In July 2017 we got married and she fell pregnant with Daniel soon after. In January 2018 I got on the housing ladder, a two bed flat in Buckhurst Hill near Epping Forrest. A particularly proud moment, a goal I’d always strived for, but mere days after moving in, I  remember wanting more - a house, more bedrooms, a garden etc. I was hungry, ambitious, greedy, even. I’d used up a chunk of my roll for the flat though so it was going to take a while to rebuild…

I then proceeded to have the best two years of my career by far.

The palm games got better and better, and in addition, several really juicy spots presented themselves:
- I got invited to play two big stream games at DTD.
- Nik P invited me to play a series of games with a Saudi Prince.
- A Gambian gambler called Gambia turned up and destroyed us at 6 card PLO day after day, until eventually losing it all.
- A scammer who called himself Joe King turned up and we played huge short handed for a while.

DTD Tricket Invitational, £125k buyin 100/200

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Gambia in the Palm Beach

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Joe King in Aspers, Stratford

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All four spots would make good posts in themselves. (I may have already told the Joe story here?). I couldn’t say that I god-moded any of these spots, but I always won a healthy amount, and seemed to never ever lose in the regular games at palm. The private game was going well for most of this time also. It was simply two years without a downswing.

By 2019, the private game had started to go downhill. I was giving occasional seats to palm regs to keep the peace and this was making the games too tough, people were refusing to come if two pros were in the game, and also all the KYC stuff was meaning people couldn’t withdraw money - they all just ended up going to the rival private game. In the spring, two of the guys from the game approached me and said let’s get our own flat and do the game there instead, away from the rules and regs of the palm. I asked Charlie's permission, and to my surprise she said yes. She knew everyone was going to the other game anyway, and at least this way she can have some say / control over the goings on. Besides, the other two would have found someone else to partner with and do it anyway if she/I said no. The rule was that only existing private game players could play it, or players recruited outside of the palm. June 2019 we signed a lease and Nik, myself and two others (one of whom dropped out quickly) began a new partnership.

It struggled to gain momentum, and because I was running so good, and was a pro, my position was always questioned. My job was providing the liquidity (the game was all done on credit) and to do all the admin, but pressure was starting to be put on me to find players also. They other two didn’t care about my promises to Charlie and I was constantly toeing a fine line keeping both sides happy. There were so many grey areas like people that had been to palm once, or years ago, or that Nik had known for years but also played at palm sometimes. I was guilty of trying to have my cake and eat it too. I always asked Charlie’s permission but even though she said yes, there was one case in particular, where I knew was crossing the line. And this just happened to be the one who grassed and told all the palm regs I’d invited him. Gabby Agbonlohor of all people!

I’ll always remember that moment and feel guilty to this day. You could say I was just maximising my own opportunities but at the end of the day, my greed had cost me friendships - and although they’ve mostly been since rebuilt - I still bear that guilt and regret how I acted in that time.

I finished 2019 in incredible style, completing the perfect year of 12/12 winning months, on 30th December in Latvia playing 200nl on stars with AA vs KK on AKxxx to give me a £180 winning month

Then Covid happened which changed everything forever...

London had probably been the obvious choice on paper for a while but I never liked it until I actually moved there. We lived in Stratford because there was regular 2/5 at the time there and Viktorija got a job dealing in the Empire. The 2/5 died after a couple months and on April 25th 2015, I decided to check out the Palm Beach. A momentous day. 

I’d heard lots of stories about Palm. Apparently a few months before, they’d banned a dozen or so regs for being too bad for the room. You had to dress up nice, be sociable, give action, tip etc. It was a two table cardroom with £5/10 minimum stakes. I probably had around £100k roll at the time so it was within my means, but with often a £25 straddle and regs that were clearly all stinking rich from the games there (not to mention much better than me), I was out of my comfort zone and shortstacked sitting with £1500 or £2k at a time.

I remember not knowing where to park on my first few visits and I’d been told they do valet parking. Usually for the Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Ferraris that frequent Mayfair, but I rocked up in my mondeo that had bird shit all over it and sheepishly handed the keys over

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It was a rude awakening about my skill level too. I’d learnt the basics of GTO from Stu Barnett (shout out to HoneyBadger) but never used piosolver before and it was clear now was the time to sink my teeth into it. I used to never 3bet hands that I didn’t want to have to fold to a 4bet, so my 3bet range never included hands like KJs, A5s, 98s - so if a flush came out in a 3bet pot I was screwed! I 3bet way too polar with many offsuit hands and junk like A4o, and would “go with my gut” if I thought a reg was 3betting light etc. I cut my teeth in DTD games where intuition was enough to print, I had a lot to learn.

3 months of hardcore study later and in August 2015 I started to see results, averaging £20k / month for the next 2.5 years until end of 2017. I loved it so much there. I’d play 8pm - 2am on average, 5-7 nights a week, and played very few tournaments. The game had been kicked up to £10/25 with often a £50 straddle and the good times just kept rolling. But all the regs knew to keep their mouths shut. Anyone suspected of bringing horses in was quickly admonished! The next biggest game in London was 2/5 so there was a huge gap for anyone wanting to take a shot. And it was often a very tough game. A lot of battling top players 8pm till midnight and sometimes nobody would join at all. But if you were patient and put the hours in you’d get rewarded.

The studying I was doing helped me make a vital mindset shift that served me very well. Before, I’d look around at the table and think “who’s the value here?” and if there wasn’t an obvious answer, I’d quit. But then I changed the question to, “who’s better than me here?”. I then had the confidence to play hours and hours in games with all pros, if I thought I was in the top 2 or 3. And when you did that, you gave yourself more of a chance to be there when the game turned sick all of a sudden, which it often did.

In early 2017 I approached the cardroom manager, Charlie, with a proposal to run a private daytime game on a Wednesday. I knew they used to have daytime games organised there but that the game had been taken to another casino, Aspinals. So I thought she’d be keen to have some extra business back and she was. Nik Persaud was part of that original game but no longer, and he helped me with players and together we built a decent game. The regs were worried it would affect the evening games. I was on good terms with everyone and I felt their fair concerns were balanced out by the evening game on Wednesdays would be much better than usual, with our game becoming public at 8pm. Most of our players already played in the Aspinals game, so keeping them in the building could only be a good thing I thought.

It was the start of tension with the regs that built up over the next few years as things developed and a rift between me and them was formed.

BOOM, yes please Alex.

Include plenty of photos if possible, please. And family update.

Holiday pics?

How does one attach a photo these days? Assume it’ll be a large file size

Seriously…

I think Imgur.com is the site to upload photos to and then insert the link in here in the img tags.

Ty, very easy

The creator of this thread, Sean, has been my PT for the past two months! I've gone from zero exercise in any form for 7 years to 5/6 days a week in the gym! Loving the new lifestyle! And he's still letting me eat what I want, for now...

Currently trying to get the hang of squats...

Macau wasn’t anything special. Round the clock action, but not exciting games by any stretch. You could say it was the exact opposite of DTD. Very nitty regs, nitty recs, quite high rake so you had to play tight also and absolutely zero banter / fun. Give me a tough splashy lively game over a soft nitty silent game any day of the week. I never dabbled in the bigger games though which are quite different.

It was a means to an end though and I did do alright in the 3 months I was there. Maybe I made £20k for myself I can’t remember, but with the car sale, I might have been back to £30-40k, with no horses, and no rent to pay. I’m very grateful to Cos for this opportunity to kick start my career again. He was kind to me and looked after me while I was there. I met his partner and they now have a beautiful family together. He’s crushed life as much as anyone in this business - deservedly so - top guy.

About two months into my trip having not heard from her until then, Viktorija skyped me one night drunk. That was the first time I thought she might like me. She seemed to be breaking things off with her boyfriend and was going out a lot with my friends. I have this image burned into my retinas of her, Fred and Craig on a night out and they were winding me up pretending they were getting off with each other lol.  I needed to get back fast!

But I was going to be more sensible this time round. I started some kind of partial backing deal with Keith aka mondeoman. He said it would be good for his brand awareness if I drove a mondeo also, so I obliged Sensible.

This was May 2014 when I came back and was stopping at Keith’s for a week or so. My blonde profile picture was taken at that time, at Keith’s house with his dog, and Viktorija.  We went headfirst into an intense relationship (Viktorija and I, not Keith, nor his dog)- I basically moved into her basement flat within a couple of weeks. On our first date we went walking in the peak district and pretty soon after that we started travelling all over Europe together. Marbella, Tuscany, Pisa, Como, and eventually stopped in Barcelona during the EPT. I came 2nd in a 1k side event for €80k and since it was both of our favourite cities in Europe, we decided to get a short term rental there for 6 months and see how it went. We lived right by the beach. I grinded stars.es and winamax and played some 2/4 in the casino, a lovely ten minute stroll by the sea away. This was the only period of my life I can remember actually winning at online poker. I even bagged myself an ESCOOP title!

Our street in Barceloneta

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

I binked WPT National Prague for 80k just before Christmas, quit the staking deal and we decided to move to London in February.

BOOM, yes please Alex.

Include plenty of photos if possible, please. And family update.

Holiday pics?

How does one attach a photo these days? Assume it’ll be a large file size

Seriously…

I'll start with the lead up to Macau, and even though it was only a 3 month trip, it was quite a turning point in my career.

In 2013 I had taken on 3 or 4 horses, I suppose I had around a £50k roll, and was playing and staking in £500 buyin events, the odd £1k probably I can't remember, and playing the DTD 2/5 games or 1/2/4 whatever was running at the time. I made dumb mistakes like counting makeup as an asset (cos they're bound to win it back soon right?!) and thus making bankroll decisions based on money I didn't have (erm wtf?!). The horses I had were friends and the lines tend to get blurred in those spots. I dropped them one by one in £5k-£20k makeup each I guess.

Early 2014 was certainly the trough of my bankroll. The Keith and Keys stable had become just the Keith stable and I think I considered getting staked again myself (a little hazy on the timeline tbh) as I was becoming under-rolled for the games myself. As it happened, I was getting marginalised out of the DTD games anyway. Skalie had taken over organising games, with the purpose of maintaining a healthy ecosystem as the bigger games had gotten too tough for most people and were dying out.

I think of those as the glory days as I love that environment, but it was often Mitch, stato, myself, Giblin a couple of other regs like Jack Allen, Tom high, PJ, Fred, Nick Hicks, Kurt or Keith and then one or two seats open for whoever else.

I thrive in this kind of game - where I really enjoy everyones company, enjoy battling hard with the regs, plenty of good needle and banter, straddles, action and just enough recreational money to keep the game going. It was the kind of game where even when you did your bollocks you often left happy because it was so much fun.

But it wasn’t sustainable and Skalie rightly had to limit our game time. I saw the end was nigh and it was right around this time that our very own Greekstein messaged me saying I should come out to Macau to play 50/100 (£5/10) and he could sort me a banking deal, expenses on makeup etc. I remember when I left, that my BMW was worth more than my bankroll so it was a no brainer. I told my Mum to sell my car for me, I’m off to China!

Two weeks before the trip I happened to meet my wife-to-be…

Viktorija was dealing at DTD whilst studying at Notts uni, and she was super keen on poker herself, and would play on her days off at Alea or Gala. I’d go along and play too and we got to know each other a little but nothing more, she was in a relationship and I was off to Macau so I didn’t think too much about it.

So there's a lot to catch up on!

The main reason I stopped blogging frequently here was because it didn't make sense to promote the games I was playing in. That started in Macau, where I was told by my backers I couldn't, and then when I moved to London and started playing at the Palm Beach, that same sentiment carried over - it very much felt like people didn't realise how good it was there, and the regs were keen to keep it that way.

Then from about 2018 to Jan 2022, I split my time between there and the private game scene, another domain I really couldn't speak about publically for a myriad of reasons.

Now ALL of that has come to an end, I can tell a few tales and spill the beans I guess

BOOM, yes please Alex.

Include plenty of photos if possible, please. And family update.

Holiday pics?

How does one attach a photo these days? Assume it’ll be a large file size

HNY Blonde!

Shall I restart the blog? Had a lot on my mind lately and no good place to put it, and also some fun tournament stops coming up so thinking about bringing it back, warts n all!

What kind of content would you guys like to read?

Hi Alex, very well done - I can assure you, you’ll get an invite back (should you want it!) - hard to forget those hands (from his perspective ☺️). The whole ‘angel investor’ thing too, lol.

NB - I saw you once in the Empire, approached to say hi, you were very courteous - could tell you were a good guy who wasn’t letting success swamp ego (stay true to that whatever happens). 🙂

Dwayne

Hi and thanks for the kind words!

People think that angel investor is made up but it's genuinely not. Started a fund 5 years ago with a couple of non-poker people and we invest in startups. Sure I play a lot of poker still but it's not my main source of income. Especially since covid 

Go on...tell us about the Kings

Did it for him besmirching the name of Phil Hellmuth Jr, presumably?

Well done.

Thanks all. I'm back home in England after quite the trip. Run good came at the right time!

Kings hand was wild. My biggest ever winning pot.

I was making an effort to give more action as I felt Eric needed to be convinced I was good for the game (he blocks people if they have <35% vpip for eg Wesley, he tweeted that yesterday), and it was his $800 straddle and I was on the button.

I think raising blind in this spot is a fine play and good for optics + the show, so I annouce blind raise to $2k. Folds to him and he makes it $12k. I let my neighbour sweat my hand as we squeeze two beautiful kings.

I'm playing a stack of $94k (I think it was down as 84 on the system which was off by 10), it doesn't take a former professional poker player turned angel investor to work out how to get the money in here. Small 4bet that he has to call - $28k. He does call.

or some similar Ace high wheel rainbow flop.

He instantly puts me allin for $65k 😂😂😂

I was always calling but just took some time as a) biggest pot ever, b) you can get info from his speech play c) huge swing emotionally for the trip which is in its final 30 minutes or so - either down heaps or up small.

He uses a phrase which I'd seen him use to Garrett when he had the nuts. "Better to live like a man than die on your knees". This worried me a little. But I decided to live like a man I guess!

Gave him credit for at least having a draw / pair but no - , happy days!

It was my poor attempt at a halloween costume yes.

Funny cos people don't know me out here, and I'm already dressing kinda quirky so it wasn't entirely obvious I was trying to be JD.

Two more stream games before my trip finishes. Firstly tonight 25/50/100 and then tomorrow with Eric Perrsons 100/200...

What do you think of the new look?

Well I had to go and see what all the fuss was about!

Played on 4 or 5 shows so far and another 3 to come this week before hometime. Results been shocking unfortunately but at least theyre all happy to keep playing with me!