Playing Live Again

Having not played a live event for about 3 months I think the time has come to step back into the fray. My last event was the UKIPT at Dusk Till Dawn, I put in a solid performance however busted at the end of the second day after losing a standard flip QQ < AceKing.

I got back from a holiday in Majorca last week and I’m off to Italy tomorrow, with work thrown in and the new UFC Undisputed game I haven’t found much time for poker at all. That’s going to change hitting the back end of this year, and I’m ready and refreshed to start playing some live events and grinding out the online satellites.

I have been doing some research and put together a little short list of potential events I’d like to attend. Most of which are small buyin weekend events as I can’t really take that much time off work having had 3 holidays already this year. The list is as follows:

August

Sun 29^th – Mon 30^th.........£220 – August Festival, Harbourside – Bristol

September

Thu 9^th – Sun 12^th......... €550 – UKIPT, Burlington – Dublin

Sat 11^th – Sun 12^th.........£250 – SPT Grand Final, DTD – Nottingham

October

Sat 2^nd – Sun 3^rd......... £336 – Deepstack, DTD - Nottingham

Sat 16^th – Sun 17^th......... €200 – IPO, Regency - Dublin

Gala Harbourside Casino, Bristol

One event which is 100% certain will be the £200’er at The Harbourside in Bristol. If I decide to play the UKIPT then I’d need to take 2 days off work as it’s a 4 day event, I’m going to try and qualify for this one as the package seems fairly decent and if I bust out of the main event there are decent looking side events as well as the WCOOP running online. The only issue with these £500 events is if you need to travel to them then the hotel and travel end up costing just as much as the buyin, so a deep cash is needed to make it worthwhile, you’re better off just staying in bed grinding online. With that said, Stars do offer well structured satellites to the events so I’ll be giving this one a shot. If I fail then I’ll head up to Dusk Till Dawn for the Sky Poker Tour Grand Final which does allow direct buyin, unlike the previous legs of the tour.

Another tourney I’ll 100% play is the IPO in Dublin, last year it was the largest tourney in Europe with some 1,500 runners. Offering a first prize of about $60k which isn’t bad for a €200 buyin, it’s also a 3 day event with 2 of those being day 1s. The structure is fast so it’ll be a bit of fun but with not much to lose, why not?

I’ll do trip reports as and when and also continue to report on my online play. Once I’m back from Italy I’m going to start upping my online volume and also give the WCOOP schedule a look.