First week back

I started playing again on Saturday and it didn’t really go to plan. I didn’t play a full schedule as any high stakes tournament starting after 9pm on a Saturday usually has a poor turnout and it’s not really worthwhile playing. Anyway my first day back playing had me tearing my hair out straight away as a frustrating session saw me ending with zero cashes, lol.

On to Sunday, the day started pretty well when I had decent size bet on arsenal to beat west ham, and although they made me sweat a little, always looked like scoring. On to the night’s tournaments, I played a gruelling full schedule, getting deep in several tournaments but only one developed into meaningful cash. I made the final on the $150r on full tilt but it was hard work because the final 27 players were all very tough opponents. I came into the final relatively short on a super aggressive table, so I had no other choice than to sit back really. I got into no big confrontations until my exit hand in 6^th place. I had AJ on the button and the aggressive chip leader had AQ in the sb, standard cooler given the dynamics of the table, $11.5k for my troubles.

Monday wasn’t too great either, I dominated my tables in the $100r 6 max on FTP having the chip lead from about 75 people out until we reached the final table bubble at 7 people. I then lost my composure and made a pretty terrible 4 bet straight into QQ and my K9s didn’t get there for a pretty big pot. On the final I then 3 bet folded in another stupid spot which just crushed the flexibility of my stack. AQ into KK a few hands later and I was the first to exit on the final for $1900, I’m such a mug. Nothing else materialised and a slight loss on the evening.

Tuesday however would turn out to be a totally different matter as it would become one of the days that makes it worthwhile when you are grinding tournaments day in day out. I made 4 final tables in total and managed to keep my head and not blow up in any of them, lol. I came 4^th in the early 109 on stars for $4100 (raced badly at crucial times), 2^nd in early $30r FTP for $4200 (muffed it HU really), 4^th in the late $30r on FTP for $3100 (raced badly on the final) and to top it all off, I won the $100r on ipoker (bam bam) for $13.5k, :-). I got a huge stack about 4 tables out in the 100r and started dominating the table. With 2 tables out though I got a little reckless, spewed off some chips and went back into the pack when we made the final. The key hand on the final table came when the button shoved for 70k @ 4k/8k, the SB isolated for 120k, and I call from the BB with AK playing 125k. The button had A3 and the SB had JJ but I hit a K to scoop the big pot and knock two players out. After this It was pretty plain sailing tbh, I sat back until I was heads up playing fairly even stacks and then the guy just played really bad heads up poker to gift me the win. He never 3 bet me, he folded to all my 3 bets, and limp/folded the button loads. With him playing so weak/passive it was just a matter of time before I ground him down and took the win, ship!

Went out to watch the football on Wednesday evening, WP arsenal, lol. I decided to play the late tournaments on Wednesday and regretted after only just 30 mins of the session. I was too tired and had a splitting headache which resulted in me playing like a twat for the most part and drawing blanks across the board, lol. Had Thursday off, went to see Ghost town the new Ricky Gervais film. Gervais was funny but the film generally was poor imo. Overall a pretty good first week back playing, even if tournaments proved as frustraitng as ever at times. Probably not playing tonight as on Fridays drinking > poker, back for a gruelling weekend schedule though..............

EPT & Holiday

So where to start, the lack of recent posts is only partially down to my laziness. Went to London and railed moorman to a bubble in the WSOPE which was pretty brutal as he ran KK into AA vs Johnny lodden who is a notoriously aggressive player. We then all played the EPT which for me personally couldn’t have gone worse, never got going really, had a set busted early, made some bad bluffs and eventually making a dodgy hero call on the river to bust. One to write off and forget about ASAP.

Got back home and played online on the Sunday and it was the usual story to be honest, had several chances at a big score but nothing materialised. The closest I came was an 8^th place finish in the pokerroom 350k gtd for $8800 when it was $110k ftw, :-(. I lost 2 pretty big races just before the final table that put a real dent in my chances and didn’t catch a break early on the final and that was that.

So after another frustrating Sunday, me, moorman and allinstevie all decided to go on holiday somewhere, no poker, no laptops etc.... This for me has been overdue for a long time. We looked around to see where the weather was good and eventually decided on ayia napa. Just got back yesterday, had a great time and really enjoyed the time off poker, not played in 2 weeks!!!! Had some really messy nights usually ended up with us trying to figure out what happened the next day by merging our recollections. Double JD n cokes + sambucas were the main culprits and also led to some stupid bets. During one heavy session me n Stevie had a $5k bet regarding berbatov. I have under 20 goals, Stevie has over 20 and 20 is no bet lol. Obviously the very next game berbatov scores 2 vs Celtic, gg $5k

There was a mini golf course near the hotel and we played 5 times, each time the loser having to pay for dinner that night. I won all 5 so got 5 free dinners, 2 from Stevie and 3 from moorman. Had some cracking steaks etc... and stuck some 150 euro bills in moorman/Stevie’s eye, happy times. Weather was good apart from a bit of rain on the first day and even managed to crawl out of the room occasionally before the sun went in to grab a bit of a tan.

That’s about all for now; just before I went away I was ranked on pocketfives however 2 weeks of not playing has seen me slip off the radar again today. Will start playing again soon but got shit loads of TV shows to catch up on; Heroes, Prison break, Entourage, US office, Family Guy, American dad & Simpsons :-) Some1 recommended a site to me for streaming stuff online called ninja video and I have been impressed so far, check it out.

WCOOP roundup and the aftermath

So, I had a few days off and came back to play tournaments on Friday 19^th as it was the $500r 6 max WCOOP event. I never got a big stack in this event and grinded my tits off really and just creeped into the money finishing 76^th place for $3200, I also bubbled the 2^nd chance event, blah. Better luck was to be had on full tilt that day though as I made the final table of both $163 freezout events. I came 3^rd and 4^th in these totalling about $15k in prize money, :-)

Saturday was pretty brutal, I got screwed deep in the stars $50r as well as the f.tilt 100r. The saving grace for the night though was winning my $5200 WCOOP main event seat in the $300 super satellite.

I had several deep runs on Sunday including the Party $300k and the party $500 hi roller event but fell short of the final in both. I did however manage to final the early $100r but came to the table short-stacked and was hanging on for a while before choosing this spot to gamble:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3222557

Such bricks on the river, ty pokerstars. Did get just shy of $12 for my efforts though

The wcoop main event was really a non-starter for me; I treaded water for a couple of hours before eventually 3 barrelling off my stack, wp pab, lol. The $1k 2^nd chance event went a little better thanks to this pot pretty early on:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3222630 very well played sir

Any thoughts I had of running over the table were quickly scuppered when I got owned here, not a lot I can do about this, I must have a tell:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3223017

I could never really get anything going at the business end of the comp though ad ended up 1 tabling it for around 3 hours struggling to stay awake, eventually busting about 8am for $2440, in my eye.

Monday was a half session as I was still pretty tired from Sunday’s exploits and stopped registering by 9pm. I did however go deep in the f.tilt 22k only to run into the golden MoormanI account, sigh:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3226788

This was with like 16 left so he obviously went on to win the tournament for $6k. Tuesday was a disaster of a day, with only 2 minor scores to show for a near full session :-( At the end of the night me and moorman were both 1 tabling the late $30r on f.tilt. Plenty of shit was been talked on msn with flushy in the conversation as well before this pot came up:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3232393

I had T6s, lol and should have either shoved the river to stop him doing that or checked and maybe hero called a bet. After I made that bet on the river and he still shoved I didn’t see how he could be bluffing............................... owned

I just played the later tournaments on Wednesday and thought I was going to fire another blank again until I started to go deep in the $100r. I was one of the shorter stacks from when we made the money until the final table formed, but I was still in which is all that matters. I folded for a while, and then got a timely double up with TT vs. 99. After that I literally did nothing while one player took most of the other players out and we were soon left 3 handed with me and other guy having about 300k stacks and the chip leader having over 1m. I donked some to the chip leader but then doubled vs. the other guy who the chip leader eventually finished off and I found myself HU but with a huge chip deficit. A quick double up though and we were more even and start trading blows for a while going back and forth. We eventually get into a pretty big hand all in preflop, I have A8s and he has KK but I get there, ;-) From then on it was pretty much a formality and I took the whole thing down for $29600, send!

I took Thursday and Friday off from poker and just got drunk with mates and went round town. I was still feeling worse for wear when Saturday night rolled around so just played a few comps, nowhere near a full schedule. I messed up a couple of big stacks in the tilt $300 6 max, tilt $100r and stars $50r. In the stars $50r I managed to play an 80BB pot with no pair no draw with 40 people left, weeeeeeeeeeeee. I blame a combination of tiredness and still been hungover but whatever. The only hand that bothered me was from the $200 Omaha comp on f.tilt. Can anyone confirm this is terrible from my opponent or am I just an Omaha noob?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3248160

Just finished a full schedule of Sunday tournaments today and I was very much the ‘nearly’ man all evening. I came 4^th in the betfair $55k for $4.5k but lost a CL pot with 5 left AJ < KQ. 57th in sunday million:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3254108

I hadn’t done anything on this table, we had no history, but he beat me in the pot, fucking KQ everytime!!

Made a decent run at the late 100r also but bust 15^th going pretty card dead at a critical stage and getting shoved on everytime I opened light, blah.

Heading down to London on Tuesday to play the EPT so hopefully can run good in the live arena again. Just like to congratulate RookieITB who shipped the brawl on f.tilt for $73k tonight, and also congratulate luckbox flushy who stakes him, lol. Also good luck to moorman who had made day 2 of the WSOPE, one time etc......................

Long post, because I was too lazy to update before now, sorry

So, was supposed to a detailed trip report about Macau but due to my laziness I have only just got round to writing this blog post and most of the details are too hazy now so ill just do a brief re-cap. I didn’t have a very good start when I rocked up to buy into the $5k APT event and couldn’t get in as most of my USD were rejected for having writing on or a little bit faded, sigh. It was like 30 mins before the start of day 1B and didn’t have time to arrange an alternative so the end result was I didn’t get to play the event and was tilted for the next few days.

I had no issues with the APPT as that was the event I had won the package for so was already bought in. The first few hours were pretty uneventful for me even though I had a crazy table with people raising 10x preflop in level 1 and others raising 3x preflop but then opening shoving flops, lol. Was very bizarre but I didn’t get any hands or hit any flops early before all the free chips were dispersed elsewhere around the table, sigh. I grinded for a while and then knocked out too short stacks pretty quickly with QQ vs 88, and AA vs JJ which took me to around 25k at 200/400 so quite comfortable and looking good for day 2. The in the space of 10 mins I was short stacked because of 2 hands. The first hand I lost was 66 vs 77 but we got to the river on a 34557 board, and check called his bet on the river, unavoidable imo. The next hand I lost was AQ vs KQ on a Qxx flop but he rivered a K, in my eye. This left me very short and in the BB with KT, felt obliged to call for my 9BB’s when the SB set me in, he flipped Ax and held, GG Macau!

Forget to mention I bubbled the $1200 side event before the main event, only got 40 something runners, 6 places paid, I lose 66 vs AJ to get 7^th, weeeeeeeeeeee. The rest of the trip was spent drinking and mindless gambling. The night of my bust from APPT, me and my mate mark started drinking in the grand waldo bar, then played Caribbean stud n blackjack until about 4am while drinking shots etc.. We were running good at blackjack and I vaguely remember me and mark both proposing to the same Chinese dealer who was pretty fit called kimmy, lol. Woke up the next day feeling shocking and having the nice surprise of realising I had won $5k USD, when I spoke to mark later that day he had won the same as well. Lesson of the story, drunken blackjack with attractive Chinese women dealing = +EV.

The next few days I was playing the cash games in the grand waldo, the game was 50-100 HKD which is about $6/12 - $7/15 I think, but the game had a 20k HKD buy in so played quite big. Sometimes the game was quite tough with some internet players in, but late at night it got pretty wild with the locals turning up and had a habit of never passing preflop and would definitely felt a gut shot post flop for 200 BB’s. Obviously great value but if u went card dead or they ran good it could get costly and because you are 1 tabling full ring live, pretty time consuming. Came out a little bit up on the sessions but nothing major.

The last night in Macau also turned out to be a pretty good one. We had no real plan, mark was on day 2 of the APPT main event but unfortunately bust out pretty early so we headed over to the Venetian about 5pm and took it from there. We had a few drinks in a bar and wandered round the casino which was absolutely huge. It was hard not to notice the huge amount of prostitutes just lurking around the gaming floor; I had never seen anything like it. To be fair some of them were amazingly attractive and if I had been staying at the Venetian for 2 weeks, my willpower would have been tested to the max, lol. After a few drinks we went to Morton’s steakhouse and smashed through a quality steak and would highly recommend it to anyone that finds themselves in Macau. After dinner we carried on drinking, fell in love with another waitress, lol and then as on the first night got the urge to gamble. We started off with blackjack again and also played some random gambling game that involved spinning a wheel and ppl betting on a communal board. I remember betting on firecrackers spinning in multiple times and being very vocal about it when firecrackers rolled in time after time, lol. The final game we played, which mark has told me since is called sic Bo, involves 3 dice in a jar and you can bet on a multitude of different things but in our state of heightened drunkenness we just stuck to hi/lo even money bets lol. We won quite a bit and then in a moment of madness mark put 50k HKD ($6000 USD) ish on high numbers and shipped it in, lol. I convinced mark to leave it there, finish gambling and go enjoy the rest of the night drinking. We ended up in another bar in the Venetian that had a live band on, I spotted a Danish guy who I had played in the cash games with at the Waldo and we eventually ended up drinking together. He was with about 6 other Danes and we all ended up in a nightclub somewhere else in Macau that I don’t remember a lot about apart from a bloke being dragged on stage to be danced on by naked women (wasn’t me, I run so bad). That was the end of Macau, a great trip overall, besides the poker, lol. My journey home was pretty horrible as I had to get up at 11am after the final night out I described above. 20hr journey door to door while being sick on the hour every hour is not much fun.

Since coming home the WCOOP has started so the days I have been playing poker, I have been playing tournaments. I did have a bit of a bad cash run just before WCOOP started as well dropping about $10k, sigh. The WCOOP has gone pretty horribly to be fair, well not just WCOOP, tournaments in general have gone very bad. I had a deep run in the $200r WCOOP event but ended up coming 23^rd for $2600 and 12 hours my life I’ll never see again, sigh. Pretty standard exit hand in this one, reshoving AT on a LP raiser but he had AK and I didn’t get there, fml.

I played a full schedule, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and to be honest it was pretty depressing, no big scores, a few close calls but generally losing money. I came 5^th in the F.tilt $100r 1a 6 max on Sunday for about $4k. With 7 left I lost a 300k pot at 5k BB with QQ vs 77, then with 6 left I lost a 240k pot to the same guy with AQ vs QJ. F.tilt just hates me always has, and as far as I can tell always will. Pretty sure I have mentioned it on my blog before but the discrepancies between by tournament results on stars and f.tilt is amazing. I have resorted to changing my avatar today in order to try and run ‘normal’, lol hopefully this weekend will be a turning point in my f.tilt career

OK, that’s my little moan over. Hopefully Run good this weekend as it’s the WCOOP main event; If not I will still try to blog more frequently to avoid long posts like this one, lol