Greekstein

New Blog

2011-01-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

I now have a new diary/blog on the Blonde forum. Here is the link...

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=50836.0

Downswongs

2010-11-26T04:12:00.000-08:00

Had a crazy blowup in Notts where I gg'd about $25k over the space of like 4-days. Don't really know why but decided to play some $25/50 PLO. I lost 2 big hands, nut straight with flursh redraw all in on turn vs top two. He made a house. The second pot I 3-bet doubled suited Aces oop and flopped the nut flush draw on what would ordinarily be a good flop of Q42 if my single opponent didnt have a set of deuces. *Sad face*. I'm not really complaining though, it was completely my fault to be playing stakes that are not only pretty tough but that I'm not rolled for. Not even properly rolled to legitimately take a shot at but thats how it goes.

Trying to grind my way out of it at much smaller stakes but not playing well. Not losing but just not winning what I should be. Think I'm pushing the pace too much which is understandable but nonetheless frustrating.

Got back into the gym atm and eating real good and exercising again with my personal trainer who is awesome. Highly recommend getting one to anyone who has the spare cash - they aren't cheap though.

Hopefully update soon, I'm a terrible blogger.

Long Overdue Update - Vegas trip report + a bit of pre + online (Part 1)

2010-09-24T03:55:00.000-07:00

So I got back from Vegas about 2 sundays ago. It was my first ever trip there and I absolutely loved it. In some ways it was everything I imagined and in other ways it was completely different to my expectations. One thing's for sure, I can't wait to go back.

The run up was pretty turbulent in truth, I'd put a few K to one side as soon as Vegas was booked and invested it with my then backer. Little did I know that he was scamming half the poker community and the £2.5k I'd invested (aswell as the £5k i'd got my dad to invest). Luckily his family paid everyone back (and quite quickly too) and the money I'd earmarked to blow, could now be blown. I wish him well for the future, genuinely.

Because I have a job and ridic small living costs I live pretty comfortably and can spend money freely (a lot of the time too freely - I should probably save more) and this in turn meant I was never really treating poker as seriously as I should be. If I wanted to take a shot in a big game, I would. If I lost lots in a particular month, I didn't care as a paycheck is never far away. In the last 8 months or so, this has really changed imo. I've taken poker a lot more seriously and grinded small when I've needed to. This led to me binking a $3.5k score and a $16k score (+ a few others) before Vegas which is pretty good for me considering I really don't play many tournaments. I followed these scores up with good results in cash games, grinding the £2/5NL at the Vic and $1/2 and $2/4 PLO on full tilt. In fact, I had very few losing sessions. I was also pleased with the fact that I'd shaken any desire to actually gamble. Hadn't played blackjack or roulette at all apart from in the same way a recreational player might (e.g. £100 on a one off, once or twice).

Fast forward to Vegas and I was going with a bigger bankroll online and offline than I'd anticipated. This didn't deter my plan to only take $5k with me (plus my card +£1500 just incase!).

In retrospect this was a mistake because knowing I had more money to pull up meant I was always likely to do so and didn't have to budget as I think it's correct to do so in Vegas. Fast forward to the day of leaving and I win the breakfast flip at the airport, $120ish in Chinese on the plane and then followed this up by fading the flip for the cab to the hotel and just about every other flip with the lads for the first few days.

Before Vegas, I'd told myself I was going to allow $1k as a gambling budget, as it would be unrealistic to go to Vegas and not play house games at all. I also wanted to try out craps.

Upon arriving and checking in to our hotel (Planet Hollywood) we went for a few drinks in the hotel bar and then for a walk down the strip. After a drinks stop and a quick venture into a games arcade we plodded into the MGM and delved into a cash game. Me, Mitch and Jakally put ourselves down on $2/5 and were all seated on the same table. The other boys were playing on tables nearby. The drinks were flowing and I was happily getting drunk whilst playing in a ridic soft game. I was playing very lag and up around $700 though I'd definitely had too much to drink. Because of my lag style (I'm the value) the players at the table wanted me there and when I wasn't happy that they didn't have orange juice to mix with my vodka, only orange soda, one guy got up, said nothing and came back 10 mins later having been to a shop and got me a carton of orange juice. lol! I'd been 3-betting a fair amount and opening even more so to find AA to a Jakally raise and about 4 calls it looked like the perfect squeeze, which I did to about $120ish. Neil (Jakally) moves in and I snap it off and tell him I have aces. Neil does a massive sigh (think it was a 1.2k pot) and the board rolls off J4392 so I turn my hand and Neil taps the table doing a sigh. As the dealer is gearing up to push the pot in my direction, Neil turns over JJ! SKLJDHGSDGHSDG. Gotta admit though it was a class slowroll and set a really high benchmark for slowrolls for the rest of the trip.

I then decided to bluff some young american kid (obv a $2/5 reg grinder there) in a spot where I 3-bet pre, airballed the flop, picked up the miracle double gutshot and fd on the turn, barrelled that too and barrelled the brick river when, if sober, I mostly likely would have just given up. I just couldn't help it, this kid was about 4 foot tall, looked like a cross between a kiddy fiddler, computer programmer and an outright dick and he perma had a toothpick in his mouth.

I play another 20 mins, just folding and drinking. I'm now around $300 down and get up to go play blackjack where I knock in around $700 before the boys come and find me to drag me to dinner. By this point I was annihilated and literally couldn't see. I got to the restaurant, ordered my food and then fell asleep. The guys, (mostly Neil) pretty much carried me home whilst I just kept grunting because of how sick I felt. The last I remember of that day was telling Stu not to leave me as I was going to die and quickly falling asleep/passing out.

HOLZRENHOLZRENHOLZ?

2010-08-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Follow this mug on twitter http://twitter.com/karl_mahrenholz and receive $200 on full tilt from either Praz Bansi or James Akenhead.

Simple as that

Blogays

2010-07-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

Having a blog is pretty tedious most of the time, winning or losing. Us poker players are lazy by nature so we aren't built to write and usually I cant be bothered. Here's a synopsis of some of the blogs I read (linked on my right and how they've changed!).

(Hope no-one takes offence - I'm jus' playin).

Amatay: Used to be young and fun, shaggin every bird he could. Recently celebrated his 35th birthday and about to get married. No longer fun. Still a nit though.

James 'MC' Atkin: Former highstakes nosebleed player and badboy gangster rapper has settled down in Leafy Lincoln with mrs. Had baby and grinds poker like 9-5. Not much of a transition then.

Animal: [ x ] Been bashing the game for years. [ x ] Still moans about running bad. [ ] seems to understand variance.

Steve Holden: Not his former self, only updates his blog 23 times a day now. Possible cause: Twitter.

Ant0893275394734: Has been playing the same game (SNG's) for more than 2 weeks now. Wtf!?

More another time.

I'll be at DTD this weekend playing the £300 and hopefully not the £150.

2010-06-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

Only Sing When You're Winning.....

2010-06-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

So it's been two months since my last update. Why? A combo really but not hiding the fact I've been on a horrible downswing, for the most part due to a bad mindset and some permatilt. It's horrible blogging about losing which I guess explains why I haven't been but I guess I should balance by blogging range a bit better so I'll try and post come wind, rain or shine.

I went to Dusk Til Dawn 2 months back for their 3-2-1 weekend and killed the cash games, making over £3k in the £1/2 games. I normally come back to London on the monday but had booked monday-wednesday off work and elected to stay and play on monday night too as they had a satellite to their upcoming UKIPT. After a quick 10 rebuys in the £20r I couldn't be bothered to keep donating to nits who didnt want to gamble to pick up chips in the rebuy stage so off I plodded into the £2/5 cash game. I doubled within 5 hands (QQ>KJ I 3-bet pre and faded all his outs on the 1047hh board - running it twice I scooped both). I was up about £1000 when someone I speak to in London came and asked what the game was. I speak to this guy on the phone occasionally and we've played in several of the same cash games together, going back a few years to the old gutshot.

He sat and lost his buy in while I was having a drink at the bar and I decided to go back with him to London. I didn't have a train ticket and it was easy. In the car he fed me a line about his bank account being scammed a few days before by a phone insurance thing and that he was going about claiming back £40k in lost funds. Normally when a live poker player says something like this the BULLSHIT BULLSHIT alarm goes off in my head. This guy drives an audi sport and is always dressed in designer stuff, sitting really deep in cash games and I just bought it. I lent him £500. We decided to go to the Empire upon getting into London which was a huge mistake. I was knackered from Nottingham should have just gone home and slept. It was 3am. Instead, I played in a game not deep enough, pushed the pace, misread my hand in one hand thinking I had the nut flush on an unpaired board and subsequently tilted away some money in cash and then on the casino floor. I was still up on the weekend but it turned a very enjoyable, very profitable weekend into a shit one for me and I was not happy.

Added to this the guy doesn't answer his phone anymore and from now on I'll only ever lend money to people who I both know where they live and class as a friend away from the table. People don't/can't stay away from poker for long so I'll catch him eventually.

That aside, I continued to lose more in a few tilted cash sessions and this spiralled into my makeup increasing online. I did manage to put in some really good sessions and ultimately ran hugely below EV. It even got me about giving the game up for good. Luckily, the summer has arrived and I'm also back in the gym, going out with friends more than before taking advantage of the weather and I've also started a Brazilian Ju Jitsu class (love UFC and always wanted to learn BJJ).

This weekend on saturday I stayed up to watch UFC which started at 2am. I decided to 1 table the $28k gtd to keep me awake and by 6am when UFC had finished I was top of the pack where I stayed until the final table where I was 2/9. Unfortunately I flatted two red aces against a cut off raise OTB as the blinds had stacks likely to squeeze. When no one bit and the flop came K92 all clubs I got it in nearly dead vs A5cc. Cold. I eventually went out 8th and to bed at 9am feeling gutted with the $588 reward that wasn't going to do much good to $4k makeup. I got up at 2.30pm the next day and regged my session, playing really really good and managing 4 cashes from 8 comps including a $5.3k win in the 962 runner $16.5k gtd. I used to do well in MTT's back on Crypto and Ipoker but the size of the fields on full tilt I always had a mental block with. I think I pushed the pace too much too trying to win the comp before they started instead of taking it one hand at a time.

Hopefully I can build on the rush before Vegas in August. A live comp bink would be nice soon. Maybe the DTD 300 again. (See the sick 'again' brag?). I'm concentrating on gym and poker and going out for the next few months and that's pretty much it. Strangely even the world cup isn't interesting me that much but I know I'll get more excited in the last of the group games and knockout stages. Cameroon vs Japan with that fucking rediculously tilting noise in the grounds just doesn't appeal right now.

Anyway, I'll try update again soon. Pls can my stakes bink huge at the wsop.

23rd at the IPO

2010-04-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

So I came to play the IPO this Easter weekend gone by.

It completes 2 of my yearly goals. (1) To play another donkament abroad (I'm still going to Vegas) and (2) To have my biggest donkament score to date, which I did coming 23/708 for 13,700 euros.

I still have a rediculously small sample size of live decent sized MTT's (under 30) but my ROI is really good and I run deep in like everything so I know I've got bigger binks in me this year.

Will be doing a full tournament report soon.

I feel lost...

2010-03-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, no philosophical bullshit post here.

I dropped my phone in the bath on saturday and realised how much I rely on the bastard. It's the second phone I've broken in the bath (best time to talk imo) and I've also dropped one in the shitter (slap bang on a brown log I just planted) and had to wave goodbye. Must be more careful....

Had a fun weekend though going to Luton on friday night and getting absolutely smashed and then playing the blackbelt tourney. Not having too much time to blog atm but I'll try do a write up of the weekend during the week some time.

Blogitis

2010-03-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

Suffering a big of blogitis atm. Just not a great deal to update about. I'm back on the gym in a big way atm which means I'm finding no time to play on the internets and just putting all my energies into my job and the gym. I really want to get promoted soon so I'm working towards that and I wanna bulk up a bit more and lose some weight. Pretty sensible considering its me.

Playing some live stuff at the international this weekend. £200 PLO on friday night is right up my street...just hope they get some runners. Then the £500+50 main event which I'm probably going to sell 40% in. gl me

Was excited at the New Season of High Stakes Poker coming out but despite Hellmuth's comical, and now typical ridiculous display and poor play which saw him bust within one episode it hasn't been that interesting so far. It's a pretty tough line up. Even Eli isn't as bad as he used to be. Bring back the good action donkos like Sammy and Bob Safai etc imo.

Prop Bet I forgot to mention, TV stardom, Vegas and live pokerz...

2010-02-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I went on a stag do with some other players of the poker. Now I'm like always late for everything (not a lot, but if you say 9.30 i'll be there at 9.40 and if you say 1.30 I'll still be there at 1.40). I don't do it deliberately...I'm just kind of terrible with time. I was mean't to go up for the start of the stag on friday night but I had to arrange some stuff on the friday night and so the boys (LeKnave, Rookie and Hitthehole) bet me $500 vs my $2000 that I wouldn't be at an agreed McDonalds in Luton before 9.30am. I was playing MTT's with a friend also grinding round my house until about 3.30am, managing a lovely final table bubble in a 900 runner donkament on FTP. Marvellous.

So I plan on getting their uber early as I had not planned on losing $2k. My alarm was set for 6.30 and I must of been in such a deep sleep that I just didn't hear it. So a little while later I roll over and my face literally rolls over my phone which kinda woke me and I looked and saw it was 7.30am. sdjgsdgds. Anyone who knows what I'm like with time will also know that I NEVER leave the house before I've had a shower. Even on the weekend when I'll get up and go to the gym I'll have a shower before. So anyway, I jump in the shower, pack my bag, and get in my mates car at exactly 8am. We had borrowed another mate's TomTom the night before and it wouldn't start at first. Could this bet be going any worse?! Luckily as my mate set off with his foot firmly down we got the TomTom working and managed to arrive in Luton at 9.05am. Wii.
It was nice to open the door to the macdonalds for the 3 lads....just a shame I had to give my mate $250 for driving me there. Not sure I'll be risking $2000 to win $250 like this again. I won this time but I like their side.

At the weekend I also went on Sky Poker. In a programme called Cash Masterclass (ha - the irony!) I sat in the studio and played 2 NL £0.5/1 cash games and they just asked me about hands whilst I played them in the studio. It was good fun and I had some really comedy banter with Tikay the presenter. However, I did feel really weird at first and wasn't my normal self. For some reason I developed this Tony Blair - like usage of my hands to talk but nvm! The show is being repeated a few times through the week I believe on channel 865. So far there have only been 3 contestants but I'm top of the leaderboard atm. Hold on time for the [ ] prize on offer.

Whilst I played for that few hours in the studio I really just did what I should always be doing in cash and even with a few mistakes I still made a few hundred quid. I haven't played in that mindset for a while now online (my live play has been real good) but my online play has just been session after session of me playing my C game. Added with a comment from an 'anon' (Sigh why can't these useless fuckers put their name to their comments) on my last entry these things gave me the motivation to start grinding a little bit online again in the right mindset and I'm probably up around 15 buy ins or so at 25 and 50 plo over not very many hands. It'll definitely take me 3 or 4 months now I'm grinding lower again but I'll get the stake back to level and start making profits if it kills me. It's not hard, I put together 6 consistent winning months on my last stake last year because I was doing it in a much more professional and focused manner. More of the same pls Cos you dick! (Sigh - I'm talking to myself like that knobrot Amatay now).

I also won a live £10r on friday (lols) for £850. I was in for £100 though and play it as part of a greek night down at the big slick club in purley that they have every few months. A lot of my uncles and cousins play so I go down for the crack more than anything. Highlight was shoving over a 6x open with KQ and getting called by AA. Board rolled off 10 6 5 Q K. Unfortunately I paid for it when I made the last 45 of the 16.5k guarantee on full tilt on sunday. I was around 19th in chips and played a huge pot where I standard 2.5x'd under the gun with an Ace and another Ace and table chipleader just spaz shoved about 60x in the pot. Hi der! I snap and the board rolls off J 5 5 10 Q. gkdhgsdgsgd.

Finally we've booked up Planet Hollywood for Vegas in August and I'm really pumped about it already. I'm gonna be putting in a lot more live sessions too from now on and in the run up in order to go with a juicy roll to pwn the Vegas cash donks. I'll be playing most DTD £300's and upcoming will be playing the Blackbelt tournament at the Vic I think.

gl at the tables bus wankers.

Live pokers, Pokers of the interwebs, Getting Grimmed, Feldman challenge, Las Vegas Trip, Cirque Du Soleil, DTD this weekend & longest title ever

2010-02-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Well in short I've been kinda knocking my dick in online. I've played a few too many tilted sessions and I let my staking roll get down to about $1900 before moving down and really grinding it out. I've since won over 25 buy ins at 25rush PLO but it's gonna take me a few months to claw back the $5300 odd I'm down atm and get back to even.

Live poker has been the opposite. I've had a few really good sessions recently and managed to shave my live makeup to pretty much breakeven since we last chopped profits after my DTD win in December. Talking of which, I have monday off work and am off to DTD this weekend for the £300 weekend. £30K one time. (I'm definitely going to be trying to include as much live cash as possible into my routine as long as it doesn't fuck with work at all and gym too much).

A few weeks ago I would even get excited about a trip like going to DTD. However, I've just booked my flight with a few of the lads from blondepoker and I'm going to VEGASSS!! Can't wait! Any suggestions for the trip...let me know fish! (I went to see Cirque du Soleil last night at the Royal Albert Hall - I'll definitely be trying to get tickets for this in Vegas - what a show. Some of the shit they do is just sick!)

I was putting a guy called (*edited*) into a few small online tournaments as he was in a rather bad financial and personal situation with the goal of making me some money and him enough money to pay back stakers through blonde poker and have some money whilst his girlfriend is ill.
He was $700 in makeup when he had a cash for $350 in a $20 heads up tournament on full tilt (he plays as riverdave69) and I haven't seen him since. I think this was a week ago. I'm not panicking too much as someone like Dave can't stay away from poker and I'm sure my debt is one of the smaller ones on his list. Unfortunately for him though, I'm willing to do things to see my money again that others who he owes aren't.

Andrew Feldman keeps trying to add me on facebook after some stuff I've said about him on both the radio show and on blonde poker. I don't mind playing him, even if he is a better heads up player than me, which I've no doubt he is as I neither play heads up or hold em online. However, playing me heads up has no relevance to the things I've said about him - so I've offered him an opportunity to organise a 'well' with the moderators on blonde poker where he can answer questions that a lot of people have of him.

I'll try update again after the weekend with a 'wiii shipped the DTD £300 post'.

gl at the tables fishcakes.

DIE FULL TILT

2010-01-22T17:40:00.001-08:00

Last 12 of 600 runner $25k.

Full Tilt Poker Game #17824685339: $25,000 Guarantee (130339196), Table 43 - 2000/4000 Ante 500 - No Limit Hold'em - 20:36:23 ET - 2010/01/22
Seat 1: BadforYa (219,902)
Seat 3: pantherfan8 (78,380)
Seat 4: pmshoww (140,672)
Seat 5: lord just (128,096)
Seat 6: GreekStein (117,059)
Seat 7: VOVO_LEO (160,391)
BadforYa antes 500
pantherfan8 antes 500
pmshoww antes 500
lord just antes 500
GreekStein antes 500
VOVO_LEO antes 500
GreekStein posts the small blind of 2,000
VOVO_LEO posts the big blind of 4,000
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to GreekStein [Qh Qs]
BadforYa raises to 9,898
pantherfan8 folds
pmshoww folds
lord just folds
GreekStein raises to 24,777
VOVO_LEO folds
DiAragao (Observer): VAMO VOVO VAMOOO
BadforYa raises to 172,000
GreekStein calls 91,782, and is all in
BadforYa shows [8s Ad]
GreekStein shows [Qh Qs]
Uncalled bet of 55,441 returned to BadforYa
*** FLOP *** [6h Kc 8h]
*** TURN *** [6h Kc 8h] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [6h Kc 8h 6s] [8d]
BadforYa shows a full house, Eights full of Sixes
GreekStein shows two pair, Queens and Eights
BadforYa wins the pot (240,118) with a full house, Eights full of Sixes
GreekStein stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 240,118 | Rake 0
Board: [6h Kc 8h 6s 8d]
Seat 1: BadforYa showed [8s Ad] and won (240,118) with a full house, Eights full of Sixes
Seat 3: pantherfan8 folded before the Flop
Seat 4: pmshoww folded before the Flop
Seat 5: lord just (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: GreekStein (small blind) showed [Qh Qs] and lost with two pair, Queens and Eights
Seat 7: VOVO_LEO (big blind) folded before the Flop

Battling with Red Pros and New Blog !

2010-01-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Amatay my blog is looking a little sharper and snazzier. Tbh when I gave the fish my password I was expecting gay porn links all over the place but all he's done is said that he's a legend (which I'll leave up for a while longer by way of a thankyou) and obv changed my name slightly - lol. He also signed me up to a twitter account which you can see on the right but I've not even logged in or had a look yet. With the amount of time I waste on facebook etc I'm not sure I need twitter aswell.

In other news my full tilt account was finally unlocked and I played pretty solidly all weekend long, a combination of on the stake and on my own when I wanted to play a slightly bigger game than usual. At one point I was 14 buy ins down but rallied back to level things up - slightly down on the stake and a small winner on my own dime but I just levelled it off for easyness sake and said level all round. I also managed to stack Erica Schoenberg (damn, I wish that was slang for something else) and I sent Ali Sarkeshik to the rail (another red pro whoever he is). The ones I played against at the low stakes seemed pretty bad: Dave Colclough by far the worst. On several occasions he open limped and just passed to a single raise. I was surprised as I'd heard he was meant to be good.

I politely asked him if he fancied playing heads up to which he replied, "I'd be sitting at a heads up table if I wanted heads up". Now I guess fair enough but when you're getting $35/hour + 100% rakeback you should be an ambassador for the site and at least respond politely to customers/players - imo of course. What's so hard about saying, "No thanks" or "Sorry mate, not a heads up player"?. I know that's what I would say.

So when he came up with his comment I couldn't help but bite. I replied...

"Sorry it's just that it has always been my dream to play heads up cash against a red pro, and you're the only one I can afford to do it against".

BOOOOOM, how d'u like those apples son?

gl at the tables guys.

Bankroll Challenge update & VEGAS trip!

2010-01-07T01:34:00.000-08:00

My bankroll challenge has gone well this week.

As I was determined to stick within the guidelines I set myself I haven't been able to play in any of the $10r's or $30f tournaments on ipoker which has made life a little difficult in relying on a decent tournament bink to get the bankroll going. I've played the select $10f's and $5r's with huge fields that so far I just haven't got going in.

Cash has more than kept me ticking over though. I've been 1-tabling (lol) PLO and adding another table when things are going really well. When playing such few tables it really is easier to pick up on people's tendencies and moods and just concentrate a little more on assigning opponents ranges etc and acting accordingly. I've barely dropped a buy in from what must be nearing 1k hands now.

I've been playing $100 PLO which is essentially like shot taking but part of my new system means that if I lose so much as one buy in I have to move down a limit until I'm either rolled for $100 PLO (i.e. 50+ BI) or back to the peak of my roll. Playing so few tables has reduced variance greatly as I'm able to chip up playing semi smallball, making good moves and getting it in to big pots as a significant favourite.

The roll is now at £607.

Part of my new motivation for being so disciplined is that I'm planning on going to Vegas at the end of July. It would be awesome if I could freeroll my trip & bankroll from this alone, not including live tournaments or my staked account.

If anyone has any particular Vegas recommendations for shows (def wanna go and see Cirque du Soleil) or places to stay / eat / go / play poker etc pls post in comments.

gl at the tables!

2010...Poker goals....

2010-01-05T03:28:00.000-08:00

Never really done new years resolutions etc before but this year I am. I'm intent on being a lot more pro-active, disciplined and focused.

The goals are...

1) To have my biggest live tournament score. (£7250 to beat)
2) Win a tournament outright with no chops/deals/pay flattening.
3) To make $20k at online small stakes cash.
4) To give my cash stakers a nice healthy return on their investment as I did last year and at some point through the year have 100% of my own online action again.
5) To put more effort into my game by joining a training site / reading some books. (Already do a lot of reading on the forums).
6) To implement a stop/loss system for my cash sessions online.
7) To be less confrontational on the forums.
8) To keep this blog regularly updated and in good shape.
9) To keep detailed records of everything I play / how well I do. This should include buying and using a tracker and HUD.
10) To lose no more than a maximum of £1000 throughout the year on all various forms of other gambling. Will document all of this.
11)To play at least 1 online MTT session per week.
12)To go on at least 1 poker trip abroad.

MY YEAR STARTS NOW.

I've kept these goals very realistic, yet not easy as I plan on doing poker the proper way this year and apart from live poker where I play staked, I will be playing smaller, much lower variance games online than I have done this year. None will break my back, but all achieveable.

There's a mix of fun (for me) goals and ones that will require work.

One thing I didn't mention was that I will be putting £250 on a separate site to use as a bankroll challenge type thing. I will try and run this up as high as possible through the year, whilst still never cashing out and always using correct brm.

My next post will be life goals for 2010.

Let's gogoo.

Brief December recap.

2010-01-04T01:52:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to you all. Hope you had a good Christmas etc etc. I always love this time of year. Just sleeping and eating...and poker for a degen like me. Heaven!

Getting up back in routine today was an arse though...everyone on the bus who was back at work / college etc looked like they were on the way to a funeral.

(My DTD trip report is almost finished - I'll have the last part up today hopefully Mr Rubbish sir.)

Anyway enough rambling...

Well 2009 had it's ups and downs but definitely finished on a really high note in December. The first half of the year saw me winning and then knocking my dick in when on tilt either playing way too high or on silly house games.

I since won the £300 deepstack at DTD, managed a 3rd at the Big Slick £100f which I should have won (600k of the 1mil 3 handed - sghdjghsgd) - 3 winning live cash sessions on my own dime and a £2400 bonus from Victor Chandler!

The £2400 wasn't a bonus as such but it certainly wasn't money I was expecting. In July of this year I told VC to ban me from their casino features as I was only interested in using their site for poker and had a problem with blackjack and roulette etc. Anyway, some 12 days later, I'm on monkey tilt and go on the chat and ask to be unbanned, which they do, instantly. Luckily I didn't play much on VC as this was around the time I switched to blonde where I never had access to the feature.

Anyway, after my successful trip from DTD, the return journey was filled with snow and it took me the lions share of 7 hours to get from door to door I logged onto VC and found a £44 loyalty payment in there. I proceeded to spin it to $268 and then back to 0 after one of those tilting hands where I fired 3 barrells with the bare Ace only for my opponent to move in on the river for a little more. skdhgsd. I deposited another £150 taking a shot for myself and quickly lost it and fired one more £150, but this time on blackjack. After I lost I decided to vent my anger in the chat about how I should have never been unbanned and how VC were not advocating responsible gambling etc etc. I told them I wanted someone to address the issue and with my steam let off, I went to bed thinking no more about it.

The next day I receive an email from a manager at VC, offering an apology and admitting it was a fault on their part that I was unbanned. I was then given back any money lost on house games from the time of the initial ban. £2400. Bink.

Ship it!

2009-12-23T01:55:00.000-08:00

Ok so I didn't win the £1k main event, but I did chop the £300+£36 side event at Dusk Til Dawn this past weekend for £7k and change.

I then got home and found out I earnt £2.5k for doing something that took me 5 minutes...but I'll explain that one when the money hits my bank in a day or two hopefully.

I'm doing quite a big write up of my weekend in stages on blondepoker.com. The reports can be seen here.

Monte Carlo £1k Event at Dusk Til Dawn

2009-12-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

Heading up to Nottingham tonight to play the satellite for the £1k at Dusk Til Dawn.

I've sold shares and am buying in regardless.

Countless times I've gone deep this year and ammassed stacks but I've had some shitty coolers & outdraws to leave me close to the cake but no cigar unfortunately. I know I've a big result in me soon but hopefully it can be this weekend.

gl to those who are playing.

FML what a weekend...late recap....

2009-12-07T03:30:00.000-08:00

Saturday began with me making a deposit to play some small MTTs on my own dime, something I don't do too often now as I'm staked to play PLO cash.

I think I played 7 MTTs in total, including one satellite for the $50k GTD.I busted the first 2 within about 30 mins playing like a complete dick. After a bit of a word with myself I regged for some more.

I eventually won the $20 deepstack for $700 and came 2nd in a small PLO MTT for about $500 and change and then later in the evening won the $5r for $2.4k and change. I'm not a huge MTT player online as I simply don't have the time to combine playing them with my work/lifestyle but almost 700 runners was one of my biggest, if not my biggest win in terms of field size.

I had also ammassed a stack in the 50k GTD and was never in danger. I was one-tabling by this point and checking the lobby but 12 left was taking a while - this comp strangely has no antes at any point. (I was meant to be at a mates birthday - gg me).

On my 6-handed table it passed round to the button who opened just as the table merged into one, meaning we were on the final and two had gone from the other table. I moved all in with AQhh and my opponent tanked. The longer he took the more confident I was, thinking he's either got AJ/A10 or a pair like 77/88. As his time almost ran out he made the brave call with AK green. FML. Went from 4th to 10th in a hand and exited in 9th for $1k.

I should have just gone to bed when $4.2k up but had played so well through the day I thought I could continue the run playing cash but wasn't overly bothered. That is until I saw a fish I know playing heads up $2/4 PLO. He had a $3k stack but I consider him complete dead money. I know his game inside out and feel he's so exploitable. Unfortunately he was already sitting against someone and I said to my old man, I hope his opponent is no good because this guy can iron out that $3k in 25 minutes. I think I was out by 1 minute. Sigh.

So I sit at $2/4 and find another baguette. I didn't know he was useless until he made two ridic calls to stack me for 2 buy ins pretty quickly. I was on his left and he was min-raising or potting every hand and every single time without fail I was 3-betting to isolate him. I ran up my $400 (I was now in for $1200) to $1900 and he had gone from $2700 down to $600 and back up to $2300 when we played a huge pot for him to stack me. As usual he pots it and I reraise with 7889. He calls. Flop K8K. He check raises me, and I 4-bet it and snap off his jam. His K1043 no suits sent me to the rail and on uber tilt. I reloaded, knowing if he stayed long enough it wouldn't be a problem to get it back. Unfortunately it was 4.35am by this time and he quit me. Obviously kinda tilted I spewed some more off and went to bed with only $1.5k profit for the day and in the knowledge it was going on Sunday. Again I was right.

Had a session on the stake last night and finally began winning which obviously didn't really last long. I was up 6 BI at peak and finished up $52 in the end.I did something rare though and reviewed every hand from the session and made some general notes which probably explains why I've had the worst month in terms of buy ins I've ever had so far. I'm 100% I'll get back to even but it will probably take me until into Jan to do so which is obviously pretty annoying.Anyway my notes were:

3-bet pots:3-betting too many hands. Peel in pos with AKJx type hands more. 3-betting with run downs etc I'm still doing well but I've widened my 3-bet range way too much.3-bet sizing is sloppy. It seems I'm just hitting 'pot' rather than 3-balling small. Normally I 3-bet to like $9 after someone opens to $3.50 but I've been potting to like $12 all the time. Takes away a bit of my edge post I think.Playing way too many double suited hands. Start folding these dickface!Playing too many hands from UTG.

Table Etiquette

2009-12-07T02:39:00.001-08:00

When talking to my friend Stu on msn today in relation to someone celebrating a suckout in the DTD £300 final table (77 vs AA all in pre) this was Stu's response....

I say:
lol
I say:
ur the epitome of GET IT QUIETLY at the table
Stuart says:
i know this bud
Stuart says:
i hardly make a facial expression
Stuart says:
let alone bang the table
Stuart says:
but if i saw someone classless
Stuart says:
then i would do something comedy
Stuart says:
so everyone knew i was ripping him
Stuart says:
i would wait till he showed a hand
Stuart says:
then go ba ba da
Stuart says:
ba ba ba da da
Stuart says:
doop doop
Stuart says:
ba da ba da da da
Stuart says:
then after 5 mins turn over the nuts and do a little dance involving my crotch in his face
Stuart says:
thrusting
Stuart says:
like a mofo
Stuart says:
goin
Stuart says:
smell the nuts
I say:
lollllllllllll
Stuart says:
smell the nuts

Who is the most fun/interesting/weird person you've shared a table with?

2009-11-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

Post in comments!

TV appearance, being a calling station & random other news.

2009-11-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

I was in the filming of a TV programme 2 weekends ago. I really can't say much more than that except it should be good viewing - I have to wait until Spring 2010 before it airs though!

Made one good hero call last week at the Vic and made one horrible call in Luton this weekend. Since I barely write about any particular hands in here I'll try and recall them

First was a £1/2 game at the Vic on a saturday afternoon. Bunch of limpers and I make a largish raise to £16 isolate one guy who was incredibly weak loose. Old guy calls in the BB, the target folds (eh!?) and a young american guy who talks like he's a board on the 2+2 forum calls. I have J6cc.

Flop = 10s 7s 5c

They both check to me and I decide to check back.

Turn = 6h

Mr 2+2 bets £35 quite quickly and I call, though a little worryingly tight guy calls behind me.

River = Qs

Mr 2+2 insta bets £95 and I quickly decide he has air but have to snap to show some sort of strength so that old boy passes which he does. Young kid fires his hand towards the muck and as I turn my hand the typical bad live players are surprised to see how I played the hand and how I called the turn and river. American kid even has the cheek to try and say he mucked A6 until I pointed to his two cards and told him he could take the pot if they were A6 but he'd have to pay me double if they weren't. Quite comedy as I completely stumped him and he soon left the game.

I realise all the 'live tell' stuff is quite lollable but the speed with which the guy bet turn and river when it was checked to him didn't really make sense given how the board had changed. I often find that live when people bluff they do it really quickly with no real consideration of whether their line is believeable for the hand they are repping.

The other hand was in a cash game in Luton. I 3-bet an open with AK otb and checked down a 56QJ6 board before calling a £45 river bet and being shown 55. Old guy thanked me for the call too. TILT.

In other news I will be playing the £1k Monte Carlo £250,000 gtd event at DTD on December 18th and am really looking forward to it. I'll use up my '1 time' for this event pls.

Also, to anyone who hasn't seen it already, take a look at Dale's blog. He knows his stuff about SNG's and puts his effort into his blog, unlike this greek degen who can barely be bothered at times. http://daleroxxu.blogspot.com/

gl at the tables.

Have Some Bollocks ffs.....

2009-11-06T02:42:00.000-08:00

To anyone that's posted on my blog within the last few entries as anonymous, grow a fucking pair and put your name to what you write please. I don't mind criticism but by writing from anon, you must know deep down it makes you a fucking pussy. xx

Will be going to DTD this weekend. Looking forward to bubbling!

Message from Fleck...

2009-11-05T04:27:00.001-08:00

Dunno if anyone remembers Fleck, the flea infested little cunt, but i got a message from him.

'Woof Woof'

On the Radio Show tonight....

2009-11-03T04:10:00.000-08:00

Well I've just had a call and it looks like I'm going to be on the Radio Show tonight. An educated guess tells me someone their end has seen what's gone on with blonde and are perhaps expecting me to unleash the way I can on people or things I don't like....

That's not the case with blonde whatsoever and what I don't want to happen is a slanging much.For the most part I love blonde and wish I still posted and played on there. As sad as this sounds the forum meant a lot to me but I feel at the moment I'm making the right decision.

A few people have used terms like 'throwing my toys out of the pram' but I feel I should explain my reaction and reasoning a little better since I can't post on the thread, (despite a moderator addressing questions to me on there. Rubdown) ?

If you look at my posting history on blonde I've only ever slagged off people like Andrew Feldman, Carl 'The Dean' Sampson etc. I think most people who have a clue about what goes on in the poker scene would agree with me, just not many are willing to say it how it is. I've always been like that and I think it surprises most blondes when they meet me in person how easygoing I am.

For those who don't know, this guy (Salfi) posts on blonde, who always comes across as a complete dousche and we tend to universally disagree on everything and I know I'm not the only one he pisses off starts being his usual annoying self. Who knows, he might be a nice guy in person, but he just comes across as a massive toolbox whenever he posts. I snapped and told him to leave and join another forum is the general crux of it. Not my place to do so and it was out of order. I acknowledged I was wrong and in the morning told I'd be back on tomorrow. No huge deal and the mods didn't need to blow it out of proportion which is what happened. I obviously wasn't happy at even one day but felt it was fair and I can't think because I'm a contributor to the forum in many ways or a decent raker on the cardroom I'll go unpunished.

Then in the evening I get told my ban is being decided. I'm like wtf!!? Is that really necessary? Ok I was wrong but it didn't warrant a longer ban - I felt that was put in place because the mods wanted to show their authority and make an example of me and Rooks. I could also understand a bit better if I was in the sin bin a lot but this is my first ban so to speak.

A blonde moderator made similar out of order comments that night, making a wrong assumption that Rookie had put someone up to making a paedophile joke when it wasn't him yet nothing happens. Surely by the rules 'out of order' comments like that warrant 3 day bans no?

Some people have also commented that I needn't stop playing on the cardroom as they are two separate entities but the card-room supports the forum. How can I continue supporting a forum that made decisions against me that I don't agree with?!

I know I was gonna get the odd post against me from people like Mantis. At least he had the honesty to say when he didn't agree with me on the forum. I'm fine with that.Kinboshi is a mate who's pissed me off greatly in all of this but he has to have his view as a mod and he's still my mate. There's also the odd idiot like Acidmouse who posts some nonsense once he knows I'm banned. Desperate to be a mod much?!

Otherwise thanks all for the support and to those who were sensible enough to see that the ban was kind of unnecessary. I'll answer any questions if anyone doesn't understand anything as I've just written this quickly.

Cos

Banned from Blondepoker

2009-11-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

As a lot of you who read this will know, I'm an avid poster on the blondepoker forum. I've made a lot of friends through there that would still be friends even if I quit poker tomorrow and think it's a great place, both in terms of community and content.

I started out just lurking the site and reading the stories on the main page until I deviated to the forum. In the last few years I've spent a hell of a lot of time logged in and posted over 5000 times. When I play any live event I wear a blonde badge and always talk it up as much as possible, which I did both times I was on the Pokershow. I've also tried to contribute to many of the charitable things that have gone on and I did a fair bit of staking too, as well as making some blondes a bit of money with my PLO cash staking too.

All in all I've been a pretty good member of the community I'd say. I do say exactly what I think however which can sometimes make me come across as harsh etc but that's just how I am. I love the silly banter too. Every blonde I've met in person I've always got on with. 2 nights ago I did a bit of flaming of one of the members. Pretty much any blonde I have on msn thinks the guy is a complete idiot and probably should have been banned already but thats another matter - admittedly I was out of line with forum rules.

I came in to work this morning to see I'd been given a 24 hour cooler. Not happy but a fair enough punishment and I swallowed it. Then this evening I find out my ban is being extended. I think this serves no purpose other than to piss me off and is too harsh. For that reason I won't be posting on blonde anymore or playing on the cardroom. Not something I wanted to have to do or thought I would do ever and will take some getting used to but unless things change that's the decision I've made at the moment.

I'm staked to play on blonde so I will be shipping any staker that doesn't want me to move site with the stake their money back and carrying on as normal. To those who I probably won't be contacting again best of luck in future.

Hope to bump into some of you soon.

Ireland Part 1

2009-10-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

Well sorry for the lack of updates, I'm going through a very lazy at life in general phase atm and have the flu which won't fuck off.

I went to Ireland 2 weeks ago for the IPO. A big group of us travelled, mostly guys from the blonde poker forum. My dad had plenty of Euros left over from his holiday so I took 3.5k with me so I had some ammo for the cash games. Turned out I needed it as Dublin is the most expensive city ever, and that's coming from someone who spends 5/6 days a week in central london!!

At the airport I'm already losing 200-250 Euros in PLO flips, for 50 euro a pop when I just cant hit to save my life despite being dealt like AKKQJ10 every hand. Sigh. Not even in Irish air yet and I'm on tilt. This trip could get expensive...

Anyway we land and finally I win a flip, Amatay has to pay for the taxi to the hotel. Only 193 below EV now. No poker on the first night, just drinking in the hotel and Amatay loses the next flip when we go for a burger and chips (25 Euros for 2 people! - lol Dublinaments). -185 below ev and on the road back to even....

We hit the hay about 1am wanting to get a good night's rest before the tournament the next day. Me and Amatay get a taxi to the venue and he loses the flip for the 16 Euro taxi ride.... - 177 below EV and heading back in the right direction.

Chipping up in the tournament is easy, some really bad play and as flushy said to me, "this is like playing tournament poker 5 years ago". I flopped the nuts with Q10 on an AKJ rainbow and thought I was going to stack the only other capable player on my table but he had Q10 too....norrrrrrrrrrr. Some comedy hands take place though. At 75/150 I'm playing about 16k from my inital 10k stack and theres a raise in early to 450. After 4 callers I decide to call on the button with 67 and see a flop of : A 6 8. Guy in BB leads for 600 and all 4 players fold. I'm never folding here and decide to peel one. Turn: 4. Picked up a gutterball too, 6 7 5 I know are all good and he leads for 600 again into the bajillion chip pot. Ok sir I call. River is a beautiful 5. I lead for 3700 and he snap jams. I auto assume A7 and call straight away. He declares proudly, 'Sorry mate, rivered 2 pair!' as though he got me. I instantly turn my hand and after a second he realises he's beat. [ ] Good value jam though buddy.

When I move tables I continue chipping up and make 3 hero calls within the space of 2 hours and I'm opening pretty much every hand and taking 90% down. My favourite hero call came at 200/400 when I open the hi-jack to 1025 and the BB calls. Flop is K56 and villain check-calls 1350. Turn brings an 8 and villain leads for 4000. I call. River is a Q and he slides about 16k across the line. I call fairly quickly and his hand hits the muck. I got a few looks after that and I was allowed to just chip up in every pot until I reached 70k.

An updater came to take my photo and ask my name as apparently I was 3rd in chips of the 700 or so entrants that day. The only problem was my concentration. I sometimes get impatient when playing donkaments. I'm a cash player through and through and will sometimes sit and play a session for 1 hour and other times I can play for 20 hours straight. I go for dinner with Flushy and Blatch and I even suggest to do a flip against the two most golden people in the history of the universe for the meal. After I pay I head back to the tournament. At level 10 I'm on 90k and there are still probably only a couple of stacks ahead of me. I'm shattered by now and really don't wanna be sat there but do my best to get through the last few levels....until the TD said we were playing through to the end of level 18. Needless to say my chips were gone 3 hands later. ffs Cos you massive prick. I just didn't wanna be sat there. This is something I really need to work on, my patience. Anyone been through the same and got any advice?

I went to the bar with Maria 'Chili' Demetriou for a bit so I could moan to her as if I'd sat down in cash I'd have insta spewed. Have a few drinks and then hit cash, where I win a monkey and can sleep a bit easier. Still feel like a dick. More annoying was the fact that most of the lads busted really early and were already in town, after 10/11 levels of play I didn't feel like meeting them when they were all pissed already.

Part 2 to follow

Overdue update...

2009-09-29T02:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a rather long time since I last made any sort of significant update so I thought I'd better do one now before I give up on the blog altogether.

I'm now being staked to play cash online. I put up a proposal on the blonde forum and it was a nice feeling to sell out within like 1 hour. I had to take a look at things logically and I just wasnt being sensible with my own money - tilt led to me moving up limits or stupidly playing house games. I guess I just had zero respect for my own money so even though I've been a big winner this year at small and low midstakes PLO I was never holding on to the money which essentially just meant I was wasting my time.

I'm learning bankroll management and to just call a losing day a losing day. Not once have I messed around with stakers money or played different limits and won a few buy ins the first month which was a little turbulent after some sessions where I wasn't in the best frame of mind held me back a little. This month has been going much better and despite two shots at the $109 PLO comp I've won around 24 buy ins with 16 of these coming on one massive sunday session. I've cracked the styles and the regs at these limits now for the large part - time to press on and make some mad ones. I'll only quit the stake when I'm 100% confident and rolled to move onto my own dime without fear that I'll do anything silly.

I went and played the £200 freezeout at Luton this weekend and I was playing so well early, just destroying the table who all hated me for opening so many pots and being so aggro as live players do but I lost almost every flip I got into and ultimately lost a biggun at the death of day 1.

The friday before I went to the Empire casino which turned out to be quite a good laugh too. I got a picture with Todd Brunson, Howard Lederer, a Freddy Deeb lookalike and the best of all.....a very fit waitress who I'm a little in love with. I'll try post the pictures with the next post. Howard Lederer's face was a picture when a very drunk me decided to start asking him about activating the boomswitch on my Full Tilt account - he really needed that when standing outside the casino on his 5-minute break when about to go heads up for a bracelet!

Met up with the Amatay there too as well as some other blondes. I heard Amatay shagged 3 or 4 of the valets that night. good work mate.

On the PokerShow....

2009-09-09T02:57:00.000-07:00

I was travelling back from Dusk Til Dawn on monday afternoon when I got a text from a mate off the blonde forum saying 'You're gonna be a legend'. Instantly think ffs what have I done? Two minutes later I got a call from Eddie Hearn asking me to go on the Poker Show with Jesse May and Andy Greekfish.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope they have me back soon. I was actually a little nervous and towards the end my reception was crap which didn't help.

Here is the thread where you can see how it came about....

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=44053.0

and here is where you can hear a replay of the interview....

http://www.thepokershowlive.com/listenagain.htm

Edit: I'm GreekStein or Cos for those that didn't know.

Overdue Poker update coming soon!

gl

Filling the gap...part 1. LPC £750.

2009-08-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone on the blogging front is updating less these days and I've been as guilty as any. Sometimes it feels like such a chore but I've got no excuses with how much I post on blondepoker and am constantly reading 2+2 and blogs etc to not manage to update a bit more regularly.

To quickly fill the gap I played the £750+£75 London Poker Circuit Event. Unfortunately they've decided to scrap their main events from now on being these big buy in jobbies. It's a shame as even though this was the first event I played, the field consisted of 5 players capable of winning and the rest was pure value in the field of 20 odd. The structure is great and makes a nice change from what you normally play. 20k chips and 1 hour clock starting at 25-50. yum yum. The location was lovely and dealers very good too. Sadly I didn't make the end of the 3rd level! Sigh. Don't know whether I was more pissed at my exit or not making the buffet break which I heard is meant to be awesome at these LPC things.

My exit hand.....

Fish limps the button at 75/150 and I see two Queens in the sb. I iso-raise to 675 (playing 16k) as Woody Deck was playing like a bit of a station in position but he raises the BB to 2675. Woody had been the most active at both my tables but I hadn't really seen him 3-bet pre. I was pretty active too though so wasn't ruling out that he would be 3-betting light. I did think he had a genuine hand though as I feel normally he'd want to just flat though and play a pot with position.

I think If I raise/shove I fold out all worse hands, apart from maybe JJ and AK, possibly. Folding is just too weak and that leaves me with call. Flop comes Q23, with 2 diamonds. Kerching! I check and Woody bets less than his initial reraise. I hollywood for a while like I might have 88-JJ sort of hand whilst thinking of the best way to get them all in. I decide to flat. The turn comes a black 5. Being that Woody doesn't know me combined with my little act I decide to make a ridiculous bet of like 600 to look like some sort of weak noobish blocker, hoping that if Woody had no hand he'd spazz out and get it in. If he did have a hand then it was going in anyway. As soon as I bet he snap announced all in and I called. Almost before the hands could be turned over the river was the 4 of clubs making Deck the backdoor wheel.

It was actually quite weird as no-one really realised straight away apart from me who got up quickly and shook his hand. Ross Boatman said something like 'unlucky' and I tried to respond but I was in such shock (lol donkaments) that worlds just didn't come out of my mouth. I rambled two half sentences that made no sense and quickly made an exit for home. At least my Chips went to good use and Woody went on to win. Not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse though!

Will try and put a quick update tomorrow on some other stuff.

London Poker Circuit £750 this weekend

2009-08-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

I'm playing the LPC £750 at the Kingsway Hotel in Covent Garden/Holborn this weekend.

Just wondered if anyone had a good steer on the number of runners it will garner? How long it usually goes on for and if you know anyone attending?

DTD £300 day 2

2009-08-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

I go back second in chips at the DTD £100K guaranteed. There are 65 left of 385 runners with 36 cashing and £34k ftw.

I played really well all day and never had my entire stack all in until the penultimate level.

I got Aces bust in an 80k pot where I flatted a raise pre and got it in against the raiser on an 894 flop with 2 diamonds and FML he had one hand I didnt want to see 910dd. It came Queen clubs Jack clubs to make him a backdoor straight and I was left with 4k at 800/1600 with a 200 ante.

My chips went in very next hand with 66 and I got 2 calls but binked on the flop to get back up to 14.5k. I reshoved twice to then get a workable stack and then just played quite patiently managing to chip up to 63kish when I played a huge hand with the chipleader. By far and away the most active player at the table, opening with a v v wide range he opened to 5k at 1k/2k and I called in the bb with 9Jcc. Probably the second time I had flatted a raise from OOP all day.
The flop of K103 all clubs fitted quite well with my hand and I check called a bet of 8k. The turn came a red queen and I checked to villain who bet 18.5k. He's a very good player who's game I respect and I know he's not bet folding in this spot and with like 27k back it's a pretty easy shove. He snapped and turned his hand and one card was kind of stuck to the other but all I could see was the 6 of clubs. Knowing he didn't have a set I was like FML if this guy has A6 clubs leaving me drawing to one out but luckily it was 56cc and the 130k pot was shipped my way. I won another hand with the nut flush and raise folded 1010 on the last hand of the day against a reraise and an all in from the two shorter stacks. I was up against AA and AJdd and would have missed which helped me sleep easy.

Some really good players left in, Jerome Bradpiece, Pete Linton, Nick Hicks, Ashley Mason etc all of whom I'd rather were in Luton but I'll just dig in and see what happens.

After the tournament we also did a Larry the Lobsterathon at DTD with 10 members of blonde poker putting £100 each into the Larry the Lobster machine and cashing out £1100 for a £10 profit each. It was good fun and a nice way to wind down after the tournament finished for the day.

To see the thread, look here..... http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.0

Robusto------------> not robusto & DTD this weekend

2009-07-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't blogged lately partly because I haven't been arsed, partly because I've not had too much to talk about and I go through periods where I enjoy writing entries and others where it's just a hassle.

I'm up to Dusk Til Dawn this weekend for the £300. I'm going to Leeds in September for the Blondepoker forum bash which should be good crack and in October I'm going to Ireland with some of the lads from blonde for 5 days. Really looking forward to that one in particular.

I read Animal's blog this morning and saw he did a very brief 6-month review which I should prob do too.

First part of the year...I started a blog and was really focused/had a good head. I ran really hot and crushed the $1/2 and $2/4 plo games I was playing in (p.s. pls return to the tables rory liffey u mega donk) for a lot of money. I made the trip to DTD a couple of times, running up decent stacks in both £300's I played but ultimately getting bored and throwing my chips away. 2 day tournaments aren't terribly appealing when you can sit in a small cash game and make £1000 without stressing too much.

I did play a 2-day £200+100 at the Big slick club in London, making the final table where I refused a deal for £3.5 and ran like dogshit to bust in 5th for £1500. Still feel it was right not to take that deal with the stacks and players at the table, all of whom I had an edge on but I ran bad and perhaps played a little fast.

Recently I played a £200 freezeout at the Vic with 109 runners and got in a 4-way chop for £4.3k which I couldnt really refuse despite being chipleader after the first hand on the final and then throughout. Sadly I got AQ all in vs A10 4-handed for the world and lost which led to me being the shortest stack. I couldn't refuse when the guy (Mr A10 with 400k - I had 110k now) agreed to an even chop. Though on hendon mob it does look like i got £1800. Norrrrrr.

Including some smaller comps, (I've prob only played 15 live donkaments this year) I've spent about £2k and returned about £7.5k.

Unfortunately the wheels came off in the last 6 weeks and I ended up shot taking at $5/10 PLO. I ran good winning 3 buy ins pretty quick but then began to lose to the variance war. This led to tilt and I basically ended up gifting away half my roll having already lost most of the other bit anyway.

I've just got involved in a deal with a friend from poker who is putting me into any live donkament up to £500's on a 50-50 deal after makeup. I've never been staked before so hopefully I can run good in my first one at DTD this weekend. For the meantime I'm gonna knock online on the head and just make easy money, but less often at live poker.

gl all.

This week I have been mostly.....

2009-07-24T08:09:00.001-07:00

RANGEMERGING

Mr Anon

2009-07-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

I know some bloggers don't allow anon comments because of random pricks and enemies but I don't really have any in or outside of poker so I've not disabled it and still won't. Obviously there's a ton of people I don't like but I just don't associate myself with these people in the slightest.

Why am I banging on about this? I had a bit of an argument with someone on a forum a while ago and he has since posted on my blog. I was gonna give him a good old slap as he was due to be playing at the same event as me that weekend but my mates I was with just convinced me there was no point as he's just an immature prick.

Anyway...about two entries ago I get this comment....

Anonymous said...
busto fish? knw u always would be. Just play sngs or donkaments... u ant do ur nuts playing them... a degen fish like you probs would! hahaha
03 July 2009 10:04

Posting to make it clear to this idiot that just because he posts as Anon it doesn't mean I don't know who he is. Look forward to seeing you at some time R....

Warning Brag Post

2009-07-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Just chopped the £200 at the Vic for £4300.

Will post a proper report tomorrow if I have time before the £100 rebuy plo. Lemme take that fker down 1 time

That ineveitable blow up

2009-07-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

So I lost £2.5k/$4000 last night at $5/10 PLO. There was an absolute donkey in the game and he ran so good against me it was sick.

First hand I flat a cutoff pot to $35 on the button playing a full buy in with AA22. The small blind repots to $150 and the initial raiser flats. I repot it to get most of my stack in and lose vs the donkeys AK47 double. (He now has $3000 on this table)

On the other table about half an hour later playing $1400 stack its potted utg and called in two spots when I find 6789 on the button. Maybe I should raise here but I elected to flat. I flopped the nuts on a 345 board (2 spades) and it got checked all the way round to me so I bet $90 into the $140 and got 1 caller before donkey repots. I get it in and he has A457 no spades. The turn is the 4 of spades and I now want to put a screwdriver through his eye. (He now has $3000 on this table)

Admittedly I lost my last 2 buy ins through playing way too fast and way too predictably but the haze has hit my eyes by this time and I was steaming like mad. No excuse especially as I'm not rolled to be playing this game in the first place.

Not quite sure what the plan is now. I'm just not learning. What's the point beating the game and just doing stupid degenerate things? My time is better spent elsewhere where I might have something to show for it like at the gym etc. One thing is for sure. I need to change my ways or stop playing poker completely.

Edit: Donkey gave all his money away in the end. Just a shame it was my money he was dispensing.

Immitating Police Officers FTW

2009-07-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post about this when it happened two weeks ago.

I was walking from work to the Empire Casino in Leicester Square as I sometimes like to do on a friday. I don't play live at all during the week so enjoy just unwinding in a cash game for a few hours (ok sometimes longer than a few hours lol) before going home and enjoying the rest of the weekend.

So I'm almost in the main square when I saw a chinese dude not letting his girlfriend go. She seems quite distressed and every time she goes to walk in a direction he just grabs her and pulls her towards him. I stop and watch for a minute and when he doesn't stop, and he's being overly physical I can't watch any longer. He's grabbing her, yanking her, and she's not screaming or shouting but she is clearly crying.

I didn't particularly want to go up and just smack the guy or get in a fight so I go over and say 'What's goin on is everything ok?'. He stares at me with quite an aggressive angry look on his face. I said to him 'I suggest you fucking answer me, I'm a plain clothes policeman'. He bought it straight away and his heart insta-sank. The expression on his face went from hardman to embarrassed fool.

He said, 'She my girlfriend'. I replied, 'I don't care who she is. Don't ever put your hands on a woman'. He apologised about 10 times and then tried to shake my hand. [ ] I offered him mine. The comedy moment was when I told him to go and stand by a street light about 5 metres away. He did and looked a right lemon whilst I asked the crying girlfriend if she wanted me to hold him here for 5 minutes when she went on her way. She was ok though and when I called him back I just warned him that I would be in the area and so would plenty of other plain clothes officers who had been informed of his description. One further misstep and he would be in the back of the van.

Now I know it's obv illegal to pretend to be a police officer but it's not like I did it to get into an old ladies home and nick her pearls and china tea set. Having said that I quite enjoyed it - I may apply to be a police officer or just get a part in the Bill! I'll ask my mum to borrow the handcuffs she keeps on her bedside table. ((Joke obviously!))

Pokerwise I had one of my rare midweek sessions last night donking off two buy ins before I went to the gym. I don't normally do donking anymore as I'm really focused and playing well at the moment. After the gym I came back and ran up a $2k stack on a $2/4 table completely pwning the soul of one guy over and over. I called a $48 river bet that should not have been called. I could have raised or passed but never flatted and I ended the session righ there which I felt was sensible of me. I now know when something could set me off so I just insta quit. I finished up £700 on the night from being down £500 so not too shabby.

Bump in the road....

2009-06-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

I broached the subject with my parents last night that some of the lads wanted to go to Vegas in November and their response was 'Ahh that's a shame, the one place you can't go'.

Kind of lifetilting. My parents are a lot more laid back than most and just let me get on with my shit but this is one thing, after what happened when I was at uni, that I feel I may have to bite the bullet and accept.

I just soooo want to go to Vegas. Shall I just go and say I'm going somewhere else?

Argh mindfuck, what shall I do?

New strat and focus

2009-06-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Since I've got it in my head that I'm going to Vegas in November and it's actually happening I've found a new discipline to grind grind grind. I want to take £10k out there with me if not a bit more so the aim is to make double that between now and November. Doable if I keep my head. I don't want to use any money from outside of poker and I'm going to leave a lot of money locked up in shares over this time. Likewise my savings and salary are being put away for when I buy my first property soon. A good talk when I met up with Amatay recently about how I'm wasting my time and talent (that's not meant to seem like an arrogant dick comment, just can't think of a better word) grinding up and tilting down had an effect and made me realise I really do want to knuckle down and keep earning nice chunks from this game I love and actually hold on to them.

In the last 9 days I've made £3100ish at $2/4 plo. I've actually changed from playing 4 and 6 tables to playing 1 or 2. I think this really allows me to exploit my edge and as a result I've been playing close to what I think is my best game. Getting it in really good in a lot of spots rather than the higher variance 55/45s and 50/50 type spots you're more likely to get into playing $5/10.

I don't use any software, in fact I think it should all be banned. It's just not poker and having some system telling u a bloke checkraises flops a very high % of the time feels a little bit like cheating. I know it's not but I'm in the camp that these are things people should work out for themselves in poker. I don't feel I need it either when I play at 1 or 2 tables as I have a good feel for where everyone is at and what they are capable of which I lose when 4 tabling.

Got some time off in a week or two to play the festival at the Vic too. Looking forward to the £100 rebuy PLO in particular. Bought Rolf Slotbooms PLO book and it seems pretty decent though I've only read a little bit and it hasn't told me anything I don't already know yet.

gl at the tables

The urge

2009-06-25T04:01:00.000-07:00

Everyone I know seems to have been to Vegas and I just can't handle one more person going on about how incredible a place it is and how soft the cash games etc are.

I really want to get out there for 2 weeks and I'm hoping I can get a few fish together to go out in November as I've heard this is a good time to go. The Venetian deepstacks are on around that then and hotels, flights are normally cheapest around then. Plus who wants to be in England in November?

I know the Amagay is up for it providing he won't have started his travels by then. My mate Figo will come and a few lads from the blonde forum may well be interested. Plan will be to play a few comps but just generally grind the hell out of the $1/2 and 2/5 cash games where at the former I've heard it's not at all difficult to make $1k a day.

I'm blog freerolling

2009-06-24T02:58:00.000-07:00

I was gonna write a blog about the weekend and then the Amafish did it for me.

Click here..
http://amatay.blogspot.com/

In the meantime I haven't been playing poker this week because I've been busy with gym and other stuff. Will post more soon.

Weekend Plans

2009-06-18T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ok so Amatay messages me on msn the other day and is literally like 'I have no friends...my blog is complete lies as I'm still a virgin and even that ginger bastard Scotch hates my guts'.

At this point I kinda feel sorry for the fish and agree to go with him to the masters football at Wembley. I insist that he must pay for everything though in return for the purchase of my friendship and he instantly agrees and buys the best tickets in the stadium.

Hopefully we will get drunk and end up at the Empire where I can put the fish even more out of pocket on the night.

Going to the 20-20 on friday too and busy on sunday so gotta find a bit of time to try and rape the tables.

Sooooo much going on atm

2009-06-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

So much going on at the moment really not had time to blog although that's always a bit of an excuse as I haven't really been arsed either.

I don't know what it is or why but I am really comfortable playing PLO now. Things have been a bit swingy the last month or so and I've played regularly anywhere between $2/4 and $5/10 which probably isnt so sensible for my poker bankroll....

I've set myself the goal of getting out to Vegas next year and I'm not prepared to use my personal funds to do it as I want to buy a house soon (just waiting for what I believe is the best time in the market) and I've just lumped in the stock market too from a tip from a friend who's an investment banker and knows his stuff so fingers crossed that goes well. Ship me the lot pls one time! I know it's a fair bit of financial pressure to manage all this at 22 but I'll be fucked if I'm working at 50.

I don't get the mentality of a lot of people in this country who just aren't bothered about saving money and investing. I guess that's why so many people are in the hole for so much money everywhere. I'll elaborate on this point in it's own post soon as I want to discuss this and specifically how it relates to poker and why all these big names aren't the minted people you might think they are. Anyway plenty more to say on that before it makes sense so I'll leave it for another time.

I'm also cutting my staking ventures right down. I've spent in the region of £3k through blondepoker which is a fantastic forum but most people are clueless as to their value in a tournament. From now on I'm only going to buy pieces in friends or proven players selling at no more than 1.1 and that will be a rarity as I think people should be selling at 1.0. Ok I'm just as bad cos I've been buying pieces in a lot of these people but people who aren't rolled for events they want to play are charging premiums etc when they can't justify them really. If they could, they would probably be rolled to play said event! People are just too polite to challenge them publicly. I don't want to say too much more on this but it's a leak of my own I'm going to plug.

Finally I've decided to drop down for a little while as the swings have been a bit stressful lately...lots of +/- £1k-2k days aren't good and when winning or losing these amounts in a few hours I don't want to get off the laptop. Luckily playing as high as $5/10 hasn't really affected me and I'm even over the last few weeks but evens isn't doing me any favours.I just can't resist the challenge although 5/10 is noticeably a much more solid game in terms of skill. I'll still be playing $2/4 and $3/6, games I beat comfortably but I've set myself the challenge to win another £5k by the end of July before I allow myself to really be in these games only. The me of old would be playing $5/10 and moving to $10/20 until I busto'd so I'm obviously making a lot of progress in terms of bankroll management and mindset towards poker which is half the battle.

I played two sessions since, on sunday at $.5/1 which was a real test of my discipline but I did it and won £400 and then tonight in an hour whilst writing this post I've just smashed a guy for 5 and a half buy ins at $1/2 heads up plo.

Feel free to leave a comment so that I know I still have one reader!

2009-06-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

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SWONGS

2009-05-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

Had some right swongs this weekend, dropping about £4k on friday night and saturday morning. I think that's up there with my biggest loss ever. It was partly poker and partly tilted bj sessions to try and recover.

Luckily I had tickets to see a friend fight and it got me away from the laptop on saturday afternoon and out on saturday night. He won in the first round and is an absolute brutus which got me feeling a bit better after a good night.

I had £1000 on Lyoto Machida to win vs Rashad Evans at 1/2 and then a £500 treble on Machida, Hughes and Sherk all to win. Machida obviously won so the second bet was going to be a freeroll but Sherk fucked up which was about a £2k swong towards recovery. On Sunday I logged on to will hill and tried to put £200 on Chelsea, Ars, Utd and Lpool all to win their last game at 17/2 but the max bet was £120 so I had no choice. When they all won I didn't know whether to be happy or angry!

After that I just refocused a bit, spoke to live support on both my sites and got myself a ban from table games/casino sections so I can't do them even if I want to in future. From that point on I just grinded like some 2 bit downtown stripper trying to make a buck and finished the extended weekend down only £1kish. I'm happy with that and it shouldn't take me too long to grind back even if a player called Snooper is the luckiest human alive and running about $4k above expectation on me in all in pots.

One other thing to anyone who reads this blog, you will love the blog of a guy I know. It can be found here ( http://www.verysickmandavidlam.blogspot.com/ ) and tells of his utter degeneracy. Pls become a follower.

Good luck at the tables and more importantly to big Stavros Flatley in Britain's got talent tonight!

My 2 biggest online cash pots in 2 days.

2009-05-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

So it appears I haven't completely shaken off the degenyamine within despite my best efforts.

The other night I went out with the lads for my bday. We had a meal and then went to a bar in Camden for some drinks. I had to be in Birmingham on Friday for work which meant a very early start.

When I got home around midnightish I decided to fire up the tables and blast for an hour. I duly played like a donkey. I'm not sure quite why as I didn't feel drunk but after losing 3 buy ins at $2/4 having been up a buy in I decided to buy in for $1000 on a $10/20 plo game. First hand I'm dealt Q567 in the BB. UTG pots to 70 and the SB calls. I join the party. Flop comes Q23 with 2 hearts. SB checks, I check and raiser pots for $210. SB flats and I decide to jam. Raiser rejams behind. Oops. SB tanks. Oh shit. I'm truly hung drawn and quartered. Eventually SB passes and on their backs for the $2300 in the middle the raiser shows AJJ4 with nut hearts. I'm ahead...weeeeeeeee. Now hold vs his 300,000 outs pls one time. Turn 6. River A. Ship. I do a dirtball and don't even play my sb. Insta-sit out. Insta-leave. Insta de-tilt. Nice.

Then today I'm up $400 on a $2/4 plo game on two separate occasions and both times I got outdrawn when in pretty good shape for stacks to take me back to my initial $400 buy in. I then potted the cut off with KK72 with nut clubs and the K hearts. The flop came A72 with two hearts (A) and the raiser potted for $104ish. I called with bottom two with a plan to jam any heart turn but decided to stack off on the complete brick 6 turn when I called villains all in just hoping he was going crazy with a rundown that missed pre or a hand like AKQJ. Obviously he wasn't and had AA but when I'm on tilt I stack off considerably lighter than I should and I was fuming with myself. I don't mind losing hands and rarely tilt when I lose a big hand hand for stacks but I do beat myself up when I donate money to someone else.

So I looked at $3/6 and there were no games running. Scrolled to $5/10 to see one 6-max table with 5 players. Perfect. I took the empty seat and bought in full. First hand I look down at A9A9 double suited. It pots infront of me to $35 and gets called on the button. I re-pot to $150 and the guy next to me flats as well as the other two! Flop comes 24J with 2 spades. Good enough for my nut spade draw and I bet pot $600. I get one jammer and an insta call behind. My last 300 goes flying in and there's just over $3000 in the pot. I'm up against 2357 with spades and JJxx. I bink the nut flush on the turn and the river bricks. Insta-sit out. Insta-leave. Insta de-tilt. Nice.

Actually that's not quite true. I just wanted to get that line in again! I posted the SB and passed and then got AA22 on the button. It passed round. I potted and the BB defended. Flop comes 856, rainbow. BB checks and I check behind. 2 on the turn so my hand is completely disguised but it's still not a good board. I call the $75 pot bet and then feel obliged to pay off the $225 on the K river as it just looks like I can never really have anything but I lose to 744x. I don't think I hate the call on the river as he bluffs a bunch in that spot. I leave the table and I'm now £850 up on the day and happy.

Can't keep doing this though. Shot taking should be for when you're running good and up some buy ins, not when you're doing it!

gl at the tables de-gens.

That perfect moment.......................crash!

2009-05-14T01:42:00.001-07:00

On tuesday night I went to the Empire, with the intention of meeting a friend and then going for a few drinks and a bite to eat as he's had exams and a lot of uni work so we haven't caught up in a while.

I go in about 7pm and he's sitting at a cash table with about £900. He gets up to say hi etc etc and his phone rings. I tell him I'll play for him even though this is a bit of a grey area and I'm not really sure if it's allowed but no-one seemed to object. There were 3 familiar faces to me at the table so maybe they just didn't object cos I'm such a good value spot! Anyhoo, I raise the first 3 hands (I've watched Durrrr on HSP and PAD this week and convinced I can be a genius too obv!). I take down 2 small pots and concede one when I get reraised. There are two guys on the table, both look like total geeks and one is wearing a pkr t-shirt. T-shirt gooks mate asks me if I'm on 2+2. I respond deadpan, 'Is that like Youporn community'? He looks at me and says no and continues talking to t-shirt gook about pokertracker or the size of Pat Antonius's ring. My mate gets off the phone and whispers, 'Those two have been doing my head in today...sooo annoying, come on let's go and get some drinks'. "One more hand" is the completely predictable response from me. I look down at 53o in MP and it's folded to me so i make it 8 to go and both blinds call only. Marvellous, I'm happy at least I have position with this sack of shit. Flop 356 with 2 hearts. T-shirt boy check raises me from the big and I set him in for his last £100. Even though the pot was only £300 it was so nice to felt gook boy when his J6hh bricked. Soooo sweet. My mate was very happy.

The crash happened a little later just as my mate was leaving. He put £550 on one hand of Blackjack and got....yes...Blackjack. His life is just like one whole run good story. Another friend from home who had met me in the meantime watched me piss away £700 trying to emulate Figo (the initial mate in the story) who it turns out didn't go home...he went to the Vic and spun up £8k on blackjack. Sick bastard. He won a £1k freezeout when he was £18. Lost £99k sportsbetting on Will Hill before he was 21 and won £28k on the Barcelona vs Real match a week or so ago. On top of that he's meant to be doing his finals at uni at the moment! He's still a sick degen bastard who will try to nip anyone in his site, so if you hear of Figo...stay the fk away! I'm gonna make the dirty little bastard read this too.

I've since clawed back over half of that £700 but won't be playing much til the weekend.

GL all.

BBBBB

2009-05-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

BBBBB = Big Black's Black Belt Blog.

A really good friend of mine Aarun 'Big Black' Bernard is doing the Blackbelt grading scheme at the moment and he came 3rd in their BlackBelt only tournament on Stars yesterday, getting cruelly outdrawn KJ < J10 when all in pre. Both wp & ul mate.

I know the grading couldn't really have come at a much worse time for him but he's a loyal guy and will always give things his best. Many people including myself were sceptical about the Black Belt scheme thinking that Doctor Channing would use the rake that everyone generates to give the 20k packages to the players who were in his previous stable. However, from what Black Belt have said I really think everyone will get a fair crack at the whip and everyone has a good chance. I know quite a few guys doing this (gl James Atkin, Steve Holden, Dom Kay & anyone else I may have forgotten atm) but I'm obviously rooting hardest for Aarun.

The live arena is his forte really and you'll usually find him getting the lot in live cash games though I wouldn't like him on my table online either. He might not put his thoughts into words like Shakespeare but this guy has got game. If I had the roll to stake people he'd be first on my list...making a nice chunk in cash games for Bad Beat and then finishing 5th in the one and only GUKPT main event he's played for £20k gives you an idea of his clinical style. An affable and very cool guy I would have thought he's probably 10x a lot more marketable than a lot of players too.

Anyway enough rambling..not entirely sure why I wrote that post. Just something I was thinking about having spoken to Aarun recently and felt he deserves a lot of credit. Obv its monday morning and I'm at work too...sigh!

I'll try and put up a post this week which fills the gap.

gl in the meantime fish.

Pls no bok!

2009-04-27T07:18:00.001-07:00

Ok I'm a lazy git and I've been too busy for making long posts at the moment hence no trip report from the £300 at Big Slick where I got 5th a week ago.

I've been running really good online at the moment - in the last 6 weeks I'm probably up around £6000 playing $1/2 and $2/4 (probably 90% $1/2). It's a bit weird but when I've had a minute and felt like posting I've not wanted to do so for fear of bokking my good run or seem like I'm boasting. Pretty stupid huh? Can't wait for my rakeback to come in at the end of the month too. My first full months play on a 50% deal....juicy!! Leave me a message here if you wanna know more details or to jump on the more $$$ for nothing bandwagon.

I've decided to have a few days off. This week I'm hitting the gym and meeting a friend from Nottingham who's down on tuesday as he begins the Black Belt poker scheme. Then on Wednesday night I'm going to watch my old housemate from Uni at a gig in Camden. I've also pulled all my money offline so I can work out what my bankroll actually is. Constant deposits and cashouts and money across a few different sites isn't totally ideal and this will be the first week in a while I know where I'm at.

I'll be up at DTD this weekend for the £300 weekend. Let me know if you're playing.

In the meantime, glglglglgl.

5th for £1500.

2009-04-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

Will write up a report when I de-tilt.

Day 2 of the Big Slick £300....

2009-04-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

Played the Big Slick £200 +(1rebuy/add on) last night. I really like the club - the management and valets are really friendly and the dealers seem to be pretty well trained too.

You start with 10k and can rebuy or add on at any time. If I didn't find tournaments so draining I would play at Big Slick a lot more often as it's probably the softest live place I've ever played with 60% of the field being absolute dead money. Had some really interesting hands which I will try and remember and post after the tourney finishes.

The one bad thing is that there were 103 runners and 18th-10th pay £300 for money back. I would rather they scrapped that and just paid the FT a bit more but I think the club want to pay as many people as possible so that they get more returners each month. The one good thing is that I went to play it with 2 mates and both of them made the final 18 too and I have 50% in one.

There are 1,870,000 chips in play and I have 258,000 going in with 18 left and £7.5k up top.

One time and all that!

My inspiration in poker....RAZOR666!

2009-04-14T05:50:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to write a quick post about my inspiration in the poker world. For most people it's Patrik Antonius, Daniel Negreanu, Durrr, Phil Ivey etc etc. For me its someone much less well known but no less skilled.

Formerly known by Chaos, Wooderl and Razor666 his play has now become so unexploitable that he no longer needs to change his nickname ever again. Anyway this guy is a true midstakes baller. When he's not crushing the 292 tables that he's able to play optimally at one time he's normally in a sunny far away country sipping on gin and juice with an exotic woman on his arm. I won't even go into the Razormobile that he drives. Sick, just sick.

It's just a shame that he doesn't play on FullTilt because he would DEFINITELY work his way up through the limits and in my opinion (some dickheads with no brain may disagree) he would be battling the nosebleeds day in day out with the likes of Ivey, Benyamine, Ziigmund, Durrr, Hansen & Co. Unfortunately this doesn't look like it will ever be the case as Full Tilt don't offer good enough rakeback deals for him.

I'll leave you all with a conversation I had on msn with Razor after a very rare bad session.

10 BI says:
hi m8
Razor says:
hi
10 BI says:
can i write about u in my next blog post?
Razor says:
sayin?
10 BI says:
its a post about my inspirations in poker and life
10 BI says:
just about how u crush so hard
Razor says:
ye
Razor says:
losing 5k last night
Razor says:
is crushing
10 BI says:
urgh £ or $?
Razor says:
pounds
10 BI says:
what were u playing?
Razor says:
5 10
Razor says:
full stacks
10 BI says:
urgh ul
10 BI says:
though with those limits i think you have to game select really carefully
10 BI says:
i thought u found the right strat in buying in short?
Razor says:
ye
Razor says:
i tilted
10 BI says:
its because William Hill is a cuntbag
Razor says:
iv not had much luck with anything at mo
10 BI says:
ur luck will change
10 BI says:
maybe have a few days off
10 BI says:
do some other stuff, get to the gym
10 BI says:
u'll feel better when u hit those tables in a few days
10 BI says:
can i still write that post about u?
Razor says:
ye
Razor says:
show me the site after u write
10 BI says:
cos only other ppl i know who consistently crush are like red pros on full tilt etc
Razor says:
wotu guna say
10 BI says:
just i hope one day i can be like Razor666 who has a massive bankroll
Razor says:
and crushes the games so hard online that swans off with exotic birds to egypt all the time
Razor says:
lol
Razor says:
sometimes i swear ur takin mick
10 BI says:
nah im not
10 BI says:
you earn more rakeback in one month than successful businessmen earn in salary
10 BI says:
anything you'd like me to say?
Razor says:
that i run like shit (and he still wins at like 30bb/100, running normally would be like 40bb/100 imo)
10 BI says:
dont be so downbeat
10 BI says:
u'll get that money back
Razor says:
this site
Razor says:
is a joke
Razor says:
i jus lost big pot
Razor says:
aq to a5 all in pre
Razor says:
lol
Razor says:
he hits trip 5
10 BI says:
these fish that get their money in with A5 are why u make ur money online
10 BI says:
cos sometimes they get lucky, but normally you just crush their souls so hard
10 BI says:
its like you put a skewer through their kidneys the pain u make their bank accounts feel year in year out

Any fan mail you want passed on to him let me know and I'll arrange an appropriate method of delivery.

Other news just in is that he's employed Platonic as a toilet attendant within his property and he will be doing Razor's ass wiping in exchange for Razor rolling him to play £.10/.20nl.

He also does coaching of any game/limits at $750 an hour. pm me if interested.

Intentionally Blank

2009-04-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

My gran passed away on saturday morning. Don't really want to write too much about it other than to say RIP. She battled several illnesses the last 15 years and never really had an immune system after chemotherapy years and years ago so hopefully now she can finally rest.

On the friday night before, I met the Amafish and Ant (fellow bloggers in the list on my right) at the Empire in Leicester Square. They were both playing the tournament but I didnt make it in time as I had just come from visiting my nan at about 8. I had things on my mind obviously so wasn't on the best of form though it wouldn't have shown too much as we didn't get to share a table. Hopefully we can do it again properly where we share a cash table whilst I take their money from them. Me and Ant both lost about £200 each (despite my £600 all in coup with KK vs AA where I hit a K vs the one guy on the table I least wanted to bust).

When I've had a spare hour or two in the last day or so I've been playing $1/2 cash and I'm prob up about £1700.

Don't know when I'll next update but gl all.

End of the run good....

2009-04-05T16:28:00.000-07:00

Dropped like 11 buy ins tonight. Mixture of bad play and bad luck. If I reviewed the session I would probably say it was definitely more of the former than the latter. Will prob have the rest of the week off. Hopefully one of my stakes can ship me some money in the meantime before I'm ready to get back to the grind.

I've had quite a lot of interest in the deals I can help people with on sites so will be helping a few people get set up this week. As always leave me a comment if you want more details.

In much more important news one of my grandmothers is really unwell at the moment. She has throat cancer and my parents went to see her tonight. Unfortunately it doesn't look like she has much left and is deteriorating quickly so I'm going to see her tomorrow.

Hope you all run a bit better than I have just lately.

Last few nights

2009-04-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Played a live £80 donkament on friday night. I only lasted 5 hands after the first break.[ ] I didn't arrive 5 minutes before the first break! Sigh lol.

I played cash and after raising to £10 in the £2/2 pl game with KK i was repopped to £30. Lovely jubbly, I moved in and he called for his stack with A10 and duly hit the turn. I asked the dealer if we were playing blackjack or poker. I can't help jabs like that when someone donks so hard. After that I raised pretty much every hand (I was already raising more than anyone anyway)and it wasn't too long before I had won my £100 back and was up £140. I left when one of my mates got knocked out and we went for something to eat. When we got back my other mate was already sitting in the cash game and I was too tired to sit. I don't really like sitting in games where friends are playing either. So i went and watched TV (and fell asleep) when I went halves with another mate in cash and he made me a nice ton while I was dozing off.

Yesterday was a bit shit though. I decided to have an MTT session online for a bit of a change to cash. I ran up big stacks in everything but not changing gears cost me in most and I was soon 1 tabling the $35k on ipoker. 1385 runners and I was always around the top few dozen.

With 100 left I played a pot I'd like opinions on. Blinds are 1600/3200 with an ante of 200 (I think). My stack is 85k. It passes round to the small blind with 42k, who makes up. I check my J8. Flop comes 10,9,4. SB checks and I bet 4.5k. He bumps it to 14.5k and I move in. He calls with K10 and I hit an 8 on the turn but brick the river.

Should I raise pre? Check behind the flop? Pass when he c-raises? Be interesting to know what people think of this.

Anyway y-day I finished down -£450.

Will be grinding cash today.

gl

From Rakeback to VIP!!

2009-04-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Since my last post I've had a few people ask about the VIP deal I'm on - and not just in the comments too(honoured to know people actually read this blog!).

I've moved off the William Hill Skin where I was formerly on a 30% rakeback deal to be put on to a new VIP deal with my new site. This gets me the equivalent of over 49% back every month.

Two people recommended the person who sorted this deal out to me and have used him for years. So far I've been more than happy as he makes everything very simple and easy to ensure you earn more cash prize monies per month! So far three of my mates have also got on board and are very happy. One was formerly a member of Will Hill's VIP Black club which offered 38% net rakeback to its highest raking members - obviously this pisses all over that and is NOT dependant on your volume of play. Pretty sick imo. You will be earning the equivant of over 49% and under 55% each month irrespective of whethere you play one hand or you have a 300 tabling $1/2 robot.

I know this sounds like some sort of sales pitch but it really isnt. Since I've become a lot more nitty with my bankroll I've realised the difference this makes each week/month and year and think any way to maximise profit is crucial to us poker fish!

I can help you sort this if you like so either leave your email in the comments box and I'll send over my msn to get the ball rolling. Feel free to ask questions.

gl in the meantime!

A piece of everyone!

2009-04-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

This week I've gone a bit crazy on the staking front and have dished out around £1k buying pieces of people.

Don't want to say who incase they'd rather not have it splashed on my blog but some talented players so hopefully one can ship me something one motherfucking time!!!

Also invested £400 in someone on Blonde poker in a STT long term staking thing so hopefully that goes well.

If anyone wants a better rakeback deal on any site please let me know. The guy from my affiliate is fucking good and is on msn every day to help with anything. It's like increased rakeback with a mentor thrown in for free! Anyone who's interested pm me on blonde (GreekStein is my username) or write a comment here and I'll get back to you. One stipulation is that I'd not want anyone who is currently playing on the blonde cardroom to move sites but if you play anywhere else I'm almost certain he can help you with an improved deal.

I haven't actually put in any table hours this week as I end up playing til late and am tired the next day which isn't good for work so I'm just gonna be hitting the tables hard at the weekends and hitting the gym hard during the week.

Going to watch Prizefighter with the lads tonight in Bethnal Green as got some free tickets - think its on Sky this evening at 10ish.

Hasta luego

Running like Lava

2009-03-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

So fucking hot it's untrue atm. I lost one buy in the other day with AK vs AQ blind on blind in 6-max and I was literally shocked at how I didn't win. That might give you an idea of how I've been running lately. I fucking hope this little chirp doesn't bok me. Mind you I've been due and deserving a run like this though I would say that wouldn't I!

I love the move from Crypto to ipoker too. The players are so much weaker and I'm on an improved VIP deal (I've had to edit this as I can't mention site/amount or what this payment is called (pretty obv) - it's higher than 49% and skin is pretty irrelevant and the network I play is also obv) which is gonna make a very significant difference too. I was actually talking with Woodsey (some of you may know him, some not) at the Empire on Saturday night. We're both very active members of the blondepoker forum (pwns all forums imo) and we were discussing playing on the blonde card room. Whilst I'd love to in order to give a bit back to the site I can't justify moving back to a 30% rakeback deal as it would cost me a few hundred £ every month to do so. I will be joining soon just for the times I wanna play an MTT session.

I'll go into why I've been doing so well online a little later but in live poker you don't even have to be that good to win. The main skill is putting up with sitting at a table getting 25 hands an hour and tolerating at least one absolute dickhead that you'll ineveitably get on any table. On friday night I played the £1/3 game at the Vic finishing with a £1600 stack after buying in for £600 and then I went to the Empire to play on Saturday night and after buying in for £600 finished on £2600 (-£100 on massages - FML but she was too fit). It was good to see and play against Woodsey again - a good guy from my days at gala and one of the best players there. My game has come on a lot since then and I was therefore able to battle a lot more evenly with Woodsey than the one sided schooling he gave me on more than one occasion back in Nottingham! I made one very good call against him and one poor one right at the end of my session. Also had drunken mates show up at like 4am just as I was finishing and fck sake what a nightmare they were. One got punched in the face too and was so battered that he insisted on going in to the empire to win his money back from a night out on the basis that he shouldn't have to pay for a night that got ruined! Sigh donkaments. Anyway £600 of not being able to stop him later he was not happy! We then argued for about 10 minutes as he wanted to borrow £300 off me but I didn't want to lend it to him in that state and woulda felt responsible if he lost. Anyway I did eventually and he did £300 a hand and won a few to get even for the night and then I got him out and home though that poor cab driver endured a lot of abuse.

I've studied and worked on my game a fair bit. When I was in Nottingham for the DTD £300 weekend I stayed with Tom Rutter and saw how professional he is with his bankroll and approach to the game. Obviously he is a very talented player but it kind of made me sit up and think about what is necessary to be succesful at poker rather than just being able to play well. So far I am doing everything I think is necessary. Despite a £5k upswing in cash the last 9 days I havent any temptation to play any higher than $1/2 online. I've not even experienced an ounce of tilt when I've lost a big pot or a buy in or got donked which is obviously having a huge impact. Richard 'Loser18' Lewindon has helped me with my game a lot too. He was the best reg on Crypto at £1/2 and £2/5 and I know him from old live cash games at Gutshot yonks ago. Through discussion on msn he helped me iron out a lot of leaks and just improve my all round game.

Fucking hell I blew my own trumpet in this post. I'll try to update again soon even though the novelty of blogging has worn off a bit.

gl at the tables

A Prelude To Getting My Shine on at the Vic

2009-03-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

As I said briefly in my last post I really haven't felt like blogging but maybe that's cos nothing too noteworthy has happened of late though last night at the Vic makes for a good little tale which I'll get into in my next post tomorrow. Anyway when Steve Holden tells you to blog, you fucking blog.

In the meantime I've been getting back into the gym big time. My training partner is back from his travels and a few other mates have decided to get into it so I've been showing them and we've all been training together. My strength is sick good atm, I've just gotta keep the cardio up at the beginning of my sessions so I can lose about 10kgs so I actually look strong too!

I was playing online a bit here and there and couldn't really get anything going. My B-game wasn't even in site let alone playing my best though volume was pretty small. Despite this I wasn't really losing and decided to move my money off William Hill and back into my bank as I had just set up a new account with VC where I'm on a 50% rakeback deal. (Thanks Barry Carter and James Atkin for helping me with this one). I decided to have a few days off while I just did other stuff when I realised my rakeback money had come into my Will Hill account and I registered for a few MTT's and ended up taking down a 336 runner 6-max MTT for £650/$910. Having the next 4 days off meant I could finally play some tournies on a sunday night and after this win I seem to have been running really well in cash games on VC and playing pretty close to my best too. I think I'm up around 20 buy ins in about 5k hands this week.

Since the Will Hill move to ipoker and my other move to VC (also ipoker) it's the first time I've ever really played online in dollars. Crypto tables were predominanly in ££ and I think the change has made the tilt factor which I sometimes suffer a bit more than most from decrease loads as when I lose a pot in dollars it doesn't seem to mean as much when you lose one in ££ and think what that money equates too. Maybe I'm just rambling now.

Anyway, before I post about my day at the Vic on tuesday I'll leave you with a conversation I had with King of the Bloggays Amatay on msn where he mentioned that Richard 'The Virgin Cunt' Kellett won the £200 rebuy at the Vic the other day. (I'll mention TheKellster in my next blog post). Myself and Amatay mentioned that whoever wins the most in cash on saturday would get to pick a move for the other to perform on the Kellster at the Vic. Amafish's comment at the bottom sums up both our thoughts at the time. Amatay used to be a teacher you know. [ ] Great use of English mate.

Amatay says:
DDT off the final tarble
Cos says:
Sweet chin music from the top of the stairs
Amatay says:
maybe tag team the cunt
Amatay says:
sweet chim musik from greek followed by the big boot from Amatay
Amatay says:
elbow drop from Tikay
Amatay says:
fml
Amatay says:
wtf am i talking about
Cos says:
at least we're true men and can admit wrestling pwns
Amatay says:
2.30am chatting to some cunt i only know as greekstein about performing redic wrestling moves another some other cunt i only know as kellster in London biggest casino!

CBA to blog

2009-03-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Really cba keeping a blog anymore.

Maybe that'll change so I won't delete it for the time being but atm just really dont feel like it.

Week off work atm up about £1k so far this week. Should be at the Vic in the next day or two.

That link I forgot and Cool hand I just played....

2009-03-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

http://hoss-tbf.livejournal.com/

soulowned imo...

Game #7506553533: Hold'em NL (£0.25/£0.50) - 2009/03/16 - 20:02:07 (UK)
Table "Mosalds" Seat 2 is the button.
Seat 1: Dan030738 (£69.23 in chips)
Seat 2: Bcfcglen1 (£7 in chips)
Seat 3: Dizzeeeee (£65 in chips)
Seat 5: Dav010472 (£19.40 in chips)
Seat 6: Sub0inc (£68.45 in chips)
Dizzeeeee: posts small blind £0.25
Dav010472: posts big blind £0.50
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to Dizzeeeee [Qh Td]
Sub0inc: raises to £2
Dan030738: folds
Bcfcglen1: folds
Dizzeeeee: calls £1.75
Dav010472: folds
----- FLOP ----- [As 8s 7h]
Andre5eeo joins the table at seat #4
Dizzeeeee: checks
Sub0inc: bets £3
Dizzeeeee: raises to £7.50
Sub0inc: calls £4.50
----- TURN ----- [As 8s 7h][2h]
Dizzeeeee: bets £9.50
Sub0inc: calls £9.50
----- RIVER ----- [As 8s 7h 2h][2c]
Dizzeeeee: checks
Sub0inc: bets £17
Dizzeeeee: raises to £46 and is all-in
Sub0inc: folds
Returned uncalled bets £29 to Dizzeeeee
Dizzeeeee: doesn't show hand
Dizzeeeee collected £69.50 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----
Total pot £72.50 Main pot £69.50 Rake £3
Board [As 8s 7h 2h 2c]
Seat 1: Dan030738 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: Bcfcglen1 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Dizzeeeee (small blind) collected £69.50
Seat 5: Dav010472 (big blind) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Sub0inc folded on the River

Severe case of Blogitis

2009-03-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt like Blogging recently.

Will try and fill the gap at some point this week.

In the meantime check out this blog from FTP red pro Matt Hawrilenko aka Hoss_TBF who endured a Phil Hellmuth rant on UB recently. Pretty funny.

gl fish

Cheltenham

2009-03-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

Fuck horses.

Binocular - die.
Voy Por - die.
Kasbah Bliss - die.

I guess what I'm trying to say is just fucking die - stupid animals.

FFS!

2009-03-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

Just lost £500 on poker and got really steamed. A dirty 88 vs 44 on 567 flop. 3 on river all money in on flop. Did a further £300 on WH blackjack.

Why does this always happen after a good streak? Been playing like a dick.

Thoroughly fucked off.

The Dirty Ho of Poker

2009-03-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

Over the next week I'm going to be doing more grinding than a slag on the dancefloor.

I've got monday-weds off work so I'm in two minds as to whether to go up to DTD for their £300 deepstack but don't know if I can really be arsed to make all the arrangements (e.g train/hotel etc). I'd say I'm about 25% to say 'fuck it I'm off atm'.

My plan for my days off is to go out on monday and use some of my recent 'run-good' monies to buy a new set up for my room. At the moment I only play on my laptop which isn't really ideal for multitabling. Anyone who plays Crypto will know how annoying it is not to have adjustable table sizes and I prefer overlapping tables slightly to their gay 'pro view'. As the saying goes 'you can't miss what you've never had' but playing on my mates 36 inch monitor a few times recently I loved it and it can only help my profitability so is now a must. Luckily these days things like that don't cost a ridic amount and I reckon I can get what I want for about £600. I'm going with a mate as he's knowledgeable about what to buy and I'm clueless other than size. Is that a realistic amount of money to spend or should I be expecting to fork out a bit more?

Last night I had my first bad session in a while. I was really really disappointed with my play and my attitude which seems to have improved greatly since I started this blog and trying to take a more professional approach towards poker even though I'm not a pro.

I was down about £300 a few times and as much as £550 once. I made so many stupid spews when on mild tilt it was ridiculous. Raising too much and getting 3-bet a lot I was spewing hard...esp when I kept calling the 3-bets to catch a flop. I made a stupid 4-bet bluff with A4 on a Q2310 board with no knowledge on villain to fold to his 5-bet shove. I haven't donked like that in a while and hopefully I won't be again! I've also reviewed my HH's and really wasnt catching any flops and did run pretty poor but still shoulda lost less in a few of these spots and not got into some in the first place.

Some spots were unavoidable like when I raised 88 on the button and got smoothed in the BB. Flop 689. obv opponent had 10 7.

I also lost with a set and flush draw all in on flop in Omaha to a wrap and smaller flushdraw.

Then playing a $2/5 game guy UTG playing $200 makes it $17. 2 callers behind him and I find AK on the button. Great spot to look like I'm squeezing and get it in. I make it $85 and raiser flats with $115 behind. Flop comes QQJ and I miss for the rest vs his J10. Wp sir, wp.

Revenge was very very sweet though as a few hands later I made a big bluff and before I could even top up, my stack was at about $700 when I raised the cut off with J10 and Mr J10 3-bet in the BB. I had to call this guy just to stick it in the motherfuckers eye. Flop was K92 and he checks. When he checks I know he feels his hand is massive because he woulda continued anything bar laying me a trap. I peel off behind him as even if he does have QQ,JJ,1010 etc he's not folding to me. Turn comes a queen. Absolute sexual chocolate of a card. He insta leads for $85 with about $205 behind and I flat to make sure his stack goes in on the river. The river comes a 9 and he takes about 5 seconds before getting it in. Unfortunately for me I didn't think so slowroll the little bastard and just instacalled to see AK. tyty.

I finally trapped a late night tilter into overshoving the flop when i 3-bet pre with K9 and made a weak lead at the King high flop which he shoved with bottom pair A kicker and missed.

Since I started this post I'm now really really fucking tempted to come to DTD and as long as I can sort somewhere to stay I'm gonna try and do it. Be nice to ship the £27k first prize one time!!!

Minraise me and I'll put it in your eye.

2009-03-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

Game #7391431303: Hold'em NL (£1/£2) - 2009/03/03 - 02:06:03 (UK)
Table "Waltevi" Seat 3 is the button.
Seat 1: Hero (£196 in chips)
Seat 2: Godfather (£247.60 in chips)
Seat 3: Ryan87 (£361.25 in chips)
Seat 4: Walrus2 (£197.30 in chips)
Seat 6: Stabec (£340.10 in chips)
Walrus2: posts small blind £1
Stabec: posts big blind £2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to Hero [4h 4d]
Hero: raises to £6
Godfather: calls £6
Ryan87: folds
Walrus2: calls £5
Stabec: folds
----- FLOP ----- [Qd 7h 6h]
Walrus2: checks
Hero: bets £12
Godfather: folds
Walrus2: raises to £24
Hero: calls £12
----- TURN ----- [Qd 7h 6h][4c]
Walrus2: bets £22
Hero: raises to £54
Walrus2: calls £32
----- RIVER ----- [Qd 7h 6h 4c][Ks]
Walrus2: checks
Hero: bets £66
Walrus2: raises to £113.30 and is all-in
Hero: is all-in £46
Returned uncalled bets £1.30 to Walrus2
----- SHOW DOWN -----
Walrus2: shows [Qc Ah] (A Pair of Queens, Ace high)
Hero: shows [4h 4d] (Three of a kind, Fours, King high)
Hero collected £397 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----
Total pot £400 Main pot £397 Rake £3
Board [Qd 7h 6h 4c Ks]
Seat 1: Hero showed [4h 4d] and won (£397) with Three of a kind, Fours, King high
Seat 2: Godfather folded on the Flop
Seat 3: Ryan87 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Walrus2 (small blind) showed [Qc Ah] and lost with A Pair of Queens, Ace high
Seat 6: Stabec (big blind) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

That is all.

Weekend Poker...

2009-03-01T14:30:00.000-08:00

I made about £1k last week and only really played one session. I've put in a good few hours this weekend and managed to continue my good run..

On friday night I went with a mate to play a £10 rebuy at the Big Slick club. I ended up busting with AK vs JJ in a pretty standard spot but my mate just seemed to steamroll the whole way. We had 40% of each other and whilst I was playing cash he was down to the last two tables. He made an excellent call with K high when he raised the cut off with KJ and the bb defended. Flop 357. check check. Turn 8. BB leads for 11k of a 34k stack - my mate calls. River comes a queen and the board now reads 3578Q and BB moves in for his last 23k. My mate thought the hand through for a few minutes and made the call. He pretty much eliminated everyone from the final table and won the tourney outright for £1200. Ship the 40%. Shame I was down £200 in the cash game. I definitely ought to go there more often as the standard is without doubt, the poorest I've ever seen and I've played in a lot of places.

The cash game was £2/2 pot limit and after bluffing off over half my stack I was playing about 140 and there was a straddle of 5 and then 10. I duly put in 20 and pick up AK (mbn!) when its called in 3 spots. I get it all in vs 2 oppos and bink 2 aces vs QQ and KJ. Unfortunately about two hands later I raised the button in a double straddled pot with 99 and saw a 9,10,A flop (all diamonds). When checked to me i bet £90, about 2/3 pot and was met with an all in for £240. Check raising is pretty strong there but I call pretty quickly and miss a pair-up vs 56 diamonds. I reloaded and made most of my losses back by the time my mate had shipped the tourney and went home happy.

On saturday a mate who had left to join the army had his first weekend back home in 2months so a few of us went to a pub in central london to watch the rugby. Coming from a big rugby school that produced players like Andrew Sheridan and Nick Easter, it was disappointing to see another poor england performance but the amount of vodkas in me by that time I didn't really care. We went to an all you can eat chinese to line our stomachs for more drinking. Unfortunately it was an absolute shithole and the food tasted like pigshit - well done Will who works nearby for recommending it! donk.

After that we moved on to Leicester Square and then Covent garden for more drinking. I was in trainers and hoody and was never going to get into a club so while they went off I met a few other mates in Chinatown and we finally went to my mates house at 2am. He has an awesome new set up and I had a quick spin up which the 3 of us were 33% each on and despite being stuck pretty quickly I won a few hundred quid which paid for our nite out. I got back home at about 4am and loaded up a few tables again to see the biggest donkey in the world sitting with a £1300 stack at £1/2. 1 hour later and he'd been stripped of the lot - unfortunately I was only able to catch him for about £200 of it but I'm not complaining. I played until 7am and just before I logged off to go to sleep I played a 400x pot with KK vs J10 on a KJ41010 board.

Today I logged on and more of the same ensued. I've changed a few things about my game recently and without saying too much (as I know some of the regs I'm playing against may read this) I feel like I'm +EV against probably everyone at £1/2 on crypto apart from Loser18 who is a really good player and in a good spot to keep taking shots for the time being. If I lose 3 buy ins at any point I will drop down and keep grinding til that money is back before I take more shots at £1/2. I will try and save some hand histories and publish them on my next post as I've had loads of really interesting pots I could share.

All in all I've made around £2k this weekend so up £3k for the week. Now just gotta try and keep the focus and discipline up as sometimes when I win I get cocky and end up having a session where I play like a dick and undo my hard work.

gl at the tables

Run goot!

2009-02-26T02:43:00.000-08:00

Feel really good today even though I could be in the office until a sick hour trying to finish a bastard of a project that needs to be finished by the end of the week. Why I hear you ask? Well not only did I get a comment from the famous Junglecat off blonde but I destroyed some tablez last night on teh online pokerz.

I'm a big Chelsea fan and got home at like 8 with the intention of watching the game but decided to watch it whilst one tabling (yes - 1 table, lol). I raised the cutoff with J8hh at 0.25/0.50 and got a call in the big blind. the Jack high flop with two hearts looked sweet like tropicana but my oppo led, I obv raised and he reraised so small I knew he had a set. I shoved it in knowing what he had but I don't see I have too much choice there as I guess he can have something like AQhh or an oddly played QQ type hand which he will either lay down or I'm more than happy to flop against. In retrospect I doubt he re-raises so small with these hands. The second jack came on the turn housing oppo up but still giving me a few outs which meant it was going in anyway but I really really hate losing money to the regs on 25p50p on Crypto because they are all pretty pants and I'd rather get donked by a non reg coming to spew off his wages than the regs who have no game apart from nit-poker. At least the donks give it back more easily and the occasional win stays in the ol' memory banks so they come back to keep donating.

I put £100 into a £.50/1 table and raised to £3 in 2nd position with AA. Small blind makes it £13. (weee!) Big blind calls (- slight boner now!!). I make it 38 and SB ships. Unfortunately I can't hold vs his AK as two kingballs hit the flop. Must be nice.

I was obviously disappointed to start the night off badly but playing poker a little less makes me more determined now when I do play. I didn't tilt and deposited £400 more and joined 2 full ring £1/2 tables as the lineups included like 0 cash regs from the £1/2 6-max games who for the most part actually play pretty good on Crypto. The only familiar faces were one or two of the MTT regs who usually play horrible in cash. One guy quickly runner runnered me when I 3-bet him pre with A6ss. (He opened cut off I raised button). Flop came 863 and he called a big shell on the flop and a bigger one on the 4 turn to hit the 7 on the river and checked to me. I checked behind and he shows 55.

I then proceeded to just control both tables for the next few hours. I was being allowed to rob everyone blind and just ran over people for the most part. Subsequently people stacked off to me a little lighter than they would anyone else on the table too which helped but that's usually the case when I play as I'm more lag than most but seem to have patched a few leeks and don't spew in many spots at all. Cut a long story short I came off the tables at midnight with £400 and £950 for a profit on the night of a tad under £1k.

I'm probably boring now but thanks to people who are writing comments on the blog. Without constant feedback I really think I would have packed it in already and I feel they really do help me.

Yorkshire Pud - I have a mate who is a personal trainer and I know loads about training myself so let me know if you want me to come up with some form of programme for you to try and follow?

Plan for the time being is to keep playing £.25/50 and if I play any higher it will only be full ring where there's far less variance and the players are far worse. Will only be playing 6-max when properly bankrolled.

Greek

FAT BOY IS GIVING AWAY FREE MONIES...

2009-02-24T04:03:00.000-08:00

You will understand the title in a moment but a bit of background first...

Since mid-december and all the Christmas holidays I kinda slumped off going to the gym. Anyone who does weight training will know how quickly you can undo a lot of hard work. I think the actual term for it is reversability or something like that.

This basically sums up my situation as since mid-december I can't have made more than 10 or so trips to the gym and my strength etc has suffered as a result. The more you stay away and the less motivation you have to go back.

I'm not going to stop though because I was finally getting into really good shape before Xmas and I know it won't take me too long to get back there. It didn't help that my mate who I train with went off travelling for four months either.

When I train I tend to eat like a horse and unfortunately I've kept this up the last few months since not really training. I now weigh 85kg which is my heaviest for a while. When I was in Nottingham I lost a bit of weight without even realising it...pretty easy to do when most days I was eating one meal a day - in the casino. Anyway on sunday, my nan commented to me - 'you look fat today'. Coming from a woman who is 5 foot 2 and almost 18 stone I knew I had to get into gym gear again, fast!

As of right now I am 86kg and have set myself the target to lose 6kg by the end of April. That's only 2 months away and is actually quite a lot of weight for me to drop considering I will be taking my protein shakes again daily and weight training again which means I will gain some weight that way. To make sure I do this I will transfer £50 to anyone who reads this blog if I fail to meet my target my the end of April. (Just post in comments section to be included). I'm capping it at 20 people cos I don't wanna shell out more than £1k if I lose but want it to be enough to make sure that none of you bastards get a penny of my hard de-generated cash.

In the meantime I will be putting in a session of teh online pokerz tonight (=babysitting) whilst my olds are at my little sisters parents evening and will go to the gym for a shoulders and tris session later on.

StaceyS-laters

(If you don't have a blogger username and are using anonymous just post your blondepoker username etc)

New Goals

2009-02-22T06:59:00.000-08:00

This week has been pretty good for me despite finishing on a bad note today. As far as bankroll management goes, there's still so much room for improvement but things are getting much better.

I managed to stay playing small at £.25/50 and made 10 buy ins at peak. Only played 3 or 4 sessions of a few hours each but was playing really good and the opposition at this level is just incapable of giving any problems. It's just kinda easy.

This morning however I undid some of my good work. I was playing a $.50/1 omaha game and lost a $400 pot when I had doubled up my stack to $200 through lots of smallish pots. With AK94 double suited on a K74 2club flop when I also had nut clubs. Unfortunately I ran into KK and missed. It was raised by villain pre utg and called round except for one player and I made up the rest in the BB. Should I have passed pre? I check raised a pot bet of 15 dollars with 2 callers and then was committed even though he pretty much had to have KK there. sigh. Need to stay away from omaha until I'm rolled for it. Plus such a high variance game may not be something I should be playing when I tilt so easily and there are so many more instances where you are playing for stacks in omaha than hold em and you're never normally a huge favourite like in hold em.

After I lost that pot I jumped straight into 2 £1/2 games and immediately ran one huge bluff in a 3 way 3-bet pot. It was a good start but I shoulda avoided a silly spot like that straight off the bat. Then on the other table I picked up Aces and made it £24 following a raise to £6. The 47x flop was checked to me and I checked behind to induce overpairs to fire the turn as my line looks like AK /AQ the 2 of hearts rolled off on the turn and my opponent overbet pot and I got it in immediately as I was sure he had an overpair like 99-JJ and committed himself. He had 56hh and binked the 8 ball on the river to set me back a bit further. I didn't tilt but was annoyed that I had undone much of this week's grinding.

I had the sense to log off and immediately cashed out my roll so that I don't play anymore today. I'm gonna go to the gym and chill before a busy week of work starts on monday. *Sigh*

+£250 for the week still not too shabby under my current effort of playing to a roll etc.

I'm gonna set some new goals as they have changed a bit from the beginning of the year:

--To play no higher than £.25/50p online until I have made 100 buy ins.

--To implement a stop loss of 2 buy ins in any one session and 4 on any day.

--Not gonna play any GUKPTs just because I can even though I was intending to enter one or two this year. I plan on playing a few of the 3-2-1's at DTD and the Greek Festival.

That's about it for now. Best not to overcomplicate things.

As always, comments appreciated.

gl

My Room 101 (Edit:Part 1)

2009-02-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

Just felt like doing a non-poker related post and what better than a few of my own pet hates...

1)Chavmobiles.

Wtf is the point of buying a 10k car and then spending £20k+ sooping(sp?) it up. For that sort of money you can buy a properly awesome car and not look like a nobhead who has to deal coke to buy it!

2) Bad handshakes

Its horrible when someone shakes your hand and they have a horrible moist palm. urgh fck off!

It's even worse when you go to shake a blokes hand and they give you one of those poncy non firm handshakes like they are a woman. I can't fcking stand that. Be a man you phag!

3) Modern Art.

I was watching a programme recently where some of the work of a modern artist was being showcased and i thought wow what utter shit that is. Then they say the price of the stuff and I'm gobsmacked. How can some talentless twonk who hasn't even brushed his hear wearing yellow trousers and a top that's too small invent some airy shit about the meaning of his work and then sell half a carrot splashed with paint for more money than most people earn in a year?

The pic is actually a piece by Damien Hurst, a man who sold £100 million worth of stuff at Sotherby's in the last few years. Credit to the guy if he's getting people to buy shite like that. Must be nice for those buyers who have more money than sense.

Gonna have to cut this blog short as my ole man needs the laptop but will do a part two soon!

gl!

Donkeys and Horses...beware long post!

2009-02-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

Been pretty busy since my last entry. Had a fucking random cough too which decides to surface for the one hour a day immediately after I wake up in the morning until last night when I randomly woke up at 4am and went into a coughing frenzy every time I tried to lie down again. Marvellous.

Took Friday and Monday off work as I had 9 days to take off before the end of March and fancied a long weekend off as I was initially meant to be going to Nottingham for a uni reunion/birthday thingy. Lazyness combined with the fact it was my grandfather's 5 year memorial on sunday meant it didn't happen and I stayed in London.

Friday I went to lunch with my dad and uncles and as usual they came back to my house for some hokay pokay. They are absolute fish but just make a hilarious time of it. They play £10 with rebuys for 30 mins and then blinds go up like mad. My dad gave me the nod to play which he didn't have to do considering I got kicked out of uni cos I was gambling and playing poker rather than studying. He lets me play online now cos he knows I have my life in order now and my priorities straight. I'm also not even thinking about roulette or blackjack anymore and the temptation to go near a table is at sub zero which obviously is good. Even if someone told me to play and were gonna guarantee I win £500 I wouldn't as there couldn't be anything worse. It just leads to more money that gets given back eventually. I was careful not to use the words 'long run' there because your one of the extremely lucky ones if you can hold on to winnings for any sort of sustained period as a player of the Wheel of Doom.

Anyway the very first hand of the first game is a minraise from my dad. I'm insta-putting the luckbox on Aces or Kings (I've never seen someone pick up so many premiums online - if Durrr ran like my old man does but obviously without my dad''s horrendous play he could probably easily add a zero on the end of his roll) as this is always how he likes to milk (=allow people to outdraw him) with nut pairs. I make up in the BB and of course everyone else calls. The KKK flop fits my K7 nicely and I double in two spots vs JJ and A7, yes, A7 lol. I coasted from there and won the first game for about £100 and thought I was gonna make about £300 without having to even give any hand much thought. However, their games are ridic crapshoots with some truly hilarious rules. For example one uncle is so so bad that he is allowed to rebuy whenever he wants after the initial 30 minutes. He's only not allowed to buy back in when it gets about 3 handed. I've still never seen him win a game! In the ensuing two or three crapshoots I began to donate back and played one comical hand against my uncle Mike. It's limped in a few spots and check in the BB. Flop 44K again good for my 48 because someone won't be able to stop themselves doubling me up if they have a King. I check and uncle Mike bets 1000, both playing about 20k. I quickly make it 3.5k and am met with a snap. Nice, I am getting paid! The turn card is a horrible horrible ace. I say horrible not because I think I'm behind but these guys are so bad that they don't consider any action or that my hand never has an ace in it against the action but that I probably have an ace as I've shown strength at some point in the hand. I lead again and my uncles insta-ships. Ok gg uncle. He has A5. River....Aceball! I fell right into the trap there. On the night where 20bbs is deep stacked I finished about even but it was more fun than I've had in a long while playing poker. I'll definitely try and organise some more home games with my mates again.

In other poker news I've not put in many hours at all online. I played sunday night and most of the day monday and that's it. I was at a mates house and we were halves on some cash and donkaments. Finished about £150 up each for the day which shoulda been more but we took plenty of shots in tourneys that just didn't go our way. In the biggest one we played we were 1/11 and got QQ in against 2/11's JJ but it wasn't to be. That was the difference between being up a lot more each but I don't mind. As long as I can resist any temptation and stick with small stakes for the time being I'm happy. It is tempting when you see fish at £1/2 and £2/5 to not deposit and play but I might as well stop playing poker if I'm gonna approach the game like that.

Boldie who I staked £100 as part of a syndicate for horse racing put money on the first horse the other day and he obv shipped! Increased the kitty by more than 25% already. Well done mate! Obviously there's an element of luck to these things but I guess it's more important for his own confidence that the first one was a winner, especially as I guess there's probably more pressure betting with other people's money than your own and I'm assuming it's the first time he's done this.

I think Tom Rutter and James Atkin are playing their events this week and I have small %'s in both. Ship the looot one time!

My 50% in vegaslover on blonde has only just started and we're down a small amount so far but there's obviously a lot of variance with MTTs and he's obv just running a little badly at the moment. Hopefully the results will pick up soon. gl fella.

I know I have a stake somewhere else too but I can't even remember! sigh.

This post has again been written in bits and pieces over the last few days and is probably not even coherent but I'll be taking some time off work soon so hopefully I can write something a bit better and more interesting.

gL at the tables.

Stuck in a rut....

2009-02-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

Updates have already slowed down as the novelty of writing a blog has worn off pretty quickly. Not a good sign considering it's only been going about a month.

Things have been going pretty shit at the moment and it's all because of my mindset. When I'm in the right mindset I just know that when I log on I'm going to win $$$$ but at the moment I know that logging on means I'm putting myself up for punishment because I'm playing bad.

I didn't take the HH but here is one example....

6-max £0.5-1 cash game. UTG raises to £4, donk sitting next to him calls. I 3-bet in BB with QQ to £14 and UTG let's the time go down before he makes it £38. I know QQ is never good against this reg as he's a granite. The other thing to take into account is that at these limits if people have AK and decide to 4-bet they tend to do it to commit themselves. Some move in and others make it bigger amounts. This is generally because people at these limits play so bad post-flop that they would rather just get it in and close their eyes with AK. Anyway donk then moves in for £65and I know I have him absolutely crushed so decide to shove myself in the hope that the guy behind has AK and I win the pot. He actually time bank called with KK (see how lol they are?!) and won the pot. I really was angry with myself after this as I don't mind losing pots where my play is ok or getting coolered but donking just generally sparks off one of these ruts where I donk for a few days.

My weekend began with two £10 MTTs - one of which I came 5th in for £80. By the end of the day I had turned the £80 into £900 and was pretty happy as I just put in a mega session of grinding small limits - think I was 6-tabling 25p50p for like 8 hours and had like £100-200 stacks on every table. This was one comedy hand where I just massive overet the river with a royal floooooosh.

Game #7183976853: Hold'em NL (£0.25/£0.50) - 2009/02/07 - 23:28:59 (UK)
Table "Elizeiz" Seat 5 is the button.
Seat 1: Dizzeeeee (£148.89 in chips)
Seat 2: Bumhunter (£93.01 in chips)
Seat 3: Stew09093 (£24.25 in chips)
Seat 5: Chopp11 (£50.14 in chips)
Dizzeeeee: posts small blind £0.25
Bumhunter: posts big blind £0.50
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to Dizzeeeee [Qh Th]
Stew09093: folds
Chopp11: folds
Dizzeeeee: calls £0.25
Bumhunter: raises to £2
Dizzeeeee: calls £1.50
----- FLOP ----- [5s Kh Ad]
Dizzeeeee: checks
Bumhunter: bets £3
Dizzeeeee: calls £3
----- TURN ----- [5s Kh Ad][Jh]
Dizzeeeee: checks
Bumhunter: checks
----- RIVER ----- [5s Kh Ad Jh][Ah]
Dizzeeeee: bets £143.89 and is all-in
Bumhunter: folds
Returned uncalled bets £143.89 to Dizzeeeee
Dizzeeeee: doesn't show hand
Dizzeeeee collected £9.50 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----
Total pot £10 Main pot £9.50 Rake £0.50
Board [5s Kh Ad Jh Ah]
Seat 1: Dizzeeeee (small blind) collected £9.50
Seat 2: Bumhunter (big blind) folded on the River
Seat 3: Stew09093 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Chopp11 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

I log off for a few hours and decide to hit that ',' mark for the day.

Then this happened and the rut began meaning it didn't take long for me to spin back down again. MEH!

Game #7174801443: Hold'em NL ($1/$2) - 2009/02/07 - 01:31:49 (UK)
Table "TampTamp" Seat 9 is the button.
Seat 1: Alsengo ($192 in chips)
Seat 2: Smith ($414.20 in chips)
Seat 3: Fizban35 ($265.35 in chips)
Seat 4: Stuar2804 ($145.60 in chips)
Seat 5: Johnj0301 ($364.60 in chips)
Seat 6: Doremifa ($44.35 in chips)
Seat 7: anonpd1 ($531 in chips)
Seat 8: Sevensup ($38.90 in chips)
Seat 9: AudiSanne ($60 in chips)
Seat 10: HERO ($160 in chips)
Dizzeeeee: posts small blind $1
Alsengo: posts big blind $2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to Dizzeeeee [As Kd]
Smith: folds
Fizban35: folds
Stuar2804: folds
Johnj0301: folds
Doremifa: folds
anonpd1: raises to $7
Sevensup: folds
AudiSanne: folds
Dizzeeeee: raises to $26
Alsengo: raises to $192 and is all-in
anonpd1: folds
Dizzeeeee: is all-in $134
Returned uncalled bets $32 to Alsengo
----- FLOP ----- [Ad Qc Jc]
----- TURN ----- [Ad Qc Jc][5h]
----- RIVER ----- [Ad Qc Jc 5h][6s]
----- SHOW DOWN -----
Alsengo: shows [Ah Qd] (Two Pairs, Aces and Queens, Jack high)
Dizzeeeee: shows [As Kd] (A Pair of Aces, King high)
Alsengo collected $324 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----
Total pot $327 Main pot $324 Rake $3
Board [Ad Qc Jc 5h 6s]
Seat 1: Alsengo (big blind) showed [Ah Qd] and won ($324) with Two Pairs, Aces and Queens, Jack high
Seat 2: Smith folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Fizban35 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Stuar2804 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Johnj0301 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Doremifa folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: anonpd1 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Sevensup folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: AudiSanne (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 10: Dizzeeeee (small blind) showed [As Kd] and lost with A Pair of Aces, King high

[ ] my opponent played this well.

I know you may be thinking this is just a cooler on my part but apart from losing one other £400 hold em pot when I got JJ in against 66 on a J86 flop for him to hit diamond diamond and make a flush I was really not happy with my play. I was being a pay off wizard far too often, actually scrap that, all the time(!) and just doing everything badly. Where it would normally take me minutes to lose large chunks of cash after coolers like this I was realising i was on tilt and managing to log off before hemorraging too much money - though not for long. Sigh.

Since then I decided I'm going to do more staking as hopefully other people won't make as much of a hash with my money as I do lol!

Along with Longy from BlondePoker I have 50% of VegasLover in a long term STT deal which set me back about $300. I also have 10% of James Atkin in a few events in Birmingham he's playing soon and 5% of Tom Rutter in the next GUKPT main event. I've never met the other two but Tom was a mate when I was at uni in Notts and I know he has an absolutely terrific game so was more than happy to get a slice. Just a shame it came at the wrong time for me money-wise otherwise I woulda bought 20% ish. Likewise I have £100 worth of shares in Boldie's horse betting syndicate as he seems to have a pretty good knowledge and track record to more than back it up. When I get paid in two weeks I'm also staking another friend in an MTT deal.

Let's hope one of these fish can win me some monies!!

In the meantime I have friday and monday off - I will be relaxing having a break from poker playing though I intend to do some reading. Need to start on Tommy Angelo's elements of poker and I'll also be hitting the gym really hard as this week has been a bit disappointing on the gym front.

I offered a fish named Amatay (some of you might have heard of him) a prop bet on who can do the most press ups at the next blonde bash as shock surprise no-one took me up on my last post offer of a prop bet. Apparently he writes a blog too though I doubt any of you read it. The fish is yet to get back to me - Amafish I'm waiting buddy!

Also looking forward to this months pay...on top of my usual salary I'm getting my bonus and hopefully my tax rebate which I still need to ring up and sort out the exact amount though defo in the region of £1500-2k so a bumper month could mean I just deposit £3-5k and just start playing straight in at £.50-1 correctly rolled which I would be ok with as I don't mind playing this limit and it's easy as fck. Having a proper roll amount on the site should eliminate any implied tilt either.

Wow this post got pretty meaty for someone who started with his intentions of stopping! Maybe not just yet.

As always comments are appreciated as I really do like the feedback.

gL at the tables.

PROP BET PLZZZ?!

2009-02-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet as it's friday and I'm about to go out but I wanna do a prop bet...

Now the prop bet can be me vs you or just you betting against me doing something.

It can be poker or non-poker related.

Willing to do anywhere between £100 and £1000.

If anyone wants to take me up on it let me know.

Had over a +£1k day whilst playing only 5p10p!

2009-02-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

Ok slightly misleading....the over +£1k day wasn't from poker...

I got a letter from the Inland Revenue telling me I've been paying too much tax since I started working in April so I'm due somewhere between £1k and £2k back soon. Weeeeeee.

Work has been kinda shit lately... i was even in the office from 1-8:30 on Sunday. I was one of three people in the entire building that day, the only one on my floor and the only one in past 5pm. My job is ok but since I moved department I have a boss who must be the grumpiest man alive and we have absolutely nothing in common. It makes a huge difference to work ethic and morale when you're getting praise and encouragement - unfortunately he does neither. I could probably find the cure to cancer beneath my desk and he would find it hard to muster something resembling happyness or god forbid a 'well-done'. The journey home was a nightmare and took me two fucking hours so it was nice to wake up on monday to see it was snowing like mad and there was my sunday back and a 4-day week. Ship.

I played some poker...I know I said I wouldn't but realised I was like 150 mpps from the next bonus so it woulda been like throwing money away to not play it out. I have played nothing higher than 25p50p and quite honestly I played atrociously to be even though I had a winning session last night chalking up an easy ton against a reg who I had position on and floated/robbed all night and a terrible donk who seemed to think I had trash every hand and was calling me down with Ace high. I wasn't even tempted at any point since my last entry to play higher than this. I don't know how or why but hopefully it will continue.

I actually wrote all of the above about 4 days ago and I've just been too crazy busy to finish off my post properly. Now it just looks like a random mish mash but I'll try and fill the gap quickly on the last few days before I am back on track and at full on blogging potential. Sorry for the gay numbered bullet points.

1) Chelsea are shit. I used to have a season ticket back in the days when our team wasn't as good but we played good football and stamford bridge actually had an atmosphere. I've been 3 or 4 times this season, like at Chelsea vs Arsenal paying £50quid a ticket to sit and watch a bunch of overpaid w*nkers who care more about their hair than winning games. We weren't good enough against Liverpool and although Lampard's sending off was disgraceful it wouldn't have made much difference. Wow so we coulda drawn 0-0,woopty doo. Man Utd woulda been quaking at our one point. The league is theirs, all locked up now. I won't be paying to go to the Bridge any time soon either - I resent it. Not til things change.

2) I've had a new cousin - little George was born on tuesday morning. Unfortunately my uncle and auntie live quite far so will have to wait for the weekend to make a visit.

3) I've been to the gym every night this week - its going well and I'm beginning to regain a bit of strength. My benching was poor the other night, not managing to rep any more than 85kg but I've started doing fitness before jumping into the weights room and its draining me as I've never really bothered with fitness before.

4)I'll also be getting a small bonus from work - somewhere between 3-6% of my annual salary which is gonna make for a good few months on the bank account considering I'm due money back from tax and my wages too.

5)I played poker once this week - putting in a 4 hour session after my gym session last night. I was only 2 tabling as I was watching some telly too (- what a joke ITV are btw - missing out the goal because they randomly put adverts on after 118 minutes - I woulda been mightily pissed off if I watched the whole two hours. Luckily putting myself through pain and risk of injury at the gym was a 10x more exciting prospect than watching liverpool). Anyway - I won about 8 buy ins on 25p50p and was never in a difficult spot. I made one bad calldown with 33 on a 99685 board to be shown 77 but other than that it was plain sailing. More importantly to me at the moment is not feeling any urge or temptation to play higher and immediately take shots with 2 buy ins until i hit self destruct mode. I won't let this happen!

I think genuinely the comments I've received on here and from members on blonde have really helped and I'm glad I've started this blog.

Hopefully my next post will be less rushed and a far more coherent all-in one piece.

In the meantime I will leave those of you who haven't seen with the story that JOHN TERRY IS SUING THE NHS! Click here

Latest update

2009-01-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet really as I'm still at work - and it doesn't look like I'll be leaving for a good few hours yet - (FML)!

So what's happened since the last post. I haven't played any more poker. I've decided to have a few months off. Something I've never done before. I wanna see if the break does me good and refocus 10x harder on my work, gym and social life.

I've also bought Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo thanks to a recommendation from Barry Carter and will be reading it during my break. I'm also organising a poker coach/mentor for when I hit the tables again in April which I think will be a really big help for me.

I just want to address one of the comments from my last blog:

"Follewed this blog as u seem to be always on blonde. You need to just quit , u will never ba winner. It is as simple as that! You talk a good game and are quick to put down certain pros on blonde, thats all u are.

QUIT before u go busto.

Ian"

Ian, what's your nickname on blonde? I can hazard a very good guess by your spelling and construction of sentences but I wouldn't want to make a rash assumption.

I'm guessing I must have offended you with a contrary opinion to you on the PHA or something to evoke a post which has such a bitter tone to put it nicely. Your opinion seems a little harsh but you're entitled to it and I respect it.

Though I would like you to name a few instances where I'm quick to put down certain pros? Seems like this is just a comment randomly plucked from the air. If you see my comments on tournament updates etc I think you'll find the opposite is true. I publicly support the blonde contingent in live events (whether I know them or not) and have staked 5 blondes too. My posts on PHA are also always constructive where possible and I try to help. If you're responding to a post I made today about someone folding Kings being bad then I guess that does equate to me 'being quick to put down certain pros'(*sigh*). I'm always polite and courteous but will not compromise giving my honest opinion too.

Saying that I talk a good game implies I know what I'm doing, which I agree with. I have tilt and bankroll management issues which I need to address moreso than my knowledge of the game and the way I apply it. Just because I have failed a few times it doesn't mean I should quit - I'm determined to overcome the issues I have. Not that you know my personal finances either, but I am no-where near busto. Did you think this because I lost £1k? hmm, lol.

I partially appreciate your sentiment, I just would appreciate you were a little more constuctive, particularly as I don't even know you.

Regards,

Greekstein

gg wp nh BUSTO

2009-01-25T04:43:00.000-08:00

Title pretty self explanatory really.

Roll was at £1000 on friday night and I sat in some £1/2 games as someone told me about a complete spewmonkey who was donating to the whole table. 5 minutes later and he'd doubled up from me twice. Obv his 4-bet jam with QJ sooted got there vs my AK and then I lost a really sick pot With QQ vs his 25ss on a 778ss flop when we put £170 each in to a £50 pot on the 2 turn for him to duly bink the Jack of spades on the river. I opened A5 hearts on the button and was flatted in the BB by a decent reg to see a Q55 flop. After leading and flatting his raise we got it in on the turn. No prizes for guessing I was drawing to one out vs Villains QQ.

I finished the night with my roll at about £100. marvellous.

I went to the gym for a few hours on saturday morning and came back home and put the remainder on 2 £50NL tables. A few hours later and I had a £320 stack on one table and £190 odd on the other. Decent semi recovery but I wasn't content to stop there and I don't know what got into me but I sat in a £2/5 omaha where I did my stack check raising all in on the river of an unpaired 3 heart board with the bare ace to get called by a 10 high flush. I sent the HH to a few friends on msn after as I don't know how he called me there when I lead out flop and turn and both felt my line was super strong and had they been in villain's seat wouldn't have called there. More I think about it more I like my line but oh well shit happens.

Question is...what to do now?

I could re-deposit but what the fuck is the point? Things are becoming more evident but I'm still not learning. I crush £50NL, I beat £100 and £200 nl fairly comfortably too but don't give myself a chance to win when I constantly jump up and tilt etc. Ok I just ran bad this time rather than tilting but it would have been the same result, whether in a week or two months.

Two of the comments from my last blog were pretty spot on and are what have kept me from redepositing another £k to rinse and repeat.

1)'BRM is mostly about discipline.

If you can't be disciplined and win with 1k against the donks how do you expect to suddenly find that discipline by depositing more?'

2)'As for the tilt thing if you cannot control it you have to ask yourself should you be playing the game?'

Both very valid points and it's got me thinking about whether or not to actually quit the game. I just don't think I can because I love it so much but I need to find a formula to help me work my round my problems with tilt and bankroll management. Whether this means taking a 3 month break, finding a mentor, using a staking site (really don't want to do this as I have the money to play and if winning don't wanna give half my profits away) I'm not sure yet.

Comments appreciated!

gl all

'Oh my god I'm coming night and day'

2009-01-21T05:03:00.000-08:00

I've Played under 100 hands of pokay this week and it doesn't look like that will increase til the weekend. One thing I always found difficult when playing poker was a balance, or should I say the lack of it. When I was emmersed in the poker world so to speak, it became all I did. If I was on the internet it was poker related (or porn obv - who am I to kid?). If I was watching TV it was High Stakes Poker/Poker After Dark/Wsop etc (or porn obv)and even anything I talked about had a gambling slant to it. With Poker I think its hard to not fall into that trap, especially as you're often surrounded by people who do exactly the same.

I began to fall into that trap to a much lesser extent (but still too much) the last two months and playing online particularly during the week was detracting from my gym routine to the point where I stopped going. Playing so much has a knock on effect on your social life and even work.

I'm now well and truly back into the gym and while I'm still a little weaker than I was two months ago I come home from work and go straight to the gym instead of logging on as fast as possible and loading tables up. When I get home I have a shake, some food and a shower before going to bed at about 11-pm-midnight. Having a good night's sleep is making the week's go faster (even though I'm not really enjoying my job atm- but that's something I'll discuss in another post) and generally I feel a lot more positive. It's no easier coming in to work after winning or losing £2k the night before so I'm keeping poker to an absolute minimum during the week and just going to play at weekends now. I'm gonna gym so hard for the next few months! (The title of this blog was inspired by a legendary gym related quote from the great Arnie himself in Pumping Iron - if you haven't seen it - watch it it's so fucking funny, though not meant to be).

Thanks for the comments in the last post too - I'm gonna follow their advice and stay playing really low and grind up because that's a necessary quality of a poker player. Just because I have the resources to play higher, it doesn't mean I should - even if it's boring I gotta learn some discipline and patience and grind it out. I'm sure it'll feel like an accomplishment in a month or two's time when I've won enough buy ins to move up.

I realise this entry probably isn't particularly well written but I'm wrting in rather a hurry during my lunch break at work and just getting things off my chest as they come in to my head. I'd love to know who the anon comments are from too - whether insulting or helpful I honestly appreciate every one.

In the meantime I'll leave you with a photo (at the top of the blog as I'm too noobish to know how to put it below) that was sent round the office today. Its from the Ozzie Telegraph. A brilliant piece of creative media buying!

Laters

New plan

2009-01-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

Last few days have been shit. Ive put in a few hours, though not many as its been the smallest stakes I've ever played, $25c-50c and playing with complete donkeys, while it can and should be extremely profitable it makes u lose any desire you have to play the game. Most of the fun with poker is the challenge and the money in some senses can be secondary but playing with these donks is so annoying. I've broken even over about 700 hands after initially donking off buyins as if for fun when refusing to not win every pot as my opponents didn't deserve to win a single one.

I just can't play with only £1k so I will deposit 2k more and start playing $1/2. $1/2 is still really easy to beat but its probably the smallest I can play whilst still playing my game. If I didnt have that one lapse I would probably be on £5k now and motoring but one of my failings as a poker player is losing my head when things arent going my way.

I remember one time in Nottingham, I was staying in my house alone as I was up before the start of term doing resits. I had about 6 to do as I didn't even turn up to exams in the second semester and shoulda been working my butt off. After doing the first two I had a 3 day break before my next exam and convinced myself (I took fuck all convincing) that one night off to play poker at gala would make me more productive as studying too much is counter productive etc. So I go along and win the £50 rebuy for something like £1800. It's only 3am and I've only been playing non stop since 7.30 so I decide to jump into the emtpy seat in the cash game. After catching a rich bloke who'd come in pissed for another £600 quid I finally went home when the game broke at 5am. Getting up late the next day and feeling invincible I wasn't gonna study some Portuguese bloke who died 600 years ago for the night I was gonna go and win some more fucking moolah! Another successful night turned into too many and I had missed more of my resits, thinking it would all be ok with some lame calls to the doctors in the morning complaining of sickness before rolling over and getting some more sleep.

I made my last two exams and thought getting a doctors note would suffice. I didn't even bother doing that in time as it had to be done within a week. On the last night before I was due back to London I went to gala again and after losing £300 quid of the best part of £4k that I won that week I cashed in the rest for chips and began playing roulette. My cap that I was wearing was full of £100, £25 and £5 chips as I had too many by far to carry in my hands. This was about 5am. By 6am I had done my last £50 on blackjack and was walking home in the freezing cold as I literally didn't even have a fiver for a taxi. May give anyone reading an idea of what my bankroll management has been like.

Having just read that back myself, I can't believe what a degen dickhead I was.

I'll try and put in a post of how I turned things around when I came back to London.

In the meantime I've got a bet on Hoivold to win the GUKPT so I'm sweating that now its 4-handed. Wd to my mate Richard 'Loser18' Lewindon who finished 6th for about £9k. Also watching the Snooker final, Ronnie vs Selby. Want Ronnie to win this one big time.

gl

The most Evil Creation in all the Universe....

2009-01-15T06:09:00.000-08:00

...PIGEONS!

and not only are they the most evil fucking things ever, and ugly twats too but they have something in particular against me.

More annoying is that they are currently on top in our battles. Just today at lunch time I was walking back to the office, lunch in hand when this pigeon takes off from about 30 metres away and decides to fly directly at my face. Obviously it never hit but I'm always the bellend who is ducking and flailing about to move out of their way. Never happens when I'm walkin down a quiet road either, always when 30000 people are walking the opposite direction to me to witness these misbehaving winged wankers making me look a complete tool.

I feel sorry for the next pigeon I see with a damaged wing or leg or whatever. Cos next time I see one fucker that can't fly I'm gonna paint my Nike trainers red giving it one mother****** of a boot. Maybe even a rockbottom.

I feel better now.

One step forward 8574362 back

2009-01-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Fuck sake I'm such a dick sometimes.....

So the roll was at around £3k. Pretty good for one week of part time play. Then on Friday night I was due to go and see Slumdog Millionaire with a mate. He comes round and I've just got in from work and I have to hate a nice bath so give him my laptop and log in to my hills. I've got over £2k in the account at this point but I'd trust this mate with my life so no problem there. He wants to play some 25p50p cash but I want in on the action. Can't be going out in an hour whilst he's chirping about winning and I've had no action on the day so I tell him to buy into a £50p£1 game for £100 and we'll go halves.

So I'm in the bath thinking about how well things have been going when he shouts 'I've got Kings'. It's been raised to £4 and called, so he reraised to £16. (I'm getting a fucking commentary from outside the bathroom door at this point). Another guy makes it £35 from no-where and my mate wanted to pass. He knew the other guy had aces but I don't think I've ever folded Kings pre in a cash game and I especially don't intend to start doing it when I'm in for £50 quid in a £100NL game. My mate shoves and obv KK < AA. This shouldnt bother us but we didnt wanna go out losing so when I got out the bath he said let's get it back.

The film starts at 8.30 and its 7 now....we're meant to be going to grab some food before the film too. He wants to get our money back and I can't say I was arguing lol. The quickest way to do it was to start 3-betting the fuck out of everyone. Would only need one or two nice moves or a big hand to get out of it. Instead we get no big hands and I'm 3-betting like a donkey in the worst spots possible. After donking off a few hundred we lost a big pot with J10ss on a QsKs3d board to AK.

Less than half an hour later and -£100 is now -£430. We decide not to lose more than £250 each so the last 70 goes on blackjack First hand we get 83 vs 7. No choice but to double. Coulda got a better card than an 8 but we'll take it. Until the dealer puts the 410 in our eye. Now I know how James Akenhead feels. Almost... Anyway, 104 is the nuts.

So we go and eat and have obviously missed the film. We go and play some live poker and are halves. Never going to get our money back in this game though where the average buy in is 100 quid. I'm boring myself now but needless to say I decided to start playing online.

I'm playing 4 £200NL tables and first hand get dealt 99. One raise to £8 and it's called in 2 spots. I look down at 99 and decide to 3-bet to 38 as this reg raises loads of hands and I'm probably the only player on our limits on Crypto who's looser. Needless to say we have a lot of history and where I bluff him a lot and get called down he stacks off super light vs me. When he makes it £200 I know he has AK. I've never ever seen him play a big pair like that. My mate is telling me to fold but I tell him this buy in is my one then and call. The 9 on the flop was only insurance vs his AK. I'm now out of it for the day but my mate is still in the hole. Eventually I win a bit more and knock £100 off what my mate owes me.

On the way home I tell him not to panic and that I'd play small the next day to get him out of it. Instead I can't be arsed and cockily decide to play £200nl until his money was back and then at evens I could do my thing again. I got stuck £600 within 90 minutes after missing an open ended straight flush draw with one over vs an overpair and getting four flushed. I was pretty angry as there was no way I was gonna ask my mate for half when it was my fault anyway. I keep playing and by 6am I'm almost back to level. Then we get some drunk nutter join the table with £200 and his standard open was between £32 and £176. Brilliant. Until his £46 open insta calls my AQ shove and binks two pair with J7. 10 mins later he made it £100 in the cut off and I was in the BB with 1010. I almost fistpumped this one and couldnt hold vs his K6.

He proceeded to fck off after donating most of the monkey he luckboxed off me back round the table and then both £1/2 games still running at that time insta-broke. I jumped in a £2/5 game with 3 regs, not only completely ignoring my supposed new bankroll rules but I was clearly tilted too and way off playing even my C-game. I lose a bit more and fire a few shells on the Will Hill live casino to lose another £400. I can't see out of my windows now because so much steam has come out my ears.

The next day I go to the gym in the morning and knock out a good session though I'm still a pussy compared with a few months before. Then I spent the rest of the day in the pub with the lads as one of my mates is joining the Army.

Sunday I met my mate Figo at the Vic to watch the Man Utd Chelsea game (more about this and the degenerate bastard cunt that is Figo in the next post - fuck knows why I still like that kid) and lost £500 more in a £1/3 game with QQ vs KK. I don't think me or my opponent played this hand at all well. This post has gone on way to long and is a bit boring I think, but mainly doing it to get off my chest.

My roll is back to square 1 at £1000 and I'm having a few days off. Not because I want to but I think I have to be more mature in my decisions and few days off will hopefully make me come back playing well again. So fucking annoying to have got off to such a quick and good start which tbh I should be banging out most weeks as it isnt hard and to blow it in the space of a 24 hour tilt-fest. I'm a dick. I think I need some sort of mentor to help me address these issues so feel free to pm me if you're interested!

In the meantime I think there is some massive massive value on Blue Square for the GUKPT Brighton. I will be spreading £100 between 3 of the guys from the blonde poker forum. James Dempsey at 80/1, Chris Moorman at 100/1 (this is sick huge I think) and Alex Martin at 125/1. I will be wishing my old mate from Notts Neil Blatchly good luck in this one too but would be happy to see any of the 'blondes' as such, do well but if I had to pick one it would be Alex. I've never met him but like me he is predominantly a cash player but always helpful on the hand analysis board - a resource which is very useful.

I also bought 10% of James Atkin via the blonde staking board for the £300 and £150 at DTD in feb so glglgl ship me some dollars.

I've Linked Alex 'I always win 45999535 big blinds in cash' Martin and Barry 'my real name is Dave but thats too boring so I'll call myself Barry' Carter and James 'about to make me rich' Atkin's blogs up too.

I'll try and fill in the many gaps this post has left up tomorrow. There are loads.

gl in the meantime.

So far so good....

2009-01-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

Played for a quick half an hour when I got home from work about 7 last night. Lost £100ish. Couldn't put in a longer session as I had just booked 10 sessions with a personal trainer who I used to work out with and my first session began at 8pm. Just can't motivate myself at the moment so it had to be done. It was £300 quid for 10 sessions and I don't normally like spending money on this kind of thing even though I'm the opposite of a nit with money, especially as I know the routines in the gym and correct form and technique etc. Its just a case of needing the help with motivation and someone standing over me making sure I do those last few reps and not giving up. My mate Andy who I was going to the gym with is now travelling for 4 months so I don't have a spotter or training partner either which doesnt help. Add that to xmas which is just like a festive one month binge...

So I went, did 10 minutes on the bike before our session started and then did 10 mins on the treadmill before heading into the weights room. The session was absolutely brutal. We did chest back and abs, one set of each in different exercises and constantly rotating. I was allowed virtually 0 break inbetween sets. Fcking exhausted afterwards but at least feeling a bit motivated again. I knew Xmas was gonna mess my routine up. I was struggling to rep 80kgs on the bench last night when I was pumping out 100kgs less than 2 months ago. ffs! Completely revamped the diet again too to what I was eating like a few months ago. Plain porridge for breakfast. Banana at 11. Pasta salad with cottage cheese, pine nuts, sweet corn, broccoli and cottage cheese at lunch. A pot of edamame (if you haven't tried this - do!) at 4 and small pasta salad again at 5 before leaving work. Did some weights when I got home before starting the pokay....

Had a look around the tables at 7.30pm and literally all the £1/2 games were all non-regs. Really unusual but too good an opportunity to pass up even though I should only be playing £.50-1 at the moment. I got up a few buy ins fairly quickly when I won a 3 way all in pot for circa £800. I dont have HH but it went something like this....

Both Villains playing around £250-280. I cover.

Villain 1 raise to £8
Villain 2 calls £8
I call in sb with 45spades
Flop was 234 (2 spades)
I lead for £16
Villain 1 makes it £55
Villain 2 flats the £55 (hmm...wtf!)
I move all in.
Villain 1 instacalls
Villain 2 tanks and calls (hmm wtf!!)
Villain 1 has AK spades
Villain 2 has QQ (hmm wtf!!!)

Turn 6 of clubs (weeeeeeeeee!)

River Q of clubs (in Villain 2's eye! - terrible play anyway imo)

This put me up about 4 buy ins at which point I stopped for a quick break to have something to eat. I logged back on and ran QQ into KK and managed to lose the absolute minimum. Then I got AA all in pre against a reg who just never believes I have any kind of hand. There was a raise to £8. He made it £24. I made it £56. QQ not good in this spot. He gets it in and I instacall. The flop brings 3 diamonds, of which he has the queen and I don't. Obv the river rolls off a diamond and I was set back a bit. I didn't tilt at all and just kept playing my game. Finishing the session up around £900 or so. Pretty pleased as I was on the wrong side of 2 coolers aswell. Managed to watch Poker after Dark whilst 4 tabling too! I only played 1 hand really badly tonight and I paid for it.

Need to keep up this level of focus and I should surpass my goal of £15k by a big margin.No harm in taking it one step at a time. If I reach the goal I can always reasses.

Roll @ £2662 for a profit of £1662.

Will try and put in some random stories from my gala days soon as and when they come to mind. Plenty of mad degennaments to report!

If anyone wants me to link them up just let me know in the comment box. This sounds like some sort of dating request but I really do wanna put some more links up as I think feedback from fellow players is gonna help me a lot.

Off to get some shuteye. gl!

What I hate about poker and latest update

2009-01-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

In so many blogs I see people complaining about not enjoying the game etc. Don't play it then! The only thing that annoys me about poker is that I can't play it more. Working full time means I can only play about 40 hours a week, logging big sessions at weekends and some weeknights til pretty late not getting as much sleep as I really need. Don't really know how to balance this properly - another thing I'll have to work on. I'm pretty glad that winning or losing I'll still wake up the next day and know I enjoy it.

The challenge I've set myself has seen mixed success to far. For those who don't know I deposited £1k and after a frustrating start trying to destroy opponents and not let anyone at 25p50p win a single hand I revised my strategy and decided to move up. I just wasnt playing well at those limits. Luckily most players, including regs at those limits are so terrible it wasn't hard to not lose.

They were equally terrible at £.50-1 and I ran up four or five buy ins with ease before taking some shots a little higher. Even though I ran out a winner, it involved a few swings that with my new bankroll, I shouldn't be dealing with. I was playing £1/2 NL, which isnt as easy as it once was, especially as all the tables now seem like 5 regs and 1 fish. I was playing in a $2/5 dollar omaha game too where I justified sitting because I had such an edge over the lineup. Regardless, I will just have to resist. Being pretty card dead and on the wrong side of two coolers I ran up my $500 to $1600 dollars when I was reraised pre by villain playing $800. I just called with 5678 and the flop rolled off 2 5 7 with 2 spades. Villain instabet pot for $150 or so and I made repopped him for 3/4 of his stack. Apparently AQJ9 with the J9 of spades is a monster in that spot. Needless to say he got there.

I jumped into 2 £2/5 NL games to try and make back the money I'd just lost. I wasn't tilting or playing bad - I just didn't fancy going to bed down on a night when I felt by and large I had played well. For half an hour I was in control of both tables and after 3-betting the same guy twice with nothing I made a nice call down when he thought I was full of shit again on a 226JK board when he raised my flop bet and fired the turn before shutting down on the river where I checked behind. My 88 was better than his 77. oops wrong spot to play back at me. Ul though I guess with my image.

Also played with Pete Shag-a-lamppost (Charalambous) and Sam 'I win absolutely everything in sight' Trickett for a while. Sam is a good bud from my Notts days but so random the way he plays any limit - logging some sick sick winning sessions on full tilt this week in 25/50 and 100/200 on full tilt before playing a little 2/5 omaha on Crytpo before jumping back into full tilt games again. Maybe he saw me sitting and the value was just too good to pass up. I'll get Pete Chara back for calling me a Turk though!

I did have some tilty sessions on blackjack after losing a few buy ins earlier in the week and recouped my losses but this was just luck. Today I'm ringing Will Hill and getting myself banned from these games so that the temptation isn't even there.

I will also not be playing any 2/5 whatsoever until my bankroll is ready. I'll be playing predominantly £.5-1 and some mtts (at the weekend) and only taking shots at £1/2 when there are plenty of fish in the games - most commonly on friday nights and weekends.

Roll is currently at £1918 so a profit so far of £918.

Thanks for comments on last post guys. It's really nice to receive feedback.

One other thing is - I must stop writing these blog posts whilst at work!

From Gala and beyond....

2009-01-06T02:33:00.000-08:00

I'll start this post with something I've been saying to women all around the globe. Sorry this is gonna be so long. lol i wish.

As I mentioned before my bad beat post (I won't be posting too many of them hopefully), I really got into the casino when everyone began to knuckle down for exams. It was just doing a bit of blackjack and roulette, never really for much money at all. I would often call it quits after losing like £80. God bless being a nit. I miss those days. It wasn't til one night when I was in the casino and loads of my mates had come in for some free drinks and to generally mess about after a night out that I decided to show off so I maxed the withdrawal on my card and put it all on one spin like I didn't care. (I was fcking shitting it). I think I hit number 34, a number I don't think I actually ever put a penny on again. Pretending it was a standard bet, I collected my winnings - put my chips in my pocket and bought a round of drinks. Everyone was kinda shocked but I loved the buzz and from that moment kind of lost my fear and respect for money. Coincidentally I remember the first time I lost £200 at a casino. At the time I couldn't comprehend this and didn't sleep that night. Every time I shut my eyes all I could see was a roulette wheel where the ball never landed but just kept spinning round the wheel. A few months later and losing £200 was a good night of table games.

I played a few tournaments at gala, which was an intimidating place if you were an 'outsider' to the card room. In my first one I literally hadn't played a single hand until raising with queens and finding two callers. wtf- did they not know how tight I was?! Got it all in against both after an AQ6 flop to be shown AQ and 66. This live poker shit was a piece of piss. I'll just do this every night and clean everyone out. hmm.... I ended up making the final table of the £20 rebuy without a single rebuy. Once again, god bless my nit days. We were down to seven players when everyone started shaking hands and the guy in 8th looked gutted. wtf? Was I part of some sort of collusion that I didn't know about? well no, but I HAD entered a satellite tourney. oops. This gave me a £250 seat to a gala tourney but being aware that I still needed to learn so much about poker (beating my mates more often than not in £5 home games and uni games hardly qualified me to expect any sort of a result in this tourney) I started going to play the tournaments every night to practice.

On my starting table was Dave Smith, Lee Rawson and some guy wearing sunglasses and a top with a sponsor on it. I was pretty nervous and before I had chipped up I passed pocket jacks pre flop to a single open from Dave Smith. LOL donkaments. I had about 20k in chips when I was dealt 44 in the Big Blind. A guy moved in for his last 2k and got 2 callers. I made up the 1600 more in the big blind and bet all 3 streets of the 949 flop being called by a flush draw and K9. I caught a set against another local when I called his small reraise with 55 to see a Q85 flop to which he massively ridiculously overbet all in with 99. tyty. Then Anthony Nicholls didn't like the fact I'd started to open up a little and jammed 45k over my initial open to 3200 with blinds at 600-1200. Mbn to have Aces in this spot and instacall. I was already biggest stack in the tournament about 40 out with 120k in chips so getting to 165k I was planning to coast my way to the 20k first prize. The deck seemed to agree with me when the door card was an Ace and Anthony had AJ off btw. The four clubs which followed fitted his his jack of clubs a little better than they did my set though. Wow I was gutted. My first truly sick beat in poker and I was gutted. I don't think Anthony lasted more than 4 more orbits with my chips too. :(.

We make it down to the last 11 and now I have about 120k. I can't remember what the blinds where but it must have been pretty crapshooty as six handed Julian Thew opened to about 45k and I jammed with AK. I was met by a short dwell but a reluctant 'I think I have to call' to see 88. Obv I brick and go out 11th as the bubble boy. The final table played 9 handed as someone went out on the other table at literally the same time to collect like £1k. I felt sick. Probably told everyone in the casino what happened that night, taking a little comfort in the fact that I was knocked out by William Hill's superstar pro Julian Thew. Only thing was, about 2 months later I was sat at a final table with Julian to realise the guy that knocked me out was actually Chris Bruce. oops.

As expected I didn't pass my year. I passed the few exams I attended but its hard to get 40% in the ones you don't turn up to. I basically went to the doctors in Nottingham for the 3 exams I missed and got illness letters. Faking ftw! However, I didn't realise that I had to submit them within 3 days of missing the exams so I had to resit. I couldn't resit for lectures I hadn't been to, with books I didn't have etc etc and I was booted. Oh shit. I came up to Nottingham from London when I got the letter home in the summer holidays and begged for like 3 straight days to be repeatedly told no. I used every excuse under the sun and basically got the bluff through. I was allowed back in as a first year on a slightly different course...

In my second first year I attended around half my lectures in the first term, submitted my courseworks and got my exams out the way. This was pretty good for me, expecially since I would have rather put my bellend through a cheese grater than listened to some of those lecturers drone on and on about shit I really had no interest in. But I did it and allowed myself a week of degenning it after exams. This week quickly became 8 months solid and I'd fucked up again. Lost all my dosh and was out of uni.

I thought I was happy playing the donkaments and cash games each day, whilst regularly doing my bollocks on house games. Wasn't like I had any bills to pay or children to clothe and feed. It just takes change to realise that it isn't a healthy lifestyle and whilst I love poker and am fascinated by gambling I couldn't be more happy that part of my life is over. In the end one of my housemates at uni rang my mum and told her I'd just got out of control. At first I was furious with him for not talking to me first but I realised that wouldn't have made the blindest bit of difference. Not like he had many chances either when I got in at 7.30am every morning, slept til 5pm and then jumped straight in the shower and headed straight for the casino. Pretty ashamed of what I had become back then.

Cut a long story a little short, my parents came and collected me from Nottingham and brought me back down to London. My dad nearly kicked me out and for a few months didn't really talk to me. I eventually got a work placement after temping and bumming around for the most part and then got kept on permanently after working really hard and making a good impression. I'm still playing lots of poker but online. My bankroll management has gotten loads better and hopefully with this blog the intention is for it to be 100% where it should be. My life is pretty normal again too after how mad it got in Notts. Going out, drinking, going to the gym, spending time with mates and family comes first and poker fills the gaps. Obviously I'm still playing a lot but you get the idea...

Before I finish I would like to indirectly thank Blondepoker. Posting and reading on there makes you realise that its possible to play poker and not be a degenerate. I've certainly learn't certain things from it. After ineveitably spending some 000's to learn the game I eventually became a winning player, even though more often than not in Nottingham I decided to play a gambling game rather than a proper poker game. There's a lot of guys on blonde with similar knowledge (and some who would pwn me I'm sure) of the game to myself who have conducted themselves properly enough to be very successful in poker. Something I'm now 100% I will be doing too. Just a shame I didn't start earlier but we all make mistakes. Anyway, it's a great site with a good community and great resources - free to sign up and I'd recommend to any poker player.

My next blog post will be a poker update hopefully, with a little story about a fish named Amatay who posted on his blog for all the world to see about my idea to merge pokertube and redtube to create the ultimate website of them all.

Be cool to get some comments on this blog too.

gL at the tables.

Why does the table donk never fail?

2009-01-03T23:24:00.000-08:00

Game #6850252413: Omaha PL ($1/$2) - 2009/01/04 - 07:16:32 (UK)
Table "Nowayout" Seat 1 is the button.
Seat 1: bigblack ($377.40 in chips)
Seat 2: HERO ($512.40 in chips)
Seat 3: Bilybob88 ($60 in chips)
Seat 4: Jibby147 ($119.95 in chips)
Seat 5: remarx ($77.40 in chips)
Seat 6: bugger74 ($179.30 in chips)
HERO: posts small blind $1
Bilybob88: posts big blind $2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to HERO [Tc Kh Ts Ah]
Jibby147: calls $2
remarx: calls $2
bugger74: calls $2
bigblack: calls $2
HERO: raises to $14
Bilybob88: folds
Jibby147: calls $12
remarx: calls $12
bugger74: calls $12
bigblack: calls $12
----- FLOP ----- [4h 6h 5h]
HERO: bets $50
Jibby147: folds
remarx: folds
bugger74: calls $50
bigblack: folds
----- TURN ----- [4h 6h 5h][8c]
HERO: bets $172
bugger74: is all-in $115.30
Returned uncalled bets $56.70 to HERO
----- RIVER ----- [4h 6h 5h 8c][8h]
----- SHOW DOWN -----
HERO: shows [Tc Kh Ts Ah] (A Flush, Ace high)
bugger74: shows [9h 2s 7h Js] (Straight Flush, Nine high)
bugger74 collected $399.60 from Main pot
----- SUMMARY -----

Oh well...at least Crypto is gonna fuck off and die very soon.

How it started....Part 1

2009-01-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

Being Greek you're never far from a deck of cards and so as a kid I played various different games and it was always something I really enjoyed. My dad and uncles had always been keen gamblers. (Don't think the sort of gambler that spends all day every day in Ladbrokes or going to the casino once a week to donate on the tables but people who went on a night out once every three or four months together to play at the casino or their own home games). My dad and one uncle even managed different bookies for a while when I was a baby so betting of sorts has always been in the family.

My dad actually had a job in a computer company yonks ago and began playing a little bit of backgammon with his work mates at lunch times. He was in such demand for games that his co workers offered to manage his workload if he would stay in the staff room whilst they alternated with each other losing money to my old man. How could he refuse?! He was trippling his wages back then but when it came time for their systems to change he was the one who hadn't learn't how to use it.

One night, I must have been no older than 10 or 11 my dad was going to one of my uncles houses where 7 or 8 of my uncles would play cards all night. For some reason, I don't have a clue why now, I kicked up a massive fuss because I wanted to go with him. That night I remember being fascinated by the game. They were playing stud and each had about 500 quid in front of them on the table. I literally thought this was the coolest thing ever and even though I didn't have any idea of the rules of the game I was more than happy to try and figure it out myself whilst watching the psychological battling and the money moving around the table. At one point my dad got in a big hand and had to call a big bet on the river. I had no clue what my dad was holding nor my uncle, but I said 'Dad I think he's bluffing you'. Another one of my uncles promptly told me to shut up in the middle of a hand. My dad folded and my other uncle turned over the bluff...I was right.

In the sixth form of school I used to play a lot of killer pool in the common room which was only for pounds and 50p's but my money was always on the table ready to play anyone. Me and a few mates used to bunk off lessons a lot and go to our local snooker club to practice. By this time a few of my mates were driving and we had already started having a few home poker games, normally at my house. We started playing the £5 double knockout pool tournaments in 8-ball and 9-ball. We all won both tournaments a few times before our handicaps went up and things became a lot more difficult but it was still great fun nonetheless. I remember winning my first one and getting £50 quid to come home and wake my dad up to tell him about it! Lol donkaments. As it goes, Nick Persaud used to play that tournament most weeks and at the time I didn't even have a clue that he played poker or was an old boy from my school. Hopefully Potters Snooker and Pool club in Streatham is the breeding ground for poker success! Probably not judging by most of the Pikey retards who go in there...

They did have a roulette machine though which was my only access to gambling before I was 18 and I did do my burger on that fcker many times. It was around this time that my best mate Shan met another one of my now good mates David. David's brother had a website called casinobonusexpoits which involved wagering through thousands of blackjack scams on most online casinos to be able to cash out their bonuses. We began doing this and were making roughly £200 for every online casino, each one taking about 4-5 hours to wager through properly. Happy days when ur 18 and making that sort of money.

I already had a nice savings account of about 10k + all this money when I went to uni. Luckily I never needed a student loan the two years I was there. I went to Nottingham to do Spanish and Portuguese but wasn't enjoying my course at all. I loved languages (did Greek, Spanish, Italian and French at GCSE all A* and got two A's in French and Spanish A-levels) - shameless brag but I can't help it. I had no organisational skills and just slept, went out and got stoned for a while basically. Until the second term of uni hit and we had a lads night where we got suited up and went to the casino. Fck me it was so much fun - betting like 8 quid a spin on the touch screen roulette was such a buzz. We started going regularly and 40 quid was a standard 'call it quits session'. Fck knows how we used to make that little money last so long but beautiful were the days when money actually had value and meant something. As exams got closer everyone began going to lectures and the library more often whilst I couldn't be bothered with all that and just planted myself at gala.

I will finish off the Uni/Gala story in my next post(the brilliantly named part 2) . This one has taken me aaaaaaaages to write a load of shit that I already know and probably no-one else will even read. Maybe I should whack a whole load of porn links in here to guarantee some traffic.

In terms of Poker stuff today has been a bit of a rollercoaster with me dropping almost 800 in the early part of the day to claw back a few hundred odd profit by the end (now 6.45am fml). I ditched the 25p50p plan - I was just spewing playing that low trying to win every single pot I played. I'm going to be playing NL100 for the time being as it's just as soft but I put a bit more effort in there.

Had 33% of Snoopy in the Dusk Til Dawn £300 freezeout with £25k+ to the winner but after much grinding he was card dead and made it through half the field before a cutoff shove got snapped off by the blinds AK. ul m8. Let's just hope good bud Pete Linton can take it down from here. He's chip daddy going into day 2 and has a sick ability to run up a stack early in comps.

Laters

STEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAMING!

2009-01-02T16:48:00.001-08:00

So the plan today was to write a blog about how I got into poker etc... but that plan backfired. I think I will delay that one til tomorrow.

I deposited my £1k as mentioned and loaded up five 25p50p cash tables. I quickly ran up two buy ins without any real big hands and stopped for a while to watch the new episodes of Poker After Dark.

So I loaded up my tables again and quickly dropped the buyins back flopping 3 undersets in about 30 minutes as well as a QQ vs AA blind on blind and flopped flush blind on blind. Pretty sick but to end up even after the cards really went against me was ok I guess - especially as if I was playing my normal limits I would expect to be down like 6 buy ins in such unavoidable coolers where im gonna stack off.

A bit dismayed by this start I decided to play MTTs as whenever I set my mind to a win I get a result in one of these. I just dont always have the patience/time to play them. I played the £6k GTD, £9K GTD and two smaller £1000 GTDs on Will Hill and ended up making the final table of the £9K. This guy The_Bstrd (or something like that) made my life more difficult in the mid and latter stages by telling everyone on my tables I nick the blinds every time I raise and always raise Ace rag just cos I was in position on his blind and had it almost every orbit. He's wasn't wrong but thanks for telling everyone..glad the wanker bust on the final table bubble. wahaha. After a few folds to reshoves because of his chatter I made a few calls lighter and players stopped playing back at me.

I made the final table as shortest stack and grind my way through, shoving in position and without showdown until we somehow get 4 handed. Me and another guy are shortest with him 90k, me 50k and the two big stacks like 250k each. I shoved almost any unraised pot to get myself back in contention with 120k with the blinds at 2k/4k and a running ante of 400. I pick up KK and raised 3x instead of my normal 2.5 and was met with a shove. The call any button was already clicked and I faded the two fives he needed for his set to become chipleader. I raise the button a few hands later and both blinds call. There is now 56k in the pot. (I have J5 off). Flop comes J28 2 spades and after both blinds check i bet just over half pot 30k and am met with an all in. for 130 odd in total. Wasn't really expecting that but I obv call and his 108 hits 2 pair on the river.

I didn't recover from there and with one guy laddering his ass off I wasn't gonna outwait him for 300 quid more. I wanted that £3k for the win and a few hands later jammed 99 after a min raise and a call with blinds at 4k/8k and unfortunately ran into the table donks JJ. I wish people weren't able to minraise - its so fcking gay. Not that the hand plays any differently anyway.

So got £851 for 4th though I'm still gutted. I had it locked and £3k win woulda been an awesome start to my years goals.

Two of my mates want railing now in a smaller comp so I'll get them to the final, make sure they ship it and get to bed. I've been playing so much recently that I've completely neglected the gym. I was doing weights like 4 times a week and making good progress but I've let that slip. I rang the guy who used to train me and I've booked 10 sessions with him to get me motivated and back into it again.

Roll now at £1651. +£651 for the day.

StaceySlaters

First Post

2009-01-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

I'm new to this blogging shit so people will have to forgive my lame titles til I become a pro like that Amatay fish bloke.

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now because I'm hoping it will help me manage a bankroll. The last year has been really disappointing on the poker front even tho on the tables I'm up about £15k. Why? Well, I've been a dick basically -I can win 10 or 20 buy ins in a short space of time and if I lose one or two back I'm instantly moving up limits looking for the quickest way to get A9 off all in pre or trying to blast away on Will Hill's Live casino. So I've basically had a breakeven year pokerwise. Marvellous.

On a side note, the Will Hill live casino is based in Latvia so its basically lots of fit female croupiers who you can wind up in the chatbox. Me and a mate thought it was hilarious playing on the first night when pretty drunk. Choosing screen names 'yourbellend' and 'Myhairyanus' is entertaining when some nice looking latvian bird (who looks like she got lost on her way to work at Spearmint Rhino's) asks 'Do you want to split your bellend?' or 'Would you like to insure YourHairyAnus?' Hmmm maybe I need to get out more.

Anyway, I've transferred most of my bankroll over to a mate and I'm starting again in the next few days with the £1k i just transferred into my Will Hill account. Not looking forward to playing 25p50p but if it helps me learn bankroll management then it'll be more than worth it. I will only put more money in my account and move up if I know 100% that I'm not going to touch sports betting, house games or play in any poker game in which I have less than 30 buy ins for. Of course 25p50p is an exception with 1k because if I lose 20 buy ins there I'd probably quit poker its so soft. I'm hoping it won't take me more than a few weeks to make 40BI and move up.

My targets for this year, which i posted on blondepoker (my nickname there is GreekStein):

To start a blog. (Think I'm on my way)

To go to a blonde bash.

To play the Greek Poker Championships again at Dusk Til Dawn.

To play the monthly £200 freezeout at the Big Slick Club more often and their £2/5 cash when it runs. (I swear to god this has to be the softest place to play poker in the world. Even the regs who play day in day out are completely clueless).

Play one leg of the GUKPT.

Have a +£15k year.

In my next post I'll write about how I got into poker and how it eventually got me kicked out of Nottingham uni. Few mad poker related stories to tell before my blog probably turns into another boring bad beat/brag blog.