Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Almost novel to discuss Poker on here these days, but scenes at DTD last weekend, whilst I was up in Scotland.

They have introduced a new weekend schedule, a £50,000 G'tee £125 on Saturday, & a £50,000 G'tee £250 on the Sunday, both one-dayers so inevitably a bit "sharp", though they did have a 20/25 minute clocks. And for reasons we can only guess at, they were "reg-free" if you regged before it started.

I had bumped into Rob last week & he was musing on whether it would hit the guarantees, which looked very ambitious for 1 dayers.

Well he need not have worried, the Saturday £125 got 662 (SIX HUNDRED & SIXTY TWO) entries. WTF? That must be some sort of DTD record for a 1 day affair.

And that's despite it being during Ramadan, which with the DTD demographic, means quite a few absentees.

Rather oddly, the £250 on the Sunday "only" made 268 entries. Which, compared to 662 for the £125, really seems to emphasise that there's a price-point sweet spot.

When the dust settled, the £125 went to Mark Habbershaw and the impressive Ben Shannon chopping it up for just north of £25,000...


1   MARK HABBERSHAW  £12,550

2   BENJAMIN SHANNON £12,550


In the £250, I believe it was a 5 way chop, with the winner being shown as the fella with the best name.



1   GHOLAMREZA MOHAMMADI MOGHADDAM  £9,600

2   ANONYMOUS £8,045

3   GEORGE HOLMES £7,975

4   ANDREW MAPP £7,690

5   KAI CHAN£6,500
 

In a post script to those extraordinary numbers at DTD when they ran the £125/£250 on Saturday & Sunday.

I was able to play the 2nd weekend of them. And the Saturday £125 dropped from 662 entries to 451, with the Sunday £250 going from 268 to just 140. Explain that. Safe to say, the £250 got promptly dropped from the schedule. Rob arrived for his Sunday night  pow-wow with the Team & it disappeared from the schedule within minutes, having missed g'tee by a mile. Can't say I blame him.

All of which is an excuse to shoehorn in the fact I cashed in both.

Full on min-cash in the £125, (£250), minus £25 for a 10% swap with Thewy. Gonna take me a very long time to get even with him on staking at this rate. But we had great fun, & the meet-up crew during breaks was Ian Gas, Maria, Thewy & me. Lovely.

Even more surprising, was somehow bimbling & bumbling to 9th & the FT on the Sunday, collecting £1,810. A £250 NLH is top of my range in NLH really, the kids are just too good, only the WSOP Seniors would I play a higher NLH affair. A 10% swap with Moulty cost me £180, but I suppose I should not complain as he ran 2nd (chop) for £9,400, lol, so that was a bit of a bonus. How good do I run with swaps?

And on the subject of run-good, in both the £125 & £250 I had two remarkable strokes of luck.

In the £125, it's walked to the SB who has A-K, & I'm sat in the BB with Aces. Match ups don't come better than that - & it happened TWICE, in identical positions.

And in the late stages of the £250, there's a shove & a call & I'm sitting behind with Aces, which held. Then, on the bubble, rinse repeat. And still I only ran 9th.... In fact, that was the last hand I won or even played, I just went totally card/spot dead after that, & just bled away. The Final was painful, three levels without a) anyone busting or b) without me playing a hand. It's variance doing it's thing, & I had to get payback for all those Aces.

Really pleased for Moulty though. And for myself, I'm on a mini-heater right now, 6 or 7 cashes at DTD this year now, though of course never threatened a win, Top 3 or even "business". And it was one of the most enjoyable weekends of poker I can recall, 12 hours play two days running, it does not get better. Loving life.

And with that, I end this chirp.

[AndrewT]

It being Ramadan should make no difference to numbers as gambling is Haram for followers  of the Muslim faith. However I live in the real world and suspect that it probably does. Ho hum, life goes on.

My first job after university was in one of the livelier William Hills in NW London - the clientele was full of characters.

One day two of them got into a massive row about something or other.

One of them said to the other 'You shouldn't even be in here - you're a Muslim'

To which the Muslim replied 'You shouldn't be in here either - how that judge only gave you a suspended sentence for throwing that traffic warden through that shop window I'll never know'

So lovely to hear from you Andrew.

Do you & your brother still play Online poker? One of you was "Dr Marbles" iirc?

Still in touch with Claire/Claw? Anyone else from the old gang?

What are you doing these days?

No - out of the poker game. I qualified for the Seniors last year so gave the seniors event at the Irish Open a spin and managed to make the final table. Standard of play just like the old days - nitty and stationary, reraises with super-premiums only. Managed to bust in the most seniory way possible - facing a river bet on a two spade board I worked out that he could only have been on a flush draw so called his bluff only to learn I'd misread the board and the river club was actually a spade.

When I went down I couldn't believe how big the IPO was - back in the poker boom they held it in a hotel but it's now in the big RDS conference centre and people were there from all over the world for the ten days. I had no idea that poker was still a big thing.

I play a weekly Zoom quiz with Claire Dan and Curtis which is a fun way to while away an hour or so - we're in a league where we play Only connect style games against other teams.

I work in cybersecurity now - trying to keep one step ahead of the AI which may either save us or destroy us.

[doubleup]

Did you ever visit the transport museum when you were up in Glasgow for Skypoker, tikay?

There's some great stuff there.

[doubleup]

This wouldn't fit on the post. Didn't know that boats had turbine engines.

[celtic]

https://x.com/grosvenorpoker/status/2053635480818716808?s=46

Not sure why I felt that this was the right place to post this, but here you go.

[Kev B]

https://x.com/grosvenorpoker/status/2053635480818716808?s=46

Not sure why I felt that this was the right place to post this, but here you go.

Cheeky Celtic 🤣 We were all rooting for Lillian in tbe chat.

[typhoon13]

So, the last poker post.

All those cashes - 11 I think, only 9 of which are currently on Hendon, & around $2,000 in Bounties in total.



https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=3265


So my total profit for the trip was....


A LOSS of £984, of which my Staker contributed £492, so I sent him a dividend of £7,508 from his £8k.

All that chirping & I ended up losing money, lol.

I mean, it COULD have been a whole lot worse.  

Personally, I could not have enjoyed it more. Lots of table time, lots of fun tables, lots of cashes. The only regret was I cost my staker nearly £500.

And - let's ignore Dr MANTIS as usual -  there's the A thing. What do YOU think when a 77 year old bloke sits down at the table? Yup. He's the mark. Or so they think. Most of them would swap for my end result & would not have half as much fun.

I am the new Eric Dalby. (Though not as schoolheadmasterish). I really don't know if dear Eric is still with us, he was well over 80 last time I saw him, & his last Hendon was 2012. I do hope he's OK, or, at least, resting peacefully.

So that's Vegas 2025 wrapped up, but the memories will last forever, I loved every moment. Most all all, NO RUSHING. Arrived every day 90 minutes early, registered, sent Mr Staker the receipt/seat/table draw, then went & got a Starby & sat in a quiet corner with my book for an hour & just chilled.

A year ago...incred how time flies

I hear our master is heading out to Vegas again tomorrow

What a playa

[tikay]

Morning Mr P.

Yes, I'm heading west on a 787 today, can barely believe it's been a year since the Great Retirement Adventure (GRA) begun.

If I can figure out how to upload photos again, I'll try & do a bit of a Diary of the trip if anyone is interested. Maybe mix it up with a few of the GRA highlights & lowlights. Been the most amazeballs year of my life, one way & another.

It's also 19 years & 10 million+ views since this "Diary" started. Even that very first Post is quite evocative when I look at it now.


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=25486.0



 

[tikay]

Test photo...

[tikay]

oioi, we're up & running.

OK, need to head down the M1 now. More if & when time permits. Surprisingly a few folks have asked for Vegas Updates, including one lovely Gentleman from Nottingham who tells me he enjoys a morning squeeze when I'm in Vegas. Quite so....

[tikay]

Oh, & some very important news incoming from Jonathan Raab who's been a very busy boy of late.

[EssexPhil]

Really, really looking forward to this.

Sure I am one of many. Whether it be the "wish I'd been to Vegas" type, or (as in my case) "been lots of times, and suspect I will never go again" variety.

VBOL young man

[AlrightJack]

Best of luck Tony, will be following your progress with interest, whether it be via your updates or on chip count lists and results sheets.

As for me, i’ve had another topsy turvy year. When I was last briefly active on here last year, i’d been writing for a site called Poker Pro, having published a bot farm expose story on there the previous year. I did quite a lot of reporting last year at live poker events and covered UK players’ progress in a regular report throughout the WSOP (from afar).

Since then i’ve set up my own site www.mttdb.com and together with one other co-founder we are running that and a poker news site called www.pokerindustrynews.com.

They are meant to be side projects but as I don’t have any significant paid gigs at the moment, apart from a spot of SEO writing for gambling.com, they’ve become my main focus, especially MTTDB, which is a live and online poker event planner and analytics site. It’s just 7 months old but has come a long way and we are quite proud of what we’re building. It’s not perfect, has glitches and some mistakes, but we’re aiming to curate the most comprehensive poker db with just two people, so it’s gonna happen like that until we either make a bit of cash or get some volunteers to help fill and check the accuracy of it all.

We have over 200 live festivals listed, 70 venues (mostly in USA) with daily schedules plus over a dozen online poker room mttt schedules. We also have results and player pages from key tours, but not a full data set. We’re not aiming to be the hendon mob, although there’s some overlap. Just launched a live events news feed so will be experimenting with some live event coverage on that, for the wsop and other events. Speaking of which (brag time) i’ve just won two seats into the Battle of Malta (i live here) Main Event from an accumulator milestone satellite. €70 into 2 x €600 seats. Will be playing on Friday afternoon.

Keen to hear feedback on the sites, good and bad.

[AlrightJack]

Here are my first two articles related to the 2026 WSOP

https://pokerindustrynews.com/poker-news/live-poker/uk-players-heading-to-the-2026-world-series-of-poker/

https://pokerindustrynews.com/poker-news/live-poker/participation-drop-for-opening-bracelet-events-at-the-2026-wsop/

[c4ught]

oioi, we're up & running.

OK, need to head down the M1 now. More if & when time permits. Surprisingly a few folks have asked for Vegas Updates, including one lovely Gentleman from Nottingham who tells me he enjoys a morning squeeze when I'm in Vegas. Quite so....

Had my fingers crossed you would be doing some updates. In similar fashion enjoy the squeeze during morning break.