Charity Update

Grinding most of my waking hours at the moment so don't really have time to do a detailed post, will do that once TCOOP is over. I have made 10 final tables since Friday but only managed to close out 1 win and that was in a relatively small tournament for $4021.

so, 10 finals = $500 + (5% of $4021) is $701 to be donated so far. I'm exactly halfway through the allocated time period atm so hoping to push that total past the $2k mark come the end of this Sunday!

Pab

Blog Revival (part deux)

After a failed attempt at bringing my blog back to life last year I am going to give it another try after been inspired whilst reading probably the best poker blog out there, lil daves. If you have never read it, find the link in my blog list and enjoy :-)

2011 was a pretty mixed year for me overall, online went well and I won a SCOOP for $188k which was my biggest score online by some margin. On the flip side live poker went terrible and I bricked the whole WSOP as well as 6 bet/folding on TV deep in EPT London main event, sigh. The whole full tilt saga has left me about $50k out of pocket as well if that never comes back. Sill a good year overall tho so cant complain too much.

Not really got any goals as such for the year ahead but I'm trying to make a real effort to grind more. many of my peers put me to shame with their work ethic so its time to put that right! If I have a few decent results I become super lazy and just stop grinding for weeks at a time and do nothing constructive whatsoever, usually a mixture of going out drinking and playing COD online :-)

Grinded quite hard in January so far and looking to put in some more sustained volume over the next 10 days as its the inaugural TCOOP (Turbo championship of online poker) on stars. Even though some of the buy ins are a little smaller than I anticipated, one of the main benefits of a festival like this is a spike in traffic throughout the rest of the daily schedule producing bumper prize pools all over the place, oioi

I have done this in the past and always made me feel good about myself so will be donating money to charity based on my results over the TCOOP period (friday 20th - sunday 29th inclusive) I will donate $50 for every final table I make as well as 5% of any tournament I mange to close out and win.

I am going to use some of the money to sponsor my friend Chris Hall who seems to have lost his mind and is doing the Tough mudder challenge later this year. Chris is raising money for the national eczema society, if you like to sponsor him find all the info here : http://www.justgiving.com/chriskphall

I am going to donate to breast cancer care and maybe some other charities depending on what total I end up with, just hit 9 tables and counting so gonna end this post and concentrate on clicking buttons!

Pab

Blog revival......

Soooooooo

My blog fell off the radar again as it often does when I don’t play any poker for a prolonged time period. I stopped playing just before Christmas and didn’t start playing again until the last week in January. Since I started playing for a living I have been to PCA and/or Aussie millions every January but 2011 would break that trend. I tried a couple of sats for the PCA to no avail but wasn’t really that bothered really. I didn’t fancy the long journey to Australia just for the Aussie millions since in previous years I had always spent some time in aus before or after the event making the trip worthwhile. Instead a few friends of mine had rented a house in Thailand on the island of koh samui for the best part of 2 months so decided to head over there for a couple of weeks and put poker to the back of my mind.

The trip to Thailand turned out to be a really good idea as I was able to relax completely and just enjoy myself for 2 weeks with good friends. The house was situated in chaweng beach on koh samui which is a really popular spot for backpackers. It was a really cool place and going out was great but the only downside was the weather as due to some freak anomaly in south east Asia, all the weather patterns were messed up and it was overcast most days but was still hot making it 10x better than UK weather in January…. The main reason I only stayed for 2 weeks instead of 6-7 weeks like the rest of my friends was the shitty timezone for grinding mtts and the start of February would see the 19^th (fml) instalment of full tilts FTOPS series.

So after catching up with family/friends at home it was time to start the 2 week FTOPS grind, which in the past hasn’t been too kind to me but it’s got to turn sometime right…. Well unfortunately this FTOPS was not to be my series either so my full tilt avatar will not be sporting a gold jersey anytime soon. I had 3 deep runs, finishing 18^th in the $100r 6m, 26^th in the $200FL rush event and 16^th in the $200 HA event. The $100r was by far the toughest to take as 1^st place paid almost $300k and I’ve had several close calls in past FTOPS series but have yet to close a mammoth score. I was doing ok overall though putting up some decent results and came close to a big score again this past Sunday when I finished 6^th in the big stars $100r for $19k losing AQ vs AJ when it was over $80k ftw, blah! Even though I bemoan my luck in FTOPS, the fields are massive so being a realist it’s no great surprise I’ve not had a big result there but will be trying again next time :-)

I’ve tried to play one session online this week since FTOPS ended but unregged pretty quickly as I had no motivation at all and still felt burnt out from the previous fortnights exploits. On Tuesday I went to the Leeds/Barnsley game at eland road and thoroughly enjoyed it despite us drawing 3-3 in a game I expected us to win. It was the first game I’ve been too in quite a while, one of the downsides of playing poker for a living and constantly travelling around. I’m also going to Leeds/Doncaster game in little over one weeks time for one of my friends birthday so hoping for a better result.

Plan on taking it easy for the next couple of weeks as far as poker goes, playing online but a much reduced schedule. Then all being well I’ll be heading to London to play the GUKPT closely followed by a trip to Vienna to play EPT snowfest and maybe try my hand at skiing…. Early April is EPT berlin then I’m going to Canada to stay with a friend of mine and we have tickets for the UFC there :-) Going to Vegas at the start of may this year for the WSOP in order to grind the pokerstars SCOOP festival there in a much more accommodating timezone. Will add a couple of photos which sum up the trip to Thailand...

Lazy as usual

For anyone that has followed my blog over a decent period of time will be used these rediculously long periods without me posting due to the fact im a lazy git. It also has to do with the fact ive not been playing much poker over the past 6 weeks or so. After brighton I returned home for 2 weeks and was catching up with family n friends and didnt fancy grinding online. Quite a few weeks previous I had won a seat on stars to APPT cebu in the phillipines and was looking forward to this despite being so far away for a couple of reasons. Firstly the place looked abs stunning and it was a chance to escape the british weather for a few weeks and partake in one of the few actual hobbies i have besides poker, scuba diving.

A long flight to singapore and a short flight to cebu and I arrived at the shangri-la resort and the pics on the stars website didnt do it justice as the place was incredible. I had purposely gone a week early to have a holiday of sorts and do some diving. Managed to get 3 days of diving in which was great despite not seeing anything too spectacular (sharks etc..) The stars party before the main event was held on the shangri-la private beach, pretty fkin ballin tbf, and was a blast and managed to meet a few drinking buddies for the rest of the trip.

Onto the tournament and day 1 was almost a non event as we started with 20k chips and i bagged up 19650 or something at the end of the day, lol. Day 2 would be more eventful and I doubled up almost straight away 99 > 77 and then went to work chipping up without showdown and the standard was woefully low. I think over half of the players were qualifiers for the metro card club in manila providing tons of value imo. I ended day 2 on 120k with the blinds starting at 1.5k/3k on day 3 but we weren't in the money yet. On days 2/3 of big tournaments i think i open the first hand of the day like 100% of the time unless I'm mega short but this time it folds to the BB who just piles 40bbs right in my eye, nh sir.

Won a good pot with AA at the start of day 3 and then I had a pretty easy ride until 2 tables out because of 1 guy on my right. He would sometimes open fro like 3.5x and show his strong hands once everyone folded but then sometimes he would open for like 2.5x after a little think. Everytime he did this i 3b him and he snap folded. He didn't seem to cotton on what was happening and kept on with this pattern for like 6hrs with him never 4b or even calling me :-). We redraw tables with 16 left as we were playing 8 handed and my meal ticket is separated from me but I had like 419k at 4k/8k so was in pretty good shape. New table was a disaster right off the bat as I 3b some guy with AJ and then some1 found QQ cold when i was getting even money on the call and bricked. Lost another big pot soon after when a guy raises LP and I call from Bb with AT, flop is ATx one heart and I c/c 3 streets but his 93hh hit running hearts to take the pot and I was now short with 13 left. Jammed the button with 97s and lost to KJ to bust 13th for $6k, was $135k ftw, asdfghjsdfg. Received the usual tilting congratulations from the cashier and headed back to my room to geeg the mini-bar....

Was meant to flying to Barcelona for the EPT but after the 13th I was pretty deflated and decided to hang around Cebu for a few more days before heading back to London for GUKPT grand final. Touched down in London at 7pm Wednesday night but since I change timezones on such a regular basis I'm pretty much an expert at dodging jet lag. Hardly slept on the flight from Singapore to London and therefor crashed for a good 12hrs Wednesday night and was good to go on day1a of grand final 2pm yesterday...

I busted the GUKPT at around midnight last night after a pretty frustrating day. I was seated next to stuart rutter which was cool as stuart is one of the good guys on the tour, always a pleasure to talk to at the table and ready to instingate a night out at the drop of a hat once the poker is over and done with. During the first couple of hours I ran KK into AA and 67 into QJ on 89T flop as well as losing with KK again and TT 2x and missing every other flop.. Never got going and never won a meaningful pot and clung on as well as i could until the very last hand of 4/800 when it folded to me in the cutoff and I jammed 11.5k with A9 and found the button holding AJ and I was a gonner. Don't felt I played bad at all, just ran into shitty situations all over the place which can happen pretty easily in tournament poker. My only complaint was having to play 10 handed all day in a £2500 tournament which is something I hope they can address for next years comp. Made a swift exit from London and am currently on the train back to Doncaster after the 2 nights in my London hotel cost more than a months rent for my 3bed semi house, lol.

After my break I'm motivated to grind online again so will be trying to put in some good volume as well as playing champion of champions in Coventry next weekend and then the £1k monte carlo event at DTD later in december. Could be be tempted to throw EPT prague in as well but I'm a bit sick of travelling atm and wanna just stay at home for a few weeks including xmas. January throws up a few options with PCA, aussie millions as well as few friends of mine getting a house in thailand to grind online for a while... Need to formulate a plan as well as setting myself some goals and aspirations for 2011. Sorry for the long post, as usual ill promise to try n update more regular but the chances of me doing so are slim/none so look forward to another essay in 6 weeks time :-) Ill attach a few pics i took on my phone of shangri-la...

Catching up with everything....

Ok, firstly ill wrap up the end of the WCOOP with Friday 24th September being another very good day for me online as I made 3 more final tables, all on FTP (burn stars lol). They were the $20 rebuy (7th) $500 Friday fight night (5th) and the $200 turbo where i managed to luckbox the win for $16564 :-) Unfortunately I was unable to muster any finals over the weekend but one of my horses managed to get 3rd place in the brawl for $54k so we had truly broken out of the slump and was back in high spirits again about poker just in time for EPT London!

As far as the charity goes the total was at $1788 so add 3 finals and 5% of the win and I finish on a grand total of: $2916 to be donated. After some suggestions from people that read this blog I have decided to split the money evenly between MIND (http://www.mind.org.uk/) and a homeless shelter in my home town of Doncaster (http://www.m25group.org.uk/) The donate link on their site isn't working at the moment so will try to contact them but if that fails ill choose another charity.

Right, a quick recap of EPT London saw lots of drinking as well as me losing a 300k pot at 1k/2k on day 2 of the main event which was pretty frustrating especially after villamoura. I had AKs and had been caught 3 betting light on 2 separate occasions where a short stack found a hand behind and I had to call and failed to hit either time. So since my rep was in tatters I had found the immortal nuts vs an aggressive player who i later discovered was Femi Fakinle who won a UKIPT earlier in the year. A short stack sandwiched between us with KK and my AKs was against Femi's QQ for a bigger side pot but not only did we not spike an A for all the gold, QQ flopped us all dead on Q33, lol gg EPT! Quick commiserations to matt perrins who busted in like 12th place which was pretty gay, but I'm sure he will bounce back soon and put up a huge result.

Played 2 side events in London and was going quite well in the £1500 freeze but eventually busted in 20th position for 80k pot at 1200/2400 when JJ
Onto the £1k main event and it was split into 2 flights starting and 12pm and 6pm. Since the night before I had welcomed in the sunrise with a full english on brigton seafront after a night on the booze it was an easy choice to play the 6pm flight. Had a pretty soft starting table and didn't get any tough spots early and then was on the right side of a cold deck to double up with AA vs AKs :-) Rest of day 1 was pretty uneventful and I finished on 55k and blinds would be 500/1000 when we returned.

Day 2 also started with a pretty soft table apart from 1 seat two my left which happened to be Flushy and he had more chips than me. He bashed me up pretty hard for most of the day and really put me in shitty situation. I wasn't getting any spots and when I did, people took them before me or if I was raise/calling vs some1, someone else would cold4 all in behind etc... Toby Lewis moved to the table later in the day and some good banter was flying around, mainly at my absolute bowl of a stack. I got really short at one point and jammed 18k otb at 1200/2400 after looking at just a J, Toby called me int he BB with K4 and things looked bleak after AKQ flop and Toby stood up with his hand in the air (fatal mistake) as a T snap rolled off on the turn to seal the lucky double up I needed. After this I started re-shoving on some of the guys to my right and managed to get all the way up to 100k with no showdowns. Despite being my friends I was glad to see Toby and James get knocked out just before the bubble as they were both on my left and 2 of the better players left in the tournament.

The stacks were really short on our table at this time but I was going ok until I lost QQ vs KQ for 160k at 4/8k leaving me with around 85k. I managed to shove the button and then the next orbit I found KK in the SB and everyone who folded to the button who jammed all in covering both of us in the blinds. I call, BB folds and I hold vs J5s to get to 200k. The J5 guy then loses another decent size all in and only has like 48k left when it folds to him on the button next orbit and he jams K8, I call with A9 and hold in order to set the 10 handed final :-)

Ok, this post is starting to go on a bit now so will try and rap up the final pretty quickly. I had position on John eames (I thought me and him were the best players on the final) as well as position on 2 other people with big stacks. I won flip early vs a guy with 10bigs and then prob the most crucial hand of the final for me took place. A guy i played with a decent amount on day 1 opens the hi-jack to 16500 (4/8k) and I make it 40k otb with AQ. Back to him and he quickly jams like 340k total. I was almost certain I had the best hand but purely from an ICM standpoint I should be folding since I would be left with 9bbs if losing. However since it wasn't the biggest tournament in the world and the relatively quick structure I decided to call and try to pretty much secure a top 3 spot if i won making this a £20k hand. He rolled over 67cc and after the flop of 9c8cx I was the underdog but as is usually the case when u have so many outs he couldn't find one on the turn or river and I hold to become the big chipleader with over 700k. I managed to get to 1m chips without showdown and things were in cruise control at the first break. The 3rd level of the day was pretty bad one for me though and didn't win a pot throughout and soon found myself back with around 700k going on dinner with 6 players left.

Regained my composure after dinner break and got a light 4b through almost immediately and the confidence came flooding back, as did the chips :-). Quick mention about how sick bad John eames ran on the final though, losing two 80/20s to the same guy and then iso'd a short stack all in with A6s only for the same guy again to find AA behind. Again was happy to see him leave as he is a v.good player but he will making many more finals and will not run so bad everytime...
After that we were 4 handed and one guy was short and bust quickly and the stacks were like me 1.1m, and the other guys had like 600 and 700k respectively. I was winning most pots 3 handed and had taken significant pots off both of them when I flopped a set vs a guy who i had been getting the better off and he jammed 2nd pair on be for a fairly large pot. This left me HU with a 4:1 chiplead, nothing silly happened and when he was down to like 12bbs i set him in with QJs and he called with QT and since I had ran golden all final it was no surprise I held again to take the title and the £46k, Boom!

Really pleased with how I played on the final, and was nice to run good and have hands hold up at the right times since tournament poker is such a fine line. Right time to stop rambling for now. Got like 2 weeks back in the mighty DN5 then its off on the road for another month again with EPT Vienna, APPT Cebu (won seat on stars so will be staying an extra week or so in Philippines to do some diving and have a much needed break from poker) the EPT Barcelona and GUKPT grand final in London......

Finally won a tournament....

finally had a good day on Monday in what felt like forever on Monday and made 4 final tables in total as well as taking down a tournament :-) I finalled on stars the $100 1r1a turbo (4th - $8152) the $109 turbo (5th - $4394) the $50 1r1a (2nd - $7643) and won the $100 1r1a on FTP for $17758.

This is also a good boost for the charity pool which was looking pretty bleak after 2 weeks of WCOOP! 4 finals is $400 added and then 5% of $17758 is $888. Not decide what I'm going to donate too yet and I am open to suggestions if any one who reads this has any...

Current total - $1788

Got 3 more full days of playing so hopefully can rack up a few more finals and another big win!

Feels like its never gonna end

Probably in the middle of my worst ever downswing online and truth be told its starting to get to me. Played a full session of tournaments yesterday and was flying in the WCOOP $200r from a long way out and was near the top of the leaderboard from around 400 ppl out. I was playing great and not making any mistakes but as so often has been the story in the past few months as soon as we got to the last 40 ppl I snap lost 2 big all ins 77 < AQ and then AJ < KQ. I never fully recovered from these hits and was surviving with between 15-20bbs until I busted in 27th with AK < TT.

Unfortunately no more final tables to add $$ to the charity pool and it feels as though id actually have more chance of shagging Jessica Alba than actually winning a poker tournament.... There is one more week of WCOOP left which despite this soul destroying run I feel obliged to play followed up straight after by EPT London. I won a seat on stars to APPT Cebu in the Philippines in November so will use that to have a holiday of some sorts and much needed time away from the tables....