Like the others say, really good to see things have gone so well for you.

Where abouts are your based in Thailand?

Thankyou!

I'm now based in central Bangkok, a place I never thought I would be. The first 3-4 times I came here I absolutely hated it.

All my friends from Phuket started moving and the community for me was one of the coolest things about my time there. One of my mates persuaded me to come and stay with him and he showed me a different side of Bangkok and I enjoyed it. It's been great for me in terms of my friends, networking, etc etc but I'm definitely less healthy and active here than I was in Phuket but neither are places I can see myself long term. For right now I don't want to be anywhere else.

There's a lot more I can rabbit on about this subject.

Great update,Cos.

Take it you're building a house for that bear in the picture?  No way that can share with you lot

Post was very braggy, and quite right, too! Glad you're doing so well.

Agree with all of this. So great that a forum legend is doing so well!

Legend....you're making me blush.

Great update,Cos.

Take it you're building a house for that bear in the picture?  No way that can share with you lot

Post was very braggy, and quite right, too! Glad you're doing so well.

He's a puppy at the moment. That's actually the father but he will be as big.

We are in a big house right now with a big garden so plenty of space for them!

Thanks mate, hope youre keeping well.

In Macau it was PLO high only. Also, I forgot to mention that the Macau Gaming Commission have a bunch of unique rules. For example, you can't run it twice. Each hand must have one unique outcome. Obviously PLO is a game of crazy variance and equities running pretty close generally. However, when you ran like I did the last few years and were forced to only ever run it once, it was pretty nice.

I meant was it only 4 hole cards PLO? No 5 or 6 card? In Birmingham and Nottingham it's all 456 and woe betide anyone who chooses 4, even 5 is barely acceptable. Even the Vic, the last bastion of 4 card PLO is now offering 456. I was there last week and a 5/10 game had apparently been running for 24+ hours with 4 of the players having been there from the start. It was still going when I left around 4 hours later.

In Macau they can only spread 4 card PLO. Bad for fun but I guess from an earning money POV that's been a good thing for me.

Very nice to hear!

Thanks mate. Thought I'd see you in Vegas this year. It's been a few years since I've been and I miss it but I dont want to be away from Natalie at this stage. Next year for me! Good luck

That's what I call a dog BTW.

Has it eaten the other two?

Haha! He's the middle dog in terms of size. He's a Cane Corso.

The other new boy is a Central Asian Shepherd. He'll grow to around 80kg.

Your baby is gorgeous Cos!

Thanks Tom!

Glad to see your doing well on both fronts :-)

Thanks mate.

Hope the post didn't come across too braggy. I just wanted to convey how lucky I was and how lucky I feel by things all going my way for a prolonged period.

He changed it from 100/200 hkd uncapped buy in to 50/100 with a 25k max buy in and no straddle allowed.

Great updates Greek, thanks for posting. Was the game played as strictly 4 card or DC?

In Macau it was PLO high only. Also, I forgot to mention that the Macau Gaming Commission have a bunch of unique rules. For example, you can't run it twice. Each hand must have one unique outcome. Obviously PLO is a game of crazy variance and equities running pretty close generally. However, when you ran like I did the last few years and were forced to only ever run it once, it was pretty nice.

I continued playing in Macau and doing ok. Again, not great but I was getting better and unlike before, where all my friends were NL players I had some PLO playing friends. This accelerated my learning and my sense of competition. I also had some money behind me, which hugely eases pressure. Without as much pressure it's amazing how much better you can play and run.

Also increasing were the lengths of my stays in Macau. I was staying 2-3 months at a time. I'd broken my wrist in Thailand and went to Macau. I started really gaining a lot of weight and broke my foot not too long after. Wasn't exercising or taking care of my diet and I'd ballooned to over 110kg. Focus was poker poker poker. The Omaha game sort of died though and broke for a little while. A lot of the regulars left. A bunch went to LA/Vegas etc but I had commitments and things going on in Macau/Thailand so couldn't leave.

The Wynn Poker room manager, who was fantastic imo made an effort to revive the PLO game. He changed it from 100/200 hkd uncapped buy in to 50/100 with a 25k max buy in and no straddle allowed. All the regulars stayed in LA but the game started running again every day. 80% of days I was the only Westerner playing and went from middle of the pack to King of the Hill as pretty much the only pro in the games. Imagine playing the best game you play every couple of months, except playing it daily for a year. The Wynn poker room manager used to joke with me that the players should each just give me 100bb and let me go home. It felt like that was happening every day it was kinda crazy. If the offer of everyone giving me 100bb to not play each day was real, I would have declined it. It was just too much fun going in every day and winning silly amounts. I was running well, playing great and in phenomenal games. I was waiting for it all to stop or pros to show up. Neither of those things happened. I really crushed during this period. I was on my own money fully obviously by this time and got into a bunch of amazing private games that I can't write too much about but did fantastically in those too. It was just a 2 year golden run, including some other things that I dont want to write about.

I'd been with my gf 6 years and we had talked about starting a family. I ran good there too as December 2017 my little girl was born. Best day of my life by far and I'm totally in love with her. She's just perfect. The pregnancy was somewhat of a nightmare too and a constant worry so when she was born healthy it was just a feeling I can't ever try to describe. She is just over 5 months old now and since day 1 has been the best, easiest baby ever. She doesn't cry. She plays, smiles, eats and sleeps. Whoever blessed me with her I'm so lucky and I will give it my all to make sure she has the best dad I can be and every opportunity she'll ever want. End/ Big softie talk.

Would love to have one more but we also added to our little family with 2 more dogs recently.

Will send some pics to Vinny to post for me.

There were a few turning points for me in poker.

Like I said before, I was grinding away when me and Simon (Amatay) moved to Phuket and not having too much success but getting by month to month and loving it. I was playing $.50/1-£1/2 and some $2/4 sometimes. I never added to my bankroll but paid the bills and my living expenses. Better months meant I spent more and worse months meant Simon was paying the rent and I was paying him back a few weeks later. He was a good support and never put pressure on me.

I met a lot of poker players living in Thailand so when Simon moved back to the UK it was a shame but I began living with 2 Spanish poker playing friends. That was great. We were all in the same boat poker wise and in interests/activities etc. It was also great for me because we did loads of sport/gym and I got in very good shape. I was around 85kg, playing a different sport every day with other poker players from all around the world. Going out a decent amount and going to the gym 4-5 times a week.

I was also with my girlfriend and had my dog. It was still a bit of a struggle financially but it was steady enough. The other great thing was that I got to use my Spanish. I loved Spanish at school and was very good at languages. I obviously never finished my degree. In fact I barely ever started it. One of the things that scared me massively at the time was having to do my 3rd year in Spain or a Spanish speaking country. I was enjoying sort of getting my chance to do a bit of that, albeit a few years later and in a different way than planned.

After a year or so, one of the lads was struggling a bit too much with poker. The other two of us were keeping him afloat and we told him we'd keep doing so but he elected to go home and re-evaluate poker or get a job there. I decided to start doing more and more macau trips as the games were good and I couldn't be in Thailand the whole time because of visa reasons so it sorta worked.

The first while though, I was stuck playing hold em as the PLO games were too big for me. I'm definitely way too loose/spewy in NL and was even more so back then. But I did ok which is testament to the games being good.

A friend started staking me for the Omaha games and i was doing ok. Bit of a pattern emerging, doing ok but never great was a bit of a theme. Macau lifestyle got to me a bit too and I started gaining a little weight. Got into the habit of finishing a poker session at 6am and heading to the Wynn breakfast buffet. Wynn breakfast buffet is excellent. I remember heading to Vegas expecting similar quality from the famous Bellagio buffet and thinking it was a complete shitshow in comparison. I was still doing enough exercise that I was ok.

Another friend had approached me a few times, saying he wanted to stake me in amazing $25/50 PLO games online. He wouldn't tell me where but I wasn't keen. I explained I was on another stake that was going ok and had to be committed to that. It wasn't fair to take another one and I didn't honestly believe I would beat any game that big. He was aware what stakes I played online though and every few weeks he would pester me. He said if this particular site ended I wouldn't be on the hook for any makeup and I eventually asked my other backer. He agreed I could give it a go and I remember wininng $30k my first session. It felt a bit surreal at that time. I remember flying home and being on a different time zone. I had the tables open from when I woke up until when I went to bed. One night I had locked up all the doors downstairs and was carrying the laptop in my hand when one of the whales sat against me. I paused on the stairs to play the hand and by the time I reached the top of the stairs I'd won 5 or 6 buy ins and the guy left. That was an incredible night's sleep. The site was called Suited Ace. There had been a post/thread made about it on 2+2 forum where some very well respected and well known PLO players had made posts suggesting they were very suspicious of it so every player who should have been there in my place wasn't. That was a touch. Especially since all the things alluded to, I never noticed. Collusion, nope. Cashouts were fast and easy. It was too good to be true. However the site didn't last too long. I didn't lament over that. These things rarely do and I had a bankroll from nowhere.

Honestly I can't remember when I stopped updating but the last few years have been pretty cool.

I remember someone in Macau had mentioned to me that they found my diary here and had been reading it, so I asked Tighty to take it down.

I was happy to share my life and poker shenanigans with the blonde members but felt a little uncomfortable when people in my games might be reading. No big deal though.

I was living between Macau and Thailand on and off for 5 years or so. The first couple of years I was making ends meet, paying bills, winning, but not enough to push forward to where I wanted to be. The last 2-3 have been really fantastic though.

I won the biggest hand I've ever played at the back end of last year. I think I was in the game for about £15k.

It was £100 ante PLO, no blinds.  Open to £400 from the VIP and 2 calls, I call with AAJ8 one suit in the cutoff playing around £50k at this point. There were 2 guys behind me 3-betting A LOT hence my call here. The button pots it to £2,500 and it goes call call call and I can make it £14,000. I was taking a risk here because i know the VIPs in this game do not like getting limp raised or back raised but since i give a lot of action and dont make a habit of it, I just hoped in this instance noone would comment on it.

Anyway, only the 3-bettor calls. So there's around £35k in the pot. Pot size bet behind.

Flop is K96 rainbow and I put the money in.

Snap call.

This guy is the richest person in an already pretty damn rich lineup of recreational players and he never runs it twice. However he knows me pretty well and I gave him a look and said cheekily 'twice?'.

I honestly expected him to say yes because we dont usually play these stakes etc but he stuck to his once routine and off we went. He then turned over KQJ9.

I'm just under 28% to win in this spot.

Turn was a 6 and the river was a brick. SHIP IT.

That was a buzz. I remember 13-14 years ago I would play £5 thunder 6-max sit n gos on William Hill and £0.25/0.50 cash games and when I'd be done playing I'd watch the lobby and watch £25/50 games and wonder who these guys were. I remember thinking it would be unreachable to play games like that. I still remember some of the nicknames and think that they were all huge business owners and things. Now I realise most were probably just slightly nerdy degens, just like me.

I'm not a studier like Pads. I love thinking about the game, talking about the game and mostly playing the game but I don't do the off the table work to get me to that next level. But damn I'm so jealous of his work ethic. I know if I applied myself in the same way to PLO I could crush even harder but no complaints from me. Right now I am extremely happy.

I have been very good at getting myself into good games, private games etc etc. I talk a lot, I play looser than most pros, I try to provide value in other ways. In fact just this weekend in Macau I bought a VIP his sushi dinner at the table which was about £100 and arranging something for his son who has just moved to London to study. He asked who paid and then told me I'm welcome to come and play with his friends in Shanghai. He also told me he'd text me next time he came to Macau to play. I've done well networking in poker here in Asia and that's proved fruitful. Turns out my big mouth doesn't only get me into trouble.

I still have that hot Greek blood and can tilt a little easier than I'd like but I have improved hugely in the last 2 years and that's also had a big impact on results.

I'm out of practice with the diarying and that was patchy and not a great update. Will write more this afternoon about poker and then do a life update.

Update coming....

Yes!

update pls