It's 8pm In Las Vegas. I'm in my hotel room, laptop on the desk, my eyes flitting between this blank page and the mirror right in front of me.

Vegas is so different now. There never used to be a lack of options for dinners, frivolity in the pit, nights out. Now most of those types are either out of poker, or grew out of that life, became more professional and conscientious. I count myself in that bracket, the latter that is. Well maybe the former too...keep reading.

Over nearly 13 years of playing fulltime I've had plenty of spells where I thought, this isn't making me happy I might quit soon. I've never had a good alternative, or things turned around in time and it was forgotten. I've also had times where I could've quit - opportunies in the business world were there for me - but poker was going so well that I couldn’t do it.

Now is the only time both coincide - I want to quit AND I have something I want to do. This isn't some knee-jerk post to busting a few tournaments! I told my family before I came that this would probably be it for me. At first I said barring a big win, but the more I think about it, that'll be the perfect way to go out.

There's a fine line between longevity that's respectable, and longevity that's...sad...I'm proud I'm still here in some ways, but in other ways, feel I'm wasting away a bit. Both emotionally and personally and in opportunity cost, maybe financially too.

The lack of correlation between effort and reward in poker tournaments is just so tough to take, made more so by the travelling and being away from family. Spending 1/3 of the year away from home, and spending most of that time pretty miserable is not exactly the poker dream is it? So if I was still here in 5 years doing that, having supported my family in the process, would I be happy with that? I think not. But that's the reality now and although I could do the cash game trips to Florida or LA or Vegas and regain some sanity, my income is probably capped at a number that doesn't make it worth being away for so long, especially in the face of exciting opportunities elsewhere.

I'm really excited by AI. I think it's going to change the world. And I think I have a good skillset to position myself to make something happen in that industry. I can code, I have networks in business, I have money and I have time. I don't have a well thought out plan, I just want to learn as much as I can and see where my interest leads me. Starting my own business or building a product, I don't know.

We have a second child coming in October, so the timing to leave poker is ideal. I'm not saying I'll never play again. I'll probably play some random tournament stops here and there and a week or two in Vegas for the main event etc. I could caveat and say I could always come back to it if needs be but I kinda wanna be allin and not have that in the back of my mind. But I also don't wanna be the prick that makes a big retirement post then comes back a year later!

It's pretty scary even writing this, cos there's almost no going back if I hit send! Hence why it's now 9pm and I still keep looking in the mirror to make sure this is what I really want! Here goes...What do you guys think of all / any of that?

I was $60k up on the trip halfway through and ended up losing almost all of it back.




What a sentence Alex. Bet you never imagined the journey you had ahead of you back in 2013.

That was 2010. My last day of employment I believe. A friend recently linked me to a Woodsey post on here back in 2011 where he says something like

"Let's be real and stop encouraging him down a path that will almost certainly going to end in him going broke. I'm saying this for your own good" etc etc

It is good to zoom out sometimes and reflect. Especially when on a bad run. Although funnily enough at the peak of this trip I did take a rare moment to reflect, looking back on the dark times of last year where I felt at my lowest, and I was very grateful for how things had turned around and had to remind myself to appreciate that moment. It's important to show gratitude so they say...Obviously immediately lose every day for 3 weeks straight

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My 4 week trip in Florida comes to an end. I played 12 tournaments, ranging from $400 to $10k in buyins. I cashed in 4!  33% pretty good eh? To be fair there were 3 reentries in that so really it's 4/15 so 27%   . And to be extra fair, one of the cashes was splitting the bubble with someone for a less than $200 profit on the $1.1k buyin so 3.5/15... And the other 3 cashes were all pure min cashes...and they were in the $400, $600 and $2.2k. In fact, the total sum of the 3.5cashes was less than $5k. And I played $30k in buyins. Small details....

Tournament poker is absolutely maddening.

Cash game poker....also kinda maddening! I was $60k up on the trip halfway through and ended up losing almost all of it back. It's been a real rough couple weeks but what can you do. I'm so ready to come home and spend quality time with my family away from poker. I will lick my wounds and then get back to work, brush up on my tournament game ahead of some SCOOP but main focus of course being WSOP in mid June.

I also wonder whether I need some mental game coaching so my mental state isn't constantly going from "I love this game this is what I'm meant to do for ever and ever" to "this game is making me really miserable really often" I can't help but think it's all kind of a scam though and won't help me put into practice things I already know.

Hi mate, I'll have 3%

Just played a wild session of $5/10/25 where the standup game was on for 12 hours straight And $100 bomb pots every dealer change.

We're down to two in the standup game: Me and Mike. For those that don't know, the standup game is a game where everyone stands up, and you can only sit down when you win a pot. Last man standing pays everyone an agreed amount, in this case $100. I limp blind utg, my man Romeo makes it $150 utg+1 and Mike and I call. I have the powerhouse that is . Essentially I have to call any two here as if Mike wins this hand vs Romeo, I have to pay $700 to the table. And Romeo has no incentive to stop Mike winning the hand other than just the usual incentive to win whats in the pot! So Mike will probably be something like a 2 or 3:1 favourite to win a heads up pot. There's also giant implied odds with any hand as you'll see.

Flop comes and I donk for $450 and get two callers.

Turn is a and I jam $3k. Romeo calls, and Mike folds.

For some additional background dynamics, the day before, I'd played a $2650 satellite with 14 players, 1st was a $25k seat, 2nd $10k and Romeo busted me in 3rd for a painful pure bubble. So I had unfinished business with this gentleman...Back to the hand...

I can't really remember what I was thinking at the time with my postflop play. There's so many crazy dynamics in the stand up game and making huge deviations from standard play on the fly, total guesswork and intuition. But essentialy I'm up against two hugely wide ranges and I'm just trying to force folds from no pair hands and take my chances and with my equity to avoid the $700 fine.

You end up risking thousands to avoid $700 in this game, and thats the fun part - everyone loses their head a bit. But it probs stacks up in theory also - when you study solvers and realise how close the options are, if you throw in a $700 (28 big blind) incentive then you can imagine how nuts you can go...

Anyway, so I need to beat Romeo to end the standup game. We agree to go twice. First board counts for the stand up game.

Rivers are the and the ....

So on the the top I literally beat nothing. Flush gets there, straight gets there, straight draw makes a pair.

Errrr "You SCOOP" Romeo says...??

He turns over ...

??? The Robbie?? There was no bounty, nor even chat about playing J4...

He even said that he thought I was "a lot lighter than that"....? He literally made a Robbi-esque play (call J4 high on the turn thinking I'm bluffing when he loses to almost all bluffs) with the Robbi hand, without even acknowledging Robbi. SO GOOD <3. More anecdotal evidence that people lose their heads in poker hands all the time

It's a $2500 cap buyin game, I was in for 2 buyins, so to cashout $31.6k ain't bad at all...

I should add, I think the tendancy to underbluff and overfold in huge spots has served me well generally in live poker over the years (people generally have it innit), definitely better than overbluffing and underfolding given the populations tendancies, and probably still good vs the majority. But as people get better you need to get more in line. And you definitely can't be overfolding vs Calvin Anderson!

25th- made the worst fold in history

I haven't played a tournament since this and have been musing on what stopped me pulling the trigger. I thought it essential to get to the bottom of it before WSOP.

The details of the hand aren't important - I essentially backdoor a baby flush against Calvin Anderson (known lunatic) but the board is paired and he sets me in for 1.6m into 1.2m pot, 1.6m being 40bbs / average stack.

I remember in all my big tournament spots in my career I had this fear of doing something stupid and I think it all stems from the Monte Carlo J2o hand!

A memory lane refresher - "The Monte Carlo" was a £1k at DTD they held about 5 times between say 2010 and 2012 and was pretty much the flagship event of the time. Winners include Rastafish, Fraser Bellamy, Julian Thew and I think Wadey. I'd won the event in the summer of 2011 for my breakout score - life changing moment and in December later that year finalled it again. 4 handed it was Jake Cody, Rastafish, Me and a (alleged) drug dealer from Norwich called Skipper £90k up top and Rastafish limped the button, Skipper completed the small blind and I jammed 18bbs with J2o from the bb. Rasta had AQ and snapped, and quick as a flash I was out.

I was totally devasted. The chance of back to back, the money but mainly the fact that I'd done something dumb. Well, convential wisdom at the time was it was dumb. Having seen some ICM sims lately that love high low offsuit jams, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a winning jam against their actual ranges to limp here and I was ahead of the curve but I digress...

So PTSD from that feeling I think has shaped my whole career. Now I want to live in peace with the outcome, knowing I didn't fk up. It doesn't sound like a bad thing does it? But playing in fear of making a mistake leads to safe play, which means not bluffing enough, not hero calling enough etc. If you're supposed to bluff 20 combos, chances are you're sure what a few of them are, and you go ahead and bluff those, but there'll be ones you're unsure of, and if you're programmed to want no regrets, you'll always give up those combos. Same principle for hero calling the river. E.g. against Cal - I thought my baby flush was a bluff catcher, unlikely to be shoving worse for value so this fear of busting in this way kicked in. I thought I'd hate myself. When what ended up happening is I folded, and lost my 40bbs in two standard preflop setups within half an hour and hating myself anyway.

It's rare you live in regret for hands you fold like this, because in most cases, my 40bb lasts me a lot longer, so much happens after that that I "get over it" and move on so to speak. So things like this can happen again and again, especially in live poker where it's so rare to even get a deep run, most of them do end in standard ways, so your weaknesses are extremely rarely put under the microscope.

In my WSOP main 37th run is another good example, though I didn't notice it at the time. With about 60 left I was put allin on the river for 13bb into a pot of 9bb and I had middle pair and just knew the guy was bluffing but couldn't pull the trigger. I didn't want to bust the WSOP main hero calling. And because hours passed after, and I peacefully went out with 88 vs JJ (vs same guy as it happens) I remember saying to people, "I'm just happy I didn't bust doing anything I regret".

It's only now that I realise that this mantra could be the reason I've never finalled one of these deep runs in big events.  I've got 4 11ths in tournaments with 250k-600k up top and zero finals. "I run so bad final two tables!" Or do I just play like a pussy?

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Not anymore! Watch out 2023 WSOP - giant punts incoming

Is there something you ought to be telling us Alex, or more correctly, Alexander Goulder?

45 seconds in to this video....



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06c_NFyYs4

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Oioi

25th- made the worst fold in history

1.7m heading to 40k bb, 31 left, two levels to go today. Vamos.

So our 64k spin continued all the way up to 1.6m and we finished on 1.365m with 52 left and $17k locked. Returning to 20k bb. Average is about 1m. Awesome day! Buzzing! Ran so well.
Very slow structure, 5 90min levels per day. Scheduled for 6 days. My flight home is on day 6 though 

https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wynn-poker/2023-wynn-millions/3-500-main-event/

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The WSOP staking for the soft 5/10 was here http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=47772.0

While this BoB thread was going on - http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=43354.0


Which unravelled when argue caught him out  -  http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=48399.0


GLGL!

Yes I was just coming onto the scene when all this happened. I didn't know the Vegas staking thread was alongside the BoB. Didn't somebody think to suggest playing 2/5 instead of selling 50% for 5/10 Rats were being smelt at this time surely...

At least everyone got paid in the end.

Soft 10/20 reminds me of a Blonde legend!

Good Luck in the tourney Alex.

I should definitely have said softER. The game certainly isn’t objectively soft.

What was the story with blatch’s soft 5/10 at the Venetian? Bigging up the games to get a stake?

We sneaked into the money with 8bbs. Then instant heater with two double ups, went from 64 to 380 in 15 minutes. Then lost one, currently got 235k, returning to 10k bb. 120 left.

Glad you're enjoying the rivival guys! I am too. Enjoying a return to form also.

I have squeaky bum time scheduled in for 12pm local time: Day 3 of the Wynn Million Championship Event, 157 left, 134 paid, $8.4k min cash and $650k ftw. I have 22bbs which is bottom 20. Superb structure 90 min levels, which means the bubble could last a little while. And a 2.5buyin min cash means I can't do much without a big hand. Plan is AA > AKo hand one to ease the tension. Updates on pokernews.

Been enjoying playing cash at the Wynn, from 10/20 to 25/50/100. I've been torn between locking up a nice winning trip by playing soft 10/20 or pressing by playing tougher but bigger. Mainly opting for the former, especially on the days off between tournament days, when it can mess with your mindset.