Need More Time!

Blimey a month has nearly passed. Now I remember why I closed this thing down. Do you ever wonder how the day can be so short? It's probably just me making work for myself and not having any time whatsoever to spare just to sit down and relax. Get up 11am, make tea, check emails/forums etc, make lunch, sit a few minutes with Millie, go to shops, upstairs to check emails, forums, etc.... open tables........ play 4 tables til 5.30pm, make tea (dinner to you suvnas,) sit down to eat 7pmish, watch Eastenders and whatever junk is on the telly until 8.30-9pm, back upstairs..... check emails etc...... open tables........ play until 1.30-3am........ wake up/repeat^ Arrrggggghhhhh!!! I'm back playing at Sky quite a bit (God knows why) which means i can't even type whilst playing as it's browser based and my cursor disappears to active table every 3.2 seconds. I seem to have about 90 mins per day when i'm sat doing nothing and that's downstairs with the missus and Millie. So anyways, that's my excuse for not updating and also why my parents rarely get replies to their emails...... must try harder..... again!

The above hecticness really made for an awesome holiday in Portugal though. OMG what it feels like to wake up and have no pressure to do anything other than relax :) Even the 1st trip flying with Millie wasn't as tilting as i thought it would be. I think we'll be back out there after Christmas for a week, then again in April AGW.

Poker has been mediocre at best lately. Ever since i withdrew a chunk of roll earlier in the year it's been a struggle to make good money again. I went on a bad downswong straight afterwards and suddenly i'm only comfortably rolled to play $1/$2 absolute max. This knocked my confidence and saw me playing more hours and reverting to $100nl +/- just to cut down on some variance. This inevitably led to making less money which means (what with bills and the fact wifey is currently on maternity) that the roll still isn't where i'd like it. It's going in the right direction which is the main thing but i'm still not able to play the stakes i'd like to in order to give the roll a proper boost. I could do with 1 big score to get me back where i want to be so here's hoping i take down the ECOOP this Wednesday.

I haven't played much live which is something else i want to address soon. I really feel my live game is good compared to most of the opposition and i'll be trying to qualify for some live events in the new year. I played the GUKPT Manchester earlier in the year and cashed for £2400 iirc and played a £100 event in Leeds last week versus God who got it allin with me with KK v my QQ on a 7JQ board for the chiplead with 2 tables left. Obv he binked the K and sent me to the rail in a state of shock...... i was tempted to sit down at the cash tables but got a grip of myself just in time and led myself by the collar to the car and drove home, agog, before anymore damage could be done. Donkaments!.

Unfortunately Inside Poker magazine is ceasing to exist after this month. I've really enjoyed writing for them over the last year and a half. Hopefully I may get some work with the magazines stablemate Poker Player. It's a shame as i thought IP was one of the better mags out there and for me, it was a welcome break from playing and of course, provided a little pocket money. Anyways, good luck to all the IP staff in future ventures.

That'll do for today i think. Future posts will probably discuss some hands good and bad and go into some strategy and thought processes.

If anyone fancies backing me live, for tournies or/and cash, please feel free to drop me a line :)

Ciaou 4 now.

Edit...... opened 4 tables up after this post and made 6 buyins in about 650 hands. Maybe writing this blog is linked with running good? Bout bloody time!

PPS..... for Snoops.... have linked up Blackbelt. Will they sponsor me now please? ;) Where's yr blog now?

It's me Again

Blimey, nearly a year since i logged on to this ghey blog. I promised myself i would kickstart this thing and try and update at least once a week so here goes..... although we go to Portugal for 10 days tomorrow so maybe not quite every week just yet.

I've got a beatiful daughter called Millie since my last entry. She's almost 6 months old already but i'll bore you with more of her another time.

Poker has been fairly shite tbh over the past few months. I've been struggling due to trying to completely revamp my game when i should have just changed 1 or 2 things very slowly. I went from being a fairly nitty player into trying to emulate the Cardrunner lagtards which resulted in me pissing and spewing money left right and centre. More of that in future posts also as i think lots of you can learn a great deal from my utter stupidity.

So anyway, i've gone back to being a nit for a while and hopefully things are beginning to get back on track. My theory side is still strong, i just gotta listen to my own advice now and again.... /big sigh.

Anyways, long day tomorrow so for now i'll say tata and start this thing up again when i get back.

APT Manila Package!!

Woot!

Had a good week on the cash tables which was topped off by an mtt win last night. I had qualified for a $270 seat for $20 earlier in the week and the field ended up being 44 last night for a $6,000 package to Manila to play in the Asian Poker Tour Jan 2009. There was almost 2 packages on offer but the prizepool was just short which meant that 2nd-20th got their $$$'s back. Once the bubble popped i was freerolling really as i was guaranteed $270 for my $20 investment. With 8 left I lost a 88 v QK which crippled me and left me on 2000 chips. After working my way back up to 20k by playing like a maniac I settled down and played well. Then i lost an AIPF 77 v Q7 which nearly tilted me when 2 Queens came down. Built my way back up playing pretty agro and got a decent 3-1 chiplead HU. Lost another flip to get back level and then got dealt 77 again. It all went in preflop and he flipped QK. Flop again contained 2 Queens... WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!? I had just drawn back my throwing hand (which contained my wireless mouse) when a 7 blipped the turn! Woot for 2 outers...... so rigged lol!

So anyways, i now have a $6k package which is $2700 seat + expenses. Anybody want to make me a sensible offer? Could do with the cash to add to my roll tbh. Especially as the boiler at the house i rent out has just gone bang which is gonna cost me £500 best case and over £1k worst case. Poor tenants must be freezing their nads of at the mo.

Spent the whole week analyzing my game and plugging leaks. Seem to be going round in circles somewhat. I'm happy with my preflop play now but my postflop play needs a little improvement i think. Made a 4 table, 200nl video and have posted it on PFU in order to get some useful criticism. Will definitely be making some more videos now i've got the hang of things with Camtasia. Will also edit the next one down so there's not as much inane waffle and boring hands.
Dropped a few hundred on ipoker this week after a couple of crappy sessions. Seem to be fighting back a little in the last couple of days though and am raking plenty at the moment and the bonus for this month will be very timely.
Congrats to Cheesies who's had a sicko month of November. Achievements too numerous to list but was capped by a 20k gtd victory last night. Also idi0..... another sicko who won another 20k gtd earlier in the week. PFU seems to be going great this month.... long may it continue.

My god what a boring post that was......
Can i save it with a funny vid i wonder?

Been Fishing!

Ahoy there landlubbers! Things are looking up.... at last!! Thank fook for that i hear you say! About time he stopped whinging ffs!! Well, i've had a decent week after slapping myself around the face a few times. Talk about a rut ffs..... You know when you're watching some utter moronic garbage on the TV at 3AM after a night out on the piss. You tend to stare open mouthed at the telly focussing about 3 yards behind it..... wondering why the fook you don't go to bed....? Well, that's been my poker game for a while now. I slipped into playing 20/15/1 before realizing what a tit i was and seeking some help..... that worked for a few days and i tightened up to play somewhere around 16/14/3 and felt much happier....... then i realized i'd slipped back to playing 18/14/1.5....... wtf?...... i'm supposed to be doing this for a living ffs? Pass me the dunse cap!

So, this week i spent a lot of time looking over my PT figures and plugging huge leaks. My bb/100 rate for $1/$2 had slipped to less than 2 over 35k hands after being around 4.5 over 20k hands.......Anyways, after a lot of studying and a few hours on cardrunners i've spent the last 2 days playing a different style and things are going really well. Yeah i know i've run pretty well but i'm back making decisions again instead of autofolding/playing just my cards v board.

Sunday I played the 250k satellite $40 rebuy event for a $300 seat. Got the seat without any rebuys or addon. So then played the 250k at ipoker and was looking to go really deep until i lost a standard flip and got knocked out 43rd for $1k. Quite happy with that ROI.
Yesterday i played the 15k rebuy at ipoker and managed to go deep after no rebuys and 1 addon. Cost $50 and i got 3rd for $1500.
Yesterday and today i've played 600 hands of $1/2 and made $1000. I've run pretty well to be fair but still, i'm so much happier with the way i'm playing and am enjoying playing again. iPoker roll up to £5k so may have a sniff at $2/$4 this week and see what occurrs.

Enough of all this upbeatednessization..... Saturday i went down to Birmingham to play in the Sky UK Poker Tour at the Broadway. It was only a £50 event and i went down to see one of the Sky guys (didn't show) and a couple of other poker chums. Great to meet Wayne and his missus and also Chris who somehow came 2nd! Have no idea ho as he was plastered lol. WP mate!
My exit was odd to say the least. We started on a fairly weak table with 4 decent players and 3-4 donks. Come the 1st break and all the donks were gone leaving the rest of us with around double starting stacks. After the break we go repopulated by decent players and things got tricky. 1 of these guys was really talkative to put it politely. He really couldn't stop talking for 5 seconds..... Within a few hands he'd run AA into KK twice and after arriving shortstacked had got to about 9k....... anyways, the dealer is shuffling and he's making a huge thing about telling the entire table how he's UTG and his book says he should limp with aces.... i mean he made a massive show of this even telling passers by.... The dealer deals and sure enough he limps UTG and it's folded to me in the cutoff... i look down and see KK and raise about 4x.... folded to UTG who shoves (he was auto shoving a lot) and i titter to myself as i call :-) He flips AA!! WTF?
That left me with less than 2k and i was done for a few hands later. I suppose they were using the Sky Online RNG for this live tourney!

Found this video on Youtube and it reminds me of Sky poker back in the day when it was swarming with fish..... those were the days...
Enjoy...

12 Weeks!!!!

Wow..... am a bit numb at the moment. Today we went for a 12 week scan and all is well. We are expecting a baby on 13th May 2009 :-)

I iZ 1 Dumm FisH

WTF have i been doing recently? No really..... WTF??? I've been playing like a complete fookwit tbh. How i didn't realize sooner is still baffling me now but at least i realized whilst i still had something that resembles a bankroll left. Sky still seems to be dishing out horrific beats to ALL of the regulars there. If any regular, normally winning Sky player is not currently getting bashed about then please reply in this post. Anyways, i've been concentrating on bIg slIck (ipoker) and have been doing pretty well playing 50c/$1 and half stacking $1/$2. I took my £50 starting deposit and what with rakeback equivalent bonus and running good i managed to get my roll there to a little over £2k in a little under 2 months. Was well chuffed with that tbh as the 1st few weeks was spent trying to build enough to play with and was slow going. The last 10 days or so have been pretty gruesome though and i knew it was because my game had gone to shit and was not down to suckouts/coolers. Looking at my PT stats i had somehow slipped to playing 23/12/1.5 :s I enlisted the help of a stats expert who really knows his stuff and he had a look at my PT stats and PokerEV graphs and came to pretty much the same conclusion as me....... i was playing like a muppet!! Even before the last 10 days or so i wasn't playing very well but i was running good at ipoker which always helps. Anyways, we came up with an action plan and things are hopefully back on track. I'm feeling good about my game for the 1st time in a few months tbh. Can now hopefully put the last 3 months behind me and move on and start earning some $$$'s again.

Had another article published in this months Inside Poker. Am fairly happy with it but again, it's so difficult to convey points accross when you only have 1500 words to work with. Not only that, I don't think much of playing poker is 'standard' anymore so one mans line in any given scenario can be completely different to anothers and both can be correct. Just sent another peice in about playing OOP so hopefully that one will go to print before crimbo.

So i'll be spending the rest of the month grinding 4-5 tables at ipoker. Hopefully the next week or 2 will go to plan and i can move up to fullstacking $1/2 but i would want £2.5k before i considered that. Until then i'm thrashing about in 50c/$1. Current roll at ipoker is £1.8k.

Huge congrats to idi0!!! He only went and PFU'd the Brawl for $75k!!! Amazing!! :-)

Also, thanks again to Mark for helping me with my game!