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Great to hear you are enjoying retirement Tikay. 👋

Good grief, lovely to hear from you.

You still travelling the world, wating sport of every kind?

Unless I've got mixed up (an odds-on shot tbf) the last time we met was at a ball game (baseball) at Cashman Field (RIP) in Vegas.

Not a mix up, right person. Yup reckon that was 2014 WSOP, when we met at the baseball!

Life has changed a bit my end, the travelling world watching sport thing ended up with me meeting my now wife (cricket in New Zealand). Not so much travelling as I am full time dad to our daughter in South London. Work part time in cricket, mainly for Surrey County cricket club working on the scoreboards for pro cricket matches , so I still get plenty of sport in!

Also very briefly shared a table with perhaps the most irritating little man in poker, JJ, aka JJ Hazan, he of Dragons Den.

Briefly? Well, as in 1 hand, which fell between his 6th & 7th bullet I think.  

If you look carefully you can see a Trophy next to him, which he presumably won somewhere. He was using it as a card-marker. Never one to GIQ, was he?

He got that in a chop!

No!?

At Birmingham he arrived late, & he literally went to every table, brandishing his Trophy, & telling everyone how he won it. Then went round again & told everyone he would use it as a card-marker.

As it happens, the event was part of something called "PLO Masters" which, loosely speaking, he "organises". In truth I fancy Party organised it, he just added the Title.


Here, take a look...



 https://www.plomasters.com/

He comes to Malta a few times a year where he is equally as popular.

He comes along with a few hundred others from Europe for The Festival Series. You should give it a go, it's held in several locations throughout Europe, so you don't even have to see me! Loads of different mixed games along with some Holdem stuff too.

Thanks Vinni.

Ill keep an eye on the schedules. The bulk of the MTT action in Fessies is usually NLH, & I'm not remotely good enough to invest in the cost of travel & hotels etc to play NLH, but if it includes a decent amount of the sort of Mixed stuff I can handle, then yes, I'd maybe come along.

That aside, how's life for you & the fam? What you up to?

This was the schedule when it came to Malta in September: https://www.thefestival.com/wp-content/uploads/TF-Malta-Schedule-2025-Main-1.pdf

And this is their homepage where you can see their upcoming events etc; https://www.thefestival.com/the-festival-series-malta-2025#block-a74959d3-8b61-4351-89b6-1b848490f3c8

We are all fine thanks, just plodding along working for an online casino and getting fatter. Life is good though, so I'll take that for now.

OMG.

Seriously?

I don't really know what to say to that.....

Presumably not 'Take my £50, JJ'

 

Wow!

Also very briefly shared a table with perhaps the most irritating little man in poker, JJ, aka JJ Hazan, he of Dragons Den.

Briefly? Well, as in 1 hand, which fell between his 6th & 7th bullet I think.  

If you look carefully you can see a Trophy next to him, which he presumably won somewhere. He was using it as a card-marker. Never one to GIQ, was he?

He got that in a chop!

No!?

At Birmingham he arrived late, & he literally went to every table, brandishing his Trophy, & telling everyone how he won it. Then went round again & told everyone he would use it as a card-marker.

As it happens, the event was part of something called "PLO Masters" which, loosely speaking, he "organises". In truth I fancy Party organised it, he just added the Title.


Here, take a look...



 https://www.plomasters.com/

He comes to Malta a few times a year where he is equally as popular.

He comes along with a few hundred others from Europe for The Festival Series. You should give it a go, it's held in several locations throughout Europe, so you don't even have to see me! Loads of different mixed games along with some Holdem stuff too.

Thanks Vinni.

Ill keep an eye on the schedules. The bulk of the MTT action in Fessies is usually NLH, & I'm not remotely good enough to invest in the cost of travel & hotels etc to play NLH, but if it includes a decent amount of the sort of Mixed stuff I can handle, then yes, I'd maybe come along.

That aside, how's life for you & the fam? What you up to?

Wow!

No!?

At Birmingham he arrived late, & he literally went to every table, brandishing his Trophy, & telling everyone how he won it. Then went round again & told everyone he would use it as a card-marker.

As it happens, the event was part of something called "PLO Masters" which, loosely speaking, he "organises". In truth I fancy Party organised it, he just added the Title.


Here, take a look...


 https://www.plomasters.com/

Incred


Better Understanding in Only Two Hours

A small trial session was held in Tallin and one participant, Olivia Lindquist, finished an impressive 4/197 in her very first PLO Tournament, which was fabulous. She stated ‘The session gave me a much better understanding of Omaha and developed me as a player in only 2 hours! I didn’t know how much you can actually learn in such a short time, I really didn’t! I learned how I should play in different situations and applied that learning in my first ever PLO Tournament that very night.’

JJ would also encourage anyone interested in Omaha to play the Half n Half event at 5 pm on 13/10/22. This will be a level of each game (NLHE/PLO) and is only €125 to enter. The only way to learn, apart from the PLO Masterclasses (!), is to play and give it a go.

The cost will be only €50 per session and is payable in cash to JJ, prior to the session. The places are strictly limited to 6 and will be on a first come, first served basis. Please email info@thefestivalcom.wpengine.com to book your place. Alternatively, you can send us a pm on https://www.facebook.com/ThefestivalOG As an introductory bonus, The Festival is also offering ALL participants their Tournament Fee back for the PLO Tournament of that day. So, if you attend the class on 11th October and then play the PLO Masters at 5 pm, JJ will give you back the €25 Fee (on production of proof!), which is 50% of the cost of the Class. We are just so nice!

OMG.

Seriously?

I don't really know what to say to that.....

Goodness me.

Two absolutely stunning posts there Mr L.

Amazing stuff, & long may it last. 

This will be seen as a brag, and personally during the times I was very proud of it, maybe arrogantly happy about it, but every month in my 20s I had more money than the month before. I never had a downswing financially that lasted a month, I just gradually increased my roll and then had big spikes at whatever times I ran really good. I always thought this was good, but looking back now it was a big mistake. 

My best friend in poker Sam had the complete opposite approach. He planted to play higher and higher and in tougher and tougher games. He would fire 6 bullets in a 25k and I’d write my other friends asking if we needed to do an intervention? He was doing things completely wrong in my eyes, he was exposing himself to huge risk and playing in games where the edges were tiny if existent at all. But there was so much hidden ev there, in my eyes ye was investing x, RISKING X, in his eyes he was playing vs the best in the world, learning so much every day. Playing final tables, high pressure moments against people and any tournament he would play in the future we would have been there, done that, money would impact decision main when “big spots came” and oh boy did they come lol he has won the biggest tournaments in the world, wcoop mains, scoop mains, gg massive massive tournaments, he’s. Known as the best ft player of all time, the best closer, people will sometimes consider him lucky, but they don’t see all those spots he put himself in to be ready for the future. I was so wrong about it and he was right next to me doing the right thing, my mentality was to question it, to judge it, to think I must know better, when in reality if I was just open minded the answer was right there infront of my eyes. I learned a lot from this.

Poker, well life is about adversity, facing it, dealing with it and growing. I always thought the phrase 1 step back, 2 step forwards was cringe. But from working with people, being friends with the best of the best of the best I’ve seen their growth come from losing and from adversity. I would often skip the toughest games out there. GG offered a lot of 10-25ks during covid, a lot of people won a lot and a lot of people lost a lot. But if 30 of the 40 best tournament players in the world played vs eachother for 1 year every day and I played vs let’s say the 200-500th best players in the world, then the growth of those 30 players is going to be so much higher than my growth. Their adversity will teach them a lot about themselves. I won’t really learn too much, I’m basically guaranteed to win somewhere between 50-500k. Their variance is going to be somewhere between -1m and +6m.  So they get better quicker as better players will expose holes in their own game and they will learn more about themselves to help them grow. They’ll have a level of confidence that when it goes bad, it’s ok, they’ve been there before, they’ve come through the other side. Wheras for me, if a bad stretch comes then I’ll potentially just say wow fuck this and stop, protect what I have. I think that’s what happened to a lot of people in poker, the huge adversity comes (and it will come to everybody) and then they either collapse and lose it all or get scared and run. I kinda saw that and acknowledged it, and decided internally that it would be better to have a little less success in the form of “ev” but guarantee success in an important metric for me, longevity. I think on reflection this was a cowardly way to approach it, but I understand why I did at the time.

Timelines are difficult for me, as I alluded to previously I forget how old I am! But at some point during my career for probably a 2 year stretch, probably due to a lot of the above, I went from being a very good reg to a pretty bad one, at least compared to my peers. The thing is there is no elo system where you can see it, results are massively skewed by variance, so you don’t know the day you turn from +20% to +19% etc etc but it hit me after a bunch of time that I was not as good as I was, at least relative to the field, people with solvers had gotten a lot better and my game was the same game it was years previously, which was enough to crush then, but as the field evolved I didn’t.

I decided to go lone wolf, the community I was around was incredible players, some of the best in the world, but they were very toxic. They were extremely toxic, and it’s hard to escape that environment, it’s hard to not be the same, to replicate, to copy, to become then. Another cringey phrase, you are the 6 people you spend more time with. It’s very real, but when you spend so much time online it is even more drastic. It’s easier for them to be the worst versions of themselves online, so you naturally fall into it too. I kept with Euro/Elmerixx and cut basically everybody else off


I made a new internal blog called “respect everybody, fear nobody”  I’d realised previously in this toxic environment I’d found myself in I was respecting nobody and fearing everybody deep down. I wanted to go full 360 on this.

So I went full rocky mode, luckily covid came at a similar time. I relearned the whole entire game tree, I spoke everything out loud, around 3-400 hours, everyone there was bullshit ok my logic I stopped myself and spoke the new version out.

The games online during covid were incredible. I was up around 1m and then I played my 7th (I think) 25k ever. I had won 2, came 5th in one, 7th in one and bricked a couple. This one during Covid was the biggest ever one online I think, it was peak peak Covid and at this point I had incredible confidence. I ended up coming 2nd for 1.6m and cashed it out the next day and traded it off into Bitcoin to a reg. I think Bitcoin then was 6k? I don’t think he has sold since, so lucky him that I had the score and maybe fool on me for not keeping it there!

Strangely after that I decided to move down, I stopped playing those kind of games and just really enjoyed being a good reg in very very very tough online 500-5k tournaments and have done that basically ever since online. I had the bankroll, I had what I now assumed was the skill, I had an amazingly positive group around me at this point, yet still I shyd away from the high variance route.

Shortly after triton came, triton suits me a lot. Previous live high roller were always filled with high stakes cash crushers. You’d play 100-200bb deep for hours, they had a big edge over mtt players, but triton was like average 15bbs and decisions worth houses were made on intricate icm stuff, my strongest skill and cash game players weakest skill. Yet still I decided against “testing” myself, “going for it”  and took the safer route of he toughest games online instead. I say the “safer route” the games we play are insanely insanely competitive and a lot tougher than tritons, I absolutely love it though, it’s intellectually stimulating to a degree I can’t explain. The smartest minds I’ve met all treating it like the Olympics and coming and playing vs eachother. For me it’s way more stimulating than taking donations and gifts vs amateurs in soft live tournaments. I don’t really enjoy that.

But yeah, maybe it’s time to change, maybe I should give it a go for a year, travel the world again, go to Monaco, go to Cyprus, go to Jeju, go to Montenegro, play the big wsop stuff. Somewhere deep down there’s fear, it’s not about if the games are too tough, I know I’m good enough, maybe it’s an ego thing, I know the luck built into these low sample stuff, the chances of failing are high. Being exposed publically running bad vs people who don’t understand variance maybe scares me in a way?  Of course in these games you have to sell action because the stakes are insane, maybe I don’t like the idea of a rich piece buyer not understanding the variance when the bad runs come? Again all of this is kind of illogical, and my favourite quote should dispel all of this

There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky, and you ask, “what if I fall” oh but my darling, what if you fly?