The Wild Rollercoaster - Just A Kid With A Lifelong Dream

[rfgqqabc]

What are the 4 majors you refer to in your goals? Some are totally unrealistic, I was kind of prepared to go, lol do you know how hard winning the Main Event will be, but I think some of these might be harder! Progressing in poker as purely a live tournament player will be next to impossible due to the volume and variance etc. I'm trying not to be too negative here, but realistic goals are important! Absolutely nothing wrong with grinding it out at the small stakes though.

I've never got into LoL/Starcraft or any games like that, one of my best mates was top 3 in the UK for a while at starcraft, but I think it'd be before you were around. How come you choose blonde and not liquid? Do you post there as well? Been kinda dead for a while I guess. What level do you play LoL at?

[Ice Shade]

haha what can i say Gilly, i have many fans! rehfish, ill give youn that 20 quid tomorrow
ha sorry pleno, trivial was more a term for you being a silent observer!
ice shade, what are your plans for 2014 then?

Plans are to increase up to playing exclusively £100-£1,000 for the year, three on my radar are GPS Notts, the UKPC and the UKIPT...those are for certian. Also plan to try and satellite ALOT more and not have a reliance on backers for everything, sure they will always be there, sure i'd never turn my back on those that have helped me so far and i will sell even if i sat, but i need the ability to get packages to places to offset travel and accom, that way i'll play basically anywhere.

Want to sattelite into one EPT before the year is out, not saying which or when, but i think that's realistic with enough effort.

His plan for 2014 is to be like his hero Frankie !

Is it? Coulda fooled me ;-)

What are the 4 majors you refer to in your goals? Some are totally unrealistic, I was kind of prepared to go, lol do you know how hard winning the Main Event will be, but I think some of these might be harder! Progressing in poker as purely a live tournament player will be next to impossible due to the volume and variance etc. I'm trying not to be too negative here, but realistic goals are important! Absolutely nothing wrong with grinding it out at the small stakes though.

I've never got into LoL/Starcraft or any games like that, one of my best mates was top 3 in the UK for a while at starcraft, but I think it'd be before you were around. How come you choose blonde and not liquid? Do you post there as well? Been kinda dead for a while I guess. What level do you play LoL at?

Four Majors: WSOP ME, EPT Monte Carlo, WPT Champs and PCA

Nah i know some of them are borderline impossible but i'm not one to suffer from aiming too high. I know for a fact becoming no. 1 and HoF Etc. are insane, but i'd be lying if i said they werent dreams...one thing to note is that the blue section is across an entire lifetime, why not aim in the stars? got a good 60 years to get there! :-D

I chose blonde because of it's affiliation with dusk basically, I cant for the life of me remember the exact thing that made me learn of this place but i know it was around the time of dusk trying to get it's license...i'd imagine i was just reading forums (was a member of a few defunct ones before this) and stumbled across it. Not 100% sure. As for liquid, i had no idea of such a site until your post :-D

With regards to the gaming side, i've played starcraft for around three years, so might be before my time, not sure, and as for LoL i'd say im on the better half of the world at present, reactions are good and my strategy in 5v5's is fairly decent, i think my mechanics aren't up to scratch yet though, they are leagues better than when i first started but considering i play alongside Platinum/Diamond players im a complete ball bag in comparison. I'm Bronze I at the moment but that was because of placement games being a tad shit, reckon i'm high Silver...something like that, so a reasonable standard but a long way to go to be actually good

[pleno1]

where do you sell action and at what markup?

sorry if i overlooked but what about online? it would seem perfect with your gaming background.

[Ice Shade]

where do you sell action and at what markup?

sorry if i overlooked but what about online? it would seem perfect with your gaming background.

Usually sell on facebook seeing as that's 1. the place that always sells and 2. because i meet none of the requirements on ANY forum to actually post on the backing sections :-D

I always sell at spot price with stakeback, but with a cut for myself off the top. What that cut is naturally is open to people throwing me suggestions about what i should be playing for or what they are willing to buy at. Anything between 90/10 and 75/25 in the backers favour usually. Unless i am capable of putting money in myself and the event is of a reasonable size, then it's straight spot. I used to charge markup but that was before i understood what it was or it's implications, as such i just don't anymore.

Online i've never quite had the bankroll to be able to give it a proper stab, as such my results are largely sporadic and to be honest most come from the 09/10 period where i didn't take online seriously at all and saw it as a break from live (stupid idea in hindsight, but cant change the past). You are right in the gaming aspect in the sense that when someone suggested HEM2 to me it took somewhere in the region of about ten seconds to get used to it and a day of fiddling about to have a HUD set up to my preferences. The analytical maths side appeals quite alot too. I'd give online a go though in the future for sure.

[ruud]

What subject are u studying at uni? How do u find the work/poker/RL balance at the moment?

Do u purely play NLHE, and does your backing extend to online? I can't imagine you really believe there is a future in being a UK based solely live tournament grinder?! Not trying to offend, but this seems like madness if that is the case....

[shipitgood]

What's with the suits? You are playing poker not sitting in some office, where something comfortable when playing.

You say you have goals, which we all need but these should be manageable and achievable, short term and longer term.

If you are serious about playing poker, why would you not spin up a bankroll online playing mtts, where instead of playing 1 game you could play 5/6 MTTs at the same time and get in a good amount of volume.

If i was you i'd play online as well as live.

Do you work/ study?

Good luck with your poker journey

[Ice Shade]

What subject are u studying at uni? How do u find the work/poker/RL balance at the moment?

Do u purely play NLHE, and does your backing extend to online? I can't imagine you really believe there is a future in being a UK based solely live tournament grinder?! Not trying to offend, but this seems like madness if that is the case....

International business administration. The balance is fairly decent at the moment, although I know six deadlines are coming up across the next few months so that could change...although I can usually finish one report a day so I'll likely set a week aside and just get the lot done.

NLHE is, with regards to others, one of my weaker games, I play every game in existence except for those that you'd only see in the shoes of the high stakes DC games, I don't know death stud or any trash like that, but if there's a bracelet event of it, I can play it.

It does extend to online and you are completely correct, I know for a fact live UK events alone will not suffice save for a massive win, so yeah I am looking to branch out wherever possible and online packages are something I've moved into as of late

[Ice Shade]

What's with the suits? You are playing poker not sitting in some office, where something comfortable when playing.

You say you have goals, which we all need but these should be manageable and achievable, short term and longer term.

If you are serious about playing poker, why would you not spin up a bankroll online playing mtts, where instead of playing 1 game you could play 5/6 MTTs at the same time and get in a good amount of volume.

If i was you i'd play online as well as live.

Do you work/ study?

Good luck with your poker journey

I find the suits far more comfortable than any normal clothes, by a mile. Personal preference I guess.

Thing is again that's down to personal opinion, my short term goals are incredibly manageable, as those are the ones that keep me driven, goals in the long term are, as they were put, hopes and dreams...I'm not someone who needs to be down-to-earth with those...at the end of the day it's fun to dream right at the top, if you miss then the short term goals will have carried you through, get there and it's just a nice big bonus

The online MTT thing is exactly what I'm looking to do come the new year, I've been toying with it for some time now anyway and have friends with successful blueprints of how to run such things, so I'll adapt those and go from there

No job, but study a business degree until July '14, from there I will get a job that pays the bills but I can imagine 80% of all spare money will go towards poker, what the split is online/live I don't know, I've got people better than me to ask that question to :-)

[Rexas]

Well, I'll say on here what I've said before - Good luck, kid

[Ice Shade]

That One Big Chance

Alot is spoken about how bankrolls come and go in this game, you see people make it high, then crash down soon afterwards...I find myself in that situation on a regular basis, over my lifetime (and in poker terms, still a small one) I must have lost upwards of thirty bankrolls...each time trying to take that one shot too high. But i've never made the same mistake twice, so each one has been a valuable life lesson going forward...But for someone in my situation I have alreadt had that one score that was big enough to make a serious shot out of it...until the real world got in the way...

Always Dreaming, Never Succeeding

14th July 2013, Can hardly forget it...three of my best friends had found who are now long term girlfriends, one had proposed on the steps of the Louvre, i'd been asked to be their best man, my first ever deepstack day two and was actually smashing it...all in the same day. It was a wave of euphoria that i hope to see someday in the future...

27 Players left with me and J-Gill tossing banter across tables, me with the obvious chip lead, him grinding away nicely...and even then i knew what was coming. Something in the pit of my stomach told me what was to happen, and it didn't dissapoint. Second to the man himself for £7k, AT LAST! A bankroll to call my own! Obviously some went to backers but they had all sworn by my side for the future! That coupled with money that i'd been saving for years meant that the impending trip to america was going to be the greatest ever. I was going to spend four months in the land of my dreams, then come back armed with enough of a roll to give the tournaments a reasonable crack. Sure bankroll management was going to be a bit iffy, but whats not to try and achieve?

When The World Falls Apart

14th September 2013, two months afterwards...and my entire life could not have been more different. The trip to america had been a complete disaster. Everything it had been billed to be was a lie, 5,500 miles away from home, with nobody in the place i was staying that spoke english (Multilingual universities my arse) and feeling completely lost...Now i know i'll likely hear the line of "should have just held out, might have got better"...I got told by three residents of where i was staying (Long Beach, California) that every problem i had raised was "the way it was there" and there was no way around it...I lasted five days in america, didn't eat a single meal (the two i had both got thrown up), lost over a stone, was in constant emotional states and with knowing what my past was like (I'd suffered depression like this before) i knew, for the sake of my health, i had to get out of america regardless of the consequences, knee-jerk reaction yes, but i know in my heart it was the right decision.

Being back home was torture, i had to spend almost every single penny i had to get back home...to (as you'd expect) one of the frostiest receptions imaginable...now it wouldn't have been bad if not for my parents known method for dealing with issues...threats and violence...lots of them, in the end about a week later i got thrown out of the house and ended up spending all of my remaining money and then some trying to survive...i comfort ate this time round, putting on the best part of 2 stone (still suffering that weight gain to this day) and owing out thousands to the parents after they demanded i pay them back for all the time and effort they'd wasted in getting me there...

Worse still, coming back had put my degree in serious jeopardy, i needed to have 6 months abroad and 6 months working OR 12 months working within that year, what this meant (and another key reason i came back so fast) was that i had until the 14th to get a 36 week placement, naturally given the job market i failed spectacularly...

So here's me, two months off the back of having nearly five figures at my disposal and being on top of the world...flat broke, owing out, jobless, homeless, disowned and about to sign on...i'm not going to lie some fairly drastic things went through my head in those days...dark things i'm not proud of.

Silver Lining In A Mushroom Cloud

If there is one thing i am good at it's talking my way into and out of anything. And this time showcased that to it's truest potential. I had my first meeting with the job center planned for Tuesday 24th September...and i had decided (off my own back, obviously, seeing as the parents wouldn't even speak to me at this point) that on the monday i would get myself back on a degree, whatever it took. I had rang up Derby University (where i'd spent my clearing year) and explained the situation, they'd told me to ring a specific person who could get me back on the course i had been on at the start (Business Studies)...so i had a backup plan. My line was going to be walking into trent and basically reading them the riot act, clearly there had been no "safety net" for me and i refused to believe that i was the first person in the uni's history to have gone down the route i had (turned out i was, not a record i want)...we were to get me onto a degree that day or i was going to withdraw that afternoon.

I'd been given the private number of a tutor who ran a course for business defectors (Something that had been kept from me while i was in america and, in hindsight, could have avoided all of the worries, but my dad purposely never told me about it) and the idea was to try and get on his course...i still remember how the phone conversation went:-

Me: I've been told that Yvonne has explained my situation to you? Or should i give you a quick overview
Angelo: No need she has told me, basically i would love to help you but if you don't have 240 credits then there is nothing we can do
Me: But surely there has to be something, there is no way that the university hasnt got something in place! I've worked too hard to see this all lost over a health decision
Angelo: I'm just not sure, it's a very strict procedure.
Me: (Eureka Moment) You know this 240 credits, does it have to be from trent specifically or can it be across the whole academic career?
Angelo: Whole career.
Me: Well then i don't have 200, i have 320! I spent a year at derby before coming here!
Angelo: OH, I was NOT told about this...now we can look at this in a more favorable light!

Information was kept from me, and hidden from them...but in that moment i had felt a wave of emotion unlike any before...i ran, ran like never before to the university...i cleared nottingham from one side to the other in six minutes flat...i was red faced, panting, puffing and heaving, but the smile on my face was all to clear...around a few hours later i put pen to paper and transfered onto my course. The parents never did appologise for keeping it hidden from me, stating it would have been "just an excuse to come back", but it was solved...i rang the job center up right then and there and told them under no illusions how much i cared for it. And that was that...Life saved. Just.

The Aftermath

Hopefully this goes to explain to you all why i'm in the state i am...while you might not agree with how this has gone down, i don't regret any decision ive made...i thought i'd wasted an entire life's work in the space of five days, now im seven months from graduating from a degree that people tried to hide from me, in a country i should never have been in, with parents that have finally seen my way of thinking four months later, flat broke, with no fixed income for at least a while...looking to poker, the reason i had the money to travel at all, to realize a dream that had stood the test of time long before anything else...

Alot of dates got mentioned here...but there's one that overrides them all.
December 22nd 2013
...It was the day i would have arrived back home.

Amazing what can happen in the space of a season. Don't you think?

[ruud]

What subject are u studying at uni? How do u find the work/poker/RL balance at the moment?

Do u purely play NLHE, and does your backing extend to online? I can't imagine you really believe there is a future in being a UK based solely live tournament grinder?! Not trying to offend, but this seems like madness if that is the case....

NLHE is, with regards to others, one of my weaker games, I play every game in existence except for those that you'd only see in the shoes of the high stakes DC games, I don't know death stud or any trash like that, but if there's a bracelet event of it, I can play it.

Can I just ask about this bit? How did this come to be the case if you don't play online but exclusively live holdem tournaments?! Sorry but it is just a line I hear quite often but struggle to believe unless you have spent A LOT of times in mixed games. When you weigh up time spent playing Holden versus anything else then surely you have more experience and skills in this area?!

Personally I am a decent PLO tourney player but I have put in some big volume on a variety of sites online to get there. I genuinely middle through the other games when I find myself in

[Ice Shade]

What subject are u studying at uni? How do u find the work/poker/RL balance at the moment?

Do u purely play NLHE, and does your backing extend to online? I can't imagine you really believe there is a future in being a UK based solely live tournament grinder?! Not trying to offend, but this seems like madness if that is the case....

NLHE is, with regards to others, one of my weaker games, I play every game in existence except for those that you'd only see in the shoes of the high stakes DC games, I don't know death stud or any trash like that, but if there's a bracelet event of it, I can play it.

Can I just ask about this bit? How did this come to be the case if you don't play online but exclusively live holdem tournaments?! Sorry but it is just a line I hear quite often but struggle to believe unless you have spent A LOT of times in mixed games. When you weigh up time spent playing Holden versus anything else then surely you have more experience and skills in this area?!

Personally I am a decent PLO tourney player but I have put in some big volume on a variety of sites online to get there. I genuinely middle through the other games when I find myself in

Home games, years of past experience and just a better understanding of the mechanics of the other games, Hold'em is actually one of the later games ive learnt (5CD when i was 5/6, Stud when i was 8/9). Sure i've played more holdem in regards to time spent but id still see myself better in the other disciplines, I couldn't give you hard factual evidence to support this, it's more of a feel when i sit down to play the games.

I'm not saying im amazing at mixed games at all, but in comparison i feel more comfortable

[ruud]

Thanks for replying, we will have to get a Beeston home game going at some point

[Ice Shade]

Thanks for replying, we will have to get a Beeston home game going at some point

Would be more than happy to play in another one of those for sure :-) will take the guess you are round these neck of the woods also?

[verndog158]

where do you sell action and at what markup?

sorry if i overlooked but what about online? it would seem perfect with your gaming background.

Usually sell on facebook seeing as that's 1. the place that always sells and 2. because i meet none of the requirements on ANY forum to actually post on the backing sections :-D

I always sell at spot price with stakeback, but with a cut for myself off the top. What that cut is naturally is open to people throwing me suggestions about what i should be playing for or what they are willing to buy at. Anything between 90/10 and 75/25 in the backers favour usually. Unless i am capable of putting money in myself and the event is of a reasonable size, then it's straight spot. I used to charge markup but that was before i understood what it was or it's implications, as such i just don't anymore.

Online i've never quite had the bankroll to be able to give it a proper stab, as such my results are largely sporadic and to be honest most come from the 09/10 period where i didn't take online seriously at all and saw it as a break from live (stupid idea in hindsight, but cant change the past). You are right in the gaming aspect in the sense that when someone suggested HEM2 to me it took somewhere in the region of about ten seconds to get used to it and a day of fiddling about to have a HUD set up to my preferences. The analytical maths side appeals quite alot too. I'd give online a go though in the future for sure.

so if you sell at spot, but leave a cut for yourself off the top, surely that means your selling at mark up!? or have i missed something :p