FezioJnr - Poker Blog

I'm Alive ! (£5k EPT ME, $10k online score and more...)

2011-12-09T08:10:00.000-08:00

I'm currently putting together an epic post as I haven't blogged in a while.

Since my last post I spent at week at the Hilton in London playing the £5,000 buyin EPT main event. I got to mix it up with the best in the world and ended up one of the chip leaders after the first day, I ran pocket Ks into As preflop twice within an hour on day 2 to kill me :( It was an amazing experience and got to play with lots of the high stakes cash game and tourney players from the US and Europe :) Even Boris Becker made an appearance.

I also had my biggest score online to date, winning $10,500 for a 3rd place finish in the $162 Big on Stars.

I also final tabled a £300 side event in London for a score of £1,500.

Since all of this I've taken a break from Poker and haven't really played a proper session in ages.

I've a massive all day schedule planned for next Sunday starting around 3pm and hopefully finishing around 7am the next morning :) I've the Monday booked off work some I'm looking for a deep run and a six figure score.

Watch this space for my epic post :P

Oxegen, 2 Finals, UKIPT Brighton & Golf

2011-07-12T05:43:00.000-07:00

This is my first update in a while. Nothing major to report pokerwise, work and my personal life has been busy so my poker volume has been down of late.

I recently got back from 5 days in Ireland. I went over for the Oxegen Festival and it was totally awesome. About 90,000 people were there over the course of the weekend and it was said to be the biggest festival in Europe.

Highlights for me were Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Two Door Cinema Club and City and Colour. I also went to see BEP, Beyonce and Bruno Mars, not my typical music but all great entertainers in their own right. Bruno Mars was awesome, singing, dancing, playing the guitar and piano, just an all round class act.

Two Finals

Although I've nothing to rave about poker wise I have made 2 final tables within the past week. They both came in the my usual Big Antes Cap games I play, the first was 4/285 in the $27.50 500 Cap for $600 and the second was an annoying 8/358 in the $22 for $180.

UKIPT Brighton

After failing hard to qualify for UKIPT Brighton I decided to buyin anyway. I had all the required days booked off work and I've also sold off 20% of my action in the Unibet Open, so decided to "treat myself".

I've got the Hilton booked for Fri and Sat night so will probably drive down early Friday morning (depending on how I feel I may head down Thur afternoon and find a cheap room somewhere).

With the majority of pros in Vegas I imagine the quality of the field to be reduced. 15k starting stack on an hour clock gives plenty of room for play so I'm looking forward to it. This will be my 5th UKIPT (played Season 1 Galway, S1 Coventry, S1 Nottingham and S2 Nottingham) and I'm yet to cash in any. I've made day 2 50% of the time so looking to break my duck this weekend. Updates can be found on my Twitter account.

Golf

I've decided to take up golf along with S4ooter, we've had one driving range session and have another scheduled for this week. We'll hopefully hit a course for the first time in a few weeks pending improvements.

We're blogging our golf progression here. We've had one private coaching session by Mr Golf Dan Carter which led to epic improvements. More to come hopefully :)

€2.5k Unibet Open Package and four figures

2011-06-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well I put in an uber 12 hours grind session this past Sunday. It didn't start too well but then I ran deep in the Stars $11 rebuy. I ended up busting in 6th out of 1,362 runners for a score of $1,700. This was bitter sweet as I was playing very well and thought I'd have a great shot at shipping it. 6 handed I lost a flip to bust a player KJ < QT. This would have seen 5 left with me 2nd in chips, I failed to recover from this and busted out in 6th.

Last week I watched a few clips on YouTube of the Unibet Open event in Malta, it looked sick. So I did some research and saw that they run a weekly tourney with 8 packages guaranteed. They are holding an event in Barcelona this week but their next stop is in Dublin in August. Therefore I downloaded Unibet, fired up an account and fired in some Euros. I played a €60 sub satellite to their weekly €275 satellite. I shipped this and bagged a seat.

Now with €20k worth of packages guaranteed they needed 80 players in order to meet the guarantee, they satellite only got 63 runners meaning an overlay of about €4,500. Once I got a decent stack it was fairly easy to push on and bully everyone as they were just all on auto fold. After 3 and a half hours of solid play I found myself in the top 8 and with a €2,500 package to the Unibet Open.

It's a 4 day €1,500 event. I also get €300 for flights and the rest covers four nights in the City West Golf Resort Hotel which is where the event is held. Really looking forward to it.

Screenshots of the results are below...

Trip Report: Last Vegas, April 2011 P2

2011-06-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Part 2 is written by Loz, details our activity from Mon-Wed. Enjoy... (If you haven't read Part 1 you can do so by clicking here)

Cliff Notes
Went to the Gun Store
Spewed money in Aria
Won money in Cosmopolitan
Did the New York Rollercoaster
Went shopping
Went to ‘Pure’ nightclub.

Monday

Monday afternoon we awoke at 12:30pm. The original scheduled time for rising and shining was meant to be 11:30am however neither of us heard the alarm on account of Pich putting his phone on silent. A precious hour wasted. Once on our feet it became clear that we were both unpleasantly hung-over. Food is obviously the first order of the day and so we headed south along the strip to Paris where we ate at Sugar Factory American Brasserie and were served by the lovely Monica. Probably a waitress by day and hooker by night. Pich had sadly forgotten his sunglasses which was unfortunate as Monica sat us outside and he inadvertently chose the seat facing the afternoon Nevada sun. I was not in the mood for an epic savoury snack that morning so went for a ham and cheese crepe. TP obviously fancied something with a bit more sustenance and so opted for a steak baguette.

I was however in the mood for something sweet, The Sugar Factory is famous for its desert menu and neither of us had had a desert yet with any of our meals. It was the time and place for one. I decided to opt for the standard ice cream sundae; Pich went for the same thing. He casually told the waitress, Monica, that he wasn’t interested in sprinkles or whipped cream etc and she duly noted this and went off to advise the kitchen. My ice cream sundae is on the left, Pich’s ice cream sundae is on the right. We both paid the same…who’s winning?

Once TP had ploughed through his enormous and over the top desert we headed further south along the strip to the MGM to spew a little money on roulette and slots. Didn’t win, obviously. We had decided that day, to go visit ‘The Gun Store’ on Tropicana Avenue. Originally our vacation plans involved things like going to the Grand Canyon, playing golf, going to lots of shows etc. So far we’d only done one show, albeit an awesome one, and had spent the rest of the time getting slapped around the face by red and black on roulette, today we actually going to add another activity to our roster.

I didn’t know the way to the Gun Store. I knew it was on Tropicana Ave but wasn’t sure whether it was walking distance, and whether it was east or west. Plus Pich gets funny about walking in ‘areas’ in case we get mugged. (He was majorly flapping on our walk to the Rio). We therefore checked with the MGM concierge and got a taxi east to the Gun Store. Pretty sure we didn’t get as screwed over this time in the cab ride as he only had to drive straight along one road, although it is about 3 miles from the strip. He charged us $15 for the privilege.

We were greeted at The Gun Store (The Gun Store | Las Vegas) by an attractive young lady dressed in a ‘Gun Store’ cap and ‘T-Shirt’.

“Hey their guys, you come to do some shootin’ today? Awesome! Well we’ve got single shot and semi auto guns which you can hire for $25, alternatively you can fire a fully automatic machine gun for $50…We also have packages available such as the ‘Iraq’ package where you get yadah yadah yadah..”

The ‘Iraq Coalition’ package sounded good. (Guns n shit innit?) so we both went for that at around about $129 each. I added on the ‘Dirty Harry’ .44 Revolver to the package for an extra $25. The attractive lady outside told us that there was a bit of a queue and we’d be waiting for a approximately an hour. Irritating, but tolerable. In reality it was absolutely heaving in there and we were queuing for at least 1 hour 45. The queue snaked around the room in a fairly disorganised manner, everyone clutching at the paper targets they had chosen (14 to choose from, collect them all!) and a box full of ammunition for the various guns they had chosen to fire. Men, women, old people, children, all carrying shot gun shells and machine gun belts. I say children because, this being America, everyone should have the right to express themselves through the second amendment if they want. The Gun Store recognises this by offering a ‘Kids Package’ for only $40. God Bless the USA.

One thing we noticed about the Gun Store when we were queuing was how goddamn happy the staff there were. It was like a youth club for them, playing table tennis, drinking panda pops and sliding across the floor on their knees. Not quite, but they were still singing and dancing and generally having a gay old time. Job satisfaction at the Gun Store is evidently quite high. They were also heavily armed. One member of staff had around his waist, two handguns, spare ammo, a taser, pepper spray and a hunting knife. Obviously one can never be too careful when dealing with tourists and firearms.

Anyway eventually we reached the front of the queue, were met by a youngish instructor who was loving the fact that when I said “Dirty Harry” I actually pronounced it “Dir-y Harry”. “Say Dirty Harry again for me dude”. Kid needed to watch is step, otherwise I’d shoot him. Anyway goggles and ear protectors on, we were led out onto the range. I was first up, our instructor challenging me to fire the .44 magnum with one hand at a sideways angle and hit the unfortunate figure on my target in the eye. Needless to say the power and recoil on the thing was unreal and I’ve no idea where my bullet ended up. Certainly not in the target. Throughout the session we took turns in firing an M9 Pistol, an M4 rifle and the sick M249 SAW. (footage below). At the end of the shoot we got to choose a ‘free’ (although obviously it’s not) t-shirt. I am unsure when I will find a suitable moment to walk around wearing my t-shirt with a picture of a machine gun on it. Fed up with extortionate taxi prices, we head back to the strip by a convenient $2 bus that stopped right outside the Gun Store.

YouTube - M249 SAW, The Gun Store, Las Vegas
YouTube - Loz: M249 SAW, The Gun Store, Las Vegas

We decided that evening to try and go to some sort of elite club type place as we had done the night before. We hadn’t checked out the Aria or City Centre yet so figured this would be our destination for the evening. I’d been reading about a rooftop club called Marquee which we were going to try and go to. The bouncer tells me that the club opens at 10:30pm so we go to The Henry on the ground floor of the Cosmopolitan for dinner. This meal proved to be a nice change as the portions weren’t as if they’d been taken straight from an episode of ‘Man vs Food’. Nice food (we both went for roast chicken) in manageable portions. Club not open yet so we make the walk across the road to the Aria where they apparently hold ‘the big game’ now. Despite it’s large size, the game wasn’t big enough for us to spot. Just a bog standard poker room. We did the old slot machine trick of getting a ‘free drink’ whilst tipping her a dollar each and spewing $10 more on the machine, so that’s cashback right there. Then with the money we’d saved by only in effect paying $11 a drink we went to find a roulette machine…

Black had come in 7 times in a row apparently, so obviously it’s going to be red next spin. We plonked $40 down on red and watched the ball set off in motion. Black.

Black had come in 8 times in a row apparently, so obviously it’s going to be red next spin. We plonked another $40 down on red and watched the ball set off in motion. Black.

Very calmly we headed back to the Cosmopolitan, not at all flapping about the roulette session. “It’s just one of those things” I said.

“That was jolly good fun” Tom replied

“I’m pleased that money’s gone to a good cause” I declared.

Outraged at the previous 10 minutes we went up the escalator to hit up the Marquee and take in some sick rooftop strip views. It was about 11ish now. Sadly everyone in Las Vegas had the very same idea and the queue was horrendous. I don’t do horrendous queuing with a bunch of people who are probably twats so suggested we give this one a miss, learn from our mistakes, and queue up early next time.

We drowned our sorrows in the nearby lounge bar called ‘The Chandelier’. So called because the bar is set in a giant chandelier. People were going nuts for this place for some reason. I was speaking to a concierge at Ceasar’s the next day and she told me it was “the most amazing place ever”. It’s not the most amazing place ever, it was fairly average. Some of the girls in the bar were blown away by the crystals in the chandelier “Do you think they’re real diamonds?” I heard one of them say. They’re obviously not real diamonds love, that would just an Oceans 11 waiting to happen, they’re clearly plastic. Use some sense. The bar’s website describes itself like this:

The Chandelier

THE CHANDELIER IS A LIVING, BREATHING ARCHITECTURAL WONDER CREATED BY LUMINOUS BEADED CURTAINS OF LIGHT.
An inhabitable, multi-story visual spectacle housing three unique bar experiences; The Chandelier provides a bit of playground, art exhibit and cocktail haven all at once.
BOTTOM OF THE CHANDELIER
A high-energy spot in the middle of it all that transcends the notion of the classic casino bar.
INSIDE THE CHANDELIER
With every detail carefully considered, this sophisticated cocktail haven offers fine, hand-crafted delights for the true experience seeker.
TOP OF THE CHANDELIER
An inviting lounge that showcases the splendor of The Chandelier, providing guests with a glimpse into the mystique and magic of the world within.

During this spiritual experience we hatched a plan to win back the money we just lost on roulette.* The plan was to put $20 in and have two $10 attempts. Whether we bet on red or black would this time be decided by a flip of a coin. Heads = Red (obviously) Tails = Black. If the bet came in we would flip the coin again and place the winnings wherever the coin told us. We would do this a maximum of 4 times. If we lost we would jump off the roof of the Cosmopolitan. To save us from embarrassment in front of real people we found ourselves a computer roulette machine. Pich was doing the betting, I was doing the flipping. First flip – tails (black). We placed the bet and looked away (if you look at the screen it’s a fact that you’ll definitely lose). A moment later we look back, our money is still on the pixelated roulette screen. We had won ten whole dollars. I flip again. Heads (red). $20 goes down on red, the wheel starts spinning. BOOM red. This coin knows it’s stuff. Tails (black). $40 goes down. The tension is beginning to rise. The coin can’t get 3 in a row right…

$80! We are literally high rolling. At this point doubt begins to set in and we call a general meeting. We could cash out now and would almost be even. The coin won’t get 4 in a row. However, we did previously agree to go with 4 spins no matter what… I flip the coin to see what it says. Tails, black. Twice in a row coin? Really? It was time to pull our fingers out. 80USD on black. We look away for quite a while. I slowly turn my head. “YEAHHHHHHHAWOHROFDNSIOFNIO$£”^&*(“^&” was the sound. $160 plus the extra $10 is a $170 cash out. We are actually very nearly up on the night. With night drawing on it was time to leave the Cosmopolitan as victors. I’m sure our visit will have severely dented their April profit margins.

TUESDAY

Tuesday was the final full day of our Vegas vacation. In recognition of this we actually managed to get up pre afternoon. The plan for the day was souvenir shopping and night time entertainment at Ceasar’s palace. First port of call however was New York New York. I’d been badgering Pich about going on at least one ride whilst we were in Vegas. He wasn’t all that keen when I showed him some pictures of the attractions at the stratosphere so we decided in the end to compromise for the ‘closer to the ground’ New York New York rollercoaster. Rollercoasters are best done pre-breakfast so we figured we’d get some food after being thrown around amongst the mock NY skyline. We got there just as it was opening for the day at 11am, chucked all of our valuables into one of the available lockers, payed the $14 fee and took some seats near the back of the carts.

It’s difficult to describe a rollercoaster in a TR. You go up slowly, you go down fast, Pich flaps, screams and swears, you go upside down, round and round, it’s all very exciting, end.

That out of the way I took the opportunity to do a spot of souvenir shopping. One of my work colleagues asked me if I could bring back the obvious souvenir, a mini statue of liberty. The person is an idiot but I obliged. I also managed to pick up a fairly sick Vegas photo frame for the sister (she collects them). For breakfast we headed over to the MGM to a rather bog standard establishment which I think might have been the Studio Café. It did the job however and the waiter was pretty good. On the way out we gave some money to some sick and needy slot machines and sat down in the sports book to watch the second half of one-sided Man Utd vs Shalke.

Following that it was time to get on with souvenir shopping. Neither of us really knew what we needed to get in all that much detail. Pich wanted some Twinkies for his brother and a ‘Pandora charm’ whatever one of those is, for the missus. I wanted a t-shirt, for myself. Walgreen’s pharmacy was on the way to the Miracle Mile so we stopped off there first. I was flapping about needing to cut my finger nails so went off and bought a nail clipper, as you do when you’re on holiday in Vegas. Pich found a box of Twinkies. Score one for the souvenir list.

The Miracle Mile has a circular floor plan so we figured it was best to do a preliminary observation walk to get a feel for the place. TP went off to look for watches, but was dismayed that none of them had price tags on. I went off around every souvenir shop looking for the perfect t-shirt. Most were unsuitable, sporting slogans such as ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ and stuff like that. Slogans like that might have been true at one time, but I’m pretty sure that camera phones, blogs and forums put an end to all that. Eventually I found a t-shirt that was a little bit tasteful, something I could conceivably wear to places other than Las Vegas Airport. Sadly yesterday I spilt garlic bread juice down the front of it so it’s in intensive care at the moment, too early to tell whether the stain will come out. I can obviously let the forum know as soon I get an update on the stain status.

Next stop after this insubstantial amount of shopping was the more ‘elite’ Forum shops at Caesar’s Palace. The Forum is nicer than the MM, but probably a bit too elite for me. I don’t really care too much for brands or paying lots for clothes, with the exception of shoes and shirts. The Forum is just one designer shop after another. I left TP in the Pandora shop so he could go ‘charm shopping’ and I wandered up one of the ‘streets’ in the Forum. I popped into the Guess shop. A label I had not heard of until I arrived in Vegas, but apparently it’s quite popular with people with a sense of style. One thing I noticed about Vegas is that unlike a classy establishment elsewhere in the world, the shop assistants/waiting staff/casino floor employees don’t talk down to you if you walk in dressed like me. It being Vegas, they can never be sure if the low roller that’s just walked in has just come into a lot of money on a slot and is looking to splurge. I don’t recall any ‘bad’ service from anyone in Vegas.

The assistant in the Guess shop didn’t give me bad service, he was just a twat. “Hey man how’s it goin’?” he asks me as I put a foot through the doorway. Obviously you answer “good thanks”. You say this even if you’ve just lost your life savings on roulette; your wife and kids have left you for someone else; and you’re actual reason for popping into the store is to buy a belt to hang yourself with in the hotel room. Unfortunately he then started getting a bit pretentious and asking me “so when was the last time you wore Guess?” that’s incorrect grammar, and also I’ve never worn Guess. When I told him this he was a little taken back.. “You don’t wear Guess?!” Then he went on about how I’d just love the new spring stuff they’d just had in, but that there was also clearance stock around the back. It all looks the same to me. Unfortunately he didn’t make a sale that time.

Pich had successfully purchased a charm from Pandora. Not sure how much he spent on it, but it was about the size of a 5p piece so was probably expensive. I had with me a voucher book that offered FREE SHIPPING ON ALL PANDORA ITEMS, but we were pretty sure we’d be able to fit it somewhere in one of the bags if we sacrificed some non essentials.

On the way out I paid $10 for an elite ice cream. It tasted nice. Just like ice cream is supposed to. Pich bought another novelty slush puppy type cocktail thing in a big pink receptacle.

Back at the IP we spruced up in clubworthy attire and headed off to Ceasar’s. We stopped by the poker room because apparently the WOSPC main event was taking place and Pich wanted to have a look. Sure enough there were people, playing poker. It was a sight to behold. That essential visit ticked, we next headed to ‘Pure’ nightclub to chat with the bouncer about what the crack was with the place. He advised me that I could either pay $30 to get in after 10:30pm or pay $300 for a bottle and table service. This to me seems like a –ev proposition. Has anyone ever paid for this at a club in vegas? What do you actually get? Is it just one bottle? A bottle of what?

Pich is as Italian as they come, he doesn’t even speak English. With this in mind we headed to Rao’s Italian restaurant in Ceasar’s for some high roller dining. It was pretty rammed in there so we opted to eat at the bar. The food here was top quality. TP went for Spaghetti Bolognaise and I opted for Ravioli and Cranberries. We staked each other for some huge meatballs to go with it. The service here was impeccable too. Our waiter was obviously gunning for a big tip and achieved this with the standard talk about how his family originates from Liverpool and that he has a Liverpool United shirt at home. He then decided to gamble his all but guaranteed 15% tip for a 20% tip by incorporating some risqué jokes about Man Utd and Freddie Mercury into the routine. Luckily for him he read his opponents well and was rewarded with the full 20% tip. Thoroughly earned. Promotion potential?

After the meal we nailed a few ‘free’ drinks from slot play. I actually managed to hit the jackpot on my last spin turning 2c into $50. Cashback. A queue hadn’t yet formed at Pure, but there were lots of minglers about. There were also about a billion suited door staff. Anyone would think Barack Obama was about to make an unscheduled appearance. I inquired about the guest list but sadly it was too late to be put on this. As 10:30 rolled on by we took our place near the front of the queue. All was going well until one of the secret service agents protecting the president pulled Pich up and advised him that “You won’t get in looking like that…you gotta dress smart to get in here”.

I berated TP about this all the way back to the IP where he changed out of his trainers and t-shirt into something more respectable. Time for Pure, take 2. At the junction where we crossed to get in Caesar’s we met a man offering wrist bands for Pure. He mentioned how without the bands we’d pay $40 to get in, but that with the bands we’d only pay (him) $20 and would get a free bar from 12am til 2am. We were drunk and this sounded amazing. For some reason neither mine or TP’s early warning systems were functioning at this moment in time. The fact that one of the door people had told me the cover charge was $30, not $40 did not alert us. The fact that free bars don’t actually exist in real life, especially for $20, did not alert us. The fact the guy was asking for the $20 right there and then in cash on the street, rather than allowing us to get the discount at the door, did not alert us. Alert free we stumped up the cash feeling we were onto a winner.

Just as we were walking through the doors of Caesar’s a suited and booted man spied the bands we were wearing.

“Guys, you’re not going to get in with those, that’s a scam, he tell you that you’d get a free bar? That you’d get in for $20 in the VIP section?...Yeah that’s not going to happen. Have one of these instead…for free.” He handed us both ‘VIP Cards’ offering us standard general admission for free. He gave them to us for free. These cards looked a bit more official, and as he was giving them out for free, it seemed legit. Irritated at being victims of the most obvious scam in Las Vegas, but relieved that we’d passed someone able to recognise this before we made fools of ourselves we rejoined the queue. The cards worked and we got in for free after much scrutiny over our UK driving licences by the door staff. It was a net loss of $20 each, but still cheaper than paying $30 to get in.

Pure was a bit of a letdown to be honest. The downstairs area was just like somewhere you’d find in Chepstow, with the exception that you were basically not allowed to stand anywhere as everywhere was taped off for VIPS. “VIP” by the way, is the most over used, and over rated expression Vegas. It means nothing.

VIP stands for ‘Very, Important, Person’. American 21 year olds with rich parents on their spring break are not, in my eyes, very important people. Ban Ki Moon, secretary general of the UN is very important, Paul McCartney is very important, Steve Jobs is very important… Corey, 21, from Orange County, California is not important, he’s a bellend. Anyway we bought some pricey drinks and stood around waiting for the upstairs area to open. (The VIPS had get seated first). There were some free vodka shots going around so we managed to blag a few of those with our charming English accents. Eventually the upstairs was opened up to the lower classes and we made our way upstairs.

The terrace was actually pretty sick. Good music, good looking people and not a horrific queue for the bar. Still nowhere to sit down, but we were a bit drunk now so did some shit dancing instead. I ordered us two corona and limes and was instead given a corona and two limes and one corona with some lemon in it. For some reason I tipped the bartender $4 for this. It’s the effort that counts, not the attainment.

The evening eventually reached a close and we headed to O’Shea’s for a quick dose of junk food and, as was the theme of the trip, lost another $60 on roulette at the IP before retiring to bed for the last time. Standard.

$870 - 1/121 ($26 Rush)

2011-05-31T04:50:00.001-07:00

My 3rd outright MTT win of the month. I've never won 3 tourneys in one month before. I'd love to say I played amazing however due to lots of railers I can't say anything like that. I played well to get 5 handed but then I ended up getting it in with KQ vs AJ. With an A on the flop I was nearly logging out but then a K turn and Q river gave me the chip lead. A few hands later a shroty shoves for 30% of my stack. I call with AJhh and he shows AK. Flop comes down J high with 2 hearts haha :) So after that pot I got down to heads up and managed to use my #skills to take it down from there :) GG

$2,850 - 6/421 ($109 Rush)

2011-05-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

This brag is both good but annoying as I feel uber deflated. I was playing and running well. With 6 left I had about average until I got it allin preflop with a similar stack to bust in 6th. Folded to me in sb with AQs, I put in a nice raise, he just shoves so I snap. He has AK and holds :'( $2.8k is a great result and adds to the uber sick month I'm having but $14k would have been epic. Happy non the less.

Also cashed in the $44 4-max tourney I like in 5th for $250 the same night.

$1,500 - 5/302 ($75 Early Antes)

2011-05-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

I played a full schedule Thursday night for the first time in 5 days. 10 tourneys. Busted all bar one in which I made the final table but busted 5th for about $1.5k. This month is turning out to be a fantastic month for me.

I've won 2 tourneys outright for $3.8k and $2k and a further 2 final tables for $1k and $1.5k. I didn't post an update but back last week I finished 3rd on Poker Stars in their $27.50 360 Cap for around $1k which was nice.

Playing minimal poker this weekend however I'm currently planning a live schedule for July/Aug with S4ooter, we'll be hitting various locations for some UK ranking events. At the moment the DTD Grand Prix is looking likely and the UKIPT in Brighton is a shout but more information to follow. For now heres a shot of my 5th place finish...

$3,800 - 1/166 ($109 Daily)

2011-05-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

So, I booked Monday and Tuesday off work this week in anticipation I'd be playing day 2 of at least 1 SCOOP event. As it turned out I cashed in one of 5 events, for about $350 in a $215 event. I busted all the others after roughly 3 hours of play in each. I used tickets for all so it was a slight profit (however will show as -$3k on sharkscope).

Therefore I took Monday off and chilled, then hit the MTT grid on today. Gymed it up this morning and played an afternoon schedule from 2pm. Played awesome in the $109 14:00 tourney and ran well when it mattered finishing FIRST for about $3,800. Weeeeee....

This is my 2nd outright win this month and although I ran well in one particular hand, I feel I'm gaining a clear edge short-handed and headups. This is aided by playing 6-Max and 4-Max which I highly advise as it comes in so useful. I've still not gotten around to doing a short-handed article, I'm keen to do some sort of 4-max video as I have HH's from endless tourneys now :) Time pending of course.

Anyway, the hand in which I got uber lucky was 6-handed in this event. Myself and another guy were playing 90k, which at the time were the two biggest stacks. The past 2 rounds I'd opened raised his BB, only for him to put in a strong 3-bet. 3rd time around I have A7s and open once again, low and behold he 3-bets from the BB and it's back to me. I don't want to call and play a flop with so much invested pre-flop. Therefore I figure he's capable of folding AQ, AJ and medium pairs to a shove here Vs the other biggest stack. Therefore I ship it in and he snaps me off with KK haha :( WTF!!!! Anyway after a blank flop I'm about to smash the laptop due to throwing away a great spot with an ill timed move. Poker Stars have other ideas when an A binks on the turn :D :D I fade a K on the river and I'm in a prime spot to own it from here 5-handed. By the time it's heads up I've chipped up to like 400k and playing against a guy with 100k. I get him to shove allin with QT Vs my A6s, blank blank blank blank ...... Q ! :P Here we go. I regroup and figure I would have loved to be in this spot when I was allin with the A7. I mix it up with some well timed 3-bets and take it down when we get it allin on a 3 spade flop, I have 2 spades and he has the Ace of spade. I fade and SHIP IT, Weeeeeee...!!!!

SCOOP Schedule

2011-05-07T02:30:00.000-07:00

The Spring Championship of Online Poker begins tomorrow with 6 events kicking off. This will be the first online series (on Stars) since Black Friday and therefore start times and guarantees have been amending accordingly.

I'll be playing 5 of the 6 events, I've a $2.1k ticket in the account from a $7.50 step lol, as well as some entries for $215s. I've decided to play the 6-max $2k event as I feel my short handed game has really come along over the past 6 months and it would be good to "mix it with the best" so to speak. All of these are 2-day events and play ends after 12 hours in each (I believe), I'd be overjoyed to make day 2 in at least one of these 5 events.

So my schedule tomorrow looks as follows:

Sunday SCOOP Schedule

15:00….$22….SCOOP Event #1 [L]….$200k Gtd
15:00….$215….SCOOP Event #1 [M]….$500k Gtd.
15:00….$2,100….SCOOP Event #1 [H]….$500k Gtd.
19:00….$22….SCOOP Event #2 [L]….$200k Gtd.
19:00….$215….SCOOP Event #2 [M]….$1m Gtd.

Other Tourneys

18:00….$109….The Big….$50k Gtd.
20:00….$55….The Big….$200k Gtd.

Total Buyins = $2,738

I've also got some $$$ tied up in BAPs which are always fun, I've 20% in a SCOOP BAP for s4ooter which spans 9 of the tourneys during the series. We also have another little "Sunday BAP" on the go for another couple of tourneys so it'll be a busy day/night for both.

Watch this space for either a positive or negative post on tomorrows events either Monday or Tuesday.

$2,060 - 1/156 ($44 4-Max)

2011-05-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

During my first online poker session since Vegas I ran like the wind. I played about 5 tournaments making money in four of them. The final tourney was the $44 4-Max event which I love and have done well in the past.

We got down to the final table all even around 150k in chips each but everyone was simply playing for the pay jumps, which is easily exploitable 4-handed. With a pay jump of about $1,600 from 4th to 1st I was only after one thing, FIRST! It's been a while since I won a tourney outright, I think it was a $26 Rush event for $1,200 back in late Feb so I was gunning for this and ....

Trip Report: Last Vegas, April 2011 P1

2011-05-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

I went over with my mate Laurence, we've know each other for about 10 years and also started playing poker at the same time, although he tends to play for fun as appose to grinding most evenings. Loz has been to Vegas briefly before, he's just come back from 4 months travelling the whole of America on his own, so when I said I was going to Vegas he was well up for it, as he said he didn't spend nearly enough time there. We flew over separately as I was flying direct and Loz had some stop overs there and back, he booked the flight last minute for about £550 return I think, which was ok. He had one change over in Minneapolis on the way there and 2 change overs on the way home.

FYI, Loz wrote a pretty comprehensive travel blog while he was in America, it's 90% finished but the detail is amazing. If ever you get a chance take a read, highly recommend it... Laurencecastle's Blog | Just another WordPress.com site

Hotel

We stayed at the Imperial Palace which turned out to be a fantastic location. It was in the middle of everything and had a bunch of casinos either side. For 6 nights we paid £200 so £100 each and got 2 double beds in our room. As for a casino it is definitely one of the lower ranked casinos and we hardly spent any time there, however in terms of a place to stay I highly recommend it. We were literally only there to sleep, shower and change for for about £17 a night, in the centre of the strip you cannot go wrong. You'd be paying way more than that to stay over the road in Caesars and would be there the same amount of time.

Getting There

Loz and I both got the same bus from Chepstow to Heathrow on Thursday (21st) morning, he got off at Terminal 3 and I stayed on until Terminal 5. Everything ran smoothly at the airport and I boarded the plane fine. I was seated smack bang in the middle of an Indian family of about 15, made up of 4 generations. Between them they had about 3 young children under 5…Why take kids to Vegas??? Obviously the guy in front of me enjoys the recline button and the old women to my left likes to sleep and "lean" to her right…..is that all? nope! there's a french couple to my right with 2 young children. Great.

It was a slog of a plane journey, I watched 3 movies but couldn't sleep a wink so was literally just watching the clock. It made me realise how amazing it would be to be able to play poker on a plane, I could easily burn a 10 hour flight without realising it.

So I land in Vegas at about 7pm Vegas time and have 2 hours to kill until Loz arrives. I get a shuttle to the strip, it was totally amazing driving into the strip for the first time. It's annoying that I'll never get to experience my “first taste of Vegas” again as it's something special. It was getting dark so the lights were shining and I was buzzing I got to the Imperial Palace and as Loz booked the room I couldn't check in, they were just starting a $1/$2 NLHE cash game so I jumped straight it.

Right away I realised there was no money to be made at the table. Everyone was playing tight and keeping it very ABC, no one was being pushed off hands so it was pretty much just sit there until Loz arrives. I got involved in a few pots but after 90mins of play I was about $30 down and then Loz arrived. It was pretty surreal just seeing Loz strolling in But I cashed in my chips and we joined the checkin queue which lasted 1 hour haha apparently an hour wait is good and some people have waited up to 3 hours?!

In the queue Loz starts talking about the $20 trick he read on 2+2, it had mixed reviews but it was worth a shot. Basically you push the employee checking you in a cheeky $20 and see if they'll sort you out with an upgrade. I'm not really sure what upgrades the IP has to offer as it was no Wynn but we decided to give it a go.

An hour later Loz checks us in and says to the guy "We're checking, if you have any complimentary upgrades we would be more than willing to tip generously for your services"………The guy looked at him, laughed and said nothing. Not really sure what that mean't but we guessed it was a No!

So checked in and we were both pushing 28 hours with no sleep, with that said we weren't tired so decided to get showered (together) smarten up and have a little look around. We didn't want to venture too far so decided to head over the road and check out Caesars, looked at the WSOPC schedule, checked out the poker room, pissed $100 up the wall on roulette and decided to eat. It was about 1am and we decided to eat at Munch Burger in Caesars. I was unable to find a ¼ pounder on the menu so had to go for a ½ pounder...........with a bucket of fries. Steady start to eating in Vegas.

It was our first taste of Vegas food and straight away realised it would be hard not to get fat in Vegas with our free "bucket" of fries haha (each). Once we ate we headed back to get some sleep and refreshed. I figured 8 hours sleep and I'd be sound after being awake about 30 hours. After a good 8 hours we woke up and both feeling fine, no jet lag or anything and we're both buzzing for the days ahead

Friday

Friday morning we decided to hit the shops and have a look around the various casinos. We had that burger in the early hours so just got a couple of slices of Pizza at a cafe in Paris. We looked around Paris as well as the Miracle Mile shops and the Forum Towers at Caesars. I was loving the shops, they had an MMA shop so I bought myself a sick Silver Star t-shirt (Anderson Silvas label).

We decided to have a few drinks in Blondies Sports Bar in the Miracle Mile shopping area, it was 10am and they were showing Leeds Vs Reading haha. Was so surreal drinking at 10am on a Friday morning, in Las Vegas watching Leeds Vs Reading I had never tasted Bud Light before so got a few pints of that, I thought it was quite nice, just a flatter version of Bud.

It is a slog walking up and down the strip so by the time we were done with the shops we decided to head back to the IP, get into "evening wear" and head out for some drinks. We checked out all the major casinos, Bellagio, MGM, Mirage, Wynn, etc… We headed to Planet Hollywood for a steak which was nice. Every place in Vegas is rammed as everyone wants the "buffet", so Planet Hollywood had the smallest queue which swayed the decision.

By the time we were done and had a few more drinks we decided to call it a night around 1am and get some rest before our WSOPC Event the next day.

Saturday

We were up early on Saturday and both buzzing for the Poker Tourney. It was a $350 Championship Event and we swapped 25%. We headed to The Hash House for breakfast looking for a good feed. It was at Imperial Palace and made famous because it featured on the show, "Man Vs Food". He ate the Fried Chicken Hash House Farm Benedict. It has Chipotle cream with peppers, scrambled eggs, griddled mozzarella, fried chicken, bacon, market tomato, spinach, biscuit on top of griddled potatoes. Pictured below…

I ordered their "award winning" Meatloaf Sandwich called The Kokomo, it's girdled Meatloaf with Smoked Mozzarella and Roasted Red Peppers all on their Fresh Amish Style Milk Bread. It was a beast I'll say that much. From the picture it doesn't look massive but the contents were so filling I had to leave a bit. Loz went for the Waffles and got 4 of them, who needs 1 or 2 when you can have 4!!!, needless to say he left some.

Loz had fruit, ice cream and potatoes on his plate. I gave him a slice of my sandwich and at one point he had waffles, eggs, ice cream, strawberrys, potatoes, meatloaf and fried bread on his plate.....why not?

So over to Caesars and get bought into the event. A very nice cardroom and some sick pictures of all the pros on the four walls. Loz and I soon realised we were seated at the same table next to each other? WTF?! it turned out they don't do a random table draw, they simply seat you as you register, so the first person to register is seated at Table 1 Seat 1, the second is seated at Table 1 Seat 2 and so on. Fortunately there was an influx of buyiins and they were freeing up all the seat 10s, I was seated at seat 10 so was moved to another table. They even postponed the start for 30mins which annoyed me. In the end there were 520 runners, which was some sort of record for a $350 event. It was a combination of the online ban and people wanting to ship a Championship Ring on the cheap.

10k starting stack on a 30min clock but lots of extra levels, we started at 25/25 then went onto 25/50 then 50/75 lol, never seen that level before. I was seated with an English women who looked like an older version of Liv Boeree. She seemed very nice and looked like butter wouldn't melt until…

With blinds at 100/200 she makes it 600, BB pumps it up to 1,800 and she makes it 4000 he calls. Flop comes down all rags with 2 diamonds, bb checks and she shoves. He calls with QJ of diamonds and binks on the river. She went mental calling him allsorts and as she left she said "You fucking prick" haha ! At the end of the day it was a bad preflop call by him, when he 3 bets pre she doesn't re-raise much so he could argue he's priced in. Once he flops the flush draw he's going with it, what more is he looking for. He was probably playing 12k before the hand, if he's committed that much preflop then he's going with it. Chill out love, he binked a flush….get on with it.

At the first break Loz says theres a guy at his table, on his iPad raising every hand. Later I see who it is and it's David Williams, sitting there with a sick framed picture above him on the wall next to Phil Ivey haha. Anyway inevitably both myself and Loz get knocked out. Loz first after 2 limpers he shoved 10 bbs from the bb with AK, initial limper calls with AQ and the other guy finds the call button somehow with JT (for half his stack). J on the flop and Loz is gone.

I last about 2 more hours and feel like I'm playing well, I picked up some decent chips 3-betting preflop and pick up KK. I raise as I have been doing often and some women ships in 17 bigs, I snap her off and she shows AJo, ends up rivering a flush and I'm gone.

During the tournament there was slight commotion as some guy had just jumped off the top level parking lot bridge and killed himself, crazy. There was no emotion at the table and people started with the jokes “Red obviously came in when he bet black”...I had to lol.

The day is pretty much gone so we spend the evening having drinks, checking out the various casinos and gambling. Winning $0, spewing a few hundred…standard.

Sunday

Sunday was by far the best day, we were fully settled, getting to know our way around and ready to hit the drink. Visiting Vegas makes you realise how genius everything is. Everything is designed and geared up to make you spew money, it's amazing. For example, we often sat down at the slots because you always get offered free drinks (well $1 as you have to tip). Why pay $6 for a Bud at the bar when you can get one for a dollar. But the women takes a while getting your drinks so you end up spewing $10-$20 on the slots haha. At the bars they have video poker on touch screens in the bar, so you get given free drinks while you play to keep you there grinding out. The scantily clad hot women dealers are useful, and some of the places have pole dancers in the middle of the roulette tables, minimum bets are slightly higher but you think ah well why not. It's amazing though, the Casinos are raking it in by the millisecond. To think Harras which isn't the biggest of the casions has purchased the likes of Caesars, Rio, etc… Crazy !

As we walk out of the IP in the morning we get approached by a dodgy looking black guy who asks us both if we want some “nose candy” hahaha !!! Love it. Unfortunately he didn't make a sale on this occasion.

Just a slight side track but theres loads of tramps in Vegas and I was always wondering what the split was between the tramps that are just from Vegas originally and those people that went their to make their fortune and it got the better of them. Thoughts?

For breakfast we decided to hit a random place in Paris…

So as we were yet to see a show and are both Penn and Teller fans theres only one shout. Looked online and they were about $100. Theres plenty of half priced ticket stands in the street and we managed to get our tickets for $60 each, steal. As well as that we got 25% off anything at the VooDoo Steak House at the Rio and free entry to their VooDoo Lounge, best money we spent during our whole stay in Vegas. Penn and Teller are simply awesome. Penn is a very intelligent guy and talks for America (which is a crucial part of their act to keep you distracted). They do their magic is such a way it's pretty amazing. They basically tell you how there tricks are done and even often show you yet, they manage to put a sick spin on the routine and still leave you wondering WTF.

Once we got our tickets from near Paris we thought we'd quickly stroll over to The Rio, as it only looked over the road…..Wrong! It's a fair way out and took a while to walk there. Glad we did though as we sorted our seats early and got some good ones on the front row of the middle tier. Checked out their casino and decided to give the Rio some of our hard eared money, probably $40 each, they clearly need it (lol). So we headed back to the IP got dressed into our evening attire and headed back to the Rio.

So we walk out of the IP and theres a few taxis waiting, a porter guy calls it over for us and opens the door and tells the driver where we need to go. Wasn't really sure if that was tip worthy? but we chucked him $1 anyway. Taxi to the Rio cost about $20, I'm sure he went some sort of long way around. Anyway we get there, get some drinks in and head to the Penn and Teller Theatre. The show was awesome, really enjoyed it and highly recommend it. IMO a show like that is way way above a David Copperfield/Criss Angel show. As those guys try to go for the "supernatural" theme when it's clearly trickery (more Criss Angel really), but Penn and Teller expose everything which was so cool, to do that and still leave the audience stunned is something. Plus the majority of tricks people are aware how to do anyway. They did the standard saw in half trick but somehow managed to put a spin on it to leave the audience thinking WTF?!

They did this sick trick where they took a random from the audience and got took their phone, they then made the phone disapear and reappear inside a dead fish under someones chair in the audience. The amazing thing was they took the blokes phone, and started video recording the trick from the start, they said only the man is going to know how the trick is done because he can watch the video on his phone when he gets home. BUT, we found a video on youtube of a guy from the audience who they do the trick to. It's a really long trick and was totally amazing, it turns out from watching the video that it's over right from the start....

YouTube - My 2 minutes of fame with Penn & Teller at the Rio in Vegas

Once that was over we took our tickets and headed to the VooDoo Lounge, we get in and are ushered to an elevator which takes us to the 51st, as we walk out of the elevator and see the views it was totally sick, the roof terrace was awesome with a bar and massive speakers.

YouTube - Voodoo Lounge, Rio, Las Vegas

We got there about 10ish I'd say so wasn't that packed early on, we could easily get a drink when we wanted, watch the dancers/dj and plenty of room of the roof terrace. This place was the least pretentious "nightlife" place I went to in Vegas. For example we went to Pure at Caesars later in the trip (will be TR'ing about this) and there must have been a good 10 guys outside the club in suits with their "business cards" doing nothing but standing around on their iPhones. Needless excess people on the payroll? 1 or 2 guys would have been more than enough. Anyway at the VooDoo Lounge there was one guy at the door, let us in fine, our free tickets were exchanged for entry, ushered to the lift…done!

I think that the Rio and the Palms are your best shouts for nightlife with sick views, as the others are on the strip they're on top of each other so views won't be as breathtaking as the Rio or Palms, as you can literally take it all in within one view. It was totally sick, I'll definitely be going back there….AMAZING.

Only annoying thing was that as it was a Sunday it closed at 2:30am which sucked. Fairly drunk we naturally just walk back to the strip. Obviously didn't take as long when drunk lol, on the way we bumped into 2 English guys from Northampton who were on their way to the VooDoo Lounge. So we walked back to the strip with them and all went to the Wynn to see what was going down. It was quite a slog and at 3.30am "the moment had gone" so to speak to start drinking again. So we part ways and Loz and I head back up towards the IP, having only had thad breakfast that day (that pretty much fills you for the day) it was 4am and we decide to head for some early morning food. We go to Bills and I get a steak and Loz tackles a breakfast

After this we called it a night about 5.30am to catch some rays for the penultimate full day.

The next 2 days which include the Gun Store and The Caesars Club Pure will be uploaded tomorrow

$530 FLHE SCOOP Seat + Update

2011-04-12T04:41:00.001-07:00

I played a $55 12 runner SCOOP seat into the $530 FLHE event last night. 1 seat and $70 for 2^nd.

Believe it or not I used to love FLHE and played it often, it’s a much more fun game than people give it credit for. I use to watch the FLHE WPT events back in the day and realised it wasn’t just a snooze. These days I tend not to play FLHE tourneys as they don’t get the runners so it generally isn’t worth the time and effort.

The satty was 6-Max and I got to the final 6 as the short stack. I luckboxed a huge pot nuthugging a flush draw which obviously paid off. When we got heads up we were both playing 9k and with blinds at 100/200 so it was a slog. It was up and down and he had me on the back foot for a good while. I then began calling him down very light and realised he was playing/raising/betting with junk every hand. I managed to exploit him from this point on and started getting extra value out of my 2nd pairs, etc...

I ungregistered from the event as I don’t fancy this one so it’ll just be a topup for the Stars roll.

Cash

I’ve continued to grind $100NL and will make a post when I reach 5,000 hands. Upon researching, it seems 50,000-100,000 hands is a fair sample size to see where you are. This type of volume is pretty much impossible for me at the moment as an amateur player. However I’ll continue to grind and can hopefully get in maybe 30k hands by the summertime.

Poker Player UK Tour

I played the opening leg in Bristol this past weekend. The blind structure was god awful, 25/50, 50/100, 100/200, etc... on a 30 min clock. Plus it was only a 7.5k starting stack so wasn’t much playing after a few hours. I kept quiet in the early levels then opened up when blinds hit 150/300.

I started 3-betting a lot and quickly got up to 17k. I pick up Qs and some guy opens; I come in for a quick 3-bet which pretty much commits him, its folded back to him, he says “You’ve been doing that far too often....ok! I’m allin”. I snap him off and he shows 99. Flop comes down all blanks however the dreaded 9 on the turn. He fires over the usual rub down “Sorry mate, I had to go with it otherwise I’d be here all day”, blah blah. This left me pretty much crippled and I failed to get going after that, early bath for me.

I doubt I’ll be playing anymore of these, it’s such a shame this is the Coral replacement for last years CBMPT which had a £500 ME at every stop. No one is going to travel up and down the country for a £100 event.

Las Vegas

I’m off next week, everything is now sorted. Looking forward to getting over there and chilling out for a while. Playing some poker and burning some money haha! I noticed that the GUKPT is on in Walsall the day after I get back which runs over a bank holiday weekend. As it isn’t too far I might try and play some sats for the main event, if I fail just head up for some of the side action.

That’s all for now.

FezioJnr.com

2011-04-08T05:56:00.000-07:00

I've just bought up FezioJnr.com and .co.uk. Fairly pointless purchases but makes the blog look slightly more professional.

My day job is that of a User Interface Developer so I'm writing HTML, CSS and Javascript on a daily basis therefore I just can't be assed with writing any code for the blog when I get home. With that said I'm going to make an effort to "spice" up the blog slightly, starting with the domain name :) I've also faviconned the address bar right up :)

So therefore watch this space for some interesting blog developments :)

Cheers

$100NL Cash Games and $1k Super Tuesday Seat

2011-04-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

Cash Games (1,800 hands at $100NL)

MTT wise March was a great month, I had a number of deep runs and ended up roughly about $2,000 up on the month, great timing with my Vegas trip looming near.

I also started throwing some cash tables into my schedule, mainly playing $100NL 6-Max. I've found the rake to be a killer at $100NL (obv) but on Stars generally the play is fairly soft. My volume has been minimal and I've managed to get in about 1,800 hands at $100NL 6-Max over the past month ending up roughly $450 up which isn't bad. Obviously this sample size is shocking and I'm still in the "educational" phase of cash games, i.e. watching videos and studying where I can. I did consider myself uber shit at cash maybe 2 months ago but I've taken the time to work at my cash game strategy so hopefully it'll pay off. I'm not interested in jumping up the stakes or anything like that, I'm just "getting my feet wet" so to speak. I feel with my current bankroll coupled with my ability, $100NL is where I'm most comfortable at the moment. I'll continue to get my head down and work hard at my game and then readdress my situation in maybe 6 months.

$1,050 Super Tuesday Seat Binkage

Just a quick minor note, I threw 3 $10 rebuy satellites into my schedule the other night into Stars weekly $1050 event. I bought in once at each busted 2 and added on in one so was in for just over $40. I ran good when it mattered and managed to ship a seat (which I then unregistered from and took the T$ to boost the account)...

10/4,904 for $780

2011-03-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

I took advantage of the Full Tilt Multi Entry Double Gtd week last night.

I entered 4 times into the $26 $84k and cashed twice. It saw 4,904 players and I finished 96th for $124 and 10th for $777. I'm both please and gutted. Gutted mainly because there was $20k up top and I had a fairly decent stack the whole way through, on the FT bubble I was playing $600k and 3 bet a guy allin with 77, he calls with AQ and binks a Q :( would have been up over a million chips had that held but hey, still a decent run.

It was a long old slog, starting at 7pm (after waking up at 7am that day and doing a full days work finished at 5.30pm) and I didn't bust until 3am, 4 hours sleep and then up at 7am again for work today :)

Taking the night off tonight to catch up on some sleep, playing squash later then will hit the sack and play a decent schedule tomorrow evening.

I've started mixing up some cash into my schedule, mainly $0.50/$1 6-Max due to the Stars hand promotion. Once April hits I'll be going all out to at least push for GoldStar on Stars, this will set me up for 100% FPPs in May where I'll be playing numerous SCOOPs including the $2k event which gives out about 550 FPPs (1,100 FPPs with GoldStar) alone.

Also have Vegas next month so will be hitting up some WSOPC events. Overall it's been a very good month for a part-time $22 MTT grinder, I'll do a month overview post once April hits.

Also next week I have the £100 PokerPlayer UK Tour Event in Bristol which will be a bit of fun. I haven't played live since the UKIPT at Dusk Till Dawn so this should sharpen my live ability just before Vegas :)

Final Table - $27.50 Big A (5/367)

2011-03-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

Another session last night and another final table.

Very annoyed with my exit as I had a very commanding chip lead with 18 left. I lost a few small pots at the final table and got down to about 17 bigs. Folded to the c/o who opens which is obv pretty standard, I ship it in from the bb with A6s and he snaps with AQ. Busted in 5th for $520.

During the same session I went deep yet again in the $44 4-Max. I busted 7th for $290. I love this tourney and seem to always do/play well in it. I feel my game coupled with the skill level of the players in this tourney makes it great value for me. People can't quite seem to adjust to 4 handed play. They either become far too aggressive and spew or far too tight and can be taken advantage of. I think the most important factors in 4-Max tourneys are to open endless pots so you get an uber aggro image, therefore getting paid off when you have a hand and also being able to assign ranges, therefore getting value from you 2nd pairs and weaker hands.

I'm currently in the process of setting aside useful hand histories during my 4-handed tourney and will put together a blog post on 4-handed strategy at some point in the future.

I'm taking a few days off from poker, I'm heading to London tomorrow with some mates to visit another mate who's living over there. So I'm going to just chill this weekend and either hit up some poker upon my return on Sunday evening or leave it until Monday.

Final Table screenshot...

Final Table - $44 4-Max (3/207)

2011-03-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

Another final table last night and another 3rd place finish :( I played very well all tourney and upped the aggression when we got down to the final 20. Got to the 4-handed final table 2nd in chips. With one bust out I'm in the bb with AK, button raises, sb shoves which is pretty standard. It's 80% of my stack to call but his range is huge so I make the call. Button folds and sb shoves TT and I don't improve :(

Next hand I shove K7s into AK and I'm gone. Slightly gutting as I made very few mistakes throughout the whole tourney and I feel that hand was just a cooler in that spot.

Picked up about $750 so a nice return all the same...

PokerPlayer UK Tour

2011-03-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

PokerPlayer have announced a new UK tour consisting of 6 low buyin, low runner events. This was taken from their promo...

"Our high-quality dealer-dealt £110 buy-in tournaments will take place at five fantastic Gala Casino venues across the UK from April, bringing the PokerPlayer community together under one roof for plenty of laughs, lots of action and thousands of pounds in prize money! Each event is capped at 120 runners and promises merchandise giveaways, PokerPlayer staff bounties, side events, a free buffet and much, much more."

Event 1 takes place in April, in non other than BRISTOL ! It'll be at Gala Harbourside and I'll be playing. I qualified last night in a satty that had an overlay of about $1.1k worth of seats.

PokerPlayer ran a number of gtd seat tourneys on Gala/Coral Poker. Last nights was a $33 with 12 seats Gtd. Therefore to meet the gtd they needed roughly 72 runner, the tourney only got 37 lol. So a silly overlay. Low and behold I took down a seat and am looking forward to playing the event.

It's a ranking event so a chance to pad out my Hendon Mob profile. It's a 7.5k starting stack on a 30min clock and capped at 120 players so a fast structure.

See you there.

Final Table - $22 Big A (3/360)

2011-03-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update, I finaled the $22 Big Antes again last night. I've cashed in this one endless times, final tabled it 5 times and won it twice. Placed 3rd this time for $800.

I got a nice double up with about 20 left with AA, after a guy 3-bet shove preflop with AT. I then went pretty card dead although picked up some nice spots to get my chips in preflop which chipped me up pretty well.

Getting excited about Vegas which is next month, some good news is one of my mates is coming over with me. He text me one night just saying "Vegas flights booked" out of nowhere haha ! epic.

He plays a little poker so we'll be entering one or two WSOPC events together. Hes been to Vegas before and travelled America so not a bad guy to head over with for my first time in Vegas and the US.

Also the SCOOPs schedule has been announced. I've put in a request at work to have the Mon and Tue off following the first weekend of the SCOOPs so I'll be playing the $22, $215 and $2,100 (6-Max Events) for sure and then the $22 and $215 NLHE events and hopefully the $2k as well if I can satty in. My aim is to play all 6 of the opening events, they're all 2-Day events with amazing structures so fingers crossed for a deep run in one or two of them :D

Screen shot of my score from last night...

Barren Land

2011-03-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

Not much to update pokerwise really. Over the last few weeks I've had a handful of cashes and even went on a 20 MTT run without a cash.

On the up side...

I'm heading to Vegas at the end of next month to play a few WSOPC events. I've also been playing a few steps on Stars and have 2 tickets banked thus far in anticipation of the SCOOPs. I've a $215 ticket and a $2,100 ticket. Hopefully I'll build up a couple more $215 tickets as I want to play a good few of the events this year. I'm not sure which I'll play yet, if theres a 4-Max or Big Antes then I'll probably opt for them. I wouldn't mind playing the 2-day events but all depends if I can get time off work.

I'm going away this weekend however will be playing a few MTTs tonight and hopefully Sunday night as well :D I'll hopefully have something positive to report come the end of March :)

Owning Luke Schwartz

2011-02-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

Obviously I'm never really going to be crossing paths with Luke Schwartz at the poker table that often, he's a high stakes cash game player and I'm a $20-$40 MTT grinder. However I did get tied up in a hand with him in the recent $216 FTOPS Rush Turbo Event.

I used a step ticket to enter and ended up busting 102 out of 1,907 runners for about $520, gutting as I lost a huge race with KK vs A9, A on the river :( But still a nice return on a ticket.

The Hand

So the hand in question started with me picking up KJo in the bb, he min-raises and I flat from the bb. The flop comes down 8TJ with two spades and I check call a bet of 300. Due to the nature of Rush you are unable to build up notes on players (within reason) and at this point I didn't realise who I was up against, so I decide to check call a 600 bet on the 4 turn. The river is a blank and at this point I figure I'm ahead most of the time as the flush has also missed. I decide to value check as he's folding his AK and smaller pocket pairs to a value bet and he can't bluff 3bet shove as I'm commited to the pot.

However once I check he shoves allin. This threw me off slightly however once I realised it was FullFlush I figured his range was huge and the shove screamed a missed flush draw.

I elect to call and was right when he showed down QTs.

Other News: Nothing major to report, had another Rush final table last night in a $12, busting 3rd out of 200ish for $320. Have the day off work Friday so will be playing a full day of MTTs on Stars and Tilt, hopefully ending the session by playing the $216 6-Max FTOPS event. Will post up full schedule nearer the time. Taking tonight and Thur off poker as I'm watching/playing footie and catching up with mates both nights and hopefully get motivated for a day session on Friday.

Full Tilt Poker Game #28203336536: FTOPS Event #26 (209402890), Table 203 - 50/100 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:20:03 ET - 2011/02/14
Seat 1: TheDzuu (2,137)
Seat 2: madeleine88 (1,900)
Seat 3: FezioJnr (3,240)
Seat 4: Kimmo84 (2,570)
Seat 5: mlagoo (4,141)
Seat 6: Farsjer (3,495), is sitting out
Seat 7: Nice hAnd ok (3,940)
Seat 8: __FullFlush1__ (3,705)
Seat 9: CrystalBalla (2,526)
madeleine88 posts the small blind of 50
FezioJnr posts the big blind of 100
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Jh Kc]
Kimmo84 folds
mlagoo folds
Farsjer folds
Nice hAnd ok folds
__FullFlush1__ raises to 200
CrystalBalla folds
TheDzuu folds
madeleine88 folds
FezioJnr calls 100
*** FLOP *** [8s Td Js]
FezioJnr checks
__FullFlush1__ bets 300
FezioJnr calls 300
*** TURN *** [8s Td Js] [4c]
FezioJnr checks
__FullFlush1__ bets 600
FezioJnr calls 600
*** RIVER *** [8s Td Js 4c] [5c]
FezioJnr checks
__FullFlush1__ bets 2,605, and is all in
FezioJnr has 15 seconds left to act
FezioJnr has requested TIME
FezioJnr calls 2,140, and is all in
Uncalled bet of 465 returned to __FullFlush1__
*** SHOW DOWN ***
__FullFlush1__ shows [Qs Ts] a pair of Tens
FezioJnr shows [Jh Kc] a pair of Jacks
FezioJnr wins the pot (6,530) with a pair of Jacks
*** SUMMARY ***
Board: [8s Td Js 4c 5c]
Seat 3: FezioJnr (big blind) showed [Jh Kc] and won (6,530) with a pair of Jacks
Seat 8: __FullFlush1__ showed [Qs Ts] and lost with a pair of Tens

UKIPT Recap + Rush Shippage

2011-02-14T11:38:00.001-08:00

Well overall it was a fairly uneventful trip to Nottingham. I busted the main event in the 2nd from last level of Day 1 after playing solid poker all day. I followed this up by busting the £300 side event in the last level of the day at 5am after making a great preflop call with A4o lol.

May fire up some hand reviews over the next few weeks but I've just fired up an online MTT session so focusing on that for now.

On Sunday night I decided against playing the £100 charity side event and decided to chill out at the Hilton and grind some online poker. I fired up a session of Rush poker then decided to order some room service, ended up paying about £25 for an Angus burger, chips and a beer lol. This included £4 delivery charge haha :D On top of this the internet cost me £15 for 24 hours lol.

After a dire start to the session which included two set over set bustouts I managed to run deep and run good in a $26 ROD. Fortunately the final table was so so weak and managed to own with about 5 left. Ended up shipping it for almost $1.3k :) Happy days and a welcome turn of events which turned a dire deficit of a weekend into a profitable trip within 90 mins :D

NAPAT Team Event + UKIPT + Blog Stats

2011-02-09T04:55:00.000-08:00

Not The APAT Team Event

left to right top to bottom - [citrusSR, FezioJnr, tFeilding, FirePhil, Cayton, DiceMan, Jingjangjong, MangoFish, S4ooter]

Went up to Star City in Birmingham this past weekend to play the NAPAT Team event with 8 fellow GNF members. 10 teams of 9 entered, it was only a small event, £50 buyin per player but was great fun and very well organised. It's an event which offers everyone a good time, lots of people there were experiencing their first taste of live poker which was great to see.

I finished the event in 3rd place (from 90 runners) and GNF finished 2nd in the team rankings.

During the final table with 4 left I needed to finish ahead of the one guy at the table from the Black Belt forum in order for out team to finish 2nd, meaning the team would pocket £750. I managed to do this which was nice as it meant everyone got a return on the weekend. We all took £80 each and used the rest to spunk on a few numbers on the roulette wheel :D I also pocketed about £300 for 3rd and a 3rd place plate :D

Great weekend, great result and really enjoyed meeting everyone there.

UKIPT Nottingham

I'm driving up to Nottingham tomorrow evening to get checked into my hotel before Day 1a of the UKIPT event. I'm really looking forward to it as 2010 was a dive in terms of live results for me. Although I only played 4ish £500 buyins during the year it's just annoying when you fail to get anything going. However my faith has been restored this year as I've played 2 live events with 12/810 and 3/90 finishes.

The UKIPT always offers plenty of play, generally I'm happy playing a 10k stack on a 40min clock (even without the 75/150 and 150/300 levels) however with the 15k starting stack on a 60min clock there is plenty of room to play your A-game. You can chose to sit tight or if you prefer, get creative with that sort of stack.

I'm thinking that the 800 cap won't be broken although I'm going with 720 runners for this one, which is more than last year.

I'll be jumping into the side events if I fail to progress in the main event but after the UKIPT the live poker front goes quiet for me. Until I head to Vegas for the WSOPC. I also have a $2k tourney ticket sitting on Stars which I'm itching to use but I've pretty much 100% decided I'll use it for a SCOOP event, just annoying I have to wait until May until it gets used :(

Blog Stats

I never really started a blog to get lots and lots of readers, it was generally a personal journal to keep track of results and performance over time, then be able to scan and observe my progression over time. However since I've been updating slightly more regular my visitor graph has taken a nice upward rise month on month. Still I'm not in the thousands of readers category (per month) but I'm pushing for it :P

The graph below shows unique views per month...

Good luck at the tables :D

Dusk Till Dawn Grand Prix Trip Report

2011-02-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

Overall my Grand Prix weekend was fun, eventful and profitable. I ended up busting out in 12th from 810 runners for a cash of about 850e. Below is a review of some big hands/decisions during the event...

Day 1.

I was very fortunate to be seated on a very weak table during the majority of the first day. There was only one other player I was worried about and everyone else was playing nitty abc style poker.

Hand 1

Probably about the start of the 2nd level and I’ve managed to get a grasp on the majority of players at the table. In this hand I pick up AK in middle position, there’s an early position limper so I raise it up about the pot, limper calls. Flop comes down all rags 8T2 I think, limper checks and I fire out a pot sized bet of about 450. He calls, turn is another rag and it goes check check. River is yet another rag and the board is unpaired and with no possible flushes. I sit back and expect the river to go the same way as the turn however I’m woken up when the BB fires out 1.5k. It was such a strange bet and although my instant thought was obviously fold I took some time to think about the course of play throughout the hand. I thought if he limped with a monster he’d be leading the flop and with blinds so small there’s no way he’d limp with QQ-AA. I can’t see him limping that spot with small suited connectors and then calling a strong preflop raise out of position so I started putting the likes of KJ, KQ and even QJs in his range. I convinced myself to call and was correct, he had KJ. That was a nice sized pot at the time and sent an early message to the table.

Hand 2

A level or two later and I get involved with the same guy again, I raise it up in middle pos with AcKh, 2 callers in position. Flop comes down Jc5c8c so I have nut flush draw with 2 overs, at this point theres about 1.5k in the middle. Its checked to the guy who tried to bluff me on the river who leads for 1.5k. My initial thought is hes spewing after my call and just wants the pot to get some momentum going. He has 5k behind and I have about 17k, so I decide to set him allin, the main reason being I’m 70% sure he has nothing and will fold, however if he does somehow manage to call then I have endless outs to pick up the pot. He finally calls and it turns out he has pocket jacks for trip jacks, so I’m in worse shape than I thought. Therefore I’m drawing to any club, which eventually falls on the river :D It was strong play and one I thought was right at the time, he could have nothing most of the time in that spot on this occasion he had a strong holding and I got lucky.

Hand 3

I opted to get involved in this hand because the guy in question just lost a huge pot with Aces so figured he was spewing. I’m in the bb and he’s on the button. It’s folded to him and he makes it 600 (blinds 100/200) I call with 64o with the intention of outplaying him. Flop comes down 289 and I check he c-bets for 800 and I insta-raise for 1750. He thinks for a while and calls. I wasn’t happy with this call and figured he could have any 2 random cards, maybe 8T, J9 or a medium pair. The turn comes down a 2 and I insta leads for 3750, he thinks for ages and finally folds his hand, I muck face-up and he wasn’t happy.

Hand 4

The next round I’m in the bb again with pocket Aces. Its folded to Colin Mctaggart who just lost a big pot and decides to come after my blind. He raises 3x and I put in a strong re-raise (unsure of exact amounts), I figured a strong re-raise was a must because of my aggressive nature at the table. He calls and the board comes down 224, Hes playing about 7k so I decide to lead for about 1900 to give him plenty of room to shove, which he does. I snap and he has K4 lol.

Hand 4

By this stage I’m up to about 30k and way above average. A guy with about 6k comes to the table and plays solid for a few levels. Its folded to me in late position and I decide to open with Q7s, the new guy calls from sb and the flop comes down Q78. He checks and I insta-set him allin, after an age he finally calls with QT. Lucky on my part but again, I feel my aggressive nature got me this call.

Things go quiet for a while and everybody continues to play tight. I continue to raise un-opened pots with a wide range and chip up to about 60k nice and steady. Due to the size of my stack I get involved with a few short stacks and end up busting 3 more loll, all for small pots but I was soon up to 80k.

I was gutted when our table was broke as it was so soft.

Hand 5

The first hand at the new table it's folded to me in the cutoff and make it 3x the BB with A4o, bb shoves and I call as I'm getting 3:1. He shows KQ, flop gives me a flush draw so hes drawing to any non-spade K or Q, Q of hearts on the river and I loose about 12k.

This table was much tougher than the last with lots of people getting involved so I sit tight, a level later we get broken. As soon as I move to the next table we're into the final level of the day, you can see everyone tighten up so the first hand at that table I pick up KJo and decide to test the waters, I raise it up and everyone folds. I proceed to raise the next 2 hands and everyone folds. A few hands later I'm on the button, it's folded to the cut-off who raises (obv) he makes it about 15k, I look down at 99 and as I have everyone well covered just pick up a load of chips and throw them in, basically committing anyone that wants to play the pot to their tourney life in the last level. Everyone folds.

I came to the table with about 70k and finished the day on 111k from just picking up blinds and antes in the last level. Overall I busted 6 people in the first day.

Day 2

110 came back for day 2 and the first few levels things moved very slow. Blinds were jumping quite high so I just did my best to maintain a > 20bb stack for as long as possible. I then picked up AK and shoved, 44 calls and I catch an Ace. From here I played ABC and ran up to 700k and was looking good with 18 left. However I ran a mistimed bluff and then spewed a few before getting it in preflop with KJ vs KJ and losing lol. All in all a great weekend and a 12th place finish from an 810 runner field isn't bad.

$2,100 Ticket and Food

2011-01-31T12:24:00.000-08:00

I've had 4 days off poker, been in Bristol all weekend (Thur-Mon) and spent pretty much the whole time eating, eating and ..... eating. Before I took time off I managed to bink a $2,100 ticket in the Poker Stars Steps. I cba to play it atm as the only $2k steps that are running are to tourneys in Brazil and LA and I can't really drop everything and fly over at a weeks notice.

Therefore I've decided to wait for the SCOOPs as they have a number of $2k events and is probably a better shout for a decent return.

Food. As I've spent the weekend just going to the cinema and eating meals I figured I'll post some non-poker related pics...

ButterflyPrawns
Polette al Forno
BLT

*Uploading pics shortly.

I LOVE FOOD !!!!!!

Deep Run in Grand Prix (12/810)

2011-01-25T05:42:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post in regards to the DTD Grand Prix this past weekend. I ended up running fairly deep but busted just short of the final table in 12th from 810 runners. Was pretty gutting as was playing well and running well, peaked at 700k but a few pots proved costly and ended up busting after shoving KJ into KJ in which he made a flush.

Currently in the process of writing a Trip Report which will be live by the end of the week.

Cashed for about £800 but only had FTW on my mind.

T'was a good warm-up for the £560 UKIPT event in a few weeks :)

Trip report to follow within the next few days.

DTD Grand Prix Sells Out

2011-01-20T23:43:00.001-08:00

Day 1a of the DTD Grand Prix kicks off today. At the weekend there were some worries that the guarantee wouldn't be met with only 300 or so buyins. However over the past few days buyins were rife and the event reached full capacity with 810 runners creating a prizepool of 81,000 euros.

With a modest buyin of 100euros I'm sure the event will be full of fish, therefore it'll be important to be patient and pick your spots. Theres no point rushing in all guns blazing trying to take down every pot as nothing ever suprises me in these types of events. One brief example is holding AA in a 3-bet pot pre, board comes down 568 and someone wakes up with 79o lol.

It'll be interesting to see how day 1a plays out, how many bust outs, average stack at the end of the day etc. It's a 10k starting stack on a 40min clock, so I'm sure by the end of the day there will be plenty of action. Unfortunately there is no dinner break in this event, it runs from 1pm to 12am with just a 15min break every 2 hours :(

Good luck to anyone playing and I'll post an update after the event.

Follow Me On Twitter

2011-01-18T16:37:00.001-08:00

Due to a number of live tourneys coming up over the next month or two I'm going to try and use the ol' Twitter ! Feel free to follow me, click here or the nice little birdie below...

UKIPT Last Longer

2011-01-13T04:52:00.000-08:00

If anyone is interested in a £30 last longer during UKIPT Nottingham then shoot on over to the thread on 2+2 and get involved...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/65/mttc-live/ukipt-nottingham-feb-11th-14th-938459/index8.html#115

Rules

The buy-in for the bet is £30.
There will be an escrow for this bet, you can give bakinC00kies the money at the venue and he'll collect it and hand it out to the eventual winner.
The winner of the bet will win the entire prize pool (winner-take-all).
You can register for the bet up until one (1) hour before the scheduled start of day 1a, which will be 11:00 UK time; any registrations after that do not count.
Once you're registered and play the event you're 'forced' to participate.

Brief post, I was going to assign an accompanying image but typing "last longer" into Google images didn't bring back the images I had in mind !

UKIPT Nottingham Schedule Released

2011-01-11T03:38:00.000-08:00

The schedule was released for UKIPT Nottingham and I've now fully booked my accommodation. I was looking at the Hilton Spa and it was about £100 a night however when I checked this morning it was £48 a night inc breakfast. I therefore proceeded to snap call, I don't mind Travelodge when I have to but I usually pay about £30-£60 a night for that anyway so £48 a night for a hotel with a pool, spa, high speed internet and free parking and breakfast is ideal.

Anyway onto the schedule, it includes the main event which is split into 2x Day 1s, £100 and £300 side events and a £1,500 high roller (with a £100 sattelite prior to the tourney). All in all I think they've done well, it's now Fri-Mon as appose to Thur-Sun which I prefer and a good selection of side events.

I'm registered for Day 1a so if I bust can jump into the £100 side event. Also if I bust I'll have a days worth of grinding online/relaxing followed by the £300'er on Sat night and if I bust all of this I'll probably fire one bullet in the £100 High Roller Event.

Whenever I go to event I just shoot home as soon as I bust however this time I'm staying for the duration regardless. I put far to much emphasis on the main event and don't look any further than that. Therefore this will be my first full weekend of live poker in terms of playing solid from Fri-Mon.

http://www.ukipt.com/tournaments/nottingham/

Good Luck All.

Rush On Demand & Graphs

2011-01-10T05:17:00.001-08:00

Over the past month or so I've been playing more and more of the ROD tourneys on Full Tilt. Basically once 45 players register for a ROD SnG the tourney fires up, late reg then remains open for 20mins or so. The majority of players like to wait for the 2nd or 3rd blind level so entries usually rise to between 150-300 players depending on the buyin.

As you've seen from previous posts I've won a few of these to date, they're fantastic fast pase tourneys and something a little different from the norm. I haven't really grinded them as such, simply thrown them into my MTT schedule whilst I've been playing.

I've played 155 of them so far and although a poor sample size it's just nice to take a look and see how I've been getting on. I've been jumping between the $12 and $26 tourneys giving me an average buyin of $16. Total profit in these 155 games to date is just over $2.5k.

I may consider putting together a post specifically about ROD strategy. A fellow GNF'er has done something similar which I feel is a great read, Rush On Demand Tournaments: A Love Hate Thing.

ROD graph below...

I'm currently on a -$500 downswing at the moment and have been well placed about 4 times with 2 tables left but fallen short at all times. This seems the norm for me as I've gone on a -$500 downswing four times over the past 150 games.

Talking of graphs, I'm thinking about getting back into the 18 mans. After speaking with Dann whos currently grinding them. It's a great way of getting VPPs and I'd like to try and get my account up to 15k FPPs to play one of the 9 man Pro SnGs for the craic. I think the winner walks away with about $1k and theres a $200 Pro Bounty on offer as well. Will probably jump between the $16 and $27 18 mans. Here is my current graph is the $16 and $27 18 mans at the moment...

I have the £100'er at DTD next weekend so looking forward to that as it'll be my first live event of 2011. This will be shortly followed by the team event I'm entering as part of GNF and then for the £500'er UKIPT at DTD, so it's going to be a busy few months for me pokerwise.

I'll also be playing the $216 FTOPS Rush On Demand Turbo event during the UKIPT. I'm playing Day 1a on the Friday and the Rush FTOPS on Sat night along with Gazika, we'll be splitting 20% of the Final Table if either of us manage to make it. I think we're both well versed in Rush strategy, so giving this a shot is a must. Lots of players will jump in just because it's an FTOPS so I'm sure there will be plenty of dead money.

Cheers.

2010 Review / 2011 Goals

2011-01-06T04:56:00.001-08:00

Just a quick post on my 2010 pokerwise and my aims/goals for the new year.

2010 Review

Online
Online started out badly. I had a fantastic finish to 2009 cashing for just over $30k in the last 3 months of the year for spent the first few months of 2010 playing the high stakes MTTs ($55-$200) with minimal results. This was a learning curve and something I won't be doing again, to top it all off I failed to qualify for the £500 CBMPT event in Bristol so bought in :( Again, I shall not be doing this again in a hurry and was stupid for doing so. Although It didn't kill me financially I would class myself as dead money in the £500 event, I played very tight and just didn't/couldn't play my A-Game due to the fact I bought in direct with £500 hard cash (with no backing). Lol to buyin to £500 events comfortably I'd need a £100k role (200 bi BR Management rule) which I don't have.

With that said I refocused and started studying the game again and playing well. Some of my decent MTT results from 2010 are listed below:

* 1st out of 211 players ... $44 (4-Max) - $2,450
* 1st out of 320 players ... $27.50 (4-Max) - $1,750
* 1st out of 210 players ... $22 (Heads-Up) - $1,350
* 1st out of 308 players ... $22 (Big Antes) - $1,260
* 1st out of 307 players ... $22 (Big Antes) - $1,255
* 1st out of 248 players ... $12 (Rush) - $710
* 1st out of 233 players ... $12 (Rush) - $670

other results include...
* 52nd out of 1,573 players ... $640 (Party Million) - $2,600
* 4th out of 271 players ... $109 ($20k) - $2,300
* 23rd out of 4,691 players ... $215 (Sunday Warm-Up) - $2,300

So overall once I'd put the poor start to the year behind me it turned out to be a very consistent year in terms of results. As a part time player I'd now like to build on this in 2011 and start increasing my buyins and hopefully scores :D

Live
It turned out to be a poor year in terms of live events. I played 2x UKIPTs and 2x CBMPTs.

The first was the £200 CBMPT event in Bristol, I busted out with a boat. Flop came down J92, I was holding JJ. Turn was an A and river was a 9, we get it in on the river (which boated me up) but the lady I was up against had pocket 9s.

The £500 in Bristol didn't really warrent anything report worthy, as mentioned I bought in direct which rendered me dead money.

The UKIPT in Nottingham was a fun event and I made it deep into day 2. I got it in eventually preflop with pocket Queens against a serial raiser who held AK, A on the flop and game over 10 places short of the money.

UKIPT Coventry saw me bust late in day one, this time with me holiding AK against QQ and I failed to bink.

2011 has started well and I'm registered for the £100'er Grand Prix at Dusk Till Dawn, I also have 2x £500 UKIPT seats bagged for the event in Nottingham which allows me to realx a little.

2011 Goals
Basically I'll keep it simple...

Add 2 live cashes to my Hendon Mob page.
Go to Vegas during the WSOP Circuit and cash.
Try and play/satty into a £1k+ live event.
Get 2x five figures scores during the year.
Cash for over $30,000 online.
Play at least 1x Sunday Major a month.

The goals above are fairly moderate and I feel I can nail all of them this year. It's all relative when it comes to goals but the goals are based on playing 100-150 hours a month and playing 5-10 live events.

I haven't really started playing properly online this year, I had my first session online last night cashing for $400 for a 3rd place finish in a $75 45 Man on Tilt, as well as a few min cashes in the $12 rush tourneys but thats about it.

Let's Get Ready To Rumble.....

Let 2011 Begin !

A $6,000 Month

2010-12-29T12:29:00.000-08:00

December has been a great month pokerwise, it could have been a lot better however the grounding is there to build on for 2011.

This is just a quick update as I'm off to Ireland for a week tomorrow however I'll post up a "2010 Review" and "Goals for 2011" post shortly after my return.

Recent Results.

Since my last post I've had the following results over the past few days...

* 1/41 for £560/$860 (£44 UKIPT Sat on Stars - top 2 got seats)
* 2/197 for $800 ($26 Rush MTT on Tilt)
* 1/248 for $710 ($12 Rush MTT on Tilt)
* 2/238 for $432 ($12 Rush MTT on Tilt)
* 3/180 for $236 ($12 MTT on Stars)

I also had some deep runs with 2 sick beats. The first with 400 left from 5,000 runners in the $11r on Stars. Get it in with AA pre against AJ, flop J river J ... nice. Even more sicker imo with 50 left from 500 in a $75 MTT on Tilt I repop an early position raise with QQ. He calls and the flop comes rags, he ships allin and I call. If I win I'm chip leader with 50 left and $6k up top. He turns over pocket 2s and nothing more. All I have to do is dodge a 2 with 2 cards to come and I'm chip leader....Turn....2 ! GG.

I was pleased to ship my 2nd £560 UKIPT DTD seat this past weekend as that allows me to book some nice accoms during my stay. With my recent results, my Heads Up MTT shippage earlier this month, the $2.1k I got from my mate and other cashes here and there it's been well over a $6k month which is my best of the year. A nice finish to 2010 and things are looking up for 2011.

Here are some screenshots of my results...

MTT Win, Friends, Deep Runs

2010-12-20T05:43:00.000-08:00

Friend Running Hot

Well in a few of my previous posts I've mentioned my mate who I've recently got into poker, I've been coaching (Gazika11) him through tourneys and teaching him the basics. Well the past week has been a sick week for him (and me in some respects). He only plays Rush as he doesn't have the patience for normal structure MTT poker.

In the space of 2 days he binked yet another $75 45 Man for $1.1k (from an original $3 step ticket), after this he finished 2nd out of 1,152 runners in the $10r $30k Rush on Tilt for $6,000 and then the day after finished 1st in the $26 $20k Rush Turbo on Tilt for $5,100 haha. I was playing with him in both of these tourneys so took 20% in each for around $2.2k. Sick sick sick run hes on.

He's taking it well in his stride and is under no illusions that this is how things are on a regular basis and appreciates theres still plenty to learn in poker but what a start to his poker career. He's got a nice little bankroll to play with now so onwards and upwards in 2011 I say.

Heads Up MTT

I had some binkage of my own on the weekend. I jumped into the $22 Heads Up MTT on Stars and managed to put together 8 straight Heads Up wins for an outright win for $1,350 which was nice...

Deep Runs

Over the weekend I had 3 deep runs falling short in all :(

I placed 40/2,369 in the Poker Stars DNG on Friday night for $267. Followed this up on Saturday with an 11/247 in the $109 $20k on Stars for $395. Finally I late reged for the new Stars major, the Sunday Kick Off. This got 1,339 runners and I busted 20th for $536.

I was feeling really good deep in the Sunday KO and felt a final table was on the cards. I went card dead for the final hour and a half before reshipping 17 bigs with AT, 66 calls and holds and that was that.

Overall this past week has been very profitable especially with Gazikas results. Plus shipping the $22 HU MTT and running deep in a few majors. Hopefully I'm just laying the foundations for 2011 and I can turn my endless deep runs in 2010 (Warm Up, Party Millions, Endless DNG runs, etc...) into some major ships :D :D

The Rescue Ship

2010-12-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I decided to put in an MTT grinding session and played about 10 in total. After a few results in recently weeks I was firmly brought to down earth and reminded of the harsh reality of MTT variance. I couldn't even buy a vowel last night and busted all before the money leaving me firmly on "choppy waters" and sinking me to about -$400 on the night. I finally make it back to shore and just feel like hitting the hay.

The Rescue Ship

Whilst I was on shore, licking my wounds and seeing 10 ships sail away I get a call (via skype) from a mate of mine whom I'm currently coaching. Although I just wanted to get my head down he said we should play a couple of $12 Rush tourneys on Tilt so I agree and away we go. The usual of me playing my hands and talking him through his, being on hand whenever hes in a tough spot. Rush is an ideal way for people to quickly pick up the raw skills needed for poker as your always seeing hands asap and being put in tough spots much more than a standard MTT.

So I quickly bust one tourney and some how find myself with a 20k stack after one hour in the other. This particular event had 233 runners and we always agree that if we play a Rush MTT together then we'll ship 20% if either finish top 2, so that was my aim to get his bankroll moving in the right direction.

My mate quickly busted both and I found myself ITM as chip leader. I made the final table 3rd in chips and take a hit straight away when I'm in the BB with 22. The button limps and sb makes up. (blinds 600/1200, I have about 80k). I make it 6800 to try and take the pot here however the button and sb call. With that said the flop comes a nice 355 and sb checks. The button has 15k and I lead out for 13k, button shoves, sb folds I call. Button shows KQ lol for K high. Q on the turn and he takes down a nice pot :( sucks.

Anyway I grind my way back up and win a big pot taking out 2 people with QQ. When it's 3 handed I'm chip leader and with 4x the chips as 2nd just pretty much take advantage of the fact that they're both tightening for 2nd place lol.

So finally despite unable to board 10 ships earlier, from nowhere I get an emergency phone call and after 2 hours of waiting the emergency ship comes sailing in :D

After I shipped my mate his 20% I find myself with a small profit on the night which I'm happy with as it could have been a lot worse :D :D

UKIPT Galway, UKIPT DTD and 2011

2010-12-07T04:14:00.000-08:00

UKIPT Galway

Well first up UKIPT Galway was a big fail for me. My flight out to Dublin was delayed due to Dublin Airport closing because of the snow. It finally opened and we took off eventually landing in Dublin at 9pm. Dublin was covered in snow and it wasn’t letting up with the snow chucking it down as we landed. Our flight was the last flight to land before it closed again due to the weather.

Right, so I’m in Dublin at 9pm, in a blizzard and I need to get 150 miles across country to Galway, with the airport closed and most buses to the centre cancelled my chances don’t look good. I managed to find a GoBus which was going direct to Galway via the motorway and I finally got away at 10pm. The road conditions were awful and I was getting slightly worried when we were sliding all over the road and passing endless broken down cars and AA vans. To be fair the driver did well and although he was going at 10mph I finally got to Galway at 1am lol. Not bad seeing as I left for the airport at 3.30pm the previous day.

So due to the weather conditions my girlfriend couldn’t meet me as she lives 30 minutes outside of Galway in the sticks. I check into a Travelodge and book 3 nights as it was only 90e. I get to the Travelodge around 1.30am and it’s -3, I go into my room and ..... THE WINDOW IS WIDE OPEN AND THE ROOM IS FREEEEEEZING !!! I was fuming. I popped the heating on, pulled out the 2 spare duvets, put on my hoody and all was well :D not a great 12 hours for me that’s for sure.

Ok so as mentioned in a previous post I was planning on playing the 350e side event on the Friday however when I wake up on Thursday and check Poker Stars there’s an announcement that the UKIPT has been postponed due to the weather. It was postponed a day so I assumed (never assume it makes an ass out of you and me) all the side events would be pushed back a day as well. If they stuck with running the 350e event on the Friday then Stars would miss out on a day’s worth of bust outs in the 1,000e main event. Anyway with this announcement I figured that there was no poker for me that weekend because if the 350e was running from Sat/Sun I couldn’t play as I was flying home Sun.

I made it to Galway after 12 hours in the snow, changed my £s to es for the tourney buyin and was ready for some poker but it wasn’t meant to be. I spent the long weekend with my girlfriend HOWEVER on Sat I read the 350e tourney did start on Friday as planed and it was just the Main Event that got pushed back AHHHHHHHHH !!!! This sent me to Tiltsville, I was soo annoyed at myself for not 100% checking and I could have easily walked to the venue to double check. When I found this out I proceeded to go on Tilt and spewed the 350e buyin on a pointless overly expensive meal and some clothes lol.

Anyway that was a 100% poker related fail of a weekend, the main plus was that I got to spend all my time with my girlfriend which was nice.

UKIPT Nottingham

I played a £44 Seat Only satellite last night to the next UKIPT Main Event and managed to ship a £560 seat. It’s nice to bag a seat to this nice and early and it takes the pressure off the longer it goes without bagging one. Which leads me onto next year...

Live Poker in 2011

January/February is going to be a busy couple of months for me in terms of live poker (by my standards).

22/1/11 – 23/1/11 - £115 Grand Prix, Dusk Till Dawn
5/2/11 – 6/2/11 - £50 NAPAT Team Event, Star City
10/2/11 – 15/2/11 - £560 UKIPT, Dusk Till Dawn
April – WSOP Circuit, Las Vegas

I have a return flight to Vegas booked for April during the WSOP Circuit at Ceasars. There will be endless ring events with buyins ranging from $300-$500 during my stay. At the moment I’m 50/50 about going as I don’t have anyone 100% definitely coming with me due to the £700 return flight. I may head over regardless however all depends on how the poker side of my life is treating me around that time.

Online

Nothing major to report here as I’ve been away however I did bag the £560 UKIPT seat and have had two MTT cashes since my ship, 11/360 for $115 and 7/500 for $220.

That’s all for now :D

Cheers

...the ship has arrived !

2010-11-29T01:38:00.000-08:00

Well last week I made a post about being so close but no quite "getting there". I put in a session over the weekend and on Saturday I again had numerous deep runs. I had 5 cashes on Saturday making one final table. My results were 124/2780 for $22, 21/876 for $93, 15/360 for $108, 44/500 for $50 and 7/360 for $252.

With all of these deep runs I was beginning to think it just wasn't going to happen and then on Sunday I bust a $33 500 man tourney in 57th with 56 paid after getting involved with another big stack with JJ pre, he woke up with AA.

Anyway in the background during the $33 MTT was the $27.50 4-Max. I really enjoy these 4-Max events and have done well in the $44 4-Max on Stars. With 320 runners in the $27.50 I was chip leader with 8 left. I lost a huge pot after flopping trip 5s when my opponent rivered a flush, managed to regain a stack without showdown and again lost a big pot with trips after another rivered flush (lol), I was beginning to think it wasn't my day.

However I again managed to regain my stack and really did dominate without showdown, I was really pleased as I was bossing the game when there were 6 left and I'll make a post with some key hands. Two in particular involved calling a river bet with A high (on a double paired board) and also calling a strong river bet with pocket 7s on a board containing a K and a J.

The Deal

Once we were 3 handed we decided to call in a mod to discuss a deal. 3rd took $688 and 1st was $2,080. Two of us had 400k in chips and the other guy had 90k, ideally I wanted to wait until headsup however was willing to look at the numbers. In the deal 3rd was offered $800 however he said he wouldn't deal for less than $1,100 haha "yeah ok mate good one".

We played on and eventually got rid of the short stack. I had a minor chip lead in headsup however we called in the mod as I was willing to deal if we split based on chip stacks, he agreed and the deal was done. It looked like once the deal was done he couldn't be assed to play on a shoved allin on a 3KKK board, I snapped with 88 and won the pot and the tourney. However I'm 100% sure he wouldn't have made this play had the deal not been done.

As mentioned I'll be sure to save out some key hands and post them up when I get the chance...

Coaching

Over the past 2 weeks I've been providing coaching to a mate of mine. He has a good grasp of poker already and the coaching isn't too intensive. He put some money of Tilt and during my sessions I just have a Skype call open with him so he can ask questions whenever he wants and I can give him tips. Its been great so far and I've even learned a lot from our sessions, what's more it's good to see him learning and understanding what I'm explaining.

He managed to grind the $3 step on Tilt into a $75 ticket. I told him to use it for a "real money" tourney and we opted for the $75 45-man. Once I'd shipped the $27.50 I focused on his table talking him through things and aiding decisions. Anyway to cut a long story short he shipped it for just under $1,200 weeeeeeeeeeeeee. He was amazed and chuffed. I told him to cash out a chunk and for the meantime just continue what he's doing which he did...

UKIPT Galway

Well the final satellites are over and I've failed in my attempted to bag a main event seat. I'm heading over Wednesday night so instead of playing Day 1 on Thursday I'll just chillout and relax. I'll then head to the venue Friday as the €350 side event kicks off in the evening. They have a €50 5 seat gtd f/o satty before hand so I'm going to play that to get into the "live" groove. If I win a seat then great but if not I'll buy into the event anyway. I imagine most of the day 1 main event bust outs will be playing so the field should be fairly large. Looking forward to playing live again :D

That's all for now folks :D :D

Can I see a ship sailing in...?

2010-11-22T01:25:00.000-08:00

...I'd like to say yes. I had an uber grind session on the weekend playing 20-25 MTTs, making it deep numerous times however just falling short at the crucial time. Over recent weeks I've had a number of deep runs which have left me very frustrated. Below is a list of my deep results over the past couple of weeks...

$55....$90,000 Gtd.....[21/2,521]....Cashed for $390.75....top 0.8% of field
$109...$10,000 Gtd.....[9/148]....Cashed for $384....top 6% of field
€135….€75,000 Gtd.....[29/472]....Cashed for €300....top 6% of field
$44....$6,000 Gtd.....[8/200]....Cashed for $240....top 4% of field
$27.50….$5,000 Gtd.....[15/500]....Cashed for $137.50....top 3% of field
$44....$6,000 Gtd.....[15/205]....Cashed for $123....top 7% of field
$33....$10,000 Gtd.....[41/500]....Cashed for $82.50....top 8% of field
$22….$4,000 Gtd.....[24/360]....Cashed for $61.20....top 6% of field
$26....$16,000 Gtd.....[39/1,068]....Cashed for $53.40....top 3% of field
$26....$16,500 Gtd.....[51/802]....Cashed for $51.97....top 6% of field

I've decided to take a few days off from the MTT grind. Maybe even the whole week, I'll reduce my volume this week and maybe focus on STTs and Steps on Stars. MTTs take up a whole evening and if your playing two sessions a day sometimes a whole day so I'm going to take some time off to refocus. I'm very pleased with my string of results and it makes me even more determind to ship a tourney. My last outright win was back at the beginning of October in the $44 4-Max for $2.4k.

I'm still in the hunt for a UKIPT Galway package/seat so will probably play a couple of hours a few evenings this week to try and work towards that goal. This will give me time to refocus on my MTTs and I'll probably be looking to put in a 12 hour session on Sunday.

The Grind Station

2010-11-21T05:09:00.000-08:00

The True Art of Multi-Tabling

Well over recent weeks I've been enforcing the true are of multi-tabling. Most people usually multi-table 8-12 tables over 2 screens (even more for the pioneers of the art). However, recently I've been multi-tabling across three screens, two laptops, two mouses and two keyboards.

"Why?" I hear you ask. Well my primary laptop is a Mac and I've recently been playing on Poker.co.uk which doesn't have an Instant Play version. I currently can't be assed to setup a windows partition on my Mac and being the law abiding citizen I am, I don't want to download a copy of Vista. If anyone is aware of other ways to get a .exe working on a Mac then feel free to comment.

Here is a picture of my current setup. I've the 13.3" Macbook Pro (probably my best investment ever), this is hooked up to a 23" Phillips HD monitor and to the right is just an old 15" Acer which is used for non-mac software. I hate the Boss media Instant Play so Dusk Till Dawn is played on here as well as Blue Square and Poker.co.uk. Also notice the new age iPhone in the bottom right of the picture, I like to keep this handy to use various poker related apps :D :D...

The Donked becomes the Donker

2010-11-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

Well I rarely receive abuse in the chat however I absorbed it by the bucket load in one tourney this evening, in concecutive hands and it was fully justified.

Hand 1.

Tilting from donking numerous MTTs at the beginning of my session. Not really paying attention at all as I'm busy on Skype and watching the Rugby. I call a button raise from the big blind with 46s, I check the flop without looking and my opponant moves allin for his remainding 800. I glance at the flop, see a 4 and call. He tables QQ, turn blank river 4 lol. Someone insta types "y o u l u c k y b a s t a r d". Excellent...

***** Hand 2405451630 *****
100.00/200.00 Texas Hold'em (No Limit ) - 19 November 2010 23:09:51
€5,000 GTD REBUY (Real /Tournament )
Seat 5: turi11 (1250.00)
Seat 7: FezioJr (6935.00)
mouur post SB 100.00
FezioJr post BB 200.00
** Deal **
FezioJr [4h, 6h]
*** Bet Round 1 ***
Drobek21 Fold
VemComigo Fold
adriancris Fold
blueskyjul Fold
chistorra Fold
jbouuu Fold
-RAMSES- Fold
turi11 Raise to 450.00
mouur Fold
FezioJr Call 450.00
*** Flop(Board): *** : [4c, Js, Kc]
*** Bet Round 2 ***
FezioJr Check
turi11 All-in 800.00
FezioJr Call 800.00
*** Turn(Board): *** : [4c, Js, Kc, 2d]
*** River(Board): *** : [4c, Js, Kc, 2d, 4d]
*** Showdown *** : Rake: 0.00 Total Pot: 2600.00
turi11 [Qd, Qs] Two pair queens and fours Win: 0.00
FezioJr [4h, 6h] Three of a kind, fours Win: 2600.00

However the fun doesn't stop there...

Hand 2.

The very next hand I'm sitting in the small blind. I see that the action is on me, I look at 57s and decide to make up the bb as it's only another 100, OR IS IT? once I pressed call I soon realised that the action had gone, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, call 200, raise to 1600 and then I call the 1600 with 57s lol. Everyone else folds and im headsup with this monster hand. Flop comes down 277 weeeeeee! I think to myself I hope he has AA or KK. I obviously check and he shoves 5.5k into the middle, I snap, he shows KK, I fade and ship the pot. Great skill and play by me. At this point the table note taking is going crazy, everyone has identified the fish at the table so I'm sure I'll be hunted down in the near future.

***** Hand 2405452818 *****
100.00/200.00 Texas Hold'em (No Limit ) - 19 November 2010 23:10:52
€5,000 GTD REBUY (Real /Tournament )
Seat 6: mouur (7125.00)
Seat 7: FezioJr (8285.00)
FezioJr post SB 100.00
Drobek21 post BB 200.00
** Deal **
FezioJr [5c, 7c]
*** Bet Round 1 ***
VemComigo Fold
adriancris Fold
blueskyjul Fold
chistorra Fold
jbouuu Fold
-RAMSES- Call 200.00
mouur Raise to 1600.00
FezioJr Call 1600.00
Drobek21 Fold
-RAMSES- Fold
*** Flop(Board): *** : [2d, 7d, 7s]
*** Bet Round 2 ***
FezioJr Check
mouur All-in 5525.00
FezioJr Call 5525.00
*** Turn(Board): *** : [2d, 7d, 7s, 10h]
*** River(Board): *** : [2d, 7d, 7s, 10h, 9d]
*** Showdown *** : Rake: 0.00 Total Pot: 14650.00
mouur [Ks, Kc] Two pair kings and sevens Win: 0.00
FezioJr [5c, 7c] Three of a kind, sevens Win: 14650.00

PokerStars.com Daily Ninety Grand Fail + More

2010-11-17T02:13:00.000-08:00

Online volume has been minimal of late however I’ve found time to play some MTTs with frustrating results. My first deep run came in the Poker Stars DNG a daily $55 tourney, I’ve played this a number of times before and have managed a few deep runs with my best result being about 30^th.

The tourney saw 2,521 players take to the virtual baize generating a first prize of about $19k. I started well and after a few hours of play found myself in the money with a slightly above average stack. With 120 players left I found myself short shoving to a button raise from the sb with AK only for the bb to wake up with QQ and hold. From here I pretty much enforced uber short stack management and did so until there were about 30 players left, never really getting out of the bottom 10 of the field from 120-30 players. I began to gain some momentum by open shove, 3-bet shoving and chipping up mostly preflop. I then proceeded to open with AK only for the button to 3-bet, I set him all in and he snaps with JTo, J on the turn and I’m crippled. Very next hand I shove to a raise with 10 bigs holding A3s, the raiser snaps (committed) with K9 and hits. Really frustrating to run bad at the wrong time, brought back horrible memories of being deep in the Sunday Warmup (AQ less than AJ aipr for 3m pot with 20 left)

I’ve also been playing some MTTs on Poker.co.uk primarily the €10 rebuys, I’ve done well in these over the past few days making 3 final tables. I’ve placed 10/120 for €60 after getting it in for the chip lead with TT vs A9 for the A to bink, 5/130 for €270 and most recently 3/101 for €375.

UKIPT Galway

I’ve yet to qualify for the €1,000 main event which takes place in a few weeks. I’ve played 2 €215 satellites, both having 40 runners producing 4 packages each, the first I busted 14^th and the second I busted 8^th. I’ll play a few more of these however regardless of winning a package I’ll still be heading to Galway during the event so will most likely be playing one of the side events if I don’t get a package within the next 2 weeks.

DTD Grand Prix 2011

A quick mention for Dusk Till Dawn, they’re hosting their 2^nd Grand Prix and having missed the £50 last month I’ll definitely be playing the £100 Grand Prix in January. I’ll be hitting it up with Dann and we’ve already sorted accommodation so we’re good to go lol.

Twitter

2010-10-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

I've started using Twitter which I'll use for various poker related updates, follow here... http://twitter.com/FezioJnr

Winning via Tiltsville

2010-10-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

I had a little 3 hour session last night and the evening couldn't have started any worse. Two hands in particular sent me to Tiltsville Arizona. The first was in the daily $27.50 MTT on Stars, after running my 3k starting stack up to 10k I get seated at a table with a complete donk who had a similar chip stack...

AK less than K3

PokerStars Game #51052811283: Tournament #318977735, $25.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XI (100/200) - 2010/10/13 22:14:20 WET [2010/10/13 17:14:20 ET]
Table '318977735 7' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: GeorgeGunner (9597 in chips)
Seat 2: justyxas (12273 in chips)
Seat 4: FezioJnr (9301 in chips)
Seat 5: Mintal703 (6360 in chips)
Seat 6: Pig's Eye 1 (9546 in chips)
Seat 7: moverdave (11890 in chips)
Seat 8: TrapoLeproso (6263 in chips)
Seat 9: Hepburn1 (3887 in chips)
justyxas: posts small blind 100
FezioJnr: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Kc Ah]
Mintal703: folds
Pig's Eye 1: folds
moverdave: folds
TrapoLeproso: raises 299 to 499
Hepburn1: folds
GeorgeGunner: folds
justyxas: calls 399
FezioJnr: raises 1301 to 1800
TrapoLeproso: folds
justyxas: calls 1301
*** FLOP *** [7s 6c Ks]
justyxas: bets 10433 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 7461 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (2972) returned to justyxas
*** TURN *** [7s 6c Ks] [3h]
*** RIVER *** [7s 6c Ks 3h] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
justyxas: shows [3s Kh] (two pair, Kings and Threes)
FezioJnr: shows [Kc Ah] (a pair of Kings)
justyxas collected 19341 from pot
FezioJnr finished the tournament in 137th place
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 19341 | Rake 0
Board [7s 6c Ks 3h 9d]
Seat 2: justyxas (small blind) showed [3s Kh] and won (19341) with two pair, Kings and Threes
Seat 4: FezioJnr (big blind) showed [Kc Ah] and lost with a pair of Kings

AA less than KK greater than KQ aipf

I found myself allin preflop holding AA in the dream position, up against KK and KQ, only one out could cripple me...

PokerStars Game #51058532508: Tournament #318996170, €25+€2 EUR Hold'em No Limit - Level X (400/800) - 2010/10/14 0:14:40 WET [2010/10/13 19:14:40 ET]
Table '318996170 1' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 2: isidrink666 (23126 in chips)
Seat 3: patinho77 (3045 in chips)
Seat 4: NegPL (16858 in chips)
Seat 6: pennyyy (21392 in chips)
Seat 7: FezioJnr (30204 in chips)
Seat 8: Mihai Nutt (23506 in chips)
Seat 9: Tonys111 (8369 in chips)
Tonys111: posts small blind 400
isidrink666: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Ah Ac]
patinho77: raises 2170 to 2970 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 2970
Tonys111: raises 5324 to 8294 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 5324
*** FLOP *** [6s 3d Kc]
*** TURN *** [6s 3d Kc] [4d]
*** RIVER *** [6s 3d Kc 4d] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Tonys111: shows [Kh Ks] (three of a kind, Kings)
FezioJnr: shows [Ah Ac] (a pair of Aces)
Tonys111 collected 10648 from side pot
patinho77: shows [Qd Kd] (a pair of Kings)
Tonys111 collected 10235 from main pot
patinho77 finished the tournament in 7th place
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 20883 Main pot 10235. Side pot 10648. | Rake 0
Board [6s 3d Kc 4d 8c]
Seat 3: patinho77 showed [Qd Kd] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 7: FezioJnr showed [Ah Ac] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 9: Tonys111 (small blind) showed [Kh Ks] and won (20883) with three of a kind, Kings

I managed to bounce back from this hit and ship the €25r to take down a €500 seat...

1/211 for $2,447 (Daily $44 4-Max)

2010-10-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

Shipped the Daily $44 4-Max Event on Poker Stars

Well after my post just two days ago in which I spouted

“Online has been mediocre to say the least over the past few months. I haven't made a final in a while and when you grind MTTs that does hurt.”

I proceeded to take down my first online tournament since the $1.2k I picked up in July for winning the $22 Big Antes.

After I made that post I again had a deep run (that evening) in the $22 Big Antes, however I got caught up in a high variance spot and busted 13^th out of 360 for $100. The following day I was two tabling between the $27.50 Big Antes and the $44 4-Max both on Stars. I made deep runs in both however busted the $27.50 in 36^th place out of 361 runners for $60, this was a disappointing result as I was maintaining a sub average stack the whole tournament. Whenever I’d build a stack I’d lose a standard race JJ less than A K, A K less than TT and QQ less than A K.

Once I busted I was fully focused on one table, which was the $44 4-Max. These tournaments in particular need to played with extra due care and attention due to the speed and amount of hands played. Your constantly involved in pots, 3-betting, 4-betting and even 5-betting a few times an orbit. So it was fortunate I busted the $27.50 tourney so I could concentrate 100%.

I registered 30mins late for this event which is what I have started to do a lot recently. Stars keep late registration open for an hour for every MTT now and usually 5%-10% of the field busts in quick succession so I like avoiding the meaningless 10/20, 15/30 levels and jumping right in at 25/50 with a 3k starting stack.

I immediately jumped into the top 10% of chips and remaining there until the money, keeping really busy and creating a nice aggressive table image. Once the money bubble burst my stack started to grow significantly, I ran very well for about an hour and found myself with 150k in chips. My aggro table image did help, because I was involved in so many pots that when I did hit I got action. For example I’d raise with K8 and the flop would come down 88T, if it was checked to me I’d put in a strong c-bet and if my opponent had any hand I got paid off with 3 streets of value. The beauty of these shorthanded events is you can find value with 2^nd and even 3^rd pair as people just don’t believe you and sometimes they’ll eve pay you off with A high.

I took the chip lead into the final table and was involved in a number of interesting hands, some of which I played well and some badly. I don’t have the HH’s to hand some pots which I thought were interesting were the following...

Full House.

4 handed final table, seated to the left of a serial raiser which was perfect as my 3 bets were getting though and I was winning a decent number of pots from the sb and bb when he raised from the button. I’m in the sb with 9T and its folded to him on the button, I’m playing about 170k and hes playing 120k blinds are 1500/3000. He makes it 7500 and I call. Flop 992, I thought about betting and it may have been the better option but I decided to check as I knew he would be betting 100%, he did and I called. Turn was a T giving me a boat and again I knew he’d bet so I check called a 25k bet on the turn. Now I’m sitting there with pretty much the nuts, how do I get his last 60k??? I know the chances are he has nothing, so in order to get that last 60k in the middle I can either put out a tiny river bet and hope he shoves or check and again hope he shoves. I decided that betting was a no go the hand went check call, check call, and a bet was obvious so I checked and hoped he’d shove, unfortunately for me he gave up and checked behind with nothing, not really sure how I could have played that hand differently to get more value, I know he had nothing but he was a serial aggressor so I’m sure I could have gotten his chips in the middle somehow.

A-Rag (this hand was before the one above)

2^nd hand was from the same position, I’m in the sb with A2o and the same guy on the button raises (I’m playing about 120k and hes playing about 150k) to 6k (blinds 1/2k). I call and the flop comes A high. I check and he bets out 15k into about 15k I min-raise to 30k as I’m 90% sure I have the best hand, to my surprise he then 3-bets to 65k. Now I start to think, do I want to risk my tournament life with A2 and bust out first in the final table. It’s a fold or allin situation. Based on his aggressive style and the fact I’d been raising and 3-bet him a lot, his play started to look like strange. He may well be doing that with a small pocket pair and figured I’d fold without the Ace. I went with my read and decided to shove my A2 allin leaving him another 50k or so to call, he instantly folded and this play gave me plenty of confidence and added to my super aggressive table image. If only you could show one card on Stars, I would have loved to have just shown a deuce.

I took out the aggressive player in 4^th after he shoved his 88 into my 99. I then had about 400k of the 600k in play and just shoved any pair, ace and king to try and accumulate as many chips as possible before heads up as both guys tightened up loads due to the $1k pay jump. Once heads up I had a 5-1 chip lead, picked up AQ, shoved he called with KJ and I held. GG.

Play finished in the early hours and didn’t get to bed until 3.30am, up at 7am for work :D I was getting slightly annoyed that it was getting late at the final table and once I did spew chips on a final table just because I thought “fek it, if I bust I can get some sleep”. But this time I focused and was determined to win even if it meant no sleep before work.

Thanks.

Live/Online Update

2010-10-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

As this is my first post in a while I'll break it down into small sections...

Live.

I played the £220 Deepstack event in Bristol last month, I busted late in day 1 and it was a fairly uneventful tourney for me. The structure was ok with a 10k starting stack on an hour clock and this event produced 100 runners which wasn't bad at all for a local tourney. Myself, Dann (s4ooter) and Shme all went down for the event with Shme busting first despite building a decent stack early on, Dann busted next after getting "s4ootered" (again) and finally I busted around mid-night shoving my shortstack into AT.

This was the only event I played over the past few months which wasn't the original plan, this was due to a number of reasons. One, the UKIPT is making a return for a 2nd season and therefore I want to try and keep some holidays (from work) to play some of these. I played 3 of the events last season and enjoyed everyone of them, so looking forward to trying to satellite into a few more. Secondly my overall volume has generally been a lot lower and haven't had the urge to play live events like I did a few months back. After the Bristol event I just figured unless the live event was a juicy event or festival then I cba to travel to it. It's pointless booking time off work and trekking to a venue for one event, wasting money on hotels, travel, food, etc... Plus my time is probably better spent online. With that said I'll be throwing lots of UKIPT satellites into my weekly schedule, furthermore the GUKPT satellites have been restructured so I may even try and play one of those events. Although I've been told there isn't much dead money in them anymore, it would still be interesting to play an event to get a feel for the competition.

Online.

Online has been mediocre to say the least over the past few months. I haven't made a final in a while and when you grind MTTs that does hurt. I made it deep in a 6-Max $44 MTT on Stars and stupidly spewed the chip lead with JJ on a 255 flop after flatting a raise preflop, the villain woke up with A5 lol.

I also min-cashed the Sunday Warmup again playing my A game. Just in the money I took a hit and ran three shoves through uncontested, then I wake up with QQ and shove for a fourth time and a big stack calls me with 99, flop...9 gg.

Apart from that some other cashes here and there, with that said my all time online MTT winnings has now surpassed $60k...

I also shipped a30e Double Shootout good fpr 530e. The beauty of this tourney was that only 17 players registered, meaning one lucky player got a freeroll to the 9-handed final table....fortunately that lucky player was me.

I built a stack early on and managed to get it allin with the other bigstack at the table and another medium stack with AA. I was in the big blind with AA, folded around to the button who makes it 450 (blinds 75/150). SB shoves 1.7k and I flat in the BB playing 5k, button shoves and I call. SB has QT, me AA and button QQ, I hold and have over half the chips in play with 4 left...

The Art of Disconnection

2010-08-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Having managed to locate a few added value Sattys on Absolute poker for the UBOCs I fired in a few hundred $$$ to give them a shot. I proceed to fire open 2 $120 sattys both offering $1k seats and each only having 5-6 players. Bingo, I've stumbled upon something sweet here........10mins into the sats............POWER CUT !!! GAME OVER.

I ring the electricity board and the power won't be turn on for another 4 hours. After steaming for 30mins I finally calm down so decide to just drive to Bristol and do some shopping, nothing more I can do :(

This weekend I've played a fully schedule of tourneys making about 4 minor cashes. The next few weeks are going to be busy for me with work and trips to Ireland so I've decided to use it as my standard break from online poker. I tend to take a few weeks here and there, although my volume over the last few weeks has been minimal I'm not really feeling it online at the moment.

With that said I will be playing some live events so the break from online will motivate me more for those, see the previous entry for details on my potential live tourneys.

Playing Live Again

2010-08-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Shipped the PS daily Big Antes (Again)

2010-07-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

Managed to ship this tourney for the 2nd time this year. I've Final Tabled the 360 Max 3 times with 3rd, 1st and 1st place finishes.

Managed to ship this tourney for the 2nd time this year. I've Final Tabled the 360 Max twice with 3rd, 1st and 1st place finishes.

The Ultimate Heads Up Donk

2010-06-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Right, I thought I'd pop online and get an hours worth of play in before watching the Italy game. Mainly playing to build FPPs at the moment as well as grinding out the $27 18 mans for various promotions on Stars. I fire up 4 18 mans and figure I'll fire up a $55 HU SnG to help aid the "gaining of rake". My first game lasts 10 hands and I can't believe how much a donk my opponent is. To my joy his accepts a rematch invitation.

The second game is of similar donkness and lasts just 8 hands. He again accepts a rematch with the third game lasting 2 hands (lol). He doesn't give up and wants a fourth crack at me which ends in just 5 hands. To my delight he thinks 5th times a charm however unfortunately he disconnects and I'm left to blind him out for a further $50.

The winning / major crippling hands are listed below: -

Game 1 (Lasted 10 hands)

PokerStars Game #45502710067: Tournament #282773187, $55.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2010/06/14 18:45:00 WET [2010/06/14 13:45:00 ET]
Table '282773187 1' 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: FezioJnr (1420 in chips)
Seat 2: X (1580 in chips)
FezioJnr: posts small blind 10
X posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Ks Ah]
FezioJnr: raises 40 to 60
X: calls 40
*** FLOP *** [4h Kh Kd]
X: bets 200
FezioJnr: raises 380 to 580
X: calls 380
*** TURN *** [4h Kh Kd] [As]
X: bets 940 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 780 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (160) returned to X
*** RIVER *** [4h Kh Kd As] [6h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
X: shows [3c 4d] (two pair, Kings and Fours)
FezioJnr: shows [Ks Ah] (a full house, Kings full of Aces)
FezioJnr collected 2840 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2840 | Rake 0
Board [4h Kh Kd As 6h]
Seat 1: FezioJnr (button) (small blind) showed [Ks Ah] and won (2840) with a full house, Kings full of Aces
Seat 2: X(big blind) showed [3c 4d] and lost with two pair, Kings and Fours

Game 2 (Lasted 8 hands)

PokerStars Game #45502886767: Tournament #282774922, $55.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2010/06/14 18:48:50 WET [2010/06/14 13:48:50 ET]
Table '282774922 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: X(1100 in chips)
Seat 2: FezioJnr (1900 in chips)
FezioJnr: posts small blind 10
X: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [8s 7s]
FezioJnr: raises 20 to 40
X: calls 20
*** FLOP *** [6d Jh 7h]
X: bets 100
FezioJnr: calls 100
*** TURN *** [6d Jh 7h] [Tc]
X: checks
FezioJnr: checks
*** RIVER *** [6d Jh 7h Tc] [7d]
X: bets 960 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 960
*** SHOW DOWN ***
X: shows [9c 4c] (a pair of Sevens)
FezioJnr: shows [8s 7s] (three of a kind, Sevens)
FezioJnr collected 2200 from pot
X finished the tournament in 2nd place
FezioJnr wins the tournament and receives $110.00 - congratulations!
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2200 | Rake 0
Board [6d Jh 7h Tc 7d]
Seat 1: X (big blind) showed [9c 4c] and lost with a pair of Sevens
Seat 2: FezioJnr (button) (small blind) showed [8s 7s] and won (2200) with three of a kind, Sevens

Game 3 (Lasted 2 hands)

PokerStars Game #45502938799: Tournament #282775901, $55.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2010/06/14 18:49:58 WET [2010/06/14 13:49:58 ET]
Table '282775901 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1:X (1490 in chips)
Seat 2: FezioJnr (1510 in chips)
FezioJnr: posts small blind 10
X: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Ks 4d]
FezioJnr: raises 20 to 40
X: calls 20
*** FLOP *** [3d 4h 4s]
X: bets 120
FezioJnr: calls 120
*** TURN *** [3d 4h 4s] [5c]
X: bets 160
FezioJnr: calls 160
*** RIVER *** [3d 4h 4s 5c] [8c]
X: checks
FezioJnr: bets 1190 and is all-in
X: calls 1170 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (20) returned to FezioJnr
*** SHOW DOWN ***
FezioJnr: shows [Ks 4d] (three of a kind, Fours)
X: shows [3c 9c] (two pair, Fours and Threes)
FezioJnr collected 2980 from pot
X finished the tournament in 2nd place
FezioJnr wins the tournament and receives $110.00 - congratulations!
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2980 | Rake 0
Board [3d 4h 4s 5c 8c]
Seat 1: X(big blind) showed [3c 9c] and lost with two pair, Fours and Threes
Seat 2: FezioJnr (button) (small blind) showed [Ks 4d] and won (2980) with three of a kind, Fours

Game 4 (Lasted 5 hands)

PokerStars Game #45503020503: Tournament #282776251, $55.00+$2.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2010/06/14 18:51:45 WET [2010/06/14 13:51:45 ET]
Table '282776251 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: X (1520 in chips)
Seat 2: FezioJnr (1480 in chips)
FezioJnr: posts small blind 10
X: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Ks 9s]
FezioJnr: raises 20 to 40
X: calls 20
*** FLOP *** [6c 8d Kh]
X: bets 80
FezioJnr: calls 80
*** TURN *** [6c 8d Kh] [9h]
X: bets 1400 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 1360 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (40) returned to X
*** RIVER *** [6c 8d Kh 9h] [7c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
X: shows [2s Kd] (a pair of Kings)
FezioJnr: shows [Ks 9s] (two pair, Kings and Nines)
FezioJnr collected 2960 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2960 | Rake 0
Board [6c 8d Kh 9h 7c]
Seat 1: X (big blind) showed [2s Kd] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 2: FezioJnr (button) (small blind) showed [Ks 9s] and won (2960) with two pair, Kings and Nines

Game 5 - After 9 hands he gets disconnected and sits out so I just blind him out

Overall: 6 mins, 5 heads up matches, 34 hands, $250 profit.

Never seen anything like this if I'm honest. I have replaced his username with X as this guy is my biatch. GG

UKIPT Nottingham

2010-05-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Day 1

The tourney started at 12pm and only played 8 levels with NO dinner break, therefore a 15min break every 2 hours meaning a finish of around 9pm.

The early stages were god awful. You start with a stack of 15,000 and I found myself quickly down to 6,000. The main hand involved a BIG fold on my part...

Blind were 50/100 and UTG raises to 400. I find AA and decide to smooth call as 3-betting seemed to be enough to take the pot down preflop at my table. The SB also calls which I wasn't happy about. Flop comes 8h 9h 2s. The SB actually leads out for 600 which I found strange, the original raiser quickly popped it up to 1,700. I decided to re-raise to about 4,500 as I though the original raiser was weak and just trying to take the pot down there and then. However the SB decides to to ship allin and I have about 8,000 behind. I couldn't really figure out what AA was beating here and put him on a set or 89. I opted to fold as blinds were still 50/100 and with 8k I still had plenty of play.

I proceeded to stack off some more chips and found myself with 6k.

The first pot to get my chips moving the other way started with the UTG limping. I found Kh2h in the sb and decide to make up the BB, the BB checks. Flop comes Ah Jh Qs, so I've flopped a gut shot and nut flush draw. I check, B checks and UTG limper min-bets 300 I think it was. I call and the SB pops it up to 1,200. UTG calls and I decide to ship my 5k (ish). Both fold and that was a nice little pickup.

My double up hand was when UTG raises and I smooth call with AA (lol). Flop comes Q high and he bets out, I shove and he snaps with QT. I dodge and double up. This took me to about 12k and I managed to small ball right the way up to about 20k. I continue to small ball by taking the blinds and antes as well as 3-betting and taking the pots down pre.

One interesting hand was when MP raises 3x I call with 33. Folded around and the flop comes JJ5. He leads out and I was going to re-pop him here but decided to smooth call. He checks/gives up on the turn, I bet out and he folds. That pot added a nice 15% to my stack.

I then finished up with 43k. I was so frustrated early on because the last 3 live tourneys I've never gotten above the starting stack and have had to play short stack poker. However once I got some momentum in this one I was able to open up a little and start chipping up. 394 players started Day 1b with 160 making it into Day 2. Not sure about the figures from Day 1a however I know about 250 players played. Making this tourney the largest £500 tourney in the UK to date. 72 places paid with 1st taking home £80k.

Day 2

Day 2 started well, I ran my stack up to about 100k before getting moved from the softest table ever to one which had Tom Middleton and Rupinder Bedi on it :( I was placed to Tom Middletons immediate right which wasn't the best place to be sitting.

Anyway the day pretty much ended for me when I picked up QQ. I raised, Middleton 3-bet and I tanked. I could either call and play the flop oop and be put to a tough decision if an A or K comes on the flop or I could 4-bet shove. I know if I shove he's folding most of his 3-bet range however he snaps me off with AK. An Ace hits the flop and I'm left crippled.

Finally busted in 107th place out of about 670 runners.

4th for $2.3k - Stars daily $20k

2010-05-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

This was a fun tourney, I 1 tabled it which is very unusual for me but it seemed to work. I played my A game and was a huge chip leader going into the final table. I sat tight until we got 6 handed where I started to open up. 4 handed I manage to flop a set "Bing"!!! however unfortunately my opponent flopped a bigger set :( That left me crippled and that was that, out in 4th...

Egypt

2010-04-16T14:23:00.002-07:00

Right Egypt was a funny old trip. It was nice to sample a different culture however I came back with mixed reviews.

We stayed in a nice 4* hotel which had everything we wanted...

The holiday started off strange as our guide was a little dodgy and made sure he told me to "watch my girl" when he dropped us at the hotel. Fair point but obviously made me wonder why he would say that. Anyway the first day we decide to visit Naama Bay which has lots of shops, the beach, restaurants etc...

We got a taxi and the taxi man insisted we book our return trip with him because getting a taxi back from Naama just wouldnt be safe, fair enough we said collect us in 3 hours. As soon as we left the taxi it was like being dropped off in the lions den. We were surrounded by shops and the shop keepers were standing at their doorways ready to pounce. for some reason we were the only people walking around the shopping area, no other tourists in site.

Within 2 minutes we were approached by a guy who was nice and introduced himself to us and we got chatting. To two naive tourists this just seems like a local being friendly until he eventually got us into his shop. He then proceeded to sit us down and shut the door. At this point we smelt something slightly fishy lol and then he said he was going off to make us an arabic drawing of our names lol. His brother then enters who proceeds to bombard us with perfumes and creame, rubbing creams into my girlfriends arms. I was like "Nah I dont fancy any perfumes at the moment mate". This went on for a while a we eventually had to get up and storm out because they just wouldnt let us go.

2 minutes later another guy approaches and I just say no thanks and walk on, then one minutes later two others who this time I ignore and then they proceed to get angry shouting "Do you not like Egyptians". Then a huge Egyptian guy comes over and offers his hand so I felt obliged not to piss him off so shake his hand and he wouldnt let the fuck go lol, he was holding and squeezing it for fooking ages.

I finally go my hand free and my girlfriend and I walked off again and kept our heads down. We didnt know where to go or what to do all we knew was we had 2 and a half ours to kill. Eventually we found The Hard Rock Cafe and the moment I walked in there felt like heaven haha familiar surroundings, English tv and nice burgers lol.

We burnt a good while in there and walked back to where the taxi man was collecting us but bloody hell, what an experience. I appreciate thats the Egyptian way but everyone I have spoken to have said they are never going back because of this carry on.

Anyway Day 2 and determined to enjoy the rest of our holiday we start of by booking a snorkeling trip in the red sea. We then just chillax by the pool for most of the day roasting in the 35 degree heat.

Halfway through the holiday I start getting use to their food, I also grew to love chickpeas lol, something I use to think was a bland food stuff, it can actually be used and incorporated into amazing meals.

Probably the best part of the holiday was the snorkeling in the Red Sea. It was totally fantastic and a once in a lifetime experience imo. We headed out towards Tiran Island around 8am in the morning in a lovely boat. After 3 hours in the boat we stopped and had the chance to dive into the seat and follow the instructor on the snorkeling route...

March Results

2010-04-16T14:23:00.001-07:00

Online

I played the $640 Party Million at the beginning of the month and managed to cash for $1.5k. This was a great start to the month of March and in fact sparked my most consistent month of MTT poker to date. For a few solid weeks during March I was immersed in a routine of coming home from work having food and then settling down at about 7pm for an MTT session until about 1am.

During a span of 21 days I managed a total of 21 MTT cashes for a total of over $10k. I ran a fairly good ROI on this volume but it really made me realise the hard work, intensity and commitment needed to grind out good money playing poker. I managed this volume for around 3 weeks whilst working a 9-5 job so it may be slightly easier if I had more time but it was hardcore.

The individual cashes are shown below...

This included 5 final tables, 1 ship and 4 four figure scores.

Live

I made the trek to Coventry for Day 1b of the UKIPT. This was my second UKIPT event having previously played the Galway event. Getting there was no problem as it was all motorway and you can't miss the casino from the outside. I hadn't heard great things about Coventry so wasn't expecting much but was blown away by the casino itself. I've played in about 8 UK/IRE casinos and this is by far the best. Not yet entered a Vegas casino so I'm unable to compare.

The tourney itself didn't go great and I never got above the 15k starting stack. My table wasn't that tough but I had no real hands to get things going. The two players I did recognise at my table were James Mitchell recently IPO winner and Andy Bradshaw lol. Andy Bradshaw really made the table fun, he was so strange and got put in some tough spots. One of his so called "friends" at the table outdrew him on the river and Andy went mental..."How could you call that bet on the turn"..."We play together week in week out and you do this to me" haha it was so funny. He was like an open book it was sooo easy to tell when he had it and when he didn't.

Anyway I got short and managed to double up getting 7s in pre against Ks lol. I then got back up to about 12k before getting 4 bet allin by a guy whilst holding AK, I called and lost a race Vs Qs. I could have maybe gotten away from that and waiting for a better spot but I felt that was the time to gamble as if I busted I would have been able to drive home in good time without getting back late lol. Therefore I didnt bother checking into my hotel which was booked all weekend. Maybe I should have then I could have railed Dan and played the side events. But when you bust a tourney you feel like doing nothing else but leaving the place.

Seat @ UKIPT DTD

2010-04-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

Took down a £560 seat to the DTD UKIPT event in May. I've played 2 of the 3 previous UKIPT events running pretty dry in both. Best I managed was Day 2 in Galway, busted late in Day 1 at Coventry...

180 man ship

2010-03-31T06:18:00.000-07:00

Just a small update, I took down a $12 180 man yesterday. Obviously I ran good when it mattered with the main hand being a 4 way allin.

AK vs AK vs AK vs my QQ :D I hold...

PokerStars Game #41951424327: Tournament #258053933, $11+$1 USD Hold'em No Limit
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FezioJnr [Qh Qs]
Rpg32585: raises 26704 to 30704 and is all-in
jay johnny35: raises 12100 to 42804 and is all-in
hajal: raises 21296 to 64100 and is all-in
FezioJnr: calls 36282 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [Jd Qd 9c]
*** TURN *** [Jd Qd 9c] [8c]
*** RIVER *** [Jd Qd 9c 8c] [8s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jay johnny35: shows [Ks Ah] (a pair of Eights)
hajal: shows [Ac Kd] (a pair of Eights)
FezioJnr: shows [Qh Qs] (a full house, Queens full of Eights)
Rpg32585: shows [Kc Ad] (a pair of Eights)
FezioJnr collected 127616 from main pot

I'm off to Egypt tomorrow so my next encounter with poker will be UKIPT Coventry next Friday :D

Deep run in Sunday WarmUp (23/4691)

2010-03-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I had run a deep in the Poker Stars $215 Sunday Warm Up. I placed 23rd for $2.3k however was gutted with the overall result. After 8 hours of play and down to the final 30 I'm sitting with an above average stack. I 4 bet a late position raiser on the button with AQ and we eventually get it in for what was a $1.5m pot. Winning this would have seen my stack grow to around $2.3m.

I'm delighted to see him table AJ however this was short lived when a J hits the flop and he rakes the pot. Totally gutting however I got very lucky in a hand earlier in tourney so I guess it evened itself out. With that said I would have been in great shape and had a fantastic shot at a $150k score had I won that pot.

Left short I spend the next half an hour shoving and end up getting back up to about $1m, however I eventually run my pocket Jacks into pocket Aces and its goodnight.

That was my 2nd Sunday Warm Up cash this month and I have also had 2 deep runs in the Party Million in recent months. Although the initial disappointment isn't great once that elevates it just makes you even more hungry to persist.

Below is a screen shot and I hope to be replacing that with one of me in 1st during the course of 2010...

Busy few months & a FT

2010-03-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

I made the Big Antes Final Table again tonight on Stars but unfortunately couldn't take it down back to back. I did manage 3rd for around $600 which is decent enough. Also made it deep in the $11 rebuy however busted with KJ on a K78 K A board Vs 77. Maybe could have gotten away from this hand however always hard to fold these deep in a tourney Vs an aggressive big stack.

My MTT volume has been this highest I've ever played this month, resulting in over 10 MTT cashes for well over $3k and the month still isn't over. I'll post up all this months cashes towards the beginning of next week.

I'm off to Egypt on Wednesday and will be heading straight up to Coventry for the £550 UKIPT Main Event a day after my return. In May I'll be playing the £550 CBMPT at Harbourside Bristol and a week later be heading to Dusk Till Dawn for the UKIPT Main. Then just a few weeks later I'll be heading to Vegas with Dan for the first $1k WSOP event as well as a number of Venetian Deepstack events. So all in all its going to be a very busy few months for me. Egypt, UKIPT Cov, CBMPT Brizzle, UKIPT @ DTD and then Vegas for the WSOP and Venetian.

Anyway here is the Screenshot of my FT tonight...

Shipped the PS daily Big Antes

2010-03-24T00:28:00.001-07:00

Took down the daily big antes tourney on Stars. These tourneys definitely suit the more aggressive player. Also the payout structure isn't as harsh as other tourneys.

I was lucky in that my final table was very very soft. Despite suffering 2 bad beats during the final table I still managed to build my stack with the ever so useful 3 bet shove lol. 4 handed it was just a case of raise, raise and raise :D I managed to pick up over half the chips in play without showing down a hand and took it down from there.

2nd for $1.6k - $44 4 MAX

2010-03-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Having finished 4th for about $500 in this tourney last time I played this I was adamant to give this one another shot. When I finished 4th, I made the 4 MAX final table as chip leader. However my AA wasn't a match for Q4s and somehow the table donk managed to wake up with KK when I found AK.

However I made the FT for a 2nd time on the trot and managed a slightly better finish of 2nd. Not much more to say about this one, I went into HU with a 3/1 chip deficit so now qualms really...

Seat @ UKIPT Coventry

2010-02-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

Not much to report on the poker front at all. Made a FT in a 1000+ field only to be coolered with KJ on a KJ8 board Vs 88. And busted deep in endless tourneys after getting it in 60%+ on the flop soo many times.

However a decent result worth a mention is that I've just got a seat in the £550 UKIPT event in Coventry. It'll be my first live event since UKIPT Galway and I already have time booked off work as I'm off on holiday the week before (flying back during Day 1a, so need to get registered for Day 1b).

I've also booked 10 days in Vegas during the first week of the WSOP. I'll be playing the first $1k event and maybe the $1.5k NLHE during the week. Also going to be watching UFC 114 at the MGM Grand as well as checking on the UFC Fan Expo at the Mandalay Bay Event Centre. Going to be staying at the Flamingo for 2 nights then staying at Dan Carters Baller house (which hes renting for 9 weeks during the WSOP) for the remainder of my stay...

My First Poker Tutorial Video

2010-02-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

(part 1 below, parts 2, 3 and 4 can be located from my channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/FezioJnr)

I've finally finished my first poker tutorial video. Basically walking through a recent MTT win showing various hands and discussing them. Its broken down into 4 10min parts.

I'm looking for feedback both positive and negative as I want to make my next one a lot lot better.

The general consensus at the moment seems to be a good video overall however my voice is slightly monotone (i tried to speak clear and slow lol, but obviously over did it). Also people say they would like to see a varied selection of hands, i.e. hands I opt to fold, big lay downs I had to make, and so on.

I made the video for 2 reasons, firstly to help out those looking to get into the game, and gain a general understanding for various plays in poker. Secondly I made it so I could learn a lot more about my game, listening to what people have to say, how they would play certain hands differently, why they didn't like my plays etc...

So take a look if you have a minute or forty lol and I look forward to hearing your feedback. Don't be shy :D if you think its sh*t just say so :D along with some decent criticism I can implement into the next video.

Cheers guys

Recent Results: 2 Final Tables...

2009-12-25T07:51:00.000-08:00

I've had two decent scores in MTTs on Party the past week.

Firstly I made my 2nd consecutive final table in the daily $35k. Unfortunately I couldnt take it down twice in a row :( although that would have been fantastic. I placed 8th for $1.1k. Played fairly ABC up untill the final table where I ran pretty dry.

2 days later I final tabled the $10k $22R on Party and managed a 3rd place finish for $1k. I was average going into the final table and without getting any real hands managed to make it to 3rd place.

Screen shots below...

1st in the $162 Party Daily for $9k

2009-12-18T01:01:00.000-08:00

I won the $162 $35k gtd tourney last night on Party. Its a great daily tourney with 20min blinds and around 200 runners.

I played for 5 hours outlasting 213 players to claim a first prize of $9,450.

I really enjoyed this tourney for a number of reasons, after the first hour I was amoung the chip leaders with around 10k (3k starting) and from here I just chipped up without being overly involved in major preflop allins.

I was always the most active at my table which got me plenty of action when I picked up a solid hand.

May post up some hand histories at some point, but for now heres the screen shot...

Party Poker Million: 52/1573 for $2.6k

2009-12-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

Was really gutted to bust out of this months Party Million. Had an above average stack and got it in with AK vs QQ. Folded to me on the button, I make it 4x BB, aggro bb re-raises and I 4 bet shove. He calls with QQ and I don't improve. Would have seen me chip leader with 50 left and a good chance at first place which was $200k :( Anyway I sattied into this event for about $100 so $2.6k is still a fantastic return...

2nd for $2k on Party Poker

2009-12-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

Finished 2nd out of 162 runners in Party Pokers $30 rebuy yesterday. Shame I couldn't win this one but still a $2k score is always nice...

Poker Stars Steps: Guide

2009-12-02T04:07:00.001-08:00

My journey up the steps.

In order to avoid over use of my bankroll I set aside a certain amount I was willing to invest in the steps. This is a good tip as the rake in these is higher than that of standard STTs so be warned. I set aside $75 which allowed for 10 entries to the $7.50 step 1.

I also devised a strategy before play began, I decided that I’d play out all my step 1s before proceeding to step 2, then all my step 2s and so on.

Step 2 entries are worth $27 therefore you need to be winning one in three step 1s to make it worth your while, otherwise you should be entering directly into step 2. With that said I was looking to win 3 or 4 step 2 tickets from my 10 step 1s.

The challenge got off to a good start and I managed to win 4 tickets to step 2. My general overview of the play in step 1 was that it was fairly weak. However these are turbo events and only top 2 move up so you need to apply a certain strategy to your game which will be explained later.

For me step 2 was my worst step, not because it was a tough step to beat, but simply because the poker gods decided to rain down some nice beats. I quickly flushed 3 tickets down the toilet when my Ks ran into As preflop and my AK wasn’t good enough to beat A4 after getting it in preflop. I refocused and proceeded to use my last $27 ticket, after all, if I made it through I’d have a nice $82 step 3 ticket which would justify my $75 investment. I eventually managed to take it down and moved onwards and upwards to step 3.

Step 3 is the best step in my opinion, it pays top 5 of the 9 players and pays them well. There’s no business of moving down a step or 2, the top 5 players are guaranteed another crack at step 3 with the top 2 moving up to the $215 step 4. The standard of play defiantly increases at this point and you also have the option of registering to a non-turbo version which is a plus for most.

I finished in 3rd, 4th, 3rd and 5th in my first 4 attempts at this step, I lost endless 60/40s and didn’t run well at all. With that said the beauty of these things is that despite the bad beats you can return over and over again off the back of one ticket. If I had my way I’d jump right into the system at step 3, the play is a lot higher than the previous steps and I’m sure you’ll understand when I say its a lot easier to play better players than weak unpredictable players who don’t have a clue. It also give you the freedom to tighten up slightly when playing the non-turbo. As this step pays top 5 you’ll often get a lot of players looking to creep into the top 5 before opening up their play, this is easily exploitable and allows you to be the table aggressor.

I won both step 4 and 5 at my first attempts. Again these are full of nitty players who turn the game into a folding fest. I started to think “I’m only going to gain chips here if we get two monsters allin preflop“. It got to the point where people were simply raising with premiums and AQ-AJ. I ended up mixing things up and calling people out of position with air with the intention of check raising raggy flops, this worked 75% of the time and was a profitable play of mine, in turn it allowed me to accumulate lots of chips.

When I finally got around to playing a step 6 I decided to opt for a UKIPT qualifier. The main reason being the main event was in Galway so I could just take 2 days off work if I won as appose to a whole week. The morning before I played my step 6 I actually looked at flights for Ireland during the dates of the UKIPT, they were only about £1 each so I ended up booking about 6 different flights there and back in anticipation that I’d win a seat. The reason I booked 6 was because I could get a decent cheap flight home depending on what day I busted.

So the step 6 began and once again it was a nice nitty table, 75% of the time the original raise would be taking down the blinds. I recognised one player “Spraggs” who is a young UK online pro. So 9 players with top 5 places being paid, 4th-5th got $2,100 and 1st-3rd got the $4.5k UKIPT package. To cut a long story short I picked up AA, KK, KK and KK all within the first hour which got my stack up to about 10k. With 27k in play this was more than enough to see me into a seat so I just used my stack to pressure those on the bubble which worked to good effect. That was that and I took down the package.

Not really to much enlightening information however I’ll now try and provide a few tips which my help…

Useful Tips.

Do’s...

...Keep your range very tight in the first 3 levels. Avoid playing A-rag, however set mining is always good if you can get in cheap. Once blinds hit 50/100 at least 30% of the table will be in the 10 BB range. Therefore you need to be picking up blinds as often as possible in position.

...Exploit the bubble. When I say bubble I mean each stage. For example in Step 4 there is almost a continuous bubble (6th - step 2; 4th-5th - step 3; 3rd - step 4; 1st-2nd - step 5). When the game is 9 handed some people (believe it or not) are thinking “right, I’ve gotten this far on $7.50 I want to go away with at least a step 2 ticket”, and so on. Therefore exploit this way of thinking.

...Keep notes at all times. There are a large number of Step grinders who seem to exclusively play these, keep an eye out for them, those are the players you should probably be looking to avoid.

...Use database tools during the higher steps. During Step 5 and 6 for example you can view the records of the 8 players your up against. Keep an eye on those who regularly play the big $500+ games and pressure those who are the micro grinders. The micro grinders will be the tightest and the easiest to bully around. The only reason I’m saying this is because they obviously grinded up (on a budget) from step 1 so they wont be looking to go out to early.

Don’t…

...Play the steps to make money. If you’re a solid STT player then its more worth your while playing in STTs that payout cash. The rake is higher in the steps and tickets are worthless. Unless you make it to step 4 where you can use your ticket to enter any $215 MTT, the tickets have no cash value and are non-exchangable.

...Play one table at a time (At step 1 and 2). If you really want to push your want up the steps you need to grind these. $7.50 a pop is very expensive in my opinion and bankrolls could diminish very quickly without you realising. You want to be jumping in with at least 10 buyins at the first step and just grind away. Just playing “one now and again” is money down the drain, play a normal STT if you feel like a one-off 9 man tourney.

...Make reckless, unnecessary, unjustified plays. Keep it ABC in the early stages and mix it up later on.

Hope some of the information here helps.

Tom

$4.5k Package x2

2009-11-27T01:02:00.000-08:00

Took down my 2nd $4.5k UKIPT Galway package last night. This was again in the Steps tourneys on Stars. Invested in 5x $27 Step 2s and worked my way up again. As I alread have a package to the Main Event I was given the $4.5k in cash.

$4.5k UKIPT Galway Package

2009-11-21T03:18:00.000-08:00

This week I climbed from Step 1 to 6 to win a $4.5k package to the Irish Poker Championship in December. This is a very popular event with the likes of Vicky Coren, Andy Black and even Teddy Sheringham already registered. This will be my biggest live event to date with the buyin set at €2,000...

4th for $760 (500 players)

2009-11-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

Took $760 for a 4th place finish out of 500 players in the daily $22 6 MAX on Stars...

Interview with thenutz.tv

2009-11-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

Here is my interview after being knocked out in 4th of the £550 Main Event - Coral British Masters Poker Tour...

£6,250 - 4/150 Croal British Masters...

2009-10-26T15:07:00.001-07:00

Final Table Results As Follows...

Total Runners: 150

1st.....£13,500.....John Gardner
2nd.....£20,000....Richard Lewis
3rd.....£16,500.....Chris Brice
4th.....£6,250.......Tom Piccirilli
5th.....£4,200......Adrian Pound
6th.....£3,050......Trevor Pearson
7th.....£2,350......Ady Eaton
8th.....£1,900.......Neil Blatchly
9th.....£1,600.......India Storrar

This is quick TR of my experience at the British Masters this past weekend. I havent proof read it or spell checked it so sorry for the errors or if some of it doesnt make sense, enjoy...

Right then time for the Trip Report. First of thanks to everyone for the railage, my brother took loads of screen shots of the chat and it was class loads of my mates were in the chat as well as the PCUK forum members (who are also mates ). Some people I havent spoken to for 2 years said they saw my facebook status and watched it last night haha.

I arrive on the Saturday and see 140 odd people are registered, I have an empty seat next to me and who comes to sit down??? none other than Matt Dale aka Mango Fish This was the most fun/entertaining table I've played at ever, Matt can talk for England and could even make the Queen laugh. He was the most active player at the table picking up quads, top two pairs and also trying a few unfortunate bluffs which seemed to always be called (to my knowledge). After almost 2 hours (i think) Matt looses a big pot, getting it in on the turn with top 2, he was up against a flush draw, gut short straight draw or 2 cards for the guy to hit trips, which he did. Matt was down to about 400 and although managed to double up didnt last to much longer which was a shame. The table went dead when he left, although I was able to focus and stop talking to Matt haha! We had many detailed convos about endless topics...Mad Marty, Gloucester Road, iPhone Fifa, The Christmas Party haha ! But when he left I got to work.

At the first break Matt Dale emerges from the smoking area with a friend ... the one PCUK vetern and future Hulkamaniac Lucky Scrote. Got chatting with Dan for a good while and hes a top lad, easy going and easy to chat to Also got to know Tom Fielding over the weekend to which was nice, again a v cool lad Also met Paddy, Rod, Drago Judi (Im sending to your £50 dont worry ) and Toby over the weekend too, also great guys a great mix of people on the PCUK forums

Back to the poker... for the first 4 hours or so nothing really happened I was maybe at 13k from the original 10k. I eventually moved tables where I got involved with a bigish pot...

Im in the bb with J10 and its folded around to the button who makes it about 1000 (blinds 200/400/25 - i think, there or there abouts anyway). I call as I fancied seeing a flop, flop comes JA6 and I check, the button bets out 1500. I think for a while, an A is defo within his range although he could have a medium pair, KQ, etc... so I decided to just call and see how he plays the turn. Regardless of the turn card I was always gona check it back to him, so I check in the dark. The turn is a J and Imake 3ofakind. He bets out 9k which has me covered. Its a strange one as I could obv have the J and have him beat so why is he putting me all in? I cant put him on AJ/KJ as why would he bet that amount? I'm never folding here so make the call within a few miliseconds and he turns over A9, river is a blank and I take down a 20k ish pot.

To be honest I really cant remember anymore major hands from day one, due to the blind structure I really tried to enforce pot control, I avoided putting myself in horrible situations as there was no need. I was never allin (bar the J10) and just small balled. I built up to about 60k on day one however lost 3 medium sized pots and got blinded away abit to end the day on 30k with the average at about 50k.

Day 2

My plan for the start of day 2 was just to settle in and not do anything rash to early. I wanted to get a feel for my table and see who the blind stealers were/tight players, etc... after 2 hours I pick up AK on the button blinds are roughly 2000/4000 and I have about 40k so I shove. the big blind calls with 1010. Now... obv this is a standard race so AK > 1010 isnt that major. However the way I won the pot was very cruel lol... flop comes down 6 10 2 and the guy fist pumps his trip 10s and Im getting my hoody heading for the exit however the turn is a Q and river is a J I didnt really fancy saying sorry as I was allin Pre, it would have been a different story if I moved in on the flop after he slow played and I hit that lol that would have been a complete sickner but AK > 1010 AIPF isnt major anyone wana work out the odds of me winning on the flop? haha!

Thats takes me to about 100k, I then small ball and make it to the FT with about 130k. In the whole tourney (prior to the Final Table) I was AIPF once which I'm happy with. Theres no real need to get busy in these tourneys unless your Blachly lol. He ended Day 1 on 160k and he said he had pocket Aces 10 times in Day one, most of them were shown down as well.

Anyway at the FT I pick up Aces twice in the first 10 hands or so, although I only pick up the blinds and antes its still a nice boost to the stack. The first major hand of the FT was when it was folded around to India in the sb who moves allin, I'm in the bb and think to myself "please just once have a good hand to call with" ... AK ... Call. She shows K8s, the board runs dry and she busts out, that was a nice boost to my stack.

Blatchly starts getting short so shoves allin a number of times. He then raises about 3.5 times the bb from under the gun"ish", Adrian Pound thinks for ages before folding. When he raised I actually sneaked a look at my cards and see 1010, as people were making their decisions I was thinking how I would play the hand (assuming it was folded to me in middle position). I thought about folding but then thought no, I can't give him that much respect. I thought about calling but hes nearly always shoving the flop and its always gona be a hard call if any over card hits. So I decide to raise (if it folds around) just over double his raise. Anyway its folded around to me and I pretend to look at my cards and instantly put a 50k stack in. He thinks for a while but once he starts thinking I know hes folding because if he shoves I have to call (pot committed) so he lets them go.

There is a flurry of bust outs and we are quickly down to the final five with a minimum of £4k for the next bust out. At this point I had achieved above and beyond my expectations, qualifying for $5 and I greaful for the experience and the chance to meet some forum members and play my first tourney above a £200 buyin. So I realx although keeping in mind there is a £2k pay jump for the next bust out.

One key hand played out which I feel I played like a donk but it was the right fold as the ripper told me what he had, and he assured me he had no reason to lie and he 100% had the hand he said he had. Anway I'm in the sb and ripper is in the bb, its folded round (not sure of the blinds maybe about 8k/16k. I looked down at KK and limp from the sb. He checks and the flop comes down 668 with 2 diamonds. I check and he bets 30k. Now ive been sitting with him for about 4 hours and everytime hes bet into a pot and showed down hes had the hand. He bet big into a pot earlier and a guy moved over allin he insta called with trips. So he doesnt like to slow play. Theres every chance he has a 6 or even an 8. I call and decide to re evaluate on the turn. The turn is a rag and I check, he moved allin. There is 2 diamonds out so I can only assume he has a 6 and thinks im fishing for a flush, so hes happy to take the pot here and now. I think for a while and fold my kings. I bump into him outside the toilets at the break and asked him what he had he said A6, I said "I can only hope you did, but it was a fantastic bet all the same" I tell him i folded Ks and he cant believe it, I just said great play even if he was bluffing but im 90% sure he had A6. The way hes been playing all day, the reason he had 600k at that point was because he was betting his big hands hard and no one was believeing him so they were moving allin over the top and getting called.

Anyway Adrian Pound busts out in 5th, he was allin with 66 and gets called by 55, river brings a 5 lol. It was so nearly going 3 handed as John had like 2 bbs but he kept doubling up. I pick up KQ on the button and shove, get called by 6s and bust. GG.

CBMPT Day 1

2009-10-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick update as its 3.30am (4.30am technically). I just finished Day 1 of the Coral British Masters Poker Tour £500 ME @ The Harbourside. 150 runners, 30 left, average stack about 50,000 and I have 30,800. Blinds will be 1000/2000/200 (i think) when play resumes tomorrow. I'll do a proper TR when the tourney is over. fyi I won a £50 last longer I had going with Matt Dale and other members of the Poker.co.uk crew. Although If I cash that will be handed to the player to bust before me (who didnt cash) which was Judi.

Nite.

Back2Back PCUK Forum Game Wins

2009-10-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Every week the very kind MD of PCUK holds a €150 value added tourney for it's regular forum posters. I've only been playing the weekly game 3 weeks and have taken it down twice over the past 2 weeks, cashing for €230...

(click image to enlarge)

Good Game.

UKSPC 2009 - Broadway Casino, Birmingham

2009-10-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

(Me in the white, 2nd from left)

UKSPC 2009

This report is long overdue, however I thought I'd quickly blog bout my experience at this years UKSPC.

This was a 2 day event held at The Broadway in Birmingham, you started with a stack of 10k on a one hour clock so plenty of room for lots of play.

The tourney had a buyin of £33, however the sponsors BetFred added a WSOP Main Event Seat for the winner, which generated a huge overlay and was more than an added incentive to play.

Play started at around 2pm on a Thursday afternoon.

I was somewhat card dead for the few first hour so played like a nit. I picked up one hand from the button and I flopped the nut straight with J10s, the flop came down AQK with the BB having AQ, so I won a decent sized pot.

One hand of note was when I picked up 44 in late position. MP made it 3x bb and I called, everyone folds. Flop comes down 10 5 8, the guy bets the pot. This guy had been playing weak throughout so I wanted to test his hand with my 4s, I put in a 2.5x raise and he tanks. Finally he folds and shows K10. I rake the pot and show him one of my 4s lol. He looks sick and we move onto the next hand :D

After this hand I stayed quiet for a while and after 6 hours of play I finally move tables :( At this point I have about 15k, which is below average, blinds are about 600/1200 (roughly).

First hand at my new table I pick up AK on the BB. UTG makes it 2800 to go, its folded around and I shove my 15k. He tanks for ages before finally folding, he tells me he folded QQ.

After 20mins at this new table I get moved again :(

I have about 20k at this point and after a few hands at my 3rd table I pick up AJs on the button, its folded around to me so make a standard 3x bb raise, the bb shoves for like 20k (I have 15k behind). I figure although his range is fairly wide here, theres a good chance I'm either a small dog against 22-1010 or a big dog against AK or AQ. I decide to fold.

Later in the day I have about 18k with blinds at 750/1500 and I pick up JJ. UTG makes it 3x BB and I make the shove. A guy behind me moved allin over the top, everyone including the original raiser folds and my Js are up against AK. The flop brings all blanks, so does the turn BUT the Ace spikes the river and I'm gone.

All in all a good experience and I feel I played a good solid game. I didnt show down many hands and took lots of pots I wasn't entitled to. Just a shame my Js didn't hold up as that would have seen me into the second day.

Good Game.

Weekend of relaxation

2009-10-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Absolute SPA Hotel - Limerick, Ireland

I spent this weekend with the girlfriend, I flew to Ireland on Friday after work and we spent the weekend at the Absolute Spa Hotel in Limerick City. It was a very nice stay however the "extras" were a little pricey. It was €12.50 for breakfast so €50 for the both of us over to days, and it was €25 each for one hours use of the Spa haha. Didn't mind too much as it was only a 2 day stay, however I wouldn't stay there any longer than that. I arrived home on Sunday so decided to hit the virtual felt for the evening...

Pokerwise

Due to the weekend trip I didn't play much poker this weekend, however I did manage to squeeze in a four hour session this evening.

My schedule consisted of 3 tourneys, results shown below: -

1. €150 - €100k on Poker.co.uk. This tourney saw 698 runners and I was gutted to only last an hour and a half. Busted in 464th place after coming over the top of a big pre flop raise with AKs. We ended up getting it AIPF and I was up against AQo, needless to say the board brought a Q .

2. €22 deepstack on Poker.co.uk. Finished in 27th place out of 260 for a €32.20 cash. Would have liked to have pushed for the final table in this one :( I made a squeeze play with KQs and got called by 1010, the board ran dry and I busted.

3. $5R on Coral. This was a sub satty to the $80 direct satty to the Coral Masters. This tourney saw 18 runners and I managed to take this one down within 2 hours...

GSOP III - Event 1: $200 NLHE

2009-09-27T14:45:00.001-07:00

The first event of the GSOP III was the $200 buyin NLHE event, which drew a total of 2,241 players, I finally busted out after 4 hours of play in 757th place.

Nothing really major to report from this one, you started with a 5k stack on a 20min clock so plenty of room for lots of play. First hour I managed to chip up to 10k winning lots of small pots. The next 2 hours I was card dead and had around 6k at the third break.

I busted just short of the fourth break, i had around 4k with blinds at 200/400/40. UTG raises to 1200, it's folded around and I shove my 4k from the Button with AKs, UTG calls and shows AKo (with a diamond). Board brings 4 diamonds and I hit the rail, GG.

I also managed 6th out of 24 players in the $80 CBMPT satty, with top 2 getting paid. I busted again with AKs AIPF vs A10s and of course, A10 hits the flush... GG. :P

2 solid games of poker on my part, however unable to really gather chips tonight. I got my money in good in both tourneys but it was just the right move at the wrong time.

Ciao for now.

The Grand Series of Poker III

2009-09-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Today marks the start of the Grand Series of Poker III, an online poker festival running on the OnGame Network. It consists of 16 events ending with a big high roller $5,000 buyin NLHE event.

I doubt I'll be playing many of these events due to work, however I'm going to be playing Event 1, the $200 buyin NLHE Deepstack which has a guarentee of $350,000.

Event 1 kicks of today at 7pm GMT, with a starting stack of $5k and a 20 minute clock.

I'm also playing the $80 buyin direct Coral British Masters Poker Tour satellite, although I've already won a seat I've been told that if I win a second seat I can register for the £220 side event and recieve the rest of the money in expenses.

So today (27/9/09) I'll be playing the following online tourneys: -

6pm GMT - $80 British Masters Qualifier.

7pm GMT - $200 GSOP Event 1 - $350,000gtd Hold'em NL.

This should keep me busy this evening, the outcome of these events will be posted upon completion.

$3,796 (13% ROI) = Poker Stars Shark

2009-09-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

After 1,729 games on Poker Stars, profiting $3,796 (£2,300 approx.) I'm officially a Poker Stars Shark, for now at least.

These stats cover both SnG and MTT's. Not really mind blowing stats but good enough for now at least.

The graph below indicates my profit trend...

$1,050 British Masters Package

2009-09-19T05:05:00.000-07:00

I took down the weekly $80 satellite on Coral Poker to bag my first package to the Coral British Masters Poker Tour. I have chosen to play the final leg in Bristol at the end of Oct.

These events have a starting stack of 10,000 on a 1 hour clock so plenty of room for pre and post flop play.

The package includes £550 entry to the Main Event and £175 for hotel.

The screen shot below is of my satellite win.