LolPro and Onwards

[Lambert180]

Hi all,

I've been a long time lurker on here and very occasional poster. I have a diary style thread running on Sky Poker's forum and have done for a good few years now but would love to interact a bit more with some of the players/posters on here so thought I'd set up something similar here.

Here's my blog for a bit of back story... (I didn't realise at the time I was stealing Alex Goulder's pun when I started it)

http://paullambert180.blogspot.co.uk/

Any regular Sky forum users will probably know me but if you want the short version... I've been playing on Sky for maybe 4-5 years now. It was about a year of playing on there before I actually took it a little more seriously and put some effort into improving. Started at the bottom (£4NL) and playing the odd MTT and went from there. Skip a few years ahead, and I've been playing the game full time now for maybe 9 months, mostly grinding £50NL and still the odd MTT. The highlight of my poker 'career' so far was in the February UKPC, I came 3rd in the £550 6-max side event for £18,000

Gonna try and keep this not totally boring by just updating sessions results etc, so any questions are welcome?

Paul

[tikay]

Good luck Paul.

Personally, I don't have much interest in flop stories and hand histories, though plenty others do of course, but I like to see the real life side of things.

So, let's start with a bad beat story.

How much did it cost you when your cat was unwell recently?

Good luck with the diary.

[Lambert180]

Mmm that was an expensive tale...

We've got 2 cats (brother and sister) called Sly and Zelda. About two months ago the boy, Sly, seemed to be having trouble going the toilet, I won't bore you with tons of details but he had a urinary blockage and crystals had formed in his bladder. My girlfriend, Emma, is a big cat lover and knows her stuff so she said (and the vet confirmed) that this is one of the few conditions with cats that they treat as very serious emergencies as it can cause death pretty quickly.

It only became apparent he was having trouble going to the toilet on a Sunday which means out of hours vets (and the price that comes with it), they kept him overnight and transported him to our regular vets in the morning (our vet doesn't do out of hours), then he had an operation at our regular vets and they had to keep him in for a couple more nights. So a couple of days and various x-rays/tests later when he was starting to go the toilet on his own again we picked him back up for the princely sum of £900.

They told us to keep an eye on him, and bring him back if he looked like he was having any more trouble going the toilet, but gave us no other advice to avoid it. Within about 5 days he was having similar problems again, take him back in, has to stay a couple more days, ya da ya da, £500 more to get him cleaned out again. Similar happened not long after and they put him on a special diet.

Long story short, over the last like 6 weeks or so, it's cost not too far off £2k to keep the little fella going. Now he's on a special diet which is a bit more expensive than regular food but ALOT cheaper than visits to the vet! and he seems to have been fine for about a month now so hopefully it stays that way.

=============================================

Thinking of life stories... something I've never really mentioned on Sky but I have 2 daughters who live with me (Lily is 6 and Leah is 4), and both of them (Lily in particular) have had pretty tough starts in life due to various illnesses/conditions so I'll tell you a little about them two soon.

[tikay]

Thanks Paul, & yeah, I'd like to hear about Leah & Lily.

Think you'd best throw in a flop stories first though, for the poker purists.

[shipitgood]

Hey Paul,

All the best with the new diary.

What are your aims from poker in the next year and beyond?

[mondatoo]

GLGLGL with the grind.

[Lambert180]

Here's a picture of the expensive fella btw.

Click to see full-size image.

As poker players go, I pretty much couldn't be any less of a punter if I tried. Never ever do any sports betting, table games etc but I got a free £5 bet from Sky the other day from a promo they're running so decided to punt it on Villa beating Liverpool today so just won a free £50

==========================

Goals for next year and the future...

Get ALOT better at the game. While I am doing well at 50NL now, I am still a fish myself in the grand scheme of things (maybe I'm being hard on myself), I'm sure there's a ton of room for improvement in my winrate where I am now, plus I want to move up, and the games are probably only going to get harder. I just want to keep improving.

I've been playing bits of £100NL on and off over the last month or two, but took a break from it and stuck to £50NL after a rough period at the tables cos I'm not quite as rolled for it as I'd like to be. This time next year I wanna be regularly grinding £100/200NL and think that's a very realistic goal.

I wanna get out and play a lot of live cash (only ever played once). That's partly down to the distance I am from a casino but more down to laziness. I live in Oxfordshire, the closest casino to me is Reading which is about a 1hr drive, further than that it's like Luton or Birmingham.

I also wanna get out to more live tours, GUKPT/GPS/UKIPT etc. Again up to now, a lot of laziness on my part in terms of getting round to depositing on other sites and playing sats.

==========================

P.S. A few people on here may know me from Sky but I don't know many people on here (at least not by their username on here) so if you know me, please let me know who you are.

[Jac]

Bet you can't guess who I am?

[tikay]

"...P.S. A few people on here may know me from Sky but I don't know many people on here (at least not by their username on here) so if you know me, please let me know who you are....".


"shipitgood" is someone you know quite well from Next Door, though he has a different Alias here. It's up to him as to whether he "identifies" himself of course.

You know Paul Jackson (not the poker player) of course.

[Lambert180]

I'd been looking for a new TV series to watch recently because I usually have something like that on my 2nd monitor while I'm playing. I'd already done Dexter, Breaking Bad and 24 pretty recently so asked for ideas on FB and was swamped by suggestions. I'd been reliably informed that The Sopranos and The Wire were/are the 2 big daddies but need your full attention so shouldn't really be watched while grinding.

I ended up going for Prison Break and have been pretty disappointed... I'd heard so many good things about the show and the first series was pretty decent, it was no Dexter/BB/24 but it was worth a watch. Now I'm a good chunk into series 2 and have just completely lost interest. I never usually stop films/tv series midway through (the only film ever I had to stop watching before it ended was Saving Private Ryan), I'll always give it a good go but with Prison Break it just seems realllly average and like a waste of my time.

[OverTheBorder]

I'd been looking for a new TV series to watch recently because I usually have something like that on my 2nd monitor while I'm playing. I'd already done Dexter, Breaking Bad and 24 pretty recently so asked for ideas on FB and was swamped by suggestions. I'd been reliably informed that The Sopranos and The Wire were/are the 2 big daddies but need your full attention so shouldn't really be watched while grinding.

I ended up going for Prison Break and have been pretty disappointed... I'd heard so many good things about the show and the first series was pretty decent, it was no Dexter/BB/24 but it was worth a watch. Now I'm a good chunk into series 2 and have just completely lost interest. I never usually stop films/tv series midway through (the only film ever I had to stop watching before it ended was Saving Private Ryan), I'll always give it a good go but with Prison Break it just seems realllly average and like a waste of my time.

I have a two hour bus it and from work so I download series on to my iPad to watch.

Sopranos is excellent in my opinion. I liked prison break but it gets a bit "conspiracy heavy" like many American shows that kill a great start by trying to expand it and deepen what is just great superficial entertainment. Series 2 is not the best, it does pick up in 3 and 4 though. I have just started boardwalk empire, I am pretty hopeful it looks good.

[verndog158]

I'd been looking for a new TV series to watch recently because I usually have something like that on my 2nd monitor while I'm playing. I'd already done Dexter, Breaking Bad and 24 pretty recently so asked for ideas on FB and was swamped by suggestions. I'd been reliably informed that The Sopranos and The Wire were/are the 2 big daddies but need your full attention so shouldn't really be watched while grinding.

I ended up going for Prison Break and have been pretty disappointed... I'd heard so many good things about the show and the first series was pretty decent, it was no Dexter/BB/24 but it was worth a watch. Now I'm a good chunk into series 2 and have just completely lost interest. I never usually stop films/tv series midway through (the only film ever I had to stop watching before it ended was Saving Private Ryan), I'll always give it a good go but with Prison Break it just seems realllly average and like a waste of my time.

I have a two hour bus it and from work so I download series on to my iPad to watch.

Sopranos is excellent in my opinion. I liked prison break but it gets a bit "conspiracy heavy" like many American shows that kill a great start by trying to expand it and deepen what is just great superficial entertainment. Series 2 is not the best, it does pick up in 3 and 4 though. I have just started boardwalk empire, I am pretty hopeful it looks good.

best series on at the moment is Ray Donovan, by miles. Guess its a modern day Sopranos. So good haha

[titaniumbean]

I'd been looking for a new TV series to watch recently because I usually have something like that on my 2nd monitor while I'm playing. I'd already done Dexter, Breaking Bad and 24 pretty recently so asked for ideas on FB and was swamped by suggestions. I'd been reliably informed that The Sopranos and The Wire were/are the 2 big daddies but need your full attention so shouldn't really be watched while grinding.

I ended up going for Prison Break and have been pretty disappointed... I'd heard so many good things about the show and the first series was pretty decent, it was no Dexter/BB/24 but it was worth a watch. Now I'm a good chunk into series 2 and have just completely lost interest. I never usually stop films/tv series midway through (the only film ever I had to stop watching before it ended was Saving Private Ryan), I'll always give it a good go but with Prison Break it just seems realllly average and like a waste of my time.

I have a two hour bus it and from work so I download series on to my iPad to watch.

Sopranos is excellent in my opinion. I liked prison break but it gets a bit "conspiracy heavy" like many American shows that kill a great start by trying to expand it and deepen what is just great superficial entertainment. Series 2 is not the best, it does pick up in 3 and 4 though. I have just started boardwalk empire, I am pretty hopeful it looks good.

Boardwalk is fantastic and well written like all HBO shows, you have to bear with it though as it's a slow burner.

prison break is easy watching gash obv.

[Lambert180]

Cheers all. Suppose I'll give Prison Break the benefit of the doubt then if you say it gets better in series 3 and 4.

=====================================

I just realised, mostly after looking at the first page of Shipitgood/Larson/Kev's diary, that I haven't actually introduced myself really and most people on here won't have a clue who I am...

My name's Paul Lambert (yes, same as the footy manager) and I'm 27, soon to be 28. I was born in Liverpool (Everton fan) and lived there until I was about 22 when I moved to Oxfordshire to move in with my girlfriend, Emma. Lily, our 6 year old is not actually mine but I've known her/Emma since she was about 9 months old and only fairly recently has her dad started visiting her once a month so for all intents and purposes I'm her dad. We also have a daughter together, Leah, who is 4 years old. I have another daughter who lives with her mum in Liverpool called Nevaeh, she's 8 and I go up to have her for Saturday and Sunday every other weekend.

All the info about how I got started playing poker etc is in my blog which is linked in the OP.

Interests outside of poker....

I love books/reading - To name a few... Shogun, 1984, To Kill A Mocking Bird, Lord of the Rings.

I love films - Too many to list but my favourite film of all time is American History X. A few others... Goodfellas, Platoon, Good Will Hunting.

I love music - This list is WAY too long, I got a very wide taste in music and the list I'd give would probably change from one day to the next but to name a few.... Metallica, Rufus Wainwright, Davie Bowie, The Beatles, Billy Joel.

[baldock92]

Don't watch prison break after the first season or 2- it gets shockingly bad!

I'm tempted to start watching lost, no idea if it's any good?