The Best In The Business

[celtic]

Finally got round to reading the last trip report. Really enjoyed it.

Two things to ask.

1. What do your mum and dad think of poker?

2. More importantly, what did you order in nandos?

[pleno1]

Finally got round to reading the last trip report. Really enjoyed it.

Two things to ask.

1. What do your mum and dad think of poker?

2. More importantly, what did you order in nandos?

One of first memories I have of poker is being in Morrison's car park on the way back to Uni after Christmas holidays. Parents were driving me back down, for whatever reason my Dad took my card to the machine to get a statement as somebody had put some money into my account or something. I totally forgot I had done the lot (prob 200-500£ maybe a little more) playing online that Christmas and he came back rather unhappy. We had an hours chat or something there and they didn't even want me to go back to uni, eventually we calmed down and I went back, but they really thought I was a huge loser and didn't want a son (rightfully) to lose a lot of money playing online gambling.

This actually probably stopped me from playing for the second half of my first year at uni as I just didn't have the funds. I remember there was a tournament at Rileys once a week in Sheffield which was a £20 1 rebuy or add on that had a good structure. My friends went to play it most weeks but I made excuses up. One week I really wanted to go and thought I had £50 or so in my account, I got there and had like £12 or something and incorrectly put my pin in the wall 3 times so it got swallowed and asked my friend for a short loan.

I was actually always a hard worker, I definitely wasn't a bum. When I was 16 I worked in a supermarket, when I was 17 I worked as a glass collector in a bar, from 18-21 I always had some part time job at uni. I'd play football on Saturday afternoon, finish at 5/6, be working in a club from 9-4 then up at 10 in the morning to play football again.

Anyway, obviously I kept all poker stuff very low key from my parents. I was actually relatively very good at poker, not like a big winning player or anything, but I had really solid fundamentals and lived/slept/breathed poker. I think one day I won a $11 freezeout on Stars for 1/2k and couldn't sleep that night, I knew I could be good at poker but it's really hard without a bankroll to play a lot, that night I finally had a bankroll then for the last two years of my university I didn't have to worry about trying to raise £10-£30 to play in some live tournament.

When I was a little older but still living at home I was playing more obviously and would try to brag to the parents as much as possible so they would start to accept it a little more. If I had a good session live and came home with £1.5k in 50's I'd make sure they saw not because I was big headed but because I wanted them to feel like I wasn't this big degenerate failure.

I was working as a financial journalist after university and they were really happy about that, I then got offered a really well paid job at PokerStrategy.com which I would never have gotten if I wasn't a poker enthusiast, I guess that was the first time that poker really seemed like a positive to them. Coming home at Christmases each year they would be a little bit more vocal to the other parts of my family. I remember my first "big" win in poker  was the Sunday 530 which I had gotten $55k or something, we used to (still do) speak 4/5 times a week and I had had a lot of nearish scores, 10-20ths in big tournaments and they were very supportive and telling me "you'll get a big score soon, you deserve it" so winning that amount was really big and I remember calling them at 7am and telling them.

Since then things have gone really well and when they talk about poker with me it's more "we're very proud how hard you've worked to get to where you are" rather than "we're very happy you're doing well". Playing tournaments and chasing leader boards obviously gives more media exposure and they get to see stuff like n1 on pocket fives or streamed tournaments like the WPT this year. They realise poker is my life and now they worry about me opening bars in Budapest and being a real life fish, I'll prove them wrong on that too though, gimme a couple of years

I think parents generally will all be very similar when it comes to poker, friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine, but I hate for my best friends from school to ever think I'm trying to be big time or arrogant, so I'm really careful with the way I answer the questions they ask.


Nandos, I always order half a chicken (hot) and double fries, I never really eat fries if I'm not in the UK though.

[celtic]

Nice answer, I like the way they are proud of you for the hard work you've put in.

Can't believe you don't have halloumi or wings tho. Def a nandos fish.

Another question,  has the money and success changed you? If so, how.

[pleno1]

Nice answer, I like the way they are proud of you for the hard work you've put in.

Can't believe you don't have halloumi or wings tho. Def a nandos fish.

Another question,  has the money and success changed you? If so, how.

Hm this is a hard one to answer really. I remember when I was 16 we were paying for a holiday to Magaluf and all gave our 100 deposits to the guy fixing the trip. He was petrified walking through the city centre wih £1k and it was a huge sweat for us. Now with travelling for tournaments and the difficulty of getting local currency easily (euros on ept, dollars in Vegas) it's natural that we have to carry around 10's of thousands of dollars. I'd like to think I'm mature about this kind of stuff, keep it well secure and avoid any kind of problems. The whole poker world and money in general is just a huge joke though, if people on a train could see that the four geeky guys on the table next to them had €200,000 between them and a $1m on their laptops they just wouldn't and couldn't get it. A Sunday for s high stakes MTT player is upto $10k, during SCOOP with satalites etc it could be $20k

These numbers don't seem like money to the people using them and I think to be successful you have to seperately the dollar amount to the buy in. If for example you went to this really sick gym and it had amazing saunas etc and the best equipment but somebody said it was going to be $162 most people would be like wow that's so much and wouldn't contemplate it, but the same people may punt off the big 162 4 nights every month because it's their last table of the night and they've ran bad.

Personally I definitely spend money sometimes when I don't need to, but I don't do any super extravagant purchases. I haven't bought anything really except accommodation for over $1k, I do spend a lot of money eating out, enjoying life etc but I feel like those are things that make me happy and help me have a good mebtal wellbeing to play poker.

I actually have a really tough time working out how much I should use of my roll to play live tournaments, when should I sell action, how much action should I share etc. obviousky there's so much variance in it and of course I'm not being short sighted here but swapping/selling has probably cost me $175,000 this year which when we're talking about money is really a lot. I try to swap with good players who are similar to me but I do feel that long term I'm probably losing equity by swapping not solely because of skill but I just really put everything into my sessions and whilst I know the people I swap with are good I don't really know much about them personally or monitor their tables to see if they've punted etc

In regards to money I think that almost everybody, most likely myself included has way less money than you'd imagine. Every pro who has done well online or live probably has some kind of leak where they lose money or more simply you just don't hear about their losses. I could probably name 10 guys in the uk that many would say we're in the top 25 players in the UK and they would have made very little or in most cases lost a lot of money this year. I think the toughest thing for people to manage is going through a downswing. Let's say we have two guys who have 200k, last Christmas as one had $1m and the other had $10,000. Even if the guy who had more money previously is a good player he very likey will not change his game selection, not work as hard and not be as likely as the other guy to have a good 2015.

I don't want to sound arrogant here (who doesn't sound arrogant in the next sentence when they open like this ) but I had a big downswing during WCOOP, i ran particularly bad, bricked all the 1k+ tournaments and was very down at the end of the month. The month finished and I had a 75k downswing or so to get out of. For the next few weeks I grinded really hard, I think I probably went from a $350 Abi to a $70 abi playing tournaments with 1-3k ftw. It didn't take too long to get out of it and I came through it as a stronger player both mentally and strategically. Downswings will happen, it's poker, if you respond negatively to them, avoid grinding, only play Sunday's and Tuesday's or just keep playing high stakes love tournaments then you have to get very very lucky to get out of them. Not only hat but your fame will deteriorate, if you're not playing its hard to make mistakes. Nights like tonight are the nights where I learn the most, I reg a short session and end up with 4 tournaments, all small stakes, end up 1 tabling a €50e tournament with 3k for first and start analysing lots of spots whilst chatting to friends about spots and running icmIzer. If you just play Sunday's then usually if you're 1 tabling you've played 12 hours, all your friends are tilted or sleeping, you are playing your C game and first place money is $30k+ so you can't just start taking lones you're unsure of or give a lot of attention to math programs.

Anyways I'm going off at a tangent sorry, I'm really hoping for a very good 2015, I want to be extremely successful on and off the table with a lot of hard work and good application if it goes successfully then my goal for 2016 will be to start making more real life decisions about my future, a home, relationships and all the scary things.

[arbboy]

Nice answer, I like the way they are proud of you for the hard work you've put in.

Can't believe you don't have halloumi or wings tho. Def a nandos fish.

Another question,  has the money and success changed you? If so, how.

Hm this is a hard one to answer really. I remember when I was 16 we were paying for a holiday to Magaluf and all gave our 100 deposits to the guy fixing the trip. He was petrified walking through the city centre wih £1k and it was a huge sweat for us. Now with travelling for tournaments and the difficulty of getting local currency easily (euros on ept, dollars in Vegas) it's natural that we have to carry around 10's of thousands of dollars. I'd like to think I'm mature about this kind of stuff, keep it well secure and avoid any kind of problems. The whole poker world and money in general is just a huge joke though, if people on a train could see that the four geeky guys on the table next to them had €200,000 between them and a $1m on their laptops they just wouldn't and couldn't get it. A Sunday for s high stakes MTT player is upto $10k, during SCOOP with satalites etc it could be $20k

These numbers don't seem like money to the people using them and I think to be successful you have to seperately the dollar amount to the buy in. If for example you went to this really sick gym and it had amazing saunas etc and the best equipment but somebody said it was going to be $162 most people would be like wow that's so much and wouldn't contemplate it, but the same people may punt off the big 162 4 nights every month because it's their last table of the night and they've ran bad.

Personally I definitely spend money sometimes when I don't need to, but I don't do any super extravagant purchases. I haven't bought anything really except accommodation for over $1k, I do spend a lot of money eating out, enjoying life etc but I feel like those are things that make me happy and help me have a good mebtal wellbeing to play poker.

I actually have a really tough time working out how much I should use of my roll to play live tournaments, when should I sell action, how much action should I share etc. obviousky there's so much variance in it and of course I'm not being short sighted here but swapping/selling has probably cost me $175,000 this year which when we're talking about money is really a lot. I try to swap with good players who are similar to me but I do feel that long term I'm probably losing equity by swapping not solely because of skill but I just really put everything into my sessions and whilst I know the people I swap with are good I don't really know much about them personally or monitor their tables to see if they've punted etc

In regards to money I think that almost everybody, most likely myself included has way less money than you'd imagine. Every pro who has done well online or live probably has some kind of leak where they lose money or more simply you just don't hear about their losses. I could probably name 10 guys in the uk that many would say we're in the top 25 players in the UK and they would have made very little or in most cases lost a lot of money this year. I think the toughest thing for people to manage is going through a downswing. Let's say we have two guys who have 200k, last Christmas as one had $1m and the other had $10,000. Even if the guy who had more money previously is a good player he very likey will not change his game selection, not work as hard and not be as likely as the other guy to have a good 2015.

I don't want to sound arrogant here (who doesn't sound arrogant in the next sentence when they open like this ) but I had a big downswing during WCOOP, i ran particularly bad, bricked all the 1k+ tournaments and was very down at the end of the month. The month finished and I had a 75k downswing or so to get out of. For the next few weeks I grinded really hard, I think I probably went from a $350 Abi to a $70 abi playing tournaments with 1-3k ftw. It didn't take too long to get out of it and I came through it as a stronger player both mentally and strategically. Downswings will happen, it's poker, if you respond negatively to them, avoid grinding, only play Sunday's and Tuesday's or just keep playing high stakes love tournaments then you have to get very very lucky to get out of them. Not only hat but your fame will deteriorate, if you're not playing its hard to make mistakes. Nights like tonight are the nights where I learn the most, I reg a short session and end up with 4 tournaments, all small stakes, end up 1 tabling a €50e tournament with 3k for first and start analysing lots of spots whilst chatting to friends about spots and running icmIzer. If you just play Sunday's then usually if you're 1 tabling you've played 12 hours, all your friends are tilted or sleeping, you are playing your C game and first place money is $30k+ so you can't just start taking lones you're unsure of or give a lot of attention to math programs.

Anyways I'm going off at a tangent sorry, I'm really hoping for a very good 2015, I want to be extremely successful on and off the table with a lot of hard work and good application if it goes successfully then my goal for 2016 will be to start making more real life decisions about my future, a home, relationships and all the scary things.

How many uk poker pros do you think have had total assets of £200k+ for at least the last 12 months at all times (liquid and non liquid - ie houses/cars/businesses/cash less make up/debts/credit cards/mortgage/car finance etc)?

[RED-DOG]

Finally got round to reading the last trip report. Really enjoyed it.

Two things to ask.

1. What do your mum and dad think of poker?

2. More importantly, what did you order in nandos?

One of first memories I have of poker is being in Morrison's car park on the way back to Uni after Christmas holidays. Parents were driving me back down, for whatever reason my Dad took my card to the machine to get a statement as somebody had put some money into my account or something. I totally forgot I had done the lot (prob 200-500£ maybe a little more) playing online that Christmas and he came back rather unhappy. We had an hours chat or something there and they didn't even want me to go back to uni, eventually we calmed down and I went back, but they really thought I was a huge loser and didn't want a son (rightfully) to lose a lot of money playing online gambling.

This actually probably stopped me from playing for the second half of my first year at uni as I just didn't have the funds. I remember there was a tournament at Rileys once a week in Sheffield which was a £20 1 rebuy or add on that had a good structure. My friends went to play it most weeks but I made excuses up. One week I really wanted to go and thought I had £50 or so in my account, I got there and had like £12 or something and incorrectly put my pin in the wall 3 times so it got swallowed and asked my friend for a short loan.

I was actually always a hard worker, I definitely wasn't a bum. When I was 16 I worked in a supermarket, when I was 17 I worked as a glass collector in a bar, from 18-21 I always had some part time job at uni. I'd play football on Saturday afternoon, finish at 5/6, be working in a club from 9-4 then up at 10 in the morning to play football again.

Anyway, obviously I kept all poker stuff very low key from my parents. I was actually relatively very good at poker, not like a big winning player or anything, but I had really solid fundamentals and lived/slept/breathed poker. I think one day I won a $11 freezeout on Stars for 1/2k and couldn't sleep that night, I knew I could be good at poker but it's really hard without a bankroll to play a lot, that night I finally had a bankroll then for the last two years of my university I didn't have to worry about trying to raise £10-£30 to play in some live tournament.

When I was a little older but still living at home I was playing more obviously and would try to brag to the parents as much as possible so they would start to accept it a little more. If I had a good session live and came home with £1.5k in 50's I'd make sure they saw not because I was big headed but because I wanted them to feel like I wasn't this big degenerate failure.

I was working as a financial journalist after university and they were really happy about that, I then got offered a really well paid job at PokerStrategy.com which I would never have gotten if I wasn't a poker enthusiast, I guess that was the first time that poker really seemed like a positive to them. Coming home at Christmases each year they would be a little bit more vocal to the other parts of my family. I remember my first "big" win in poker  was the Sunday 530 which I had gotten $55k or something, we used to (still do) speak 4/5 times a week and I had had a lot of nearish scores, 10-20ths in big tournaments and they were very supportive and telling me "you'll get a big score soon, you deserve it" so winning that amount was really big and I remember calling them at 7am and telling them.

Since then things have gone really well and when they talk about poker with me it's more "we're very proud how hard you've worked to get to where you are" rather than "we're very happy you're doing well". Playing tournaments and chasing leader boards obviously gives more media exposure and they get to see stuff like n1 on pocket fives or streamed tournaments like the WPT this year. They realise poker is my life and now they worry about me opening bars in Budapest and being a real life fish, I'll prove them wrong on that too though, gimme a couple of years

I think parents generally will all be very similar when it comes to poker, friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine, but I hate for my best friends from school to ever think I'm trying to be big time or arrogant, so I'm really careful with the way I answer the questions they ask.


Nandos, I always order half a chicken (hot) and double fries, I never really eat fries if I'm not in the UK though.

Great post Patrick. I think I enjoyed it more than any other you've done.

[BrokeLivingMJP]

friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine

Implying you'd ever talk about anything but poker at any given moment.

Also, the only option at Nandos is the sharing platter. Any other selection is incorrect.

[Marky147]

Great posts over the last few days, and a very enjoyable read!


Congrats again on the WPT trip, and gl in taking over Budapest

[celtic]

friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine

Implying you'd ever talk about anything but poker at any given moment.

Also, the only option at Nandos is the sharing platter. Any other selection is incorrect.

Nandos is not for sharing.

[pleno1]

@arb. Idk, 100+

[arbboy]

@arb. Idk, 100+

ok cheers i haven't got a clue personally what the number would be.  I agree with you though poker players are nowhere near as cash rich as people think

[BrokeLivingMJP]

friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine

Implying you'd ever talk about anything but poker at any given moment.

Also, the only option at Nandos is the sharing platter. Any other selection is incorrect.

Nandos is not for sharing.

You eat it all to yourself you fish.

[celtic]

friends though is way different, they are all so intrigued, when we all meet up they just want to ask about poker all the time, I really don't mind at all, it's fine

Implying you'd ever talk about anything but poker at any given moment.

Also, the only option at Nandos is the sharing platter. Any other selection is incorrect.

Nandos is not for sharing.

You eat it all to yourself you fish.

My apologies. The word 'sharing' scared me. I'll give it a go next time. Full report on here.

[JustinSayne]

Nandos, I always order half a chicken (hot) and double fries, I never really eat fries if I'm not in the UK though.

This must be a life leak of yours!

All the times we would have lunch etc we would always order extra fries and never touch them xD

[tonytats]

This diary just gets better n better well played last week Patrick and best wishes for the future keep the run good up