Joe blogs

First term at Uni

2011-12-07T00:14:00.005Z

Ello ello ello, long time no speak ^.^

In keeping with my life goal of being the world's worst blogger, I've not managed to get anything down for over 4 months now, which is a shame because so much has happened and I'm not particularly sure where to start, but I guess I'll go with university.

To be honest, it's been awesome so far. A good combination of absurdly drunk nights out with loads of really cool new people and challenging work. I really wasn't prepared for the fact that because I had never studied philosophy before, my brain wasn't trained philosophically, nor did I have a lot of the knowledge that the students who studied the subject at A-level have. For the first time I feel like I'm starting to find my feet in the subject; helped by the fact that I got my first essay of the semester back and I got a first (with some extremely generous first year marking I'm sure). Politics has been a lot easier to just get on with and I'm really enjoying getting stuck in to tutorials. I should get the mark for the first essay in Politics soon, but judging by our tutor's remarks about the group in general I'd be ecstatic with a 2-1.

The only society that I joined at uni is Crystal Clear, the DJ society. I've always wanted to learn how to mix and the nights that the society puts on have been excellent for an EDM nutcase such as myself. My friends Amex, Liv and Matt convinced me to finally take the plunge so two days ago I got a Pioneer DDJ-T1 through the post and I don't think I've stopped playing with it since (bye bye degree!). Right now I suck something awful but I'm having loads of fun with it. I did try out for the American Football team but unfortunately half an hour into the tryouts I broke my finger and did some considerable ligament damage to the point it's not even properly healed now. Luckily it's only my pinky!

The poker front has obviously been very empty in the last few months, which makes me very happy in a lot of ways. I was really worrying that I was going to struggle making the transition from professional 40+ hour weeks to stopping almost entirely. When I have played it's either been making a weekly donation to the PCA satellite community or playing the deep PLO50 games on stars (I'm playing this small because I've never consistently beaten a online 6max game before and I'm eager to move my way up through the stakes). Since September I've played about 20k hands and I'm running at the very sustainable 21.49 bb/100, which is conveniently about as much money as I've done off either buying pieces or playing sattys over that time. To be honest I don't even see myself playing too much over Christmas, except the obvious exceptions of the absurd 10th anniversary Sunday, or as I'm calling it: server-crash Sunday.

I won't be playing much over Christmas because there's simply too much to do! Too many friends I've missed, too much reading and too many amazing nights out to be had. The one I'm looking forward to the most is on New Years Eve and we're going to see Ferry Corsten at Brixton Academy. Ferry blew me away the four times I saw him this year and I'm expecting nothing different on the 31st. Obviously I'm excited for Christmas and my birthday between now and then too =)

Thanks to all you guys who take the time to read this and pester me to update it more often (I will someday be a good blogger).

Has it been 7 months already?

2011-08-01T17:40:00.002+01:00

In keeping with my usual fashion, I’m terribly sorry for being the world’s worst blogger (I think my last 5 or 6 blog entries have begun with an apology of this kind). It means a lot that you guys take the time out of your day to read about my life and I’m sorry that I’m too lazy to update on a regular basis.

The good news is that I’ve been far too busy having the best summer of my life to date since I last blogged. In March/April/May poker went really well, I won a live £400 tournament for £15k at the International, and I cashed for about $33k in the Spring Championship of Online Poker on Pokerstars, including a $20k score in the $109 Turbo and as well as a few close misses; 12th in the $215 6 max on a Sunday and 32nd in one of the $1k Turbos; all in all a very good few months and one of my best years to date so far. In the middle of June I went to Las Vegas for 5 weeks for the World Series of Poker, and despite having a horrid first 3 weeks poker-wise, I recovered by cashing for $18k in the $1500 event #54 (32nd place) and $40k in the Main Event (278th place) for about a breakeven trip after expenses. Obviously I didn’t have much of my own action in the world series events since I’m not bankrolled for them, but it still ended up as two very nice cashes for me.

Away from poker, I still intend to go to university in autumn. I’ve accepted a place at the University of Hull to study Philosophy and Politics starting on September 26th (1 day after the WCOOP ends!). I’m really excited for this new beginning and I’m really planning on making it count this time. Poker has been a great living for the last two and a half years and it may still be my future but I’m really looking forward to learning other things and giving myself the option of doing something else.

Part of the reason this has been such a great summer has been the amazing parties going on in the last few months. In that time I’ve seen (to name only a few); Deadmau5, Markus Schulz doing a 7 hour set, Carl Cox and Adam Beyer tear up Fabric and Gabriel & Dresden make their glorious return to the Gallery. On top of those great nights I managed to get to two music festivals; the 3 day Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas and Global Gathering in Stratford upon Avon. Both of them were fantastic weekends with the absolute best in electronic music. Over the two festivals I saw Swedish House Mafia, Above & Beyond (twice!), Ferry Corsten, Richie Hawtin, Andy C and Wolfgang Gartner. I probably saw about 35 different sets over the two festivals and at the moment my favourite was Gareth Emery’s set on the Group Therapy stage on Friday night at Global, I’ll still be having dreams about that one for months.

As well as those dreams, the next few months will be pretty busy too. It seems that there is a great club night at Ministry or Fabric every week in August, SW4 festival in Clapham Common on the bank holiday weekend, a trip to France to visit my Gran and I’m still trying to squeeze in a trip to Edinburgh for a bit of comedy sometime in the next few weeks, all while trying to get enough poker in that I can take my first few months of uni off and still be Supernova in January. As soon as all that jazz is over, the World Championship of Online poker starts in September, and then I’ll be off to Hull to start my new life. Thank you very much for sticking with me through this, I will try and be a better blogger in future xxx

A December to remember

2011-01-04T01:25:00.002Z

I would imagine that it's now beyond the stage in which I need to apologise for being the worlds worst blogger (I am sorry though!). I feel very embarrassed that so many of you take the time to read it and give me feedback and I can't manage to put out more than one every 2 months.

In essence, everything and not a lot has happened since I last blogged. I managed to get my application off and currently have received two responses; a yes from Hull and a no from Belfast. The other three universities I applied to are Sussex, Kent and Reading, studying Philosophy and Politics at all of them.

I also decided that I was going to grind my little behind off to try and earn some money for university, as opposed to just wasting it away like I do on a regular basis. Obviously that hasn't worked out and am currently on a $15k downswing since the second week off November. Ah well, plenty of time until September I suppose! The good news is that I managed to put in enough volume in November to retain Supernova VIP status on pokerstars, and with it will make a lot of solid bonuses some time in early 2011 ($4k bonus, I'm looking at you).

I pretty much decided to take almost all of December off, mostly to get my party hat on and feel a lot fresher for it. My birthday (long) weekend was amazing. On the 18th I went with a group of friends to see Deadmau5 at Earl's court followed by a drum and bass night, after which I returned home the next morning in the snow at 10am. It was my birthday two days after and I went for a lovely family meal to my favourite resteraunt Matsuri and a few days after that I made my way up to Cambridge to see my lovely friends and get outrageously drunk drinking chilli vodka. Add that to the mandatory other going out nights around Christmas and new year and you have one happy joejoe.

I suppose now is the time to look forward to 2011. I hope when I look back on it at this time next year that I can say that I used the next 6 months well and am now settled in a lovely Pol&Phil course somewhere. As long as those two things happen I don't think I need to worry about resolutions, although my fat, out of shape ass could definitely stand to lose a few pounds.

Thank you all for reading my lovelies xoxo

The Beginning of the End

2010-10-25T14:39:00.000+01:00

For the first time I’m starting to look towards the end of poker. I’m sure every poker player that frequents this blog will either have thought of quitting or had to suffer their friends threatening to quit during nasty downswings. I suppose the way I know this is for real is that it’s coming in the middle of a decent winning run. At 21 I feel I have to make a life choice soon, decide to play poker for ever or start to look at college applications (as I’m qualified for absolutely nothing right now).

Although poker can be a fun way to earn a decent living, I can’t consider it a future. I still have a desire to be the best player I possibly can but I find myself depressed way too often. Depressed that I’m essentially nocturnal, depressed that I never get to see the people that I love (or meet new ones), and certainly depressed that I can’t handle the insane monetary swings as well as I would like.

I had been loosely planning to go to uni next September, and have been completing my application in the last few weeks, but I’ve firmly decided that I won’t play poker in the time I’m at there. If four years down the line I decide I want to play again for a living then so be it.

My plan is to grind hard online until the end March, earning 10k VPPs per month, which should be enough to make supernova and the $4k Bonus with the FPPs I already have as well as hopefully $20k+ in expectation (which as I’ve hopefully explained in my blog over the past 2 years is not a sure thing). After March I’ll find something to do for a few months (probably travelling) and then likely do Vegas, festivals and more travelling in the summer before hopefully going off to a uni in September 2011. Obviously this could all be scuppered if nowhere accepts me (a possibility looking at the current situation), but if that’s the case I’ll have to reassess my plans.
With that said, my plan in the next five months is to stick to only online poker, as live poker is both a colossal waste of time and energy and is part of the reason my sleeping pattern is so messed up (and I’m sure partly contributing to my increased mood swings). I’ll try to spend my extra time in this time doing productive things, be it exercising, learning or simply having fun with my friends.

I’m sorry I’ve been a bit of an awful blogger, but I am truly thankful that so many people take the time to read it give me feedback or encouragement. I hope you’ll all see that this isn’t meant in a moaning nature, but an excited one; in fact I’m getting quite excited at the thought of life after poker having just written it down.

Tough times

2010-09-13T02:39:00.002+01:00

Obviously no-one wants to hear a poker player bitching and moaning about how bad he's running, so I won't bore you with that. What I do think is worthy of discussion is how we, as poker players actually manage to function under these extreme swings. Online I've lost around $6k playing tournaments in the last two weeks. I understand that considering my average buy in (around $50) this is a natural swing and I can expect this downswing to get much much worse before it gets better.

The main problems with living off playing multi-table tournaments is;
a) You have no idea when your current downswing will end. Obviously it would be good if Stars could pay each reg their tournament equity at the end of each month, but for the most part it's something everyone has to deal with.

b) Confidence. Those of you who know me well will know that I am not someone who suffers from confidence issues. I also pride myself on being level-headed and not delusional; something that turns out to be something of a two-edged sword. I naturally question every negative (and positive) result I have. Are you + EV in these tournaments or cash games? Was that the correct play? I know deep down that I'm a winning player in these games, but each losing session slowly chips away at that.

c) The extra high variance towards the end of tournaments. Let's face it, not everyone runs as well in the end-game, as none of us have a meaningful sample size. No matter how many flips, coolers or suckouts I win in a session, all of my equity will eventually come down to a range flip. In the last week I've come 9th in the fuper; cashed for $2k, first was $25k, I came 11th in the $20r; cashed for $450, first was 9k, and 18th in the $50r for $400, first was 8k. As well as this I've had all manner of deep runs in other tournaments. The point I'm trying to make is that if we're not Shaun Deeb, we only have a certain amount of end games to actually leave our mark.

I'm not exactly sure what me writing this will do, perhaps the honesty of publicly admitting that I'm struggling will do me good, perhaps I'm just wasting my time writing when I should be studying the game itself (something everyone should always be doing no matter how good they are). Hopefully it may give someone who's just starting MTTs an accurate portrayal into what playing them for a living is actually like.

All I know is to keep on grinding, keep a level head and try to play well. There are a lot of WCOOPs left and I'm not going to win any of them if I sit around feeling sorry for myself.

Away from poker my post-vegas summer was amazing. France was blissfully peaceful, Edinburgh was hilarious and great fun and Creamfields rekindled one of my favourite types of music with some amazing people.

Love all of you lots
xoxo

Vegas part 1

2010-07-03T18:34:00.001+01:00

I've just woken up at 11:22, and I'm sitting next to an absolute legend. But we'll have more on that later.

Vegas has been so fun, despite the fact that I've managed less than 7 hours of poker in 5 days. The weather has been over 100 every day, so it's either been a day of lazing by the pool and playing playstation or going into the strip and tasting each casino's range of strawberry daiquiris (Ed is quite the connoisseur unsurprisingly). I'll try to paint some kind of a picture of what's happening, but seeing as I have to keep this blog somewhat safe for work (and believe me, there's a lot of NSFW content), i'll have to tell a lot of stories in person.

Thursday night was pretty insane, we got a limo from our place to Stoney's, which is a modern country and western club, so we all got our line dancing on while chilling out in the VIP section with the county sheriff (who sung and danced every word to Baby Got Back flawlessly). One of our number who shall remain nameless managed to get with a woman who could well have been 3 times his age and as such as earned legendary status.

Cashgames have been going ok, I lost $600 on the first day and had been posting small winners up until last night where I was up about $600 in a 2/5 PLO game and lost a $1500 pot with 5432 vs T764ddxx on 853ddx. It was kind of sick, after he made a huge repot, he showed his hand to the guy next to him which seems like it can just never ever be a made hand so I made a light call hoping to see a wheel wrap with a flushdraw rather than the hand he had. We ran it twice and he obviously got there both times.

I'm about to head off to the 2p2 party which should be a lot of fun, then watch the UFC with the guys in the evening. I will try and blog again in a few days.

Later taters xxx

Some binkage, boredom and goodbye to lovely Brighton

2010-06-24T01:07:00.003+01:00

I had some minor shippage last week! I chopped the £250 ISSOP in London last week for a smidgen over £6k. Thank you to everyone who railed on the gutshot site and for saying such nice things on facebook/forums.

I was talking to Sam G about it a few nights ago, and it really seemed that as long as I ran halfway decent there was a really good chance I was going do well. The bubble was very interesting; there were 100 runners, paying 9 places, 9th receiving £1000 which is a pretty huge bubble. Obviously I dropped a few subtle comments like 'wow that's a huge bubble' and proceeded to be the most active player 10 handed. It's a pretty interesting ICM spot, because the bubble was so huge, but the next 4 payouts were all less than £1k extra so taking a bunch of stupid risks to try and win the tourney certainly seemed to be the order of the day, everything from there was basically me running pretty good. As soon as I got heads up with Demetri, we decided quickly to chop it. He seemed pretty good and if I had any edge on him heads up it certainly seemed negligible. We decided to leave a tiny bit of cash and the trophy to play for; which I won in about 4 hands, getting it in with A5o on a T3T5 board in a 3bet pot when he check raised all in on the turn against his A7o. It feels pretty great to win something, and definitely gives me some breathing room just before Vegas.

Lizzie was away for the last four or so days leaving me in Brighton pretty much on my own, which was cool but I certainly have noticed a few things that occur when you live on your own;

1)I have absolutely no need to actually get dressed. I did flirt with the idea of throwing a dressing gown on to walk to the shop to buy some wine gums, but decided it was too much effort.
2)I go absolutely insane and start talking to myself
3)My music taste becomes much more outgoing and unashamed. I'm pretty sure that I legitimately like Taylor Swift at the moment (see my second point).
4)Listening to The Who on full volume while doing Townsend-esq guitar swings around the house is totally acceptable.

To be honest, I have actually appreciated some time alone, especially as I'm going to be in a guys house in Vegas from Monday for about 3 weeks. I'm planning to take it pretty easy to start with; play some 2/5 and a few tourneys and see where things go from there. I'm so stoked for the trip, i'm roughly as excited as 12 year old fat Joe got when you mentioned ice cream. I don't want to jinx anything but I feel so confident in my game at the moment, and my ability to play live more than ever. I'll try and keep my blog much more regular while I'm in Vegas and post my wins and losses.

I suppose that's about it from me, I'm going to run back to Watford on Friday and that'll be all she wrote from lovely Brighton for now. It's a really lovely place and I could certainly live here later in life. If anyone is around London on Friday/Saturday/Sunday then give me a shout if you want a drink.

Later taters xoxo

A May without a lot of poker

2010-05-28T15:36:00.002+01:00

Sorry about my hiatus from the world of blogging; my excuses this time are twofold. Firstly I've had such little time for poker in the last few weeks (other than a trip up to Nottingham for the UKIPT which i'll touch on later). The second reason is that May was one long breakeven month, I'm writing this on the 28th up approximately $2.5k online and up about £1k live. Apart from bricking a lot of SCOOPs, there isn't really much to report on.

I did manage a trip up the M1 to Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham two weeks ago for the fourth leg of the UKIPT, managing to brick the £560, £330, £150 and £55. Despite not doing well in tournaments I feel that my play was very good over the weekend, and I feel very aggrieved at how tough my main event table was when I was hearing about an incredibly soft field from my friends. Although the poker was disappointing, I caught up with Steph and went out drinking and had an awesome time, which is certainly more fun than slowly losing money to lots of bad live poker players.

Although I've not blogged about it, I'm sure most of you are aware that my Mum did not win Watford, but came a close second (increasing her vote from the last election) to the Conservative Richard Harrington. I've certainly lost a lot of faith in UK politics after May 6th (despite predicting the election result some time ago). I suppose it's now down to Mr Cameron and Clegg to show us all that they can make positive change that they were both promising on the campaign trail.

My last week has been a lot of fun, without playing much poker. Steph decided to take a revision break and come and visit for a few days which was very cool, we distracted Lizzie from her last exam (which she has literally just come home from and I hear went well). For my guilt I played about 110 tournaments last night and won about £2.2k-which is pretty much May's entire profit-playing 180s. I just sharkscoped myself for yesterday and I was running at an incredibly sustainable 269% ROI in 12/180s.

I'm going to Watford tomorrow to see Elton John with my parents (which I am so freaking stoaked for!) and then hitting up Cambridge for some Monday night fezzage. Be there or be square!

later taters
xoxoxo

2010-05-03T14:58:00.002+01:00

I feel that apologising for the punctuality of my weekly blog has become a regular occurrence; and lord knows I hate to be inconsistent. I don't have much of an excuse this time except that I've been busy settling in Brighton and have obviously been playing a lot of poker with the FTOPS and SCOOP well underway.

April is well and truly in the books, it was a very good month for me both live and online, although it did get off to a great start and started to turn sour towards the end, which so far has carried over to the first two days of may. I've turned in 5 losing 180 man sessions in a row now, and I've had deep runs in numerous tournaments in which I've finished in very disappointing positions. I'm currently on a 2k downswing at 180s (that's 166 buyins), over about 600 games. Although I'm mentally tough when it comes to downers, it certainly starts to eat at you when you play 600 tourneys and cannot come top2 in any of them (with about a zillion 10th places as well). Obviously the answer is to put in a good amount of volume to turn this rut around; which is exactly what I'm going to do. Expect to see this run turned around in the near future!

Aside from poker the last few weeks have been really fun, I've gone out in Brighton a few times, as well as a few trips up to London. I'm going to be going back to Watford for a few days to vote (and celebrate with Mum) this week. The good thing about downswings in poker is that it helps you realise what's really important in life.

Well that's all from me, got to hit the 180 tables and turn this bad boy around.

xoxo

A great start to April and live poker trip report

2010-04-15T02:26:00.004+01:00

I should start by apologising for the extremely annoyed rants in my last blog. Although I obviously have a very opinionated view of music, it's not my place to bash artists who are out there doing their thing (even if it is completely shit).

April has been really great poker-wise, I'm up about about $8k playing 180 mans on stars. It's not just the winning that feels great, but playing well (while maintaining supernova pace) and being rewarded by running well really helps to get you out of bed in the morning instead of living my usual lazy lifestyle.

On top of that I'm up about £5k playing live poker from 2 visits to the International. The slight sour note is that I came 13th in the Cash Race final for £750 having had the chiplead with 13 left (cue standard JoeJoe tournament blowup story). I did however swap 10% with Mike Piper who won the whole thing for £15k. The Saturday after I decided to play the £150 (or the Guper as I'm christening it) and ended up chopping it heads up for £2.6k.

Despite running really well live over the last two visits, my taste for it was very much spoiled and I don't know if I'll be playing many live tourneys with less than a £300 buyin in the foreseeable future. Firstly, upon my arrival on Saturday a friend told me that someone who I considered at the very least a well wisher had gone around telling people that I had intentionally dumped chips to Mike P in the Cash Race final. Despite how absurd the idea of me dumping my chips to someone who I have 10% of is, it's also a very serious allegation to be making and even entertaining the idea is highly insulting.

The other situation came up at the final table of the Guper (I'm going to keep on calling it the Guper until it sticks by the way), in which I was berated by 4 players for completely nonsensical things. Firstly, when I refused the ridiculous 'let's do a deal for 10th place' notion, 4 middle aged men started having a go at me. The pick of the insults was, 'You look like the sort of person that wouldn't give a starving man food!'. The second instance was from one of these middle aged guys, who seemed to be really upset after I raised 22 in MP1 then called his 8bb HJ shove. Apparently deuces is not a 'calling all in hand'. I tried to calm myself, try my Angelo-Esq breathing exercises, but he kept on berating. Eventually I couldn't help myself and said in my nicest possible voice, 'You know sir, it's very bad business of you to educate the fish. I'd carry on letting me make these terrible mistakes if I were you.' Obviously that didn't stop him, and in retrospect I should have kept my mouth shut, I don't want to be the sort of person who takes satisfaction from making someone else look a fool.

The fact that they didn't let their points go and kept on having a go really irked me but I've learned in my 5 years of poker to deal with the fact that people cannot think logically when it comes to money. However unpleasant the situation was, it truly means that if I want to, I'll be able to make a living from these kinds of people for the rest of my days.

Life is pretty great away from poker at the moment. I'm moving to Brighton on Monday (I had to push it back a week because I got ill and Hannah offered me a lift) for about 3 months before Vegas. Although I'm really grateful that my parents put me up; or put up with me for so long, I'm really grateful that I am getting out on my own.

I'm probably going to take tomorrow off poker, as I've got Chess with Tautvydas at 5 then Mum is having loads of Lib Dem friends and colleagues over to watch the Prime Minister's debate.

Laters tater
xoxox

A completely non poker related rant

2010-04-05T02:14:00.003+01:00

So I just watched 'the greatest songs of the noughties' and I can't help feeling incredibly disappointed. Apart from it obviously being a very poor decade musically, the list of songs that the channel 4 viewers decided topped the last ten years left a very sour taste. For those of you who missed it;

20. Leave Right Now- Will Young
19. Ruby- Kaiser Chiefs
18. Valerie- Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse
17. Viva La Vida- Coldplay
16. Take Me Out- Franz Ferdinand
15. Mercy- Duffy
14. Patience- Take That
13. Stan- Eminem
12. I Don't Feel Like Dancing- Scissor Sisters
11. Hey Ya!- Outkast
10. You're Beautiful- James Blunt
9. Can't Get You Out Of My Head- Kylie Minouge
8. Crazy In Love- Beyonce
7. Rule The World- Take That
6. Crazy- Gnarls Barkley
5. Rehab- Amy Winehouse
4. Sex On Fire- Kings Of Leon
3. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor- Arctic Monkeys
2. Mr. Brightside- The Killers
1. Chasing Cars- Snow Patrol

To be fair I completely agree with songs 9, 6,4, 3 and 2 being included in the list because apart from all being decent songs in my humble (lol) opinion, they were huge in the charts (especially Kylie, Gnarls Barkley and the Arctic Monkeys).

I wasn't exactly expecting a spectacle of all the songs I like released by far and away the best and most interesting artists of the decade simply because most of those bands haven't had much success in the singles department. I was shocked to see a list this bad though.

If you're a pop fan, would you not have expected something more like Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, or Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid20, perhaps Where Is The Love by the Black Eyed Peas?

Possibly you're a hip hop fan, and while I'm the first to admit that I don't know my Puff from my Diddy, one Eminem song probably does not fit your description of a fully musically representative poll. From the more commercial side of things perhaps 99 Problems by Jay Z would have fit in this list nicely or maybe you liked Dry Your Eyes by The Streets.

I think the biggest injustice in this poll is that somehow very average bands like Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs as well as a simply awful contribution from James Blunt when Jonny Cash's cover of Hurt lies in no-mans-land.

It strikes me that unless you're a Snow Patrol fan(and let's face it, who really is?)you're unlikely to be satisfied with the contribution that the great British public has provided us. Instead of mourning this list, lets remember that this decade wasn't a complete waste of time; Radiohead released four world class records, as did Muse. Pink Floyd reunited for an amazing gig at Live8 and music lovers in the UK showed Simon Cowell that he can't buy the Christmas number one anymore, he has to actually put out decent artists from now on.

Thank you for listening to my rant. All feedback is appreciated.
xoxox

Failure and new oppertunities...

2010-04-01T02:30:00.004+01:00

Well it's certainly been a bit of a hectic month, and not all for good reasons I'm afraid. I'm very sorry I haven't been able to blog to update my challenge, but to be honest it's because it's been so far from my mind.

Basically the challenge was going swimmingly, I was up to $1200 after about 10 days, which is more than on course to reach my target, then I had a personal issue (which i'm afraid I can't really discuss on the internets), and I had to take a week off, essentially making the challenge impossible. In the time since then I've made about $3k playing sngs but I'm still well short of the 10k. Obviously i'm upset that I decided to put my mind to something and I couldn't complete it, but occasionally life throws banana skins. To be honest when push comes to shove, we play poker so we can live our lives more easily, we don't live simply to play poker. All of my bets have been payed and I hope you'll give me the pleasure of booking some action the next time I try something this crazy.

For those of you who don't know about my family, my Mum (who literally just turned 55, happy birthday Ma!) is standing as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Watford in the UK general election in just over a month, so it's safe to say that things have been manic for her and my Dad. I'm trying to remain as non politically affiliated for as long as possible, not because I don't think the Lib Dems are the best of the three major parties but because I have issues with the populist ways all three do business.

The only other major piece of news is that I'm going to be moving out of Watford in about 2 weeks to go and live with Lizzie in Brighton for a few months until Vegas. It's primarily to help one of her flatmates out, but I think it'll be a super fun experience, that is if Lizzie doesn't kill me in her pre-exam hysteria or I don't TC myself to death in the haze of post-exam celebration.

That's just about it for now, sorry for being such a shit blogger.

Loves and hugs
xoxoxo

Bet update 02/03

2010-03-02T23:32:00.002Z

I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you another quickie (another reason you can call me Joejoe 'quicker than the speed of light' Whittaker...)

It's been a really good 5 days (even though I've only actually played for four), I'm currently at $726 and feeling very good about having this bad boy done by the end of March. I've played about 1036 sngs in that time and I'm not really feeling the burnout yet; perhaps because I've only had one losing day. I suspect that the real test of character will come in when I have a few losing days in a row.

I've played 3 London Poker masters events, the £300 NL, £200 NL and £100 HORSE, not cashing in any of them. I was pretty happy with my play in all 3, except my exit hand from the £300 in which I had completely misread the situation and tried to squeeze in a spot where I had much less fold equity than I thought.

Bet update;
Sngs played; 1036
Roll; 726.26
Profit; 526.26

Quick update

2010-02-26T00:26:00.002Z

Okie dokie, it's been tiring and frustrating but things have started to fall into place (I hope).

Sngs played; 573
Account balance; 265.61

59.6 buyins up from 573 sngs, comes to about 9.71 roi which is obviously well below expectation, I have started to hit a bit of a boomswitch after 2 days of breaking even. Hopefully I won't be at this level for more than 4/5 more days of grinding. I feel that the land of the 2/180 will be a utopia.

Hopefully I'll get a good 250 in tomorrow before playing the £300 on Saturday.

Love you all and good luck to me xoxo

Time to get my grind on

2010-02-23T15:16:00.005Z

Short blog post coming up. I've decided that Feb was a complete shambles on my part in terms of volume. I'm at 3300 VPP with little hope of getting to 7500 before the end of the month. So I've decided on a decent punishment/motivational challenge that certainly fits the crime. I've withdrawn all but $200 from my stars account and I'm going to try and Boku it up to $10k. I'm not planning on doing this as a prop bet (although if anyone wants to put any money on this then I'd be glad to take up to $5k's worth of action). If I manage to keep myself busy and determined I should be at 10k about a month from tomorrow 24th March.

The kicker for me is that aside from the 4 live tournaments at the London Poker masters which I've already committed myself to, I shan't be playing any other form of poker until this is completed. If I do, I'm going to instantly ship $1k to charity.

Here's a screenshot of my cashier now with the bankroll guidelines I've set myself. I'm going to be starting tomorrow so good luck me.

I'm a lazy lazy man

2010-02-19T12:49:00.005Z

Good afternoon, I'm joejoe, the guy that pretends to blog here on a weekly basis.

If it makes any difference, I've been really lazy in every aspect of my life this month, let alone blogging. I'm currently sitting at 2100 VPPs for the month, which means if I want to maintain Supernova then I'll have to put a major volume push through next week. I really don't feel like it, but I think future Joe will be really mad if I undo all the good work I did last year and forfeit a lot of money in rakeback just because i'm feeling lazy now.

Poker is going pretty well in general since we last spoke, I won the £300 freeze at the international for £7k, then came 2nd in the £100 the week after for £1500 and on Wednesday came 5th in the new £100 for £500. Cash has been so so, I won about 1k on Wednesday before and after the tourney, but had a nightmare -2k session Monday.

I was taking an online pummelling at the start of the month; which is obviously part of the reason I was avoiding playing. I didn't cash in a 12/180 in about 3 sessions (which is about 150 $12s, 20 $36s and 5 $60s) but luckily on monday I managed to win and come 2nd in two $36s to reverse most of that bad run.

Life has been very good away from poker, have been going out a lot and just chilling when not playing. I imagine that I'll probably make it up to Cambridge sometime in March to party on down.

Currently just browsing Vegas flights for summer, I'll probably book all that jazz soon because the prices seem to be going up a lot.

loves and hugs xx

Can't grind. Won't Grind

2010-01-15T21:01:00.002Z

I think I made one fatal error in my last blog post about how I'm going to be an amazing SNG and MTT grinder this year. I failed to take into account that the very reason I am who I am is because I am in the front running for the laziest man in the world competition. At about the 2 week mark I've played about 5 days, although to be fair I've put in a lot of volume those days and am sitting at about 5500 VPP (which is on pace with my targets). I think of up somewhere in the region of $2k, although it's hard to break down properly at the moment because I played some cash game and MTT sessions to help mix it up.

Speaking of cash sessions I just returned from a nightmare of a cash session live, dropped £2k at £1/3 9max. I'm actually fairly mad at myself for how badly I played, it wasn't so much that I was tilting out of my mind (which I used to do and learned to either remedy it or quit the game), but because I was at a table of droolers I thought I'd be the durrrr-esq big man, playing every hand, finding 3bet and river raises that really didn't merit it, and got myself into some really stupid spots. I suppose I've got to learn that the only way you can beat 9max holdem is by playing somewhere close to 10/8; which is obviously really boring.

The flip side is that after the game broke, 6 of us played the most epic game of Legs I've ever been a part of. We had a £1 running ante and the biggest game ended with a £78 pot. It really cheered my spirits up despite being stuck £300-500 for most of the game, just because of the sheer enjoyment of the awesome game. For those of you who don't know the game (which I'd expect would be just about everyone) I'm going to try and get Simon H to write an official Wiki for the rules, because it's without a doubt the best gambling game i've ever seen.

Not too much non-pokering news this week, except the fact that I'm really missing going out and having the amazing times I had in December. If you guys could all finish your exams quicker, that'd be dandy.

Loves and hugs xxx

I love all of you very much

2010-01-06T02:07:00.003Z

I should start off by apologising yet again for being such a terrible blogger, I do appreciate that you guys take an active interest in what I do and I shall try and post more (and hopefully more interesting things).

The first and most important thing I should get into is that I made the top 200 of the Pokerstars December tournament leader board, meaning I won a seat into a very juicy freeroll with 5, 3 and 2 stamp passports as top three prizes (as well as cash prizes for 4-18 as well). For the non poker literate of you (and the cash game players), a Passport is essentially entry to the number of Pokerstars sponsored live tournaments that the 'stamp' is equivalent to. A 5 stamp is worth roughly 70k, a 3 stamp 42k and a 2 stamp 28k. I suppose the hard part is already done, as December was a very sick grind. Now all I need to do is win a tournament with 200 of the best players in the world, just looking at the Lobby with all the players registered, its choc-a-block with superstars (and D1rtyR1v3r lol). I suppose I should also give a huge shout out and well done to Aprilsfool, who at the start of 2009 I was grinding Hyper Turbos with, who put in a monster grind in the second half of the year to win the Yearly TLB and take down a 6 Stamp for himself. Well done kiddo, you're a sicko.

Part of the reason I've been such a terrible blogger is that my birthday, Christmas and New years were 11 days apart, so aside from the insane grind I spent a long time getting heavily intoxicated. I really enjoyed my birthday celebrations in the bridge with all of my lovely friends, followed by a quiet family Christmas in Watford, then an awesome night out with Lizzie in Brighton with her uni friends. Part of the beginnings of the new year is remembering how awesome you have it, and how much you complain about everything because you have a stressful job. This holiday period I really remembered how amazing my friends and family are, and how nothing would really be worth it without them.

To the future! The short term goals are mostly poker related. I've set myself the task of 10k VPP/month for every month this year, which is fairly easy if I dedicate myself. In fact, Ken and I have a $500 failure-to-grind penalty for each month, so I'll have to make sure I'm as dedicated as I know I can be. I've started off January by playing MTT Sit and Goes, mostly the $12/180 mans and whatever $36/180s that run. Two days in and the grind is firmly on, and I'm actually enjoying myself (something must be wrong?!) My current stats look something like this;

$12/180s; 338
$38/180s; 35
$60/90s; 2
About 25 MTTs ranging from $11 to $55

net; +$1045
2349.41 VPPs
8222.93 FPPs

All very pleasing so far, but I'll admit that I did win a $36/180 about an hour ago for $1700, so my stats would look much more soul-crushing without that. My other goal is Vegas related, which I'm about 90% sure I'm going to do. All I need to do now is take the plunge and actually buy the plane ticket.

My non poker goals seem to be going well too. Firstly, I want to swim 3 times a week. Since I've swum both yesterday and today, I'm one day away from freerolling the rest of the week. I'm not sure how long this will last, but we can't keep all our resolutions can we? The second is to be up and awake by 11AM each day. I've decided to keep this one quite lax, since I should probably be allowed a lay-in if I go deep in a tournament, or stay up to watch the playoffs that start on Saturday (which I am STOKED about by the way).

Aside from being a boring online geek, I managed to sample some fine live poker already, road tripping up to Nottingham on Saturday/Sunday for Dusk Till Dawn's monthly £300 with Dave, Phil, Ric and Luc. Although I only lasted until level 3 of the tournament, I had a few decent cash game sessions and ended a small winner for the weekend (although I did remember how much I hate full ring cash holdem). I do really love the venue and will certainly be heading up next month for the same tournament, hopefully it can sort out it's financial problems and stay afloat because it really is the center of live poker in the UK.

Sorry for the long ramble this week, but I had a lot to say.

Loves and hugs xxx

Getting my December grind on

2009-12-14T15:25:00.002Z

Ah! Another weekend of tournament poker in the books and shock horror, I somehow booked a winner winning both the $22 6max (for $2k) and the $27.50 360 cap (for 1.7k). Obviously not the big scores I'm looking for, but it certainly feels good to win two tourneys. I also made another deep run in the million last night, eventually finishing 250th or something. I'm afraid there's no interested hand history for this one, simply lost AK to QQ for all of the cheese. Despite 2 deep runs in majors in consecutive weeks, I'm brimming with confidence and feel that the big score is just around the corner.

For those of you who are not poker players, or just not tournament players, Stars is doing a really sick promotion for the December Tournament Leader Board (http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/passport/december/?utm_id=6), which in a nutshell means that if you finish in the top200 at the end of the month, you win a ticket to freeroll with 3 Stars Passports and cash prizes are up for grabs. I currently am sitting in 236th place with 3633 points. I figure if I max out on 12/180s for the rest of the month I should be close to a lock for top 200, but just to make sure, i'm going to play a ton of big field tournaments over the next few weeks just in case. Don't be surprised to see me playing a load of $1 freezeouts!

I suppose that's about it, I'd like to give a very loving shout out to Marty who is celebrating his 21st in Tally today, I wish I could be there to get wrecked with you sir. As for my birthday, obviously anyone who is around Cambridge next Monday is more than welcome to join, just hit me up on facebook/aim/skype for details.

Love you all

xx

The morning after the night before

2009-12-12T14:48:00.003Z

Yesterday was a messy one, just like the last time I went out with Ed and ended up with a huge cut on my gum from trying to drink out of a smashed Corona bottle (that really impressed the girls we were talking to) before getting kicked out of a cab for chundering. Last night was the 'GOSCARS' and as per usual it was just an excuse for everyone; especially me, Ed, Sam, Nico and India to get absolutely hammered. For those of you who aren't aware, the Goscars evening is the annual award ceremony for performances at the Gutshot, followed by a fun £50 KO tourney. All seemingly nice and fun, well that was until Ed and I came up with the idea of 'the tournament poker drinking game'. The rules are simple, all the players in the game have their chip counts taken at the end of each level and the player with the fewest chips has to buy the round of everyone else (the tournament had 15 minute levels by the way). There was an extra added bonus that if you busted out, upon leaving the game you buy a round of shots too. Despite never having to buy a round and lasting longest in the tourney, India was the first to go for a TC (tactical chunder), and I certainly wasn't far behind.

Apparently the tournament poker drinking game wasn't quite enough and Ed and I (who were tablemates) started on the double vodka/cokes and also managed to sink a few sporadic shots of Samuel Buca with Dhaam, JJ and Barry.

After I busted the tourney at about 11:45; which coincidentally was the last point I remember knowing the time, I went to the bar with Ed and Lou-Lou and as far as I can tell, in mid conversation with Ed, simply stopped talking and walked outside for my first TC. The wall to the side of the club was my first victim, swiftly followed by me trying to walk to old street underground only to stop 20 meters down the road to settle for about 10 minutes (this is where Phil saw me 'laying in my own pool of vomit').

As I slowly stumbled on, my next resting place was waiting for a tube to Euston, where I expertly found a good hiding spot to throw up in (especially sorry for whoever have to clean that one up) and I think some poor girl even came up to me and asked if I needed any help; to which I very politely declined. I managed to hold everything in when I was actually on the tube (which I think took almost all of my tactical knowhow), and the next place I remember being after that was Euston station toilets which funnily was the first time of the night I actually managed to throw up in a toilet or sink all night. After that I stumbled on the last train home and parked myself in the train toilet for the 20 minute journey to Watford; no prizes for guessing what I got up to. All in all, having left the club at 11:45, it took me well over 90 minutes to make the 7 minute journey from the club to Euston, and there are several things that are currently unexplained-like why I have a fairly deep cut on my thumb and bruises all over my body-that I'm sure will come to me in time. When I got to Watford, I stumbled home, threw up once more in my toilet before falling happily asleep in front of Eddie Izzard.

All in all, thanks very much to Barry for putting on such a fun evening, I look forward to making an even bigger dick out of myself next year.

Other than last night it had been a fairly quiet week. I had an awesome time out with Lizzie and Sarah on Monday, having dinner and predrinking and Sarah's before going to some club in Soho. I also managed to put in a winning live session on Wednesday to the tune of about £750. Im looking forward to putting in some MTT volume this weekend, hopefully that 6 figure score is around the corner.

Love and hugs to you all
xx

Soul crushing weekend, but certainly taking positives

2009-12-07T03:50:00.002Z

I'm blogging at 3:50 GMT, which means I've abandoned hope of Favre and his Vikings making a comeback and giving me 5 correct Sunday Night Football picks in a row, I suppose the run had to end at some point. I've also drunk quite a lot of beer in the last 90 minutes so forgive me if my blog isn't up to it's usual grammatical standards.

Basically this weekend reminded me why I quit playing tournament poker for a living and moved towards cash games, on each day I had a sick deep run in two huge field tournaments; on Saturday the $11/30 Guaranteed (with 6000 players) and on Sunday the $215 Sunday Warmup (with 4700 players) coming 18th and 25th respectively. Although retrospectively I can't really fault the way I played it's is extremely hard to go so deep in these tournaments and live with winning a few buyins.

Saturday's deep run was a bit of a joke (as you'd expect with such a low buyin), as the chipleader was a complete maniac (and not the good kind), the first spot I realised this was when he 3b/called my 30bb shove with 35 left HJ vs btn with K9s (and luckily my 77 held) but my AQo was not so lucky vs his K6s when I r/shipped UTG vs UTG+1 with 18 left 50bb deep. Having such a novice in the tournament really creates a strange dynamic, and I thought AQo was basically good to go with considering he'd 3b 7/8 of my opens since he'd been on my left and there was a decent chance I was at least a 70% favourite (with a small chance he may fold).

The Warm Up was effectively decided by one; what I think is a very marginal spot with JJ in MP2;

Poker Stars $200+$15 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t20000/t40000 Blinds + t4000 - 8 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BB: t1553562 M = 16.89
UTG: t1105280 M = 12.01
UTG+1: t769303 M = 8.36
MP1: t1717114 M = 18.66
Hero (MP2): t1761736 M = 19.15
CO: t701846 M = 7.63
BTN: t1523630 M = 16.56
SB: t1285372 M = 13.97

Pre Flop: (t92000) Hero is MP2 with J J
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to t99779, MP1 raises to t560000, Hero???

I had no specific reads, but the table had been fairly active and there had been a decent amount of 3betting going on (even if most of it was from me and one other player). It's a fairly complicated hand just to 'run' on stove because of the possible side pots and overlays created, but it seems that if MP1 is raising a hand he's willing to go with for 19bb but folding all but AK, QQ+ then we're making a decent profit, but if he's not 3betting much more than AK and QQ+ then it's kind of spewy. Retrospectively it seems to be somewhere exactly in the middle of those two, probably folding out AQ (which is awesome) and TT/99 (which is to be expected). It still seems really close and i'll run the numbers properly tomrorow.

Despite the feeling of shock directly after busting both tourneys, I'm feeling pretty awesome now. I've made money in the last month or so away from tourneys so it seems that every time I get deep in a tournament it's some kind of a bonus. I'm really happy I decided to focus on cash games, and as well as improving my game it's generally just made me a happier person.

I'm thinking I'm going to put a ton of cash game volume in over the next few weeks, up until my birthday weekend, where I'll go out with my family on the Saturday, maybe play MTTs on the sunday and hopefully do something in Cambridge on the monday. I love you all lots for following my blog and the constant support you all give me.

Loves and hugs xx

Live heaters, Parties...oh yeah and one of the greatest bands of the decade

2009-12-05T02:55:00.002Z

Well it's been an interesting week to say the very least. Just over a week ago I essentially had a bit of a whine about not running well in November and apparently that's all I needed to give me a kick up the backside, actually play some hands and start making money. As well as being up 25 buyins in 7k hands online, I managed to come 5th in the £300 freezeout at the international on Saturday, and have two very profitable live 1/2 Omaha sessions where I really felt I was playing close to my A-game (as well as obviously running hotter than Usain Bolt).

Aside from poker I went to Nel's 21st Birthday shindig on Wednesday which apart from being the best girl-to-guy ratio I've ever seen (about 40 girls; most of whom were very attractive, to 4 guys; with me being the only one for about 2 hours) it was also generally a really fun night in which I made some new friends and happily drunk until I had to stumble on the last train home.

On my way home I just happened to get a text from Charlie T to the tune of, 'Joejoe, I happen to have 2 guest passes to go and see a Doves set in Leicester square tomorrow', to which I responded with an appropriate 'hell yeahz'. The venue itself; a small Church in Soho was quite strange but the band certainly didn't disappoint. The set was rather short but very enjoyable and I can tick one extra band of my 'top ten bands to see before they break up' (Blur and U2 still topping that last at the moment).

One funny situation I got myself in this week was being told to quit my job by a complete stranger. Well actually that one happens on something close to a daily basis but the strange part about this one is that I didn't even mention the fact that I play poker for a living. The Chinese Herbal medicine woman who I sought advice on how to cure my insomnia from was so distraught that I thought it was an early night to be getting to bed at 5am that she advised that I quit my job immediately. I thought her head may have exploded if I had told her I gamble for thousands of pounds each day.

Despite having a what is essentially a +£5k week playing live, I'm still pretty over live poker. I'd probably make the trip into London for an especially juicy live 1/2 Omaha game (perhaps when Wayra returns to London), but the prospect of sitting at a poker table all night playing 20 hands an hour really doesn't appeal to me (especially as i'm not getting as many FPPs as I do on stars).

Hears to hoping all you beautiful people had as much fun this week as I did

Later taters
xxx

Of all the things I've lost I miss my mind the most

2009-11-26T21:30:00.002Z

Well that's it, I feel I've crossed the threshold into actual madness. The idea of winning money at poker for a sustainable period of time just seems a foreign concept right now. I'm aware that I don't do myself any favours by choosing games that are so high variance (traditionally turbo MTTs and now 6max and heads up PLO), but eventually the mental strain of the long losing streaks just tear your mind apart. Since the middle of October i'm winning something of the tune of $1600 (and that's including an $800 supernova milestone bonus). Considering the amount of time and effort I've put in during this period, it equates somewhere close to flipping burgers. Worst of all, I've begun severely doubting myself in terms of both raw talent and my ability to concentrate and play my A game for long periods of time. It seems that those are attributes aren't just something a player can work on, but is something someone is stuck with. I'm going to have a real think about how able I am to actually win enough at poker to sustain myself in the manner i've grown accustomed to.

As well as doubting myself, it's just about put out the faint flicker of enjoyment I once had for poker. I suppose the thing that most people don't understand about me is that doing anything that I can't defend as 100% perfect is nothing but a failure in my eyes and I end up beating myself up over plays that will still arguably make me money if in hindsight I can anticipate better lines. The only thing that still drives me to play poker is firstly my desire to be the absolute best version of me, and secondly my huge ego which won't allow me to stop playing before I'm rich enough and have accomplished enough to consider all this time a success.

Hopefully the second paragraph makes how tough this last month has been easier to understand; it's like every time I load up pokerstars I'm losing be it making the right play and getting unlucky or making bad choices and still losing.

It seems that right now there isn't much I can do but bite the bullet and keep grinding hard. I'm probably going to play the monthly £300 at the international on Saturday, then I'm going to have to put in a ton of volume in December and try and stop the rut.

Sorry for all the non poker players that read this, I love you all very much but this has been the major highlight of the last month (the only highlight in reality). Next time I blog i'll have something non-pokery to say.

Loves and hugs xx

I may be the worst blogger on earth

2009-11-18T04:40:00.002Z

Apologies to all of you guys who humour me by reading my blog. I have been absolutely terrible at updating despite some of you riding me about it (Ken and Lizzie, that counts as a shout out).

In short I suppose I've just been having a lot of fun relaxing and going out mixed with an insane amount of volume in the last few weeks (I finally got supernova on friday for my efforts). My last 3 consecutive Fridays have been house parties (with another this Friday), after the best part of a year feeling slightly old and out of place it feels good to hang with old friends in London (as well as the awesome ones who traveled from afar for Sarah's 21st).

In my poker life everything is going pretty well since the end of the EPT, just been grinding away at small stakes and im up like 2k in the last week or so. It's long work for not a huge reward, but it feels pretty good to be working hard and getting something out of it.

Sorry for the short update, but I will be a better blogger!
loves and hugs to you all xx

Reading TR Part 3+ WCOOP/General poker update

2009-09-17T17:09:00.002+01:00

Lizzie has been constantly bugging me to finish this report which I said would be done about 10 days ago. The stupidest thing is that I do so little, there's no excuse for me to be as lazy as I am; but hey, you just have to love me the way I am.

Sunday
I woke up at midday on Sunday morning, slightly hung over and very disappointed by last nights 'headlining' act. It didn't help with my usual level of first-3-hours-after-I-wake grumpiness, but I somehow managed to put it to one side and drag myself down to the NME stage to see Frank Turner with Lizzie and my mood changed instantaneously. Having only heard a few of his songs before I was skeptical of how good a full set of his would be, but I had to eat my words as he gave a full 40 minutes of great acoustic tunes with really got the crowd going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrkdYXJK6_A
This was actually taken from a short set he did at the BBC introducing stage shortly after his set (his full set wasn't on TV).

As Frank Turner ended I wandered around and tried to find Tom and Fiona, and after some half-arsed searching I wandered back in to see Deadmau5, who despite headling the dance stage, was playing in the early afternoon (I'm assuming because he had to go and play Creamfields or Notting Hill in the evening). I actually missed half the show because of a distinct lack of phone to tell me the time, but the parts I saw from the back of the crowded tent were pretty awesome. I definitely thought it was a shame I didn't see the full set, so I'll have to catch some sometime soon.

After Deadmau5 I headed back to the campsite to eat, drink and chat about how amazing the final night was going to be; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, followed by Bloc Party then Radiohead.

At about 6:30 we rolled down to the main stage to see the band who Lizzie and Abbie had been really excited to see all day and they certainly didn't disappoint with their very own brand of weird rock, it seems that Karen O is; and has always been, everything Lady Gaga strives for, but does it while managing to keep credibility and put out good music.

I'm kind of tilted that this was the only performance highlight I could find;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/yeahyeahyeahs/

Bloc Party were next to hit the stage with their soulful styled rock anthems getting a slightly rained on crowd into the mood to jump around and sing along. This was the third straight year that this band had played at Reading (and according to the band, their last for a while), and they seemed as fresh and eager to please as first timers. Despite the fact I'd never really been into this band before, I really enjoyed their set and put me in a great mood for Radiohead.

Again, the good people at the bbc have decided to remove all but 40 second clips of all their bands, so this will have to do;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/blocparty/

As Bloc Party left the stage a nervous wait began as roadies started to set up for debatably the greatest band in the world, and I'm sure one that will be looked at half a century from now with the likes of your Pink Floyds and Led Zeppelins. Having seen them the year before on tour I know that they have a very liberal choice of setlists, ranging from random songs on EPs to their mega-hits from The Bends and OK Computer. Being such a huge fan I would have been happy with either Karma Police or Stop Whispering. What I was not expecting was them to open with Creep, a song which they didn't play in concert for 10 years from 94 to 04.

To be honest, it shows why a band like Radiohead are where they are today, they gave the people what they want. I'm aware that not everyone in the tens of the thousands watching the main stage that night was as bigger fan as I am, and wanted to hear their hits. Radiohead somehow produced the best setlist I think i've ever seen in;

* 1.Creep
* 2.The National Anthem
* 3.15 Step
* 4.There There
* 5.All I Need
* 6.Nude
* 7.2+2=5
* 8.The Gloaming
* 9.Climbing Up The Walls
* 10.Street Spirit (Fade Out)
* 11.Reckoner
* 12.Karma Police
* 13.Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
* 14.Just
* 15.Idioteque
* 16.Exit Music (For A Film)
* 17.Bodysnatchers
* 18.You And Whose Army?
* 19.Lucky
* 20.These Are My Twisted Words
* 21.Jigsaw Falling into Place
* 22.Paranoid Android
* 23.Everything In Its Right Place

Sitting here in front of my computer I'm having trouble finding the words to really express how awesome those 2 hours were, basically just singing/dancing and generally rocking out to some of my favorite songs around thousands of other people who were also near the front who were singing/dancing and generally rocking out to their favorite band. As Jonny finished the last notes to Everything In Its Right Place, I left the main stage almost shaken at how much I'd enjoyed the set. Definitely the best band in a really great 4 days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/radiohead/index.shtml

F U BBC for not having it all up.

As I think back about that weekend, it's certainly the great performances by the likes of Radiohead, Florence+The Machine, The Prodigy and Frank Turner that I remember rather than the child like attitude of the Kings of Leon or the general terrible set by the Arctic Monkeys. I'm afraid I had to leave a ton of stories out to keep this SFW (my parents read this blog), but if you catch me on facebook/IM then I'm sure i'd be able to fill you in.

I'm certainly looking forward to hitting up a festival next year. I feel slightly old for Reading, so that may not happen unless the lineup is amazing again. Might hit up Global again if people are going. I suppose it's useless talking about until the lineups are announced.

Just a quick poker update. I've basically bricked the WCOOP, cashing in about 1/10 events, but my non festival results have been okay so I'm only stuck 1/2k since the start. I also won a live £200 HORSE event last tuesday for £2500 or so, basically proving I am the master of all games.

The end of September/beginning of October will be pretty busy with all the yanks in town for the WSOPE/EPT London. As well as that, my good friend Marty MF Mathis is coming to stay for a bit before he hits up Europe for a few months; and who knows I may join him for a bit.

Thanks for reading this huge tl;dnr
xxx

Reading TR part2 +WCOOP

2009-09-04T15:54:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a long 24 hours since I promised i'd put part 2 up (mostly because it was closer to 72) but that's mostly because other than 2 short trips to the gym i've been glued to my computer screen. Last night I made the final table of the Daily 30k Guaranteed but ran Queens into Aces vs the chipleader to come 6th for a mere $1500. FML!

So back to Reading;

Saturday;
I woke on Saturday morning with the familiar headache and bad back that I'm now growing quite fond of, almost like I couldn't be having fun at a festival without them. I managed to resist the urge of Fightstar on the main stage and decided to accompany Lizzie, Abbie and Laura to Spinnerete on the NME stage who gave a good rocky half hour of songs that despite not knowing, I was more than happy to dance along to. Unfortunately, the BBC chose not to record this set for TV, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

After the set I left the girls to walk back to Tom's campsite to meet up with him, and we decided to go straight back into the festival and chill in the comedy tent for abit. It was pretty good to sit there and chill for a few hours, even if some of the comics were abit suspect.

Firstly we saw Jessica Delfino who, although showed some merit was stifled by a) not being very funny and b) because she wasn't very funny the crowd begun to talk so it became harder to hear her. She occasionally hit upon some genius one liners but finding a laugh seemed quite similar to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Then we saw Gary Delaney, who strikes me as everything you might find at a Jimmy Carr concert. He stood there for about 30 minutes and delivered roughly 150 simple buildup-punchline jokes, which were admittedly very funny in places. Although I enjoyed his set, I kind of felt cheap for enjoying such a basic brand of comedy afterwards.

Lastly and most controversially, Doug Stanhope an American comic who can only be described as a cross between Frankie Boyle and Jerry Sadowitz. If Gary Delaney made me feel cheap for laughing at his set, Stanhope certainly made me feel dirty for his racist/sexist/masochistic/narcissistic view of life. Tom's girlfriend Fiona did, however, not laugh and actually started heckling him (safely from the back of the tent) and got up and walked out before the end of his set. Luckily she returned after and we all went back to our respective campsites.

As I got back to the campsite, everyone was there getting food and tanked up for the evening bill of the Prodigy, followed by the Arctic Monkeys and as the time came nearer we slowly trundled towards the main stage.

In short it was an evening of incredibly ups and downs. We got to witness one of the really great live bands of our generation in the Prodigy, who made close to 100,000 people dance/mosh/sing along to their rocky dance tunes. The one small downside of the performance for us was that we were just in front of the second set of speakers, putting us in quite a quiet spot, making it a bit too quiet for our youthful ears that are used to music on full volume.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/prodigy/

(You may need to confirm you are over 16 to watch this video)

Unfortunately for us, whatever comes up must come down as we went from one of the best live bands of our generation to one of the worst. The Arctic Monkeys did not only have the same 'fuck you' attitude as the Kings Of Leon, but they couldn't back that up with a really good quality set. They played almost all of their new album which was released about a week before the performance (and in that week was completely panned by the press), leaving the crowd with not much to do but stand there and wonder how a band like this could ever headline a festival of this stature, much less win a Mercury music prize. I wouldn't really advise watching, but I may as well keep with the rest of the report

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/arcticmonkeys/video3.shtml#emp

As it's 4:30 and my tournaments are just starting now, I shall have to leave Sunday until tomorrow. Good luck to all my poker people in the $215 Pot Limit Omaha tonight as well as the $200 rebuy NL Single draw and the $109 8 game.

Later taters xx

Whoop whoop Reading TR Part 1

2009-09-01T13:05:00.004+01:00

Wow, I've been the shittest blogger in the world recently, but life's been abit busy with poker and the like. That's the excuse and i'm sticking to it.

I thought I'd hit up the blog scene again because I just came back from a wicked weekend at Reading festival 2009, in which I saw some really good bands and had a really good time in general.

The weekend really started on Wednesday night when i decided to play a bunch of tournaments through the night, which proved to be a good idea because I somehow managed a 7k heater in about 100 games. I woke up the next morning with a spring in my step, knowing that I'm now well over half way into the huge hole that is my makeup.

Thursday;
I woke up lazily on Thursday morning to a call from my friend Lizzie who was already at the festival asking me when I was going to come, I told her 'soon', put the phone down and slept for a few more hours before finally slumping out of bed and plodding towards the train with a bunch of heavy bags/tent/sleeping bag. After 2 hours of napping on the train, I was in the beautiful city of Reading; just one of the tens of thousands of young, happy-go-lucky campers who'd came to see what was probably the best festival lineup in our lifetimes. The first thing we did when I arrived was go to Tesco for get supplies (by which I mean alcohol) with Lizzie's Bury friends, the guys I was camping with, and then go explore the campsite with cider and spirits in hand. Since there was no music until Friday, we just chilled around the fairground and had some bananas. I did prop bet Lizzie £100 to run across the dodge ems while they were going which she promptly snap-called me on and earned herself what she said for her was 2 days work. I think the stupidest part of the bet was that she probably would have done it for about 1/4 of the price, but at any rate it was a fun start to the weekend.

Friday;
I woke up on Friday morning with the familiar headache and bad back that is usually created by the combination for booze, bananas and sleeping in a tent, but I wasn't going to let that ruin what looked like a fine day of music. There was a slight drama at about 10am, when Lizzie went to withdraw some cash and she found herself with £2k less than she thought she had, after much nail biting and talk of identity theft and a 60 minute walk into Reading city center we found that Lizzie is in fact terrible with money and had simply spent about £1500 without knowing it in the last few months. At least the journey back to the campsite was much more fun than it's counterpart, with us taking the piss out of Lizzie for the absurd situation she got herself in.

We got back to the festival at about 2:30, just in time to be convinced to go to the arena and check out Little Boots, who I really enjoyed. Her girly brand of electro-pop was a great way to show the world my dance moves in what was just generally a really fun and upbeat set. I wanted to try and embed some video clips into this, but the bbc website is being rubbish and protecting against that, so I'll just have to give links;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/littleboots/video2.shtml#emp

We then headed back to the campsite for a quick half our alcohol refuel before going in for the rest of the evening. First up on the bill was New Found Glory, who Lizzie and I saw in honour of our friend Emo who couldn't make it to the festival despite having tickets. It was pretty good to rock out to abit of emo/pop-punk that I haven't really heard for 5/6 years, I think the last time I saw them when when they were supporting Greenday in 03.

After that we met the rest of the group of people we were camping with to go and see Florence and the Machine, the band I was most looking forward to that day. About a month previously, I had bought her album and had been slightly embaressed to admit that it was pretty much the best album I'd heard this year. After her performance on the NME stage, I'm certainly not ashamed anymore. She gave an amazing performance that could be confused with an aging rocker who'd given hundreds of festival performances. I literally can't give high enough praise about how good she was;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/florenceandthemachine/index.shtml#emp

edit; can't find a one song clip of that performance, so just watch as much as you want (the 30 minute highlights are well worth the watch fwiw)

After Florance I was pretty buzzed, and having met my friend Tom and his girlfriend we rushed over to try and check out the end of Placebo (which we just missed) so we hung around for abit checking out some random bands/comedy performances before eventually deciding to go and see the Kaiser Chiefs.

We obviously weren't expecting much, but I've got to say they were quite a lot of fun, we danced it away and ate some bananas while not so quietly asking when they were going to do the one where he predicts a riot. I liked that they didn't take themselves too seriously and just played some good rocky tunes;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/kaiserchiefs/
(go to about 22 minutes in for the best performance of the set)

Suitably pumped up, we waited for the Kings of Leon, who were the evenings headline act. The crowd really started to fill up and get tight, it seemed as though everyone at the festival had really wanted to see KoL and to be honest, the vast majority of them were bitterly disappointed, not by the performance which in my estimation was a very good, rocky show, but the 'fuck you' attitude of the band, who at 4 different points were complaining about seemingly nothing, only to end their show with no encore and the lead singer giving the 50,000+ crowd the V. Despite that, the music was pretty good, and I'd probably go and see them again;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/artists/kingsofleon/

(watch from 16:55 for a perfect example of both a great musical performance and class douchbaggery)

Will hit up a part 2 tomorrow

loves and hugs xx

No more live poker!

2009-07-05T01:34:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I woke (at 9PM)to this on facebook;

Lizzie Gull; youre a total noob as blogs.

Yes Lizzie, I suck at blogging. The main reason for this is because I've been living a vampiric life in the last two weeks of June through to Yesterday, generally getting to a game at about midnight (where the games seem to be best) and leaving anywhere between 8AM and 5PM. To cut a 3 week story short, I run extremely good at the start and ran very bad at the end and have realised that I really hate live poker, and as much as I love Pot Limit Omaha, full ring £1/2 playing 20 hands/hour is putting me on extreme monkey tilt.

There was a festival at the international, and the cash games were so good I only actually felt the need to play 2 of them; the £100 HA for fun and the £500 Main event today. My bustout hand was kind of sick, but aside from opening pre from UTG+1 I don't think I won any money reciprocally;

£500 Live Freezeout, Blinds 100/200

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to 700 (20k), 3 folds, Hero calls in CO (7500 effective) with AcAs, sb calls (about 7k) and bb calls (10k)

Flop (2800); KcTc2c
UTG+1 bets 1500, Hero raises to 6800 (all in), 2 folds, UTG calls+1 calls and shows Qc9h

Being a 90% favorite is nice, them binking a 3 outer is not. So I decided to come home and sulk for several hours; which is very unlike me normally, I just think I was upset that my table was so soft and I missed my gaping spot to pick up a bunch of chips.

So as of today, Saturday 4th July, I have decided to play a bunch of hands online. I am boycotting live poker until I have played 100,000 hands online, and im showing a decent, sustainable winrate. So it means lots more blogging for all of you lucky people. I'm also going to get to the gym 3 times a week and shall be setting myself personal punishments every week I don't comply with this.

Probably gunna be up in Cambridge on monday for abit of Monday night fez, hopefully I shall see a bunch of you guys there.

Hugz xxx

Live or online?

2009-06-11T18:58:00.002+01:00

Currently sitting in front of my computer in the nude, wondering if I should get dressed in a basketball jersey and shorts to grind tournaments online or put some more dignified clothes on to go and play live Pot Limit Omaha. I'm painfully aware that I've only been putting in one or two nights online in the last month or two and have only been breaking even. Live Omaha on the other hand has been freaking sweat in the last week especially, I think I'm winning £4100 in the last week in the regular £1/2 game, which basically boils down to being on the right end of a few 1k pots. I think I should be trying to play more online tournaments but its hard to stick at something you're having a rough patch at when you're running really well in a different area.

I've really not been playing too much poker in the last week anyway. Last week I visited Lydia in Birmingham for a cool houseparty; I got totally wrecked after drinking some bright green liquid which turned out to be a mix of all the spirits he had in the owners collection. I'm not usually too much of a lightweight, but Im afraid to say I fettled like a bitch and spent the early part of the next morning throwing up. I also went to visit Lizzie in Brighton for her 20th on Tuesday which was great, another night of getting drink and seeing one of my favoritist people in the whole wide world.

Sigh, I've missed the 20 cubed and the daily 80k so I guess I'll go play in London.

Later taters xxxx

Sorry for the absence

2009-05-26T17:11:00.002+01:00

Wow it turns out i've been really rubbish at updating this. As it happens I've been running a blog on a different site, Blackbeltpoker.com.

At the beginning of April I had a conversation with my friend Nik Persuad who convinced me to do this 'grading' for his new company Blackbelt. It entailed 50 poker players grinding out the small stakes for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week (with 1 workshop per week). The first week was NL50 or PLO50, the second NL100/PLO100 and the third NL200/PLO200, and had to be played a minimum of 4 tables (or 2 for heads up). The best 8 of the 50 would get a $4k/month sponsorship package and $20k to play about 5 WSOP events. To cut a long story short I've had an immensely stressful and hard working month in which I managed to complete the 4 weeks (which only 31 players managed to do) and turn a small profit (which less were able to do). In the end I finished just shy of the top8 and qualified for a $1500/month sponsorship package (which I have dually declined). Obviously while it's a compliment that someone wants to spend $1500 every month on my poker ability, I'm very disappointed as I certainly thought myself in the top10 players of the 50 and therefore had a great chance of getting the better sponsorship deal.

I suppose that's about all I have to say as this grinding has literally been my whole last month. I played mtts every sunday (my day off) and keep on making final 2/3 tables of majors but can't seem to get that 5 figure score breakthrough. At least now I'm much more prepared to grind than I ever was before.

Thanks to those of you who have been supportive and berated me for not updating my blog. I love you all very much.

2009-03-27T16:25:00.002Z

I've once again been really rubbish at updating, theres been a load of stuff going on and I've spent little time online (and when I have I've been too lazy). First things first, my grandfather passed away early Sunday morning, so it's been a really emotional week, which was unbelievably hard because I had to sandwich it between a £500 and a £1500 which I couldn't unregister from or anything. Now they're done and dusted I can take a week or so (before SCOOP starts) and be with my family. The Guardian wrote a really nice obituary http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/26/tim-brinton-obituary

I've been thinking a lot about the future recently, I'm certain I don't want to be grinding 5/10 or something equally depressing when I'm 40, so I've created a figure which I want to reach then I can finish with poker and go back to school. If I reach my figure and I either decide that the amount of money wasn't as much as I think it is now or I'm not yet bored with poker then I'll just put my whole roll into savings and become 100% staked. Even if none of this ever happens, it feels so much better to have a plan to be working towards rather than just 'tearing shit up 5 days a week'.

I've continued my trend of running like ass in tournaments but being 100% golden in cash, I shorted abit of 5/10NL at the Vic on sunday and won like £2k and have won £2.5k at the international playing PLO basically because im about 8 and 2 on huge set vs wrap+FD flips. I'm aware that I will not run this good forever but at some point I will start winning flips deep in online mtts.

I played a few GUKPT London events, busting in lv2 of the £500 PLO, losing an 18 card wrap vs an overpair and a flushdraw in a 3 bet pot (I do lose PLO flips sometimes), and I busted late last night in the £1500 main event, eventually getting it in with QQ vs KK. Kind of nice that in both spots it's all super standard and I don't need to sweat how I played too hard.

So i suspect I shall be off to sunny Kent for a few days for the funeral, and then i'll relax on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday is my dear Mothers birthday, and then the Spring Championship of Online Poker begins on Pokerstars on Thursday, so expect lots of blogging, I'm probably going to stay clear of the High Stakes events, just playing almost all of the low and medium ones.

Once again thank you to everyone who's been there when I've needed to talk about my Grandfather (Amy and Poppy again especially), your love and support has been really appreciated.

Lots going on in the live world of poker

2009-03-11T02:10:00.003Z

Sorry I haven't blogged in a week or so. I meant to do a Paris trip report but the festival at the international kinda dragged on and little things have kept coming up, so i'll do a shortened version now.

Basically, I ran horribly at mtts in the last 10 days, blanking 3 500euro events, 2 250euro events, the £150, £200 PLO and finally going deep in the £500 before essentially bubbling it. Luckily for me, my inability to run bad at either cash holdem or pot limit omaha means i'm actually winning for the period (which is pretty impressive when you consider i decided not to take a shot at 5/10 PLO in Paris so i've not played any bigger than 5/5.

Away from poker Paris was a lot of fun; and I feel it was important for me to take a week or so away from London just to try and get my head around my current MTT downswing. Obviously it didn't work too well, and I literally do not know what I'd do if I wasn't on a 2000bb 1/2 PLO upswing in 2009. It's mainly because of that that I feel so good about poker at the moment, and I'm probably going to continue playing some live mtts over the next few weeks; theres a festival at the empire this week then its GUKPT london straight after.

So yeah, i'll probably hit up the empire tomorrow/thursday (I can't make the main event because im seeing an old friend again), spew off a bunch online on Sunday trying to get out of makeup then relax and wait for the vic.

As always, thanks for all the comments and support, I love you all.

Whoops, didn't blog in a while.

2009-02-26T22:29:00.002Z

Yeah, i've not really been in this last week at all. Had a bad Sunday online, not running especially bad, just not shipping anything or getting especially deep in much. The other side of the coin is that my friend and fellow nitreg mr HotKarlMC shipped the Sunday 500 on stars, picking up a cool $91k. Very well done sir, the cream on the cake being that he satted in, plays on his own money and did not make a deal at the final table.

On Monday I decided to play the International's £50 HORSE London Poker Masters warmup event for abit of a giggle. There were 56 runners, creating a first prize of £860. Simon Hennessey and I decided to crossbook to spice things up abit (I busted him in razz in 15th place), as well as a 20 player £20 last longer, meaning the first place was worth more to me in prop bets then it was in prize money. To cut a long story short, I was very bored, the buyin was too small and I spent 9 hours coming 10th -_-

Tuesday arrived and I somehow found myself back at the International with my brother to play two £20 comps (I haven't decided if this is more or less tilting than playing a live low stakes limit tournament), but we had a really cool time, and I managed to drop £40 at Yo Sushi. I also met up with Baneris, Ed Marsh and his friend. The highlight of the tournament was me taking the term "hero call" to a whole new level.

Blinds 150/300
Preflop action; 5 folds, CO (7k chips) open limps, I open limp the BTN with 63s (7.5k chips). Sb completes, BB checks. They both cover us.

Flop (1200); As Kh 5s
BB;Check, SB;Check, CO; Bets 800, Hero;raise to 1600, 2 folds, CO;raise to 2400, Hero;call.

Turn (6000) 6c
CO;Bet 4700 all in, Hero;call 4700

Thoughts?

After I busted the tournament I went and played the juicy 1/2 PLO game and won about £1400 in an hour or so and decided to go home and get some sleep, despite feeling kinda bad for hitting and running.

I've kind of taken the last few days of poker, been up to Cambridge abit to chill and see people, which is always fun. Caught up with Nel today before somehow managing room for 2 deserts, then had my silly little operation (which went fine) and now i'm just chilling at home.

I'm glad to have taken a few days off, especially as i've got a large stake live poker tournament every day from Saturday to the 7th March. It'll probably be really draining, but i'm definitely looking forward to the challenge (as well as the glamour of Paris).

I guess that's about all. Thank you to both Poppy and Amy who were especially nice to me when they found out I was having my operation (even though as i said, it was nothing at all), your kind words were still very much appriciated.

Thanks very much xx

Oh, and a small p.s. My friend Kris posted a really interesting video on religion and game theory on his facebook. While I don't agree with his arguments, he forms them in such a smart and sophisticated manner. I think he's got the makings of an excellent poker player. I suggest you check the videos out and possibly subscribe to his blog; http://kperovic.blogspot.com

Cambridge...Leicester...then oh yeah...FUCK SUNDAYS

2009-02-16T03:19:00.003Z

Some day i'm going to ship a major. It will be a very happy day for all concerned, i'll win 6 figures and we can all have a big party. Before then i'm going to have to keep on going deep and losing big flips (absolutely redic flips in the case on the mill this week). I was so unbelievably angry that I didn't have time to pokerhand this, but the short story is that I have 12bbs at 5k/10k, utg limps, sb completes, I ship 88, utg folds and sb snaps JTo and obviously binks. I really really want to hurt something.

I also went deep in the $129 FTOPS knockout, coming 250/9000 for like $500 inc knockouts. That was just a fairly standard 4bet shove HJ vs BTN with 88 and losing to AQ for a huge stack. In general I havn't been running very well or poorly recently. I've just not been hitting the exact flops and the right time, but I'm sure that'll change soon.

Other than poker, I was in Cambridge at the start of the week and was able to catch up with Nel which was fun, I then mozied on down to Leicester for Thursday-Saturday to generally chill+celebrate Amyday. Although it was really great to see everyone again, it made me sad that going away, everyone else's life moves on; and even though mine has been taking me to really exciting places, it's been away from all the uni guys, which kind of had me feeling abit left behind. That aside, I had a really good time with a lot of people I really care about and am already missing them.

My schedule is kind of packed over the next month or so, I wanna play 2/3 nights online this week before playing live (probably Thursday), then I'm going to play the £250 in Luton at the weekend. The week after that I'm going to play the £50 HORSE at the int, go to Cambridge for 2 days (got a minor operation), play live again that thursday night (and hang with my brother) then be all ready for; Paris on the 28th-5th, The London Poker Masters 5th-8th and maybe the GUKPT at the Vic straight after that.

I'll be a very very busy Joe in the forthcoming month or so, but i'll try and blog at least 2/3 times per week (sorry ive been abit rubbish). Thanks to everyone whos been reading and chatting to me about it on facebook/msn/aim for your love and support.

Nighty night xx

Live poker ahoy

2009-02-01T12:56:00.002Z

Today is the first sunday i've taken off online poker in about 6 months. No mtts, no volume, no mirrion. Superbowl sunday seems reason enough to take the day off, plus Ed final tabled the £300 at the International (and I have 10% of him) so I'll go down and sweat him/play some deep £1/2 PLO then watch the superbowl there with my brother.

All this live poker madness started on thursday when after blasting about 11 mtts, I decided to cut my session short and head to the Vic to play some cash. After about 3 hours there and still being within £50 of my original buyin at all times, I decided to move on to the gutshot where the PLO games can get fairly big on a thursday. Oh boy was I right! After about 6 hours of standard 200bb PLO, we'd somehow managed to get about £7k on the table, and then Chen showed up, immediately losing 2 1K buyins to pump the money up to around £9k, specifically in one hand against me (sorry for live hand history):

This was Chen's exact first hand in which he straddles for £5. I opened for £18 UTG with ATJ8hhxx. Folds around to chen who calls.

Flop (£44): Jh5s7s
Chen: Bet £40
Hero: Call £40

Turn (£124) 7h
Chen: Bet £120
Joe: Call £120

River (£364) Qh
Chen: Check
Joe: Bet £225
Chen: Raise All-in (after a very long dwell)
Joe: Call (after longer dwell)

Chen tabled something along the lines of AKQT for a big bluff and I took down a 1000bb pot. I don't especially want to go into my thought process of why I played certain streets the way I did (namely 4th and 5th) as I play a lot with Chen and I think it would be harmful to both of us for me to post the reasons online, but basically, it feels great to make a huge hero call and be right.

I left that game after about 17 hours and went home to get some sleep (after phoning Mike to tell him he should go down and play) for the £300 freezeout the next day. Long story short, I busto'd it pretty quick. Got fairly well outplayed in one hand, and then eventually busting for my last 5k (25bbs) with JThh on a 972xcc board in which I was actually beating 45cc lol. Since there were 2 guys I had percentages with still in the tournament, I decided to stay for a few hours, and won about £460 playing cash anyway.

So yeah, this weekend reminded me how much I love playing live poker (when im running good). Im about to head back down to sweat Ed, play some PLO, watch the Liverpool/Cheslea game, crossbook Marcus in the £30 freezeout that im putting my brother in then watch the superbowl. Have a great superbowl sunday everyone.

Tough week

2009-01-27T23:12:00.003Z

I think i'm starting something of a downswing; after losing £1500 at the international in a particularly bloody PLO game, i've been firing blanks online in the last 3 days, I think im losing another $700 in MTTs. Obviously i've not actually lost a great deal of money but its very damaging to my ego and competative nature. As most of you know, I play extremely high variance poker and its just getting so hard to continue to play this way when its going against me; i.e. 3 bet shove light deep in tournaments when i'm getting called light. Obviously its crazily results oriented and I shouldn't be thinking things like this, but its hard not to let recent results dictate your life.

I was deep in both the $8 w/rebuys and $44/6Max today coming like 81st and 24th respectively, losing big flips in both for really decent stacks. No point in me posting the hand histories as it was just losing 88 to AK and then AK to QQ in each. I suppose the killer in the last few days is that ive been finishing outside 1st/2nd when ive gone deep in the 12/180s, which (considering the payout) really sucks.

Anyway, slight rang over. I know i'm awesome and everyone else knows it too!

I'll probably play tomorrow because i'll be taking the 3 days after that off from online poker. I'm gunna go see Nikki on friday in Peterborough then i'm going to play the £300 Freezeout at the international on sat/sun and round it all off by watching the superbowl (probably at the international)with my brother, Ed and maybe Mike (and anyone else who might be in london and wants to join us).

Thanks for reading again guys, i'll try and throw up some more interesting hand histories next time.

xx

Not running that well at MTTs...making up for it in Mtt sngs

2009-01-20T01:18:00.002Z

Exactly what it says on the tin. 2 Days of MTT grinding, busting out of nearly every tournament real early (either through losing big flips/being coolered/getting it in good and losing/making bad plays). This doesn't really bother me in the slightest; I know I'm a good, winning tournament player, and I'm putting in enough volume that I won't be on the shnide for long.

That being said, my running bad at regular tournaments has been made up for by how lucky I've been getting at the stars 12/180s. In the last 2 nights my Sharkscope profit has gone up by about $2k just from these, which has really saved me. I'm not sure if its mostly due to luck or playing good (I did get some sick sng coaching from marty a few months back)which has really helped me beat stars sngs). I'll probably load up the usual mtts again tomorrow and once again start loading 12/180s if things turn to shit.

Last week Mike suggested that I play more live poker, which I thought was a smashing idea, so we headed down to the juicy PLO game at the International on Thursday. Long (12 hour) story short, I ran good in that game too, winning about £1100. One particularly sick hand was between a reg named Rob and I, in which I bluff CRAI'd KK44 on a AQ5A turn, he thought for about 2 minutes before finally calling only for me to bink a 4 on the river.

Another good hand was really late on in that game, in which I raised AT97ds to £11 from MP, got 4 callers, the board came Q42 two tone giving me a bare backdoor NFD. The action checked around before the 8s fell on the turn upgrading me to a NFD. The BB bets £42, which I cold call (effective stacks are deep enough for us not to worry about this call), and the value player in the game calls on the button. The river is the Ah, the bb checks, I check and the value player starts looking at the pot, then asks the dealer how much is in there before betting £126 (the pot was £171).

Before he made this bet I was fairly certain that I had the 2nd best hand, but I didn't consider for a second that the value player could ever have me beat. He was capable of making really weird bluffs, but was certainly knuckling behind almost every 2 pair combo (except maybe AQ, which he very likely raises turn with). In the end I went with my confusion as to his line and my live read and called, and then got berated by the value player for calling with AT (my hand was obviously good). I'd quite like to hear peoples comments on that particular hand.

I also played the £100 Freezeout a the International on Saturday. Not much to talk about, I played my usual laggy deepstack game, ground 8k in to 13k by the begining of level 4, before getting 70bbs in preflop with KK vs AQs, obviously he flopped a flush and it was goodnight Vienna.

Outside of poker life has been abit dull recently, which I intend to remedy by getting about with old school friends ect. As well as this its my Dad's birthday on Wednesday, so it'll be cool to see the family again.

Sorry if today's been abit rambley, just couldn't be bothered to stop typing. Get in touch with me on thoughts about the hand. Toodles xx

A couple of nights of close, then really close

2009-01-14T00:13:00.002Z

Sigh, just busted the stars $109 FO in 4th for $5k which is a really nice pay but I had a real chance to ship it but my KK couldn't hold vs AT then I lost KT to AQ. Obviously I won an obscene amount of flips to FT, but it was just frustrating being so close.

I'm currently 1 tabling the $11 PLO FT (1/7), for a grand first place of $600 lol. Although it would be nice to ship something to do to fill my huge ego.

Ah well, I'm going to grab an early night ahead of grinding tomorrow. Thanks so much to all you guys that railed, big 5 figure score coming I promise =)

xx

I just made Raspberry Jelly...

2009-01-11T03:01:00.003Z

You know youre a professional poker player when; You've had two nights this week in which you havn't slept, you're stuck 4 figures, you've t30'd 3 mtts in a night and only broken even and you're completely happy with your play and looking to the future.

Although, that may all be down to the fact that i've just made Raspberry Jelly.

Sorry it's been a while since I blogged last, I'd love to say it's been a bit hectic but it really hasn't. I've played live PLO at the International 2 nights this week and despite losing some important flips and getting my money in bad a few times, I was happy with my all around performance. It just so happened that the game was so ultra swingy, that short term variance did not smile on me those two sessions.

Tonight I went deep in the $8 w/rebuys (13th for $200ish), the $109 (30something for $300ish) and 20th in the 20 cubed for 270ish. While these results are very annoying when they come all at once, I was happy with my play in all 3, especialy my shorthanded play.

The 8 rebuy key hand was when I 4 bet shoved a 25bb stack with KQo 6 handed and got snapped by aces for the chip lead. It's very easy to look at my play as a big blowup, but my hand play well against his 3bet range and it's a big leak to be laying hands as big as KQ down every time we're 3bet when we have fold equity.

The 20 cubed was a fairly standard 3bet shoving 22 for 23bb and getting called by QQ. We were 7 handed and by virtue of the fact that my opponent thought for a good 10 seconds (not multitabling)before making the most standard call in the world makes me feel really happy about the shove. I guess we was only calling JJ+/AK, which is an obviously profitable shove.

So i'm looking forward to tomorrow and all it shall bring, might play the mill/warm if I fancy it, but otherwise i'll be expecting to play the standard comps and hopefully take something down.

lots of love

Oh and as a fun sidenote, I just played HUNL against a guy who started open shoving 45bbs (then +1 for each hand he won) every hand. Luckily I only had to wait 5 hands till I got aces. GG wp

xxxxx

December tear continues

2008-12-31T23:24:00.003Z

I am running hotter than Usain Bolt at the moment. Luckily my NYE plans fell through the roof yesterday so i decided to take advantage of the huge overlays on stars. Shipped the $8 w/rebuys on stars for $6k, also decided to play live last night and won £850 playing £1/3 NL.

Makes up for sunday where I lost like $700, bubbling the warmup, mill and $109 that I played.

The only sour note is that it looks like I'm just going to miss out on the tbl t100 by only a few hundred points.

Ah well, still on a $10k heater over the last 3 weeks.

xxx

Good night yet again

2008-12-28T02:24:00.003Z

Hey kids, feeling pretty decent as I just came 3rd in the $16.50 Turbo on stars for $2.9k, making my heater in the last 2 weeks now somewhere in the region of $5.5k. Obviously i'm disappointed I didn't win but it's nice to be winning a really decent amount over a short space of time.

Don't really have too much else to say today, was thinking of hitting up GUKPT Brighton from 12th Jan, seems like a pretty neat idea; even if I just play the prelims.

Tomorrow is obviously a huge day so i'll give you guys a proper blog then.

Until then:

There was a flasher who was thinking about retiring, but he decided to stick it out for another year.

xx

36 hours in 3 days in front of a computer screen

2008-12-24T16:19:00.002Z

And it's time for a break!

Ive spent roughly 12 hours each of the last 3 days playing a ton on stars, probably averaging 40 MTTs per night. Although I obviously feel really drained from all the hard work, i'm winning about $3300 in the last 10 days so I'm satisfied. I came 2nd in the $11 PLO w/rebuys, losing a huge flip for the win with AJQx to TT98 on a JJ7 board, but luckily for me (this time anyway) it was quite a smooth payout at the top. I also came 10th in the $22 Freezeout, blowing a really strong 2nd in chips running a 3 barrel on the FT bubble. He called me super light but I think i'm happy with the bluff in general, unfortunately my HeM is being a nightmare and i didn't pokerhand it so I can't throw it up. I also ran super good in some PLO100 while I was waiting for my last MTT to finish (and I didn't feel like loading more 180 mans).

I'm breaking from poker until the 28th, in which I suspect i'll be playing the whole hog. I've spent this afternoon helping my family prepare Christmas dinner which has royally got me in a the mood to relax with loved ones. My Gran has come to stay too, and it's the first time i've seen her since my Grandfather's funeral so i've got a lot of catching up to do.

I hope all of you have a very happy Christmas and please think of those who are all alone during this time. Love each other.

xxx

Mini heater continues...kinda

2008-12-23T02:51:00.004Z

Just finished a very weird night and a weird 48 hours. I ran so so bad at MTTs this weekend that I think I dropped nearly $2k into the MTT community on stars. However, i've won 2 $12/180 mans, 3 $12/45 mans, made multiple FT's in other $12/180s ect ect, and I also won a very tilt induced $225 STT. Which actually makes me winning a small amount of the weekend! Horay!

Sunday was a nightmare, lost loads of deep flips/semi deep flips for all the tea. Had KK vsAA in about 4 different comps, QQ losing to AK in the mill blah blah blah, but running like god himself in the 180 mans made me feel much better about myself.

There are 2 hands of note that I want to discuss here. I must apologize that my hyperlinks dont seem to be working tonight (or im just a spazz), so you'll have to copy/paste them to Pokerhand. Firstly;
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3620657

Obviously my line is ultra spewy, and looking back on it I just feel that he was the kind of player that rarely showed up with a flushdraw that I actually beat, so I was beating maybe 77/99 if he went abit crazy. I'd really like some thoughts on this. It seems to me that bet/folding is really leaky.

Secondly;
a href="http://www.pokerhand.org/?3620246
I'm pretty happy with the way i've played this hand on every street. There is an argument for checking behind on the flop, but I feel since I'm an EP caller to an UTG+1 raise, hes giving me credit for a real enough hand to probably C/f JJ/AK here.
Obviously the turn plays itself, since JJ was the main hand I put him on, I don't especially know why I didn't bet more. I suppose I was thinking that if he did have a non believing hand (Like he did), then I might get another caller.

I think the river is pretty standard too. It's abit of a horrid bluff on his part as I'm never folding anything really. When he made it I was really taking aback, but it should be fairly obviously that he basically never has a flush here, QQ/TT never c/c's two streets and I feel I can obviously dismiss KJ/J8. Having said that, it didn't seem there was too much I could get value from, so smoothing the river seemed best. Thoughts on this are welcome too =)

I'm probably going to play on tomorrow then take a break until Sunday night (the big 28th!!!!). I've been deliberately playing a lot just before Christmas, so I can have some nice family time in the next few days.

Outside of poker, everything has been rather peachy. I enjoyed a very nice birthday in which the family and I went to a super night Japanese restaurant and then me, Helen, Chris and Becky went for cocktails in a salsa bar which was sweet. I've managed to put off finishing my Christmas shopping again, so the 4/5 last things i need to buy will need to be taken care of tomorrow before I play.

Rightio kids, I fear im going to get to bed as soon as i've finished consoling Amy for being a big fat silly head =) xx

Well I heard there was a secret chord

2008-12-18T01:54:00.002Z

Before I start this blog, please please please everyone load up their itunes and purchase Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, it'll only cost you £0.79 (and most of you are very baller). It's our one and only chance to have the second best song ever recorded as Christmas no#1. It's currently #2 on the itunes 'top songs', lets get it to #1.

Just got back from the Goscars; thats the Gutshot Oscars (NOT the gay Oscars thank you very much Ken), which turned out to be a really fun night. Was great seeing all the old crew again, especially playing a great RoE100 game with PaulSS/Marcus/Minh and for a short while Howard. I think that its the perfect sized game as we were all getting progressively drunk, I managed to spew off a buyin over a few hours and decided not to reload...good shout joejoe.

The tournament was surprisingly good, £60 Tag team. My partner played extremely well, unlike me in my drunken stupor. Only really had time to play 1 or 2 big hands, managed to double up some fish who defended 10% of his stack with KJo from my EP raise, we both flopped a pair, money went in ect ect ect, yawn.

My mini heater seems to be going on, since this time last week im winning about $3k in live/online combined. Came 5th in the $16.50 turbo on stars for $1.6k, was abit dissapointed as I had a c/l for almost the whole FT until i busted.

I'll probably put in some volume tomorrow and sunday, don't wanna work too hard on my birthday weekend

xxxx

Back in London, back at the Shot

2008-12-12T13:02:00.002Z

Blah, just woke up after a I received a horrible text after 4 hours of sleep and couldn't roll back. You know who you are and my lord you'll pay.

Last nights action at the International great, I ended up playing the £55 tournament because there were no Omaha games going at 7:30; in which I came 3rd for £435. It was very tilting not to win, but at 5 handed play we all had <10 bbs so I guess I ran about standard. Afterwards I played £1/2 PLO and won about a buyin, making me winning about £600 for the night which was cool. It was almost all on the hand I want to talk about (please bear with my live HH, i'll try and make it as clear as possible).

I'm in the sb with K6JTddxx and 2 players limp, and I complete and the bb checks. We're all at least 200bbs deep. (£8)

Flop; 9s Jh 4d
I bet £8, bb calls, 2 folds. Probably a spot for me to check fold, but I thought my hand might have been good enough to win there. (£24)

Turn; 3d
I bet £21, bb raises to £63, I raise to £221, bb calls (leaving about £200 behind).

River; 9h
I move in for the effective £200ish, bb folds

Obviously the turn is a thin semi bluff, but considering the player I thought it was pretty decent. He was a decent thinking player (who may have been on slight calling mode due to him being losing slightly and at the end of the night, but he had a decent stack I felt he wouldn't want to get in too light). His line really made no sense, its highly unlikely that if he had a set which wasn't JJ then he wouldn't call then raise the turn, and even if he did then he was likely to fold to my threeb. One of the hands that made sense was was a wrap that picked up a flushdraw, but I felt he was a good enough player to jam KQTx on the flop, so he'd probably fold a lot of bad wraps to me on the turn.

Ed and I discussed the river, and in our 5AM drivel discussion decided that check/snapping the river would have been the sickest line ever. At the time it seemed like shoving would fold ties, AJ, maybe 33/44 if he was horribly spewy. I miss the opportunity to pick off a buyin sized bluff, but it would have been a horrible crying call.

So yeah, any feedback on the hand would be really neat, i've tried to formulate my thoughts as well as possibly, but doubtlessly i've missed something important lol.

I'll hopefully be playing a lot online/live in the next few weeks so i'll be able to blog regularly

Still miss people in Leicester loads, hopefully i'll see you all soon.

Back with the family

2008-12-11T13:09:00.002Z

I just got caught in a line in HMV behind a middle aged couple arguing about which Cliff Richard calendar to buy. I'm in hell.

I really really hate Christmas shopping, its very tilting and I wish I had done it all at least two weeks ago to save myself from the insane crowds and idiots that are Christmas shoppers. Ah well, the glazed raspberry filled Krispy Kreame made everything better...it makes everything better.

Havn't played poker in a while, so in celebration of being back home Ed and I are going to hit up the International tonight for pot limited omaha related fun. Might even play the £50 too if the structure isn't terrible and they've finally succumb to adding antes. Truth be told i'm quite excited about seeing the new club with all the old members, even though I still see people around, I miss the old gutshot vibe greatly.

That's about it for the blog, missing the Kent house massive greatly, hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and that it's not too long before I see you all again.

Toodles

Hmm stars

2008-12-10T22:52:00.001Z

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 671690

go nuts

Standing alone tonight....

2008-12-07T01:39:00.002Z

Sorry for the morbid title kids, just chillaxing to abit of Above & Beyond. Just got back from the GMS Christmas ball at college. Had a great time; was a good laugh and I got a little bit drunk... HORAY

Been a very weird week in poker terms, started well at the Empire and PLO200/400 on Cake. Then I went to Dusk Till Dawn on Thurs to meet Ed who was playing in the £1k Freezeout there and somehow got talked into playing; underolled shots are apparently what life is all about.

The tournament was amazingly fun, it has the best structure of any i've ever played (mirroring the Main Event structure; 20k Chips, 120 minute levels), I had a really weak table with 2 absolute fishes on my left and lots of medium/strong players including John Kalmar. The tournament itself was quite hard to gain any steam, unable to win 2 big pots in a row and having between 15/10k for most of the time, until I lost 2 big pots about 6 hours in;

First was in a nutshell, I open for 2.6x in the CO pre antes and the BTN repops for about 23bbs total. This was obviously one of the absolute fishes, which made it much harder for me to stack off 23bbs, my eventual thought after a few minutes was that its probably a huge leak to ever open/pass AQ for 23 bbs so I called and got shown AK. Superb.

Second was a bvb hand, my sb opened 3x w/antes and i repopped for 22bbs with K7o. I simply thought he was opening widely enough for my shove to show profit, Ive since stoved it and it was much more marginal than I thought; leaning me more towards a fold because of the very smooth structure of the tournaments and chances to pick better spots. He sighed and called with AA...bastard.

So im feeling very broke at the moment after taking my underolled shot so I guess it means much more grinding and hopefully a nice 5 figure score will come soon.

Backstreets back, ALRIGHT!

2008-12-03T02:25:00.002Z

Sorry for the lack of blog in the last few weeks guys, it's been a tough few weeks, my grandfather was ill in hospital in France and recently passed away. As i'm sure most of you know i'm not great at communicating actual human feelings normally so thanks to Jess and Amy specifically for lending an ear when I needed it.

Needless to say I havn't played much poker in that time, I think 3 or 4 nights in those 2/3 weeks. However, last night I was at home so I decided to head down to the Empire with my brother for the £20 w/rebuys which I took down for about 7hundo. I then played some NL200 (£) and won a few buyins, making it a +£1k night which felt good. It was a fun night in general, the NL table was spread with ex gutshotters, so we had a laugh to boot.

Can't think of any HH's to bore you with, especially as that would require me actually formulating live hands to paper. I remember having an argument with myself (I get very bored playing live MTTs) about the virtues of semi bluffing terribad live players (but not always stations) , but I can get into that one another day.

Today has just been travelling home, quickly losing $200 on stars playing HuNL, then playing PLO400 on cake; which im currently +2BI. In general its been a good few days from a monetary sense. Horay for positive variance!

On a slightly sour note, i'm not sure how much longer I am for university life, I'm finding it increasingly hard to motivate myself and get my head down. I guess I need to do some serious thinking over the forthcoming few weeks as to my future.

Sunday grind again

2008-11-17T02:44:00.003Z

Hey kids, been a few days, just winding down from my mtt session with abit of PLO200. Been a cool week, handed in 3 essays, put in 3 nights of volume (except we're currently not talking about Saturday night lol) and went out on friday with Kristen/Hobie and the John Foster lot which was cool.

Tonight has been very weird; again I was deep in a few tournaments and didn't even make a 4 fig cash, but I was quite happy with the way I played. Went deep in the $11 Daily 30k Guaranteed, but had a chiplead to busto 5 mins and finished like 42nd. Also cashed in the mill with 2 very funny hands;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3460143

And;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3459992

It should be noted that the second hand was on the absolute bubble, hence the craziness. I don't really know why I went insane in the first one, just from the way he was playing I thought he'd be 3betting me light (oops lol). The funny part of the second one is that he slowrolled me, he actually used his timebank to call with KK, so its kinda cool that he got what was coming to him.

So ive roughly made $650 tonight, which isn't a terrible nights work or anything, its just the 5 figure score needs to come soon for confidence more than anything else. I'm generally very happy with the way i'm playing, i've been able to generally make correct decisions in all the tournaments i've played in the last few months (bar the first hand I just showed you and the occasional blip lol), obviously i'm still very young and have so much to learn about the game, but I feel I can hold my own in what i'm doing and make a decent $ while i'm at it.

Well I think that'll just about do it for the night, you guys just cost me $200 because in the PLO200 table im keeping up I just lost AA82DS vs AATTs allin pre. So much for winding down.

Gnight guys

Gutting

2008-11-14T01:40:00.004Z

Just busted out of the stars $55 Daily 80k Guaranteed 18th, im obviously very disappointed. Was 4th in chips but then ran KK into AA with 22 players remaining crippling me, thats poker I guess?

Also just busted the $3+r rebuys about 40th in sickly fashion, some guy with 15bbs limp/called with Q6s, outdrawing my AXs to cripple me. Im not writing this to complain about my misfortune because I know everyone hates to hear bad beat stories, but I think its an accurate indicator to how devastated I feel right now, winning only $300 or so tonight when it should have been a $3k+ night. I also went deep in the $22 at 5PM and busted about 60th. The good news is that im feeling more and more upbeat about the way im playing, and I know the 5 fig score is coming soon.

Only hand of note was in the first hour of the stars $20Cubed, note its still in the rebuy period and therefore keeping a stack and remaining in the tournament to take the massively +EV addon.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3445320

Do you guys raise the river here for value/play any other street differently? In retrospect I should probably have bet more on the turn, but other than that im fairly happy with the way I played the hand.

I think im going to try and put in some volume in on Saturday as well as Sunday this week, I just feel like I should really be putting the hours in and i'll be rewarded for my good play and good volume.

Anyway, aside from poker it's been abit of a hectic week; had 3 different essays in for this week, hence the lack of poker nights. All 3 essays are done and dusted now, feel abit nervous about getting them back as I don't think I quite did my absolute best, but luckily it's only first year and I need but a pass for next year. Ive got 3 more essays in for the first week of December, and i'm definitely not going to leave them as late this time (not that it was my fault I left them late this time). I'm gunna get cracking on one this weekend/week and try and average out one per week till Christmas.

That should just about do it, thanks for reading as always. BIG UP THE KENT HOUSE MASSIVE
xx

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY

2008-11-10T01:57:00.004Z

Hey kids, hows it hanging, i'm in a surprisingly good mood right now considering I just busted out of my last tournament of the night. Just got a nice email from mummy who very nicely just emailed me a proof read version of the essay that I finished last night, I'm just about to touch up the essay before I hand it in tomorrow. Other than that just had a nice chat with Kate for the first time in a month or so which was nice, catching up and all.

The dodgeball tournament was yesterday which was pretty cool, we qualified from our group joint top but then lost in the semi finals which was very disappointing as I didn't feel I played very well. On the flip side I was really impressed with how well every member of the team played. Without sugar coating it, I wasn't expecting much at all and everyone showed me that they have a lot of heart and a lot of game, so well done guys.

As for poker, like I said; there was unfortunately no 4/5 figure score today which is obviously very disappointing. I played in 15 MTTs, including the Mill, both $55s and the early $22 freeze. I went deep in the $22, busting out about 42nd, the hand that crippled me was of note, I actually didn't save it at the time as I was 9tabling and had a few hands going on but the gist of it was;
Active CO 2.5x
I pop with A3o from the BB for 17bb effective
He snaps with KK.

A lot of people don't like the resteals with weak aces, but I think in this situation it was correct. I feel that 17bb effective is just about the perfect restealing stack, so i'm liking doing it with a wide range of hands, and the fact that i've got any ace whatsoever gives me at least 25% equity when im called by any hand (bar AA). So yeah, despite not winning that im fairly happy with the resteal, just a shame I ran into a monster.

I also made the final 3 tables of the $11 PLO, can't really say much about that, zig-zagged up and down before eventually busting with aces on a dry board having put 1/3 of my stack in preflop. Can't really complain too much.

Overall, I think i'm pretty much exactly breaking even for the day, I bubbled in 3 tournaments (including the mill), so it could have been abit nicer, but I feel nice and upbeat about the way I played and hopefully i'll be able to put some volume in one night this week as well as the weekend.

Cheers guys, may you be on the right end of variance

Edit: How did I not mention the november 9 who i'm currently staying up to rail. 1 TIME DEMIDOV! I put small bets on both CraigMarq and Ivan, hopefully he can take this bad boy down one time.

Put in some volume tonight

2008-11-07T02:06:00.003Z

Did it turn out well? No it did not.

What started off at the weekend of a little bit of running bad has started to turn into abit of a downswing which isn't nice for anyone involved. Tonight I played (on stars); both $55s, the $20 Cubed, Both $11 10 min levels, $3+r, $11+r, $5.50, $11 PLO and the early evening $109. Made t100 of the later $55 and the $11 at 8:15, but both had disappointing finishes.

There are a few hands from the $109 that I wanna talk about, both early on.
Firstly;
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3414297
Looking back on it, it looks like a pretty easy fold, at the time I remember agonizing over it. I dunno how my line is. I'm pretty happy with the preflop raise, and the check on the flop, I didn't really think I could possibly be ahead and I guess I wasn't. Maybe another nice MTTer could give me a line check cause it's always nice to et some feedback.

Secondly;
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3414748
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get away from this one, if i'm honest because i'd lost the AK hand a few earlier, and wasn't in the mood to lay down QQ preflop for a half stack. I dunno what else this guy really ever 4bet shoves with at 15/30 though. Abit spewy yucky yuck yuck

Most of the other tournaments were pretty standard, I ran shit into AA/KK so many times I was unlikely to go deep in too much. I'm fairly happy with the way I played, except this hand;
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3414832

I can honestly say that i'm embarrassed that I stacked off in this spot, I literally have no idea what I was thinking and i'm quite clearly nearly never good here, I just somehow managed to convince myself that he'd be shoving AQ since I checked the flop, so so stupid young Joejoe.

I guess to make matters worse I busto'd my online account because I took all bar 1k out because of the favorable stars exchange rate, my roll isn't hurt too bad, but its pretty demoralizing to keep on having to reload when I wanna put in a set of tournaments.

So yeah, this weekend will have to be different. I've got a 1500 word critical analysis to do on 'the effects of the north Atlantic slave trade on British industrialization' in for monday, but if I get that done hopefully I can get 2 nights of volume in (including sunday).

Other than that, going to the gym tomorrow which is good because I feel like such a fatass at the moment. Got the dodgeball tournament on saturday which will be fun im sure (would just be good to get a nice score first =D )

Thanks for listening to yet ANOTHER ramble, I feel I should tell a funny or something, urm I'm gunna win the mill on sunday. HORAY

New blog ahoy/tough live weekend

2008-11-06T00:51:00.000Z

Hey kids, joejoe signing in with the new blog for poker and general life things. Thought i'd be a pretty decent way to self assess as well as keeping all my friends updated with whats happening.

Just got back from Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham from a weekend of extremely grueling live poker. As most of you know I really really hate having to single table and play about 11 hands an hour whilst simultaneously being abused, bored and condescended to by your standard idiotic, arrogant and foul smelling atypical live poker player. There were a few instances of this over the weekend, firstly in the £330 freezeout after I ran a bluff and got called, the small blind from the hand (who had folded preflop) decided that he wanted the dealer to expose my cards to the table. At first I looked at him in a "wtf?! are you smoking something?" kinda way, and asked if he was serious. Apparently he was and does infact not care about etiquette or the fact he is basically insinuating that i'm a cheat.

Another incident was in the £1/2 deep NL/PLO cashgame after the tournament, I repeatedly got into hands with what I can only assume was a drunk biggot, who repeatedly asked me if I am gay in a very aggressive manner, after the first time he asked me, I asked him if he was coming onto me...lol. It all kind of blew up in a PLO hand, in which I potted from the SB with AA34ddcc for £26 through several limpers, and he was the only caller from MP. The board came KdQc9s and before I could bet he moved in for roughly 3/4 of the pot, i dwelt up and eventually called (which is a terrible, money burning call by me, by the way) and he had some shit like KQ62 or something, which i proceeded to suck out catching running fives on the turn or some such. After the hand, for the first time that night I honestly felt like I could have been in some kind of danger, so Ed and swiftly made our exit.

While those 2 incidents were abit ridiculous, the weekend of live poker was dull as expected but the standard was so very very poor, I fear it shan't be my last voyage to Nottingham for poker purposes. Aside from the actual poker, Ed and I had a great weekend chillin' like villains, we created a new game named; 'what would you do to sleep with vicky coren', to which i think we're both a bit disgusted.

In other news im completely snowed under with essays at the moment, got 2 1500 word bad boys due in a noon on monday, which may interfere with my standard sunday night poker tournaments (the only night in which I really get to put any volume in), but hopefully it'll all be done and dusted by then.

Oh, and i'm gunna need your virtual sweats in the dodgeball tournament that me and a few housemates have entered in on Saturday, i recently joined the dodgeball club at college at im having such a fun time playing it, should be pretty gangsta imo

Anyway, first rant/ramblings over i'll write something of substance in a few days