Over the course of the ftops schedule which starts in a few hours and runs through until 21st February, myself and moorman have agreed to raise some money for charity and make it fun in the process. Moorman backs quite a lot of high stakes regulars who will be grinding like hell over ftops as will I. Over this period if I bust one of moormans horses in any tournament he has to give $500 to charity and if one of his horses busts me, I have to give $500 to charity. Should be a good laugh with lots of banter and help raise some money for those less fortunate than us. I will be updating after every session I play and can hopefully share some of the hands that go down. Both me and Chris are liable for up to $10k each on this proposal. We will combine the money at the end and likely donate it to the American red cross to help the people of Haiti. That's about all for now, please anti-rail the moorman horses in pots vs me, :-)
Played the Aussie millions main event last week but unfortunately I busted several hours into day 2. I had a really soft table on day 1 and was able to accumulate chips at will once the antes came in. I didn't really have any big confrontations until the last level on the day when TT lost to KJ for a sizable pot ending the day with around 60k. Coming into day 2 the blinds were 500/100 so i still had a lot of room to manoeuvre. My table was stronger than day 1 but still relatively weak for a big buy in event. I got to around 100k during the 600/1200 and then bluffed off a little to have about 80k when my exit hand happened. I was opening a lot of pots and didn't have a very good reputation so was pretty hopeful of action when I raised QQ to 3k. It folds to the small blind who makes the call and then the big stack in the BB who is relatively new to the table squeezes to 15k. I shoved for 80k instead of just 4 betting to try and make my hand look weaker than it was. The small blind folds quickly and the big blind doesn't snap so I'm pretty happy and he tanks for around 45 seconds and eventually makes the call with KK! I was pretty steamed at the slowroll and when no justice Q arrived I exited sharply. It was really annoying as I was starting to feel really good on day2 and was confident of a deep run. Pretty gross cooler in the end but made 10x worse by the slowroll, fk live poker!!!
I am going to be living in Melbourne for the next 6 weeks or so with moorman/geeforce/allinstevie and I intend to be grinding online for the most part. Played online a bit since busting the Aussie millions and its gone OK but could have gone a hell of a lot better. Made deep runs in lots of big tournaments been have been running really bad about 2 tables out so not posted any big scores yet.. I have won a couple of smaller tournaments though this week, one on cake and one on UB so I am on course for a pocketfives triple crown that i hope to close out before next Monday.
FTOPS starts on full tilt next Wednesday so it will be full schedules every day chasing the elusive gold jersey, but I envisage more full tilt heartbreak really. Going to be donating some money to charity as well over this period and have managed to get moorman involved for some fun. I will post the full details next week but basically over the ftops series, whenever I bust one of moormans horses or him, he is donating $500 to charity and when one of his horses busts me i have to donate $500 to charity. I will be updating daily on how its going and all mones will probably be going to help the people of haiti.
Really enjoyed the PCA, met loads of people who before now were just a screename I played against on a daily basis. The first night I arrived it was around 3am and while checking in I spotted moorman and a few others grinding the sundays in the lobby, lol. The next day we went for lunch and then got straight on the beer, that ran into the stars party with a free bar and then onto another bar on the resort. I was absoloutely blasted and somehow managed to run into a pole resulting in me going to hospital for a few stitches, sigh. Woke up the next day with a bandage on one side of my face, pretty good shiner, stonking hangover and 90 mins late for day 1 of the main event.....
Despite the less than stellar preperation I was going along comfortably in the main without a lot of incident and then all of a sudden I was out. Pretty standard exit really, guy opens in LP to 900 at 150/300 -25 and the button flats, I make it 3k from the SB with AK playing about 32k total. Both guys call and the flop is KT4 two clubs, i check as does original raiser and now the button bets 8k and I jam for my 30k. Original raiser passes and button now tanks for about 1 min before calling with KQ clubs, turn club, gg PCA.
If anyone was in doubt about how good moorman runs then look no further as his horse, ty reiman (puffinmypurp/gimmeda1time), finished 2nd in the main event for a cheeky $1.7m with moorman getting half.... Celebrations followed for the next few days and I manged to stay out of hospital which was a bonus. The weather was pretty shitty really and inbetween hospital/drinking/poker only managed one afternoon on the water slides so that was a little disapoointing.
I managed to ship the Full tilt $1k monday yesterday for my biggest online score, :-). The tournament panned out really well for me with a lot of strong players busting 50th-18th leaving the final two tables pretty weak. I won a decent size flip with AQ vs TT and then bust mr menlo with AK > AQ to get a stack and then chipped up really easy when it was short handed before the final. The final was really smooth, I hardly got 3bet, all my light 3bets got through and both 4bets were met with swift folds so near enough coasted to Heads up. At the start of heads up it was pretty even and not a lot happened, I had a feeling that the first time I 3bet his button open he would 4 bet me and that is exactly what went down. I responded by 5bet jamming my J4 clubs and running into TT, J on the turn soon sorts that out though, lol. After that hand I had a commanding chip lead and we got all in again on a AK9 flop with me holding A2 and him AT, bit of a cold deck HU when he is short but nothing a 2 on the turn wouldn't solve bink!
I am playing the Aussie millions main event next week so hoping the online run good transitions to live.... After that I am going to be living in Melbourne for a couple of months, enjoying the weather and grinding online with moorman/geeforce/allinsteve. Btw if you haven't tried rushpoker on full tilt yet do it, great fun!
So I have been really lazy over the last few weeks when it has come to updating my blog, for anyone that has followed me for a while this is pretty much routine....After the ftops concluded at the back end of November I have pretty much not played online at all which has been a nice break but not great for my pocketfives ranking as I hit a peak of 8th but have slid down again now due to not putting up any results. Hopefully when I start playing regular again in the New Year I can get back into my groove and start moving up again.
At the end of November I went to London in order to play the £3k GUKPT main event which I managed to luckbox last year (sick brag) I arrived in time to play the £1k side event which only managed to attract 60 something runners but still worth playing with about £20k going to the winner. I never had a stack the whole tournament and from when the antes kicked in I was grinding between a 10-15bb stack. I managed to double just before the final and then take a few pots uncontested until we formed a final table of 9. I had about 40bb’s and was in decent shape and one of the micro stacks busted so we had 8 ppl left with 7 places paying. I had raise/folded twice on the final when I picked up AKhh and raised again finding a guy with 50bb’s just jamming (lol) I get it in for almost chip lead stack and can’t get there vs JJ after a hh flop, sigh. Not the greatest start to the week, ha
Just got drunk for the rest of the week donking around in some low limit cash and doing chunks on blackjack, sigh. On to the main event and I had a mixed starting table as I knew 3 players, sunny chatta, pyrian de mel and Matt perrins. I don’t know that much about their games but guessed they were all solid and were not going to be spewing chips about. After playing for a while though it came apparent there were some good spots on the table so would be looking to capitalise on them to chip up. I made one really bad call against sunny when my set was almost never good on the river but paid off his straight like a mug. Was winning enough pots though in order to keep around average stack though before the table broke. On my new table I managed to get a stack going when I won a race vs Roberto romanello at 300/600-75 level.The penultimate level of the day was a terrible one for me when I cold 4 bet from the BB only to find the original raiser snap 5 bet shoving, sigh. After that I also butchered 77 and donked ¾ of my stack off leaving me with around 12k going into the last level 500/1k. I did manage to double up with AK vs 88 and then found AA when some1 else had JJ and ended up with 55k to end the day and the dream of back2back titles was still alive.
My starting table on day 2 had Stuart rutter and Julian thew both on my direct left so wasn’t planning to get out of line really. However Julian had a brutal run of hands/situations and was sent to the rail early in the level. I had a really good start to the day when I got a somewhat fortunate double up. We had some crazy Italian guy who ended up finalling that would limp 90% of hands and almost never fold post flop if he caught a piece. Anyway the Italian guy limps for 1200 and I make it 4000 with JJ and every1 folds back to him who peels. Flop is T73 rainbow, he checks and I bet around 5500 and he basically sets me in for50k, I call and he shows T7 off but the turn and river is 6,6 ship!
My next big confrontation would come vs Stuart rutter when I made it 4200 blind on blind at 800/1600 and he shipped in around 40k, I called with AQ but lost the rave vs his TT I think. I was grinding for the rest of the day and was picking some good spots to 3 bet to keep my stack intact but no hands of note or big confrontations meant that I was treading water. Then mid-way through the 1500/3000 I opened AK to 7500 and a guy re-ships a 55k stack on me with KQ, flop comes JxxTA, wonderful. This left me with around 10 bb’s and I bust shortly after absolutely gutted :-( Tilted off around £2k playing blackjack with Jeff kimber while knocking back JD n coke before heading to a club with JP Kelly, and a couple of others to drink myself into oblivion and forget poker existed!!!
After the drinking exploits of Saturday I sacked off online tournaments on Sunday as I was in no state to be playing and then headed to Prague for the EPT on Monday. I had managed to win a seat on stars for this so that was a nice bonus and I was playing my first EPT since they Improved the structure to a 30k start stack and longer clock. I had a pretty soft starting table and I was winning a decent amount of pots without risking a lot. I had slowly chipped up all day without any bog confrontations or memorable hands and the last level of the day we would be playing was 300/600 -50 and I had 60k stack at the start of this level so was very comfortable with my position. This is when disaster struck when I managed to bust in the very first hand of this level. I 3 bet and oldish guy with 57 suited, he peeled and the flop came j53 rainbow. He check/raised me on that redic dry flop and I just couldn’t really put him on a hand that he could call my jam with and imo he was the type of player that would check/raise KJ there to ‘find out where he was’ and then pass to my 4bet jam on the flop. I thought for a little while and shipped in my 60k stack, he had me slightly covered and snapped me off with JJ for top set, lololololgg Prague. I have spoken to a few people about the hand as I was pretty pissed off myself for donking out, but others reassured me my move was ok. The only debate we were having was despite my move being good, albeit very risky, is there any need when the field is pretty weak with lots of easy chips on offer. Looking back I don’t really need to make plays like this at this stage of the tournament but it did free up my time to enjoy drinking in Prague, :-)
After this I came home for a few days before heading to DTD in Nottingham for the £1k ‘monte carlo’ event that boasted an EPT structure as well as a £250k guarantee that they easily surpassed with a turnout of 300 and a £93k 1st prize. This is the first time I’ve been to DTD and was very impressed with the facilities and all the dealers etc as well as how efficiently the tournament was run. My day 1 was going quite well picking off bluffs at the right time and chipping up nicely especially once the antes kicked in. I then got involved in a monster pot at 300/600-50. I raised 89 suited utg to 1500 and got called in the next seat, on the button and by the big blind. The flop came 963, big blind checked and I bet 3600 and was called by utg+1 and the other guys folded. I wasn’t happy at all with my hand at this point and would be giving up on most turns, but the turn was an 8 but brought out 2 flush draws. I now bet pretty big, 9000 and the guy jammed on me for about 30k total, I called and was in pretty good shape vs his JJ, not good enough though as the river paired the 3, sdfghjdfghjdfghj. That pot would have taken me to around a 95k stack at 300/600 and loving life. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful with me grinding a short stack and eventually won a pot towards the end of the day after busting rivermanl when he shoved the button with A3 and I found AQ and held. Came back for day2 with 38k at 800/1600 so quite short but a stack I’m very comfortable playing and not likely to make many mistakes with. I didn’t get anything going in the first level so I was playing around 30k a 1k/2k when my exit hand occurred. The button opens to 5k and I jam from the BB with AT and he calls with KQ and turns a K, gg. No complaints really, things just didn’t go my way. Ended up going out on Saturday night in Nottingham with about 12 others doing all types of shots as well as witnessing 3 fights in 20 mins in walkabout, lol.
OK, looking back on the year I am really happy with how it has gone online but pretty disappointed with my live performances. The most annoying thing was playing most of the NLH holdem events at the WSOP and not even managing one cash, fml! Looking forward to 2010 I plan on putting in a much improved performance at the WSOP. I am playing the PCA and aussie millions in January so plan A is to bink one of those and take the rest of the year off but if for some reason that doesn’t happen I’ll be grinding online until EPT grand final in Monte Carlo. Shortly after that it will be time to make the annual pilgrimage to Vegas!
Think I’ve rambled enough now, so hope everyone had a great Christmas and have a good new year, good luck in 2010. Also ive decided to moderate all comments as the amount of spam is tilting me....
I will do a combined gukpt (sigh) and prague trip report this weekend once i get back home, hoping to fit in ukip galway as well b4 christamas but need to get some other stuff organised first,
So, the ftops finally came to an end this past Sunday and it was a relief that this intense period of playing was over. Been shackled to the computer for 12+hrs a day for 2 weeks straight is not fun even when you are winning so when you are losing/breaking even its an absolute nightmare. The $2500 on Saturday was a shambles, I played pretty awful and was out very quickly, sigh. I made a semi deep run in the $100 rebuy omaha event but lost 2 big pots right after the bubble burst so ended up with not much more than a min cash. On to Sunday, pretty shitty day again, made a few deep runs early, notably 42nd in stars early $100r when it was $80k+ ftw and 20th in UB $100r when it was $24k ftw. Things were looking bleak as the session was winding down and then I got a stack in the $200 rebuy on stars and the UB $120 deepstack. I was mentally exhausted from the last 2 weeks poker and wasn't playing my A game by any stretch of the imagination and finished 9th in both, fml.
These last 2 final tables add another $200 the charity fund so no that its all done I will be donating $2534 to Children in Need. Obviously it is a little disappointing to get nowhere near as much as last time but I ran so golden last time, lol. I haven't played poker since Sunday, been catching up with friends and drinking. Also I got the new call of duty game, pretty awesome, xbox live ftw! I am heading down to London on Saturday for the gukpt grand final festival to defend my title, :-) Then straight from London I'm going to Prague for the EPT. Will probably take it easy after that up until Christmas and then the travelling starts again in the new year!
Been too lazy to update on my progress for a couple of reasons, firstly poker hasn't been going that great since this started and Ive been playing long hours due to ftops and been exhausted every day once Ive done playing. I have had one deep run the FTOPS which was the $1k 6 max event but I managed to lose 4 all ins in 30 mins to finish a soul destroying 14th for $11k when first place paid $300k sdfghjksdfghjksdfghjkdfghj. I did manage to win a EPTPrague seat last Saturday so that was good but apart from that not much else has been going right. Have just unregistered for the later tournaments on Friday and am going to get drunk instead before the final 2 days of ftops with the $2500 buy in tomorrow and the $500 main event on Sunday. As far as the charity goes i have decided to donate to Children in need. Here are the standings so far
Final tables - 12 - $1200
Wins - 3 ( $100r stars for $13222, $50r UB for $4809, $77 turbo stars for $4649) 5% of these is $1134
Total so far is $2334
Hopefully I can add to this over the next 2 days with a couple of big wins......
