Big Deal in a Box

1/12

2011-01-02T09:47:00.002Z

Well another new year, thought I would have a nother crack at the blog thing.

I have had a hard year or two as I have just finished getting divorced and the blog has kind of been kicked to the kerb. I won't go on about the comings and goings of the last 18 months as it isn't really inspirational or even that interesting, but will move forward with the poker side of things.

I have found the game that I feel I am a sure winner at. My Omaha Hi/Lo stats (I will link/post them in a later blog) are pretty good at both SNGs and MTTs, so will be focusing online mainly at these. I think I am probably a winning player at NLHE MTTs, but havent had a top place success in that over the last year really.

So my main online games will be the $16 NLO8 (18 man SNGs on Stars) and I aim to play 300 of these a month. That will be my only target I think, not going to bother with win rates or a certain $profit, just to play a min of 300 SNGs a month.
I will however also play a fair few MTTs, either the N/PLO8 games or the evening thousand of entry NLHE games ( $3r, $40kgtee and sunday $1/4 Million) looking for a big win as these all pay 10k+ for first.
I will also of course play any +EV opportunities that arise in leagues or specials.

AS far as live goes, I am not travelling for any standard evening game. So looking mainly at the £100-£150 range or there abouts. I have thoughts about the PokerSatrs UK tour games @£500 a pop and try to get some staking, but getting out of work is just too awkward to make these realistic.
Will also play a local Wednesday league and run some of our local tour games too.

First post back and boring as hell, all about me...............nothing changes then !

New Year = New Opportunities

2010-01-08T17:22:00.002Z

No updates for a while, but got a few big issues going on at the moment. Some of you know what I am on about.

I will put up the monthly and yearly figures later, but nothing to write home about, pretty even in Nov and slight profit in Dec due to winning a local pub league comp.

The next live event on the calendar is the APAT UK Team Championships in Manchester on 23rd Jan. I have put the team together based on results, but every man and his horse wanted to play and have complained about this and that or suggested "better ways" to pick. Having said that, the way I chose probably isn't the best way of getting a team , but it is definitely a fair way of picking it as I have based it on our local Tour and league winners. I rest my case and if we come away from the w/end with more than hangovers it will have been more than worth it.

And the other exciting news is that I have put down a deposit for VEGAS baby!!! Next October for Salmon's 40th. As good as an excuse as any.

My Mate can Play (2)

2009-11-22T10:16:00.003Z

A couple of months ago I did a post when a mate of mine scooped the B'pool £100 for the lot http://bigdealinabox.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-mate-can-play.html
Well now my other mate ( I know, I know, I have 2 Mates !! )can play too as he phoned me from the BoylePoker "Sponsor a Pro" comp in Dublin last night trying to be cool.
Mate~ "oh I'm in Dublin"
Me~ "How d'ya get on?"
Mate~ "Oh yeh I won it"
AS cool as you like and very matter of fact. Then got all excited and asked me to stick it on the FurnessPoker forum.
Great Prize for Daz, a 10,000 Euro deal to play in any tourneys he likes I think. Wonder what he will play ???
Unfortunately being a Sponsored player does have it's downside. Look at this hoody he had to wear !!

Here is his story

October 'horror' Accounts

2009-11-07T14:33:00.002Z

Accounts for September
PokerPlex : up $140
PokerStars: down $320
Bwinpoker: up $50
Playing live: down $640
In total for playing down $770
Bonus this month of $20 and pokerplex rakeback of $20.
So -$730 for the month.

and +$3760 for the year.

CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA...............

2009-10-30T16:19:00.003Z

..........In the words of Liam.

And also in the words of Pokerstars support who sent me a email letting me know I have finally got there. Not that it means much except I get 5 little red stars next to my icon and I earn FPP's (rakeback equivalent) 50% quicker. Having seen my form there in cash recently though might not be worth having after all....probably even detrimental.
Still got 3 freerolls at Stars this Saturday, the $100k, $75k & $30k, although it will be Robo who is playing them for 50% as I swoop out and take on the B'pool £100 monthly game. Let's hope it is no horrow show for me at the tables this Halloween ~ GOD my blog is lame.

Live hand history or two I promise next post.

Try and get lucky guys, JON

Runner, Runner , Quads !! Nice...........NOT

2009-10-25T10:16:00.004Z

Been running like a dog recently and this hand sums it up.

Also have played the comp in Ireland and the APAT, but unlikely to report much on them as they have been pretty dull without any hands of great interest and sadly no success to report either. Although Ireland was a great, if expensive w/end.

September Accounts

2009-10-15T20:02:00.003+01:00

Accounts for September
PokerPlex : up $140
PokerStars: down $650
Boylepoker: up $40
Playing live: down $50
In total for playing down $520
Bonus this month of $30 and pokerplex rakeback of $30, also $100 bonus at Stars
So -$360 for the month.

and +$4490 for the year.

2 Months running Losses .....First time ever I think. Have been playing well though, especially live so not overly concerned and still think I have a big payday coming soon LOL!

Could be this weeend too as I'm off to Dublin for the IPO with HoneyM, Sneaks,Trainglot and the monster that is Devileperch. Should be good and we might even win a buck or two!! Full report promised for next write-up.

Hoping to be lucky, very very lucky Jon.

The Yo-Yo run continues

2009-09-27T19:48:00.002+01:00

Been a while since the last update and it has been a mixed one on the real and virtual felt with some long nights.
First off, I had the 2 WCOOP games lined up. Unfortunately had to withdraw from the $320 PLO8 as I was just too knackered from work and couldn't really even start let alone last the near 14 hours that the tourney actually lasted.
Lesson learnt so went to bed early and had the alarm blast me into action at 1am for the $215 NLO8 game. I started slow but after the second break started to make a move up the leaderboard, only to get it all-in with AA23 and get called by some donkey with KKJ9 who flopped a King and even scooped when the board paired and was Hi only ~ 5 hours for nowt !
Next day I was free so popped away for the w/end starting with a trip to the new G at Coventry. What a wonderful Casino - like a small Vegas Casino on the inside and situated so close to the M6 and inside the Ricoh Stadium itself - it is sure to become a very popular venue for big festivals/games. So it was a shock to realise that they had only 8 turn up for the £200 game that I fancied and 4 of them had satellited in ! Anyway they delayed it a little and eventuall we got going with 14 players. It was great to play so deep (15k stack, 25/50 start, 30 min clock) with only 7 at the table. Usually the only time you get to play short handed is at the business end of a tourney when there is so little play left. The standard of play was appalling, especially for a £200 game, and I mean "really, really bad" so I fancied a good cash. Everything was going OKish, a few bad beats by shortstacks but on course and then I got AA when 6 handed and managed to get it all in against JJ and QQ.........happy days or so I thought.
The Board came
2
3
2
6
.
.
.
.
.
.
J

D'oh. top 3 paid and I lose on such a sucker river card for best part of half the chips in play. So with the previous night's bad beat and a tragic week on cash at Stars I was feeling as though my poker bankroll was doomed to dwindle away on DONK beat after beat. Anyway enough of the loser talk and stick with getting your chips in with the best of it.

This has taken me a while , I will save the rest ( and better stuff) for next post soon.

Stay lucky

Long Live Keith Floyd

2009-09-15T18:23:00.005+01:00

. Keith Floyd RIP

Just got home from work to find that Keith Floyd has died. I love charachters of life and he was certainly one. I have such vivid memories from uni days of watching his afternoon show and making whatever he was cooking with whatever we had in the house ( NOT MUCH ! ) whilst drinking as much wine, beer or anything else toxic we had lying around...........and the food always tasted great .......Great Days !

Oh and Patrick Swayze has also died , let me tell you how all the girls used to think I was just like him LOL !

Poker has been a bit crap recently, on Stars at least, so I will skip that until the next entry, when I should have a report or two on my big WCOOP games coming up and progress on the local Poker Tour.

Stay Lucky Geezers

WCOOP off and running

2009-09-05T08:39:00.000+01:00

Pokerstars' World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) has started. It is the online equivalent of the World Series of Poker and has a bracelet for the winner of each event WSOP style.

As I have mentioned here previously, I had targeted 3 events and had already satellited into 2 of them. The 3rd one was starting at 1am last night so I entered a last minute 50 seat g'tee satellite. And hey presto I was in.......

So I had managed to sat into all 3 tourneys, $644 of entries, for less than $150. Now I had to cash !? Which wasn't going to be easy as many of the world's best live and online players are also in. In the later stages of this one I had previous WSOP Main Event winners Joe Hachem and Tom McEvoy at my table at the same time , and it was only a 6 seater table !!!!

Anyway I made the cash and then laddered myself up rather than really go for it and ended up 134th for $240.. ........................

............................................... so all-in-all a good start , here's hoping to stay Lucky for the next two.

August accounts

2009-09-02T20:11:00.000+01:00

Accounts for August
PokerPlex : down $160
PokerStars: down $50
Boylepoker: up $90
Playing live: down $490
In total for playing down $610
Bonus this month of $40 and pokerplex rakeback of $50, also $200 bonus at Stars
So -$320 for the month.

and +$4850 for the year.

So not a good month, although I have qualified for $545 worth of Stars WCOOP entries, I don't count these as I can't liquidate them. Also have $400+ of FPPs too that if I do cash will include in Sept figures.

Right off to earn my extra chips on Boyle for the Irish IPO tourney. Stay Lucky guys !

Live dive

2009-08-30T20:05:00.000+01:00

So after the Omaha I had the APAT main event on Friday and The B'pool monthly £100er on Saturday. No good in either as far as cashing goes, but some good hands and I do feel I am becoming a better player at the moment, I can actually feel my NLHE live game changing and becoming more LAG and positional.
The APAT game had a mixed starting table with a very good young Irish lad that was raising in position 80% of the time and continuation betting almosty 100%. The table to his left were weak/tight and just folding him a big chip lead. He did venture out of position a couple of times to take me on and we had a few clashes including one where I 4-bet him all-in with just an overpair of JJ on a 3,6,10 board. I would never do that against anyone else when we are playing so deep and was very pleased with myself. Had to endure a 3 minute stare down though !
But the game was never going to be mine and I had my chips in on pre-flops all-ins 4 times and didn't win one of them. I lost with AK v A8, AQ v 99, AQ v J5 and also QQ v 77 when the flop came down 977 for quads. Still I had played fairly well and wasn't too unhappy.
Next day I drive up to Blackpool and arrive a few minutes later to find KK in my first hand. I limp in from mid-pos, it gets raised by guy to my left to 200 and 2 others call. For some reason I decide not to raise it up as I feel it still needs a bit of pot control here. Anyway the flop comes down A high and when the SB bets I can get away, which is just as well as it goes raise, re-raise , re-raise , all-in , call !!!! guy on my left had AA and SB had AK !! I had got away with KK v AK v AA on my first hand and only lost 200 chips..........Phil Helmuth or Phil Iver would have lost a lot more there me thinks. I was well chuffed with myself and then played nicely and got my stack upto 30k and thought I was in for a good run as the table was fairly weak, but a couple of mis-timed raises and then card dead for hours meant I left in about 50th/195, when I pushed in a BB v SB battle with KQ and he called with A4.
So my live casino record is now blank for 9 games and over £600 of entries. It also means I am probably going to have to post a loss for August as online has been a bit downhill the last 10 days or so.

Good news though is that I have qualified for the second of my 3 target games on Pokerstars WCOOP and that is the $320 PLO Hi/Lo, so just the $109 8-game to qualify for now. Looking forward to these.

Also was impressed with a packed DTD last week so Sneaks and I now considering going for the monthly £300 deepstack in October, should be good!

Stay Lucky Punks, I haven't been.

Omaha is a game for Luckboxes

2009-08-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

Played the APAT Omaha champs last night at DTD and as you can probably tell from the title I didn't win. Quite enjoyed myself though, here are some of the highlights and my ultimate demise.

Arrived almost 2 hours late due to a delay in Barrow that I could do little about. Stack had whittled down to 8600 from the starting 10k, so not too much damage. I then get KK45 in mid position with 2 limpers, I elect to limp and we get 7 see the flop of 29K...BINGO, I bet the pot and some guy in late position says "where did he come from". I gave it the "got to get my chips" back line hoping he had a smaller set and would call, but they all folded and I was back to level after 1 hand. LOL

Cruise along to the break without much action, but I have clocked the Holdem players and tight players at the table. Then first hand after the break I get A J 10 10 (with the Ace suited in clubs and see an all club flop, giving me the nut straight. guy bets and I elect to call in position as does the SB, pot wasn't big enough to warrant repopping it and I wanted to stear clear of the FH arriving on the turn or river this early. Turn is a blank and same guy comes out betting 2100 so I choose to take the poyt down here and repop it putting me all-in, SB dwells and elects to call for value as he is short stacked, he has trips and blanks the river so I am up to 19k and looking good against what I consider a fairly poor table.

I am now calling in position against raisers as they are all raising with big hands only and I'm looking to take them down, I don't hit anything else but do push a number of players off pots, some are real weak and playing Omaha without a clue really. I'm feeling comfortable, but then run trips into a guy who slowplayed the top set very well and also one hand where i bet the Nut flush draw on the flop only to get re-raised by a short stack that has me priced in to call and I blank out the turn/river leaving me back to my original 10k stack size.
So two hours of picking my spots, people folding way too much to pre-flop raises and although I don't connect with any flops I am holding steady. However when the blinds go to 600-1200 I have to start making a move and yo-yo a bit but never get above 16k. Then with 11k behind this hand comes up where I sense a moment to steal from a limper and he was a nice guy ( ended up 3rd too ) and said I am putting you all-in just hoping to get lucky. I replied "I raised hoping to get lucky", but when he turned them over I could see I was in good shape.

The flop brought him an 8 but also me a Q so it looked real good with me over 80% favourite.

The turn was a blank and left me in great shape now, just got to dodge a J or an 8.

You know what happened next, I can't post it cause it is sick (and hendon mob calc won't let me put up the river). Yep BOOM 8 of hearts, groans and sighs all round "unlucky", "well played mate" etc. But instead of sitting there with above average in a field I really fancied playing against I was on my toes and going home.

Oh well today brings the NLHE main event, so lets hop I am back Sunday for the final. Probably popping to Blackpool for the monthly £100er on Saturday too....MAD FOR IT !!

By the way Barrow Rugby playing at home on Sunday just a point needed to secure the title , hope they have the trophy up ready. 15 years going to almost every home game and we are now going to win something.

WCOOP, GUKPT and APAT

2009-08-17T23:11:00.000+01:00

Full of acronyms and all poker !!

First of have noticed that Pokerstars have their annual World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) coming up and has 45 events in total all at highish buy-ins.
Well the main event is a bit out of my price range @ $5200 with a $10 MILLION g'tee ! However there are 3 events that I like the look of. The $109 8-game (event 5), the $320 PLO Hi/Lo (event35) and the $215 NLO Hi/Lo (event40).
Well I played a couple of satellites today. One was an impulsive mad $2 rebuy to the $215 RAZZ event and bloody bubbled, but then went and played a $39 sat to the NLO8 game and BINGO

so in one of them now, will try a few more at the other two. Fingers crossed.

Also Blue Square now have a betting market up for the APAT World champs @ DTD on bank hol w/end and I have been priced at 150-1, and although I feel I am probably way above average in this field, there are going to be 300+ runners so not great value, but feel free to have a punt here if you like.

Now GUKPT have added a late mini-date to their schedule and it is at there new Coventry casino and has just a £300 entry. It is on the Saturday after APAT and I might get tempted down to that, it will all hang on if they are using their main event schedule or something similar. I am not getting temoted into a crapshoot like the Manchester £100er.

So updating like mad and giving all you readers some great value the last couple of weeks. The general grind has been a general grind. Gone about 10 tourneys without a cash until the sat win and the cash graph has done all the usual yo-yo stuff as I burn my way to Supernova. No hands saved to pick on, will try and find a juicy one or two for next time.

Stay Lucky.

Had to change....another MTT in the bag

2009-08-14T23:15:00.000+01:00

Just finished a 204 runner MTT as top dog again, no deals this time just straight take down.

It is a strange one as it is $5 entry and rebuy (1k chips)and then $25 for an add-on (5k chips). I had entry and add-on for $30 so $680 profit and always nice to actually win them. I knew I was due one and feel there is more to come !

Not much else to report, apart from Barrow rugby's marvellous win against Widnes last night, live on SKY too. Puts them top of the table now with 3 games left. C'mon the Raiders !! Sad I Know , but do love watching it.

Stay lucky like me guys.

Hand replayer trial

2009-08-13T13:47:00.000+01:00

Ok Robo sent me this link to replay hands , so posting up a hand (very boring hand at that) just to see if it works.

here goes

Oh that is beautiful !!!!

get ready for death by PLO8 hand analysis.

Tourney downswing

2009-08-12T11:15:00.000+01:00

Poker is such a game of variance. I have done OK in tourneys this year and played a fair few online and live. However the last few weeks I have been getting deepish but just not cashing deep, either just falling short of the bubble or busting out early into the cash places, not cashed in a live (local or casino game for last 14 times!). In basics this post is just a moan at 'my bad luck' that I seem to be getting in tourneys at the moment. I say 'bad luck' because I do think that I am running bad in the later stages of tourneys and it isn't just poor play/strategy from me. I feel as though I am playing well but just not getting the rub of the green, a big one is due !!

Anyway enough of the whinging, onto when I am going to get another nice score. I have a few things lined up including getting a seat for the PLO at the APAT festival at the end of the month at DTD. I was in for the main event on the Friday 28th and now have got a seat in the PLO on the Thursday, thru just catching a guy selling his seat on Blonde at the right time. He also has a HORSE seat available for the Sunday which I would love to play too, but not sure if I can blag time off for that one as well.

Playing a lot of cash at Pokerstars, trying to get those points for Supernova status. About 7,000 to go now and also taking advantage of a rare Pokerstars bonus of $300. Most games have been Omaha Hi/Lo but mainly No Limit as opposed to my usual Pot Limit stuff. This is the normal game spread at Stars these days and I think is the only site that really does it, but it does mean there is a lot of chance to push on boards where you think you can 3/4 someone. I have been using the Hendon Mob calculator to work out and annalyse these situations afterwards and thin I have a bit of work to do there, but potentially a very profitable game if I can get my head round it properly as I'm sure many players are making -EV calls or folds when faced with such a big bet relative to the pot. I will try and get some examples up for next time.

Could do with someway to display hands well in this blog. Ideally be able to put the Pokerstars replayer or similar into the post, but no idea how. If anyone has some good suggestions how to display hands more visually please get in touch or leave a comment down below.

Stay Lucky Folks

July accounts

2009-08-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

Accounts for July
PokerPlex : up $320
PokerStars: up $850
Full Tilt : up $80
Playing live: down $330 (although this was saved big style by my mates 5% for $410)
In total for playing up $920
Bonus this month of $40 and pokerplex rakeback of $50
So +$1010 for the month.

and +$5170 for the year.

In short ~ a very good month online coupled with a disaster live (not one cash at all in 5 casino and 5 local events, plus a heavy drop on a dealers choice cash game).

Hoping to make August a month when I really hammer it online, would really like to get Supernova status and they have just brought in a bonus special this month to give me that little encouragement.

As for live I have registered for the APAT PLO game on the 27th, but unsure if I will be able to make that and similarly for the Blackpool £100 monthly. Hope to get a few other casino games in while I am off work though.
Also there are a few of us that have comitted to play the IPO in Dublin during October which is the biggest tourney in the world outside the USA. Flights , Hotels and Entry already booked, anyone want to come along as well look here for details.

Till next time, stay lucky !

My Mate can Play !!!

2009-07-29T17:31:00.000+01:00

It's true, my mate can play ! We (Me, Adam, Daz, HoneyMonster and my mate)went down to Blackpool for the monthly £100er which drew an amazing 185 runners.

And my mate came 1st for a cool £5490. No poxy deals but the outright winner at 6:10am !!

It was a good game as always and I hopped along nicely and moved upto almost 35k when the average was only 20k. So thought I was going to be in for a good one, but ran a couple of bluffs and raises that got picked off or pushed and I was back down to average. Did my usual creeping along for a while looking for a chance to move and then made a slightly rash move when I got dealt 10,10 under the gun and decided to push all 20k in, with blinds at 1600/800, and duly ran into a crap players Bullets and that was me out in 60th.

That was not the end of the fun though because we got a little dealers choice cash game going with Adam and Daz. About 8 in all including the never dull Howard Plant.
I do love dealer's choice and there was lots of loose money in this game, unfortunately some of it turned out to be mine. Still a +EV game without a doubt, just not on this occassion, and Daz's re-raise from the blinds in 6 card Omaha Hi/Lo didn't help.
I had A34568 double suited and had to call the £40 bet as did 6 others. The flop brought the 2 but also the Jc Kc. Daz is all-in next guy is all-in, next guy calls and I have £85 left so got to call and the pot ends up being around the £700 mark. Turn is a 6 so any low card will do, but it comes 9c and makes my flush, but I know it is too low and sure enough guy on my left flips the Nut flush. RELOAD Please!

So I ended up walknig away in the end £230 down from the cash, by biggest loss for a long time. But hey ho it didn't matter as we watched my mate storm it and my little 5% saver brought me in £275. Nice one and back in bed by 8am !

So live games haven't been too good for me this month, but off down to Bolton tonight I think for their £50 triple chance. Played it on the first of the month and crashed early, I'm due a good one....tonight is the night.
Online has been pretty good though so will have the figures up next time after the weekend for July. Might be the last post for a while as I have an important matter or two to deal with.
So enjoy and stay lucky chumps.

2000+ views and MTT frenzy

2009-07-23T20:54:00.000+01:00

Since the last entry I have been hammering the online MTTs, mainly PLO Hi/Lo, but also a bit of Razz, Stud Hi/Lo, HORSE and the Stars 8Game tourneys ( involves, 2-7 triple draw, LHE, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, NLHE, PLO) which are great fun.
Been going fairly deep in most but apart from a $260 PLO8 cash for 4/169 on PokerPlex, they have all been low cashes <$100 or busting just short of the cash.
Official Poker Rankings is a good site and has a comprehensive list of all my Pokerstars tourneys, worth a look here

In the money at 18% and a ROI of 35% is worthy of staking, so hoping to keep it up and get some staking for PLO Hi or Hi/Lo tourneys. Preferably live but maybe online as well.

Tried to ring the gambling comission guy about the tour games, but phone turned off all the time and no response to my texts so still up in the air a little.

Played a fair number of local live pub games as well with some success, but last night I made my first bad move for a while.
I was BB and looked down to see pockets 10's. HoneyMonster made a raise from early position....could mean anything....but I was well ahead of his range so was going to push it back over the top......then another Adam, a solid player, dwells in the small blind before pushing all-in himself, I snap called even though in my head I had already placed his range and only 88 & 99 were hands I was ahead of. D'OH sure enough HoneyM got out of the way and he flipped JJ. It was only a £10 pub crap shoot, but still bit miffed as it was a clear mistake and junior play to call just because I had already made my mind up prior to him acting.

However every cloud has a silver lining and it gave me time to play Athers at Snooker afterwards which I really enjoyed. I haven't played pool or snooker for about 10 years and I played a lot in my 'youth' # I could definitely get back into it.

Sneaks, HoneyM, DazN and maybe a couple of others going to Blackpool for the £100 deepstack this Saturday so winners tourney report coming up Sunday Morning ! LOL

Keep in touch with yourself lads n lasses and stay lucky.

2nd tour game and a win at LAST !

2009-07-13T20:03:00.000+01:00

Played a few tourneys yesterday and went OK , but only managed a cash in one...but what a cash...1st at last in a proper MTT only my 3rd ever in 300+ tourneys.

Wasn't actually for $1600+ as we did a deal 4 handed with me taking $1000 and then played on for an hour later for the $200 left over. Thought I played it well, although as you have to in PLO8 tourneys I got lucky a couple of times. Still another nice little bankroll boost.

It also pushes my rankings right up on OPR and that could well come in handy if I try to look for some staking later in the year , especially for the GUKPT PLO8 at the Vic in Nov/Dec.

The 2nd tour game wnet well, and you wouldn't Adam 'n' Eve it but I only nailed the correct number of entrants again. Remember in the last entry I put 64 as my guess and spot on I was. So Robo is going to have to cough up and get me another Bottle of Red to make up for the one I left in the bar on Saturday LOL.
Game wasn't as smooth as Dalton CC just because it was harder to get around and see everyone, plus no screen for players to see clock which makes a big difference. However it all finished a little earlier after a big heads-up duel between Daz Naylor and young Callum Stewart ended with Daz as the bridesmaid again. Have to say though Callum really impressed me and seems like a quality player, will have to see if he fancies coming down to Blackpool for the £100 on Saturday 25th this month.

There was a problem though as a geezer from the Gambling commission had phoned to see what was going on, after being passed around to several people who didn't have my number, Chris Salmon talked to him and got the OK for that game on the promise that I will ring him during the week. Too busy today at work, but will do tomorrow..............will be a real shame if he says it cant go on anymore as they have been such good events with 100 people having a great night out without losing much and feeling everything was fair. Will report back once I've found out exactly where we lie.
3 possible outcomes I think:

1. He says what we are doing is fine and a real credit to things being done well, carry on. This is what I would most like.
2. He says I cant do this and that, but got to do this and offer that etc. then you can carry on, although it might reduce how many want to be involved if it is too restrictive. This is the mostly outcome I reckon.
3. He says "No Way" and either completely bans them all and/or throws me in the slammer for 10 years ! This is not really my favourite....gulp !

Oh yeh forgot about the car crash, oh well maybe next time............stay lucky freaks.

June Account

2009-07-08T23:08:00.000+01:00

Well lets make this quick, not a lot of action this month but what did happen was OKish.

Accounts for June
PokerPlex : up $90
PokerStars: up $190
Playing live: down $60
In total for playing up $220
Bonus this month of $40 and pokerplex rakeback of $30
So +$290 for the month.

and +$4160 for the year.

In brief played at Blackpool £100 and finished 38/167 after going card dead for the last 4 hours. A Barrow lad was playing his first game in a casino and did very well to finish 7th for £750, but was a bit drunk by the final table so let himself down a little or he felt he did. I was on his table for a few hours and he was pure entertainment, so lively and asking after every mucked hand " what d'ya have then??? " LOL Well played Ben.

I split a local tourney a few days later and then last night got my first few bad beats for a while live, but not too much damage done.

Got Poker Tour game no. 2 coming up on Friday @ The Ambrose and it will be interesting to see how many we get. Ive gone for a slight drop at 64, Robo has gone for 73......we will wait and see, but do feel I will be getting my second bottle of red coming soon :)

Till later, stay lucky punks !!

Tour Game Proves a Hit

2009-06-19T23:35:00.000+01:00

Well the First Event of the Poker Tour went ahead as planned and was a fairly good success. We got 69 runners in the end which was exactly the number of players I had bet on with Paul Robo, he had gone for 64, so I'm looking forward to a nice bottle of red for that LOL

There is a report of the comp on this page HERE and thr tour itself with results and future events HERE
Getting all the names in and registering everyone went fairly smoothly but took a bit longer than i had planned for. So we didn't start till 8:10, not that anyone seemed bothered, but it did mean we didn't finish till almost 2:30am which was a bit late really. Get the signup sheet ready with names in alphabetical order next time should do the trick.
Enjoyed the night, people were asking why I wasn't playing, but to be honest wasn't too bothered. It did everything I had wanted and even got a bit of a clap for the little intro i did at the beginning and a fair few came over to say thanks. Didn't get any negative comments at all, which is quite an acheivement at a local game I think. Running the tourney once in play was fairly easy and once I know a few more names will be even easier. Had one guy who pulled a couple of strokes 1. betting all-in out of turn and 2. exposing his cards when facing an all-in, warned him on the first one and let the cards play, 2nd one was just a bit daft really as he only had J8 and was never calling so didn't bother making a judgement.
Anyway got 5 thru to the grand final and if we get similar numbers for the next one on FRI 10th July at the Ambrose 7pm start I will be able to increase and confirm the prizes..........more of that next time when I have worked it out properly.

As for my playing - nothing to report really as I have been too busy with work kids and life to play that much and what I have played online has been neither up or down. Do hope to get out next Saturday to B'pool G for the monthly £100 deepstack tho.

I'll leave you with a few more pics from the tour game, saty lucky guys !!

SNEAKS 'n' DAZ having a good time.....happy geezers ! ! !

SNAPPER living the life of a pro....sad sponsor shirt and shades ! ! !

Kev Buckley and eventual winner John Richardson

May Accounts

2009-05-30T19:58:00.000+01:00

Accounts for May
PokerPlex : down $40
PokerStars: down $120
Full Tilt : up $80
Playing live: up $1360
In total for playing up $1280
Bonus this month of $100 and pokerplex rakeback of $70
So +$1450 for the month.

and +$3870 for the year.

Had a good little run at the end on Stars and finally got the 7500 VPPs I needed. I also took part in their two big monthly freerolls, the $100k and the $Million (with added Porsche), and although I am not driving a Porsche today I did pick up $30 and $160 after going fairly deep and losing coin flips for big pots to be eliminated.

Nice though earning money for nothing and pushed my figures for the month up a bit too. Im running about the level I was last year, but do feel I am playing well at moment, especially in the MTTs, and I also got an extra site now worth playing at all times with this SUPERNOVA push at Stars.

All is good, stay lucky.

The Grind is dead...Long live the Grind

2009-05-30T19:17:00.000+01:00

As I have mentioned before this month has been an exercise in futility and super grind at PokerStars. I have been desperately trying to achieve their special 80,000 VPPs Bonus by getting 7,500+ this month. I am almost there now, but $315 poorer in the process. Details of the scheme are here. Being supernova does mean you can earn the pokerstars points quicker and also enter a few weekly/monthly freerolls and specials. Don't know why I am really going for it as PokerPlex offer me much better value through Rakeback and bonus. Bit of a status thing I think and also I can play at Stars any time of the day as they have so many games going on.

Will have to get another 12,000 VPPs over the next month or so to actually get the 100,000 needed for supernova status. So 9-tabling PLO8 games is my best way I think although I defo leak playing that many tables .....hence the $315 deficit this month.So the grind is far from over !

When I do finally get there will have 40k points and might well build on that over the following months. Don't quite know what is the best way to go with them, think I can get $160 cash for every 10k, but also beleive you can use them for live events (over$500) if you email them and ask for the concierge service ...oooh posh ! So enough for an event or two at the Blackpool GUKPT would be cool.
The other possibility is to use them on their ridiculously easy Sunday super-turbo sats which I have been doing and got a phenomenal good record in. You can withdraw but they pay T$ so not the best option.
Still feel committed to it now, so unless I spunk too much money will complete.

As for live play I pulled out of going to B'pool for the £100'er and spent much more wholesome activity time with the kids making the most of the hot weather and down the beach.

Did get out last night to the local Pub game, which went well with me taking it down for about $200 without hardly playing any hand of risk except for a lucky 3-bet raise when Heads-up at the end with 93 that hit a 3,3,6 board LOL

Tour idea is coming along nicely, first event going to be Dalton Cricket Club on Sun 14th June 7pm and the mass text message goes out tomorrow night.

Next post will be May accounts and should be fairly good reading due to the GUKPT success. Stay Lucky Folks !!

Tourney report

2009-05-22T23:58:00.000+01:00

Here is a report from the other night. I will take it down and link it once it goes on the cumbriapoker.com website.

and here it is gukpt omaha report

Omaha Trophy and sleep ..... NOT !

2009-05-21T20:32:00.000+01:00

So drove upto Newcastle last night to play the £250 PLO GUKPT Tournament, courtesy of a 100% sponsorship from Cumbriapoker.com. And look there was a trophy to be won

Along with a champion of champions seat. So with just 54 entrants, this was a really good chance to get a nice trophy, but alas it wasn't to be.
After a driving nightmare entering Newcastle and finding the Casino I ended up there 5 minutes before the start and had to settle for an alternate seat. Quite good they loaded up 7 tables with just 6 players , leaving plenty of room for alternates ( An idea I will use for the Poker Tour of Furness I think)
7 hours 15 minutes late I got dealt my last hand and crashed out in 4th £1350 richer, although got to give Cumbriapoker 35% back. Still it was a great night and I felt completely at home and very comfortable amongst the so called greats of British Poker.
I left the Grosvenor at 3:15am and arrived back less than 2 hours later at 5:10 am . Drifted off to sleep and got my daughter waking me upo jumping on my back saying " come on Daddy time to get up you'll be late for work" LOL love her !

Stars challenge has suffered and will need to hammer it this w/end to get back on track.

Stay Lucky Punks I'm doing alright!

Silence of the Box

2009-05-17T12:00:00.000+01:00

Had the evening in last night watching Britains got Talent and Eurovision with my little daughter. She loves it and I'm beginning to get sadder by the day as I am starting to comment as if I like it a bit...........which of course I don't. But watching the crowd there in Moscow it is easy to see it has become a big "EURO thing", heaps of nubile young women dancing for their countries pride ( probably a few nubile men, but I seemed to miss them) and everybody, absolutely everybody was smiling. Jesus not one sad or even neutral face, it is like people are really having a good time there...SICK !

Not that I was paying attention but the British lass did fairly well too, despite a crap song, guess the touch of Andrew Lloyd Webber did the trick. She sang well though and is worth a pic :

The winner was some Norwegian young wanna be poker player who had a classic Euro style tune that ended up being the biggest winning margin ever and now will no doubt be played to death everywhere.

On the poker front played a local game Friday, where i was on fine Trash talking mode, before bowing out to two poor plays from oppos that got Lucky..Story of every poker players life LOL
During eurosingsalong and then afterwards when I watched the brilliant Mr Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs I Played the Full Tilt FTOPS PLOmaha game as practice for Wednesdays GUKPT PLO event and came a respectable 124th out of 2215 runners for only about $100 but nice to feel in form, although I chickenshited a clear continuation bet towards the end that I was kicking myself for afterwards.

Pokerstars challenge sits at 2000 VPPs, +$20/month. Need another 5500 VPPs or 367/day.

Interest grows in the Poker Tour of Furness (PTF) and I am really looking forward to running this. Dates still not finalised but closest thing I have at the moment is this

First game does look like the Sun 14th June at Dalton CC 7pm start. Hope to see you local suckers there....stay lucky.

Sunday drag again

2009-05-11T19:39:00.000+01:00

Benn playing a fair bit online this week and got an exciting opportunity coming up next week.

First had two long tourneys yesterday, the Pokerstars $1/4 million where I got well stacked but then crashed out just into the money for hardly any profit. Second one was the weekly VIP $2.5k freeroll on Plex, which I have played about 6 or 7 times without success. Yesterday was chip leader for long periods but then crashed badly on the final table to take a paltry $50 when really should have been making a happy pay day for myself --> so left quite dissapointed.

So online cash has been ticking away on Plex for a slight profit and then crashed last night and lost all that I had made in the previous week, including putting it all-in to a $220 pot with the Nut lo and being a little worried about gettting quartered, but should have been more worried about playing the right game as it was PLO hi only and the pot when scooting acrosss the table to one of my opponents ............. D'OH !!

The other place I have been playing is on PokerStars, where they have a fantastic offer on for UK players only. Basically it is an upgrade on your VPPs, offering a chance to upgrade, including a chance to get 80k VPP bonus for earning 7500VPPs in May. This will then put me just a month or two from gaining supernova status and all the perks that go with that. I started well and was making a little profit as well as earning the VPPs,before I had another bad session and am now down a little. Will go for it as I think it is worth it, Stars is the one site where I seem able to multi-table much more effectively ( upto 9) but not going to go down more than $500 chasing it, although again that might be hard to stop if I am so close to it. On 800 VPPs at moment so about 300/day required .....1 hour/day if nine tabling !!

The other news is an exciting sponsor offer to play the Newcastle GUKPT £250 PLO leg. Tony at http://www.cumbriapoker.com/ has offered to pay me in for 35% returns and just on the ask that I write up a Tourney report afterwards which is something I will quite enjoy doing and gives me a chance to play a game that really is just out of my reach with sensible bankroll management. He has offered the B'pool leg too or just do the one £500 PLO Hi/Lo leg at the Vic in Dec, which is more my game of choice but cant gaurantee I will be able to get free from work for that one, so will play the two PLO instead.

Keep tuned geezers and stay lucky.

I hate crap players

2009-05-07T21:58:00.000+01:00

Saturday saw the Monthly deepstack at the G again.
5 of us went down from Barrow and had a fairly good day. I started a little slower than the last few tourneys, but eventually got going after the break with a nice float/bluff play and then a massive hand with my top two pair v. top n bottom v. flush draw stayed clear of trouble and made me comfortable chip leader by the next break. I managed to maintain my stack but then got moved to a new table where all the big stack were. I still went well and was very unlucky when my AK got it all-in v a KQ push only for the board to come down A,2,3,4,5 for a split.
Then with just 15 players left I got AK utg+1, young scandie who i had had a few good clashes with raised utg so i pushed for a total of 80k, a shorter stack of about 60k in mid position dwelled up for a minute before calling and the scandie dwelled himself saying he had AK and surprisingly let it go, flipping it as he did. What did the
shorter stack have??? 9 , 9 !!!! WHY? How can you possibly call with that and think you are ahead?? And what did he say " I knew you two were on AK !!"........what a muppet how can you know that !!
Obviously I missed and then was desperately short , went out soon after and left the tourney hating poor players and feeling I was so close to another £1000+ cash.

As it was HoneyMonster was at his awesome best and went into the final table as chipmonster, but blew away a little and finished 6th , but not before he had landed himself a £1000 deal
I had 5% so eased the entry cost a little.

Interest in the local poker tour grows, so should have dates sealed, stamped and sorted very soon.

Also online I am chomping away on Plex but also a great offer from Pokerstars.......more of which next time.....stay lucky gimps.

Aprils accounts

2009-05-01T19:30:00.000+01:00

Accounts for April
PokerPlex : up $110
PokerStars: down $40
Playing live: up $1410
In total for playing up $1480

Bonus this month of $160 and pokerplex rakeback of $130

So +$1770 for the month.

and +$2420 for the year.

BIT MORE LIKE IT ! Obviously helped by my £grand at the G, but ran well towards the end of the month on Plex too plus a few local cashes, made for my confidence returning a little.

Off for a local game tonight and then a Barrow squad are down at B'pool tomorrow for the £100er again.

Same as last month please....Stay lucky guys

Local Poker Tour

2009-04-25T09:39:00.000+01:00

More for local Barrow guys, but feel free to comment if you think you have an idea or advice on this.

Over the last couple of months I've put some ideas together to create a local Poker tour, basic idea being trying to get some larger games going and a bit of a local scene rejuvenation. Also lots of places playing but all with their own local crowd so get people out and about into other games etc.

Here is a flyer I have done for it, dates may well change and I will update when they do.

Tried to get everything standard, but basics are

*£25 buy-in with 7pm start, but latecomers can buy-in upto 8:50pm to allow as many as possible to play. Games should finish about 1:15am.
*Their is a very progressive structure with double chance so should allow quite a bit of play even for the aggressive monkeys amongst the runners.
*Leaderboard based on all finishes with a great prize of a £150 seat at the Blackpool GUKPT 2 day side event in November.
*Their will be a 2-day Grand final to the tour with a £60 buy-in and top 3 in the first events will win seats as part of their prize.
*Trying to get the venues to add extra money based on number of players (hopefully £2/player over the initial 25 players) and this will pay for the GUKPT seat, 2 trophies and a little added money to each tourney/final.

Got a couple of the legs sorted but need to finalise the rest will post back when its done, but everyone seems "up for it".

GUKPT crapshoot.........No thanks ! !

2009-04-21T20:12:00.000+01:00

I got a bit of freedom Saturday evening, so decided to pop down to Manchester and play the opening side event of the Manchester leg of the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT).
It was a £100 freezeout with almost 200 runners starting at 6pm which should have made for a great comp, but to be honest it was only slightly better if that of a normal evening casino game. You got just 5000 chips which meant lose your first hand of any size and you are under pressure. There are some missing levels on the structure and the clock is just 30 minutes through.
So sounds as though I had a disaster, far from it really, but was still out within 3 1/2 hours.
I started brightly and floated a 4xBB raise hand from the BB with 63 of spades. The flop brought 934 with one spade and I decided to continue to float it versus a pot bet and call. The turn brought the 2 of spades so I was now drawing to the flush and gutshot. Checked it and two players bet pot and called......trap sprung perfect.....pot is the right size, board is low ,players have just enough in front of them and they are both fairly TAG so in I go with a 2k raise. Obligatory stare down from the pre-flop raising DONK who has obviously now got an overpair. minute or so go by and I start thinking "look Dude, your not calling now. For god sake let it go you only got a poxy pair". Sure enough a bit more acting from him and he releases it as does the other guy and I pick up a nice little 2.5k pot.
Not a true float all the way as I was semi-bluffing on the end, but I was very pleased with myself. It is much easier to find a spot in bigger games like this but you still need the balls to pull it off and I would have been very crippled if called and if re-raised would have been committed with my 12 to 15 outs.
I then get my chip stack upto 9k with some nice play and hands before the superb buffet, worth the reg fee alone!
I then tinker through the next level, before this hand:~ On the button I get AJ, decide to push against a raise from a tight guy I have played before and the old guy on the SB wakes up and tanks for about 3 minutes. I know he has AQ, what else could he have here??? and in hindsight I should have said something along the lines of " I ain't got a pair , can promise you that" giving him the impression of AK. But I didn't , I stayed quiet and he made a great call. Original raiser says "I can't call , only got AJ" LOL. He folds and I then tell the old Geezer he has AQ, which he is quite impressed with and duly turns it over. The cruel flop comes AQJ (double LOL) and I miss my only out and am down to a single 50 chip with BB about to go to 600 (triple LOL). Somehow I manage to get my stack upto 1450, and then miss a flop for what would have put me right back in it.
Anyway, that is that for the game report.
Basic premise is I won't bother with another single day GUKPT game as 30 min and the stack doesn't allow enough play. Might play the B'pool £150 GUKPT 2 dayer in Nov, that has 6k chips and 45 min clock with a couple of extra levels, just about worth it.
The monthly B'pool game is by far the best value in terms of playability and will stick with that for now. Talking of which there are two coming up on Sat 2nd and Mon 4th May, anyone fancy coming down for it?

Didn't get the local tour info up but will try to on next entry. Stay Lucky guys

At Last

2009-04-15T13:50:00.000+01:00

Well a busy time for me on the live Poker tables this w/end with me playing almost as much this w/end as in total so far all year !

Basics are ~
FRI night local £30 pub tourney, too fast structure but had already doubled my stack slowly before being crippled when I got called by an underpair to my top pair and he sucked out with one of his two outs. Then played cash with a total LAG who was great value for money, got stacked twice before getting it all back for a level day with a great hand where I had Trips with A kicker v. Straight Flush draw on the turn.
SUN night £20 home game around a friends house which are always good fun and the only time I play drinking. Yet despite the red wine I still ran well enough to chop both games we had heads-up for a smallish profit.
MON day & night Played the B'pool 'G' £100 Deepstack game and had a great time despite turning up an hour+ late due to M6 nightmare. So many hands to talk about but not enough space and ended up playing almost an hour for the final table bubble. Once it had burst we ended up not playing any more as it was 3am and we did a chop where 7 got £1000 and top 3 big stacks shared the rest.
You can see the official payout from this NUTZ tv shot and I thought at the time it was a good deal, but looking back probably did myself out of a couple hundred quid according to a chip stack chop and I had a playable stack and could have waited longer to deal really. However when you have been playing 12 hours it is knackering and I really don't know how the WSOP guys do it for 14hoursx7days straight!!

So at last I get a bit of results that I feel my play has deserved in recent live games and gaurantees a decent profit for April. I might even have a shot at a GUKPT Manchester event this next week.

To top it off Barrow Rugby won both games this w/end against Whitehaven and Leigh who are 2 of the top 4 so a great all round performance.

Catch everyone later where I hope to put up some of my plans for a local live Poker Tour.

March Accounts

2009-04-10T12:15:00.000+01:00

Accounts for March
PokerPlex : down $120
PokerStars: down $70
Playing live: up $120
In total for playing down $70

Bonus this month of only $90 and pokerplex rakeback of $70

So +$90 for the month.

and +$650 for the year.

All in all a very quiet month. Played alittle on PokerPlex and had some good runs in the SCOOP games on Stars and the Sunday $1/4Million's, but no cash to write home about.

Question that the last few months has brought up is due to my losing the last 3 months at Plex is ~ Can I hold my own in the Plex games by enough too make it worthwhile with the rakeback and bonus?
At the Virgin Festival I heard that Plex had withdrawn the deal I am getting from most players, so if they stick with me I will stick with them and make the most of it while it is still here.

Right enough for now, off to watch Barrow Rugby this afternoon in the local derby against Whitehaven which is going to be a BIG game this year and will put us top if we win !
Then local £30 pub game this evening followed by a Home game Sunday (if I can make it?) which is always fun and then finishing with the £100 deepstack at the G in Blackpool on Easter Monday. Lets hope in the next entry I have lots of success to report on.

Stay Lucky dudes

Great Weekend ~ Poker n Rugby vibes

2009-04-06T21:59:00.000+01:00

Just had a great weekend with the Virgin Festival at Newcastle Saturday and then a day at the Rugby watching the mighty Wigan struggle ( a lot) to beat the Barrow "super" Braves !

The Virgin Festival was one I qualified for almost 6 months ago and after struggling to find my way to Aspers I stopped the car on double yellows, wound down the window to ask some local the way. He said " get out, I'll show you". Thinking it must be just round the corner, I left the car unlocked and followed him around the corner. And sure enough he led me straight to the Casino, but only after we had walked about half a mile and taken god knows how many turns. I was running latish so pooped in, picked up my security tag and then thought I'd better go and sort the car out. Got back outside and thought " Jesus which way is it"......somehow I managed to find it almost straight away, but by total luck more than judgement.
Anyway into the tournament and I pick up J,10 of clubs in early position and limp for 50, it goes round to the small blind who pops it up to 300. I planned to get busy early on so as I had position thought I would gamble and called ~ flop came with the 8&Q of clubs. He bet 600, thought about re-raising but just called. The turn brought an Ace and I could just tell that was good for him and sure enough he bet 2000. Didn't want to get this deep this early, but I had so many outs and the pot was getting big. River brought a beautiful K which did put a 3rd diamond on the board so when he bet 5000 I snap called. He indeed have AA and in hindsight I knew that and should have put him in for the rest and given him the first out bounty. Still I was upto 18k after 20 minutes....very nice.
The rest of the tournament was probably my worst ever card dead period.....I never got better than 99 and only got one AK and one AQ in 8 hours play. I did hit a few flops though and pinched a few unwanted pots post flop. Hit my AQ with a AQQ flop but no one bit at my little utg pot builder and somehow James Browning got away from my 64 on a 357 flop, when I min check raised him on the turn (Ace) and made some flippant comment " I'm giving you a way out". Couldn't put him on a hand at all to be honest, so he was probably firing a second bluff bullet anyway.
I made a move when a tight player (SWAMPY online) raised and i decided there was value in pushing with my QJ clubs. Stacks were just right and pot enough, my image had been fairly tight ( as I hadn't had a hand LOL) so still think the move was right and considering he took over a minute to call when holding AK seemed to vindicate my read on him. I got lucky as the board filled with 4 clubs and it sent him over the edge, don't think he thought it was good play from me, but I was happy with the move, albeit I had him on a lesser hand.
Then on the BB with almost 20k left (ave = 25k by now) and Mr. Big Stack limps from mid position !! mmmmm smelt fishy straight away as he had raised 10 hands in the last hour! I had K3 so liked the K57 flop, but was still very cautious and we all checked. The turn brought a 3....BINGO. I put in a half pot bet, sure I was ahead now and Mr Big Stack seemed to reluctantly call. Then a Q hit the river and again I was sure I was leading , but decided the value was to let him bet any AK or AA holding he had, and sure enough he put in a little bet and I immediately pushed back over the top. Not enough for him to fold his top pair or overpair though. He thought about it for half a minute so when he called I thought "Nice one" and was stunned when he flipped QQ for trips and I was gone. I played it well I thought and at the end of the day he hit a two outer on the end. Shame as it would have had me up on 45k and I felt comfortable at the table where I thought there were a few weak spots.

Apart from being ridiculously cramped and breaking any kind of fire regulations they must have there the atmosphere was great and I met a fair few online characters including some Punters Lounge guys and was sat again next to James Browning (sat next to and final tabled a GUKPT side event at Walsall2008). He has just got himself a 6 month sponsorship with William Hills and I hope it goes well for him as he was again very pleasant company at the table. Also sat in seat one was a prolific cash game player called "The Mole", a Scottish guy with classic milk bottle glasses and a LAGGY style to him who seemed to be very entertaining and I was dissapointed when he got shifted tables early doors to sit next to the lovely Kara Scott and knock her out with a "got to make this stupid call for the Bounty" play.
The Barrow contingent were all out early so had some chat with them at the breaks and before heading home.

A few hours sleep and was upto greet the kids back from Grannys before heading out for a few beers and a chance to witness the Rugby League upset of the millenium. However it was not to be as Wigan edged home through a few classy wingers tries in the first half , but Barrow gave them a real scare and it was a great day with the best part of 7,000 crammed in enjoying the Sun and a tremendously proud home team perfromance. Well Done Lads! looking forward to Fridays game against now our seriously big rivals Whitehaven on Friday afternoon.

Even went fairly deep in the 30,000 entry Stars $1/4 million on Sunday Evening although couldn't get into that top 200 odd where the real cash is.
Accounts for March up next time, pretty boring though as hardly played.

A Quiet Month

2009-03-22T09:36:00.000Z

Not been playing much this month with one or two things going on. Finally got the Neteller farce sorted at what must have been the 10th attempt to send documents.....I beleive the term for their customer service on this is ANAL!

Did have a little local Live game which ended up with me playing heads-up for over an hour, which is great fun live with a dealer. Also as I went into it as a dog and at 24k v 176k at one stage it was pleasing to come out on top and take home the £100 1st place.

Online dabbled a bit at Pokerplex, neither up nor down. Hardly played any where else except for qualifying for a few upcoming events.
I have the Virgin festival on the first w/end of April and starting around the same time is Pokerstars new spring series event which comprises a heap of events each being offered at 3 different levels ~ Lo, Medium and Hi. The Hi means off the wall for sickos, the Medium is for the hi-rollers and the Lo is just about right for me , wlthough will still cost about $1000 to play them all !! Details here..................

I've already satellited into 3 of them and going to try and burn through a few more of my FPPs @ Stars to save me spending quite so much on them. Should be great , with HUGE fields and good structures.....could be good value too !

Feb Accounts

2009-03-06T22:55:00.000Z

So here we go again, exceptionally dull so feel free to skip straight to the end.

Accounts for February
PokerPlex : down $650
Boylepoker : down $40
Full Tilt: down $30
PokerStars: up $460
Playing live: down $160
In total for playing down $420

Bonus this month of only $170 and pokerplex rakeback of $110

So -$140 for the month.

and +$560 for the year.

By far my worst month ever in terms of $/hr rate. In fact first time I think that my bonus+rakeback hasn't covered any loss on my main site "Pokerplex". I hope this is just a temporary blip, I could really do with a good month just to get my confidence back a little !!

Still having a ridiculous struggle to get Neteller to validate my ID, but I hope to have it laid to rest by MONDAY.

I've also received an invite to be sponsored to play the GUKPT PLO event in Newcastle in May, so will see if that comes to fruition.

Yeh, notes are useful......mmmmmmmm

2009-02-27T22:36:00.001Z

So here it is, PLO Hi/Lo and I'm on the button with 10,10,7,3 and see a flop of K,7,7. It is checked to me and I check it, too difficult a hand to call a re-raise. Turn is a 5 , check all round. River is a 3, bingo Full House! and no one has bet ( they are all deep) so must be well in front. utg bets the minimum $2 and it gets called twice, I figure they are all palying some Lo or Hi hand so decide to repop it and try to scoop the pot by flushing out all the non premium lo & hi hands. The utg then repops it and Im forced to call hoping he is Lo.

But NO he had slowplayed KK, the nut FH, on all streets and I lose a $120+ pot. I type "wp" in the chat box and begin to curse myself for being so greedy with a hand like mine. Then think I'd better put something about that in his notes. Double click him and realise I already have a note on him. This is it
PLO8 ch F&T NUTSFH (ep) minb on R
which is my shorthand for
PLOmaha Hi/Lo checked the Flop and Turn with the Nuts Full House from early position and a minimum bet on the River. I now cursed myself for not reading this as he had made exactly the same play before and i would NO way have repopped it on the river, but just called it down and saved myself virtually my whole stack.

I don't make notes enough, I should have at least used the ones I have made.
Note to myself: make more notes.

As for my online play taken quite a hit this month on Poker Plex so had a few days off, and will be back in March, Accounts up next post.

Neteller blindfolds me and stabs me you know where

2009-02-21T17:49:00.000Z

I first started playing poker at the beginning of 2002, over 7 years ago now and started small but built it up quickly with bonuses ( inc. some ridiculous easy to get bonuses on Online casinos....not possible any more i'm afraid all you freeloader you have missed the boat). Almost from the start I used Neteller as an online bank system and used a c/c to deposit , got that credited back to my c/c and have never had to resort to "my cash/bank/credit" since. Probably transfered back and forth on Neteller over $100,000 by now, yet Neteller have just put a hold on my account asked me to produce evidence of my ID !!wtf why now?? Anyway I dont have that much there at the moment but it is the easiest way to move cash into and out of sites, so is damn annoying not to be able to access it.
I have to produce a photo id and utility bill. Dont have a scanner at home and my camera gives too much glare, so had to take everything into work and get it done. They then email me back and say the Passport had expired ( sent on 11th Feb'09 , passport expired on 9th Feb'09 LOL and the utility bill was more than 3 months old) JESUS ! just give me my money back and I will go somewhere else , but NO, cant even get my money before I do this, so will have to repeat at work next week.

This meant I only had $26 in my BlSq account and the Welsh APAT online game this Saturday night costs $55, so had to enter the $5 rebuy sat. For the cost of just the initial buy-in, no more, I cruised my way in.
Thats is two APAT events, The Virgin Festival and even got a mate into the SKY live tour game too, in the last few months. Satellites had always been a weakness of mine but seem to have run/played well recently....I'm definitely more sure of myself on who/when to attack in them. If I run well for the next month or so might go for a few bigger ones !

Right APAT gold medal coming my way if I STAY LUCKY !

Another Week passes by......

2009-02-16T08:52:00.000Z

... a few things happened, but nothing great so stop reading if you are rushed.

Just finished playing the Pokerstars $200k and couldn't repeat last weeks exploits, but finished a respectable 7,000th LOL, but still over 2,500 from the cash.

I played the Hendon Mob League game this week ( i dont play it regularly but every now and then) and managed to knock out Barney Boatman. Something flashed up on the screen about knocking out a Full Tilt Pro and when I checked my emails I got this:

Hi Robbiebox,

Congratulations on busting Barny Boatman in the following tournament:

Hendon Mob Forum League (76318269)

Your Full Tilt Poker account has been credited with a bounty prize of $10.00.

In addition to your bounty prize money, you've also earned a T-shirt to commemorate your accomplishment. You'll receive a second email that will allow you to claim this shirt and confirm your shipping details.

Remember, Full Tilt Poker offers a bounty for busting any red pro playing in any scheduled real-money tournament with 30 players or more. You can collect a bounty matching the tournament buy-in (not including tournament fee) up to $200.

We're happy to have you playing at Full Tilt Poker - best of luck at the tables!

Sincerely,

Full Tilt Poker

So I have won one of those tacky " I bust a Pro at Full Tilt Poker" T-shirts that I saw 2 people wearing at the APAT comp last w/end. It might as well say "I'm not much of a poker player, but I got lucky once and knocked out this so called pro", personally think the Boatmans are evry average rock type players and would be surprised if they are long term winners as they certainly haven't cahsed much considering the number of tourneys they have been sponsored into, they were just around at the right time and have marketed themselves well.
No way am I wearing it ever, so will have to find some way to give it away.

Last thing for today is the boxing match that two of Denmarks best players have organised between each other as a sporting bet. It is Gus Hansen v Theo Jorgenson, who are best mates and are playing for $25k if Gus wins , $35k if Theo wins. That is just chicken feed to these two so it really is a personal challenge. The one thing that has caught my attention are the odds Nordicbet are offering on a bloody nose at any stage of the fight. A massive 11 to 1, which I think is exceedingly good value, I am going to fill my boots or have a little dabble on that anyway. Think the fight is live online too ! Will try and find the link and post it later.

Stay Lucky Dudes

2009-02-09T20:43:00.000Z

Played two big tourneys this w/end and came 53rd in both !
So APAT tourney on Saturday at Walsall, had me arriving late due to babysitting times. But 2hr 20 min to Walsall was impressive and meant I arrived only missing one set of blind and just the 150 chips lost from my 10,000. I didn't get any starting hands of note and didn't connect with a thing on the board, but was able to take down a few unwanted pots and stayed at about 11k for the first 2 hours. A loud fella named Scouse was keeping everyone entertained and I clashed with him in two hands where I made good value calls on the river with pocket pairs and this got him a little excited and he started berating me for my play. Out of order stuff really, with a few insults and use of the words retard and idiot, I love that banter/wind-up stuff though and replied with a "not the idiot who bet with nothing" and "I wasn't playing the cards, just the player", give him credit though he came back with "well played Phil" which I thought was a good line. However he didn't know me at the time and I think several players would have taken offence at his comments. He did buy me and a couple of others a beer after he was knocked out and then watched the footy where he got a little excited and expressed himself FULLY! There were a number of players who swore loudly throughout the tourney including a lady so drunk she fell asleep at our table and had to be given a nudge every time it was her turn to act. A few other incidents happened and now there is a fully fledged thread on APAT forum regarding "beer and poker". I personally like to have characters at a poker table and beer often "creates" more character, although swearing out loudly never sits comfortably with me in a public place and I hope that a general consensus comes from the thread http://www.apat.com/forum/index.php?topic=2791.90
The table split and for the rest of the night I got moved to a pleasant table and was stayed card dead and got a little low, until I rode my luck a bit when I moved on the turn with bottom pair and flush draw, got called by top pair and hit on the river. I made a nice move with a re-raise bluff and was avereage or slightly above until just as we reached the last level my AK re-raise ran face first into AA. A King on the flop, so even If i had played it cautiously I still would have gone out in 53rd and 40 min short of Day2. Still thought I had played well with so few cards and so many missed flops, so quite pleased.

Got back after driving home in the snow, to put the kids to bed and sit down to play the $10 entry $200k gtee on Stars. This is now becoming a regular tourney for me and was full last night with 30,000 runners! I gradually built my stack steadily, made the cash and then chipped my way up the prizepool ladder. A few weeks back I had come 216th, well that milestone passed and then we got down to the last hundred and I was starting to get quite excited with first prize of $28,500. With 53 players left I got KK on the button and it was folded round to me, picture story to follow:

So All-in pre-flop....M A G I C

So a little dissapointed, as the pot would have put me right in the mix for a massive payday, but hey-ho $480 and a 53rd from 30 thousand players is a PB in this event....

.........One day it will happen LOL.

Crashes and a $500 pot

2009-02-07T07:48:00.000Z

Off to the Walsall APAT event today, not leaving till the last minute now, so going to have to rush down. Not a great move as I watched a Fire service presentation on Road safety yesterday at work and have to say found it quite moving....it brought back vivid memories of a motorway pile-up I witnessed 17 years ago and it is incredible how clear a moment like that can be. Even got a little choked up when I told the kids about it at the end. So hope the conditions are good and snow is well clear down there.

My biggest pot for a long time, so for the $500 pot, this is the playback.
PLO Hi/Lo $1/$2 and I have $121 in front of me, everyone else inthe hand is much deeper. I get dealt Ad3d4hJs and see a flop of 2dQd8h so have Nut Lo draw and also A flush draw for the probable Nut Hi --> With two cards to come I need any 34567 for the Lo and any Diamond is my only real way of taking down the Hi.
Anyway the flop betting goes crazy with me getting caught in between the raisers and forced to call all-in against 4 opponents by the end of the round. On the turn of another Queen we lose one as the other two end up getting it all in for atotal pot of almost $1000 and the River comes another Queen, putting trips on the board and destroying any chance I had of taking anything.
One of the guys had 10A39 with two diamonds giving him almost the same lo draw and taking away two of my Hi draw outs and the other guy had Q8xx and took down the grand with Quad Queens. I stuck it into the Omaha8 calculator http://www.thehendonmob.com/pokercalc/index.html and found I was only 34% to win on the flop which surprised me as I thought I would be much higher.
Those pots make a big difference to my bottom line come the end of the month,, By the way if you are reading this and know how I can display hand histories a little better please send me the link in a comment.

Right off to become Emglish amateur champion. Stay lucky geezers i intend to !

OK Jan accounts up now

2009-02-01T16:38:00.000Z

First here are the Accounts for January

PokerPlex : down $340
Boylepoker : down $20
Full Tilt: up $50
PokerStars: down $30
VirginPoker: down $20
Playing live: up $110
In total for playing down $250

Bonus this month of $520 and pokerplex rakeback of $430

So +$700 for the month.

and +$700 for the year.

Again this shows the power of rakeback and bonuses, and in Feb I will be earning 25% extra bonus for my play as I am now on 7star VIP at Plex

It was also a good month comeback , because I plumetted early in the month to over $600 down, and recovered quite well. Here are my PT stats for the month, showing almost 15,000 hands played. If I can manage that amount this month I will be bringing in $1k+ in bonus and r'back, and if I can win at the rate of the last 2 weeks will end up with $3k or $4k. "IF", "IF" and "IF" .....one month it will happen!

As for live games this year, I really want to focus just on games with deeper stacks, so the monthly £100 ones at Stoke and B'pool are good, APAT games, Virgin Festivals and maybe a side event or two at GUKPT are ones that spring to mind.
One event that I would love to play is the PLOmaha Hi/Lo side event at the GUKPT festivals, only times you can play this game live in the UK but problems are they are only on twice and both times at the Vic in London and they are £500 comps...a bit out of my B'roll really. First one is on 21st March and if I run like God this month and make a fair whack then I might just go for it anyway. The other way is to try and get staked, I got a fair staking from local guys when I planned to play the Bolton GUKPT PLOmaha last Sept and on blonde and punters lounge forums there are active staking sections. Could do with pushing my PT stats into the green as ammunition to get staking there though.

Ducks, Bulldogs and Jan Accounts

2009-02-01T15:42:00.000Z

Last year I had 1258 views of my blog and 1 month in Jan I have had just 94 views, so my blog is becoming less popular. Not surprising when you consider the poor quality of entry and the fact I haven't had anything really interesting happen to me in the poker world for the last 4 months.

Well Saturday I took down the local comp , disposing of several fish along the way, just had to hit once with AK v 55 but apart from that was never in any trouble, aside a few blatant steals when down to 3. Ended up splitting it heads up with Snapper for £215 which was a nice way to finish the month after a long time off the cash in local games.
A few of the regular players were well plastered, making for an entertaining Saturday night. Also there were two card gaurds that took notice, Robo's stupid "nasty Duck" that was only nasty in the sense I wouldn't want one.
And also Bully's 2 brass bulldogs which he proudly put one on each card every hand.
These are not the real ones but you get the idea.
A bit of a gimmick , but I imagine it would get you noticed and that can be a good thing. I've just read an article about how Pokerstars Pro Haved Khan deliberately was outrageous in the 2006 WSOP so that it drew attention to him and he managed to get a sponsored deal out of it, even though his performance wasn't really that great. He has now cashed a few times, including one big win to make him a "name", but apparently he has played every tourney going (all paid for by Stars) just so he could get some results to be worth talking about. Quite a little business plan, as playing big tourneys from your own bankroll seems to be a very difficult way to get +VE out of poker. If I ever make a big tourney late stages will have to think of some "gimmick" to give me that PR edge !!

Maybe I should dress up in fancy dress, Robo did think I looked like Gimli from Lord of the Rings.

I don't see it myself, but then again I wasn't on my 13th pint of Stella or trying to distract people from my own uncanny similarity to a Butch Gay bloke from San Fran ...............say no more.

I was going to post Jan Accounts, but will save that to later in the week when I get the rakeback details, also will try and target a few live games/ambitions for the year.
APAT game tonight on BlSq, dont forget to get involved in this comp, doesn't matter if you miss the first one you can join in at any time and with 20 weeks it wont make much difference.

Tick, Tock, the end of month is nigh.

2009-01-31T17:12:00.000Z

So The first month of 2009 draws towards its end and I am racing to get to the Top VIP level on Plex....thats 50,000 points total and I need about another 700....I'll make it no problem but I want to get done by 6pm so I can go and play a local live game at 7, such is the life of a poker addict like me. !! LOL
Mind you it's been a fairly calm and good last week or two so quite content really after the savage ups n downs of the first fortnight. I'm going to still be down a touch for actually playing but well covered with bonus + r'back so the bank roll will go in the right direction even if not by as much as I would have liked. Also , I will now be earning the bonus 25% faster/more too.
APAT season 3 has started and the Online league begins Sunday. It's a club(region) team based thing and I have signed up for Blackpool which might be a mistake as not enough have joined to give us the best chance, you definitely have an advantage the bigger your team. You can sign up for Blackpool here

So next week I got the first APAT National at Walsall to look forward to and of course tonights fish fest to exploit after this last 250 points to get now...grind...grind....grind.

Stay lucky chumps

Late new years review & resolution

2009-01-25T23:58:00.000Z

JESUS ! Just checked out my stats from last year, to find out exactly where I made my money. Here are the year totals:

Online : +$990
Live : +$210
Staking: +$1190
Bonus & Rakeback: +$6320

Total: $8710

Quite incredible just how important a good bonus and rakeback deal is. About 3/4 of my profit coming from it. Less than a $1k up online for the WHOLE year.

So what am I going to do this year?

To be honest, haven't got any set targets.

Would like to play more well structured events live and find a game online where I feel I am capable of winning all the time LOL..... don't know if that exists, but do feel I should be able to play at Plex and grind a fair profit through using the dataminer and tableselector of eyepoker and hopefully will improve further....maybe analysing my own game is something I should do more of.

Anyway I am whittling on now, so until next time, stay lucky folks.

No Posts = No News

2009-01-23T07:35:00.000Z

Or pretty much so.

Its not that I haven't been playing , in fact quite the opposite, I have been playing as much as ever. Total grind on the PLOmaha Hi/Lo tables at Poker plex, multi-tabling at $20 and $40 mainly. Typical start to the month where I dived downhill and then climbed right back up and into a slight profit but the last 5 days have taken a $500 plunge which is a bit demorolising, so even after r'back+bonus only going to be up a little at this rate.
I am trying to reach the top level (7star) of the VIP reward programme at Plex , which doesn't mean much except I get points 25% faster and so earn 25% more bonus basically. Every little bit is good though !
Dissapointingly Blue Square have altered their monthly GUKPT league and it now includes the 4 weekly online games but also ALL live play at all grosvenor casinos which basically means if you cant play live regularly you have no chance in the league. I have played this league most months for the past 2 years, so feel a bit betrayed..........think I might them an email telling them, let you know how it goes.
As far as live games go, have entered the first APAT tourney at Walsall on Feb7th/8th, although still got to negotiate the passout properly for that yet.

Catch you later folks, promise to post more very soon so stay tuned and stay lucky!

FA Cup and Stoke madness

2009-01-05T15:07:00.000Z

Had a great weekend before the grind of work starts again.

Saturday joined the throng of blindly loyal Barrow AFC faithfull in a once in a lifetime experience to a premiership ground at MIddlesbrough. 80 coaches left Barrow as a ghost town. I expected "our" boys to get completely outclassed and probably go down 3 or 4 zip, however as it happened "our" boys got more than outclassed, I was amazed at how big the difference was. The Barrow boys would have won a 22 man brawl, as they were much stockier and heavier than the Boro lads who were all built as racing snakes and it showed on the pitch. In the Conference the Barrow donkeys might be able to kick and scrap there way in games , but on the riversides perfect grass the barrow boys were just trying to get close enough to still see the ball as Boro player after player ( especially Stuart Downing ) glided past their opponents. The fact that the final score was only 2-1 is the most amazing part as 8-0 would have been a truer reflection of the game, but it did create a lot of excitement in the Barrow 'kop' and Boro did panic just a little at the end. It would have been a great injustice but a fantastic fairy tale if "we" had pinched one and grabbed a replay in Barrow. A great day tho, wonder if it will ever happen again.

Yesterday went down to Stoke to play a great tourney ~ 226 players !! £2500 added money!! and a special £3000 prize for the top online registered player. As it happens I had a little play was above average for most of my time, but then mistimed a few moves, maybe made a slightly rash push with my JJ on the end when it ran into QQ. Afterwards I had a great time playing on the dealers choice cash game, first time I have seen one at my level and had a great time playing/learning some new games for the first time. Maltese Cross, Padooki, Irish poker, Joker Poker and also played PLOmaha Hi/Lo live for the first time. Even maages to have a little win when I hit a Royal Flush in clubs again in a game of Maltese Cross!!!.

They were a good bunch playing and were happy to explain to me the rules of the new games, some of which really make your head scratch. It reminded me how much fun poker can be, might see if we can get a local one going.

NEWS FLASH: Congrats to Paul Robinson who has just won himself a seat in the European Masters event in Tallinn next month. Good Luck and enjoy Paul !

December and year accounts

2009-01-01T10:30:00.000Z

Just got back from a great w/end out at Middlesbrough and Stoke watching the FA Cup and playing a great poker tourney, more on that another time.

First here are the Accounts for December

PokerPlex : down $460
Boylepoker : up $440
Full Tilt: down $30
PokerStars: up $230
PokerTrillion: down $80
VirginPoker: down $20
Playing live: up $200
In total for playing up $300

Bonus this month of $290 and pokerplex rakeback of $270, Full Tilt rakeback about $30

So +$890 for the month.

and +$8710 for the year.

NOTES:
1. Rakeback was less than my bonus this month for the first time. Whilst this might at first seem bad it actually means I am getting more back per $1 rake. I get 30% rakeback so my bonus this month was >30% meaning I was getting the equivalent of about 63% total rakeback, which is good by any standards ( this does not include the actual value of poker plex points which probably adds about another 3%). I hope next month to increase my standard to the 7 star ranking which earns Plexpoints at even faster rate (25% quicker), increasing my rakeback upto 70%+. I will do a year analysis soon and I am sure it will show that I make more from bonus+rake than from actually winning at the table.
2. This doesn't include the Virgin festival seat that I have won, as I dont include sat prizes unless it is actual cash.

November accounts

2008-12-27T10:33:00.000Z

Id forgotten about these, not too sure exactly on a few figures , but it is there or there abouts.

Accounts for November

PokerPlex : down $340
Blue Square: down $160
Full Tilt: up $40
PokerStars: up $110
Playing live: down $680
In total for playing down $1030 !!

Bonus this month of $200 and pokerplex rakeback about $230

So -$600 for the month.

and +$7820 for the year so far.

I didn't think I was that much down for the month, maybe I have forgotten something??
but two months running now where I have actually lost whilst playing, Not going to make the $10k profit milestone for the year that I had felt was a basic minimum earlier in the year.

Still I have been going OK this month and should be posting a fair profit at the end of the month. I have started looking at ThePuntersLounge.com and their online tourneys diary which highlights a whole load of value added games every day ! I picked out the Boylepoker game last night that had a $1000 added and came a tidy 2nd from 44 @ $20 entry for a $470 cash. Nice as would have only been about $200 without the added value !

Got a couple of games coming up and end of year thingys , so catch you all later. Stay Lucky !!!

Christmas greetings all !

2008-12-23T10:31:00.000Z

It is the season of Merriment, although I have to admit things aren't all merry with me at the moment , but more of that another time perhaps.

Online I have continued to donk away a little by little at Pokerplex and yesterday morning took a hit for $200+ although I did lose one hand of $288 with trip aces going down to a runner runner donkey.
So I decided to have a break from the cash and play some tourneys. It was Suinday evening so had a blast at some DEEP,DEEP fields. I went well in all except the Full Tilt one. On Stars I played 2NLHE and a PLO8 one cashing in all, including the big $10 $200k g'teed with 26,517 runners!! 212th for $200 not bad and could have been better if my AJ had stood up. Must have played this tourney 10 times and think this is the first time I have cashed beyopnd the basic level.

And then my favourite of the night was on Virgin where I played the 15Euro satellite to their Virgin Festival at Newcastle on April 4th/5th. To cut a long story short and the fact there weren't any interesting hands and I never really got myself at risk here are the final positions :

So yee-ha off to Newcastle for a w/end. PsychoDave has already qualified in the AWOP league and I hope a couple of other guys will give it a shot too.......should be fun.

Geeksville.... I am there !

2008-12-14T10:14:00.000Z

As you see from the above link, I have entered for the PokerStars World series of poker.
It has been running for the past 3 years and works out as a $60k freeroll basically with 3 live packages and a heap of online tournament tickets up for grabs. Seeing as I have been writing this since the start of the year, I've done nearly a 100 entries and probably had less than a thousand views ( think I must have been responsible for 200+ of the hit counter), I feel I deserve something for nothing as that qualifies me as a true geek.
Not been on the stars site for a month or so and a couple of interesting things I spotted.
1. They are attempting to break the world record ofr the worlds largest poker game ( I imagine they already hold it , but hey-ho always improving!), which is going to be a massive 35,000 entries @ $10 and they are gauranteeing $500k so a minimum $150k overlay. Ive already registered, but it does clash with a nice looking £50 local tourney on Sunday so will have to see.
2. They now have got a Russian poker tour to go with their European, Asian and Latin American tours. They sure know how to corner the market ! Only 2 dates so far on the tour and I'm not too sure if visiting St. Petersburg and Moscow in Jan & Feb when it is seriously freezing is the best way to start a new venture!

As for my live exploits, I have a few lined up over the newyear, which I will post later. First though to last Sunday where I played the B'pool night tourney which they g'teed for £3000 , turned into a £900 overlay. Ended up coming 4th for £300, with my penultimate hand the only one of note.
5 left Ive got 51k...Blinds are 6k/12k and I get 10,10 on the button, as I prepare to just push this in,, the short stack under the gun pushes his last 25k in. I am just thinking do I need to call or push here and came to the conclusion that 10s were too vulnerable against multi-hands so would have to push. But the dealer starts talking to the SB who is putting chips in over the line...he has called out of turn. The dealer says the bet will have to stand. I only have an extra 26k so he has to call if I push and thats not really what I want, my right to push and have some fold equity has gone. Figuring everyone will check it down I call as does the BB, flop comes down A,2,7 and SB pushes in! Fair enough as it happens as he had A2 and was protecting it. As it happens next hand Im utg with AQ and SB makes the hard call with AK, Im out for £300 and the last 3 then decide to chop it up for £700 each !
However if I had been given the chance to push I am sure he would have got out of the way and I would have taken down the pot and been upto 98k and we would probably have chopped it 4 ways for ~£600 each. So his out of turn move cost me £300, and at the time it was all smiles and "it doesn't really matter his call has to stand but you can bet if you want to" type of thing.

Back Online and live at B'pool.

2008-12-07T14:50:00.000Z

Im still alive, call the search party off !

The new Dongle thing developed some mysterious glitch and just wouldn't connect at home. Everywhere else but not at home. Contacted 3 mobile (India branch) and they were very helpfull without actually doing anything. Then last night it has just started working again, don't know why but I hope it will stay good.

So I haven't played online for 3 weeks.

Did play live at The G in Blackpool in their monthly £100 deepstack. Great little tourney this with 15k stack and 45 min levels, starting at 3pm on last Sat. of the month, will try and make it as regular as possible.
I started soundly on a fairly solid tight table and then made a lovely little play just before the break, where i floated a call from a double pot bet on J94 flop with K9 of spades. The turn brought 2 spades giving me the flush draw so I re-raised to 2.5k on her continuation bet of 700. I expected her to fold, but she called and I braced my self for the decision of a big bluff or to just let it go. However the river brough the 5 of spades and I value bet 2.5k again and she was forced to pay me off with top 2 pair. The table then started chatting about the hand, and I could see they had me down as a wild dangerous canon, which I love, but as you all know by now I am a pretty tight nit.
I made one little loose bluff that cost me a quarter of my stack, but then got going and started getting back upto average+ and I hardly got a hand. AK, AQ and Q,Q
being the only good starting hands I got all day ...until... after 7 and half hours I got the bullets in SB and pushed over the top of an early raiser who duly called me with her QQ. First card out was another lady and I was out. 7 and a half hours without getting my chips in at any time and then when I get Aces I get it all in and get dealt what feels like an under the belt blow. Shouldn't be allowed, or at least I should get some back as compensation.
Hell, imagine playing the WSOP for 3 days just on the bubble and getting it in with Aces against some "atit" merchant who gets lucky and takes your large stack home with nothing! STUPID GAME
Gez was down their too and final tabled where they all decided to chop it 10 ways !! Gez a £grand better off. nice one.

Had gone down the week before and played the Sunday night games at the Castle 6pm start --> out at 7:45 so went and played the G game at 8pm --> out by 11:30. LOL

Got to post the November accounts next...not going to be good reading again !

Might be off to B'pool later tonight. keep tuned all.

Cracking Aces

2008-11-12T20:47:00.000Z

Blue Square League game tonight and still on 1st level. I had to hit on the river but had that many outs , I was totally priced in, remembering it was PL. Think I played the hand great and I imagine the guy couldn't believe what was happening when the chips started moving my way after he had flopped Trip Aces. I even wrote in the chat box "OWNED" ~ I'm such a **$* at times!

Going well on Plex last day or so and back to almost even now for the month, which is a result considering the hole I had dug for myself. No progress up the Plex rake race ladder though. Going to have to have a mental night or two to get in those cash places now. It finishes on Saturday.

Rakerace is nuts

2008-11-11T05:08:00.000Z

This rakerace is all a bit stupid. It is only $200 I'm after, but feel I have to get there now. I'm upto 26th just 3 off the cash and I guess I'm not the only one thinking the same. I suppose I should look at the fact that if(when) I make it I will also have earnt a heap of extra bonus and rakeback. So I guess it will be more like $400 I'm going to gain by playing so much.

Having said that I had another downswing the other day, losing about $500 over almost 1000 hands. The thing is I'm beginning to get the feeling as though I am going to keep losing, yet still play on ! I don't feel I am playing particularly badly and the players on the tables aren't all winners, yet after a while I sense I'm just unlikely to win and probably going to lose more. Maybe it is a balance of the players on the tables or my position to them that is creating this, but as it is happening across multi-tables I have to assume that I am getting unlucky or playing not well enough. I think it is a bit of both and that I should definitely introduce a stop/loss limit to avoid me possibly "tilting" at all.

Finish with this hand from a Party Poker tourney the other day (my EXIT hand)

Get it all-in preflop with JJ v KK...."OOOPS"

Flop J3K.............................."Ah JESUS"

Turn J..............................."Get in you little beauty"

River K..............................."HUH"

Couldn't complain really, but what a damn tease !

New Month...Same Rollercoaster

2008-11-05T07:27:00.000Z

Quick post.

November has arrived and my bottomline has plumetted and come back up again.

Saturday played the £150 tourney at Leeds ALEA. Great game, great room and will be back to play it again. 15k chips, 45min blinds and every level going. Basic story is I was going well and then ran KK into QQ on a Q hi flop and then AJ got outdrawn by A7. Probably misplayed the KK hand by not re-raising, but hey-ho.

Online dropped $400 in 30 minutes when I decided the value was all at 2/4 PLO. I got it all-in 7 times with the best hand and lost 6 of them , including 3 pots of almost $300. No doubts here, I ran BAD, BAD !
Still made a whole lot back since and probably hardly down now.

I dropped out of the rake race table but back in today at 27 just out of the cash. Stupid idea these rakeraces and I should steer clear, but I will defo make the $200 places now, gives me more incentive I guess.

Blue Square League has started and I have donked out just short of the final table both games with two pieces of play suitable of a monkey.

Friday night going to go and play a local pub game and hopefully see some of the regular crew. Always enjoy these games no matter how I play.

October Accounts

2008-11-01T09:37:00.000Z

Accounts for October

PokerPlex : down $580
Blue Square: down $460
Full Tilt: up $120
Playing live: NO LIVE PLAY ALL MONTH !!!
In total for playing down $920

Staking : up $240 (ty Aces)
Bonus this month of $240 and pokerplex rakeback about $320

So -$120 for the month.

and +$8420 for the year so far.

So another negative month.....not good !

Pokerplex play was so up and down, in particular 2 three day sessions where I lost about $1000 each time and at all other times I was creeping back up grinding away as it should be. LOL
Was I tilting for those little downswings, didn't feel like it but maybe just a little frustration leads to minor misjudgements or maybe it was just the high variance of PLOmaha. It has made me realise playing for an actual living must be so frustrating.

Blue Square this month was another "bubble" result in the league , finishing 5th again. Could have been very different as I bubbled again in 2 tourneys and 3rd in another two. Losses mainly come from Sneaks who had a downswing on the cash tables, which was fair enough as he had ran real well and we were talking about it being our little Vegas fund. We are still up tho and we have never really got going any month yet. It will just be the league games here from now on I think.

Not played live for two months now, but will be breaking that drought with a lovely little £150 game with 15k chips and 45min levels at ALEA Casino in Leeds today. Hope to have something good to write tomorrow.

Stay Lucky

Yo-Yo Poker

2008-10-29T12:32:00.000Z

YO-YO Poker
Thats is what I seem to be playing this month.
No nice easy gradual upswing graph for me this month, I have been up ( a bit), down a lot, back to almost even, down a lot again and now clawing back towards even ( fair way to go yet). Expect I will be posting a loss for this month, which is always a bit soul destroying.
However I feel there have been a few positives:
1. Got Dataminers going at last. Eyepoker for ipoker and just bought SpadeeyeOmaha for FullTilt & Party. Got a heap of hands on them and now sorting out how to code the data, but it does mean I am not sitting down with tables full of winners and usually sitting down with tables full of losers. This has to be half the battle even if it hasn't produced great results this month.

2. been great staking Simon Trumper and see him bring in a good return for me.

3. I have just found out PokerPlex are running a rake race for a month from Oct15, well I knew but didn't pay much attention until I looked to see I am on the table list. in 29th place on 26Oct and didnt play much upto then, but have hammered it a bit since so should be up in the cash places now. Cant see me making the top3 but its $200 I didn't know I would get....always like that, like finding a tenner in your coat pocket weeks later.

I will post an update pic each post until the rakerace end.

Aces is Ace ...again !!

2008-10-19T00:05:00.000+01:00

You might remember a few weeks back I decided to back Simon 'Aces' Trumper in the WSOPE PLO and then the European PLO which he duly chopped for 22k (£500+ for me from my £25). Well the little tempter thrown in was if he cashed for more than 4k, then all backers would get 2.5% of him in the Thanet GUKPT. So today I have followed it and watched my "horse" make it through over 200 players to the final table. NICE ONE Simon !
He is the short stack at the moment, but with first prize at almost £70k, I could be looking at a tidy sum upto £1,600.

Not played live , and laid off a bit online , but being going fairly well making about $600 at Plex cash and getting a few 3rd places for the BlSq league, so we are back in this months comp now with 6 tourneys to go.

My eyepoker dataminer has been on overtime and I now have more than a million hands on PLO & PLO8 at ipoker. I am being much more selective with tables now using the table scan feature and only sit down at tables where most of the players are losers. I think this is probably the biggest step I have made in terms of online play for a long while and is something EVERY serious player should have. Better explanation with a few screenshots next blog..

For now, c'mon ACES !

Just realised why I dont play big MTTs much any more, just played a 200+ one on Full Tilt for "something to do". Fortunately I did OK and came 4th for almost 300 but it has taken 5 hours !!!

Bad,Bad and more Bad !

2008-10-07T20:19:00.000+01:00

I cant stop losing !! official !

I have just kept going downhill. Well Up 'n' down, but ultimately I'm now almost a $1000 down for the month....A DISASTER. Not had a week like this for ......ever.

I don't feel as though I'm playing particularly badly or rashly but everytime I semi-bluff push with a draw I get called and never hit. And every time I get someone pushing on me when I have the goods they seem to hit. Well its not every time but it seems it is more than the odds dictate. There I go sounding like a compulsive gambler (loser?) and blaming it all on luck. Maybe its time I did a bit of analysis, how can I make almost a grand last month and yet lose that much already this month??

* I have played mainly at 2/4 this month and started 6 tableing, so maybe the standard is a little higher than the .5/1 or 1/2 PLO games. Might step down to the lower games or just play the 4 games at once. Hate going backwards but think it could be needed here.

*I've got over half a million hands now logged thru the eyepoker dataminer, so need to look at that and see if any stats are showing differently for me this month vs last month.

* Am I actually playing -EV or just getting a real bad run? My PokerEV software free trial has expired so might purchase that to find out.

Bit of a negative post, but I was so looking forward to hammering this month and seeing how much I could make. I've already played almost as many hands as last month and it is only 6 days in.

On the positive side the Blue Square league started yesterday and although Sneaks didn't cash he has had a bit of a run on the cash tables and we are upto $3k.

Ladbrokes have a great added money series coming up which I will highlight next post.

OOOH Dear ...DOWNSWING

2008-10-05T08:43:00.000+01:00

Last post I was bragging about how well Sept had gone and the fact I was flyin in Oct too........well that was a curse as I have not hit a thing since. Everything has missed or been outdrawn everytime it all goes in, I actually feel as though I have played fairly well and not made too many mistakes, but nevertehless I keep losing. I have gone from $250 up to $300 down in the space of 2 days.
While it is hardly going broke, it does show how soul destroying this game must be to play as a pro sometimes. How many jobs do you put a solid hard days work in and go home with less (a lot less) sometimes than you start with.

The general thinking within the poker community is that you should be target setting based not on results but on play. In other words , dont worry how much you are up/down, but concern yourself with the number and quality of hands you play.
So this month I am going for 20,000 hands , which considering I only played just over 5,000 last month is going a bit. I am starting to move upto multi-tabling 6 tables at times and think this will become the norm at busy times soon. It will also give me about 50,000 points on the pokerplex player programme...ONLY need 17 million for a BMW M3 !! http://www.pokerplex.com/online_shop.shtml

Off Poker now ~ It chucked it down all day yesterday and I ran a trip to watch the Rugby League Grand Final at Old Trafford. The coach was half an hour late and I got soaked waiting for it and never dried out once but still didnt stop it being a fantastic day with a great atmosphere. Rugby League is the best sport to watch and I think this will become a regular annual trip.

Sept Accounts

2008-10-02T21:11:00.002+01:00

Accounts for September

PokerPlex : up $705
Blue Square: up $420
Full Tilt: down $50
Playing live: NO LIVE PLAY ALL MONTH !!!
In total for playing up $1075

Staking : up $950 (ty Aces)
Bonus this month of $150 and not too sure of what this new pokerplex rakeback will be? I'm guessing about $250

So +$2425 for the month.

and +$8540 for the year so far.

This is a bit more like it and I only played from the 8th onwards ! I think PokerPlex is a lot softer than the Crypto network and has a lot more games on offer, I've already made a good $250+ start to Oct.

As promised here are the Sept. stats from PokerTracker

I also haven't been extremely lucky running fairly true , in fact PokerEV shows that I was slightly "unlucky" in both PLOmaha and also PLOmaha Hi/Lo. Red line is what I "should" have won based on normal luck and the green line shows what I did win.

Boys are in the air to Vegas right now, cant stop wishing I was there. LOL

2 straight flushes but I'm still jealous

2008-10-01T21:07:00.000+01:00

Last couple of nights have been a bit opposite: one I felt I was playing well but got unlucky time after time and lost a couple of hundred, whilst the other I seemed to be making bad decisions but got paid off lucky at the end with a few big hands ending me winning a couple of hundred.
At one point I had two straight flushes within seconds of each other. Pics of pokerplex hand histories here. The first one was real nice as I hit my straight flush against his Nuts Ace high Flush to stack him.

However even with these hands , I'm still in mourning as a whole load of the boys are off to Vegas tomorrow and Im stuck here in the north of England blowing my whistle!
Im gonna make sure Devilperch books it outside of term time next year!

Update on Daz in the WSOPE is he is not the next poker Million, but can have no complaints after going steady enough all day before he got it all in for an above average stack pot with KK against AK only to see the board savage him with a couple of Bullets. I think he enjoyed himself although he did show that he is a bit of a lightweight as he sat next to Jennifer Tilly all day and night without getting a date or even her number ! WUSS !

September accounts up tomorrow with pokertracker stats and Poker EV graphs. oh so exciting !

ACES is Ace !!!

2008-09-29T18:53:00.000+01:00

Last post I told you that I had backed Simon "Aces" Trumper in the WSOPE PLO event to the tune of £60 for 1%. Well he got it all-in with a good hand but multi-way it didn't hold up. So when he said he was looking for backers (@£30 for 2.5%) for the European PLO tourney I wasn't gonna bother but then he threw in the extra 'BONUS' of a free 2.5% of him in the GUKPT Thanet Event if he won £4k+. So I got tempted by what sounded a +EV situation and sent a transfer on stars.
Well I forgot about it to be honest and then tonight when I got home I had this very welcome surprise message on Blondepoker.

He only went and won it (well technically 2nd on a chop) for a £22,500 pay day. So a nice little boost to what is proving to be quite a good month even though I am not going to play live at all. And I also now have that 'bonus' 2.5% of Simon in the Thanet GUKPT.

I know I said I'd do it the next post, but have decided to share the graphs/charts from my software programs at the end of the month when I do my accounts and will be more relevant. And this month they should look pretty good !

Staking and more software

2008-09-24T07:21:00.000+01:00

There are two more pieces of software, both free, that I have got on the new laptop now. Both for recording my results.

PokerEV ~ This is a very clever piece of software that tries to tell you how "lucky" you have been. Which it does to a certain extent by working out your +/-EV for each hand where you are all in. For the way I short stack PLO that probably works out at about half my big hands so a good indicator of whether I am running hot or icy cold.

PokerGrapher ~ This takes my PokerTracker stats and produces clear graphs for analysis.

I'll put a couple of screen shots up tonight or tomorrow.

Also have took the chance and invested in Simon "Aces" Trumper in the WSOPE PLOmaha that starts today. Cost me £60 ($111) to get 1% of him in this £5250 compatition. He sold 60% of himself within 2 days on Blondepoker and has got a good record, although his record is based around his game from a fair few years ago so dont know if it is a profitable stake or not, but might be interesting. His blurb to sell is here.
http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=36985.0

Software techno

2008-09-22T00:01:00.000+01:00

Out last night on the excuse of Sneaks headwetting. So a bit groggy today and didn't bother playing until this evening but set up all my software gadgets on the new laptop and seem to have got them working real quickly. In short I now have:

Poker Tracker ~ keeps records of all my hands, how Im playing, how much I'm winning but probably more importantly also how everyone else on the table plays.

Eyepoker ~ This is a datamining and table selection tool that sits there and collects all the hand details on upto 16 tables and feeds it into the pokertracker at once and I leave it on all the time I'm not playing, already today it has collected info on 48,000 hands !!

PokerAce HUD ~ This displays stats directly onto the poker table so I can see instantly how often a guy raises pre-flop and wether he is a winning player and a heap of other stats.

It might seem to be a bit too much , but INFORMATION IS KING and it WILL help give me a little more edge.

I will put some screenshots up of them over the coming posts.

Played tonight in the last BlueSquare league game and took it down for a nice $500 boost.

Sneaks and I take it in turns to play these and despite not being very successful to be honest, we still have taken our account to $2k+ now from $400 each. Couple of weeks off now before Octobers league starts so will spend some time getting to grips on improving my Omaha game on Plex.

Another Year without Trophies & Medals

2008-09-15T07:49:00.000+01:00

So last nights APAT online main event brought me no success once more, although I had a fair run finishing in 19th for $61 when my AK re-push ran into AA. I played some hands well , getting away from a few danger flops, but also didn't maximise a few great BB hands. I had AAx2, KK, QQ, AKx2 on the BB and pushed every time with it to raises, but never got the call I wanted, perhaps correct way to play the AK and QQ, but could have got more by slow-playing the top two hands.
So I finish the APAT season still without a medal, must be 35+ tourneys I have played now in last 2 years and never finished above 6th !! I'll be back next year.

Had a little win in the Middleweight freeroll on BlSq and won a GUKPT sat Token, although they seem to have credited the cash to the account.

No major events coming up. Might play the £100 Deepstack @ B'pool on last Sat of month(27th), but will have to wriggle a free passout as have arranged a trip to the Rugby League Grand Final for the following Sat.

Stay Lucky Guys

Congrats to DazN

2008-09-13T12:28:00.000+01:00

Fantastic result for a poker playing friend the other day. Daz who flopped so hopelessly with me down in London has landed himself a biggy.......WSOPE ($25k package)thru betfair and a mammoth sat the other night. He actually qualified through a few sats from a starting $5 fee!So if he takes it down on Oct2nd it will be probably the greatest tournement spin-up ever !!

GOOD LUCK DAZ

As for me, Ive been having mixed fortune, with no success at all on Blue square in the League or the APAT games, but going quite strong in the PLO and PLO8 games on Plex. PokerPlex have just moved across to the ipoker network and have a new deal, not a bad one but not as good as the one from their crypto days. However much greater choice of games and availability at PLO/PLO8 so might work out better for me in the long run.

Tonight is the APAT online main event with a GUKPT package added (and medals of course for top 3!) , would be a tournament I would love to take down. SO Im gunning for a lucky and slightly skillfull evening.

August Accounts

2008-09-07T12:51:00.000+01:00

Here goes then, don't think it is going to be great reading...

Accounts for August

PokerPlex : up $160
Blue Square: up $380 (totally due to Sneaks)
Full Tilt: up $60
Playing live: down $680 (tourneys=$430, cash=$250)

In total for playing down $80
No Bonus this month of course and hardly any rakeback, probably about $30
So -$50 for the month.

and +$6115 for the year so far.

Hardly the disaster month I feared once I have totted it all up, but this was due mainly to Sneaks who had a fair bit of success in the Blue Square league when I could hardly play and also due to a reasonable week at beginning of the month on Full Tilt and Plex while I was still online.
The live tourneys bite a little and I can't continue playing them at such a high level so often if I dont hit a result or two. My accounts include only the playing side of things and doesn't factor in the expenses, most of which came out of my 'Poker Fund' for my end of month tour down south.
Having said that, I do feel I am playing well in them and really beginning to recognise players styles, something I didn't do too well before and certainly was very poor (often non existent) at online.

I will be back at the Blue Square league tonight onwards and also got the APAT online series this week to look forward to. They start tonight with the PLO and then have a Stud, 6max NLHE, finishing with the NLHE main event (Which I final tabled in last year ---BRAG!)

Will update a bit more regularly now I'm back "at it", so keep tuned and stay lucky.

Yet another Snap Decision....D'OH

2008-09-05T22:45:00.000+01:00

Got myself a new laptop and one of those dongle things. Laptop is great but this dongle is so slow, don't know if I will even be able to download this.....although I guess if you are reading it ..I have! Not downloaded any sites yet, but still hope to be online this w/end to get back playing, especially as I fancy the APAT online series starting Sunday, details here http://www.apat.com/index.php.

Talking of APAT, I played the main event in London last Saturday and went well right from the off, being more than twice the average stack for most of the day and being in the top 10 or so throughout. I played well slightly LAG, and felt I was reading players well. Got a lot of moves through with nothing and paid value on hands where I was strong. I really felt very comfortable and then about midnight with 40 players left of the starting 205 I again made a stupid play without thinking.
I raised to 8k (BB=2k)from mid position with AJ and got smooth called by the very solid guy on my left. My head was screaming at me " whooooa, watch out he has aces" as the guy wasnt one to make moves and I was very surprised to see him not re-raise me. I figured he could have AK as well maybe , but my initial reaction had been that he was calling with Aces. Anyway the flop killed me as it came 89J, so I led out for 12k, without really thinking about bet size, and he pushed pretty much straight away. It was "only" another 23k to call and I did have top pair top kicker, BUT, what the hell did I think I was beating now ????? anyway my mind didn't think and I stuttered out "CALL" in a micro-second. Sure enough he flipped his aces over and I went from very comfortable to short stack push territory. I hung around for another hour or so and was a little unlucky losing my last two hands with the best starting two. However I left a tourney once more pissed off with myself for making a move without taking my time.

A previous post was entitled "will I ever learn?" Well I had better start quickly if I really want to get some results, got to focus the whole tourney EVERY hand.....especially the big pots......will not make a snap decision again for any kind of pot without ensuring I have considered it all. LOL we'll see?

Will have to publish some August accounts v. soon, and that is not going to be good reading.

Here is hoping I get lucky soon.

Offline, I'm afraid

2008-08-30T09:35:00.000+01:00

MY laptops hard drive has blown up and something not working on the PC router connection so been offline for a while ( 3 weeks!)

Hope to get sorted this next week and looking to get a new laptop and maybe go down the dongle route so can play anywhere.

As for live play, played the APAT PL Omaha tourney and after a good start, I got away cheaply from a couple of nut flops that would have turned into disaster and was quite pleased with myself. Then went card dead for a while and donkeded off a 3k bluff with nothing. Whilst not desperate, I was then down to 2/3 average and when with 6 limpers the board flopped 772 (2clubs) with me in BB with 10,8,7,3, I called aggresive button bet only to be check raised by another aggressive player from mid-position. I figured he had the 7 or a club draw, but felt he was likely to have nothing higher than a 10 with his 7, as he could be playing a hand like 5678 etc, if he had it at all. So I called getting about 2:1 for my money and he had QQ72 and with no help from the board I exited fairly early realy. A little dissapointed really as I had been looking forward to this game for a while and felt considerably better than most at the table where I had seen a lot of poor and questionable plays in just the 140 min I was in.
Went with Daz Naylor to the Gutshot after, to check it out and play their evening game. Very dissapointed with the place after all that I had heard~ quite grubby and small. The players were a strange bunch with plenty of characters and the standard of play wasn't bad. Got to the final 2 tables but never really got much above average and for what seems like the 10th tourney running, I get knocked out the first time I had all my chips in the middle and called.

Due a little bit of fortune me thinks....maybe today will be the day as I am playing the APAT World game at the Vic.

So till later, stay lucky !

Will I ever learn ???

2008-08-05T10:19:00.000+01:00

Went to Stoke to play their "Anniversary Cup" £100 (+£2000 added) comp on Sunday. It brought in a fantastic 158 runners and I have to say that I enjoyed the comp a lot. They run a £100(+£1000) every month and hope to play this when ever I get the chance with no work the following Monday~ that wont be often!.
My table was pretty tough, with a couple of guys i recognise from the TV, including Red Dog and some Greek dude, also was Michelle Shiels who I had played against at the APAT team game where she had impressed me and she was back from two chops at the Broadway Festival.
Lost 2000 chips fairly early with some missed flops and a 1k bluff, then managed to get back level thrigu small pot poker. After the break had a big pot where I knocked out Michelle when a continuation bet with KQ on a J,10,3 board was pushed back at me and I decided I had to make the pot sized call with all but my whole stack, figuring I likely needed any A,9,K or Q to win it ~ so 14 outs x2 . She had 22 , said she had "sensed" weakness, I hit a K on turn and that was it. Then took out a short stack and a lovely bluff on a co-ordinated board with diddly squat had me at 21k with average at about 12k. So looking good!
Then I went card dead for an hour or so and found myself back below average and the blinds and newly introduced antes beginning to bite. So when I looked down at 77 , I thought "this was it" and prepared to move all-in for about 8xBB. But, the chip monster on my right decided to raise first, "hey that is not in the plan" I think, but nevertheless move my chips all-in without more than 3 sec thought (remember my exit hand at APAT). He dwelled for about 30 sec, and I was thinking I had a fair chance of doubling up against a Ax or maybe even a smaller pair, before calling and flipping QQ.
Bit annoyed with myself, I had got to a state where I needed to make a move, but again I hadn't thought enough before throwing my chips in. And this wasn't really the case, I had hardly any fold equity, and I shouldn't be putting them in without it unless I have a Monster.
I will now write out lines as a punishment:

THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.
THINK, THINK, THINK.

Defragmented the Laptop for the first time the other day and it has messed my PokerTracker up, so will blog up the techno section I promised when I got that back sorted.

Stay Lucky Guys

10,000,000 to 1 !!!

2008-07-31T22:46:00.000+01:00

Ok so I did play tonight. Just a $1 tourney to this new promotiuon Pokerstars are running for EPT freeroll with an added $6k on top of the EPT London Package. And they are running this for the next 10 weeks , each week ! I made it in this tourney for this Sunday by the way
Worth getting on and playing 4x Sats a day ( 1x freeroll,1x$5, 1x10FPP & 1x$1).

Anyway the post title is the fact I got Aces dealt to me three times running !!!!

And I even showed them and told the whole table when I bet that I had them !! LOL

July Accounts...Early this month!

2008-07-31T17:38:00.000+01:00

Not going to play tonight, so might as well get them up now.

Accounts for June

PokerPlex : down $90
Blue Square: down $240 (combined disaster month with Sneaks)
Full Tilt: up $170
ClassicPoker: up $500
Nasty Duck: down $70
Playing live: down $120

In total for playing up $150
Bonus of $250 and rakeback in region of $200
So +$600 for the month.

and +$6165 for the year so far.

7 months into the year and less than $1000/month. I shouldn't aim for a set amount/month but more a certain #hands played or reach a set bonus /month really. So I will think about that over next day or two and post back.

I have a lot of live tourneys coming up, but intend to get playing as much as possible and complete the bonuses and I think this August I will start to play a bit more @ FullTilt as I like the site (+ I get 27% R'back too) and it is always busy in the PLO games there 24/7. I will also see if I can take advantage of any of their promotions http://my.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions?key=cGxheWVyaXg9MjgwMjI0JnRva2VuPVBEQTY3S0Q3TTRSQUJXRDQ0SFc1OA--
Second thing I intend to do is review my play and the software tools I use and how I use them. Apologies immediately to all the Poker technophobes who think it should just be a straight game of skill.LOL

Up the Online limits and the future is Live

2008-07-29T19:45:00.000+01:00

I wet to play yesterday on Crypto and found hardly any games at my usual limits, so decided it was time to move up a bit as I had been going well for the last week or two. So logged into 4 $1/2 PLO tables and proceeded to crash, down over $300 within 30 min. I made a bit of a recovery and gained back a bit more this morning, but it just goes to show the variance involved and how you really need a bankroll and shouldn't move up until ready. I'll probably continue to mix it at 1/2 and 0.5/1 for a while.

I've also played a couple of freerolls. I did a treble entry across 3 crypto sites on a "goodwill" freeroll for a sat to the 20k g'teed. Got one of 10 seats from 500 and then proceeded to the final table of the 20k before running QQ into AA and the a shortstacker luckboxing out on me, to leave in 9th for $500. Not bad for a freeroll result but left a little dissapointed as I had been in top 2 for most of tourney and 1st place was $6k.

As for Live poker, I have a few things lined up. so here is the diary of events:

Sun 3rd Aug~ £100 D/C @ Stoke Circus (with £2k added) .... this is the anniversary cup that i chopped 3 way last year and then blagged the trophy from Lucy Rokash. So looking for a similar result this time.

Wed 27th Aug~ £50 APAT PLOmaha Champs @ Vic, London.......mmmm deep stack Omaha tourney....luv it!

Sat 30th Aug~ £75 APAT NLHE Champs @ Vic, London.....another 10k, 40 min jobby !

Wed 3rd Sept~ £250 GUKPT PLOmaha Festival event @ Bolton....My B'day next day so this is a treat to myself.

I have started a 'stake me' thread on Furness forum for the GUKPT PLO tourney @ Bolton and already have sold 40%. I feel this is a great way to be able to play these comps that I couldn't really bankroll and if i get some result in this one , Im sure I will get similar or better backing for the B'pool one and maybe more in the future. However it does put the pressure on, can feel it already !! LOL
Im only selling 50% so just 10% left to sell so get on quick. Basically £3 for 1% and I feel I will be +EV in this so good value. Reply as a comment or on here http://www.furnesspoker.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1190&p=5605#p5605

APAT ...firsts and regrets

2008-07-26T08:15:00.000+01:00

Apologies to all my world wide readers...I beleive I have readers all over the UK ( Barrow for example) and even 1 overseas (Walney Island).........for the lack of entries. There has been a few poker related 'happenings', so will put a few updates up over next day or two.

APAT team champs last w/end. I had entered us on the APAT forum as a chance entry thinking we could scratch a team of 10 together for it. However that gave me the thankless job of Captain which meant having to 'pick' a team for it, forgetting players along the way and managing to get them in when others couldn't make it . Then having to justify team selection to others (which I couldn't really do because the team had been picked without any real criteria~ I hadn't realised it would be such an issue). I like to think I get on pretty much with everyone, or try to anyway, but others are more fussy, and their views came along and then people who weren't in wanted to play and such like. Robo had said to me "thank god you are doing it" and I know what he means now. Anyway I had it all organised with the last minute drop outs, reserves to take their place and transport issues with 4 non-drivers so that all 10 of us were there at Blackpool in plenty of time.

Now we just had to win the thing!
The APAT events are great tournaments with 10k chips, 40 min clock and every level all the way, only thing missing is antes. The team were all on different tabels and we settled down knowing we could take our time. However I wasn't going to miss the chance to get chips and limped or called small raises with 8 small pocket pairs in the first 2 rounds ! However didnt connect with any of them and after bluffing the turn on one ended up with just over 7k of my chips left after only 30 min. I was beginning to think things were going to be tough as the table was of a high standard with some good players on it. Then I got a hand that got me back to level before I got this hand:

I am BB with JcQc, button stealer raises and I call.
Flop comes AcKc2d......I decide to check and decide what to do on the size of his continuation bet, but he checks too.
Turn 10c .....-BOOM!!-.....

I have to check my hand to make sure. Immediately I could feel myself flustered ( not felt like that for years since I was a casino novice ). I didn't know what to do, where were the TV cameras? They should see this!!! Then the dealer says "I dealt a Royal Flush last week", I made a joke of it " do you think I will get a chip set for it"~ that might throw them off my scent. LOL
I managed to get as much as I could from it on the turn and river I think with 1k & 2k bets being called by his two pair, and although I stalled for the TV cameras they never arrived in time and I flipped it over rather undramatically. My first live Royal Flush to go with my 10 online ones ( got another one at Omaha on Wed this week too) and I did end up getting that GUKPT chip set to boot.

From there on I played fairly well, with a couple of occasions where I maybe didn't maximise a few pots, but generally good, staying at about average all the way and without ever having my stack all-in until after 9 hours of play I made this mistake.

I am under the gun (10 handed) and look down at AK. I raise to 6.5k (BB=2k) all folded round to chip leader on the BB. He looks down and makes it 15k to go. I think for two nano seconds and push all-in my 38k stack. He calls with KK and Im gone.
I was so sick with myself for this play, I had fought for 9 hours and to give up my stack without any thought left me pi**ed off with myself. He had been fairly tight and passive , had only shown premier cards....what could he have AA,KK QQ maybe JJ and also AK. Couldn't see him making the re-raise with AQ, so in essence I was beating none of his range and seriously dominated with 40% of it. He was always going to call, so I didn't even have any fold equity. STUPID PLAY and what I really regret is doing it so quickly without thinking. I know it is easier with hindsight, but do beleive now that if I had thought I would have come to the conclusion above and could have made a hero fold~ " I think I am making a big but good laydown here" and show them type of thing. Hopefully I will live and learn from it. THINK THINK THINK before big decisions.

The team ended up in 10th out of 20 thanks to the efforts of Snapper and Wendy. Unfortunately in my planning I hadnt accounted for non-drivers making day 2, so they both had to get the train down and ended up just short of the money too. So a bit of a dissapointing finish for them.

Next year I am sure we will enter again and probably make a w/end of it and stay over. Typical Jock that he is , Wolfy spotted B&Bs at £11 per night !! Christ , I would eat my moneys worth there the next morning.

I WILL post again in next couple of days with result of a nice freeroll I played and a few live tourneys i have my eyes on.

Stay tuned and stay lucky JON

June Accounts.....late posting

2008-07-07T23:47:00.000+01:00

Bit boring, hence I have never got round to posting them:

Accounts for June

Littlewoods : down $200
Blue Square: down $330
Virgin: down $40
Playing live: up $230

In total for playing down $340
Bonus of $400 and rakeback in region of $160
So +$220 for the month.

and +$5565 for the year so far.

The extra bonus from Littlewoods has helped this month, back to Plex next month.

0k last night..~.. played the ipoker $250k and doubled up after 10 min when I limped utg with AA and got a 6Xbb Raiser and a caller , I overbet All-in and sure enough he took me for a squeeze play and called with QQ. Feeling very pleased with myself I then got a run of cards and was always up there in top group until break.
After the break I went card dead beyond belief and this lasted 3 hours. I somehow got within site of the bubble(paid 150 places out of 1100) and decided to hold on for it ($250). Then I got AA with 3 places to go to the bubble and me on 2xBB. I told the table I had aces, but still got called and he pushed with top pair on the flop. Wasnt prepared to let this go for just $250 so called and held on --> think it was the right play, by folding i was sure of making first pay level but that was it.
As it was I went on to steal a couple of times and edge my way to 51st where I got AQ and decided to call an initial raiser, he had K10 and hit, so i popped out for $750....which is a nice little boost. If my AQ had hung onto the lead I would have been capable of making last 30 or higher and with $52k first prize who knows how high I could have gone.
As I qualified from a sat with a fair overlay($6k) and then the main event also had an overlay($30k+), I think it is a tourney I might play more often. I love extra value !!!

Live Omaha ! Love it...........

2008-06-30T22:35:00.000+01:00

...................but I'm still a DONK !

we had the first local Omaha tourney last night. It was NL, because PL would be too hard ! LOL

£10 with £5 rebuys and unsurprisingly it was rebuy crazy.
I doubled up first hand when I called an all-in with top two pair and nut flush draw, just to see him playing a lower two pair. He-he. After the rebuy , the standard just improved a little, not a lot, just a little. I got up to almost a quarter of chips in play with 5 left when I made a move I didn't need too. Playing against the chip leaders 4xBB raise, who was playing tight,I called in position with AKQ6 hoping to hit and take him off it. Flop came down J,10,2 (2 clubs) and when he checked I moved in with what i beleived to be 13 outs and confident of him passing.He shrugged his shoulders and said "I call". "OK" I thought, but he flipped over a Monster in AAQ9 with 2 clubs....He had an Overpair, upndown straight and nut flush draws. Suddenly my 13 outs was reduced to 6 and with him having extra outs too. Probably down to 15% for me.
It was the right move in a normal tourney, but I was well in control here and didn't need to take on the only one who could hurt me like that. Daft play, but great fun tourney hope they have one again soon.

Anyway just to brighten up my gloom, played one gane tonight and made it through a $32 qualifier for Sundays $250,00 gtee on ipoker.

Roll on Sunday---------Im due A big CASH !!

More Value

2008-06-28T23:24:00.000+01:00

Just thought I would add this. On Classic I got an email offering me money back if i entered sat for tomorrows £40k with an old alias I had forgotten all about. So i joined 82 others for £5 and hit one of the top 10 spots and a £120 seat tomorrow. About 8th time i have satellited into this weekly Sunday game in 2008.....Yet to cash in it though. LOL

I am AKAKAman

Got a problem now , because this clashes with the Omaha tourney (v good value imo) and also a possible drink with mates watching the Euro Final. mmmmmmmmmmmm decisions

Blackpool Fiasco

2008-06-28T21:21:00.000+01:00

I went to the Grosvenor at Blackpool last night to take part in the £150 link game Grosvenor had planned across the North of England. What a disaster they simply haven't promoted it at all or run sats and the numbers were embarassing. 24 @ B'pool but none of the the other 7 casinos could manage more than 6!! EVENT CANCELLED

At almost 10pm, we eventually got a game going of £75 (+ 1 r-buy or add-on). I quite enjoyed the game and steadily built my stack inc. a large number (for me) of steals at pots people didn't want. Didn't bother with an add-on and when I got QQ twice and both times it managed to dodge an ace v AQ & AJ I was onto the final table in 3rd place. 8 handed though I managed to pick up AA and when I was re-popped by KK it looked like I would have almost half the chips in play. However the poker gods threw in a King on the turn, leaving me short and I donked out pushing with Ace-rag into a pair of 8s.

I picked up £200 in 6th place for a small profit , but came away really having enjoyed myself. I played well, the standard was good too for a change (cant really remember a play I thought was poor by anyone) and I spent a lot of the evening with Howard Plant on my table. The guy is one of those guys who just cant be quiet with non-stop jokes and one-liners all night, not everyones cup of tea, but I like him and he makes the evening entertaining. Thought about posting a few of his gags here, but its the sort of thing where "you need to be there".

Not played much online recently as I have fulfilled the months bonus requirements, although I have provisionally signed up at Badbeat.com. Not too sure about it, but will write more about that and the APAT forum challenge in the next post. Also a very boring Accounts for June post soon too.

Due a Bad Beat ...or ten

2008-06-11T21:22:00.000+01:00

I've not updated for a week, so you might have guessed things haven't really gone my way. Cash Im down a little , due to a little bad luck and some poor plays. On the tournament side though , I have been playing well but getting well and truly smacked with the devils luck baton.
I had a few close sats the other day came 7th in the GUKPT with 2 seats and then on Thursday came 11th with 6 seats up for grabs in the Virgin festival sat. In both, I went out on coin flips that would have put me in the top 2.
I then got a few bad beats always arriving on the river and then tonight, I have realised it is Blue Square holding a grudge, when after 10 min in the league $40PL game, it gave me KK and I duly got it all-in pre-flop to see my opponent flip over Queens. Board xxx, x , and yes....Queen on the river.
So a few minutes later I am in the $109 GUKPT sat. 1st hand utg goes all-in and plenty of piss taking in the chat box, "one move, 75xBB, nice play" and so on. Very next hand of the tourney I get AA, so decide from utg to go all-in. Before I get any snide comments I get a call. "Oh Yes Happy days!" I think as he flips over AK of clubs. Board comes low, but two clubs and then the mighty poker lord teases me by turning a blank before dropping the cruel club on the River.
"mmmmmm never put you on AA" says the luckbox.
"I know , you muppet" I think.
"Re-buy for $100" asks the dealer
"Dont think I will bother."

END OF POST, TILT IS SETTING IN

New Month...new start

2008-06-04T21:32:00.000+01:00

So June is here and I am starting afresh.

New league on BlueSquare and main bonus will be at Littlewoods this month.

Blue Square has started brightly. First 2 tournaments have been 3rd ($150) and then out on the bubble (6th) when my AA was a victim of a horrible runner runner flush. Still two final tables and a good 16 points for the league.

Littlewoods are offering a special $400 bonus for 1500MPPs or less than 4MPPs per 1$. I also get 30% rakeback here too, so good deal all round.

Got the $40 Pot Limit League game tonight and the GUKPT Luton Sat that I got 2x$109 tickets for still.

All is not Gold

2008-06-01T22:04:00.000+01:00

Just when I seemed to be doing no wrong, last few posts have all been success, then nothing goes right.
The 2 ECOOP games just never went anywhere.
In the Omaha I was chip leader after 4 hands, but that was as good as it got. 2 hours later I was just another also ran. Maybe should have pushed a little earlier, I had a chance and played pussy poker. Got to be more assertive in these bigger slower tourneys, hard to come back from a small stack as they are so much deeper.

Tonight in the NLHE got back above starting stack after 2 hours and then got re-raised 3 hands running, couldn't call any of them. Again a bit pussy like poker I folded AK twice. I think a more LAG approach might suit me better in these games. Although to be fair I was fairly card quiet and never hit big with any speculative hand. In the end tried to re-shove a LAG with 66 and he called with AJand hit them both on flop. Only 2nd time i had pushed and first i was called. If I had of won I guess I would have been upto average....they say you got to win the 50:50s. So I wasn't unhappy with the move , but "one Time" would have been nice.

Also lost $175 on Full Tilt in about 30 minutes last night....should see the luck chart !!

Back to Littlwoods for this June as they have a nice £300 special bonus on.

Another Sat win and May Accounts

2008-05-31T16:59:00.000+01:00

Another win in a $40sat for tonights $250 European Online hampionship PL Omaha event. I was low for the whole tournament , never getting above 2500 chips, but managed to hang in there. Check the value out in these sats.. $3000 overlay for this one with 20 g'teed seats.....fantastic.....wish i had played a few more now.

Accounts for May

Poker Plex : up $300
PokerStars: down $30
Blue Square: up $830
Full Tilt: up $110
Virgin: up $60
Gala: down $80
Playing live: up $130 (up @ cash, down @ tourney)

In total for playing up $1320
Bonus of $250 and rakeback in region of $250 (150@plex &$100@FullTilt)

So +$1820 for the month.

and +$5345 for the year so far.

Bit more like it, although it has mainly come in the last 10 days. Of course I haven't included the two ECOOP qualifications in that figure or the 2x$109 GUKPT sat tikets. I will only include actual cashes in my figures. If I had though then months profit would be +$3366 !! VERY NICE

Tonights and tomorrows games are both on ipoker @7pm start. I will be on MSN on robbieboxseal@hotmail.com feel free to log in and say hi.

Am I a Luckbox !

2008-05-30T10:51:00.000+01:00

'Stay Lucky JON' is my signature at a few forums and I can now find out if that is true.
Last night I was introduced to a new piece of software called "pokerEV" and it is Brilliant!
It can tell you how lucky you are on all hands that go to a showdown. Which is great for giving you more of an idea if you are still beating the game in the long term.

This is my graph at Pokerplex for the last week, playameing PL Omaha. A traditionally "lucky" game.

The green line is my REAL winnings and the red line is my EXPECTED winnings (or in other words what I 'should' have won). As you can see I was running good(lucky) for most of the week and then this morning have hit a bad run of all-ins and slumped a bit with my "luck" now pretty neutral for the week as a whole.

I just keep on rolling !

2008-05-29T09:07:00.000+01:00

At last ! I did it ! Took down the BlueSquare league play-off game. I must have come in the top 4 at least 6 times before without success. But tonight I did it and a $1060 ticket to the $1.5 Million gteed European Chamionship of Online Poker (ECOOP). This will be my biggest event , in terms of buy-in and prize pool.

The big hand (luckbox) moment came when 4 handed. I pushed in with J,9 of diamonds to get called by the small blind and then to see the Big Blind and chip leader re-push, which forced out the SB. BB had AK and the flop brought two diamonds, and the 3rd on the turn. SB had been holding KQ suited and would have hit a FH. Nice protection for me !! hehe

I tried to do a deal with Blue Square to get the online seat transferred to live GUKPT seats but they were having none of it. Shame, as I really do want to play one of these bigger events and last year winning this would have given me a GUKPT main event seat. Also did a deal for 25% of the action in the ECOOP with "Logie66" when heads up. Funny, at the time it seemed a good idea, doesn't seem quite such a good deal now ! LOL

Sunday 7pm if you want to watch/play......not going to be fast tho.....5000chips and half hour blinds!!

Deal 'em good , till the early hours.

In the shade

2008-05-28T18:12:00.000+01:00

Well Im back blogging again today.....because I'm still winning !! Its so easy LOL

An hour on Pokerplex for about +$80 and then an hour on Full Tilt for +$120.

I find FullTilt a really good site with LOTS of PL Omaha games. I also get rakeback @ 27% rate through thehendonmob.com I dont get a bonus there but like Pokerstars they have a pretty good online store and I'm almost half way to getting these little beauties

Play-off game on BlueSquare tonight and trying to arrange a way to go to Blackpool on Saturday for a cracking 15k deep stack,45min clock £200 jobby. Sneaks is up for it too.

Little surge of form !

2008-05-27T12:32:00.000+01:00

Just an update as I seem to be winning and it is always nicer doing the blog when winning.

Poker plex has been all short stack PL Omaha this month, mainly $0.5/$1.

Last week has been good, here are the last 1000 hands on the pokergrapher again.

No Live games planned soon, next ones are probably a Grosvenor £150 link game (more of which in a later blog)and hopefully the PLOmaha rebuy locally on the 27th and 29th respectively.

110 chips to champ !!

2008-05-25T22:56:00.000+01:00

Final Blue Square league game tonight. I started in 5th place, 4 points behind 3rd and no chance of catching top 2.

3rd and 4th got eliminated early, so I needed to come 7th or higher to get 3rd and 2x$109 GUKPT sat tickets. So there I am in 8th waiting for someone to go and it doesn't happen, next thing I'm low but hanging in. I go 3 circuits with my BB taking it down each time when all-in. At one point I have 110 chips and average is 5k !! I am really just hanging in desperately for 7th, cashing(top 3 only)is not a consideration. LOL
Then someone goes out, so I push in next two hands and amazingly three minutes later I am up to 5k myself. On this surge of fortune, I rush through to a chip lead and take the last 5 players out to win the tourney and $750 (+ the 2x$109 tickets)

Poker is a great game!

It's not Terry's

2008-05-24T09:58:00.000+01:00

What a game!!

ManU v Chelsea, I'm talking about. A real proper game with both teams going for it, none of this boring "we dont want to lose this" type of game, but two teams who have great players and are so well matched. In the end it was classic drama too, almost film script type stuff, I dont like the idea of penalties (should be played out properly from a sporting ethos) but it is great entertainmant for the spectator. Don't share the sympathy for Terry, I like the guy he is a passionate and honest player even if he is too slow to be rated as highly as he is, but if he is going to take the glory for scoring the winner then he has to take the heat for when he misses too. He didn't cry, thank god, but from the look on his face you could tell he wanted a chinese type earthquake to hit just so he could jump in the hole and get swallowed up !!

Due to babysitting had to watch it at home until the missus arrived half way thru extra-time, so I popped down the local. Everyone was pissed, seems great when you've been drinking all game but when you turn up sober it just seems so yobish. Sneaks was in there (maybe pissed) and I forgot to mention his recent GUKPT at Newcastle, where once again he made the 2nd day, but then fell fowl of an IDIOT who called Sneaks (AQ) pre-flop raise from late position with (5,10), because he thought Sneaks was "at it". The flop came down Q,10,5. Absolutely Bogus flop and that was it ~ chips went in , no help . Unlucky mate. Bolton is his next GUKPT date in Sept.

Talking of big comps , the leagues haven't gone quite as I wanted, the Gala just hasn't taken off at all and dont think I will bother again there until next league starts. The Blue Square one has me in 5th, but no chance of catching 1st with just Sundays game to go. Can get 3rd tho, prizes for top 4 only.

Off all next week, so might try to get a live game in somewhere.

Tonight off camping with the family Hi-De-Hi.

League rumbles on

2008-05-20T23:57:00.000+01:00

The two leagues have been rumbling on and in the Gala league played a fair few games , but just got nowhere AT ALL !! not even final tables once in 6 attempts !
The Blue Square league has gone better. Tonight I ended up 3rd for $300 and 10 more points, which puts me into 3rd place. Should have been more but the league leader sucked out with a river to stay in and is going to have a large lead going into the three last events. I made a squeeze play from the BB with trash and ran into an all-in push from the Button which i had to let go ( he showed KK) and one big hand really destroyed me later when on a 679 board all the chips went in with me holding A10 hearts ( 2 on board) for flush and gutshot draw against LAGs 69 two pair. I missed .....sigh.

An intersting hand happened early in freezeout section. All the chips went in pre-flop between 4 of us and the lead changed on every street!
Pre-flop: It was AA v 88 v AK v (my)QQ
Flop: 8J2
Turn: Q
River: 10

Everyone felt the emotional roller-coaster on that hand, fortunately I was big chip Daddy and stayed in.

Current BlueSquare league standings here http://www.bluesq.com/bluesquare/bspoker/bluesquarepokerleague.shtml

Champions league final tomorrow, got to babysit the kids , so I'll watch it and play the BlSq league game as well. Might get out to the pub later , good mate just returned from getting married in Mauritious and he is a MAN U fan. Just fancy them to edge it tomorrow, but too close to bet on with the odds being so tight.
Did you know Derby made the European Cup semis in 1974 under Cloughy and it was later found out that Juventus had bribed the Ref. And look at us this year.

Bonus chasing

2008-05-18T20:13:00.000+01:00

ipoker ( that is mainly Blue Square for me) are having their billionth hand promotion at the moment. With the billionth probably going to be dealt in he next 48 hours. Along the way they have milestone hands every 200k and 5 million, so decided yesterday to have a blast and catch one of them. Got logged onto 6 tables playing short stacked PL Omaha...can't do much damage here I thought. I only had a few thousand hands till the milestone so was probably only playing about 10 hands per table. I will just sit here mega tight and hope to get lucky and hit the magic numbered hand for a nice 1k bonus.
The bottom line is ...I missed the magic hand....but did get drawn into moving all-in 4 times for $40 in that 10 minutes and lost them all !! so a rather costly $170+ spent in 10 minutes fishing for a bonus.

I'll try and have another go when the big one comes around as that carries a nice $50k bonus, no matter what stakes you play. Lets hope it happens early moning here about 8 am, when it is the quietest.

The Simpsons

2008-05-14T20:26:00.000+01:00

D'OH as Homer Simpson would say.
Just been on the phone and thought I had already registered for tonights Blue Square league, but hadn't and now too late D'OH, still compensation was I got to watch Bart and family with my daughter ( only thing Dad and 5yo daughter can watch together and enjoy).
Ive been going well too, 2nd in league just a point behind leader, thanks to a second place last night.

I had managed to just sit quietly and watch everyone donk themselves out with some questionable calls...... imo. So there I've ended up 2 handed and staring at the wrong stack in a 35k v 145k match. I go into a mammoth heads-up battle and slowly, without a big hand clash, claw my way to a 135k v 45k lead and then get it all-in with KJ v K7. The guy flukes a river flush and I can feel my focus go, I dont go on tilt, but I kind of know I am not going to win it now. And sure enough I just seem to lose/blow a few pots before I end up with it all-in with A9 v AJ and that is that! $375 instead of $625, 12 points instead of 15 and 2nd space in the league instead of 1st!.

As for the phone call it was some simple Indian lass trying to sell me a cheap balance transfer to a MBNA card. I had great fun forcing her to admit that I should transfer it to a Virgin C/card instead of MBNA as they were offering better terms. Took me 14 minutes though, and my chance to enter the BLUEsquare game was gone. D'OH

bit of tourney success

2008-05-07T23:22:00.000+01:00

Played a couple of the Gala and Blue Square league games last few days.

2 bad beats in the Gala games have left me with no points to worry about, remember it is best 5 only that count before mid June so not worried yet. I think this is my best method of getting a UK Tour seat.

In Blue Square league, I bubbled the final table in the first 2 comps and then tonight I managed to get a 2nd place for the first cash ($300) for 13 BSq league games. I was unlucky a lot of times too, especially with AA when i got it all-in with the eventual winner only for him to turn a 9 to trips up his pocket pair.

Also played the Barrow online game last night and took it down , although the highlight was outplaying Honeymonster on one hand only for him to do it to me next hand with his trips v my top pair Ace kicker, but wait another hook hits on the river to luckbox me the top Full House.

oh yeh Honey .....Mission accomplished !

Dealing myself Bad beats

2008-05-05T20:39:00.000+01:00

Great sporting success for Barrow this w/end , the soccer have made the play-off final and the Rugby are now 5 from 5 and top of the league !

So going into last nights Poker tournament, I was kind of confident of continuing success in 'my' sporting arena. Quiet early table and I managed to nudge my stack up 20% or so. Then this happened:

Dealing for the missing button , I was the small blind @ 200/400. Two limpers, and i got QQ so I raise to 3k leaving myself just under 8k so i can get away if a Ace or King flops. No fears though the flop comes Jxx. Easy push for me and get called by BB who has JJ, no way out really. I then even dealt him the case J on the turn for Quads !So I potter off to the cash table, feeling dissapointed with the poker gods , but nothing more. The cash game has a few hyper LAGs on it, so picking your spot is the game. Double up + against one of them and then this happens:

Dealt AA on the button, me dealing again, Ive dealt mnyself so many good hands at this place, I have started to feel guilty about it. Early position raiser to a £1, 5 callers so I re-raise to £5 and get 4 callers !! "No respect", yet torn between thinking good, but not this many callers. Flop comes a reasonable Q,Q,10. I have to push when it is checked to me and I get a caller, thinking he has the Q, I reluctantly flip my bullets for him to show K,10 of hearts. Only a 10 can save him, so I flip over the turn (5) and river(3) ...no ten.. and I am about to scoop the pot when the cheering alerts me to the fact that I have dealt runner runner hearts to give him the flush and the £50+ pot. FFS!

Despite that setback I managed to turn £50 or so profit and then late on we managed to get an Omaha game going with 7 players. Fantastic , it was No Limit as Pot Limit was going to prove too difficult at that time. Great fun, some real good Omaha hands clashing and about 5 Full Houses were hit on the flop!!
The best part was the standard of play was awfull, with only one guy really having any idea how to play and I outplayed him beautifully in the only hamd we clashed in. I have to say I was quite dissapointed to only leave a further £59 up in the hour,I felt that confident and saw over 90% of flops.

Half way thru the first Blue Square league game for May and going OK, more later in the week.

May , leagues and little bonus

2008-05-03T17:04:00.000+01:00

I've decided for May to just go a little slower on the poker playing front. This is especially true with the poker plex bonus, where I always seem to end up playing like a nutter in the last week or so to make the bonus while ignoring all family life, and strangely my wife doesn't seem to appreciate my efforts at increasing the Robbiebox clan wealth.

So instead of playing for a $500 bonus by getting 3400 MPPs, I have gone for the $250 bonus which only requires 1500 MPPs. I still get the 30% rakeback on top, but now I am also earning a little quicker too as each bonus 1$ only takes 6 MPPs instead of 6.8 MPPs as before.
Obviously I cant earn as much, but i can spend more time on a couple of tournament based leagues with gauranteed tourneys and extra end of league prizes. Namely the Grosvenor GUKPT league on Blue Square Poker and the Gala GCBPT league on Gala Poker.

I won't go into much detail, but will post the links to both .

http://www.bluesq.com/bluesquare/bspoker/bluesquarepokerleague.shtml

Basically the Blue Square league runs for 3 weeks every month, all 15 tourneys counts (so a bit more commitment required) and there is good added value to each tourney, especially in latter games although end of league prizes aren't great.

http://www.galapoker.co.uk/club/pn41.go?page=promotion5&lang=20&sid=377209244272317914151914&ms=MS

The Gala league runs for 6 weeks every 2 months, where just your best 5 tourneys count (so doesn't matter too much if you miss a few) , the gaurantees for each tourney dont look great but the end of league prizes are good ($9000+ worth) with GCBPT live packages for top 3.

So expect to hear about my triumphs or tears over this in the next few blogs.

But first of all is a live charity event here in Barrow tomorrow night, dealem 'up !

April accounts

2008-05-01T22:48:00.000+01:00

April feels like a dissastorous month. I have made both a gross and net loss !! First month for ages i have posted a net loss and it has left me a little dissilusioned with online poker. I will have to refocus my efforts for May and intend to make use of the two National Poker tour online leagues....and their added value...more in a later post on this.

Accounts for March

Poker Plex : down $1070
PokerStars: level
Blue Square: down $250
Full Tilt: up $45
Playing live: NO PLAY

In total for playing down $1275
Bonus of $500 and rakeback in region of $350

So -$425 for the month.

and +$3525 for the year so far.

Losing just over £200 shouldn't really be a major problem to my bankroll, but I have made the mistake of withdrawing into my main account and using it for general living. This was due to my Nat West card needing renewing so couldn't deposit , thus my bankroll gets hit hard and I cant replenish it.

Got a live local tourney on Sunday, not played one for ages or met everyone, so really looking forward to that !

Made it ....with 8 minutes to spare

2008-05-01T00:24:00.000+01:00

11.52pm was bonus completion time, lost it all if i didnt get them played by midnight. The Chelsea v Liverpool game was another thriller with extra-time , so that slowed me down a lot. Was multi-tabling 6 tables for a while.

Lost a little more so defo made a loss for April.

Will post month accounts tomorrow and a slightly different plan for May.

end of the month rakerace

2008-04-30T07:12:00.000+01:00

quick update.

got a big day of playing tonight, still over 300 MPP's to get by midnight.

Tried to get them yesterday , but got caught watching the Man.utd v Barca thriller. Real edge of the seat stuff~ not a Man u fan but good to have an all English final !

As for my bankroll , it has continues to spiral downwards, so the bonus and rakeback will be much needed by the time I get it.

Could be the first negative month when I post the accounts tomorrow, next 24 hours will tell.