RedKite's Ramblings

Suddenly my life is Busy !!

2011-05-02T01:40:00.000+01:00

Where do I start? After 13 months being unemployed, I finally have a JOB ! not one I was looking for, however it is going to be intriguing and fun I hope.

From the 9th May I will be one of those people walking around with a clipboard and CENSUS Logos all over me and my "equipment" , just so you can spot me coming and hide ;-) Don't worry if you happen to live in Aylesbury, I am not coming round to tell you off for not filling in your Census Form, those people have already been round and are finishing up this week. I will be taking part in the Census Coverage Survey which is a small selection of the country - approx 1% - and I will only be asking a handful of questions. I attended a training day as a "standby" interviewer, but so many people did not turn up, which meant I was offered a job at the end of the day :-)

Coincidentally I have also just started a part-time College course here in Milton Keynes, snappily entitled "Preparing to Teach in the Life-Long Learning Sector" (PTLLS for short). I almost started this course two years ago when I was last unemployed for a long time, but then Work and Life got in the way. My main objective is to get some qualifications that will support my practical skills which I have obtained over the years.

Being Unemployed is not just a case of signing on every two weeks and picking up your money, over time you get to have some very interesting discussions with Advisors, you attend Workshops and pick up many intersting Sources of Information. All these have made me realise that I have plenty of "skills" other than the core-skills in Computer Programming etc etc , over the years I have led Training Courses, Organised Workshops, Mentored Junior Staff etc etc

As for Poker, well that is also picking up nicely :-) I am either on the longest heater on a new site - 888 - or I have finally found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ! I have now been playing on there for 3 months and every week I have made a decent profit. Nothing life-changing, but I have run deep in MTTs where 1st prize would be very tasty indeed! ONE TIME please.

Sadly on the other hand, I can do nothing right on BlackBeltPoker :-( as I can't play this current League anyway due to College, I will give it a rest on there and just play the freerolls and one or two satellites into bigger MTTs.

I am also playing on NOIQ again, this is the site where I was playing low stakes CASH staked by a good friend, Adam of www.pokertrade.se I am slowly building up a bankroll via freerolls and their 7-game mini series. Once the series is over and i see how much I have won, I may start my own Cash Bankroll again, starting at the micro stakes, something I am also doing on 888 - 1c/2c is great fun!

Live Poker has been pretty quiet due to not having much money, I did play London Live thanks to some generous stakers, I am playing a tourney in Brighton soon - UKAPP - and hopefully with some money coming in I will be able to play a few more low stakes games over the next few months.

So as I said in the Title - Busy at last - a nice change to put it mildly !!

The Daily Grind (Being a rakemonkey)

2010-09-06T09:30:00.000+01:00

Yet another few months go by with no blog! where to start? This blog post will not go up on the BlackBeltPoker site as it will mainly be about my new "job". Not that this job in any way stops me continuing looking for a proper job (just in case anyone from the JobCentre is reading this lol)

For the first time in my Poker-Life I am playing on a site that gives RAKE ! a very strange feeling indeed, throughout my journey through Poker I have bypassed this for various reasons, playing on FullTilt for ages, then playing on BadBeat where Rake is there but tied up with all kinds of other benefits, and then lastly for the last year playing on BlackBeltPoker where Points are the route to happiness and enlightenment.

The main and probably only reason that I have not bothered with Rake has been Bankroll, I have never really been able to leave enough money in any Poker Cashier to settle into a long-term grind, also mainly being a Tournament player, Rake is such a small part of the equation, I play for enjoyment and the pleasure that comes from the "big score".

However, a friend of mine from my days at Badbeat is just starting out on his own experiment into staking/mentoring, he is staking me for a modest amount on a mutually agreeable profit/rake split and I am now playing 5/10c and increasingly more often 10/20c on the NOIQ site , part of the Entraction Network .... insert shameless plug here ----> http://aff.noiq.com/?affiliate=redkitenoiq

I would not be promoting this if I did not have some experience playing on NOIQ, I have now played there since early July, I am just about to break through the 40k Cash hands mark ! and for those that know me and my previous reluctance to play Cash this is astounding ! I had never played on an Entraction skin before, and after a few weeks of settling in, getting used to the quirks, tailoring the layouts (PT3 as well) I have settled in to a comfortable daily grind.

iPoker it isn't ! which may be good or bad, the Tournament side of things needs a lot of getting used to, it definitely seems to be a Network where Cash is King, but having said that, there is value in the Tourney area if you dig a bit deeper. Mainly in various promotions to Live Festivals and the Monthly one-off promotions I have seen so far.

Another friend of mine has also signed up with the same backer, he is exclusively playing 6max low stakes, and although I have only dabbled there, it seems to be very very active. I am sticking to the full-ring(9handed) and am beginning to have more winning sessions than losing. With the rake I am a winning player (say no more!) However using PT3 HUD I am now getting a very good selection of stats on players where I have 3k-5k++ hands on them.

I don't really know much about the higher stakes, my medium-term goal is to make enough profit over the next few months to return the confidence shown in me by my backer, and slowly move up to 25/50c. If I can do well there and get my avg up to 4tables consistently throughout my sessions then maybe just maybe it could turn into a "real job" :-)

If you want to have a look at NOIQ, I would be very pleased if you used this link

http://aff.noiq.com/?affiliate=redkitenoiq

If you are interested in being backed/mentored then please get in touch with me BEFORE setting up an account.

30 Days Later

2010-05-31T14:25:00.000+01:00

Doesn't time fly ? ..... when you are having fun ! But when you are grinding the micro micro stakes , Time drags and drags and drags ....... it has been 30 days since I last blogged, I really must try harder, I can't really use the excuse that I have no time spare.

May has been one long month of squeezing out my few dollars on various Poker sites, I have even played 1/2c cash and 10c STTs , proving to myself that I really do enjoy playing Poker and it is not just about the money, a lot of people think I am crazy but I can play a $1 mtt for 4-5 hours and be happy with a $2 min cash.

The best place to spend hours playing Poker for free is PokerStars, and throughout May they had a series of freerolls where you could win a seat in a $150,000 freeroll. The freerolls themselves often had guarantees of $1000 , and some had 50c rebuys so the prizepool was bigger than a lot of regular MTTs on other sites.

I was looking forward to playing these all month, but was left somewhat in limbo as I won my seat in the 150K after 3 days along with a few dollars loose change. I still played a few during the month, but having qualified so early they did not quite have the same attraction.

So, last night finally came along, 8800 had qualified and we started at 19:30. To cut a very long story short, 3000th place paid $10 - 300th place paid $100 - TOP paid $10,000 ........ along the way I had moments where I could dream of the 10K as I was in the top 30 - 50 and had 2 - 3 x avg chips. The fields dropped away so rapidly and I eventually finished up between 300-500 for a nice $50 prize.

The beginning of May started well on BlackBeltPoker, not only did I win a seat to a 2-Day Bootcamp in a freeroll, I then went on to wrap up the Tuesday League for another free seat !!! The seats were not selling well, and Annette Obrestad had also changed her plans, so maybe this is why I did not manage to "sell" my spare seat. I ended up selling/giving it to Carey, who promised to remember me when she bagged a "big score" :-)

The BootCamp was a great event, I only went on Saturday as something came up on the Sunday, but as usual from BluffEurope and BBP the content of these days is excellent. There was also an incredible value freeroll that only had 14 players and the top 5 won prizes ranging from a Vegas Package to Hoodies/Shades/Subscriptions etc , I ended in around 7th after not believing fellow Green Belt Mike Carrol when he pushed and I called with KJ to his AK.

Live Poker was almost a non event in May apart from that, I visited DTD for a UKIPT side event but once I got there, various things happened that put me in a completely negative state to play Poker so I left early. And due to not having any spare "real" money for the rest of the month that was it.

Online I played a lot of small stakes on BlackBeltPoker and of course the Freerolls , while they are not on the scale of the bigger sites, the value and quality of play is second to none. During the month I won the Yellow Belt game for $32 , my 3rd win since winning it twice very early on in the life of BlackBeltPoker. I also cashed a few times in that one and the White Belt, so I kept my Bankroll ticking along.

May was of course ECOOP month on iPoker, and along with two staked games in the two larger MINI ECOOP $50 and $75 events I played a lot of qualifiers but never got into a major event. I also used my Green Belt points to play the $200 ECOOP event #1 and finished very very close to the money when I pushed TT into AA.

Something that was enjoyable in May was railing the many many BBP players and other players I know in the many events. Sometimes the bad beats tilted the Railers worse than the Player ! There are loads of BBP players going to Vegas for the WSOP, none playing as much as Neil Channing but I am sure one or two of them will have a seriously big result.

June is going to be dominated by the World Cup for me, Poker will definitely take a back seat. However the Tuesday League is going to be a must-play-game as the winner this time round will be getting 1% of Neil Channing in the WSOP MAIN EVENT. There are a few cynical non believers who think 1% of nothing is not good value !!! but I am firmly of the opposite view and will be doing all I can to win the league .... again :-)

Here's hoping for a much happier and successful June :-)

May Day or M'aidez ;-)

2010-05-01T05:43:00.001+01:00

SOS MAYDAY MAYDAY , well that was the call to the Poker Gods in the middle of the month but things have turned round slowly :-)

Most of April has been spent playing very low stakes online and two live games in Luton, in which I cashed both times :-) I am currently 2nd in the BlondePoker Luton G League, however I need to play 15 games each 6 months of this year and atm I have played 6 times. So the next few months are going to be catch up time, especially with so many SHARKS in Vegas lol I also paid a visit to the UKIPT Coventry for a side event and some Cash action, the less said the better :-(

Online was an interesting month, while playing low stakes STTs and MTTs on BlackBeltPoker and just treading water at best, the BBP-Exclusive games are a different matter. I won a Purple Belt Freeroll which only had 8 runners, one was sat out the whole time, there were 4 other Graders and I have to say I ran GOOOOOD especially knocking out Carey in 4th and Owen in 3rd to be left with the sat-out Richard Hinds ;-) ooooops another headsup win against him due to luck !

So what did I win ? only a BootCamp with guest presenter ANNETTE-15 herself :-) I am going to be awe-struck and be making pages and pages of notes on every word she says lol, the evening Freeroll is also going to be very interesting given the amazing prizes on offer.

The Freerolls are also proving a useful Bankroll Booster, every little helps.

I am also sitting top of the Tuesday BBP League with one game left, and guess what the prize is .... LOL it is a BootCamp ticket :-) Well I can't go twice unless I keep it for next year, but if I run well enough to win the league and not crash out in the first few levels and let someone slip in, then I will probably sell it, the cost is £600 ! but I would be offering a reasonable discount.

In May it is all about iPoker's amazing schedule of ECOOP , Mini ECOOP , GUKPT sats etc etc etc , I have used my points to buy into two mini ECOOPs , both 5k stacks, 20min levels , one is 300K gtd and the other is 150K. Live I hope to play either a GUKPT Coventry or UKIPT DTD £100 side event as part of my Green Belt staking, and maybe some other smaller tourneys depending on how much spare cash I have, there are a lot of expenses in May for me :-(

Personally, April has been a bit of a letdown as far as Football goes with Man Utd failing miserably in the CL and looking for help from Liverpool in the League :-) My German team HSV had a EUROPA LEAGUE final snatched away from them by Fulham after being nearly there, it would have been in their own Stadium as well :-( The Election campaign has been pretty interesting, I hope to be able to stay awake next Thursday and see in a new day with a new Government on the Friday.

April Ash Armageddon !!

2010-04-19T11:39:00.000+01:00

My first blog of April, probably a combination of Post-Grading fatigue and not too much to write about that has been good :-(

Poker has been mostly lows with one or two bright points. Online I am still playing very small stakes, as there are too many real-life expenses coming up! My one and only Green Belt sponsored event so far was a £100 Easter Special at Luton G , I managed to scrape 9th for a £230 payday, but I feel it could have been more. Ironically when I went back for my 2nd game in April I was playing at my table then I was called to the Cash Desk !!! They had overpaid me £20 and could I please pay it back :-( Lucky I cashed in that tourney as well for a bubble saver but ended up £15 down on the day !

I then decided to try out a UKIPT side event and visited the Coventry G - by far the most spectacular Casino I have visited in the UK. It only got 66 runners which was a lot less than a GUKPT side event, and I did not get going and bombed out 40th. The Cash games were something else , full of young Internet Warriors, 40% from Ireland, throwing money around like it was Monopoly Money :-) I was annoyed that I did not leave when I was up, but hindsight is always good, so I put that one down to experience. I can't expect to win every time I play can I ? lol

A few days later I went to the VIC as it was another BlackBelt / BluffEurope Academy day, I got there too late to play in the tourney, but I was really glad to see Pete Rhodes get close and Mandy - wonderwoman take down both the Comp with a deal and also the last longest which gets her a place on the 2-day BootCamp, I played some Cash but again all went pear-shaped within 2 hands. Literally back to back TT and JJ both flopping sets and getting beaten :-(

So on to the only good thing about my Poker Life in April, I am now clear at the top of the BlackBelt Tuesday League after 4 Final Tables in a row. Only 3 weeks to go and if I can stay on top it will give me a ticket to the 2-day BootCamp.

As for the title of this blog, well after the Arctic Freeze over Dec/Jan we are now at the mercy of Icelandic Volcanic Ash , I just can't wait for the Summer ! what next ? Plagues of Locusts !!!

Irish Open

2010-04-05T13:37:00.015+01:00

BlackBeltPoker's Brown belt James Mitchell won the PaddyPower Irish Open, I was following the various blogs on and off over the Easter Holiday as there were a few of the Graders here and the BBP team, Jen Mason made the money, Nik Persaud made the final 15 or so and then James went on to win it on Easter Monday.

A great inspiration to all of us players at BBP and after Neil's 2nd in the GUKPT great potential for increasing awareness of the Community :-)

Green vs Green "Light"

2010-03-31T16:21:00.000+01:00

There are two "Green"s on Black Belt , but all is fine in the world :-) I did think that the offer of entry to the 2-Day BootCamp to all recently promoted Greens and Blues would be too good to be true, it would mean half of the bootcamp could be made up of "freeloaders" !! Anyway as Jen explained it, and I fully agree the free entry should be for Greens that have battled their way up through the belts.

So , how to see Annette for less than £600 ? Well I could win that amount of course, similar to how I ended up in the first Workshop, but there is another way - the BlackBelt League on Tuesday Nights, I final Tabled again last night and am in the top 3 after 2 weeks with 5 weeks left. Sure I had some luck on the way, like hitting a case card to hit a river Set :-) but I feel I played pretty well and did not get carried away trying to regain lost chips.

The Orange Belt freeroll was a disaster , ran into AA twice , once to Careybear who disguised them well and then allin with KQsoooted to Jamie I think ? who I had doubled up off earlier in a race. Two new faces got through to the Academy, so I mustn't be too greedy ! I am going to see Annette after all at the BootCamp ;-)

So, Easter is soon with us, which means the IRISH OPEN :-) who knows how many of the BlackBelt Community will be there, but if we do not get at least two on the Final Table it will be a big shame. PaddyPower have their Live Feed up and running, showing highlights of previous years, the betting is interesting, 66-1 is joint favourite and amongst many of the established players is BBP's own Gerrard - CarraJamie - JOINT FAVOURITE way to go , ....... not putting any money on him though lol not enough value, I am going to seek out some 150-1 + value and have some each way bets, which are 1/8 the Odds on a final table place.

Mentor / Teacher / Sensei :-)

2010-03-29T12:25:00.001+01:00

Well what can I say but ..... HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Neil Channing for 2nd place at the GUKPT event held in his own "office" the Vic !!! He ran good at times, but also played extremely well getting people to fold and call seemingly whenever he wanted them to. I saw one particular hand where he held Ace Ten and managed to get a call off Ace Seven , personally I would have been sending fold fold fold vibes to any opponent if I held AT :-)

Following so soon after his 2nd place in an iPoker Monthly Million which was for a similar amount, I think all of us BlackBelters can be assured the business is on a sound financial footing and will be around for a long time giving us all plenty of time to emulate one of our "Bosses"

I spent most of the time railing from my 1/1 Cash table, the good feeling vibes were flowing well and as Neil got further and further, my stack grew slowly and surely until at the end I cashed out for just short of £200 profit, which to me right now probably feels as good as 84K does to Neil :-)

Back to the online grind for a few days now, tonight is the Orange Belt freeroll with two prizes of entry to a one-day Academy, this was the freeroll that I ended up headsup with Pete Rhodes last month and we both got a ticket, hopefully he is back in the country now and we can try another 1-2 :-)

Tuesday is the 2nd week of the latest BlackBelt league season, the 1st prize over the "season"
is entry to the 2-day Academy, even though I qualify for that as a newly promoted Green Belt, I am still going to take the League games very seriously, they are a great challenge and always throw up some really good battles.

Green is the Colour

2010-03-28T10:04:00.000+01:00

Well, my predictions of the Blue Belts was correct but with a few differences, the BlackBeltPoker team have decided to award 4 Packages to Dublin, and 2 further Blue Belts, out of 16 players that were there at the end that is saying something for the amazing standard I was up against. I was awarded a Green Belt with enough points for at least two months of sponsorship. The reasons behind the reduced award were explained and I am very happy with the award.

http://www.blackbeltpoker.com/articles/read/Grading-II-Winners-Announced

I have a bit of studying to do with the different combinations of Staking available, I can play online or live at various rates of staking, the Blue Belts will have $1500 worth of Events to play in every month, I will have up to a max of $550 based on spending points.

http://www.blackbeltpoker.com/play-poker/live-backing-instructions/

Getting to Blue belt will be tough, but maintaining Green belt is not that bad, it is even possible by playing tournaments only, I have to rake around $1000 each month at least, considering I played nearly $8000 of tournaments in my Grading Selection WEEK, as long as I do not run too bad this should be possible.

Proving that Poker Karma exists, the generosity of BlackBelt founder Neil Channing has been repayed by the Poker Gods and he is now sitting on the Final Table of the GUKPT £1500 Main Event in his own backtyard the Vic ! I was watching some of it on Nutz.Tv last night and it just shows how quick things can change in poker, he had 2 under cards to a pair and turned and rivered 2pair, then he had 2 over cards to a pair and hit one of them , 2 double ups and all of a sudden he is back in the game.

I will probably go up later to Rail , there is a side event , but it is £150 !!! so unless I can shortstack the 1/1 Cash table and spin it up, I will spend the whole day Railing , should be fun regardless. The final table is looking like a very tough one. The team at http://www.aworldofpoker.com/ and http://www.nutztv.com/ will provide their usual extensive coverage.

Waiting Room Nerves

2010-03-24T11:47:00.000Z

Today's the day we will eventually find out the Grading Results. By not completing my hours I am fairly much resigned to not being one of the three Blue Belts. I am not sure how many weeks I fully completed, at least 4 I hope maybe even 5, but no matter what I wll have earned a heck of a lot more points than I could ever have dreamed of through playing for those 6 week.

I a going to name my three choices here ..... hardly anybody reads this anyway :-) so it is more a place to hopefully refer back to later and say "I was right" !!!

Kevin Williams - even though he is my 3rd highest contributor to my plus side at Cash - the shame the shame lololol (just onehand to be fair) he is way ahead of me at the game. I have been constantly impressed at the Workshops by his considered views on the game. His Articles have been among the best, and as with all 3 of my picks he is an all-round "nice guy"

Gavin Hall - very dedicated cash game player, studies the game a lot and also contributed a great deal to the forum discussions, was even brave enough to be on PokerShowLive with Jesse May and Matt Broughton firing questions at him.

Jamie Burland - Similar to both the other guys, also the only Grader I know that finished in profit :-) I am sure some of us did !! it is going to be interesting if all the figures are revealed ! Again, been very impressed at contributions on the boards and at the workshops.

There are another 3 or 4 that will make the decision very very tough for the "jury" to decide on. It would be great to be a fly on the wall at the discussions.

I have learned a lot from the Grading, if I ever do decide to switch over and try more Cash, I know where there is a goldmine of information just waiting to be harvested ..... errr mixed analogies there lol ..... anyway I know what I mean.

Good Luck once again to all the Graders who are up for a shot at the prize, much respect to all of you who voluntarily stepped down from the race for whatever reason. I hope we all keep in touch for a long time from now on.

Hope to see you sponsored players at Events I may be able to play in during the next few months.

Post-Grading Emptiness

2010-03-20T22:17:00.001Z

After 6 weeks of Grading with it's own schedules and targets, the last 6 days have been very strange. Like a lot of the Graders, I have scaled back my Poker, and caught up with a lot of other tasks ! However Poker is what keeps us all going and that has not been ignored totally !

The London Live Weekend was fantastic, you can listen to a great summary on the PokerShow Live , just click here and listen to episode 7 in series 3

http://www.thepokershowlive.com/listenagain.htm

There is also an interview with fellow grader Gavin Hall , who tells me he was interviewed while playing 4 tables of Cash !!!

On the Sunday I went along to watch the final few tables , it was great to see one of the friendliest and keenest of the BlackBeltPoker Community - Steve 'FalconAyr' Dickson get through to the last two tables. He probably had the loudest and most "Railbirds" of anybody in the last 4 tables, he even took out one of the last Bountys left standing - Marty Smith - and that will be a priceless reward taking a signed photo back home and the Black Belt.

Steve trebled up near the end when he flopped a set of 5s when allin, but cruelly his QQ was beaten by a set of Tens later on and that was that.

I played some 1/1 Cash and as is more often the case recently, I hit some great cards and soon won a nice amount which allowed me to buy in to the Sunday night £100 Tourney. Somehow I survived until the bubble, there was a saver for 6th and 7th which I did not object to, the final table was extra special thanks to a crazy Norwegian being there playing loose aggressive like nobody else before. His chipstack "yo-yo"ed to such a crazy extent, finally when they were down to three, he spoiled his winner take all attitude by agreeing to a three-way split for £1100 each, roughly what 2nd place paid.

By now the FT was down to 3 or 4 and I saw the final few hands play out and saw Paul Pham a 200-1 outsider take down the London Live Trophy , massive congratulations to him and enormous thanks to all the organisers. I finished the night off with a few more productive hours of 1/1 before driving home around 4am !!!

One more good thing that has come out of the weekend, I am now confident of driving into London to the Vic, only 29 miles door to door, 45 minutes in and 25 back, definitely going to be a better option than Luton, Northampton or DTD :-)

TWTGTW

2010-03-14T12:52:00.002Z

TWTGTW ? Not one of the latest PokerTracker stats , but older readers may know what I am on about ....

That Was The Grading That Was

And what a Grading it was , 6 weeks of brutal, intense, close scrutiny of our Poker Playing Credentials. Not a walk in the park by any means, and the three successful "winners" will have earned their prizes.

My Grading ran out of steam towards the end of week 5 / beginning of week 6. I had reloaded once, held it together for a while and then it just slipped away. At our last workshop Neil had reminded us that he did not want any of us to go busto , there is always time to work up the levels and of course there will almost certainly be another Grading at some stage.

My Journey on this incredible Process only began when I was "lucky" to go 8 hours deep in a full tilt mtt, 9K for 1st, I was ecstatic with 2.2K for 5th. I re-loaded into BBP, had a stunningly successful run at STTs during the "pre-grading selection" and was up $700 - $800. This gave me a seat in the Dublin Two-Oh and off we went.

I tried to focus on STTs as I still feel this is by far my best chance at long term success, however the "rules" which were fair as the Grading had to be on a level playing field were single table STTs only. On iPoker, there are some really good 2 or 3 table STTs and some good DoubleStacks but these do not fill up as fast. Also the increase to $30 and even $50 stakes towards the end of the grading was tough to keep the hours up.

Cash for me is a love/hate thing ! I love playing it, but suck at the lower levels, ironically I am much more successful at 50/1 and Live I can play pretty well at 1/1 or 1/2.

If I had played Cash from the start I would have made the hours, and would have gained a Green Belt, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I will be more than happy with a stackload of points for the weeks that I did complete.

Many other Graders have put into words all the things I would have written , so I will keep this short and finish by saying THANK YOU to the BBP team for choosing me to take part, a very big thanks to all the great people I have met during the grading, I have learned so much off you all, I could never repay you, it has been priceless. Good Luck to all of you still in with a shout of the 3 Irish Open / Blue Belt Packages.

As you may have gathered, I am pretty confident in my Live Tournament Play, and over the next months/years I will certainly be using all the knowledge I have gained here, I have consistently said over the years there is a "big one" waiting for me just round the corner... the cashes/wins have been getting bigger and more frequent :-) and if or when I take one down the first people I will thank will be BlackBelt , however BadBeat will also be up there :-)

The End .... but also the Beginning :-)

A picture from Sharkscope showing how the end of the grading coincided with a nasty slide , however the pre-grading selection was the other side of the mountain !!

The End is near ....

2010-03-08T23:29:00.002Z

..... I did it my way :-)

Week 6 is underway, a huge feeling of relief is running through my Poker veins, the Grading has been an incredible Process and I am extremely happy and proud to have been selected. In my mind I have two cast-iron favourites without knowing their exact hours and profit, I feel they have done more than enough to be gtd a place in Dublin and a nice new Blue Belt. The 3rd space is up between 3 - 5 people. I would like to think I am on the edges of that group, if they had a category for LIVE winnings during the grading, then I would be ordering my Guinness already lol

However, even with my two wins contributing greatly to my Life and Poker Bankrolls, I have not managed to get the hours in at all the required stakes. It all looks pretty easy when you see it laid out in 3 or 4 paragraphs in the Grading Page, but none of us can say we were not warned about how difficult it would be to get the required hours/stakes done.

Ironically my best performance has been at 50/1 Cash , although it is a much smaller sample size. STTs have been not as good as I would have liked or expected. I have learned a lot about bankroll management in both Cash and Tourney play. I hope to take this on board for further play on BBP and of course my "spiritual home" Full Tilt Poker. I have missed playing there these last 6 weeks, and given my preference for playing the night-shift, iPoker just does not offer enough variety.

BlackBeltPoker is one of the best places to play iPoker and I intend to hang around especially for all the Satellites into the land-based Tournies, I will see how many points I get out of the Grading and try to spin these up through Tournament success, I may dip my toes into the sharkpool of Cash now and then, good luck to all who make it their full time Poker occupation.

London Live will be a fitting end to the Grading Process and a great boost to the BB Community, I am really looking to playing a Deepstack Tourney again after a couple of GUKPT Main Events in the last two years. There are going to be some juicy Bounty Prizes as well and it will be good to meet even more of the BlackBelt Community in the real world.

Time to zip up my latest series of HH files and send them off for eventual analysis! Three more full days available to cram in as many hands as possible :-) I am playing London Live on Friday, and I hope to get through to Day Two, so there will not be too many hours left for Grading.

Three Days to make up a lot of hands and a lot of losses , can it be done ? Whatever happens, I will have done it My Way :-)

The Wall

2010-03-05T10:31:00.003Z

Having never run a Marathon myself, I have never experienced "The Wall" that moment towards the end when you feel that you have hit a brick wall and can go no further. Poker is not going to physically put you to that test, but mentally and emotionally you hit that wall so many times. In Poker it has another name, which we are all familiar with ... TILT ...

If you say you have never Tilted, or have never reached The Wall in any physical activity, then surely it means you have not pushed yourself hard enough. Cash players get that experience when they hit a run of losing "Buyins" , Tourney players get the same when they have a long run of no cashes or mtt bubbles. But in all events, we are looking at a small sample over a long period, if we all went back and had a graph of our Poker profit/loss from Day Zero, it would put it all in perspective.

Unless our name is FBRITALIA (look him up ;-) we are not on a downward slope to ruin, there is always light at the end of the tunnel etc etc etc

I hit my Poker Wall last week with a bad run in STTs , Cash not getting going , combined with Life-Tilt for personal reasons.

I was pretty close to giving up with Online/Grading, but not LIVE, so I went to Walsall for the weekend, at the time I was annoyed/frustrated/angry at my 3 Tournament Exits, but on reflection, I played OK, picked up more and more experience, and I am glad I went.

If I had not had a great last Cash session, I would seriously have considered stopping the Grading due to cashflow problems :-( but the "Poker Gods" had more planned for me, so I deposited another 350GBP and started again Monday night. 4 or 5 hours later it was nearly all gone, another 9 STTs with zero cashes, another batch of Cash Tables were I got the 50/50 decisions wrong almost every time !

However, this time I decided to reload once again, only around 100USD this time, and pressed on. Tuesday night was the usual great set of Games anchored around the final League Game which was all over as far as 1st place went pretty early, but the battle for the places was a good one. Cash turned round for me as well, and I started having more and more winning sessions, soon my funds were creeping up to my reloaded amount from Monday.

Then the Grading Workshop Day ...... to be continued :-)

Value for Money ??

2010-03-05T09:12:00.001Z

Value For Money ??? (This was written on the BlackBeltGraders Page, but I wanted to add some more comments here)

An oft used phrase, especially during these "credit crunch" times , but this hand backs up this claim 100%.

I attended the One-Day Academy last month, the cost was 150GBP and while this seemed steep, during the day I remember Alex Rousso saying if we just won one hand as a result of something we learned on the day then it will all be worth it. Well here is my one hand !

http://www.bluffeurope.com/pokeracademy/ ..... This is the link for the Academy Days , I don't get any fees for referring this , but I should lol , I can't stress enough how good the day was :-)

I was playing Live 1/2 at Walsall during the GUKPT, I had some early luck and had built up my 100 into around 300 just through a few coolers mainly. Somehow, don't ask how, I was in a pot with Tx 7x .... actually you can ask ... I joined the Cash table in a state of frustration after a week of frustration at the 3 Tourneys I had entered had never got going ....

The flop came down Tc 8h 2h

Top pair is pretty good in a Live game, so most of the preflop limpers were scared off and it was 3-way with some small betting and the pot had grown to around 120-130

Turn was 8c , I was first to act and I checked, half expecting to give it up , but the other two checked as well.

River was 2d , so any flush draw was bust

With the board reading Tc 8h 2h 8c 2d , I was a bit happier with my Ten, but not exactly jumping for joy, I checked and then after a while the next guy bet around 80 into the 120 pot, leaving himself around 50, next guy folded.

It might be a standard call for any experienced cash players, but I honestly did not know where I was. I then started to think things through, I actually said a few things out loud to gain any reaction, I could not beat anything apart from a busted flush draw or split the pot with a Ten with a low kicker.

This is where LIVE is much much better for me than ONLINE , I admit that I just do not have the capability to think this kind of thing through Online in 10 seconds or less !!! However playing Cash I find that more and more I am facing these decisions and stopping to think.

I could not work out how he would not have bet the Turn with an 8 or even a better Ten with the two flush draws out there, then I tried to work out why he bet the River and more importantly why he bet so much. Surely if he had an 8 he would want me to call with any pair or good Ten, if he had the 2, would he not be scared of me having the 8.

He was also looking pretty nervous ! and did not speak, he kept looking at the dealer's cards and the board as if he was desperate for the next hand to start. Before this hand, I had him marked down as a competent regular , he seemed to know everybody, took down some nice pots and generally looked OK. However as this hand progressed he gave off so many nervous "Tells"

I said out loud "This is one of those either / or moments , either I make a great call or am crushed" I then called, and he showed AcJc Woo Hoo ship the Pot.

As I said, this may seem standard to Cash Regulars, but I was proud of myself having remembered all the great advice I learned in the Academy and of course in the Workshops.

I also won a big pot later even after I had talked too much .... I had the nut flush draw on the flop, I had a much larger stack by now and even though I said to someone who was contemplating calling my flop bet "One card and you are crushed !!!" he still called, the flush came, I checked and he bet allin !!!!! he had a set of course, and I survived the board pairing - this is Live not Online of course lolol and raked in another big pot.

This was definitely a case of talking TOO MUCH however a combination of him not having English as a first Language - he was from Holland - and him being direct to my left, so maybe he did not hear properly, this all helped :-)

Shortly afterwards I left with around 450 profit , paid for the whole weekend, Tourneys, Hotel, Petrol , Food and Drink .... and even my IKEA shopping :-)

Week Four of the Grading - Time Running Out

2010-02-25T23:31:00.000Z

Week 4 is almost over for me, and I doubt I have even done the hours for 3 weeks! I had a small recovery earlier this week but my fears of a "double dip" recession came true and I have sunk again. My funds were boosted nicely by a 2nd place in the Tuesday Deepstack, and my Cash game is not leaking too much, but I really wanted to play more STTs and "prove" that I could perform at a decent ROI over the 6 week period. I am still up since playing on BBP, but my pre-grading selection week has a lot to do with that.

I am losing the will to grind out the $20 STTs , the $30s are just too much right now. I answered Carey's open and honest blog post and was just as open. I can reload into my account, and probably will, but tomorrow I am having a 3 day break from the online grind by visiting Walsall for the GUKPT Side-Events.

My visit to DTD was a rollercoaster ride, I had a good drive up there Saturday morning, I checked the miles this time and it is 120 miles each way for me ! Not something I can really expect my wreck of a car to do more than once a month, the £100 game was a good one, a decent stack/structure. I had the dubious pleasure of being to the right of Neil Blatchly, winner of a major GB Tourney in 2008 and regular at big buyin tourneys, he was very interesting to sit next to.

He complemented me on my AA play , which was nice as AA is quite often a death warrant for keen amateurs like me. I also reraised him once , I had AK on an AJx board, he put me though the most intense interrogation as he contemplated putting me allin, I was convincing myself he had AJ or Ax for two pairs, in the end he folded Queens (so he said), saying my AT was good! I did not tell him what I had, I would have probably called an allin push, half expecting to be beat.

The whole table was entertained by his table chat, he hates limpers, he hates people min raising his BB, as he built up chips he had no hesitation in putting the squeeze on short stacks and delighted in showing them complete "air"

In the end, I got it in with AK vs QQ with another low stack and the ladies held up for the lady ;-) Quite conveniently, the evening tourney was just starting, a £50 freezeout, that was nothing to shout about, never got above starting stack. And then CASH !!! wow such sick swings, not good for my heart, at one stage around 03:00 I was looking at a total loss of £450 on the day, at 05:30 I walked out having just lost £50, phew that was a close one.

As I mentioned at the start, the Grading Week 4 started OK, but soon turned. Playing to a schedule is tough, much respect to anyone who does it week in week out for months if not years. Like Carey, I was on the verge of quitting, unlike Carey I am a quitter at times ;-) and I will be re-evaluating my position Sunday/Monday.

The Community Side of the Grading is compensating for the lows of the actual Poker, I am already looking forward to next Thursday's Workshop. I have submitted my idea to Jen for a presentation/talk, so I have that to do as well over the next few days. I have finally networked two PCs - woooo - very excited about the potential there, so will probably get an article done about using Pokertracker over a Network.

Dublin seems an incredibly long way away, and with that in mind I have started playing Sats :-) there are some very good ones out there, and that may be more of a reasonable target for me compared to getting one of the three packages.

Just a reminder, those nice guys at "aworldofpoker" have Live Video Updates at Walsall, keep an eye out for me in my BBP T-Shirt and Baseball Cap (if I don't feel to much of a wally wearing a hat indoors ;-)

Third Time Lucky ?

2010-02-20T02:46:00.000Z

As the title says - would the saying hold up ? , it is usually applied to something that you are trying again after two failures ! but in this case I mean would I win 3 VIC Tourneys back to back to back :-)

Rewind a few days, even though I am running behind in hours, and down in profit, what do I end up doing .... wasting a good few hours trying to buy a PC from Dell and eventually giving up due to the strictest of strict anti-fraud measures put in place from Barclays :-( wtf it is MY MONEY you bunch of merchant bankers! After three days of phone calls/emails from Dell/talks with different areas of the Bank who don't talk to each other! I give up, sign on to my PCWORLD account, browse a few minutes, find a great Packard Bell with almost as good specs as the Dell, but a good £200 cheaper.

PCWORLD have a great service - reserve online, pick up and pay at the store, so I choose that and checkout. 9 times out of 10 what I choose is available from my local PCWORLD, and when I say Local, I mean extremely close, as in we share a connecting wall :-) literally if I knocked a hole in my bathroom/kitchen wall I would fall 60 feet into their shop. Sounds weird, but it works, they are new flats built as part of a Retail Park, extremely handy for M&S, Argos, Comet, KFC, Pizza Hut etc etc etc

Anyway , I digress , this time however I have to drive to Slough :-( but 2 hours later I am back and unpacking a shiny new PC. As usual it takes ages to set up a new PC, copy info over, make room for it in my non-Tardis-like bedroom, it looks big but it is filled with junk and moving around is a fine balancing act. Which brings me up to Thursday - the day of the 2nd Grading Workshop, still way down on hours , profit slowly recovering , but this cannot be missed. The last workshop and the Academy day just blew my mind with the amount of Poker Knowledge available, to be completely honest a lot of it went over my mind lol but some has stuck in there.

These Workshop days are worth their weight in gold, and for 17 of the 20 Graders who do not "win" the BlackBelt's Got Talent show, that will be more than enough as a consolation prize. One very interesting section was presented by Kevin Williams who talked about Galfond Bucks as compared to Sklansky Bucks, I am not going to repeat it here, there are loads of links on the BBP Site.

My favourite part of the day was the group discussions revolving around TV Hands from the WSOPE. This type of thing would make great TV imho, rather than just a couple of experts in the studio leading us through a tournament from start to finish , a lively and detailed discussion of key hands would surely be interesting to the serious / keen Poker Player.

Even writing about these events has a great effect on my play ;-) just been playing 5 STTs resulting in these positions - 1,2,3,4,10 !! for a nice profit, why oh why can't all sessions be like that ?

Back to the Grading Day, there was not so much interest in the £100 freezeout deepstack this week, but eventually I gave in to temptation, I honestly had the intention of playing pretty loose/aggressive lol as I really wanted to either do well, or bust before the last train. Eventually the numbers got up to around 45, and there were 5 or 6 BlackBelt players taking part. Richard Hinds soon joined his "nemesis" i.e me to his right, not sure what he felt about that ;-) but finally we made the Final Table again.

This time, there did not seem to be any of the VIC Regulars playing, so there was no talk of savers/chops/deals etc etc and play continued down to the bubble 7, Richard had not had a good time, his raises were being snapped off and he could not get into any good situations, I however was having my usual rollercoaster getting it allin with shortstacks, I doubled two of them up and knocked out 1 player. When there were 7 left, still no talk of a bubble saver, I looked down at KJ suited in early pos, I raise a decent amount, all fold to the big blind who fist pumps allin, stands up, looking all excited ..... instant fold for me ? not really! he was a young guy that I had tangled with before, he also acted exactly the same way earlier on the FT when he had a very lucky doubling up hand.

Eventually I decided that my KJ was good at least for a race if not crushing his QJ, KT etc and the pot would have meant I had nearly 1/3 the chips with 6 left, so I called to see AK :-( no Andy-Miracle this time, and next hand I find an Ace get it allin vs KK and that was that.

Double-Whammy, no cash and missed the last train ! I put £100 on a 1/1 cash table, sit there for ages nurturing my ever decreasing stack, until I get badbeated out of it and around 06:00 I lose the £100. Do I go home and lick my wounds and the £200 lost .... of course not , I get £100 out and sit down again with the intention of again paying loose aggressive, this time it pays off and within 90 minutes I have £300 , the table is breaking up and it is time to do the reverse commute from London-Home having had a long night only losing the Tourney reg fee, the money for drinks/food etc

So, to wrap it up, here I am at 02:40 on Saturday morning, contemplating a weekend in Nottingham :-) DTD 20/20 is looking very tempting, but ..... and it is a big but ! my hours are still down :-( oh well, there is always week 4 .....

Grading Week 2

2010-02-15T04:27:00.001Z

Week Two finished a few hours ago, or rather it is not finished as I am way down on the hours ! This next week has to be my catch up week or else it will get very very difficult to complete. I have started playing Cash and that will help a lot with the hours, but not my profit :-( Having said that , my STT PokerTracker graph which has resembled one of those stockmarket graphs of the Great Depression ( 2007 - 2010) , has at last bottomed out and is on a slow recovery.

18 STTs with not one Cash, and a very very low ROI over a larger number , without the incentive of the Grading, I would have definitely given up believing that could turn round. My Bankroll has also suffered, but that will be boosted soon :-) as soon as I go to the Bank and deposit a nice wedge of £50 notes ..... more later.

My fellow Graders have been very busy producing some really good Blogs and Content for the Site, along with the day to day contribution of many others on the Group Boards, BBP is really turning into the type of community it has aimed for.

BluffEurope Academy

Another reason for the backlog in hours is my last minute decision to sign up for the BluffEurope Academy day on Saturday, I had a decent night in Luton on Wednesday which coincidentally earned me the exact amount of the £150 buyin, I decided to join in, and I am definitely glad I did !

The day was very interesting and eventually financially productive ... it was held in the now familiar VIC "back room". Alex Rousso was presenting the day, with Neil, Nik and Hugh Kirton from BBP. I will be honest and say I had not really known anything about Alex before Saturday, but I am very impressed, and will definitely be looking out for anything produced by him.

Along with the presentations, the best part of the day for me was when we had a few sessions where tables of 6 of us played out hands and analysed all the various stages being led by one of the Pros. You learn so much from this type of interactive exercise and I could have spent the whole 6 hours doing that alone :-)

I will definitely be looking closely at the schedule of further workshops, there is one especially that looks excellent - The Transition to Live Tournament Play :-) which leads me on to final part of my catch-up blog.

Last Longer Tourney

One of the incentives offered by the Academy Day was to take part in the regular VIC Saturday night Tourney, a £50 self deal crapshoot, you only start with 3000 and levels are 20/25 minutes and after the first break it gets very much an Allin Fest, until things calm down. The incentive was that the 3 players from the Academy that lasted the longest ;-) would be given an entry into the London Live tournament worth $220, virtually the cost of the Academy!

I did not expect 17!! of the 54 runners to be Academy Attendees, but we settled down and got started, I played my usual patient aka rocklike game, built up a nice stack until we got to around 20 - 24 players, then had my QQ reraise allin called by a young guy in a Pokerstars.Com shirt, who "had to call" all his chips after his steal attempt with Ace rag .... Ace on the River :-( this put me back down amongst the lowstacks, and I just sat back and waited.

Eventually we found ourselves down to the last 12 and there were still 4 Academy Players still in, I had just chipped up slightly and then there were 3 and the FT started, again in the VIC BackRoom :-) Finally we had a Dealer :-) and we could relax and play poker not burdened with all the dealing etc

There were 6 places paid, once we got down to 7 we gave the bubble a £100 saver, at that stage I had lucked-up to having around 1/3rd of the chips :-) then there were 5, and 3 of us were the last longer players, a pretty damn good advertisement for both BBP and BluffEurope.

Kevin Stevens was 3rd and shortly after I finished 1st by out-kicking my opponent most of the time we "got it in". A very nice pay day indeed.

Mike Carrol was still there grinding the Cash Tables and he joined Kevin and myself for a well-earned early morning dinner !

Looking forward now to a week of grinding the online tables , I really do not want to end week 3 still behind on hours, and with the Grader's Workshop on Thursday, I am going to have to do some serious time-management.

Cars ..... or rather Wrecks !

2010-02-08T15:27:00.001Z

Grrrrrrrr , steam out of ears , do I have MUG tattooed on my forehead lol - don't answer that, my Car has had a slow puncture for a few days, I took it in to the local Tyre place and they said it was leaking at the rim (ooo err missus , sounds a bit rude lol) anyway they did kindly put some kind of sealant on the wheels and refitted the old tyre, well it is less than 3 months old. But they did recommend getting all 4 wheels looked at , not sure what the technical term was , but it would be £50 each wheel !!!

I only paid £150 for the wreck - a P Reg Ford Escort with a smashed up rear door ! but anyway it was the best I could get at the time as I was unemployed, and to be fair after a few hundred quid spent on it, it did get through the MOT until October this year, and I do have a soft spot for it, so I guess I will just keep spending money on it :-)

Pinch me ...... please !!

2010-02-07T10:54:00.001Z

I must still be dreaming ! did I really just have my first ever win in a Live Tourney ? and not "just" a £10 or £30 one, but a £100 game at the Vic

Did I really go to the Cash desk and pick up two plastic money bags of £50 notes :-) and did I really walk to Marylebone station, sit on the train home, and get a bus to my flat with a great big bulge in my pocket ;-)

So back a few days, after my last Post I made my way to the Vic, nice and early as I always am, the first person I saw was Nik Persaud about to have his healthy breakfast. I said Hello and got myself a drink to steady the nerves, after a while a few graders arrived, then the only one I knew - Mike Carroll in his BBP T-Shirt and Cap. After a few minutes chatting about our journeys, poker, and the day ahead, we all went into the backroom of the Vic.

The BBP gang introduced themselves, then we all had to stand up and introduce ourselves and the day started. We were given a very clear explanation of what the Grading was going to be about, all the software tools that we could and should be using, and a fun session where we took it in turns to play headsup with a lot of analysis and banter going on.

Throughout the day there were opportunities to talk to fellow graders and BBP people. The three main areas where the Grading will be scored break down roughly into:

1) Consistency of Profit
2) Commitment & Effort
3) Contribution

At the end of the day we were reminded of the £100 deepstack tourney, I was in two minds, part of me thought I should just put the £100 on a Cash table and try to double it up, but the Tourney-Bug inside me gnawed away at my mind and said "Come on, have a go, you know you love to play Tourneys" so I paid out the £112 and took my seat.

There were quite a few graders joining in, along with Nik and Javed from BlackBelt, and to cut a long story (7hrs approx) short, I only went on to win the whole thing :-)

As far as the day-to-day grind goes, I have not managed to do all the hours so far, but I am nicely in profit. I am going to split my hours roughly 70% STTs and 30% Cash at least for the first 4 weeks. Weeks 5 and 6 are going to be the real killers !!!

No Workshop this week, so hopefully that will allow me to put more hours in, however I may well visit the Vic to defend my title on Thursday :-)

Good Luck to all fellow graders for the next 5 weeks.

Destination Dublin

2010-02-04T08:29:00.000Z

Let the GRADING commence :-) , however true to form, this blog post is late so the Grading has started! So what is "Grading" ? Well, anyone that has been living away from Planet Poker for the last year will be forgiven for not having heard of BlackBeltPoker. Basically it is an iPoker Skin, tied into BoyleSports behind the scenes. It was set up mid 2009, the most visible "people behind the scenes" are Neil Channing and Nik Persaud, although I am sure there are many others.

I have been known to say in the past "iPoker - over my dead body" so what has changed? I had a break from most kinds of Poker mid 2009, for many reasons, however I kept my eye in by "Prop Playing" which will be the subject of another Blog Post. This kept me in spending money during my 6 months of JobSeeking, I then found an IT Contract so I could begin to pick up where I left off and play a bit more.

Around September/October BBP took off as an iPoker site and has not looked back. The added value for those beginning is something else, BBP has a real community feel to it. The freerolls are excellent value, I would say that as I have had a fair few successes, and the general look to the iPoker front end is one of the best I have seen.

So, Grading - what's it all about ;-) in the dim and distant past, well OK early 2009, BBP ran a Vegas 50 Grading where 50(duh!) hand picked players were set the task of gaining 8 Sponsorship packages including an amazing trip to Vegas. I followed this back then with great interest, mainly through Steve Holden's blog. This time round it is a mini-grading - the Dublin 20 with 3 packages to the Irish Open in Dublin at Easter. As we all know, it is not the size that counts but the quality :-)

20 of us will be playing 6 weeks of intense Poker, attending Workshops, creating valuable "Content" for the BBP Community, or writing rambling Blogs in certain cases ;-) lol

The first Workshop is in 4 1/2 hrs time , and I am really looking forward to meeting the whole group.

Until the next time , onward and forever on ;-)

2010 New Year , New Decade , New Poker Adventure

2010-01-21T21:04:00.002Z

My usual 3 months between blogs, to think in my 20s I kept daily diaries for around 3 or 4 years !! they are still great fun to read but I would not want anyone else reading them .... so why blog ? another blogger said recently that he was writing his blog for his own reference, but then why not just open a wordpad doc and save it all in there ?

No blogger can truly open up and post their true feelings about whatever subject they are writing about .... or could they ?

This year I have taken up the challenge set by BlackBeltPoker, I am currently 1/3 the way through a week's worth of STTs at the $20 min stake. This is the pre-selection, from that BBP will select 50 to go through the torture of 6 weeks of proper GRADING, where we will be pushed pulled poked and prodded , and at the end they hope to find 8 worthy representatives to play in some pub tourney in Dublin over Easter :-)

Well, I LOVE Guinness , have never been to Ireland , and like to play Tournaments ..... but hold on - how can I afford to play at these nosebleed stakes ? Luckily on Monday just gone I entered an $8 ticket satellite, got through into a $24 KO on Full Tilt, well I was not going anywhere as usual, so 8pm I start .... 4am I finish .... 5th place for $2200 as the great man once said "Jurassic Park ... Back of the Net"

If you want to see what grading is all about the first time round, Steve Holden's blog is excellent, I will try to get a link up.

This time round, there are going to be a lot of words written about BBP's second grading adventure as there are quite a few people in the Blackbelt Poker Community who like to get their thoughts down on paper.

And if anybody reading this has not heard of Blackbelt Poker, it is an iPoker skin somehow connected to Boylesports who handle the payment processing, and it is run by , amongst others , Neil Channing and Nik Persaud

Click here to find out more :-) and say hi to Redkite on the Forums or RedKiteBlackBelt at the tables

http://www.blackbeltpoker.com/refer/redkite/?page=/

Seems like years ago ..... DT V

2009-11-01T21:42:00.001Z

I have found a way to back date posts , so that should keep me busy filling in a few gaps :-) briefly the DT Final was pretty good for our Captain who finished up chopping it HeadsUp, this meant that the team members were given $250 each into our Grandslam Accounts.

I took a shot at a few higher buyins STTs and MTTs with the intention of splitting any winnings with the team, but nothing came of that, and I finished the year messing about with microstakes on iPoker Stars and Full Tilt.

DreamTeam V - Here at Last

2009-10-24T02:17:00.002+01:00

It is 02:00 on a chilly October Saturday morning , why am I awake !!! well sleeping early evening for 3 hours does not help !!! I have to be up at 7.30 to take my car to get new Tyres and then off to Brum Land for the Final. Maybe writing a few lines will send me to sleep, if not my few followers ;-)

I joined DT V around halfway through on my own Account, in a team with Jamie Briggs and assorted Fine Players, I scraped into 6th place from the 8 , mainly helped by two who did not play much if at all lol. I had one Final Table and helped the team to get to almost Average ChipStack at 2pm today. The Stacks are Deeeeeeep much deeper than last year and we finish earlier - a cunning plan to get more to come back on Sunday ;-) we shall see.

I am quietly confident, well nothing new there lol, looking forward to the battle, I have played a LOT of Live Poker since my last DT IV 12th place finish, even getting Headsup in a small rebuy, and making the last 40 or so in the GUKPT Manchester main event. Unlike last year, when I was petrified of CASH GAMES I have got the bug, and enjoy that side of the game immensely now.

Good News work-wise, I am contracting again at the same place I finished in March, just a 3-monther until the end of the year but who knows .... I was there for 2 years at one stage after countless extensions :-)

Well, off for another try at sleeping ! Hopefully there will be good things to blog about on Sunday/Monday :-)

Luton time again :-)

2009-08-02T13:58:00.002+01:00

Has it really been a year since my one and only cash at a GUKPT Event ;-) oh well, my excuse is that I slowed down my live play considerably since then ! Things have not changed much job-wise, I am still unemployed, I have my 13 week review at the Job Centre this week where we will discuss options, including work that is not in my preferred area !!! B&Q here I come lolol , well nothing strenuous allowed due to Asthma, so I won't be forced into any hard labour !!

Poker has taken a few new turns, I have signed up for Virgin Poker via AWorldofPoker.com and will be rediscovering CASH at a very low stakes and trying to progress slowly. MTTs I still can't see anything more value than Stars ! I love the 7000 - 10000 runners, I have the patience for them, and if I play for 5 hours without cashing, well it's all experience.

I have reloaded on Full Tilt and love it there for the STTs, my favourite is the 90seater doublestack turbo knockout !!!! and if you had said that to me last year I would have thought you were bonkers !!! 3rd in a $3 and 6th in a $6 grrrrr wrong way round, but the potential is there.

I am following the blackbeltpoker story closely, not sure I am keen on returning to iPoker so may give that a miss when their new site opens. Badbeat is still interesting , I am joing a team for the rest of the Dreamteam but not sure of any more involvement .... if they would have me anyway lolol

Is it really June next week :-)

2009-05-28T02:02:00.004+01:00

I spend far too much time reading other people's blogs and poker forums than taking an interest in my own attempt at online immortality :-) Having said that, the few blogs that I track are equally tardy. I look in on Steve Holden's blog, which is one of the best I have seen, he posts daily or so it seems and tracks many other interesting blogs. If he is an A then I am a D- must try harder.

So what has happened since my last entry ? I am no longer with Badbeat, I could not turn around my deficit quick enough, combined with finishing my IT Contract early March, means that I need to spend my time and focus on other things in life.

I signed on to Benefits a few weeks ago, the Housing Benefit is the main one, and it covers most of my Rent, but the so-called Job Seekers Allowance is a farce, the "state" has decreed that I need £64.20 a week to live on and that is what I will get.

I defy anybody to survive on that for a serious length of time without some kind of "help" from friends and relatives. I have not asked the question yet where does Poker Winnings come into the equation, I am starting at low levels on many sites where I had loose change lying around.

Poker is fun again, as there is not the "pressure" to perform. I even qualified for a £1000 GUKPT Main Event in Manchester via £50 rebuy Sat. And the £200 expenses and £100 Cash I won that night just about covered the trip.

And lastly, the football season finished for me a few hours ago :-( the FA Cup Final will be of very low interest :-) At one time my two teams Manchester United and Hamburger SV were in the running for their League Titles, their National Cup and a European title :-) in the end only 1 came true ! although HSV squeezed into the Europa League with the last kick of their last game.

White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit

2009-03-01T03:54:00.003Z

And for even more luck "A pinch and a punch for the first of the month" :-) now where did I put my 4 leaf clover ? I am going to need all the luck in the world to dig myself out of my BadBeat "hole" " months since my last blog, and the last 3 weeks have been badddddd !!! I started 2009 with the "sickest" hot streak I have had in the last year. I won an MTT for around $1400 I came 2nd in a DreamTeam event for around $600 and then came 2nd in a MTT for around $700. If only those three had been the only games I had played these past two months lolololol

I tried my best to "grasp" the 6max 25/50c Cash game in January, I was within $70 of breaking even then lost around $300 in the last few days of January. I then started even worse beginning of Feb and had a good talk with one of the top BB Mentors who "banned" me from Cash. That coincided with my 2nd place MTT and after around one week into Feb I was up $1700 for the year ...... what happened next was one of the fastest slides I have ever had. I have been battered, bruised, broken by all kinds of ipoker badbeats mixed in with some tilty steaming and bad play

I am now "resting" and reconsidering all options along with BB.

Live Poker has been interesting shall we say, I had a bad Brighton and have given Walsall a miss, I played my favourite £75 at Luton Friday and while busting AA with QQ allin , I then went on to lose with AA vs a flopped set ..... "It's ONLY a pair" as the commentators on Sky Poker love to shout :-)

The one success so far in 2009 has been the DREAMTEAM , our team The Wacky Raisers ( a name I am proud to say I suggested) are joint 5th with 2 games to go before the Live Final in Birmingham later this month. Much respect has to go to Adam - our Swedish Rock :-) who is not at all like the wild and crazy stereotype of a "Scandi"

Adam is also a BadBeat affiliate and that is something I have also become :-) so if anyone who is not with BadBeat already is reading this :-) feel free to contact me

I have developed my own website as well using Fasthosts Sitebuilder but it is not ready yet for general release, it has been remarkably easy for a Mainframe Dinosaur like myself to create something that looks semi decent.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T23:50:00.004Z

10 minutes to go , 2008 has been an interesting year on many levels ! but as far as Poker is concerned it has been dominated by Badbeat. It will be interesting to see how 2009 turns out, I was made a Trader in November and promptly lost all my profit of the year in the last two months !! It must be a curse being a trader as many traders have had similar stories recdntly, but Badbeat is probably the best place to be when you are on a downswing as it is their money after all and you would hope they would do all in their power to look after it :-)

I am working the first quarter of 2009 as an IT Contractor, so will have some funds for live play, I am aiming to go to Brighton and Walsall for the first two GUKPT Events and March will see me shoot for my highest target so far ...... EPT in Dortmund !! I need to go to Germany soon for various reasons and this is an ideal opportunity. The main event buyin is 5,000 Euro which may be beyond me but who knows .....

Time Flies ......

2008-10-23T19:06:00.002+01:00

..... and before you know it , it is nearly the end of October ! clocks go back Sunday and it is getting cold ..... brrrrrrrrrrrrr :-(

I notice that most of my fellow bloggers are almost as bad as me at keeping up to date ! I guess the novelty soon wears off ;-) my Facebook page is almost as bad.

Mentoring

2008-09-07T10:31:00.002+01:00

What a great concept, and one of the best things about Badbeat :-) had a session with John Conroy on Friday and learned quite a few things about my game and where it can improve, so far so good , it is early days but I feel good things ahead of me.

I have started looking on the "old faithful" Jobserve for another IT Contract, there are quite a few interesting Contracts out there, one in particular starting 1st January ..... talk about forward planning ! it is in Munich of all places, one of my favourite Citys that I have worked in before.

I am also looking at Translation-type openings, and one very intriguing one came up while browsing a Forum, I will be following that up later.

The next week will be pretty busy as I have to get myself into gear on a number of fronts and start planning the next few months in more detail.

GUKPT Bolton - least said the better ..... it was a good experience in the £100 is about all I can say, was absolutely stone cold card dead for first three levels, limped into a couple of pots and missed the flop, raised with AK missed the flop had to fold to multiple action, then a few hands after the first break find the monster 99, get a couple of min raisers/limpers so get it allin, one guy dwells for ages and then decides his AT is worth throwing in half of his stack. Booooom Ace on flop Ten on river to rub it in !

Good to see Glenn Ashworth again, he had won the £200 event a few days earlier :-) did not have such a good time in the Main Event, pushed with an oesd on flop from what I recall and tptk called him and held up.

Looking forward to Wednesday and the Croatia - England game ! and as an added bonus, Andy Murray is doing pretty well in the US Open , so will be good to see some BRITISH success ..... or failing that SCOTTISH failure ;-) ;-)

Summer at Last

2008-08-27T11:28:00.002+01:00

Could the Summer have finally arrived ! shhhh but I don't think it has rained for three days at least :-) Time for some fresh air and sunshine to recharge the batteries before September starts my attempt at cracking the Badbeat Trader Target!

I will be looking for another IT Contract once my Daughter goes back to school next week, but I will play Poker to the best of my ability and use that as an incentive to book a profit ASAP. Thinking of winter months ahead with long days travelling to some Dilbert-Office-Environment having to deal with the same old crud day in day out will be an enormous incentive.

Hopefully I will get a few other Business Ideas up and running in September as well, but realistically I bet I will be back in the ratrace daily grind come October.

Poker is going OK at the moment, getting a lot of games in, getting my Mansion STT stats slowly up to a decent figure and going deeper in MTTs.

But, as I started this entry - The SUNSHINE is calling :-) off out now for a good walk in the woods/park.

Full Time Poker

2008-08-16T01:19:00.002+01:00

Well, now the time is here ! no work to get in the way anymore :-) also no money coming in to the bank account ! As an IT Contractor I am now officially "resting" in between Contracts, having just finished one that has lasted since January, covering all my Badbeat playing time. I have been working part time these last three weeks, and I have noticed already that having more time to play Poker is a big big plus point. Having to squeeze in the playing hours after a 12 hour day working and commuting is not ideal.

Playing Poker during the day - I almost feel like a Student :-) maybe I should go back to "College" and become a Mature Student lololol

Not quite the WSOP but still ......

2008-08-09T15:45:00.006+01:00

My first Cash in my 8th Live Game

www.aworldofpoker.com/eventresult.php?id=858

Those numbers only tell the end result, but the whole evening was a crazy rollercoaster ride of badbeats given out and taken right between the eyes.

Steve Read , the eventual winner , was a larger life character who seemed to be chip leader all the way! playing some very aggressive poker and putting people to decisions all the time, sure sometimes he got caught out but overall he kept ahead and bossed the whole game.

He was the player who gave me a very nervous two minutes as on a low flop I had gone allin (with my well disguised AA) over another allin and he spent ages deliberating about calling with an oesd !!!! He made the call, as he should have done pretty instantly imho, he had us both well covered. I dodged all the various badbeats and trebled up as good as !

I had had some pretty good hands and played them quite well I thought, I had a couple of walks to the river where I sucked out , but if someone had bet I would have maybe folded. I played my usual very very patient game, putting down some low - medium pairs at times preflop when a lot of players would have used that as their "pushing moment".

As usual, the experienced players were knocking each other out as they did their textbook allins with any two reasonable cards, which suited me well. I continued to wait, and in this game I did benefit from more than my fair share of good cards. Shhh don't tell anyone, but I did actually bet out on an unconnected flop and pick it up once or twice :-) it is nice to have such a tight image ;-)

Before long it was down to the last two tables, and it seemd to get to the last 12 pretty quick. I was finally moved back to Steve's table and it was looking highly unlikely that I would limp in to 9th as he was ultra aggressive, he knew very well that a number of players were looking to cash and he used his stack well.

It then went to ten players - 2 tables of 5 , a "deal" was made where the bubble would be given £100 from 1st and £50 from second, I was happy with that, even happier when the next hand I picked up AK - ALLIN - not so happy when QQ called me ..... very happy and shocked when I rivered the straight ! Surely this only happens online ? This allowed me to survive up to the last 5 and then I found another premium hand - QQ - unfortunately this was when Steve had thrown in loose change preflop, I min raised allin !!! he called for around 500 more lololol with the monster EIGHT FIVE woooooohoooooo I was quiet on the outside , but I thought this is it ! top 3 all the way.

But the Poker Gods had finally had enough of giving me the ride of my life and managed to give him a pair on the flop, two pair on the turn, and rather than one of my 5 outs, gave him the full house on the river :-(

So 5th place and £600 ..... that is $1200 which is my second biggest Poker Win ever ! I was very happy obviously, I realise I had had the better share of the right side of fips/suckouts but that last one would really have been nice to win. The way the stacks were, and the play that followed, there would have been an even chance of top 3 at least, and maybe even getting headsup with Steve and letting the Poker Gods decide. I have won online tourneys after being that far behind pre-bubble.

Although, that amount of money made it a very easy decision NOT to play the Main Event, even though one of the Traders had very generously offered to stake me the other £400, that was a very nice offer, and if I had cashed in 4th for £860 the decision would have been tougher!

Freerolling - Nearly Over !

2008-08-07T06:30:00.001+01:00

Having played with Badbeat since February, without depositing one cent, as I guess I was invited to the first Piranha Programme as a "Guinea-Pig" along with 30+ others. My one and only serious winning month gave me the funds to play Live and after the next two nights, if I don't cash, then that will be my Live play over with for the time being.

That will be 9 Tournaments ranging from £30 self-dealt - No Thankyou !! up to £100 Freeze-Outs - Yes Please :-) More than half the time, I have folded my way all the way to the last two tables, in fact I think that will be my next Alias "LastTwoTables" :-)

I feel I have come a heck of a long way since my first nervous visit to the tables, I remember hardly being able to speak, keeping my head down literally not looking up at any of the players faces !!! now I approach the tables full of confidence, chatty and positive, and enjoy the experience immensely.

However unless I cash-out "big" again with Badbeat in the next month or two, then I am not naive enough to think I can continue to throw down £50 or £100 every month and hope to break through soon. Live - the payouts are so top heavy and combined with the slowness of play, it is a real setback to playing online, if you take the whole evening off to visit a Poker Game.

Hopefully though, having now "signed off" and made my farewell speech ;-) the next two nights will see me win the big one !!!!! If I win enough tonight to enter the Main Event, it will be a tough decision to make, as that amount of money would see me being able to play Live for another 4 - 6 months ..... HOWEVER , the prospects of winning 50 - 100 THOUSAND POOONDS :-) now can I turn that down ?

I need a Car !!!!

2008-08-05T21:32:00.000+01:00

Well, not really ! but it would help on lovely rainy summer days like these. And relying on public transport to commute between High Wycombe and Milton Keynes does give me a lot of "reading time"

Anyway, I made a decision one year ago to do without a car, and mainly it has worked out OK. I have the use of a car if necessary and that helps at times.

After next week I will be home for a few weeks "quality time" , as they say ! with my Daughter during the Summer Holidays. After that - well there are many openings ahead of me, it just depends on which one looks the more promising and can move me towards my ultimate goal of 24x7 working at home, or at least very close to home.

After the weekend trip to Manchester, I have had two very long days at work and now it is Poker Poker Poker for the next 3 or maybe 5 days if all goes well ;-)

Goodbye July - Hello August

2008-08-01T17:05:00.000+01:00

Every month I post an overview on Badbeat, but as this is only viewable by Trainee/Traders I thought I would copy it here in case anyone is interested ;-) The formatting will be screewed !!

Did July really happen ??

Time for Potcheck/Poker Tracker reflection - Gulp it does not look good

I continued June's run with +$200 in first 3 days, with a great +$224 Cash session part of +$300 cash profit, then I had a nosebleed Crash at Cash - $500 in 3 days.
All the main swings covered by around 7 - 8 hands, and looking closely at PT3 I can see straightaway where the problem is
TWO FREAKING PAIR Grrrrrrrr that causes me no end of heartache
Flopped Sets and AA however - HAPPY DAYS

Next 10 days not much better -$240 Cash, again Two Pair one BIG loss, however I did win once with them ! and did win big with One Pair at times. During these 10 days, Cash Losses made up most of my Potcheck Loss, and as I play mainly Tourneys, I was also losing at them, which is not as worrying ! I recall being very very close to getting deep in a number of MTTs during July. The payouts are so top heavy, and I have taken on board advice of fellow BB Traders and I am playing more FTW and not just to Cash.

Last 10 days of July "only" -$100 Cash - not so many Two Pair losses this period However total loss in Potcheck of around -$400 !!!! Even Tourneys are deserting me now

If I had hair left I would be tearing it out now, so to summarise, I started well, had a massive downswing (well for me it was massive) , took a step back , cut down Cash limits and hours, started playing MTTs more "aggressively" and all in all had a whirlwind downhill speed skiing type of month as shown by my graph

Total Loss = $1,100 !!!

Brief Note for any non-Badbeat-aware people reading this, that does not mean $1,100 of my own money !!!! Check out www.badbeat.com if you want to know how that works ;-)

My July Goals were as follows:
1) Ramp up the Cash hours, do a few 2-Table Sessions !
Maybe I ramped up too fast and too high ?
2) Keep at the STTs 30seater & Doublestacks, have a few sessions were I enter 3 or 4 at once - staggered.
Happy with that, won a few, cashed a few, and never really went out playing badly imho
3) MTTs / SATs to 250K and 2,500,000 - Try every week to qualify.
Qualified once, cashed small tried to qualify once, and tried too hard and lost too much
4) Get some more sessions with Jon
Errr , ooops
5) Live - play some more in build up to Luton , I'm not going to qualify on the Leaderboard unless I have a very nice MTT win, so I will need to earn some CASH to play there.
Done that, played around 4 or 5 times live, getting more and more confidence every time

So, onwards and forever on ...... Destination Luton

August Goals

Luton - Have Fun, Play Well, Win or Lose it will be great
Cash - Take a deep breath, drop TwoPair like a hot potato, keep learning
Tourneys - STTs first and foremost - MTTs "only" when in profit
Live - keep at it, have a Weekend Away late August, maybe "Eastern Europe"
Blogging - Enjoying that, have more time now
Poker in general - Play more hours, Analyse more with Pokermon/PT3, Make more Player Notes
Return to Betfair , now that I am looking forward to!

Work - Gets in the way of Life

2008-07-31T21:12:00.000+01:00

Just kidding, what would we do without it ! I have had plenty of lean times over the years, so I appreciate having work. However the next two weeks are an interesting balance of work/poker/fun :-) I only have to work 2 days a week and then I am on "holiday" for the rest of my Daughter's School Holidays. Starting tomorrow night with a friend's 40th :-) I am pretty sure he does not have time to read this blog ......sorry to the party organisers if he does :-(

A Friday night in a modern day Town Centre - errrr not really my scene as a more mature person well into their Forties ! but I will give it a go and see what fun awaits. I have a good excuse not to let myself go, as I need to be up by 7 to get on my way to MANCHESTER

Who put the ball in the German's net ? OLE GUNNAR SOLSKJAER :-) :-) :-)

No Way can that be called Variance

2008-07-31T00:12:00.000+01:00

Just played a whole bunch of STTs and some MTTs not one single cash , that never happens lololol I always cash at least once a night. Bubbled in 30seater, was crushed early on in a few STTs. Went from 1st to 12th in a 30seater in 2 or 3 hands after making two very good plays imho to take me to 1st !

Somehow I don't think I will make Luton via the Badbeat Leaderboard now :-(

Finished off after 30 minutes rest with a little Cash, very very close to doubling up, but the elusive cooler hand just seemed to evade me, I found a very very loose table with lots of min buyins.

Off to a flyer

2008-07-30T01:14:00.000+01:00

But then fizzled out ! came 2nd and 3rd in a couple of doublestack $20 STTs , and made 20th in a 220+ runner MTT, but you have to take the rough with the smooth and I just missed out on a few more.

I also tried the Sat to the Sunday 250k for $32, card dead for most of it and when I had a hand I could not get any action, so fizzled out around 12th - 14th - top 5 got a seat.

I have been checking Train times for Manchester this weekend - www.thetrainline.com is good , but boy oh boy are there so many routes you can take !!!!! fingers crossed I can pay for the trip by finally getting a decent LIVE result :-) Saturday night there is a £50 doublechance which suits me perfectly.

Running Bad ?

2008-07-29T15:37:00.000+01:00

Just read an interesting article - is there such a thing as running bad, or is it basically just playing bad and looking for an excuse ! Surely there is just Poker running as per the mathematical formulae of variance , ie sometimes you have a draw and hit, other times you miss. If you start to vary your play when starting to run bad, you are just going to magnify the effect of the normal variation. Likewise if you start to run good and start play above yourself, maybe taking a risk or two more that comes good, then you can say you run good.

Put much better in the complete article !!!! PokerPro Europe I think ? I read all the Mags :-) hard to keep up at times !

Well, fingers crossed the next 10 days/nights sees my BEST GOOD RUN EVER :-)

No family distractions, only 3 or 4 days of work, and apart from that Poker all the way !

Happy Birthday to Me !!!

2008-07-28T16:07:00.000+01:00

Isn't it strange in this "WebAge" how many Birthday Greetings you get from all kinds of sources !
Recruitment Agencies - so sincere, especially when asking for an updated CV
Dating Agencies !!!
Relatives via MSN/TXTMSG/Email
Answerphone
Community WebSites
Paper Cards
And even good old fashoned face-to-face greetings :-)

Not having seriously celebrated any major Birthday, 18, 21, 30, 40 ..... 45 is not one to start a trend, maybe 50 might be worth it, but I will not be making plans. Having a 9yr old Daughter who approaches each birthday with renewed excitement,makes the 40-something Birthdays even less exciting ! However she is getting to the age where she is thinking about my Birthday and Christmas Presents, and after getting a great Litre Glass Tankard for Christmas, I get a "Poker Set" for my Birthday and a Man Utd draw-string bag :-)

Beer, Sport, Poker - boy does she know me well ;-)

Pizza Hut tonight for my treat , yeah right - she likes it even more than me , and then hopefully I will be allowed to play a game or two. After tonight I have almost two weeks completely to myself , thanks to my Ex going on a family Holiday :-)

DoubleStack / 30Seaters

2008-07-27T23:29:00.000+01:00

Why do I bother playing anything else !!!! I must analyse my PT Stats asap, I bet they are by far my best ROI. Tonight 4 games so far, 2 with n/r then WON a doublestack for $100 and THIRD in a 30seater :-) for $90 , the latter busting out ScoobyDoo (BB) by pushing with 22 and he calls with AK and I survive all kinds of outs on the way !!! I probably got carried away with my exit hand as I had a double bellybuster allin up against a pair and missed the 8 outs. My "excuse" was he was the biggest stack of the three of us and I needed to double up through him/her.

Top three pay 240/150/90 I think ? so probably a bad move , but hey - is there such a thing on Grandslam lololol

Had a great end to the day when my Daughter "baked" me a pastry surprise ....... it is the thought that counts, and it was an interesting cake to be sure.

I just realised, if my memory is correct (not of the event of course!!) but I was born at 10:10 ..... just realised the conection with one of the most significant hands in my poker playing days so far !!!!!

Life begins at 45

2008-07-27T15:35:00.000+01:00

One more day being 44 then life moves on ever more rapidly towards the big Five O , not that I am too worried by it of course :-) more intrigued in the way some of my friends and relatives are approaching their own milestones. Splashing through a stream today with my 9 year old Daughter makes me feel 30 anyway , and being told I am the best Dad ever for joining her in the stream and allowing us to walk along the stream for all of 400 yards , which must have felt like 4 miles as we had to crouch down under trees, go over small waterfalls , up to our knees and higher for her !
Summer Holidays - great times, and people wonder why I gave up the opportunity to continue working through the summer on my IT Contract ...... no contest really, however it works out well for both sides as I am doing 2 days a week supporting / providing holiday cover for the next three weeks only.
Poker - the main reason for blogging, the fact that I am planning on having a shot at going full-time will surprise some people who still think Poker is Gambling :-) but the last 6 months as a BadBeat piranha/trainee have confirmed my view that it is definitely not Gambling when done properly !
It is a card-game with an enormous amount of variety, but the Lottery, Roulette or Bingo it definitely is not !

Crash...........

2007-11-24T03:43:00.000Z

..........and that was that !

Bankroll down to nearly zero :-(

36 game losing streak ffs wtf lmfao and every other acronym with F in it

No special reason, a bit of tilt involved, some playing of $10 $20 buyins when I should have stuck to the $5 games. Some good advice in hindsight from fellow forumites on www.pokercashcrew.com I should have maybe played some 9seaters.

However the good news ..... started playing the $1 games on Full Tilt with my final few scraps left in the account, now up to $16, however I was literally playing a few seconds ago hoping to double it up by winning $17.

Final Table of a 45seater, had 77 went allin over a smaller stack allin, headsup he had AQ and hit two more Aces !!!! Then next hand I had 44 went allin got called by 77 ffs who to rub it in hit another 7 on flop ........ Poker - gotta luv it

I was just about to write how easy this small stakes game is when those two hands came up to put me in my place grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Oh well, I still have enough for 14 more $1 games :-)

Treading Water

2007-11-11T22:32:00.000Z

Just bumbling along these last few days, nothing spectacular. Managed 3rd just now in a 45seater, limped into cash from around 20 out. Survived a couple of flips to get up to 3rd and we were all even, then lost AQ to JJ boooooo.

Only managing 3 - 5 games a day, sticking to 30buyin rule , so currently flip-floping around the $300 bankroll. Although without a few shots at $10 large field MTTs or one $24 MTT then maybe I would be comfortably over the $300 on my way to the next level.

It is frustrating playing $5 but I know that if I move up, I could easily have 20 games at $10 with no cashouts !

Patience Patience Patience

"Work" really interferes with all this Poker lol rofl lmao etc etc

But after Xmas I may be "forced" into this full time regardless !!!

Time Flies

2007-11-07T22:35:00.000Z

Is it really nearly Christmas ! Doesn't time fly when you are having fun ..... or playing Poker , which should be one and the same thing, but sometimes I wonder !

I am going to make an effort to keep this up to date. Basically just with Poker "stuff" but probably rambling on to some other vaguely related topics.

Adding some links to favourite sites and maybe even getting my Facebook page uptodate, although I am just a newbie on there and only have two friends :-( and they are family !

TV STAR

2007-06-24T06:52:00.000+01:00

Well not quite

But I did get my hand analysed on "The Open" And what a hand it was , played last night for only the 2nd time, starters 600 !!! 1st time I made about 120th , last night after a slow but steady start I rocketed up to 1st !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with about 30 - 40 left.I stayed there until this ATs , I call a raise of about 3BB , then face an allin which would leave me with about 3 - 4 BB and only 12 left.

I call - and yep ROCKETS ...... Not sure if he/she went on to win , I stopped watching when they were down to 3 or 4.

It was a very strange feeling to have my Hand analysed afterwards, the general consensus was "tough luck" but the "Pros" would have done the same.

Could anyone put down AT suited , remember the AA had not spoken yet as the Pro said, maybe I should have raised to scare the limper off, but the end result would have been the same.

What was funny was 2 hearts and a Ten hit the board, so by the river I had 11 outs.

Anyway after a couple more hands it was all over, I doubled up once luckily, but it was not meant to be. So after 2 hours I turn £10 into £55 , so mustn't grumble ....... winner got about £1200 ............ ok I will GRUMBLE :-(

SKY POKER FREEROLLS

2007-06-23T02:35:00.000+01:00

What a fun 30 minutes , playing ABC, getting into last third. Flop a Johny Chan ? is that the right player ? Decide to slow play it lol , da mn low card hits board and then the top + 1 to give two of us a str8

Next hand KK , raise to 5 x BB get a caller , niceeeeee

Flop 8 x 9 rainbow , niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Me Allin , want AK AQ to call :-)

get a caller , yeaaaaaaa

89 Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

This SKY POKER lark is a hoot , playing a 6-handed single table tourney , 1 player doubles up knocking one out , then I get QQ woo hoo , raise to 5xBB , get a caller gulp ..... then a reraise ..... ok getting worried but think F@@@ It , now or never, so go allin , both call !!!!

First player JJ , very unlucky , next player - lucky chipleader Ace Rag soooooted no less

Yes you've guessed Ace on the flop , 3 cards left to help the lucky freaker.

I don't normally "go off on one" but this time I let rip , politely of course ;-) no replies of course.

Earlier I was rivered, again allin in a £2 STT, when my KQ with Q on flop was called by KJ , and yes a King hit the River , you can go off this game very fast ;-)

How Easy is This :-)

2007-06-23T02:06:00.000+01:00

No, I don't mean playing Poker , now that is hard lol rofl blah blah blah

But setting up a Blog :-) woo hoo as a famous Scientist is quoted as saying , well maybe not , but the film was good.

I am not going to post my personal details on here , just a few garbled thoughts now and again.