.

Much prefer sitting deep myself but it's each to their own, It's always nice to have everyone covered if it's possible.  A couple of years ago I used to organise a pub cash game, started it at 25p/25p and then over time the plan came together and over 6-8 months we were playing 1/1 with a couple of straddles on 50% of hands, depending who was sat where, anyway one night I'd had a nightmare, was stuck about £400, wanted to quit and go home but it was my game, I always stayed to the end, I was sat shallow like £35, I was in damage limitation mode, tilting by playing to lose the minimum.  I called a raise from the blinds with 55 and flopped quads into aces full.  Raiser had nearly £300.  I've never sat shallow since!

Sigh PPF with the quadaroonies, pretty brutal.

This is what one of my friends wrote in his blog today on livecash:

I've decided that I need to keep my 'live play head' on, so I'm probably not going to play on Sky (or on any other site as it happens) before the UKPC.

I've had a good run playing cash at the weekends. In fact, I've actually making more money (just) on Friday and Saturday nights these last two months than I have done in my regular day job - scary thought - and I've never really thought of myself as a cash game player.

Can't wait to get February out of the way, got 8k p/points so far, just 2 k 2 go, then get stuck into some live cash in March.

Just watched the EPT FT On Channel 4, total quality!

Have really loved this series.

The hand HU where Salter 3 bet the double gutter ball on the flop, then buonanno led right into him ott, brilliant stuff!

Was hard to understand why Salter and his crew turned down the deal for the difference of £10k (think it was 10k anyway).

I really liked the way Buonanno handled himself, and can understand why he was pissed a deal wasn't done.

I may have misunderstood, but I think Salter offered €949,000, Buonanno said "make it €950,000 & you have a deal" & Salter flat refused.

Then the "I won't deal" curse hit him, & he ended up getting half a million less than the winner, for a net loss of about €300,000 based on the refused deal. All for the sake of giving Mr Italy another €1k.

Everything is not how it seems there Mr T.

Some German Hiroller (Martin Finger iirc) turned up and offered to buy a huge majority of Jacks action heads up. I believe Jack was playing for 30k of his own money in that HU match, and Martin (and friends?) had the rest, so he effectively had done a deal, just not with the Italian!

I am aware of that (though not the exact numbers), yes, but it makes no difference.

SOMEONE on Team Salter, be it him or his backers/friends, refused to pay an extra €1,000, & that decision cost them a 6 figure number. They can't have been too chuffed afterwards, whereas Mr Italy must have been doing handstands. It never cost Jack, no, but it cost someone.

At the time, Jack had a chip lead, iirc, of about 11/10, or 11/9, or similar. What price he won it from there, especially against a seasoned HU player? 4/5 & Evens at best? Can't be much different to that, it's almost a pickem.

What price were they laying when they turned down the extra €1,000? 1/200 or somesuch? Betcha they don't ever do that again.

I don't have ANY problem with Jack, not at all, but logically, that made no sense. 

Have to say, I'm not at all sure I like this thing where Italy is asking for a deal, & Jack says "I have to go ask my mates".

Italy says "give me €X"

Jack toddles off, asks, returns.

"My mates said no".

"Give me €Y then"

"I'll go ask my mates".

Can't quite put my finger on it, but that just feels wrong somehow.

If I get HU with you for a milly, I'm dealing with you, nobody else, & if you say you have to go ask someone, I'll tell you to forget it.

Anyway, good luck to them both, but I'm buggered if that makes any sense to me. Adrenelin affects our judgement, I think.

PS - Did you enjoy watching TV Star Stato? I thought he was just great.

incredible story.  Agree with you TK i would be more worried about getting to the bar than worrying about a grand esp as you might end up having to do another 2 or 3 hours work heads up to finish it off if you don't deal.  hourly rate of 300 euros an hour plus the variance doesn't seem worth it to me when you got half a mill gtd.  
Also hate heads up deals where the other guy has to ask his mates.  Shouldn't be allowed.  If you are respected enough to play the game for £1m on your own then you should be suitably qualified to make a deal on your own.

This seems like similar to "cashing out" a big accumulator on betfair, I followed that thread and you had the exact opposite view there.

By dealing Jack is giving up a huge chunk of EV. He perceives that he is the best player and has a significant edge. Giving the guy an even chop is sacrificing a HUGE amount of EV. Literally tens of thousands of euros. Why would he do that?

He's gone very deep in his accumulator, is it time to cash out and deal?

Yes he's got half a mill gtd. But he's not going to retire on that. He'll be back on the circuit playing tournaments again in a few days, playing 500s, 1ks, 2ks 5ks etc. Giving up tens of thousands of euros in EV will seem pretty silly then.

Sure i get all that but i was assuming that tikay was right in the fact that he was a flip or close to a flip to win it so he wasn't giving up huge ev.  If he was a 65/35 fav heads up then it's different.  I just went off Tikay's stats.  Sorry if i didn't realise the full story.  To be willing to offer £499k as a deal then decline 500k seems idiotic though if those facts are correct.  Why would u offer £499k then refuse £500k?  Potentially doing 2 or 3 hours work to earn an extra £1k seems pointless if you are happy dealing at £499k and taking the swings.  Again i might have got these stats wrong if so apologies.

Changing subjects to deal making Alex.  As a good deal maker yourself what is your view on ur heads up opponent in any given mtt being able to discuss with his stakers/friends etc which might give you less of an edge in any dealings?

The heads up match lasted 9 hours by the way! It was quite an incredible match, with Jack really dominating and having him allin 4/5 times to win but could never finish him. Then it all turned as you saw. The TV show doesn't do it justice at all but obviously it can't.

I don't believe there was ever an argument over 1k, unless I missed something. I remember a 949/950 thing but that wasn't the reason the deal was turned down. Martin turned up taking all the action so that's why the deal was called off.

Anyway about the deals. I thought I had started a thread after the event posing this very question but I can't find it. It was probably just discussed within the EPT Grand Final Rail thread.

I'm still not sure where I stand. I definitely thought it unfair on the Italian that Jack could do a deal with Martin Finger and take all the pressure off him and change the game completely, playing for just 30k, whereas the Italian was playing on for 300 or 400k. It's impossible to ban or police though, so things like this will only get more common I'm afraid.

I think a backer needs to trust his player to make a smart deal. Though what is smart for the horse is very often different from what is smart for the player. For example, a horse in £100k makeup gets to heads up with£200k for first, and £100k for 2nd. This horse will accept almost any deal heads up, whereas the backer would be reluctant to make a bad deal.

It's tricky because the backer has put all the money in, and is £100k out of pocket in the deal, so should he have an input in the deal? It's hard to say.

I've had two completely opposite approaches from my current backer Keith, and ex backer Keys.

I'll never forget being in that room in DTD negotiating a deal 4 handed in the Monte Carlo in 2011, with a £2/3k net worth and ready to snap off a £30k deal when Keys said no deal on my behalf.

I walked out of there feeling sick to my stomach at the thought of coming 4th now. I don't think I could have forgiven him had it turned out differently.

Keith just says "whatever, up to you"...

Was that a case of Keys knowing you were still pretty new to playing for lumpy sums, and could have done you/him out of money. Whereas Keith knows that you're not going to do that now, so can just let you crack on?

if backers have a problem they can often do a deal for their horse too.

i tried to deal once on some final table, a friend who was richer than me messaged me and offered me the deal i was trying to get from the guy. he was playing visibly weak, i played as best as possible for my friend, ended up winning and sending him the money.

if i have a horse on a $11r final table where $6k is a big amount for them and they want to take a deal to minimise the variance, if it was a bad deal, i'd way rather give them something mutually beneficial if i could financially clear it.

in that spot i think if keys offered you a reasonable deal it would be fair all round.

They said Jack was in to the tourney through a $300 Sat.

Not to sure what the set up was/ whether he was backed or German guy just offered him an amount for a % of his winnings once HU.

Whatever way you chop it up, had he taken the deal he would have 1 mil £/ Euros, sure he's prob giving away a % of this, but when that was all done, he was still probs walking away with atleast 50% of that in his own pocket plenty to play on his own £ in future tourneys and still be pretty much set up for life, if he was prudent with his money.

That's crazy the HU lasted 9 hours, is understandable if he thinks he has an edge he's gonna play on, but by the same token it seems the deal fell through for £1000- £10,000, which is totally negligible to the amounts involved.

It would have seemed good business sense for all involved to have taken the deal, both players, and Jack's backers.

HU it would make sense that no one else should get involved in any deal negotiation.

i think the fact he DID deal and played hu for 9 hours speaks a lot!

lol so MF guarantees Jack just under 1 Mill, so MF gains 200k or loses 200k.

That's a whole lot of Trust from Jack. Cut out the middleman IMO.

Going to the Celtic  Intermilan game tonight.

Could actually get a result, things seem to be clicking into place for Celtic at the moment.

Mon the hoops

Just saw the qqq thread next door.

Congrats man

Thanks Teddy, was really sweet. Was a really tough FT, 4 handed went on for an eternity.

4 handed, there was one player limping most hands, would never fold their SB (Im OTB).

Had to basically give up my button! Managed to get a couple of jams through, and the other two players were getting shorter and shorter stacked.

One of them in particular was playing way to tight and eventually jammed 6/7 bigs with 22, and we find QQ.

3 handed, other player, left it a bit late to get involved, jammed K5, sb versus my 99, we held to get to HU 3/1 chip leader against our SB friend above.

Was just a matter of blindin them down.

When it was over, they seemed really chuffed to have won 1k, so good results all round!

Lasted till 2am, I was buzzing haha.

Do you fancy playing some HU hypers sometime Teddy?

I don't really play HU that much nowadays unless it's cash. Would be good to see where i'm at by playing a very good player in yourself.

Boss!

Sounds like it was a slog, but then a main event ft probably should be. Well played. No better feeling in poker than winning an mtt is there.

-----

I'd be up for playing a sesh, but atm im not sure my backers woud be happy with me arranging games with you lol! Im also  planning on battling the 30 $ regs soon to try and get established which will take up tonnes of time.

If / when I leave the stable would be happy to play some games though.

----

Are you fully focused on mtts now, or do you still hop into good cash games?

Sure the results will keep coming

glgl

All the best moving up to the $30 games and beyond. Exciting times.

I have no doubt with your knowledge and time you have spent on HU sit and go's it will only be but a success.

The post you made next door, the strategy guide on HU sit and go's, was truly amazing and a must read for any HU player.

At any point in the future if you were to leave your current backers, and  you still needed staking (to some extent or another) for HU games, i'd be more than  happy to do so. Be it on stars or sky. Hopefully there's some decent coaching going on as part of the staking agreement.

Your ROI on Sky would be significantly better than stars despite the higher rake. You would clean up on Sky. Look forward to hearing how you do at the $30's.

I am focussed on MTT's and really enjoying them, my MTT game has defo came on significantly even since 2 months ago. You just can't beat the feeling of running deep/ taking down a tournie. But i'm still playing a lot of cash - I've earned significantly more from cash than MTTs. The optimal set up seems to be 1 or 2 MTT's alongside a few cash tables and if I go deep I can drop the cash tables.
  

I was spawny enough to win Friday's Main Event on Sky for about £1750 ;D

Had mentioned it over in my staking thread, that's why I never really posted about it in here!

Thanks man.

Yeah the staking involves lots of coaching and group work, which I enjoy as much as anything tbh. The guide next door is a good entry level guide imo, bur ive learned so many new ways of disecting situations I'd rewrite 90% tbh! Crazy the pace of change in games these days.

Will be following the blog with interest, keep crushing kev.

Where is this HU strategy guide? i have always loved a bit of hu, not played much of late though so would be a good read.

Its not a general HU guide, but more of a husng one, more particularly hypers (25bb and under)

https://www.skypoker.com/secure/poker/sky_lobby?action=show_static&page=poker_community_forums&plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a2e4f51cb-c64c-449f-a843-8db9c5fe7283Forum%3a596e7081-fff1-4103-8428-5d4d19736b09Discussion%3a214221db-3b07-41df-a2b3-d909c6821814

Its geared to beginners and people trying out the format. And is a good intro to dealing with some common hyper preflop spots, no more. As I say id tweek  a lot of the advice, but it should improve the roi of people dabbling with them

Husngs are fucking boss btw, good format to improve, esp post flop as we see so many flops and have to play wide ranges.  And a good bankroll builder when you get competent.

Been a sweet month for MTT's, especially the main win:D Managed to win another MTT that night too for a mighty £77! £5.50 200 GTD.

This is my results for Feb to date, won't be playing much now in the rest of Feb, night off to morrow / Football on Thursday, Celtic gonna smash Inter Milan. To easy ;D

http://gyazo.com/3f6ff14b2b016116b8034ce67c9bd96c

If there was any doubt, look at profit 1888, has to be!

And there ends the Winter

New season on the way, but you couldn't tell from the temperature outside!

Strange that's almost 6 months since I was at the last UKPC, time fly's by so quickly. Looking back, it's amazing how different my game is to back then.

Over the winter months I've put a lot of volume in mostly at cash, to much so to be honest. Can't really complain, has been a really good spell and made a very decent profit.

Coming back from the UKPC, it was a kinda low, needed a new challenge - the challenge was £5k profit by Christmas, 4 months to do it. Managed to do it and more, thanks to a great Nov and December helped by the fact tables were golden. I had some coaching too for cash which was awesome and really helped.

When it came to Jan, needed a new challenge (again!) MTT's, just wanted to improve a bit / iron out a few leaks. It was superb recording some MTT sessions and reviewing them, was able to pick up on quite a lot of leaks.

It's all going in the right direction, but for sure over the Spring and Summer going for more quality over quantity/ less online poker.

Will be playing more live cash over the next few months. Can't wait to get stuck into some live play!   

Come on the Summer!

Live Versus Online

Wonder what the perception is of those who play only live poker towards online players.

Reads. Really feel when I start playing live this will be a bit of a weakness. Like online it's really easy, stuff like bet sizing, loads of hands on the vast majority of players.

Also having to keep up with the pot size/ size of bets.

Will also be a bit strange playing 20/30 hands an hour versus 500/600 online.

Punter Saturday

WAs playing a bit on Unibet on Saturday, a few 50nl/100nl (euro) tables was getting really tilted by the fact I couldn't resize the tables/ the overlap, ditched all but the 1 100nl and loaded up a 400nl table(highest ive ever played!) ;popcorn;

Bit optimistic felt it might play like the 50/100nl tables! Turned out the standard was quite decent.

Cause I was only playing 2 tables was really able to pick up on stuff certain players were doing.

Didn't run particularly well, but was able to pick up a lot of non show down hands for a nice profit ;D
  

Live reads are the mostly stuff of films I reckon. There are small things people do like checking with their hands on their cards like they were ready to muck if you bet, but I've never seen anyone blink twice and itch their nose when they have the nuts or any other Teddy KGB like live tells. Bet sizing tells though are usually pretty accurate, bombing the river in small stakes live cash usually means they have it. You can usually just give people a rough profile to get a good idea of how they're playing and adjust to it, because they'll rarely be adjusting to you. Random roulette punter isn't going to be trying to barrel you off top pair and old man with 40bb isn't checkraise bluffing you.

Pot size is something you can roughly keep tabs on by just keeping track of the hand in your head, or just ask the dealer to spread the pot as well so you can estimate how much is in there. In live £1/£1 and £1/£2 though a lot of people just seem to throw conventional bet sizing out the window and will bet £20 into £16.

Some people might try to get one over you if they think you're an 'internet kid' in some weird show of dominance, but most people just seem to be in their own little world playing small stakes cash and there's no real need to overthink it. 1/1 live in some venues is on a par with 0.1/0.2 online. You'll be amazed at some of the hands that'll get shown down, just play your normal game and you'll pile up the cheddar.

...
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jf0R-SrSjE

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9fyOFefirQ

Cheers good read, i used to play hypers here and there 5.50-21 but thought the variance was too high so stopped. Great guide though you obviously know your onions, not even sure if we have ever crossed parts on sky (i know you dont play there anymore)

PS- Sorry for hijack Larson ;)

Cheers Ransom, not got to the casino yet, but will do!

Defo is a great read YG, Teddy knows his stuff!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just watched this

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfR9iY5y94s

Been ages since I've been to Aus, really will need to get back out again.

Truly is an amazing country.

Lived out there for a year when I was 20 in Queensland. It was so laid back, everything was no dramas/ too easy:D

Sun all the time, what a life!

 

Morning Blonde!

Been on a sick heater at cash since Thursday.

Had just finished a session when this flashed up https://www.unibet.co.uk/promotions/poker-promotions/unibet-open-glasgow-satellites

Total quality they are having this tournament at Parkhead, at a time when a lot of people are heading to vegas.

From Thursday - Sunday I won more than the buy in for this tournie across 2 sites.

 

^^^^^^ This is the best few days I've ever had at cash.

There's a massive difference between my win rate at Cash / MTT's. As in time spent playing the games/ profit.

But i'm constantly improving at MTT's, and as I start playing higher buy in games, profit for the time spent on them should be a lot more decent.

Also with MTT's nothing beats a deep run / Final Tabling and winning a tournament. I can also play Cash alongside tourneys,  getting the best of both worlds.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diaries/ Blogs  

I've kept a blog of some sort or another since I started playing poker. It's really good to keep me motivated or just put down my thoughts as to what's happening at any given time.

One of my favourite diarie's was Gazza's next door. It was raw and it was real, there was never a middle ground it was always full of highs or lows/ Big Wins or Losses. He told his story amazingly well and was always entertaining to read.

On here also there are some great diaries, some that have been going forever!

It does seem to have been quieter recently in here though and also in PHA. Maybe it's just the time of year, or it's just like poker has its peaks and troughs.

    

Ended up coming 2nd in last night's main for just under 1k.

I ended up on a really sweet table at 8k, blinds about 150/300. It was the most passive table ever, played the same table for atleast an hour, not 1 player busted. I was able to just win a tone of small pots to get up to about 20k and into the money.

My chips were never at risk. Was about 5 or 6th out of 35. It was awesome, just kept chipping up with no risk to my stack, getting up to about 60k.

The 1st time my stack was at risk, was on the last 2 tables. Things had turned a bit, and had lost 20k, of my 60 k stack down about 40k, with 11/12 left.

I opened XX in the SB, BB 3 bet, I 4 bet jammed and he tank folded. It would be this player that would go onto win.

Managed to win a nice pot, with a set of 4s versus KQ on a Q high board for a full double up to about 95k, which put me 3/4 out of 9.

Lost a couple of all ins against shorties to put me back down to 40k. Grinded my 13-15 bigs for a while, managed to pick up KK against shorties AQ aipf, to get back up to about 80/90 k and the FT 5th/6, but there wasn't agreat deal in it amongst the shorter stacks.

Player quickly busted in 6th.

We look down at JJ UTG, min raise @ 2k/4k, BB clicks it back from 8k, to 12k, only 4k to call. We call, J high flop, he checks, we bet bet jam. He calls with KK, which put him down to 50k. We are the chip leader!

Couple of hands later, I knock the same player out with Ace 10, on xxxA board. He had ace 8.

4 handed we have 50% of the chips in play, 400kish, everyone else has 100k or under. The other 3 players are all regs. Was able to apply a lot of ICM pressure.

We min raise AQ UTG UTG plus 1 jams, BB also jams, they had 75k each. We call, 3 way all in 4 handed!

They both had about 12 bigs iirc, think I have to call. 88 and AK, 88's hitting a set.

Couple of hands later, we knocked the 3rd player out, to get to HU.

I had about 450k in chips, they had about 350k.

HU I played really bad. Played one of the worst hands I've ever played, moved all in on the river on the most ridiculous bluff that didn't make sense and was an easyish call with top pair.

That left me with 60k, got it in the next hand which I lost.

The winner played excellent through out, if you read this, very well done!

 

Lost a couple of all ins against shorties to put me back down to 40k.


I noticed Matt made the FT ;)

Nice result. Has Lambo conceded that bet yet?

 

NH WP

Cheers Max

Well done on your roller win, fine result sir.

Has Lambo conceded that bet yet?

Not yet :D

--------------------------------------------------------

Won my 1st tournament of March tonight, a £11 BH for just under £200 and plus 150 euros at cash

#Love Poker
#Sick heater

Managed to bink the same tournie as last night for £240, first time ever back to back wins ;D

Look at this beauty

 Tc Th (95K) Blinds 1.25/2.5K

Raise to 5K.

Call (74k)

Flop:  Kd Ts  Qc

They lead for 2.5k, Raise 10k, Min Click back 20K, We're all in! Call.

Show  9s Js

 Aspades

BOOOOOOOM Ad

#Sick heater
#Never End

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Great  to see new diaries popping up, butt why not call it ,auf wiedersehen, pet :)

Nice work on the tourny results mate. Can you send me some run good for Sunday, cheers pal.

Bricked every MTT last night (as well as cash)

Wasn't playing particularly well.

Funny old game poker!

Up to yesterday can't believe the run I had, is by far the best spell I've ever had at poker.

Congrats on the good run mate! Hard work paying off is very satisfying :)

MTT's since last week have been pretty poor, havn't really got anything going. Cash has been quite decent.

I played really bad last night, was good to get night off tonight, was at the Celtic game.

Managed to trounce Dundee Utd 4-0 in the Quarter Finals of the Scottish Cup, next up is Inverness in the Semi-Final.

Ronny Deilia has really turned the team around and we're in a great position to do the treble this year.

Going to get a session in tomorrow night, i'm going to start a bit later than usual.

Starting at 7:45 with the £11 BH
8:00 £33 Main BH
8:15 £11BH
9:00 £55 BH
9:30 BH

Really looking forward to tomorrow night, get some wins back on the board!

Good MTT selection, must have a good advisor! Should play the mini too. Jackpot bonus innit!

You gonna play some micro millions when they come around mate? Would be down to swap some ℅ just for the sweat

Matt the best of course - Boss.

KP won't be playing the micromillions mate, will be a few months before i'm playing on Stars.

I played the schedule above ^^^^^^^, plus a £22 game plus another £11 game. Am quite happy with how I played through out, just ran really cold.

Was quite a frustrating night for MTT's, another night and not even one deep run. I guess it's variance.

Must have spent about £130-140 on MTTs tonight.

Luckily, I ran golden on cash for a very decent profit and to finish the day on a high.

Literally cash has saved me over the past 6 days.

Reckon i'm going to take tomorrow off, play some more MTTs on Saturday. Defo going to jot down some interesting hands and spots, just to make sure i'm not butchering things. Might post some hands in here on Sat.

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Watched the last live Sky Poker TV show tonight. When I started playing on Sky it was through my TV using the remote haha it was prob not long after that I first discovered 861, I used to love watching the Mastercash hours when I started out, it seemed crazy for me people were playing for £100/£200 pots, or even £50 pots. It got me fascinated by the game. I seen a lot of players, aliases, and remember thinking "they are really good". I have been really lucky over the time to get to know most of those folk, most of them are decent ;)

Anna Fowler and Richard Orford were fantastic presenters, Sky Poker TV was defo punching above their weight having such talents fronting the show.

Not to mention the irrepressible young Mr Tikay, Ryan and all the other analysts on the show.

I always wondered if the show generated enough knew business through the shows to justify the cost of the show, maybe to some extent it did by the sheer amount of time it ran. Eight years, that's pretty amazing when you think about it!

Whatever way, it's exciting they have a slot on Sky Sports for a couple of hours on a Tuesday. Hopefully it will generate a lot more new customers to the site given the wider audience it will receive. Only time well tell.

What's your plans for live cash Kev?

I read a few pages back you were planning on taking a shot at 1/2. That still the case?

Hey mate,

Just been going so well online at the moment mate, havnt got round to it yet.

Defo need to though! Especially in the run up to the unibet open.

Been trying to talk my friend into going too!

Went up for a swim today. Really need to start using dat membership!

Going to start going to the gym/ swimming pool atleast 4 times a week.

With swimming want to do atleast 3 sessions a week, swimming atleast 6 km.

Had some bad news recently. My Aunt has cancer, it's now at 85% of the affected organ.

Kemo doesn't seem to be working now, it's not looking good.

She is  an inspiration, always so positive despite everything that's been going on.



 

Took my mum and dad up to see my Aunt on Wednesday.

She is so strong and positive, it's truly inspirational.

My cousins getting married in a couple of weeks, something for my Aunt to look forward to and hopefully she will get to see the summer.

When stuff like this happens, it really puts stuff in perspective.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Swimming: Have got in a couple of sessions in since my last post, momentum!

Poker: I was going to post up Cash Results and Also MTT results for March. Don't think it's that interesting so wont bother, but was a fantastic month overall, and possibly my best month ever for poker.

I played a few MTT's last night, I had a very decent stack in the Main from about 40 left, was in the top 6 most of the way. In the latter stages, I made one bad call (pretty terrible being honest!) which still left me with a very healthy stack, but from then on I defo lost a lot of momentum. Went card dead, was getting total junk, blinded down to about 10 bigs with 8 left, got it in BB/ SB and lost a flip. It's just one of those ones I don't think I could have done much differently apart from that one hand.

Should make priority tonight, so will be getting about £330 rakeback on the 1st April.

This month has just went so well online didn't get the opportunity to get any live games in, will do in April tho for sure.

Won the 7 45 bh for the 3rd time this month, they should probs be renaming it! Going 2 play the wsop main event. Selling 50% at 100 percent mark up. Big $$$$ up top and a fantastic opportunity for you 2 becOme a millionaire

Elections zzzzzzzzzzzz

With the election coming up I was thinking about it - whether to vote or not.

It's all we're going to hear about for the next month plus and it's tedious already.

The worse thing about all the campaigning is the fact instead of promoting their own ideas/ policies all the parties seem to do is attack/ put their opponents down.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Voting system

Where I stay is a Labour hotspot, they always win the seat by a landslide.

It would be far better in my opinion to have some sort of proportional representation.

So in a "safe seat" area atleast if you don't vote for that party you know your vote still matters to some extent. This would be especially good for the smaller parties like The Greens.

Out of all the political parties they actually seem quite decent, some of their ideas might seem a bit "wooly", but defo good they go against the grain.

Under the current system smaller parties have little chance and overall it would be good to mix up the political landscape to involve more political parties in government.

 

Going to Play the UKOPs games tonight, plus another rcouple of MTTs.

Bounty Hunter 4 19:00 £3.30 £1,000
Bounty Hunter 5 20:00 £110.00 £20,000
Rebuy 6 20:30 £5.50 £3,000
Bounty Hunter 7 21:00 £22.00 £4,000
Bounty Hunter 8 22:00 £55 £5,000

Playing all these apart from the £110, not to sure about this 1 yet.

At the moment it's maybe ayes maybe nos. Decisions

Play the lot mate, the 110 is the cherry of them all!  Good luck, good luck!

Never played the £110 game in the end, just a bit to rich for me!

Spent about £120/130 on MTT's last night, loads of different ones. In the end I was down about £60 for MTTs, and over all for the day made a profit of £180 so about + 240 from cash.

I normally don't play much on a Sunday - it's the worst day of the week for cash imo plus Easter Dinner:D.

Instead, going to play tonight. Pretty much it should be mostly the same games as last night.

Didn't get a wiff of a FT last night, tonight is the NIGHT.

V happy with how I played last night, apart from 3 hands where my play was a bit dodgy.

Lets do wins tonight ;D

I guess you mainly play on sky? How do you find the cash games on there?

Really reg heavy especially this time of year, but most "regs" are bad tight ABC at my level.

Epic Slow roll/ Amazing poker commentary

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDx_3UkGeds

How to slow roll, 3 mins in:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj8oZQaKcu0

Not played much poker this week, been brilliant just to chill out.

Cuz's weddings on Saturday.

Picked up my suit from the dry cleaners, thought I was going to need to buy a new pair of shoes. But found a smart pair I had forgotten all about, all polished and good to go:D

Just need to buy a tie tomorrow, got to be something colourful!

Will be awesome to see all the family and in particular my Aunt.

The wedding's only been organised in the last few weeks. If you havn't read a few pages back, my Aunt is quite seriously ill with cancer.

She is an amazing person and will for sure be a great day.

Wedding was really good.

Might have had a few pints on peroni ;letsparty;

Aunt was really good through out.

------------------------------------------------

Have played a lot less poker this month compared to usual. Only sitting on 2.7k poker points normally it'd be atleast 5k by middle of the month.

Really want to get a big grind in Thursday, Friday or Sat, Plus Sunday.

Managed to win the 9pm £55 bh last night, a bit of a monkey off my back. I have won a MTT at every stake on SP apart from the Sunday Roller (£110 bi).

Going to start playing MTT's regularly on stars from next month. Having a warm up session this Sunday - playing all the same MTT's as Chris (over the border) just need to sort out a bet of who wins the most!

Seen this stars player on sharkscope, he's up over 180k so far this year alone, cant remember the user id, but in this week alone, it's just bink bink bink bink lol

I will be on the old sunday grind on stars, what's your nickname, I'll keep an eye out for you. I trust totr playing the Sunday mtts and all the big x's?

I'd have asked on the 'Poker Mentor' thread but I don't seem to be able to reply on there, presumably cos I have <300 blonde posts...

It's probably just me being stupid but I don't get what it is you want. Are you asking for mentoring but you pay all your own BIs and they get a % of your profit for the mentoring? Are you looking for a longterm deal where someone takes 30% (for example) of every comp you play in return for mentoring?

Unless you go into a proper staking agreement it all sounds a bit confusing and I'd stick to just paying for some coaching if you want it and/or selling action on a one off basis. Fwiw you already got a pretty sick group of players to get advice from in the Skype group we chat in if it's not full on 1to1 coaching you're looking for and that's free!

Out of interest, how come you sell %s so often for stuff like Sky? Do you constantly withdraw almost all of your winnings? I'm just thinking, you must easillyyy be rolled for every single MTT on Sky no problem, is it a confidence issue or what?

Also, if you wanna branch out from Sky Poker in terms of MTTs, I'd recommend playing 888 and stars, or if you can only play 1 or the other for some reason, play 888. Smaller fields, lower variance, still a very good selection given you don't like to play many tables.

UGO sent you a mesg mate.

Hey Paul

For sure we know a lot of awesome players!

I do withdraw every month all winnings (profit) and keep my bankroll at a certain level. The bankroll is more than ample to play the games I play including £55 MTTs.

The main reason I sold % for £33 games and £55 games was simply because I felt if other people were involved I would be more prone to play my A game (bit of accountability), it was also a sweat for others and a bit of fun. It was great value for the investors at spot while maybe not the most plus EV thing for me to do. Also, I hadn't any real volume at the £33 games, used to maybe play 1 a week or every 2 weeks. I'm glad I offered people the chance to buy a % and they have done well from it.

The mentor thread...

There would be no reason for me to get staked apart to get coaching as part of the deal - basically it would be for coaching, it wouldn't be for a bankroll. To do that the coaching would have to be pretty awesome, and doubt that would be the case. So overall, I really dislike the idea of staking.

Thing is i hardly ever see players nowadays and think they are decent.

What I was looking for was someone better than me to potentially chip in some money, I chip in some money, and have a % split on profits. And of course the better I do they better they do. But they'd have to be an awesome player who crushes and that could help me take my game to the next level. This was especially with a view to playing on poker stars, where the games are so different, and while higher variance there's the potential for far bigger binks. Imo it's a fantastic opportunity;)

Looking at a couple of different avenues at the moment.
 



   

Tonight was really frustrating.

Got to the FT of the £22 BH joint chip leader like 200 chips in it. Had 2 passive stations in SB/ BB when I was OTB. Done just under 1/2 my stack over 4 hands to be 4/5. Knocked out shortie to still be 4/4, grinded it back so stacks were all pretty event amongst us, but by that point every1 had just over 10 bigs jammed button and SB woke up with AQ which held to gg in 4th place.

Really think I totally screwed up the FT.

At the same time was getting semi deep runs in my other games. Bubbled one and pretty much min cashed another.

Then totally squandered a hand to gg the main.

I should have done a lot better tonight.

Just got some comfort food from the Indian, so all good now I guess ;D   

Off to the football tomorrow Celtic playing Inverness in the Scottish cup semi final. Treble Time:D

Playing the sunday roller on Sky tomors night - time for a bink!

Paul/ everyone

888 looks good, but don't they screw you over on exchange rate when u withdraw? Think the conversion ratte is at least 5 %. Looking for sites to play 10- 30 £ mtts , that you can deposit / withdraw in £ and not get screwed over with exchange rates for deposits / withdrawals

They have a withdraw option???

* never really played on 888 really but mate likes it so suppose I should give it a go

Like when you with draw on 888/ partpoker/ pkr pretty sure you lose 5-10% with shocking exchange rates.

Really like the format of the new show on a Tuesday night on Skysports. Hopefully it will get some new sign ups for the site!

Since 861 has disappeared it seems numbers are down on the site. The guarantee on a Thursday/ Monday for the main has been reduced down to £8000 - the lowest I can ever remember it being. Has been overlay in quite afew MTT's too. Traffic on the cash tables has also been really poor.

Worse than I can remember it being at the height of the summer last year. I always wondered what impact 861 had on numbers playing on the site and especially new sign ups.

The new format on the show the £100 challenge is a really simple idea but very effective. Just hope that it is popular amongst new potential players.

It also ties in nicely with the EPT show on c4 at 12 for folk to watch straight afterwards. There really is a lack of poker on the TV now-a-days.

When I first started playing - 4 years ago - used to love the wild cannon on Channel 5 plus the ept shows. As quite a newbie loved the big bluffs and massive pots. That's what I thought poker was loads of bluffing:) Know many others who started playing before me cited "poker after dark" and such programmes as being a big influence on them taking up the game.

Another show that is currently being shown is "poker celebrity club", more shows like this would be awesome too, it's a bunch of celebrities, no pros, and it shows them limping in a lot of pots, making strange plays, but it shows poker to be fun and accessible. Programmes like this, if a bit more mainstream, would for sure encourage new folk to play.

The biggest % of those watching poker programmes will be proper poker players, but it also needs to be understandable / entertaining for a wider audience. The sharkcage was an excellent example of this and turned out to be a great show.

It's really good in the new sky show they show players playing 50nl straight away it is showing it is accessible to most players, as opposed to just focussing on high stakes action. This is covered really well with the "top pot of the week". A lot of folk would disagree, but would be really good to see a bit of the basic stuff targeted for brand new players/ those who have hardly played, just the rough basics of the game.

This was a fun hand from last night:)

StuRutter    Small blind       £0.25    £0.25    £94.70
LARSON7    Big blind       £0.50    £0.75    £145.05
     Your hole cards   
6s
2s
           
mcvitty25    Fold            
rancid    Fold            
JJJOHNSON    Fold            
stewie7    Fold            
StuRutter    Call       £0.25    £1.00    £94.45
LARSON7    Check            
Flop
         
3c
6d
9d
           
StuRutter    Bet       £0.50    £1.50    £93.95
LARSON7    Call       £0.50    £2.00    £144.55
Turn
         
Qh
           
StuRutter    Bet       £2.00    £4.00    £91.95
LARSON7    Raise       £6.50    £10.50    £138.05
StuRutter    Call       £4.50    £15.00    £87.45
River
         
Ac
           
StuRutter    Check            
LARSON7    Bet       £10.00    £25.00    £128.05
StuRutter    Call       £10.00    £35.00    £77.45
LARSON7    Show   
6
2
StuRutter    Muck   
3d
7d
LARSON7    Win    Pair of 6s    £33.25       £161.30
      

Going to try ipoker for MTT's - no issues with currency conversion can deposit / withdraw in £.

Not to sure about 888 yet, because of the exchange rate. Someone was saying but ROI will be a lot better on there so it balances itself out. Also if you swap / transfer money you take the chance of being grimed, and I don't know many folk that play on there.

Quick update regarding the mentoring thread.

It was something that I thought about one night and there was a certain merit to it, though definitely a bit different.

After speaking to a couple of people regarding a possible structure and how it could work (for both parties) I couldn't really come up with a solution that would be beneficial for both parties.

Also, the vast majority of folk that have discussed this with me since my OP have pretty much said i'm better just going on as is playing with my own money.

Won't be posting much in here in the next month or so.

When playing i'll be playing more MTTs over cash. I need to do a bit of work on patience and discipline at the tables.

In the next month will be playing Sky, 888, and the odd Stars massive field type game, an outside chance but the opportunity of a massive bink!

     

I deposited on 888 yesterday, played a few tourneys 300-500 fields seemed very soft no good score so still lost a little but will be playing a few more. Their turbos seem good was playing 2-6 dollar

888 is just soft , yeah you get a little slap on the exchange rate but at least it means you are cashing out.

Shipit - was that you playing and running deep in the big 11 on ps last night as shipit10 -

Mikey unfortunately not:)

Only played a couple of games on 888 so far, it does seem softish and the software's pretty decent, shame they don't have more 6 max MTTs!

I've mentioned before about going to play live cash.

I was thinking about it, say you get 30 hands an hour at 200nl and you are making 10 bb/ 100, it's only £20 for just over 3 hours.

In saying that I was speaking to a friend last week, he plays live every Friday and Saturday night at the Casino @ 200nl - he's making roughly the same as his weekly job over those two days. Perhaps a slight exaggeration but he seems to be making decentish money from it.

I'm going to get live cash/ MTT's in this month. Suspect hourly rate will be less than online but it will be a great experience especially in the run up to the big game in June.





   

You can make 10bb/hr in a live game if not more.

Hey Adam,

Think you have played a fair amount of live cash?

On average how many hands per hour would be realistic and what's a decent bb/ 100 for live 200nl?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For anyone reading right now, Lambert180 is currently running deep in a few MTT's on Twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/lambert180

A wee win the in the mini roller will close the gap in our prop bet!

I would say £15 per hour for "100nl" live which equates to between 35-45bb/100 is pretty much the ceiling of what you can expect to make.

For 200nl, it's £25-30 per hour, or 30-40bb/100.

All depends on size of the game tho, min/max sit down, straddle culture, nature of the game etc. And of course the rake.

I know probably the best dealer I know could peak at 40 but 25 is probably closer to average.

I think 10bb I'd reasonable but it's hard to predict without knowing the game conditions. I played in a 100nl game that was bigger than most 1/2/4 games but it got made into 1/2 and the game started to die off. Live games are weird and sometimes it's about finding the right routine or knowing when certain people will be in. Bb/100 is hard to predict but I guess 20 an hour was achievable in the game I played so maybe 40bb/100. Hard to know and sometimes huge pots mess up your results. For example Matt Franklin turned up late at my local after a huge game had taken place. It was 1/2 and I was in for 1200-1400 losing 1k, got up to even and then got kings  into his aces lol. The game I played in had a 5k pot too with kj vs kj vs tt vs aq on aqt late in the night. Just absurd what can happen.


A month or so later a guy was jamming blind for 500 or opening to 100 and deciding what to do. He snap called me off for chunks after opening to 100 and seeing 54s. Live games are super weird and predicting long term win rates is very hard. Personally I'd stick to focusing on online if you enjoy it. You can easily pick up bad habits live and relying on certain players being in the game is never a fun thing.

Sorry if there are any typos or this post doesn't quite flow properly. Wrote it on my phone. Glgl

Surprised the conclusion of that post was stick to online lol.

It's not very exciting to talk about the hours in very mediocre games or the month long downswings. If that game still existed in its prime I'd play more lI've but I've not really found one similar. Interestingly enough I know one reg who works very hard to make sure the game runs and I imagine he wins 40k a year or so in it. Live is possible but certainly not for me. Nothing is worse than driving 30 mins to sit in a 50p/50p game in Sheffield like my most recent experiences of live.

DTD has been fun but that's mainly been omaha and because there is usually a drinking partner about if worse comes to worst. Having Guys who are used to playing 500bb deep when you specialise in tournaments isn't my idea of fun.

Ahoy there Mr Ship.

Just read this blog in one sitting (Well two if you count going to sleep in between) and I thought it was excellent.

Would be interested to know what your online cash stakes range is, which site, format and stake gives you the best return, and what you think about the change in standard as stakes increase. i.e. on Sky, I don't see any real difference between 5/10 and say, 15/30.

Also, how many tables do you typically play on Sky? I really struggle with more than 3 but that's mainly because I'm old and there is no time bank.   

props
Tom

Hey Tom,

Thanks.

For cash I only play on Sky and Unibet, mostly sky though.

On sky 95% of volume's at 50nl, on unibet I play 50/100nl. Started out playing @ 4nl on sky so know all of the lower levels on sky pretty well.

On sky I normally play 5-8 tables, 6 is ideal, with 8 there's a small amount of overlap.

Playing more tables it's a bit of auto pilot.

I like playing 2/4 tables, it's a lot easier to pick up on what's going on/ who's doing what, where as with more tables I miss out on a lot of information to an extent.

When I play 100nl on Sky, I normally only play 3 tables maximum, in April I only played 100nl 3 times.

There is a slight difference between 10nl and 20nl. @ 10nl "regs" when they 3 bet will pretty much always be QQ +, AK. @20nl you will get folk 3 betting a bit wider, but still very much "regs" will be TAG. 30nl is pretty similar. There will be quite a lot of overlap of the same player group playing 10/30nl.

Going into the winter I expect i'll be playing more 100nl> 50nl.



   

wowha, watched the Barca Bayern game.

Messi is a total legend, truly phenomenal and amazing...2 totally sublime goals.

Breath-taking how one player can be so talented,  definitely the best player in the world!

Wonder who the Messi of poker is, Moorman for MTTs  / Kanu7 for Cash?

disagree, think ronaldo is better.

hmmm not sure pads will like that either!!

Ronaldo is of course a great player, it really is a fantastic rivalry.

Both having scored 50 plus goals already is truly amazing.

Just been to the polling station. Going to be really interesting tonight to see which way it goes, must be a good chance of a hung parliament.

 

Good stuff thanks.

Been quite a quiet week for poker. Had a fantastic Friday - Sunday. Then the May Bank Holiday was really bad I kept playing when I should have just stopped, ended up down about £300 on the day.

Didn't play much Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday, and had a spewy Thursday but luckily hardly lost anything.

From Monday of this week up until today i'm in a  about a £250 hole.  Wasn't really enjoying the poker that much.

It's been really good pretty much taking it easy this week after Monday.

Can't wait to get in a proper session tonight, feeling really confident i'll be on my A game.

I'm going to be playing these games

7pm £22 BH
7pm Mayhem Freeroll
7:45 £11 BH
8:15 £11BH
8:00 Main £33 BH
8:30 Mini  £5

With cash afterwards.


 

You seem to be having a great 2015 Kev
Good luck with the mtts tonight

I ended up playing all the above games, plus another £22 BH plus a £5 bh.

Profit for the night from MTTs is £200 plus.

I came 8th in the main, I lost a 300k pot, with AJ> Ace 6 all in pre, 6 on the flop.

Bit of a sore one, if I win that pot i'm chip leader with 7 left and would have been a really soft FT.

Bit sore just now, but really happy with how I played tonight, didn't make 2 many mistakes.

Meh, wish I could edit the above post moaning about losing a 70/30, I really dislike reading that kind of stuff in poker blogs/ diaries.

No more posting in the direct aftermath of a bust out!

Would be interested to hear peoples views on this hand.

5 handed about 9/10 left. We have 120k at the start of the hand UTG+1

We have  Qc Qh, blinds 2.5k/5k

We min raise to 10K, BB defends (pot 22500)

Flop  5d 5c 4d

We bet 8765, he reraises to 28780. We ??

He has us covered just. He is a bit of a loose cannon,  3 xes his entire range pre flop, and is folding to 3 bet jams, that kind of thing.

I just jammed, if he has Ace 5, 56 gl to him. And don't expect he's ever got 44 from the sizing.

Hi Kev,

You can edit posts, but I think there is a time limit, maybe an hour, I'm not sure.

Tuesday saw a bit of silliness :D

Last night there was this player on my table, just a pure gambler. He was saying how he had just finished his shift, 4 days on 4 off, 12 hour shifts. He was having a few drinks.

He donated well over £140 to me in really bad spots and  just kept reloading.

It's  a shame for folk like that, but of course it's their choice to "gamble" but still got to feel for them.

These are the scores on the doors with Lambert in the prop bet, http://gyazo.com/76725aa7f3de0c9fdfade3d69f6a107a

Not long to go now Paul!   

Really enjoyed the EPT show last night. It was a bit of dejavu, I had seen the FT before, not to sure if it was a repeat or maybe I had just seen it in hightlights from the EPT Live Stream. Also pretty sure Jake Cody's call against Kevin McPhee with JQ suited had been discussed on here.

The new Mad Max film looks awesome can't wait to see it!

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJnMQG9ev8

Growing up it was one of my favourite set of films, along with stuff like Terminator, James Bond (of course!) and Indiana Jones.

Pretty sure I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I was a kid, now it's work and poker on the side!

Evening blonde!

It really isn't good posting at this time  lol

My Aunt was in hospital last week for an infection, her immune system is severely reduced cause of the cancer. She got out of hospital last Monday, but still has the infection. You wouldn't think such a minor thing as an infection would be serious, but with a reduced immune system it seems pretty bad. She is spending a lot more time in bed, struggling to walk unsupported, it is a real shame. But through out the last two months up until now she has been fantastic, hopefully the infection can be cured and she can restore some of her strength to get a bit more time.

It's secondary cancer, she originally had breast cancer  a couple of years ago, all seemed to be cured, but then the secondary cancer came back in her liver.

At that time me and slipwater from Sky did a 24 hour "pokerthon" to raise money for Cancer Research, we played on a 2/4nl table for 24hours! It was really good and well supported with over 1k being raised for the charity. So many people were so generous and kind it was awe inspiring.

I kinda wanted to do something today to raise a bit of money for the charity donating a % of my winnings in mtts to cr, unfortunately I ran terrible.

Will maybe think about getting something organised relating to poker in the next wee while.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Ran bad extended to every game I played including the mayhem game, which was really sigh, but still got 3 days to go to wrap it up. As of today I was top, winner gets a package to Lasvegas for about 3.6k

This is the leaderboard, hopefully still top come Sunday!

1st LARSON7 19 £3,200 Viva Las Vegas Package 
2nd TimmyRaRa 19 £500
3rd ubeenpwned 17 £250
4th anyone 16 £150
5th DrewMcRobb 14 £100
6th TheDart 13

Good Luck mate, I hope you stay top of the leader board! Sure you will go get them bounties!

Thanks, I wil still top yesterday, but havn't got any bounties the last 2 days. It's getting really close at the top, suspect I may have dropped down to 2nd or lower now.

But there is still 2 days to go and all to play for!

I had a look at it last night, there isn't really anything I could have done different in the last 2 games, it's just one of those where the cards weren't in my favour.

Looking forward to the last couple of days and hopefully can get some run good in these games.

Do you play live much? Where is you local?

Glasgow mate, and no not a lot!

Probs going in this weekend. Indiana Jones then pokers ;D

All this talk of vegas everywhere is making me want to go lol but probs wont be over the summer.

Missed out in the Mayhem games I ended up coming 5th, last 4 games I bricked absolutely everything.

And boooom got jeevsey back, gotta love the Jeeves.
 

... I was going to go to Vegas in Matt Bates suitcase till we realised it was too small :(

He only went and won a 10K main event package. Well done sir!

Went to see the mad max film on Friday, it was really good, if you enjoyed the originals you definatly need to see it. It was action packed from start to finish and contained all the best elements of the originals retaining it's unique character. Mad Max making his way in this surreal post apocalyptic world. Story was a bit sketchy by comparison to the originals and there was quite  a bit of ambiguity, like at the end of the film. But overall was an excellent film and defo a must me!

Poker has been a bit surreal this month, especially tonight.

The start of the month was excellent, it dipped mid way through, and the last week has been awesome. If it was to be shown in a graph it would be a massive spike, period of stagnation / slight increase followed by another decent spike.

I won 5 Mtt's during May, including one tonight, nothing big like the mains, but still really pleased with that.

Today has been a really interesting one to finish the month.

It's split into 3, The Good the Bad and the Unknown

The good was defo winning the 7:45 £11 BH for just under £300.

The bad, yeah this was pretty bad. It was the Roller. I'm not at all happy with how I played in this tonight. You know when you play and you just know you are playing shit. It happens so much, like you don't play your A game, but overall even your B game, you are still going to do ok. I don't even think I was on my Z game. The 1st hour was all really standard stuff, I had to fold pocket kings on the river, versus the nut worse run out against a guy who doesn't fold pre and was never bluffing on the river, there was a straight/ flush on the board. At the end of the 1st hour I was down to 8k from the 10 k starting stack. Within 5 minutes of the 2nd hour I had doubled to 16k. That was as good as it got. Ran a dumb bluff, when I called certain hand on the button. Then I called someone OTR with 2nd top pair, even though it was a clear fold. Then my exit hand was just ridiculous, I check jammed the river when a flush came in, I shouldn't even have been in the hand beyond the flop, and the guy snapped with KQ, Q high board. It was really poor by me.

Normally if i'm playing bad it reflects on all tables, but thankfully I seemed to be playing decent in the other MTT.

In saying all the stuff above, I would say generally I ran pretty bad in the roller. On a more positive note, I learned an important lesson from this game.

All that sounds negative, but it's just frustrating when you play badly, or more importantly play certain spots badly. But with poker it's inevitably going to happen at times.

The Unknown

This is a kinda cool sweat. Sky has been running these freerolls through out May, over 7 days. Who ever knocks out the most players during the 7 days, Mon- Sunday, wins a vegas package, 2nd place gets £500. Last week after 4 days I was leading the leaderboard and pretty much bricked the last 3 days.

Tonight I was sitting on 18 bounties, top of the leaderboard had 23. After tonight I reckon i'm up to 25 bounties, I won't know till tomorrow how every1 else done, but atleast I get to sweat it overnight! With a bit of luck in with a chance of finishing in no1 spot. Even getting 2nd would be pretty awesome.





   

That could be a good remake, The Good The Bad and the Unknown.

Not to sure what genre it would be, Western? Horror? Horror Western?

I ended up coming 2nd

1st ubeenpwned 27 £3,200 Viva Las Vegas Package
2nd  25 £500

£500 is nice, but was a sick jump between 1st and 2nd!

 

ul but nice consolation, keep crushing pal

I went up  to the unibet open party on Friday night and ended up playing some cash, it was 200nl.

I sat down with 200£, there was 1 player with - £500, 2 on close to £200 stacks and the rest had <£140 stacks.

The table was really talkative, everything was having a good time. To my left was a Scottish player, he seemed decent and had a good understanding of poker. Then there was 2 Dutch friends, one playing the UNibet Open, he had satted in and his friend who had come along with him for the few days in Glasgow. Then there was an American guy, he proceeded to lose atleast £500, reloading for £50 and losing it every time. There was another unibet open qualifier on the table who played 2 hands all night, the rest of the seats came and went.

There was a fun hand later on, guy limps, Button raises to £8, I 3 bet to £23 from the sb, the limper calls the 3 bet, and button 4 bet jammed I sheepishly went to muck my hand and accidentally my cards got flicked over, every1 was laughing when they seen my hand and it would have an impact on later play, it wasn't the best of hands. Limper had 88, 4 better had ace 7, 88s held.

Yeah after that hand Scottish guy who had position on me called every single raise I made in late position lol It was fun, thankfully he never started 4 betting, unless he had it, everyone was very honest with their betting.

I made a mistake imo in one hand, I've posted it up in PHA, I never bet the river, i feel it is a bet.

I made about £100 from the session, about 3 hours, which isn't bad considering I was down after the 1st 2 hands I played.

I really enjoyed it, it's the best experience I've had playing live. Everyone at the table was talking and having a good time, previously when I've played no1 really communicated outside of a silly argument.

Online poker is just repetitive and almost mechanical now-adays, I do still enjoy it but that few hours playing live was the best fun I've had playing poker this year.

Going to watch the England game then going out for lunch / dinner(!) @3.

Tonight i'm playing the roller plus 2/3 other MTT's, it'll be pretty chilled out and i'll always seem to do well when i'm not playing 2 many tables, so really looking forward to tonight, plus it's the 1st time I've played online since Thursday.

I'll do a write up on the Unibet open in the next day or 2 and live mtts in general, then i'll give this blog a rest for the next few months. Also during the vegas season there'll be plenty to read from all the vegas threads/ staking threads. There won't be much to say, the summer is here, games will be slower and tougher than over the previous few months (cash). May well end up playing more live cash over the summer months.

Really enjoyed the unibet open.

It worked out really well at the start, the table was 5/6 handed for a long while, which was ideal.

9 handed is so slow.

With live mtt's, there isn't a great amount in Scotland, outside of £30-£50 casino games. If I lived near Nottingham I would defo play more live tournaments.

What I might do is just play any of the Tour Games that come up to Glasgow/ Edinburgh with a buy in of £100-£500.

The more expensive ones I'll maybe look at playing Sats to get into them. Just overall, I think it'll be difficult making money from live MTT's, just the fact they are so few and far between, 1 MTT takes up a good few days, in saying that I expect they will mostly be pretty soft.

Quite a few folk have been asking if i'm going to the £550 UKPC in August. At the moment I don't have any plans too, like it's not just the cost of the tournament, i'll be paying for accommodation/ travel food (drink!) and before you know it you have spent well over £1k.

I'll decide nearer the time.

The next couple of months will be really standard so won't have much to say on here.

Have a good summer everyone!

The last 13 days have been really bad for MTTs, pretty much since I played in the Unibet Open.

June has been a really good month, I've only had 3 losing days so far, but with MTT's just nothings been happening and cash has saved me on pretty much every day.

I have played loads of games over this time and only FTed one game.

The variance in these games is really low, they are low buyin, there are 100-150 runners on avg and the standard is pretty low.

It's not like stars where there is 1000s of runner fields where variance would be massive.

I don't think i'm doing anything 2 differently to what I've done previously. I don't even think I've ran particularly bad as in getting coolered, there has been a couple, but nothing massive.

Although, there definatly has been spells where I have been card dead and just couldn't get anything going. It's the worst run I've had at MTTs this year.

I really think variance is over hyped in these types of games I play, I most likely havnt been playing my best.

I spoke to a mate about it last night, he suggested doing a review session to see if I am butchering things, so will be doing that after my next MTT session with a few folk to get other peoples opinions.

If you play MTTs regularly, what kind of stuff to do you do when reviewing hands, like use any software/ programmes, or just talk it over with friends?

It has been a bit frustrating this run in mtts, but it happens, the next time i'm playing a session, i'll just be looking at playing my best and can review the games after to see if I've started doing stuff differently or just generally look for leaks.

A week since the last post, nothing has changed with tournaments, I've kept losing in everyone I've been playing.

Pretty much not done anything in any game I've played in the last 3 weeks.

Maybe a 1/3rd of this has been spew or silly play, not fancy play syndrome, silly play syndrome:)

I've  defo underestimated variance in not-many-runner MTTs  though.

The other thing that hasn't helped has been playing so much at cash, tournaments were just an aside.

It's a strange one when people talk about variance, if it's a friend or someone you know you feel bad for them, if it's just a moany / whiney person, you are totally apathetic.

The biggest part of "variance" for me over the last period for tournaments, yes there has been coolers, but mostly it's been prolonged spells of being card dead/ not having many decent spots at all.

I won't be playing much again in June after tonight. I'm just going to play the roller plus 2 other MTT's, so only 3 mtts. I'm really looking forward to it, not many tables, so will be able to focus on every decision, really breaking down how everyone at the table is playing.





   

Another thing, in loads of MTT hand's, I've been like a bull in a china shop. Like silly play syndrome but not as extreme.

I've just been totally wrong in a lot of spots. One of the things i'm best at with poker is hand reading and putting players on really tight ranges.

This has been really lacking in the last 3 weeks. Intuition/ Feel just hasn't been there. I've been taking lines I shouldn't have been because I had insufficient information, or no read at all.

I've probably been pretty reckless.

Did you have a review session, try not to be too harsh on yourself sometimes it goes that way if you make a good play but at the wrong time etc

Keep grinding through it , confidence is the key. i played a few on sky last couple days seems as good as ever might have to put some volume in again watch out ;)

June was my 1st losing month in MTTs for over a year, for the month I was down £900 from MTT's. Luckily cash was golden for the first 3 weeks of the month, before the really warm weather set in. I was really surprised when my friend scoped me for the month. I knew I hadn't done great in tournies, but not as bad as minus £900!

It's the biggest downswing I've experienced (MTTs), sure some of it was spew, but I had really underestimated variance.

Confidence was at rock bottom, I had went into games just expecting to lose, which was a really bad attitude, it's just how it felt, I was so glad when June was over.

I put that thinking out of my head saying July was a new month, thinking positive, and just taking every game at a time, trying to make the best decisions possible, and just take it from there. I recorded my Thursday session from start to finish and reviewed it with some friends, I broke even/ made a slight loss on the night, but it was good to go over it on Friday. It was really productive.

Before tonight I decided I was going to start recording MTT's sessions for the next couple of weeks in here, just to look back on at the end of the month to see how things were going, good or bad etc.

I played 5 MTT's tonight with total buy in's of £99. 4 x £11 MTTs and the 9pm £55 BH. I'm going to be playing atleast 10 of the £55 9pm Bh'ers this month.

I managed to bink the 9:30 pm £11 BH, 270 runners, for about £550.

Needed that result bad! Confidence is back and ready to go.

     

Hi mate just seen on aussies results that u binked 930 nice result sir hopefully you have flicked that switch and will heat it up this month

Wp sir

tyvm YG

Last night only played 2 MTT's, made a profit of about £20, profits profit!

Really pumped for tonight feeling really confident. Going to play the 7:45, 8:15, 9pm and 9:30 pm b /hunters.

July Total Withdrawels: £400
Bankroll= x+£354
Sharkscope from it's highest point ever is currently minus £500ish.

I always keep my bankroll at X, if I go below this point I don't withdraw until above this point again.

*I've also sold 30% in all my £55 Games this month.

July so far:

Run good cash: 8/10
Run good Mtts: 6.5/10
Spewiness: 0.5/10

Must not Spew, Ever Never EVVVER This Month

July Spew Free Month

I played another 4 MTT's on top of the ones mentioned above.

Bricked most of them came 4th in another one, but it was only for +£60.

Over all tonight across all games, i'm down £50.

I didn't cash for anything in the £55 game, not even a bounty.

It was quite a tough table, there was a nit, a v good reg, and another reg i'm not quite sure how to describe, and this other player who limped every hand pretty much.

There was very little action, and was all very slow, and no one on the table had a decent stack and the blinds were just going up and up.

The serial limper was quite interesting, they stabbed most flops, as bluffs, their bet sizing was pretty obvious, I should have done a lot more to target this player.

There wasn't much point in raising / 3 betting them without a hand as they were never folding. They seemed to be calling a whole lot too (on flops), but would never get much further without having a really strong hand, 2 pair plus.

The other problem was I was mostly card dead through out the £55 game. I could have started check raising flops (from bb) against the serial limper, but it was kinda hard they were also limping monsters too. Out of my original table in the £55 BH I don't think one of us cashed from the starting table.

Overall, i'm quite happy with how I played today.

If I play tomorrow, I will probably just play 2/3 MTTs including the £55 game, to give all games my full concentration.

Bankroll x +£305. Going to withdraw £100 before next session so will be only plus £200 and pressures on to get them wins in!

i actually dont mind players limp calling alot then small bet/call etc. sometimes you do need to go to war or barrell several times but its still quite an interesting one, sometimes difficult if you have no value hands. say they limp call, flop K59. they will likely min bet flop any 2 inc their top of range, if we call in this spot effectively with any 2 including our strong hands. Turn if they min bet again they are 90% weak as they will bet fuller with top pair + so can either try a bluff or if you have a strong hand take them to value town, sometimes its a cheap spot to get to showdown with 2nd-4th pair etc where you can be good but its not a spot to value.

Defo makes it interesting though and awkward for some, good luck tonight im off playing pool and out weekend so realistically tomorrow night only chance i might play

Yeah lol i had total junk and didn't want to be doing stuff with no equity. Was just one of those ones couldn't do much about it, and was best just playing solid.

Cheers bud, I've ended up not playing tonight, hopefully get a decent session in tomorrow.

What are you playing?

 

Not sure yet mate ill imagine ill play Main & mini, 930bh and possibly a few around these. Mate might be coming round for chilled fifa & dominos but if not i will try and win some betting tokens :)

Good stuff mate, just seen you ended up playing after all, hope you've done a bit better than me!

Tonight was pretty meh.

Spent £121 on MTTs tonight.

Cashes = Approx £70, including £37.50 from the 9pm (2Bounties).

I never really got a stack in any game. In the Main I jammed KJ versus BB on the Bubble with 10 bigs. He called with Ace 6, Kxx, 6, A. Some1 shorter must have busted the same hand cause I min cashed it. The table from the get go was very similar to the one I described above, extremely nitty, there was this one player he only ever 3 bets QQ plus and AK, no idea how some1 can play poker like that, so transparent.

The 9PM game was completely different. I had an amazing table, but was always going to be a bit swingy given the players on it, I stuck to mostly playing tight, perhaps should have played a bit tighter though and not opened as much.

Not to sure if this is a mistake, it's my exit hand from the 9pm. It's against a maniac. They have open jammed 3 of the last 5 hands, maybe it's not worth taking a 60/40 at best. Probably is just a fold, I don't know.

Me    Small blind       100.00    100.00    5761.00
pappsee    Big blind       200.00    300.00    23574.00
     Your hole cards   
A
9
           
jorge670    Fold            
badboy-pj    Fold            
Rumpy    Fold            
Maniac    All-in       6435.00    6735.00    0.00
Me         All-in       5761.00    12496.00    0.00
pappsee    Fold            
Maniac      Unmatched bet       574.00    11922.00    574.00
Me    Show   
A
9
Maniac    Show   
K
9

First card on the door was a K. Outside of being results orientated I'll normally call in a marginal spot like this, if I think they are jamming wide, dunno, maybe it's not worth taking the 60/40, of course turned out 2 be a 70/30, I just feel i'm so far ahead of this players range.

Not a great night in as much as there weren't any deep runs/ decent cashes, but overall really happy with how I played and I've got my first cash in a £55 game of the month, even if it was only £37.50! Also I've not spewed once since I've started doing these daily updates which is fantastic!

Going to take tomorrow night off and chill,

I've not played any cash at all since I started doing these daily updates.

Bankroll x plus £142
July Withdrawals £500

It's been really good writing up after every session, going to re-read back what's happened this week tomorrow.

I have contained the downswing I was on/ reversed it which was all I wanted to do a week ago.

Tonight I came 2nd in one MTT, and busted the 9pm just before the bubble, but got 2 bounties for a £49 Cash. It was pretty bad I was chip leader with about 25 left 9 paid.

The hand that crippled me, left me with <1bb was flush over flush, all in on the turn. It was pretty bad, against a very straight forward player, he had the nuts. I should have just called his turn bet.

People looking would say it was a cooler, but it was just bad play on my part against this opponent doing so many chips with my 8 high flush.

I've got 6 £55 games to go, feel like I will need to put some work into MTT's.

£55 games total spend, £220, returns, £86.50.

Those are really ugly stats, pretty sure I can turn it into a profit before the 10th games over, need to take one of these down!

That's me all booked up for London in August, 2 days in London, then up to Epsom for a few days.

Will be playing some cash at Aspers and also want to visit the hippodrome, it sounds like a great venue.

Will get in some touristy stuff too during the day.

I've only been to London once when I was a kid, all I can remember is it being massive having to get the train/ tube everywhere lol

I'll be around London that weekend. Could meet up for a session if you want.

Gay :)

You playing 25/25 this weekend Kev?

lol just posted a message then it said I needed to login and it was gone:(

Ugot, sent you a message mate, will be down in a couple of weeks time.

Celtic, didn't even know it was on, will try and get to the next one being held in Glasgow.

-----------------------------------
Cliffs:
The £55+ Mtts havn't been going great. It's a really small sample size, but overall i'm down from playing these games ever.

The standard is a lot better than the games I normally play. I would say i'm decent enough for these stake levels, but the best players will be significantly better.

It's good to be realistic and there is a lot of room for improvement to take my game to that next level.

Over the next week or so, i'm going to spend some time off the tables, reviewing the higher buy in games, which I don't do often enough. There is a whole lot of room for improvement!

Overall I've not really been enjoying online poker that much recently, which has never really happened before.

By comparison i'm loving live poker, it's a lot more fun/ sociable. Everytime I sit down I always make assumptions as to how someone will play or how good they are, i'm almost always wrong!

£55 games havn't been going brilliantly but still feel they are great value, and it's just a matter of time.

I'm going 2 play the 9pm tonight and Thursday, really going to try and focus, just play every hand as best I can, and see what comes from it, it would be awesome to get some decent run's going in these games.

If I was going to play a lot of higher buy in MTT's, I would get some coaching, I was thinking about it last week, but come September i'll mostly be playing cash, so doesn't make a whole lot of sense at the moment. Maybe something i'll look into come the Spring of next year.

Was also thinking about taking out a RIO subscription.

If anyone uses Run It Once are the videos downloadable, and is it any good for the £60/70 a month it would cost?
   

Videos are downloadable on to an app that holds 6 different vids at a time. Quality of vids and coaches are second to none.

Yeah the RIO vids are vv good.

You don't necessarily have to pay £60/70 per month btw, that's only for the Elite level, although that is where all the best vids are (but there are good non-elite vids too). There's also a ton of free material out there if you use Google.

Yeah it's very decent and £60/70 a month is good value imo.

Getting a team together for the Partypoker/ DTD games, need another two players!

https://www.partypoker.com/whats-going-on/promotions/team-challenge.html

Evilpengwinz is el captiano, if you want into the best team post in here or send Andy a message:)

Possibly down to 1 spot left already :)

Sorry Andy, I'm busy that weekend, so please stop harassing me every day begging me to play.

Thanks.

Just wrote a longer post when my phone crashed on me. Cliffs, londons been fantastic off 2 Epsom this arvo, played at aspers and the hippodrome. Had a bit of a nightmare getting to and back from Leicester square yest not knowing London at all with the tube strike been on! The hippodrome was an amazing venue with fantastic staff. In the hippodrome they do a draw and 4 players get rake free poker all day, I was lucky to get take free poker. Played some cool hands. I 3 bet a tightish player with q5 hh otb, 10-30, he calls. Flop 1077 r, cont bet 40, call. Turn 10 check check. Don't think I'm betting any hand on this turn here 10x or over pair. When he calls the flop he always has a pair, certainly never ace high or worse. Otr he bets 30, really small! The way he has been playing he never has 10x here, he'd fold a10 pre oop, and he's pretty capped at never having aa or kk, he'd always be 4 betting these hands, he is most likely to have 88~99, Jj or queens, probs most likely Jj. Of course he could have quads, but quite happy I can get him 2 fold most of his range, it's never ever a bluff a jam here, I move all in, he tanks for a bit asks if I'll show if he folds, tanks some more and mucks his hand.

1 bed flat in Epsom = 300k plus buying, renting = £900 pm, really redic the disparity between this area and the rest of the uk, must be almost impossible for some1 starting out to buy a place. 300k where I live would just about get you a mansion!

It really is amazing how expensive it would be to rent/ buy a place in London.

It's a shame folk starting out or those on low incomes would struggle to ever own property down there, constantly having to rent, all that dead money never building up equity in a property.

I loved London though, was a really sweet city. I wasn't sure what to expect, I've only been there once before, I had a stereotype it was going to be really unfriendly where no one spoke to anyone and might not be that enjoyable. Nothing could have been further from the truth, people could not have been nicer.

London, City of 1000 Languages and literally it was!

Stayed in Stratford from Wed-Fri, then Epsom Friday - Monday. A big thanks to Doobs who suggested Stratford and the Travelodge/ holiday inn's, it turned out to be a great choice and was significantly cheaper than central London, and was literally a 5 minute walk from Stratford centre.

On the day of the Tube Strike, Thursday iirc, was pretty bad, I knew there was a strike on but had little idea to the ramifications of this. I was told I would have to get the 25 Bus, the first 3 busses were mobbed and didn't event stop, was about to change plans then the next one came along, which I managed to get on, everyone packed in like sardines. Busses in London don't accept cash (!), utterly bizarre, the driver just told me to get on, the traffic was really slow especially getting closer to London, then the bus stopped the driver saying it was terminating early due to problems on the road. By this point traffic was pretty much grid locked, I asked someone how long it would take to walk to Leicster Square they said about an hour, felt it would be quicker walking than getting another bus so off I went. London Top Tip: If you are asking for directions pick someone in a suit!

Getting back that night, I left the Hippodrome about 8pm, it was a real shame, I had a massive stack, and the table was really juicy, but wanted to make sure I could get back to Stratford, plus I was walking about with a wad of £50 notes, so just wanted to get back safely! One of the poker players told me it was a 30 min walk to Liverpool Street Station, and that the train would only take 10 minutes from there. To cut a long story short, I might have got lost, but eventually found a bus that would take me pretty close to the station followed by a short walk. Eventually I got to LS station and the train only took 10 Mins, I was home safe! Another thing I was concerned about before going was safety, for some reason I thought it would be full of pick pockets, but have to say I felt totally safe in all my time in London.

Sat seen some of the touristy stuff, Houses of Parliament/ Downing Street, Big Ben, and the changing of the guard. A tourist walked up to one of the soldiers on guard, when the soldier shouted back as loud as, the poor tourist just about shat their pants, but was pretty funny! At Leicster Square there was a guy givin out leaflets for the London Comedy Club, was like £12 for 2 hours of Comedy. The Mc was "Inkey Jones", turns out he was the main act, it was so funny. The front row was a bunch of Essex punters and he systematically destroyed them for most of his time on stage, he was hilarious. There were 4 other acts who had about 10 minutes each, 3 of the 4 were pretty terrible, but still for £12 and 2 hours of comedy it was great value. If you are from London or nearby defo worth checking out.

Sunday went up to Brighton for the day. Really enjoyed London, and the Poker went really well too.

A big thing I wanted to do was see if I could play Live Poker for a sustained period of time. On the Thursday ended up playing for 6-7 hours, laterally I feel I was getting a bit tired/ not playing my best.     

I'm going to sell 30% for 5x £55 (9pm) Bounty Hunters.

10%= £27.50, 5%= £13.75.

The last 15-20 £55 games didn't go amazing, but I didn't run particularly well.

I believe these games are great value for money. I won the DTD Micro game last night (longest ever MTT ive ever played!), and have been doing well overall. Part of it has just been watching videos on Run it Once, feel it always helps just hearing someone talk through their thought process or why they played a hand in a certain way.

It's only open to folk I know or have staked/ have staked me in the past, if you are interested if you can post in here or send me a pm, thanks.

Yeah I will take 10 Kev and if you havent already shipped today to me then keep it and I owe you a bit of shrapnel

Sold out

1st game will be tomorrow night. Tomorrow or sat, I'll post up some hands, hopefully can get some interesting spots. Was thinking about doing a session on twitch 2, as long as its not 2 difficult to set up!

2nd break have 13 bigs 18/21, spin time!

Busted with 1 head, £23.44 GG hand was AQ>A5 he only went and got a fh lol

A few hands

LARSON7    Small blind       100.00    100.00    9135.00
x    Big blind             200.00    300.00    4420.00
     Your hole cards   
Js                               Js Kh, blinds 100/200, we raise to 477, we have 9.1K,BB had 4.4k                                    
Kh
           
jayasdad    Fold            
riverdam    Fold            
HAPPYNIGE4    Fold            
LARSON7    Raise       377.00    677.00    8758.00
x    Call       277.00    954.00    4143.00
Flop
         
Jh
9d                          I bet half pot 477, I don't like my bet size here or the fact I clicked the half pot button.
5s
           
LARSON7    Bet       477.00    1431.00    8281.00
x    Call       477.00    1908.00    3666.00
Turn
         
8c                           I really disliked this 8, bringing in a lot of 2 pairs/ couple of gut shots. Check,
           
LARSON7    Check            
x    Check      When he checks, I have the best hand here almost always, so I thought(!)      
River
         
4h                            I bet 800 and the player raises to 2k. The 4 is a total brick, it's really unusual for a player like this to check the turn with 2 pair/ straight/ set, then again this is also hardly ever a bluff, like its never AJ. He could have 10Q, some random bluffs, but in saying all that don't think it's ever a bluff. I called but it should have been a fold. He had 7 10 for the straight.
           
LARSON7    Bet       800.00    2708.00    7481.00
x    Raise       2000.00    4708.00    1666.00
LARSON7    Call       1200.00    5908.00    6281.00
x    Show   
10
7
LARSON7    Muck   
J
K
x            Win    Straight to the Jack

----------------------------------

I also played my biggest ever winning and losing hand at poker tonight in a HU Cash Game.

x Small blind       £2.00    £2.00    £415.20
LARSON7    Big blind       £4.00    £6.00    £699.00
     Your hole cards   
Kh
6h
           
x    Raise       £10.00    £16.00    £405.20
LARSON7    Call       £8.00    £24.00    £691.00
Flop
         
8h
6d
Qh
           
LARSON7    Check            
x    Bet       £14.00    £38.00    £391.20
LARSON7    Raise       £40.00    £78.00    £651.00
x    Call       £26.00    £104.00    £365.20
Turn
         
Jh
           
LARSON7    Bet       £60.00    £164.00    £591.00
x    Call       £60.00    £224.00    £305.20
River
         
Ks
           
LARSON7    Bet       £104.00    £328.00    £487.00
x    All-in       £305.20    £633.20    £0.00
LARSON7    Raise       £402.40    £1035.60    £84.60
LARSON7    Unmatched bet       £201.20    £834.40    £285.80
9Bob    Show   
J
Ah
LARSON7    Show   
Kh
6h
LARSON7    Win    Flush to the King    £833.40       £1119.20

Then lost this 1

LARSON7    Small blind       £2.00    £2.00    £1190.00
x    Big blind       £4.00    £6.00    £402.00
     Your hole cards   
K
A
           
LARSON7    Raise       £6.00    £12.00    £1184.00
x    Raise       £26.00    £38.00    £376.00
LARSON7    Raise       £62.00    £100.00    £1122.00
x    All-in       £376.00    £476.00    £0.00
LARSON7    Raise       £672.00    £1148.00    £450.00
LARSON7    Unmatched bet       £336.00    £812.00    £786.00
LARSON7    Show   
K
A
x    Show   
10
10
Flop
         
9
3
9
           
Turn
         
J
           
River
         
3
           
x Win    Two Pairs, 10s and 9s    £811.00, Where was the A or K!   

Gotta love the bubble queen from the ept show to night <3 so good all the charitable work and refreshing to see stuff like that on a poker show. An American Irish  Rose. *irish rose is a total legend of sky poker, more 2 follow.

Game 2 was last night didn't cash.

Off to Celtic game for the champions league qualifier tomorrow night so next game will be the 10 30 pm 55£ Bh er.

Sky's hand history thing is fucking terrible. They need to at least make it compatible with replayers.

Out of the next 3 games only cashed for £50, in the last game I busted the 3rd hand, limped pot bb with Ks2s, flopped the 2nd nuts, they flopped the nuts.

Total cashes are £74 from the 5 games. Quite disappointed with that but happy how I played. Quite annoying the lack of returns in these games, I won't sell any action in £55 games again, pretty bad just writing lost lost lost lol

........

Irish Rose total legend of Sky Poker, always friendly with never an angry word to say.  Loves her poker and is amazingly generous in supporting any charity fund raiser event. She also has a unique style of play, the like of which I have never seen before.

I played this hand against Rose in a MTT, we raise JJ, Rose 3 bets, we call in position. Flop 1072 (R), Rose Checks, we bet get raised and call. Turn 2, still rainbow. Check Check, River 6 (no flushes), Check, we bet for value and get raised again (and call). Utterly bizarre hand!

She also beat the little fella Matt Bates a couple of weeks ago in the Sunday Roller for a 3/4K Score. Rose had been trying to get into the UKPC for sometime, and managed to bink her seat last week just in time. Rose is a total legend and encapsulates the best in a poker player, just loves the game.

..........

Just watched the whole Star War Series (yes on Sky!), I've only seen about 4 of the films in the past but had no idea of the narrative/ story line through out the sequence of films. Never appreciated either how epic/ amazing these films are.

Celtic out of the Champions League:(

Going to stick £800/£1k on Stars, try and be all patient 9 handed :)

Play some of the wcoop events, and see if they are running Sats yet for UKIPT Edinburgh.

Anyone that plays on stars, can you just take the cash from Satelites if you prereg the game the sats for?

You get tournament credits to the value of the seat won if you unregister or are already registered for it. You can sell the tourney credits for almost face value pretty easily on other forums, and Stars have a feature for it. Just enter the username and the amount you're selling along with the amount you're selling for. Stars will confirm it with the person buying and mediate the whole transaction.

Some live events are unable to be unreg'd if you qualify through a satellite. I don't think you can unreg if you win a package with buy-in, hotel etc. You might be able to unreg if it's just the value of the seat you win.

Tyvm ransom.

I won the mini rebuy yesterday and 2 tournaments tonight as well,  really pleased with that.

I played some phenomenal hands on the ft last night, taking really unusual lines. It's also the first time I've played the rebuy tournies. Will Defo be playing them more regularly, they have a great structure but do go on a bit! The game started at 8 30 and didn't finish till 2am. I was a bit worried on the ft bubble I might blow, it was going on forever but managed to keep focuseed and put on quite a display on the ft.

My record in £55 games is still pretty terrible, I'm 90% sure it's not a skill issue but time will tell.

Last night I got to the ft of the 7 45 with 8 bigs and 6/6. Chip leader had millions of chips atleast 50% of chips in play. Player quickly gg d, so 5/5. Managed to win a flip 2 take me up to about 17 bigs, it was quite even between 4 shorter stacks. Then found aa v aj and kk to treble up knocking out 1 player and crippling the other player. Quickly it was hu with the original ft chip leader, he had 90k I had 60k. Player was really tight so was going to be a slow hu, would just have to chip him down. He min raised almost 100% of buttons and cont bet 50% pot every time so I just exploited that a whole lot. Otb I was using a dual min raise/ limp strategy.

It was to and through for about 20 mins with me slowly reducing the deficit. Then flopped a set against oppos top 2 pair getting it in on flop and holding leaving him 8 bigs, winning the next hand 2 take the tournament.

Really pleased with the last 4 days and 4 wins. My s/s is at the highest it's ever been and have turned round the 1k downswing.

I kinda mucked up the 9 30 last night, it's like a 300 runner mtt, was 3/18 and managed to gg in 15th after making a pretty terrible blunder.

It was after midnight and I was pretty tired also I've pulled a muscle in my left shoulder, it's in real agony, am taking some pain killers, but the pain keeps comin back every few hours, really annoying!

Not to sure if I'm playin 2 nite, I'll see how I feel later on

Pain has been really bad in my shoulder, it's a total nightmare. The worst part is the lack of sleep due to pain during the night. I went to the dr who prescribed an anti enflamatry but it doesn't seem to be working. Im going to get some acupuncture today to try and help with the pain and might head up to a and e later to try and get an x ray done on my shoulder. It's that bad I can't even drive, hopefully it gets better rapid!

One of the most popular threads in the last few days has been the refugee thread.

It would be good to do a fundraiser on blonde to make donations helping refugees dealing with this shit right now.

It could be something along the line of someone donates 10% of a days winnings.

Just a thought, what does everyone else think ?

^^^^ pretty sigh the last few lines of that post recieved 0 responses. As a community, as a site, we could have done something really good there.

Problems with my shoulder; it started over a week ago, 1st few days felt it'd fix pretty soon, 2 days ago it looked like it was going to take a good while 2 fix. Was really worried it was frozen shoulder, I seen my cousin yest who is a physiotherapist and got some physio done. Good thing it isn't frozen shoulder, but still might take up 2 6 weeks to get back to total normality. A possible cause could be posture/ sitting at a comp. I've got some exercises to do to try and help movement in my shoulder.

Nice thread mate. In for refugee donations. GL with the shoulder.

Hey POW, thank you very much mate.

Hope you are doing well, it could have been someone else's diary, but iirc you were talking about looking for other stuff outside of poker? All the best, whether poker or otherwise.

The shoulder is getting better every day/ no longer taking pain killers, just the anti-inflammatory tablets.

Last week I was in quite a bad place, in a lot of pain, not sleeping properly and consequently had no focus / motivation, so glad to be getting back to normal now.

It was so frustrating the refugee situation - people fleeing from a war zone, many who had lost family members, displaced and quite often with nothing.

It would have been great to do a fundraiser on here, but looking back it's very much a personal thing and people can just donate individually if they wish.

It's a fantastic idea what Phillip Gruissem and others did when setting up Raising for Effective Giving (REG). They ask poker players to donate 2% of their profit to help good causes.

http://reg-charity.org/

Dan Colman in the past spoke about the bad side of the poker industry as how he percieved it, how there is nothing productive about poker in helping society or the greater good.

He made a lot of valid points.

That's why i feel inititaitives like REG are great, as money gained from poker can actually   be used to do good, to help those in need.

It sounds paradoxical that those who make their money from an utterly greed fed pursuit - capitalism at its best - should help others though their winnings. I firmly believe as poker players, and as a community we should be doing more to give back.

      

Pokers

This time last year I did a challenge to make 5k profit from Sept- Christmas. It started out a bit slow, by the end of October I was behind target, but I smashed it come Christmas, December was a fantastic month.

It's that time of year to start kick off that challenge again, bigger and better this time :)

The goal is significantly higher than than 5k, i'd like to make 5k from MTT's alone  between now and Christmas but come October> most of my volume will be Cash games.

I won't say what my goal is from cash games, but expect to be playing mostly 100nl, with some 200nl if tables are good by the end of Oct/ start of november.

Can't wait for Winter Poker, really pumped for it. Feels a bit funny talking about winter on a 20 degree September day!



 

Good Luck with your target, I hope you smash it.

Shame I didn't see your post about donating 10% would of been up for that. I've already donated a couple of sack's of clothes, shower gel that type of stuff last week, always up for helping out when I can.

Great stuff, that's prob the best thing to be honest donating stuff folk need> money.

There was a bit on the news last week about some City in England where loads of people had donated stuff + many more volunteering to help sort it and get it sent over to those in need.

Inspirational stuff.

It was a good start to the challenge yesterday I won the 11:30 Bounty Hunter, it was my last game, and up till then the rest of the night had been pretty flat lol

It's really interesting reading Teddy Bloat's posts about HU Sit and Go's/ Spin and Go's, about the different levels and cartels. From an outsiders perspective, as someone who seldom plays HU Sit and Go's, it's difficult to comprehend what the difference would be between a Reg at £30 games versus a £200 reg versus a £1k reg. It would seem to me edges in Hyper Sit and Go's, or spin and gos, must be very small, but in reality there must be a massive skill difference between the various stake levels.

If you take that and apply it to MTTs. I would imagine (!?) there must be a far bigger skill gap between a very good higher stakes reg and a lower stakes reg. Just in as much as with tournaments there is a lot more variables and intricacies to the game, you start a lot deeper versus HU Hypers, strategies are totally different at each stage of the tournament where as with hypers, the strategy will be pretty consistant from the get go when starting stacks are super shallow. 

In both disciplines I would expect the biggest edge of a good low stakes reg versus a very good high stakes reg would be better a far greater understanding of ranges and also better hand reading skills.   

I'm quite analytical, that kinda stuff interests me. One of the reasons I enjoy poker so much.

 

Most often in blog threads when hands are posted they receive v little, if any, response.

I'm going to post some hands below and would really appreciate any feedback on my thought process in both hands. Thanks.

Both MTT Hands.

Hand 1

The villain is a reg, and doesn't tend to believe me - will constantly tell me in the chat I never have it!

We are ITM, 9/10 players left.

7s 7h UTG we have 15057 chips, blinds 400/800
We min raise to 1.6k.
Reg OTB 3 bets to 7.2k. It's a massive raise, 4.5 x raise. The pot is 10K. We have 13,457 behind.
At first I was thinking is this a fold. The raise is v strange and totally different to his normal 3 bet size, I didn't think he had AAKKorQQ, nor 1010 or a worse pair based on the sizing. I came to the decision that based purely on his sizing the vast majority of his range here was big Aces, so from initially wanting to fold I decided to jam. I never really like jamming with no fold equity with this particular hand, but felt it was the right decision. 
   



 

yeah the difference between the top of one stake and the middle of the one below is pretty big. the difference between the bottom of one stake and the top of the one below it is not so great as people do move up regularly. a few mates are battling into the 60s from the 30s now [and they recently battled into the 30s from the 15's] and they are having good results doing so.

but the higher-stakes guys would rightly consider us $15-30 players as fish. literally we would be their bread and butter.

worth noting that sicko MTT players and cash crushers are often the recs i am talking about in the HUSNG posts.

here is the $500 hyper HUSNG graph of someone who is $450k up in all formats [mainly mtts and 6max sngs].

http://imgur.com/pas27v7

Get this in your diary Kev, Hampden next year!

http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2015/09/partypoker-sponsored-grand-prix-poker-tour-launched-19060.htm

I think the High stakes MTTs involve a different skill set than the low/mid stakes MTTs. You can't be pulling Pad level moves, because it just won't make sense to them at lower/mid stakes often enough to make them profitable. Because of this the way the game is played is just so much different I find.

Looks good mate, it's amazing the good work Rob Yong does in promoting poker within the UK! I'll try and play it if i'm about.
It's amazing how big the gap is, in a game that starts with 25 bigs, rapidly turning into much less! Interesting graph for someone who crushes other formats. I'm glad you are doing well, it doesn't seem that long ago we used to play HU Sit and Gos lol

I think the High stakes MTTs involve a different skill set than the low/mid stakes MTTs. You can't be pulling Pad level moves, because it just won't make sense to them at lower/mid stakes often enough to make them profitable. Because of this the way the game is played is just so much different I find.
[/quote]

I guess it's the same skill set, good higher stakes players, will just have more dimensions and subtleties to their game. I don't think the gap between a great £50 MTT player would be amazingly different to that of a £200 MTT player, then again it's hard because MTT players often play such a wide array of stakes.

The last week, really my 1st week back since I had probs with my shoulder, have been really good.

I've been playing a certain style, slightly different to before, and it's been working really well. I've not changed my game drastically just subtle tweaks.

I've made quite a lot of FT's and won another MTT on Tuesday.

I've also qualified for Sunday's Puna Canta Semi Final, its a £190 Sat into the £880 Final, then winners get a puna canta package. I was trying to take the £190 cash, but Sky's stopped people regging the final, so just have to play the Sunday sat now. Poooo

When I was playing on Monday night I got chatting to one of the players Jacques1, he is about to cycle from Rome to his home in England as part of a charity event to raise funds for sporting activities in his local area.

His brother tragically lost his life in a car accident while he was at uni. In the aftermath of his death the Steve Bernard Foundation was set up in his honour to raise money for good causes locally. www.stevebernardfoundation.com It's astounding over the last 10 years just under £250,000 has been raised. It's amazing how such good has come from such a tragedy.

The cycle from Rome starts in a few days time, if anyone would like to donate: https://www.gofundme.com/Rome2Home. It is awe inspiring the amazing work that has been done.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuYq7vdZsJY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuYq7vdZsJY

Good to see you are making plenty of "On Your Bike" noise here & elsewhere mate.

Good luck on Sunday in the Punta Cana thing.

Thank you very much Tikay.

I spoke earlier in the year about my Aunt Lucy and her battle with cancer. She passed away peacefully in the early hours of Saturday morning.

In March my Aunt Lucy was told she had weeks to live, at that point the Doctor's said there was an experimental drug they could try to sustain life as long as possible.

She was a battler courageous and strong throughout, a true inspiration.

RIP Aunt Lucy xx

It's been a pretty shitty week.

Hardly played any poker at all.

I'm going to get in a proper session tonight, really looking forward to it.

Only just seen this, sorry.

It's never easy, is it?

Condolences.

It's not, my aunt Lucy was only in her early 60's, and was an extraordinary person with a heart of gold who would have helped anyone, the priest during the  euology said within 5 minutes of meeting my aunt you had a friend for life, so true.

Condolences Kev.

Morning Kev.

I see you "seat-bubbled" a Punta Cana semi final last night......

LARSON7 0 11 £528

No idea if that was by accident or design, & I won't ask, but £528 is handy enough, well done you. (Punta Cana clashes with week one of UKOPS).

Adam Bromley made the final, which I was pleased to see, & a lad called "Talon", who is a micro stakes player made the final (seat value £880) too.

Talon, who is a great kid, has no wish to win the Punta Cana package, & has been attempting to seat bubble, but keeps messing up & winning the seat. 

Thanks for the condolences Tikay and Vince.

--------------------------------------------

Would be great to see the Bromley's and Talon qualify for Puna Canta.

Natalie and Adam love their live poker escapades in in exotic locations, plus would be great for the brommers diary!

Would be so amazing for Talon to make it, i know he says he got lucky, but was playing really well, I had the last 5 tables up to see how players were playing incase of a table move. From what i seen Talon was playing perfectly..

Talon's game of choice is PLO8, at which he is incredibly skilled.

He's a smashing bloke, & here's the thing, just look at these stats....

He has played over 3,000 games on Sky Poker. Average buy-in? £1.25. So a regular "penny player" really.

And now marvel at this - he has a profit of almost £1,500 from those 3,000 games at those micro-stakes. Not too many can boast that. Has no inclination to move up the stakes, is happy doing what he does at penny stakes. These are the guys we can be so proud of in poker.   

Isn't he an old boy?

The bearded Frank Gallagher avatar made me think so!

-------------------------------------

Been a crazy busy week, got some awesome news this week too:)

Next while is gonna be pretty hectic, won't be able to play the UKIPT Edin, i'll still be playing a decent UKOPs schedule, but volume will be a bit lower than what I was hoping for.

Don't know for sure, but from the way he plays, & the way he writes, I sense he is in his mid to late thirties. You just get a sense of these things. Usually a non-sense.

Hi Kev, I cannot post on your UKOPs thread but I saw you are considering twitch. I would be very interested to watch you play some tournaments on there, I hope you go for it :)

Best of luck for the series.

Thanks Katais, what is your alias on Sky?

Twitch is quite interesting.

I've only watched a few streams, for just a short while, or just had it on in the back ground when playing. It's not the most exciting thing to watch.

Although, it's amazing the numbers of viwers Jason Sommerville pulls in, but outside of that the vast majority of streams only get <30 viewers.

Those who twitch regularly though, must be able to monitise it somehow, maybe sharing in revenue from advertisement streams.

Overall, i don't see much benefit in someone streaming their play, but might give it a go.

 
 

What's the awesome news?

He does not post much here, but posts every day on his Diary Next Door. Interesting character, one way & another.



(http://cdn.pazoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Rancho-Cucamonga-Home-Mortgage-First-Time-Home-Buyers-Randy-Charlton-Keller-Williams-Realty-Homer-Simpson-Doh.png)

Cant believe you told him Tikay, we could have had some fun! Making up names of who he was.

You are so cruel.

Good to tangle with you last night, how did your K-J suited not get there?

I cashed, obv. £1.

Can't say yet, don't want to jinx anything!

Poker

I went through a spell of making a final table every night, often more than one per day.

Then I hut this wall for about 3 weeks where I couldn't get much going at all. For me it's so tough during these bad spells.

I never know if it's bad play or run bad. I can say it's run bad when I look at certain coolers, but at the same time, I think it leads to bad play. The best way to describe it is that when things are not going so well, and I get it in as a flip, or with a massive draw/ have to fade a draw, then instinctively I just think i'm going to be on the wrong end of it, losing the flip, missing the draw or their draw coming in.

I also think during these times I plough ahead trying to get out of the rut, where it might be best to take a break for a couple of days. At these times, I can also think i'm pretty bad at poker.

When i'm going through a good spell, it's the opposite - not that I think i'll win every hand - just that I have confidence by the barrel road.

Despite the amount of hands I have played and all my experience at the felt I still don't fully understand the psychological aspect between these good times and not so good times, it's amazing how much it affects your game, or atleast how you think about your game.

I have gained a good amount of momentum the last 4 days. I've made a bunch of FT's again. Got to HU 2 days in a row, Wed and Thursday and was chip leader in both, but blew through bad play but was still awesome to get to HU after the not so good spell. Tonight I won 2 MTT's, and came 3rd in another.

Maybe one day I will understand the psychology of Mtts!

I can't wait for UKOPs, i'm going to be playing 4/5 tables maximum.
-------------------------------------------------

I'm going to be back in London in January one weekend, would be good to get a game organised on the Saturday i'm down!

 

There goes you & every other poker player on earth. It was, & will always, be so.

It's tough when it's uphill, but how we handle those downswings tells a lot about our character. You will have seen some of the Diaries Next Door, & 1 or 2 here, you'd think a few losing nights was the end of the world to some players, we think so short-term. It's the end of the year that matters, not the intra week swings.

Think about poor old Ryan (scotty), he's been downswonging for best part of a year now.

I am pretty sure a good UKOPS awaits you. 8 days to go, oioi. 

Tried to bluff someone of a set of aces tonight on the bubble, on a 3 diamond board, he almost folded too, can't win every hand :)

Not long till UKOPS now, really looking forward to it, there's going to be some great events and great value, got a good feeling about it.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

I don't know if i'll continue the blog after UKOPs, it might be a fitting finish to park it once the series is over.

Ah got a feelin

Not at all, but it is a great song though!

Normally folk say I want to achieve x, but for the series my main goal is to play to the best of my ability, not tilt and play as close to my A game as possible.

The field sizes will be large, it would be great to make 1 or 2 final tables. The most important thing is to do my best and stay focussed.

The team for UKOPS:

Rich, £110 paid 10%
Chris, £55 paid 5%
YG. £55 paid 5%
Vern, £50 paid 5%*I'll deduct £5 from any winnings.

I'll update if there is any additions to the above before the start of the games.

I'll post in here games included in the stake before the start of any games and again at the end of the evening with results. Gl us!
 

Nooooooooooooooooo.

Keep posting.

Shortarse reads it, I know for a fact.

PS - Good luck in UKOPS.

17:00 £5.50 Rebuy £2,000
19:00 £3.30 Bounty Hunter £1,000
19:30 £11 SUPER UKOPS BH 1 £25,000
20:00 £110 Bounty Hunter £20,000
20:30 £5.50 Bounty Hunter £4,000
21:00 £22 Turbo Freezeout

Playing the bolded games, and possibly the 5pm and 9pm. Will update once all games are completed.

Vbol Kev, I will send for the extra 5ball on Monday when I land mate.

16:00 £11 Bounty Hunter £2,000
17:00 £5.50 Rebuy £2,000      Spent 16.50, 1 rebuy 1 addon
19:00 £3.30 Bounty Hunter £1,000
19:30 £11 SUPER UKOPS BH 1 £25,000
20:00 £110 Bounty Hunter £20,000
20:30 £5.50 Bounty Hunter £4,000
21:00 £22 Turbo Freezeout £4,000

Total Bi. £179.30
Cashes:£40.

Tonight wasn't the best in the UKOPs games, I didn't get any runs in any of the games, I had some interesting hands, i'll post up tomorrow.

I'm happy enough with how I played for the most, apart from a few hands. The "cashes" were bounties, 1 from the main and 1 from mini. It was a disappointing start, but plenty of games to go.

I'm only going to be playing two UKOPS games tomorrow:

20:30 £5.50 Freezeout £3,000
21:00 £22 Bounty Hunter
  

I found this hand really interesting, it's very early in the 4pm £11 bounty hunter.

It folds round to me OTB (2910) versus the SB (3480).

Blinds 10/20, I make it 60 with  Qs 9c, SB min 3 bets lol, I call the extra 40.

Flop:  8c 9s 2h (220), SB Checks, I decided to check behind.

Turn  3s (220) SB checks, I bet 145, call.

River  2s (510) SB Checks, I bet 280, villain jams.

I couldn't play tonight, will update when next games will be.

Sent extra £55 for additional 5 mate

Thanks Rich

No I don't!

Sunday main seats were added, so not sure why this stopped you playing it mate. Don't really get why you haven't found ukops good to grind. Loads of bigger than normal comps, decent games.

Magical Matt,

Sunday I was watching the football I only played the £11 25k guarantee game.

I just found the schedule to not have a great amount of variety, but maybe that's just me.

Mostly, I wasn't playing well at all. Which is really disappointing given I was really excited about UKOPs before it started.

Also, I should make priority this month/ have started to put a decent amount of volume into cash again which potentially has impacted, to some extent, how I was playing in MTTs.

Looking back, I would do things differently for sure.

I've not had a chance to catch up with you recently, hope you have had a great UKOPS!     

Hi Kev,

Sorry to hear that, as I know how much you were looking forward to it, & you are generally very positive towards Sky Poker.

Question for you - & Mr Bedi, if he sees this, as he made a similar comment on your Staking Thread as I recall.

When you say "lacks variety", bearing in mind the limited range of games they offer, & that, like them or not, Bounty Hunters are astoundingly popular there, what would you have preferred to see on the schedule?

Here's the full schedule.....


https://www.skypoker.com/secure/poker/sky_lobby/poker-promotions/ukopsxiv

The next UKOPS won't be long, so any feedback will be gratefully received. Commercially, I must add, this one has done pretty well, all things considered, but these things are rarely one size fits all.

Hey Tikay,

That's great it was a commercial success.

Lack of Variety

It was always going to be difficult having it over 15 days.

In my opinion, it would have been better to have it over a shorter time frame, to increase the buzz of the events.

Bounty hunters are great and are a USP of Skypoker, but it would be good to see atleast some games with the standard 2k starting stack with 10/20 blinds, so starting with 100bbs.

I know you are a big proponent of having 5k starting stacks, so most players could get their "moneys worth", but BH should be fast and furious.

I would say that the vast majority of players want a lot of action and a  fast paced game, for it to be exciting. I seldom play the £33 BHers now, because the first hour is so tedious and slow, due to the large starting stack. Especially when you have a table of excessively tight players.

It would be great to have some games atleast with the normal stack/ structure of every other BH game on sky.

Also, in relation to buy ins, it would be good to see some £33 games included as part of the UKOPS schedule, given that this is Skypokers normal main buyin. Whilst that might not be popular with higher stake regs, for sure it would be better for the overall player pool on Sky, given that there is very few "higher stake" regs on the site.

Just some thoughts. 

Thanks Kev, that's all good solid feedback.

5,000 starting stacks?

A lot of the hard-nosed boys think I don't get the criticism of big starting stacks, & berate me, saying "we don't need them".

That misses a very valid point though, which is undeniable.

The great mass of recreational MTT players LOVE a lot of starting chips. They just do. And at Sky Poker, it matters very much to look after those guys. And having a few "dead" levels is not the end of the world, is it?

Money in poker starts at the bottom, & gets sucked up to the top. And that's right & proper. Pretty important to look after the seedcorn though, because that's where the money comes from.

Anyway, good constructive feedback, thank you, & I'll send it upstairs when I have collated it with all the other UKOPS feedback.

Incidentally, as to the length of this UKOPS Festival, it was an experiment, they wanted to give it a try. However, it has aslready been agreed - even before this one started - that the next UKOPS will be around 4 days, so that's one box ticked. 

Just reg later?

Guess its gone ok!

BOOM!

Ha, Batesy is in like a shot.


MattBates 1700000 1 £4360 + £40,000 UKOPS ME SEAT

Well done Matt, you have now  - just - made the magic 6 figure profit mark on Sky Poker, £100,167 I think? That's great going, & must place you in a fairly exclusive club.

Incidentally, did you notice who finished 4th?


lJAMESl 0 4 £1256 + £40,000 UKOPS ME

That's young James Williams - "cottonbud" on here - who recently became a dad, Ridiculous really, he's barely old enough to shave.

The guy in 5th - "munchkin00" - was in Punta Cana last week as one of our qualifiers, really smashing chap.
 

I hit that a few days back, 6th from Monday main hasn't been showing (neither is last nights main yet). Its a club of one at the moment, Mr D is loitering with intent though and it wont be long before he joins me.

While the brags are coming I managed a win on party on Wednesday which gets me a $5k HU v Rob Yong! Best get working on my HU game!

I was chatting to James a bit, luckily had direct position on him on the FT and managed to bust him too which was good as he is a decent player.

Didn't know he had become a dad, congrats to him.

I did wonder, as none of the UKOPS results seem to be showing on Sharkscope for some reason.

Club of one? That's just wonderful - very well done. I know life away from poker has been a bit uphill for you of late, so that must feel good.

Tommy D is just £10,000 behind, but he'll get there soon enough. He's a good man - a good man - & I love him to bits. Does a lot of Hospital Radio work, commentates on Spurs matches I believe.

A $5k HU game v Rob Yong? Good luck with that. He's fearless Heads Up, & I love watching him play. Watched him play a £25,000 Heads Up affair at the club recently, v Richard Berridge. I can but dream. £25,000 HU, yikes.

Do you still get coaching from the same chap? His coaching must be worth its weight in gold. Carries a bit of baggage, which enabled the trolls to have a field day with me in Vegas in 2012, but he was fine with me, & I genuinely think he is rehabilitating himself. Good luck him.   

Apologies to Kev for the derail, but Bates started it.

Is there a hiroller tikay? Enjoyed bubbling it last year.

There was a HR last Sunday, series is nearly over now. Sunday is last day of the series

If you mean a UKOPS High Roller, it was last Sunday, whilst you were engaged elsewhere.

79 runners @ £500, very happy with that indeed.

Would have been a bit tough for you this year, looking at some of the superstars who cashed.


GSmith13 790000 1st/79 £11455
Granite89 0 2 £7505
DAVEMCDAID 0 3 £4641.25
GagginKs 0 4 £3752.50
jordz16 0 5 £3061.25
Gambuuuuul 0 6 £2567.50
jakally 0 7 £2172.50
Hotwheals 0 8 £1777.50
darsum333 0 9 £1382.50
TheDart 0 10 £1185
RUNITSRANN 0 11



If you mean the UKPC, yeah, there will be a £2,000 High Roller with a £100,000 Guarantee.

Spam? I don't need asking twice.....

Loving the diary Kev!!!

Rob may be fearless but I am really good at all ins!

Yeah, still good friends with him and getting coaching. I am lucky to have a few people to discuss hands and strategy with as I think it helps to get different perspectives on hands/overall strategy.

Lol hey Matt.

Good catching up with you a few days ago.

And once again, very well done on the ukops successes, and breaking the 100k mark, fantastic.

Gl versus Rob!

It's the only place I don't get a new arsehole ripped every 5 minutes at the moment.....

But never mind, in 5 minutes it'll be POKER TIME. Yay.

Glad you are still getting that coachinng - sounds like it was pretty good value for money to me.

I wonder how much it would cost to coach me to win £100,000 on a single poker site?

My stats for MTTs year to date are, games played 1741, Average Buy In, £8.80. ROI 37.7%. Average ROI (ever) is 38%.

My ROI for £11 MTT's only in 2015 is 58.9%.

The most profitable player for MTTs ever on the sites stats for this year are, games played, 2117, Average Buy In, £28.78. ROI 31.9%. Average ROI (ever) is 43.8%

Next year will need to increase the Average Buy In if still playing MTTs.  

Terrific numbers, well done.

This kind of links into a post from next door regarding the most key stat for MTT players. Suggestion was hourly was key which is obviously linked into ROI. How many tables are you playing when on the MTT grind?

Just now, I play 2/3 Mtts + 5/6 cash tables if having a proper session, 8 tables max. I play on a laptop so any more than 8 tables and it's difficult with the overlap. If it was only mtts then from the stats above, "hourly" would be low, but with cash games included it,s  very decent. In the new year, I'm going to get a second screen so will be able to comfortably have more tables.

Or at the very least will have a screen for poker/ can use other screen for Skype YouTube etc

One day a week, if watching the football I'll only play 1/ 2 tables (mtt), which incidentally I always seem to do very well in, like decisions are much easier and I'm a lot more aware of game flow and the nuances and intricacies of how every player at the table is plAying.

I also tend to close down cash tables or reduce table count if I reach a ft, to give it my full concentration and give my best shot at winning the tournament.

There's an interesting thread over in the rail regarding staking.

The only reason I can ever see for staking being a positive is if there good coaching involved as part of the deal, and even then I can't see it as being a good thing if it's over the super long term.

Random Post Coaching

I would say for the vast majority of players coaching wouldn't necessarily be the best thing to do, just from a cost perspective it will be inhibitive for a most players.

There is also a mass of free information available if someone really wants to improve at their game, Twitch / Youtube poker videos etc. RIO  basic package of £10 a month for coaching videos would perhaps also be better value for most players versus paying for individual coaching sessions.

I've had paid for coaching twice now. The vast majority of my development in poker has come from talking stuff over with friends or posting hand histories in public forums over the years.

The first time I got coaching was in August/ Sept of 2014. It was from a friend, who is a great guy and a very good player, I trust this person more than anyone else I know in  poker. It was over 10 hours and was for cash games.

It was phenomenal, and so worth it. Within a few sessions a good few leaks had been identified. A session would be viewed and I was always eager to analyse it straight away, however, 'coach' wanted to wait till the next day when you I wasn't going to be so emotionally involved and could come back the next day with fresher eyes and be more objective. I can not emphasise enough how beneficial this was, for some reason after every session I always seemed to do (and play) really well. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made in poker, and i'm very kind of my friend, who I am not to sure even wanted to do coaching, it was more as a favour to me, so thank you very much!

The second time I got coaching was through a player on here, I had really liked their posts (PHA) and they seemed like a really decent person also. The second time was Jan Feb of this year and would revolve around MTTs. Within 10 minutes of the first session I had raised pocket 2s OTB over a limper. He went on to say something like "that's called iso'ing, isolating"...I thought shit this guy thinks I don't know what isolating is, this might not be so good!

Dinner time, will continue this later:)       

So Jan / Feb 2015 another 10 hours of coaching (MTTs).

So not long in, the ISOing comment comes, and i'm thinking to myself, is this going to work haha The first session was perhaps a bit ackward, some silences in between talking, that kinda thing, but what did come across very well was their knowledge of poker and how they viewed poker. At the end of the first session I wasn't sure at all if it was going to work for a further 9 hours. I also realised that it was going to be a lot more difficult than previous sessions with cash, where I could just load up and close tables as was required. I felt the best thing to do was record some footage of playing, which could then be reviewed. The 2nd and remaining sessions went really well. They had a great understanding of poker and also spoke very well about the game. It turned out to be a very good decision again, and was defiantly worth doing. It was close to the end of sessions (if not the last 1) looking at an online MTT the coach  had played, pretty much we agreed on most decisions apart from a couple, where I might have done something slightly different. There was also some cool stuff covered you would never really see on a training site. And again, I found that after a training session my results always seemed to peak in the next couple of days. As with the first time, it was a great experience. Thank you to you!

To me there is a lot more merit in paying for coaching > getting coaching via staking.

In my opinion if anybody can afford to pay for coaching it is definitely worth it - and i think after a session you always play better

The other thing with coaches - its a bit like football - the best football coaches were/are in the majority no great footballers - it seems some of the best poker coaches are not great at playing the game but have a great knack in teaching others to play well

Good Hunting

Would you pay for sports betting coaching which will probably make you more money than poker coaching?  If so i would be interested in providing it.

##


agree for improvement it can be a very good deal. esp in games where you have to battle for a place at your stake. i think this is why it can be good for cash game players.

basically to move up you need to increase your roll. yet if you are grinding your way up then having to withdraw can make that a time consuming task.

if you are playing a format where battling your way to acceptance is important such as cash, husng's, HU cash etc. then the variance that comes with having to play regs in order for them to leave your lobbies / tables / stop hunting you or simply applying bankroll pressure to move you down so they can have the rec action can be a drain on your roll.

when staked the backer simply sends you the bankroll when you want to move up. when downswinging you get topped up and dont need to move down when running bad. you are cushioned from all that variance when battling and not under bankroll pressure.

you can get established that much quicker.

If they are a poor player they will be a pretty poor coach - there is many offer coaching, who have hardly played any hands this year, a lot of them can't beat the games anymore. Coaching can be valuable, it was great for me, but for the vast majority of players there's so much free information available, or training websites can be a cheap alternative to coaching with videos being current and up to date. The most simple way for a player to improve, and perhaps the best, is to have a group of poker friends to discuss stuff with.

hey, kev. yah doing well and enjoying poker and life!

i agree that poor players will wont be great coaches, but 100% agree that the best coaches arent necessarily the best players and vice versa.

it takes a lot of commitment and very particular mental skill / mindset to reach the top of any format / multitable like a boss and crush games. a lot of the very best coaches lack either the commitment to reach the top or some of the mental skills to do so. i mean the best coaches can charge at least $300 p/h and that is varianc-free money on a nice timetable that doesnt involve having to stay upto 3am to hit the grindtime of that mega-whale you spotted last week. nor does it involve the mental stress of bankroll variance / having to battle for your spot at the top.

there are people who have great agile poker minds, can solve situations, use software to build strategies and are completely ace at breaking down these complex ideas for you to undertand. teaching is a skill in itself.

there are people that think that all forms of coaching are bad for the ecology. and i can see that argument. it certainly increases the number of good players in the player-pool. but from a selfish point of view peeling back the layers of poker only makes it more intriguing, and i'm glad there was resources out there to spike that interest. i dont know if i would have been as passionate about poker if knowledge was locked up by the few.

as for me going it alone. i dont want to be a pro. i work full time and love playing in my spare time.  love playing and learning, and so beign backed is perfect for me. no $$ risk and i get to play nice stakes and compete with professionals. wouldnt have it any other way.

nice post Sir!

It's been interesting the debate / chat on staking.

Quick update, 2015 has been really good for poker.

The highlight of the year was winning a decent number of MTTs, 3-4 per month, and also playing live cash over the summer.

One regret, perhaps, is making to many withdrawals, and not moving up the cash levels. It's like you're in your comfort zone and go for the low variance route.

Looking forward to 2016, some stuff I would like to achieve:

-Reduce the amount of withdrawals and build up a 50 bi bankroll for 1/2 live cash.
-Increase the average bi for MTTs by a decent % and maintain a ~35-40% ROI
-Over the summer months grind live cash most weekends.
-Do more studying/work on my game outside of just playing, I've defo not done enough of that this year.

From a £ perspective
- On average make £1k per month from MTTs
-Increase this years (online) cash profit by ~10%
-Crush live over the summer.

It's been fun :) You always know it's Christmas time coming up when they start playing this song on the radio, have a good one!

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgMJ_ihEh9U 

Just caught up on the last 2-3 pages of the diary that happened since I last popped in. Some very interesting topics/debates, always a good read in here.

How's things been going since your last update? Gonna be having another stab at the upcoming UKOPS? I know it's supposed to be a great time to play poker (December) and UKOPS is always good, but it's usually the one time I give it all a miss... spending time with family at xmas >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> making a bit of extra at poker imo.

You gonna try any satellites for UKPC? I know it's a stretch for you to come a long way for the smaller events but £1k is a pretty chunky one (if you can get in cheap)

Hey Paul

Well done on gaining your ukpc seat on Sunday, I was delighted for you.

And the other fts you made that night, hopefully the momentum
Keeps going for you.

I won't be playing the ukpc, when you factor in travel costs, hotels, food it's really not worth it for me.

I'm going to be playing a lot more live next year from May onwards, but it'll mostly be cash. The only live mtt I might play is a unibet 1 being held in Glasgow.

I'll be playing some of the ukops games, but it's mostly cash Ive been
Playing this month and that'll be the priority over ukops games.

It's been a cracking month so far, long may it continue!

Hey hey

Happy new year all, and so it starts again!

Looking forward to a great year.

Also going to be getting a dog in the next week or so. There is a couple of local dogs trust/ RSPCA places close by was having a look on gumtree too.

So, how was your day today?

Anything interesting happen?

He told us on skype but we assumed he was telling porkies!

OBV rigged! 

Well done mate....nice one.

I moved house just before Christmas, it was such a hectic time, and certainly didn't feel like Christmas at all!

Had been looking for well over a year seeing loads of different places, but nothing really stood out.

Then about September, went to view this house which was amazing.

I negotiated with the seller there and then and we  shook hands on a  deal; job done, new house purchased.

All done at the first viewing!

Still not got a dog yet, been to a couple of dog rescue centres. A lot of the time they are looking for "experienced" dog owners, but still feel it would be better to get it from an RSPCA type place> buying from a breeder, the search will go on.

In the online poker world, I'm seriously considering dropping cash to concentrate on MTT's. I'm finding tournaments a lot more enjoyable right now.

I was only on to make a post on blonde, when I heard it was getting close to 897. Good timing!

Isnt it funny? How wewant to take shots when playing bad and losing but when we are winning and playing well we are happy to float along at the same stakes.

A quote from a player's diary on Sky.

It is so true, when things are going bad it's so easy to play games you wouldn't normally play.

I wonder if extremely tight players ever tilt :)

Poker for the first week of this month was great, I couldn't lose. Then I had 4 consecutive losing days, ok some of it was self inflicted(!), but there was a spell where no matter how good I got it in, I still couldn't win.

It's amazing in poker how quickly things can change, and how it makes you think about your game. While winning you are unbeatable, while losing you question everything.

Funny old game, poker.   
 

Good game last night mate. I had a difficult seat with you to my left for bloody hours!. I never bluffed you once ;)

Next time it will be the main and the mini we hopefully lock horns again.

PS....its 2016 now, 2015 is so last year  ;hattip;

Well done on the cash last night Tikay(not), nice finish.

Cash games on Sky in 2016 have gotten a lot tougher, there is a lot less money kicking about + more regulars. Despite that this year I've mostly been playing cash:O

Also dabbled a bit in Zoom games, they must be the crack cocaine of poker.

This was how it started:

Then I had a day of spew lol I was calling every single 3 bet and just playing silly, but really good fun games. The best regs in the player pool were defo better than me. It would be fascinating to speak to a good winning 200nl+ Zoom player about strategy.

Not played many MTTs this year, feeling a bit rusty.

Tonight 3 players remaining in a mtt, prizes are 400 1st, 2nd 250, 3rd 150.

I had Ace 3 hh in the BB, Button min raises and I jammed 20 bigs. He had 55, called and held.

Stacks were me 24k, other player 22k, button chip leader with 60k.

I think the jams ok, thoughts?

Nice graph! I get 10% for helping you with PT setup yeah?

Initially was gonna say I'm OK with a jam, and I still am to an extent vs certain villains and different stack sizes, but much prefer a peel in this particular example the more I think about it. Changed my mind from "Yeah easy 3b jam" to "Peel's actually pretty decent, both are fine" to "3b jam kinda sucks, just peel and play some poker" in the time it took me to reply.

Antes? Why am I still having to ask that in 2016 lol. Significant though, for two reasons: Firstly he's supposed to be opening wider, because he wins more chips when it gets through, so we should re-steal wider to compensate; Also, we win more chips (3 antes more) when we get it through than we do without antes. I think my action is the same as default, but a 3b jam suddenly becomes a better option with antes IMO. Is only like 0.4 BBs, but really does change so much.

Definitely lean towards a peel vs his stack size. Getting 3.5/1 on Sky, more like 3.9/1 on sites with antes, can x/r to jam turn or even just x/jam a decent amount of flops as semibluff with our hand and stack size. Flopped FDs obv, as well as a ton of gutshots which includes some dry boards where we should just have it always, like we can x/r J52r w/ BDFD and if he's not just folded his Q4 high within 0.02 seconds then he's probs gonna give us credit for Jx every time anyway. Can semibluff some flops with a 3 on too  where he's just got nothing so much of the time , as it's too weak to get to showdown vs any resistance, and we have 6 outs when called, maybe with some backdoors too. Plus there's gonna be spots where he can get out of line on Ace high boards ("We don't have many Aces because we 3b jam loads of them") and so we have pretty much the best bluff catcher we're gonna have.

Other thing in favour of a call is 3b jam gets called more when the button has 60k then if he has 40k. A3s is never in great shape when called, like we're a marginal favourite if he punts like KJs or something, or in trouble vs small pairs/ace rag which a shorter stack is far more likely to r/f. A big part of the reason to jam would be if he's going to r/f hands where we're either behind (A7o, 55) or a marginal favourite that's just gonna get barrelled off the best hand OOP (Suited broadway stuff, even more relevant this hand because ICM) and therefore, not realise our equity. However, CL probably has some wider calls that we wouldn't otherwise get if he had 35-40k, and even if we get shown like KJs or something, we're not happy about the call even as a very marginal favourite because of the ICM.

The hand he showed us is actually a pretty good example, if he has 35-40k then he might just r/f the 55 whereas he's more inclined to punt when he's got 60k. FWIW I reckon he should just open jam 55 from his seat unless he's getting a ton of steals through, but whatever.

All those factors combined make it becomes a slam dunk defend, IMO. Having said that, totally get the question. Readless, I'd like to think I would peel but I probably 3b jam more than I should, because I don't have time to think about the factors behind my reasons for defending in this post in the 15-20 seconds or whatever I have. I then swear at the "Congratuations you came 3rd" message when guy is like "KINGS LOL". Fun fact, the Ace doesn't actually flop every time someone has Kings. This is then followed by the inevitable regret when I see the same player again a few days later and he ends up getting the "Mega face up nit" tag, and the realisation that he probably didn't even widen his range from the start of the FT to 3 handed at all.

Also +1 to the thread title comment a couple of posts up too. Really is fascinating to see if the thread title just remains "2015" until the end of time.

You think the games have gotten tougher? I think you maybe playing higher than me, I've been on there for the past week or so and I really don't think so, seems like the same people, regs and fun players, who have always been on there with mostly the same leaks. Also not sure how profitable zoom is in the long run unless you are a crusher agree about the crack though. Don't know that much about ss play but would have thought axs is too good to jam and an easy call.

Nice meeting you in Glasgow at the GPPT.

Good Luck and hope to see you at the Mini GPPT :)

Hey, it was a pleasure meeting you too. It was a great event and would be up for supporting anything similar.

When and where abouts is the mini?

Alea Glasgow. Live Day 1 . 6pm Fri 24/6 and 1pm / 6pm flights on Sat 25/6
Nice to meet you at Hampden.
                     

Thanks Mac, nice meeting you too.

If i'm free will play the Alea game for sure.

Evening, I hope everyone has been doing well!

Since about August time I've been playing almost exclusively MTTs and it has been going really well.

They are so much more fun than grinding cash. You can't beat the feeling of running deep, Final Tabling and taking down a tournament.

UKOPS is coming up in October / November and i'm planning on playing a full schedule. On a daily basis it will be most I have ever spent in £££ terms on tournaments, I'm also going to have 100% of my action.

All things being equal it should be really good and will help increase my average buy in.

Lastly, I would just like to give a big shout out to Dohhhh, a blonde member and sky poker player.

He recently took part in a half marathon to raise money for the Mayflower animal Sanctuary.

It truly is an inspirational story. Dohhhh, from doing very little running started training daily, using the programme/ app Couch to 5k, and through his hard work, commitment and dedication succeeded in completing the half marathon.  

Many congratulations Sir on a fantastic job.

Dohhhhs just giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/woofwoofx

Couch to 5k: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/c25k/Pages/couch-to-5k.aspx

The schedule for UKOPs has been announced, with buy ins from £22-£530, starting the 28th of October.

It's pretty cool, there will also be a leader board with cash prizes for the top 50 places.

I will be playing all events up to £110 and am shooting for a top 3 finish in the leaderboard.

There is only two events i'm not sure about yet whether I will be playing them:

UKOPS 10 | £30,000 High Roller Freezeout7:30pm£530
UKOPS 19 | £15,000 High Roller Freezeout   7:30pm£220

I might play some sats for the £220 and £530 game or just sell a % for them. The high roller doesn't towards the leaderboard, so it's not essential I play it.

If anyone would be interested in buying a % in the £220 or £530 MTT if you can please show an expression of interest on here or pm me. If I was selling, it would be 50% of the £530 game and up to 50% of the £220 game.* I will confirm details nearer the time if I am selling.

Strangest you tube vid ever:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCK5Cq5j0jk


 

I got back from holiday last week. It was fantastic 2 weeks of sun.

I didn't play poker at all while away and was really looking forward to getting some sessions in again.

Since I've came back I've had one winning session at poker. I've not ran good, but mostly I have just played badly making a lot of mistakes.

During August I ran awesome, so can't grumble to much at a bit of run bad but I can certainly do my best to cut out silly mistakes.

Looking to get back on track this week playing as close to my B/A game as possible in preparation for UKOPS in under 2 weeks. With the £530 game not being included in the UKOPS leaderboard I've decided not to play it. 

A couple of messages ago I talked about shooting for a top 3 finish in the UKOPS leaderboad and playing most of the events.

Turns out, I will be missing a good few days of UKOPS. Yesterday I had to grind cash to make priority, Friday night I grinded cash while playing UKOPS, where I was probably playing sub optimally in both game types, Monday is  a day off, and Tuesday Celtic's playing in the Champion League. So next time I'll be playing a UKOPS event will be Wednesday.

Friday and Tonight in the UKOPS games have been very much lukewarm with 2 poultry cashes out of 7 events. But that's fine, it's poker.

I'm looking forward to Wednesday; it's a new day  and importantly will be after a couple of days break.

Some folk mentioned the thread title was a bit outdated:P

While watching the WSOP programming I was a bit apathetic to Will Kasouf's antics. When the table started to gang up on him - like something out of Lord of the Flies - I had only but respect for how he handled himself and the situation.

He also coined the most memorable phrase from the WSOP 2016.

Solidarity for WK: Nine High Like a Boss, Big Heart of a Lion:D

I love that tournaments are finally paying out in chicken and not cash, about bloody time.

Wings? Breast? Maybe a bit of skin?

Last week I started doing the Couch to 5k programme. It's good to get started a bit earlier than waiting for 2017!

My number 1 NY goal is healthier eating with plenty of exercise :)

2016 was a bit of a funny one in regard to poker. I've seen a lot of players leave the game, cash games on Sky have greatly declined unfortunately. In 2017 if playing cash games, it will be on two other sites.

I don't know if the cash game eco system is great on any site today.

My main focus for 2017 is going to be MTTs, playing on Sky and 2 or 3 other sites. I still love playing tourneys, where as sometimes this year cash could be a bit tedious, a grind. I can also see live poker becoming more prevalent in 2017.
 
Merry Christmas to one and all and have a fantastic 2017!



 

Happy New Year All.

It was quite an exciting day today: it was my first proper MTT session of 2017 across 4 sites. I ended up playing about 16 MTTs.

I wasn't to sure about what direction I was going to take in 2017 in regard to MTTs. I was kind of conflicted.

To me with poker, I love strategy and want to be the best possible player I can be. So in a way, despite the fact i'm not a big fan of staking, I was seriously considering looking into some sort of arrangement mainly just to improve significantly (coaching) so I could crush £55+ games.

I had a really good chat with a successful MTT player yesterday (tyvm!)  and it became  clear that staking would be really bad for me and am far better just doing my thing, and I could always just get some coaching later in the year if required.

It was a nice start to the year today, I won 1 MTT and came 2nd in another, as well as cashing in a few others.

To do with poker goals this year, I want to put in decent volume @ tournies, increase ABI and maybe challenge Matt Bates for 1st place in profit this year  8)

...But that will be v hard the guys a boss with one of the strongest work ethics I've ever seen.

Las Vegas

I'm playing about with the idea of going to Vegas at some point during the WSOP for at least a couple of weeks.

As a poker player, I guess it is the spiritual home of Poker, right? Having read Vegas threads on here over the last couple of years during the WSOP it has given the bug to visit Vegas for the first time.

Direct flights based on todays prices are £600-£700. Hotels seem to be coming in at about £100 a night.

Just wondering, for those who have been/ go regularly what's the best options for booking accommodation, like best location or even individual hotel names.

It would be cool to play some tournaments, but given that most of them are $1000+ to buy in, I would maybe just play a couple and for the most part just enjoy a bit of live cash.

Any thoughts/ ideas on Vegas would greatly appreciated!

seriously recommend looking at hotels and flights as a package deal. I went last summer and it was cheaper to book 10 days in a hotel with flights than it was just for flights. Think we did 10 nights in the Monte carlo and flights return for £850 or something similar.

and dont even think about it, book it. its an amazing place

Vegas info thread is where you need to go.

Lots of lower buy in comps throughout the WSOP. The $235 daily deepstack at the Rio is basically a 1,000 person comp every day with the standard of a £40 Friday night comp at the local Grosvenor.

Search on the vegas thread and lots of stuff there. Anything you don't find, ask and lots of people will give you answers.

Maybe play a couple of WSOPs, but there are loads of tournaments with decent enough structures.  The Wynn and Aria ones are probably the best.  Wynn daily is about $200, Aria $150.   Would say average player is prob worse at the Wynn, but plenty of jokers in each.  Rio daily deepstack is also good, but you have to navigate a bigger field and having started with a huge stack, they get a bit crapshooty a long way out.  Phamous series is good enough, but feels more crapshooty early.  Loads of tournaments there too around the $200 level.

Post on the vegas thread for hotel suggestions.  Should be able to get something decent enough for $100 a night.

Make sure you avoid edc weekend, hotel prices are doubled.  

Go and play cash.  Don't pay 20/30% rake to play donkfests if you are a decent player. 

could not disagree more

if going for first time as a poker player, a week o of donkfests with 20 or 30% rake and huge fields of pissed up punters sounds infinitely more appealing than sitting on a cash table and struggling to pinch a few buy ins from a bunch of miserable headphone wearing tossers.

if that does not work out there are plenty other ways to enjoy spending your dough...

Go to the cheaper joints on the strip and you'll find amazingly fun lower stakes cash games which would also be hard to lose in long term. Headphone wearing tossers...can't help but feel you'd find a lot more of them at a tournament table these days.

Yeah I disgree with Arrboy too, I mean the cash games are brilliant, and great fun, so definitely play them too. But if its your first time in vegas then you have got to play the wsop events, just to get a buzz and feel for it. I did both, and although cash was more profitable, the WSOP bracelet events were by far the most enjoyable.

Mostly my experience is that cash games are not like this at all. Basically free alcohol for everyone helps. If you have a table of headphone wearing tossers you can easily change table (or just force them to do shots with you) - There are loads of 1/2 and 1/3 running all over town.

I'm sure you'll have a great time whatever you decide though!

I was playing in this most incredible 1/2 cash game tonight in Vegas. There was a drunk guy sat down, nearly every pot was 200bb, he was punting pretty hard with very little equity hands. One of the hands I played against him, he made it $5 pre, 2 other calls and we defend 910 os in the Bb. Flop q102 rb, it checks to him he bets about 12/13, we call. I think just callings best. Turn is a brick 3, he picks up a bunch of red 5 chips and throws them in the middle. It was $80. It was a really tough decision. I had a bit of banter with him, he said he had a q and then I snap  folded and he showed his q. Before he sat down I had~ 600. At his time on the table I dribbled down to < $500. I was trying to play as many hands with him as possible, as was everyone else. Pretty much everyone at the table had stacked him apart from me. He was in for about 1.8k.

Then he announces all in pre from early position for $200 total everyone folds. I'm in the bb look at the first card Ace and am thinking I probably call ace j +. It's only another ace! I flick over my aces, and for the first time he does not show pre. After the  river card is dealt he shows jacks and aces hold, that was the last hand he played.

I've never seen anything like it before in my time playing poker.

At DTD once during a 1/2 game we played against a bloke who went all in pre no look every hand for about half an hour. It made for a really difficult dynamic. Obv it would have been easy heads up but all the other players were playing mind games with each other, opening pots when they new that we knew that they new that they would be facing an all in...

Really good blog, feel like I keep finding good reads, getting to the end and realising nothing has been posted for months! :/

Was refreshing to see you have held off on the staking arrangements and going it out on your own. Any updates on how you're getting on?