A few trips

Hi there. I've been on a few trips recently so I'll summarise them here just in case you care.  I don't tend to travel too much for poker but have been a bit more motivated recently because I have been increasingly enjoying live poker and with my PKR contract I feel I should try and 'get out there' a bit more.

Cyprus

Having not been abroad since WPT Dublin in Janurary, May was coming up so decided it was about time I returned to the foreign donkament trail.  I texted my usual poker trip companion Will (BrotherMuzone) Xenophanes Ranulf Dorey and we decided to go 'somewhere' in a two week gap in May.  I checked the Hendon Mob for tournaments and found all sorts of random tours in random places.  It's actually pretty cool that there is poker going on all over the place pretty much all the time and is a great excuse to travel to places you might not normally visit.  We eventually decided on North Cyprus for the 'Mediterranean Poker Cup'.  The main event of $3.3k was a good size and there were also some decent side events.

Travelling there was a bit of a pain.  The flight took four hours from London to southern side of Cyprus and then an hours taxi to the Northern, Turkish region.  We eventually got down to playing some poker the next day and soon realised the action there was pretty incredible.  The place is filled with Russians who have a lot of money in Cyprus.  Although there were a handful of decent younger Russians most of them were there for a good time.  Mixed with them were some locals which was also a good sight as the Greek/Cypriots were never regarded as the finest players.  I did not recognise a single well known pro except Michael Mizrachi and it seemed like he'd been paid to go as he donked off his chips in swift fashion.

The hotel where the festival was held was all inclusive and it didn't seem to matter that we weren't actually staying there when it came to free stuff.  On the first night we tried to pay for a beer but it caused such a kerfuffle that we didn't bother in the future and just accepted they wanted us to have everything for free!  As well as this in the poker room there was a buffet available all day where you could get sandwiches or kebabs made for you as well as a free bar.

The dessert section of the buffet. This is the only photo I took in Cyprus so clearly it fascinated me the most.

Unfortunately the main event didn't go very well for me.  There was a comical hand where a player did a fake misclick where he pretended to accidentally make a massive raise while holding aces.  I held kings so that worked out well for him.  I felt incredibly frustrated throughout the whole tournament because of how bad the players were and how I couldn't get anything going.  I don't think this frustration affected my play too much but it certainly didn't help.  I busted to a flip after bleeding down to a short stack which seems to be my standard way of exiting tournaments.  Oh well.  Will made it to day 2 but couldn't spin up a short stack.  We both plan to return to that region to play poker as it could be a big cash cow.  The cash games looked incredible.  The only downside is that it's too damn hot out there in the summer.

Stag do and wedding

Another entirely non poker related event I had recently was my mate Steve's stag do and wedding.  This was my first ever stag do and one thing I've realised is that they are a lot of fun, unless you are the stag.  We ended up going to the stag do capital of the the UK, if not the world, Newcastle.  It was a lot of fun and great to catch up with some old Haywards Heath College mates as well as meet some new ones.  The wedding was lovely too.

Steve's first outfit

Most of the stag do chaps at the wedding. I did not do any cocaine that night.

Dubrovnik

I managed to win my way into the EUREKA!!!! poker tour event in Dubrovnik, Croatia which was a 1.1k euro event sponsored by some poker site that is apparently doing well at the moment.  Will accompanied me as usual and although the flights were a little pricey at short notice it only took a couple of hours to get there.  I didn't know much about Dubrovnik prior to going but it seemed like a beautiful place, with very pleasant 20 degree sunshine this time of year.

The hotel seemed very nice although there were a couple of problems with our room.  Firstly there was just one massive bed and a sofa.  Obviously I won the flip to get the bed so Will has the sofa the first night.  Also the bathroom had a strange setup where when you take a shower you are in full view of the rest of the room.  Perhaps Croatians are very liberated when it comes to washing but I didn't particularly want to see my pal showering or vice-versa.  We swapped rooms the next day and had a couple of nice beds but the same bathroom situation.  Oh well, not the end of the world.  The new room came with a much better view though.

Odd Bathroom

Balcony and view

The following day we sat down to play the main event and although no where near as soft as Cyprus, the tournament was still good value and fun too.  A few levels in I ended up getting in 75bb or so with J-J which I'm not sure was good but whatever, he had A-K and I held.  I didn't win the flip, I held okay?  I was going along nicely until I doubled a short-stack with TT < KK and soon after the following hand occurred:

Everyone folds to the HJ who raises a standard amount.  This player has been more on the tight side but raising enough in late position that it wasn't always the nuts.  I flat K-Qo because we are deep enough and I felt I had a significant edge post-flop and the players behind weren't very squeezy.  Obviously then the button squeezes!  Both blinds fold and HJ folds and I decide to call figuring K-Q plays well enough vs his squeezing range with the deep stacks.

The flop comes A-Q-4 and I check call a small bet of about 1/3 to 1/2 pot. The turn is a J and it goes check check.  The river is a 6 and I check and he bets 5.2k into about 14k.  I raise to 15k and he taaaaank calls to show A-K.

I think my play isn't terrible, but I think it is bad overall.  The player in question was a geeky, young looking German and he figured out what I was doing.  And in hindsight I should have realised he would do this.  Although when doing it I thought I could rep A-Q as well as K-J he would probably expect me to 3-bet the weaker HJ player with A-Q.  Will made the point that I could have mashed the river for pot or more which frankly, didn't even enter my head at the time.  This certainly would have been the most optimal line where the German's range is capped and I can very feasibly have the nuts.  I didn't win a pot after this and eventually busted to 9-9 to K-K.

I side events were pretty lousy, just small buyin turbos of which I played two with no success.  The cash games were quite juicy though so I played some 1/2 and 2/5 euro and won small in both sessions.  The only downside was that they allow smoking at the tables.  Living in the UK where all indoor public smoking is strictly banned it just seems absolutely ridiculous that people be allowed to smoke when playing poker in a small space and in such close proximity.  It's a shame for us non-smokers because it makes playing so much less enjoyable and my clothes would stink the next day.

Although the poker was a bit disappointing I really liked Dubrovnik and would certainly go back.  Will and I even got a chance to do some touristy and stuff and walk around some of the ancient walls and go up the cable car.  Here's the view from up there:

Southend-on-sea

Last weekend I attended a PKR social event in Southend which is a great chance to put faces to some familiar online names from the community.  PKR really does have an incredible community of people that have become great friends because of poker.  As someone who mostly hangs out with professionals or at 'serious' events where people are playing more to win than to have fun an event like this is such a relief.  It reminds you of how you used to feel about the game when you first started and how you should probably still treat it now.

The weekend was a great laugh.  Aided by copious amounts of booze and poker everyone seemed to be having a great time.  I highly recommend anyone on PKR to attend an event like this in the future.  There is an event in Leeds in August which unfortunately I can't attend as I will be at UKIPT Galway.  A few pics:

Me and the main man Drewy who did a great job or organising the event.

Crazy golf on the Saturday with James666 and KKowboy here. I came 3rd for £30 which is my biggest score in any kind of tournament this year!

Wobblebottom! (shortly after limping)

Ok, I think that's about enough of an update.  This weekend I have the Poker Player Tour event in Brighton so that's a good chance to go back to the homeland and donk around at the pokers.  Poker Player is the magazine I write strategy articles for so look out for them if you feel like doing so.  I am also off to Vegas this Thursday for a short six-day trip where I will play a couple of WSOP events and hopefully not die from the heat.   That's all for now!

Edit: Sorry if any of the pics are upside-down but I had terrible trouble getting them to comply when adding them and can't go back and try now for the sake of my sanity. Tip: turn your monitor upside-down.

The blog is back

Hello again.  It's been about ten months since my last blog so sorry for the big delay to those who used to take the time to read it.  This does seem to tend to happen to a lot of people's poker blogs.  I guess at a point you just run out of what you perceive to be interesting things to say.  Anyway, I'm writing one now and hopefully I'll carry on with more.

So here's an update of how poker has gone since last time:
 - Won some money
 - Lost some money.

I had a nice $25k score in winning the Masters shortly after my last blog entry but went on a bad run at cash soon after that and unfortunately had no further tourney scores for the rest of the year.  The way tournaments work of course is if you are playing them frequently and getting no big cashes, then you are losing money.

This year is going well so far though.  I've had a few solid winning months at cash games which has far exceeded my losses so far in tournaments this year.  I've had absolutely no success at online tournaments outside PKR and nothing is going in live tournaments either.   For some reason I'm really motivated to get a big live score and have been playing a decent amount of tournaments (for me anyway, not by some other people's standards).

I moved to London at the end of last year which has made playing live donks a lot a easier as there seems to be a decent one every week.  The big problem I have with them though is that they usually require you to keep your entire weekend free.  It's very unlikely you will be playing all weekend of course because you won't go deep in most of them.  It's difficult when you get invited to something and have to say "I'll probably be able to come, but can't commit 100% to it because I might be in a poker tournament".  People in the real world don't understand things like this and will probably be offended if it's their birthday or something.  So more often than not I find myself swerving tournaments for this reason.  And this is me, who doesn't even have a particularly hectic social life.  Anyway when it's convenient and I'm in the mood I'm liking a live tournament at the moment.  But can I win one soon please!

A big poker career event that happened recently was me becoming a PKR pro!  I had been doing some commentary and writing work with them since I'd moved to London and have been playing on the site for years now so I hope I have earned the opportunity.  It certainly gives me added motivation to drag my ass to the casino and show people outside of PKR that I'm not a complete donk.  Luckily unlike some people that represent certain poker sites I don't have to pretend I like the site and think it's great *cough lock poker cough*.  PKR is the longest I have ever played consistently on any particular site and I've met some cool people through it.  All in all I'm very happy to represent PKR.

I'll try to write more blogs if anything potentially interesting pops into my head.  I'll be doing some strategy stuff which will go on the PKR.com website and I also frequently contribute strategy articles to Poker Player Magazine so check that out if you feel so inclined.  I've also got a few interesting poker things coming up. Planning a trip with the infamous BrotherMuzone soon to play some live poker somewhere in Europe (that's as far as the planning has gone) and going to play the ISPT.  PKR also filmed a live cash game which I played in so hopefully that will air soon.  As well as that I'm 90% going to go to Vegas for a quick trip during the WSOP.

Until next time...

No Vegas...baby.

After umming and arring for a while I decided to give Vegas a miss this summer. I've been every other year since 2007 so seem to be keeping this trend going. I've decided to give it a swerve for a few reasons; firstly I am just not that keen on live poker in general so don't have that 'can't miss the WSOP' feeling that a lot of pros seem to have. I actually think the WSOP is overrated in terms of how soft the tournaments are and people (as usual) overestimate their edge. Yes, the 1k and 1.5ks are full of people with few poker related brain cells but you have about 15 chips to play with so it's obviously a crapshoot every time.

Usually what happens is I get fed up with playing live poker pretty quickly and then struggle to find many other activities to do there beyond ones that involve degeneracy. This ends up getting expensive unfortunately (though it's always fun of course). I really don't like the weather in Vegas that time of year either. On my first trip to Vegas I went in December and the climate was so much more pleasant. Walking up and down the strip without feeling like you were going to pass out from heat stroke was a real treat! Muzone and Wongaman claim they like this weather which I cannot understand. We all like a bit of sunshine but 40 degree heat, c'mon!

Anyway, before I start bad mouthing Las Vegas too much it is always a hoot and I expect there will be moments when reading tweets about fun times I will wish I was there. I was actually thinking of buying something expensive and frivolous with the money I would no doubt have spanked in Vegas. I was randomly looking at pinball machines the other day. They cost more than you would think, though I have always wanted one. We'll see.

Poker Update

Poker has been going decent recently. I had a good May with a couple of good tourney results. I came 17th in the $1k SCOOP event for $11k ish. 1st place was $560k and this was by far the closest I have come to life changing money. I never had big chips and grinded my way to that 17th place so never really had realistic expectations of winning. I satellited into that event so I was very satisfied with the $11k.

I've tried playing a few other sites in cash games though I always seem to do best on PKR. It just seems to suit my skill set the most as it has a small player pool and not too many games running which forces me to only a play a few tables and therefore better overall. Although I wish there was more 2/4 running on a regular basis there has been some good 5/10 action where I have done quite well. I've been taking shots vs a reg at 5/10 and 10/20 (when he will play me) which hasn't gone great so far but I'm optimistic of my chances in the future.

I'm interested in doing more poker related writing though my attempts to find any work in this area have proved fruitless. I did this piece for PKR's Raise Your Game section: http://www.pkr.com/en/raise-your-game/opinion-and-meta-game/meta-rhymenoceros/ I think networking in poker is a very important thing in improving as a player. I knocked this up pretty quickly and wish I'd spent more time on it to make it a bit more punchy. It's not the most thrilling read ever but hope those that did check it out got something from it. I had another idea of an article on accepting and making allowances for your emotions in poker so hopefully that one will be better.  I actually signed up for a football journalism master class which the Guardian are putting on in September. It's just one day and I'm just doing it for fun but hopefully I can learn some things from it too.

Apart from that there's not much planned for the next couple of months. I've said this before but I am going to try and get fit this summer. I got recommended this personal trainer who I'm going to give a try as motivation to do exercise seems to be my main stumbling block. I have been doing some running and playing squash pretty regularly but it's not enough. Also I'm planning on doing EPT/ESPT Barcelona in August as its a great city and probably a great value tournament series.

Good luck to all those in Vegas, particularly Brother Muzone. I have a percentage you see. #selfish

blah blah blah

I feel like this blog could be ending soon as I can't even come up with titles anymore.  The entries are becoming more sparse and fewer people are reading it.  Oh well, I suppose all pieces of literary genius have to come to an end at some point.

Anyway, so far this year has been pretty tough poker-wise.  Cash has mostly been a constant struggle, and even though I think I am playing decent, and against people who I feel I have a significant edge on, the results haven't been coming.  I am at least in profit on the year, so it could always be worse.  I sense things are starting to turn around though in April.  At one point I had won 7/8 days but was still down on the month due to one disastrous day.  But since then things have gone well and I have turned around an  $8k deficit to +$8k.  Yay, go me.

As well as PKR I had been playing on a skin on the everleaf network which had some really soft games (Italians!) at mostly lower stakes like 1/2 and 2/4 euro.  I did quite well on there and built up a decent roll but am now concerned about whether I can actually get my hands on this money.  I've tried to make two small withdrawals to my debit card and my Neteller account and neither has been processed yet.  They requested, and accepted, some security documents and are now not processing the cash outs due to something along the lines of 'high demand of cash outs are causing delays'.  I'm surprised the company would admit they cannot process payments on time as it hardly fills the customer with confidence.  Perhaps the whole Full Tilt situation has made me more paranoid (I have a substantial sum at risk there too) but I will not be playing on that site until the payments I requested are fully processed and after I will probably try to get most of my money off there.

I got back from Nottingham yesterday having played the UKIPT.  It was a really good event with so many people turning up to play.  Dusk Till Dawn was completely rammed the whole time.  It's great to see a £700 event create a £1m+ prize pool at a time when the poker industry is hardly booming.  The event itself never really got going for me.  I actually think I played really well but never accumulated much of a stack.  I had a few rubbish river spots where the villain was hardly ever supposed to be bluffing, but was also repping a ridiculously small value range.  I patiently grinded a short stack for ages before shoving AJ into QQ and busting.

There were a few other things I was going to write about but I've forgotten what they were. While writing this I have watched an entire episode of Made in Chelsea and quite enjoyed it.  I hate myself so much.

EPT Madrid

Got back from Madrid a few days ago from what turned out to be a fun trip, despite disappointment in the tournament.  Brother Muzone and myself flew out the day before day 1A as that's when the hotel was booked for which I won in a Stars satellite.  The hotel was really nice, as you would expect when about 1.6k euros of the package value was for seven nights there.  It was 27km from the casino which was a little inconvenient for the tournament but good in that it was right in the city centre. Stars also had buses which took you to and from the casino for free.

Nothing really went my way in what was a tough tournament.  My starting table seemed ok, there were what appeared to be three marks, though everyone else seemed very competent.  The worse players got dispatched very quickly, sometimes by being unlucky and sometimes by doing something dumb.  After that winning chips became very difficult.  There was pretty consistent 3-betting, squeezing and lots of cold 4-betting.  I would think any edge I have over the good tournament regulars would be playing better post flop than them.  Unfortunately the incessent pre flop aggression makes it very difficult to see flops.  Although the younger regs sometimes take this too far (by for example, squeezing a hand like 8Ts in position when they could call and see a multi-way flop with a great hand), it makes life very difficult, so it clearly works well.  Unfortunately the regs are going to be a lot better than me at identifying good spots to 3-bet/4-bet/squeeze etc.  I usually decide to 3-bet for reasons like 'I haven't done it in a while'.

My stack dwindled from a starting 30k to 20k before I doubled with JJ vs TT and got moved table.  Once I came back from the break I raised the 1st hand and got 3-bet and folded.  Next hand I opened and got 3-bet again by same guy and folded.  He showed AQ. I could not beat that.  A few hands later I double barrell TQdd on JxJx8d6d8x and give up on river and get shown 98.  Next hand I raise co with randon hand, sb 3-bets, I 4-bet, he snap 5-bets, I do a fold.

It was at this point I figured my image wasn't fantastic and with a small stack I decide I'm not really going to get involved in pots without an actual hand unless it's too good of a spot to turn down.  Obviously for the next 1.5 hours I get dealt eff all and do a lot of folding.  I considered one decent squeeze spot with 62o but decided against it and eventually saw the raiser had KK and the caller TT. Must be nice.

The announcement of the last four hands of the day was called and utg opens, mp 3-bets and I have AQo in the bb with 33bbs.  Utg player was playing pretty straight forward/tightish and bottom of his utg opening range is probably like JTs.  I thought he could fold hands up to 99 if I ship though.  MP was new to the table and had a lot of chips, and perhaps more importantly lots of ante chips.  I decided to ship it and utg folded a millisecond before mp snapped with aces.  GG.

Muzone also busted on day 1 so we spent the next few days wandering around Madrid, mostly just chilling out.  Once Japete busted he became our tour guide and translator and showed us some lovely bars and restaurants.  We also went to see Real vs CSKA Moscow at the Bernabeu.  Amazing stadium and great game, albeit rather easy for Real as they won 4-1.  I made a couple of bets which of course I wiffed, as did Muzone.  You might not believe this but Japete cleaned up.  You didn't think his run good was limited to poker did you?

I'm now back on the online grind.  March has been going very average.  I was putting together a few small winning days in a row but lost a decent chunk today.  I was playing one of the tightest hu players I have ever encountered and it was quite fun to just 3-bet and barrell him incessently, because doing so is quite far removed from my default game.  His game plan worked out well in the end though when he went on to hit the nuts a lot and being the fish I am, I make hero calls vs him.  The last hand he 3-bets 86 and goes for the check/bet/check-raise line on 22868 and I bet/call river with K6.

I haven't been playing too much on PKR recently due to a lack of games running, and more recently because of some bugs in the software that are quite annoying.  I've been playing more on a euro site which has very good action but the rake is high, especially in hu games where it caps at 5 euros.  I'm going to keep playing there a bit to see if the good action is worth the rake (I do get 35% rb fwiw).

Got some more interesting things going on in April.  It's my birthday on the 5th (28!) so will be going out that weekend.  The weekend after theres UKIPT Nottingham which somehow is going to be a £1mill prize pool for a £700 tournament.  Sounds like everyone is going so should be fun.  Weekend after I might go to WPT Marbella.  A few people had mentioned going but not too much recently so maybe interest has cooled.  That's probably a last minute decision one.  Then last weekend of April off to the Prince of Malpas Royal Estate somewhere in the Cheshire countryside.  For someone as lazy as me that's an action packed month.  I'll probably spend Monday-Fridays sleeping.

Check out this video which Muzone posted on twitter recently:

I forgot how much I love this video.  There's so many great quotes in it.  The guy just loves the game!

2012 so far

So far this year I've been doing pretty atrociously in the form of poker I enjoy and think I am best at, and running hot in those stupid tournaments.  The cash games have been good and I think I've been playing decent most of the time so I'm sure it will turn around.  Unfortunately due to issues with my new pc I have been unable to move my previous database over which is a shame because the moan-worthy graph I posted earlier in the year now looks even more moan-worthy.  After spending a conservatively estimated ten hours trying to get Holdem Manager working on the new pc along with my previous database I have now given up.  Just when I thought losing at poker was annoying, I find something worse.

Now onto the more fun stuff: Donkaments! On a whim I decided to do a $215 hyper turbo tournament on Stars during their TCOOP and somehow managed to finish 6th for just under $19k.  The only frustrating thing about this is that I was chip leader when the final table started and was hoping to deal straight away as with it being a hyper turbo, it was a shove fest with teeny tiny skill edges.  Unfortunately to deal on Stars everyone needs to click on a check-box which at least one person didn't do, so no deal happened.  I probably could have secured myself 35-40k at that point so it's a little irritating, but there's nothing more I could do.  I also managed to bink a package to EPT Madrid in a 22r euro 3x turbo (seeing a trend here?).  That's next month so looking forward to it.

This year I've also done a couple of live tournaments.  The first was the 2500 euro WPT event in Dublin.  Think I played really well in this one actually.  There were about 70 left (36 paid I think) when I lost a big flip with AK vs QQ.  This pot would have sailed me into the money and after that I couldn't recover and lost my next three allins to bust 50 something.  I also played the £500 APT event in London and played pretty rubbish and busted early.  Some luck sack went on to win that one.

Not a lot else going on. Bye for now.

Making good poker decisions

I was thinking recently about what goes through people's heads when they are making decisons in a hand of poker.  The amount of variables you can analyse is huge, starting from the very basic 'what is my hand?' to the more complex 'he knows I know he knows my turn range is very polorised in this spot'.  I recently read two very good examples of extremely thorough hand analyses by two excellent players:

Hand Analysis by Sauce

Hand Analysis by Phil Galfond

These examples give you an idea of just how deep your thinking can go when trying to make decisions in hands.  They include things like player history, game dynamics, psychology and HUD statistics.

However, just how much of what these guys write in these entries actually consciously goes through their heads at the time is up for debate.  Unless these players have brains that function at a massively higher rate than my own (possible I suppose, I'm not that smart) then they can't consciously think of all those variables in the 30 or so seconds you would have to make decisions.  Therefore they are either pretending they thought these things (unlikely, though we all like to embellish from time to time) or much of what they analyse occurs in the subconcious.  I believe the second factor is more likely.

It is my belief that the best poker players in the world are the ones that are able to process the most information in the subconscious when making decisions.  I have found a lot of people, like those on 2+2, can analyse a hand perfectly on a forum and come up with very logical arguments for why they would do certain things but their actual long-term results suck.  I think such people lack the subconscious set of skills.  In poker, particularly on the internet, we do not have the time to consciously process lots of information.  Also, consious poker thought is very mentally exhausting if done over long periods of time.

I think this is why I feel so much more knackered after a live poker session compared to an online one, despite the online one requiring much more actual decisions to be made.  Internet poker is what I have done for a long time now and what I know best.  Therefore it is a skill where I can make decisions most of the time without really thinking about them.  Whereas I am much less used to the live arena. It often brings into play variables I have never encountered before and therefore causes me to consciously think about more things all the time.  Being able to shift a lot of your decisions to the subconscious in online poker is actually a very necessary skill if you are playing multiple tables.  Using a lot of conscious thought on one decision can easily be at the detriment of another decision on another table which could lose you money overall.

This is why you will often see typically internet based players taking a long time to make decisions in live games.  There is no merit to making quick decisions if it means you are not analysing all the available information properly.  The only reason could be if you were slowing the game down too much and therefore making it worse.

The difficulty is that it's very difficult to train yourself to be very good at the subconscious level of thinking.  The best people are probably just the ones that are naturally the most intelligent.  I imagine just playing lots and lots of poker is the best way of advancing this skill set.

Big new tune from M.I.A and cool video.