Everyone who is anyone in poker seems to have heard about DTD and I got 101 questions every day, we really have the support of the european poker community and this sort of feedback makes me feel like what I am trying to do is worthwhile.
Despite me personally having achieved bugger all in the poker world, I do know a lot of the big names mainly due to me playing them online every night . Although we try and bust eachother for large sums of money there is a strange, ironic mutual respect and understanding between us, I guess we have shared so many sick beats in front of our PC's, sitting alone in the early hours of the morning, climbing uop the walls when our aces are cracked, that we have some sort of bond even though we do not often meet face to face. Guys like Will Thorston and Jonny Lodden are fantastic players and I was able to talk about DTD with them and invite them over next year, we plan to arrange some huge cash games at DTD and these players are so exciting to watch.
Obviously I was very disappointed with busting out 6th in the EPT final to a 3 outer on the river, I would have been chip leader if I won that pot, and I would have given myself a great chance to win from that position, but it was not meant to be. I spent quite a lot of time with Roland De Wolfe in Dublin so I was very pleased to see him win, and he was genuinley sorry to have bused me in that way.
It was important to get the DTD shirt on TV so I made sure I made the final table when we got down to the last 2 tables, maybe this actually cost me as there were a lot of dead chips to be picked up at this point. My normal aggressive style of play may have taken me to the final table with£ 1m but instead I made a commercial decision to ante away my 600k stack and make the final table with just under 400k. This meant than I could not play the final in the way I would have preferred, and had to pass nearly every time I was re-raised as my tournamant life was at risk.......with £1m I would have taken a shot with a marginal hand such as 44 or KQs for < 40% of my stack.
I love poker but I find these 3 days+ events very tiring and my patience levels are low. Being banned from playing in most venues in the UK (even DTD !) means I cannot play much tourney poker anyway, so I have decided that I will focus on just a handful of events each year. I think its important for DTD that I personally start to do better in these events as well as the other DTD crew, so I'll hopefully improve my tourney results as a result of this. My name is associated with DTD and you cant have a "donkey tourney poker player" at the helm of the DTD operation! I plan to play all of the EPT's (except the Vic as I am banned), WPT Paris and the WSOP. Thats only 8 events per year to focus on, but if I can transfer my online success to live tournament poker, I know I have at least 1 big win in me in the next few years.
I'm taking my FD round the club tomorrow to drop a few bombshells about costs that she can expect to get invoices for, such as the £120,000 air condioning bill I agreed to last week. It's all happening now , reality is closing in on me, and the money is flowing out of the bank account and nothing is coming in. There is a big difference between talking out spending £2m on a re-fit and actually seeing the cheques being sent out, its scary. If someone has told me when I was 16, that one day I would be spending this type of money, my own money, I would have never believed them. It's so crazy that we are doing this in my hometown, Nottingham, the whole thing is unbelievable, I worked so hard to get financially confortable in life, I stasred with nothing, and now I'm gambling the lot of on this crazy venture.
Not many people believe that I will go personally broke if DTD folds, they think I am joking and I have money stashed away everywhere. Some people assume that I am lending the money from the banks............you try going the Nat West and asking for £4m of unsecured capital to open a poker club and an online poker room! In round terms, £1m set up, £2m re-fit and £1m working capital is what DTD needs to get this thing rolling, who in there right mind would lend me this? This is the biggest gamble of my life and its happening right now....................
Cheers Rob. Thanks for all your support in the EPT, sorry I couldn't bring it home
