middy doesn't know the meaning of the word grind anymore

How many HHS do you look over a week?

If you have a super tough hand and want to get instant feedback who do you send to on skype?

Have you ever been staked?

How good is your girlfriend? I heard she plays really well have you intensively coached her or?

I don't look over HHS as such but prefer to watch Runitonce videos and save boomplayer hands that I've played and ask people whose opinion I respect about potential lines and possible what ifs.

If I could only send a hand to one person it would be Chris Brammer.

I've never been staked but have obviously sold pieces before for certain tournaments.

My fiancee has been playing poker way before she met me. She used to live with AMAK and Roothlus and learned a lot from them (particularly AMAK who she spent a lot of time discussing hands with and who imo is one of the most underrated players in the game.) She is always watching me deep in tourneys and asking questions of why I make particular plays and is very keen to learn more. Poker is more of a hobby for her but has been a profitable one thus far.

Do you actively target triple crowns or are they just a byproduct of your schedule?

Favourite place you have played poker?

On a typical grind I load up Stars, Full Tilt, Party Poker, Winamax, .FR and Ipoker. Playing 5 main sites I get plenty of opportunities to win on multiple sites. Once I have won two tourneys on different sites I obviously actively target the third by adding a few extra tourneys into my schedule on eligible sites. For example this week I am two thirds of the way to my 22nd triple crown with the first two legs locked up on Stars and Tilt. This has meant adding more euro site tourneys with smallish fields to my schedule which I normally wouldn't play. Unfortunately I'm still searching for that elusive 3rd win though, with Monday nights grind being my last opportunity to make it happen.

My favourite place to play live poker has to be the Crown Casino in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions. I've not been the past couple of years but am excited to go back in 2015. It has a special place in my heart because the first big live final table I made was there.

What do you consider you best moment in poker? Any particular poker aspirations left that drive you on?

I read previously about you tilt shoving, do you still do this? Do you consider yourself one of the best around at tilt shoving?

I think the LAPC win was undoubtedly my finest moment in poker so far. To finally win a huge live tournament after a number of near misses was incredible. As far as poker aspirations go I would love to win the live triple crown one day.

I read through my old well on here the other day and laughed hard at those tilt posts. It was all true but I've now learnt to have a lot more control whilst playing and no longer tilt shove or go nuts in the chatbox.

Thanks for doing this ! I have a feeling the answer to my question might be different for each person but I'd like to pick your brain anyways. I've been grinding MTT's for 7 years now and have made money each year. I've never been able to make enough to soley do poker so I have a little business on the side selling crap on eBay lol. I balance the two together and scrape by but my dream is poker full time. I can honestly say I'm working 60 hours a week between the two trying to have some gtd income as well as keep chasing my dream. I watch training vids nightly, I've literally probably watched weeks worth of WSOP, EPT coverage. I try and find live streams with no hole cards, anything i can to learn. I guess my question is... how important is that 1st big score in propelling a player to the next level ? I've had a ton of 1K-9K scores but everytime i hit one i need to take out the money for bills because of my lack of other income. I have an 11th and 13th in tournies paying 60K+ to 1st and i feel like if either of those came through I'm in a totally different place in my life. I think some people think being a losing player is the worst but I'm convinced being a small winner takes the cake. It's torture

Building a bankroll through MTTs is very tough and not really something I would recommend if you are strapped for cash. Having to play through thousands of players at the low stakes to get a good score means a ton of variance and a lot of heartache along the way. I think it is better to play low stakes cash or SNGs until you have a more comfortable financial situation and then move back to MTTs where there will be much less pressure on you for instant success.

Do you play cash games or strictly MTT's only?

I started with cash games but now play strictly MTT's. The feeling of winning that you get from shipping an MTT is much more exciting to me and less of a grind than cash games imo. It also helps that tournaments are much softer!

Out of interest - humour an idiot - did you used to play pool?

http://upc-pool.org.uk/cueaction/honours-board/

(Scroll down to the bottom)

If so, we might both have played in the 2004-5 Universities Championship, although I didn't make the Dream Team

Do you (still) play?

Sick! Which university did you play for? I don't play nearly as often as I would like and whenever I have I am a shadow of the player I was. However, I'm looking into getting lasik eye surgery before the end of the year (laptop grinding messed my eyes up) and it will be easy to motivate myself to play more when I can actually see the balls properly!

Ha! Yes, we were all a lot better then

I was in the Cambridge second team that year. Great fun those comps.

Looking through the names there now Mark McCulloch, Ricky Taylor, Carl Caney and Paul Edwards what a blast from the past and some amazing talents

Do you come over to the UK much these days?

If so, there is a Guest Spot awaiting you on Ch 861, Sky Poker. Might not sound the most exciting way to spend an evening, but we could spend plenty of time puffing the book, be a great way of promoting it. Truly.

I'm back for the whole of October actually and would definitely be up for doing that at some point then.

Out of interest - humour an idiot - did you used to play pool?

http://upc-pool.org.uk/cueaction/honours-board/

(Scroll down to the bottom)

If so, we might both have played in the 2004-5 Universities Championship, although I didn't make the Dream Team

Do you (still) play?

Sick! Which university did you play for? I don't play nearly as often as I would like and whenever I have I am a shadow of the player I was. However, I'm looking into getting lasik eye surgery before the end of the year (laptop grinding messed my eyes up) and it will be easy to motivate myself to play more when I can actually see the balls properly!

People probably underestimate how exhausting Sundays are,
Let him sleep lol

How do you manage to keep a decent body clock if multiple nights of the week you're up until 3-4am?

The simple answer to this is that I do the vast majority of my grinding these days in Vancouver and Playa Del Carmen. In these places the schedule is much more like a 9-5 job and imo the grind is a much more enjoyable experience. When I was playing in the UK back in the day I had a terrible body clock and poker came first before anything else.

Do you still stake?  What aspects of staking do you think you have got right and wrong in the past?

I'm completely out of the staking business now. As Lil Dave said I really could write an entire book on this topic lol. In a short answer I would say that I got the best out of the majority of players because I created a relaxed environment where they wanted to win for both of us. I see a lot of stables try and bleed their horses dry for everything they can get and I feel like this creates resentment from the horse towards the backer and has a negative effect on their game. My biggest problem was that I was bad at saying no. At the beginning of my backing career Ty Reiman got 2nd in the PCA for 1.8 million and after makeup had been paid off I received close to $1 million. At the time I had profited about the same amount in 4 years of playing 6 days a week!  To win that much money in one day by effectively doing nothing fish hooked me into backing. After Ty's score I was inundated with offers by players wishing to get backed and for a while it was easier to get into my stable than it was to create a poker account. I had way too many players (around 30 at peak) and my resources were way too stretched for 30 players in high stakes tourneys. I chased makeup numbers too much rather than just getting rid of a bad horse and cutting my losses and I put too many people into the toughest tourneys. To be a good backer you need to be ruthless as well as reasonable, I was more than reasonable but just don't have that ruthless streak in me and ultimately I believe that is one of the main reasons why it didn't work out.

Who are the best/worst players you've staked?

I'm too nice to write about the worst players I have ever staked but the best playesr I have ever staked include Taylor Paur, Middy, Mohsin,Ty Reiman, MikeTelker, Jason Koon and Dempsey. Taylor would probably be my number 1 pick though.

How often do you play well online? Do you just feel like you always make the odd mistake or do you have stretches of a few days/weeks where you play really well or poor?

I make a ton of high variance plays and obviously not all of them are going to work out. Even if I have a successful day there is no chance that I didn't make a mistake. I try to look at it in the way that I force my opponents into making more mistakes against me than I make against them. Like anyone I have times when I am playing much worse than normal. I often find that they correlate with when I would rather be doing something else other than playing poker. In the past week I feel like I have been playing my very best poker and have been fortunate enough to run well at the same time. Next week I wouldn't be too surprised if I am nowhere near as confident in my game and as a result playing at a much lower standard. When you have confidence in poker good things normally happen.

all about who gets the first blow in horse v dog. one kick from a horse will KO the dogs fo sho, but if the rottie sinks his teeth in the horse will panic and bolt. although he may accidentally trample one of the rotties to death in attempting to escape, the ultimate victory has to lie with the rottie. i think 1 v1 wouuld be close but rotties gotta edge it 2 v 1. yorkies would lose to a cat every single time IMO

for chris moorman. do u ever get bored of playing poker and wish you did something else for a living?
what would you be doing now if you had bust yr bankroll long ago and decided not to redeposit - i dont mean dream job, just realistic?

Like everyone I get bored and frustrated with poker at times but thankfully those times are very rare. I can't think of anything I'd rather do for a living than poker.

I have no idea what I'd be doing now but I would probably have ended up in some kind of city job because Economics and Business Studies were pretty much the only school subjects that I was interested in.

You should ask him if it's too late to get the cover redesigned.

The cover is being redesigned as we speak..