I've phoned up insurance companies before and they suggested entertainer or professional sportsman (both of which unsurprisingly result in huge premiums).  I decided to settle on house husband.  Even before I was married and living in a shared house I used house husband, I agreed with my housemate that we'd just pretend to be in a civil partnership if it came down to it.

In my experience insurance companies are extremely lazy when it comes to investigating claims, doubt they would ever look into your job title anyway.

Thanks for the support. Not a bad spin up from a 2.5k hyper satellite

I explained this to you at the time  Tikay! I was pretending to have big cards when I actually had little cards. Then when the little cards come boom! It's like the Kansas City shuffle

Looking to do some more poker coaching in 2015, pm or post here if you want to improve your game, MTTs (online / live) or live cash. Can do midday-8pm only, any day except sundays.

Will the coaching include heads up live play?

I had heard of this one but have since forgotten

Here's a fun question for you grammar guys. Don't post the answer straight away if you've heard it before.

There's a legitimate way in the English language that the same word can be used ELEVEN times in a row! What is it? Obviously context and punctuation are necessary.

That was a pm right?

Yep going for the long con - nobody will suspect the guy who took 5 years to get 300 posts

[you taught yourself everything,]

yeah but the reality is nobody has that person to sit with them 24/7 and teach them how to play. you taught yourself everything, had the right approach, the right way to deal with risk, when to slow down whilst keeping life ev.

obviously if you or i had somebody who's sole objective was to teach us to be better at poker we'd be way further ahead (and richer!) than we are now.

wcgrider for example took in this kid in Vegas who moved to be a dealer and had never played poker before and within 8 months (i think?) he was playing 10knl online and beat Ivey HU in the 25k in vegas.

 

Incredible. Just been in the middle of nowhere in Kyrgyzstan for 4 days and this is the first thing I see when I log on. Off to celebrate with some laghman and vodka!

I think you should bet turn, check river unimproved.  I don't think you get check raised very often on the turn unless you are crushed anyway.  I think villain can def put you on a flush draw and peel one off.
Also if villain has say AJ/A10 he can def call the turn and if even if he always folds AJ that's still not a bad result for us as AJ has 12 outs versus our hand here.  By checking the turn we just let him freeroll us with these types of hands.
Say he's trapping with a better hand then he'll prob bet the river and we'll call anyway so we can also decide the price of showdown by betting ourselves.

Stolen all of Mondeoman's thunder too, unreal

Yeah peanuts compared to Pads' score though.  It did mean I was railing the million from 90 players out and have to say Pads seemed to play pretty well, and I'm not just saying that.  His tactics of aggression and pressure were spot on with so many players looking to ladder.  Particular favourite was when he double potted the river bluffing repping no hand after turn had gone check check.  Really good spot cos even though the other guy might strongly suspect you're bluffing he's pretty much never going to call given the tournament situation.

[When you 4bet I thought you could be light here because it was such a good spot for me to 3bet at the time (he was visibly tilted) and you're never going to cold call here I,don't think so I thought you would be capable of being light here]

Yeah hand 3 pretty interesting I think. I think flop peel is a little ambitious especially as if I'm peeling kj then I'm peeling my entire range. I would normally never ever 3bet kjs pre here I'd always just call almost always. When you 4bet I thought you could be light here because it was such a good spot for me to 3bet at the time (he was visibly tilted) and you're never going to cold call here I,don't think so I thought you would be capable of being light here. I didn't expect you to 4bet a range with no bluffs in. Not just for balance but just because its such a good spot to 4bet bluff. Anyway I think I would flat my entire range pre here (not everything that I 3bet but everything that I decided to continue with I would be flatting ie AA/kk/ak. S,I don't think I'm ripping it in ore very much hands that I'd want to rip it in with would be hands with poor visibility that don't realize their equity vs your range such as 22-88 but Id just peel all of those vs the opener.

Mmmm i stopped worrying about being balanced in live comps sometime around 2007.  Tbh the table draw has a lot to do with it - if there's no spots then i'm more likely to be light here i guess.
Basically part of poker is getting people to mis-perceive your range so if i'm never light in that spot but you expect me to be then that's good for me as you're working on a bad assumption.
Don't think it is a good spot to 4 bet light because you know that i know its a good spot, which in fact makes it a bad spot! 
Playing mainly cash i used to go after every edge but i think part of tournament poker is navigating the field, i mean how can 4 betting you out of position be a lot better than just conserving my stack and waiting til i can play in position versus the weaker players. 
Anyway you won a big pot with the worst hand so wp.

[Dtd high roller]

Dtd high roller

This was probably the 4th/5th biggest buy in event I've ever played and definitely a shot. Not many people are rolled for 6k$ events.

I sit down and it's an incredible table. Toby Lewis, pab, Keith and lots of complete sickos. I was like er lol. Within 3 hands I was moved and had a very good table 2 fish to ,y direct right meaning I could chip up. Devilish was across the table and it was extremely fun.

Hand 1

Pretty cruel hand. Fish opens cut off, Sam grafton calls btn, I call sb with kh th keith Johnson calls the bb.

Flop is

Fish cbets 1100, Sam calls. I make it 3300, fish folds, Sam calls.

Turn is

I check call turn nd river hoping we would value cut himself it's a3 or worse flushes but he had called 43 otf and made a full house on the nut worst river card


Hand 2

Devilish makes it 800 utg, I 3bet in position to 2200 with aks he peels.

A65r I bet 3200 he cr to 7400 I call it's 19k behind

Turn is 9x and he bets 10k and I tank fold

Hand 3

Irish guy just lost aipf with ak v qj. He opens cut off at 1200 at 600bb and I 3bet the btn for value to 2800 with kd jd

Keith Johnson makes it 5400 and I peel. I feel like I'm dominating some of his range and my hand will play well

Flop 965dxx

He cbets 3400. I decide to call as by the river my range should improve on lots of run outs and one of the boards my range doesn't improve on is a king which ofc I can call down.

Turn is q

He checks and I have a pot sized shove left.


I decide to,check the turn as I could have some draws but jam the river as there's very little hands I would jam as a bluff with as almost all of my hands will have some showdown value and thus never be bluffing in this spot. He tanks and then eventually folds a pair.



Hand 4

I open to 1600 with kk and Ben Dobson jams around 22k and I call

He has aj and the flop runs out axxxx and we lose a really critical pot tht would have out us on over 65k t 800bb


Hand 5

Zimyan opens cut off for 1600, grafton 3bets button for 4200 and I pile 33 for 22.5k from the big blind.

Sam decides to call with at and the board runs out k76..6..7

Pretty nasty run out and really sad to lose the two big pots that were so important. It's so hard,to keep taking shots at high stakes live tournaments but I feel like I played very well. I remember when I picked up kings and I was like wow I haven't had a hand better than (cf a flop) all day. Felt like I did well in the small pots and look forward,to continuing later in the week starting with the Main event tomorrow. Poker has gone so well so far this year and I can't allow this trip to stalt the momentum n so I'm just looking forward to,playing good poker tomorrow

Hand 1 - the flop was 3h3c2h, I folded ah5h on the flop only to see the roll off on the turn.  Pretty tilted by that one!

Hand 2 - Can kind of see why you folded.  You are prob used to playing against players who when they raise either either have the nuts or a bluff and  he couldn't really be bluffing in this spot.  However, live players like to do merges (although i was surprised to see him turn up with AQ).  Think i might call/shove turn though due to his sizing on the turn was quite big - think if he had a set he would bet smaller.

Hand 3 -  A bit annoyed that i folded here although i did double up next hand so guess it all worked out for the best.
Can kind of see why you peeled pre but tbh think its pretty bad.  If you 3 bet the fish and i'm out of position i'm not looking to cold 4 bet 20% of my stack with anything that i'm not willing to get in v you, you def don't dominate any of my range here.  I don't expect you to fold that often and i do expect you to rip it in pre a fair amount of time. 
If i've got j10ss here i'm just folding - there's enough spots on the table that i'm not going to take a high variance line.  Anyway i had 1010, when i bet the flop and you called thought you either had aa/kk, some sort of suited connected hand that had a part of the flop or something like j10s with a back door draw.  I'm checking to call the turn as i expect you to shove a lot of your floats and the Q improves some of your floats e.e k10/kj/j10 all have some equity now.  When the river bricks i'm check deciding. 
On the river i expect you to check back all middling pair strength hand as there no real need to turn your hand into a bluff as i just have air/ace high a lot here.  So when you shove my thought process was you have AA/99/78/Q9/AQ/KQ/QJ for value and in terms of bluffs you have 108/J10/k10/KJ,/A10/A8.  There's no real value hands that i beat that you shove here so i'm thinking is he really spewy enough to peel a 4 bet with with some broadway hand, float a 956 flop with no draws then jam the river.  Added to this is that you know i've read a lot of your hand histories so you can't expect me to give you too much credit i decided to fold.
Finally there were a couple of players on the table who i thought weren't great so decided to do the old man thing and "wait for a better spot".

So i guess well played but can't help feeling you got lucky by catching me in a nitty mood whilst i was at the bottom of my range.

Other hands you ran pretty cold, unlucky.

Thanks tighty, accurate reporting as ever!  I finally found a game that suits my skills in 10bb turbo PLO.

[Perhaps we've played? More than likely to have done.]

When I read your opening post I had to check twice that I hadn't written it myself.  Had a very similar past few years playing similar games and similar stakes. 
I definitely found last year tougher than previous ones, the standard in general IMO seems to have improved somewhat. 
I also really struggle to get through books! (been stuck on Shantaram for about a year now)

What are your views on game theory optimal play?  I've never really studied it much but all the players I respect the most (Haxton/Kanu/Sauce) seem to be big advocates of it.
I'm currently remodeling some of my game to be more in line with this fundamental theory.  In my view a lot more players at medium/higher stakes are implementing this strategy and leaks are becoming more difficult to find.

Finally claiming you're a veteran at 25 depresses me somewhat!

25 is pretty old by today's standards!

Personally, an understanding of GTO is quite crucial. Implementing the actually strategy yourself is very difficult however, so I tend to focus on playing exploitatively myself. Try searching some threads on 2+2 and railing some of the big guns, to work out what they are doing (and why obv).

Perhaps we've played? More than likely to have done.

If you ever sit in 6 max games around 10/20 level then almost certainly yes.  I play a lot of heads up but not really on heads up tables (unless im punting in a HU hyper!).

I'm also heading out to Deauville - whether you like France or not you should enjoy the games out there.