Blackpool, Sundays, PKR Live

Hey readers, been a while. Haven't been up to much since Estonia, went to Blackpool and donated £2k there and played one sunday online grind. Blackpool confirmed my suspicions that GUKPT Main Events aren't that much value at the minute. Problem is that these days you never get a table full of fish to yourself, you always have to carve up the fish-EV with a Ben Vinson or a Rick Trigg etc. which really impacts on your bottom line. In 2 years of live tournaments my ROI has been 150-200% so far, but I have run very well and if I had to guess at my ROI long term in the GUKPT Main Events I have played recently I'd say it was probably between 1/4 and 1/3rd of this since on my tables I have always had to share the fish with 2 or 3 other good players. I'm gonna be in Spain for the £3k Grand Final so I'll be forced to give it a miss, but tbh I think this is a good thing and I probably wouldn't have bothered with it anyway. I would have had to sell a load of action and I feel like I used up a ton of goodwill selling so much action in September and whiffing everything, so I don't really want to go cap in hand to backers again for a while. Going forward, with live poker I think I will stick to events that I'm rolled for (which thanks to Estonia now just about includes £1ks) and maybe swap with players at the event.

The online grind wasn't very rewarding, I started out hating life after busting nearly every event in a $3k schedule within 3 levels, but I got quite deep in the Sunday 500, the million and lasting for about 5 hours in the FTOPS main without really getting anywhere. In the end I mincashed the 500 and managed about 200th in the million (after being in 1st with 500 left) to recoup about $2400 of my losses total. I could tolerate playing the same schedule more often I think, maybe leave out the 100rebuys which I never felt a favourite in and it might even be a good (+EV) idea.

In London at the minute for PKR Live. Should be quite a soft field so hopefully have a good chance of binking something.

Inbits lads.

Estonia Brag Post

OK so obviously things went quite well in Estonia. If you haven't heard, I chopped the Main Event heads up with Tommo (maryhadalamb), we played on for the trophy and a $15k PCA package that stars had added but I unfortunately lost. Still, the roughly $100k I got in the chop will be of some comfort I'm sure. I'd swapped various percentages before the tournament so I personally drew a bit less but I'll keep that figure to myself, gotta retain some mystery.

Congrats to Tommo for crushing me heads up, I made a few crucial mistakes and got soundly punished, I don't think I played too badly though, his making 3 flushes and 2 sets in the space of 20 hands certainly helped. The main mistake I made was 3betting 77 in the first few hands of the match and getting barrelled off it on an Ace-high board by KT (wp sir). I should have stuck to my usual formula of starting the match very passive until I get a feel for my opponent's ranges, I made the mistake of assuming I knew roughly how Tommo played because we'd been on the same table for a few hours already, but full ring and heads up are very different games. Also I should have known that my opponent would be unlikely to make mistakes in big pots as he is a very good winning cash game player at 2/4 and thus isn't going to call one street and fold the next without good reason. The best bet would have been to keep the pots as small as possible as Tommo doesn't play much heads up so I ought to have a better idea of what hand strengths to stack with at bigger SPRs. Oh well, we swapped 10% of the PCA seat so I'll at least have a decent sweat come January, and I'll be going out there myself and possible will qualify for the Main there in time.

Key hands (stack and bet sizes are approximate, adjusted from 8/16 blinds to 5/10):

I 3bet 77 OOP
I bluff off 3 streets with 5 high

As usual pokerhandreplays has fucked up the bet sizing ever so slightly, my flop raise is smaller and thus my river bet is nearly full pot in the 2nd hand. Personally I think it's nearly good play, as I think I have a tonne of better hands than 87 in my range, pretty much any gutshot I could have has binked the turn enough to go for 2 streets of value imo and the only bluffs I could have are 6s that I turned into a bluff, 54 52 and 42. I'd rule out random 2-over bluffs cos it's unlikely I limped the button with anything like KT. Tommo said he had a live read and tbh I got the feeling he was calling pretty much anything as I was contemplating my river bet. With the way the match was going at the time I should have just folded the flop and wait until I had won a hand and maybe had a history of making thin value before making any big moves like that. Alternatively I could have bet more on the river, circa 2x the pot, to try and shake Tommo's confidence in his read.

Oh well, congrats to Tommo anyway, the better player won heads up, with any luck we'll have a rematch in January at the PCA :D

Finally, props to Pokerstars for a great tournament and the usual amazing hospitality. The Swissotel was top drawer and Pokerstars threw TWO parties with open bars, a welcome and closing party, and on top of that they sent two bottles of Dom to our table at the closing party as congratulations which was a very pleasant surprise. They really are the best in the business by a long way right now.

Back down to Earth in the UK now, Ptevey's back at the flat so this weekend various people are visiting for lash and the DTD 300 which should be a larf. Would be nice to 1-2-3 a tournament one time ffs.

Inbits,

Keys

Estonia Calling

The blog kind of needs a post, although I've nothing much to say really. I'm flying out to Estonia with Rupert + a couple of mates on Tuesday morning for that Baltic Festival, I'll let you know how that goes. Hopefully we'll get a chance to break out from the hotel/casino petri dish for a day or two and see Tallinn, or otherwise hopefully one of us will ship the 1st place for a nice payday. Other than that I've been playing a little bit on PKR, really not very much but the swingaments are fortunately upwards and the balance is now around the $3600 mark. I am playing 2/4 through 5/10 though so it's still very precarious. Also I went to Birmingham again at the weekend, if I do win in Tallinn it might be worth my buying the house next door to Nathan's, just to save on train fares back and forth.

Inbits lads.

Heads Up PKR

Been a while since my last post. I've actually been filling my time relatively productively, for me anyway. I've been playing a lot of heads up cash on PKR after I found some money in my account there a week or so ago. I found a little over $300, which I took to $100NL HU immediately and have managed to build up to about $1000 at last count. All my profit has come from one fish who offered me up to $2/$4 after losing 2x $40 buyins to me. I took him up on the offer and he proceeded to give me buyins of $160, $250, $400 and $211.18 followed by a brief pause for a chat tirade/account topup and a final $400. He actually pulled up another $200, but he'd detilted by then and after half an hour of him waiting for the nuts, I quit leaving him with $202. I figured I'd leave him time to get back into his old habits and then take some more, but unfortunately he now sensibly refuses me action.

Funny I should say 'sensibly', because from the paragraph above you may have noticed that apart from against this one guy I have been losing to the PKR aquarium on the whole, so maybe I am the one who should be avoiding people. I've bought a bluefire subscription with my PKR points and watched a few Phil Galfond videos that have been really helpful and have definitely helped a lot with my game and self-confidence when it comes to playing heads up. Overall the standard of play is terrible but I think the problem is I've been hit-and-run/ratholed a lot of times so I need to work on controlling this aspect of the game, if it's possible. Any suggestions for dealing with short-stack ratholers heads up would be much appreciated. I don't want to refuse them because I'm pretty sure they're awful. Maybe it all balances out in the end and I've just been running bad?

Either way I've been enjoying my poker a lot for the first time in a while and I think it's improved my hand reading no end. I've tried a couple of short sessions of 6max on iPoker but I'm really not feeling it at the minute, I lost concentration very quickly and money soon after, so I'll stick to heads up for a while. I'm gonna move up to $1/$2 now (yes, with 5 buyins in my 'roll) and maybe mix in some HUsngs which I'm pretty sure I can crush.

Apart from that I'm gonna be going to Estonia at the end of the month for the Baltic Festival. Rupert qualified on stars and it seems like it'll be good value so I thought I'd go along too. I think while I'm young and free I should see more of the world so this hopefully will be a good experience. Paul (147_star) showed interest initially, but has wussed out because he's scared.

Inbits.

Back in Notts

Brag: Negreanu called me a "great player" in his blog

Beat: Spelt my name wrong

Well I busted WSOPE, as most of you are probably now aware considering that someone called Barry Schulman has won it. I busted early on Day 3 after a torrid time in the 2nd two levels of Day 2 where I didn't win a single pot for 85 minutes at one point, and even then I only got a walk to break my duck for the level. The only pot I won in the next level was stealing the blinds once. I had accumulated 106k after being pretty active in the first half of the day, but could probably only have saved chips by folding every hand in the last 2 levels. Actually that's not entirely true, I got a bit gunshy and missed a couple of cbets so maybe could have won one or two more pots, I played pretty badly tbh but I was running ridiculously badly which was frustrating. I survived to Day 3 with only 30k and lost that very early on with AK vs 77 all in pre.

Back in Nottingham now as you can tell from the title. I'm a bit ill with something I probably caught on the tube but other than that it's nice to be home. I had mares of times in London, in the end the trip probably cost me in the region of £8k which still really hurts even straight after my £20k touch in DTD. I lost a fair bit at cash, didn't manage to string 2 winning hands together in all my roughly 24hrs of play at £2/£5, but to be honest I was too impatient and it was my own fault. In the tourns I barely made the antes except for in the Main Event, so I'm thoroughly fed up with live poker at the minute. I think I'm gonna quit live poker till 2010 and concentrate on online for a while. This may mean cancelling planned trips to Macau and Las Vegas but I'm really not feeling it at the minute. Maybe I'll cheer up in a week or so. Or maybe I'll hate online poker by then as well...

I'm gonna play one last live tourn tomorrow in the DTD 300, just because it would be so sick to win it back-to-back, and after that I'm gonna be grinding cash games online once again.

Inbits,

Keys

WSOPE Day 1

Pretty exhausted at the minute after spending all day on the feature table playing against one of the toughest lineups I've ever faced. I finished the day with 64k (starting stack 30k) after running pretty well for the most part. As for being on the feature table, the lights were hot and my chair was way lower than the table which was really uncomfortable, I didn't enjoy it much. Also, after a poor night's sleep I couldn't be arsed to gel my hair or anything and with the bags under my eyes and a sweat from lugging my suitcase about on the underground, I looked like I'd been up all night smoking crack. Not the first impression I really wanted to give a TV audience but never mind. As for my play, I might come off as a total donk or not too bad depending on how they edit it, because I played some hands terribly but also I think I played some quite well. We shall see. Apparently we're kicking off at 5:30pm tomorrow, the late start is due to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur I hear, first national anthems and now religious holidays, the WSOP is getting more mainstream every year.

Inbits lads,

Keysey, Keysey, Easy

EPO and WSOPE Event 1 Roundup

I wrote this blog post 2 nights ago but my internet wasn't working so it had to wait till now to see the light of day. Since I wrote this I've lost £3300 playing £2/£5 cash, busted the £1k in the Vic I mentioned and lost the sickest £300 sit and go ever assembled. So yeah things aren't going well. Anyway here's that old post:

I'm in a flat near London City Airport as I write this, having busted out of the £1k WSOPE Event several hours ago. It's looking like this tournament is gonna be massive, for reasons unknown to me, with maybe over 700 runners total. All the online qualifiers make this massive value though, I guess it must be the bracelet. Unfortunately I busted in the 100/200 level but had still managed to outlast 150 players before finding AQs in the cutoff against KK in the blinds. The starting stacks were awfully short, although I think I managed it much better than most. Basically I decided just don't get involved unless the situation really calls for it. I violated this rule on only one occasion and this hand was my only regret from the tournament:

With a stack of about 5400 and blinds at 75/150 I find JhTh UTG+1 whilst 9 handed and raise to 425, which was my first and biggest mistake. I asked Sida and he said the open was fine, maybe sometimes he would fold, maybe like 50/50 fold or raise, so now I know for sure it's a clear-cut fold if Sida is having doubts. The small blind, an inexperienced, young and english player, flat calls and the bb folds. The flop comes down KcQhJc and the sb checks. My default line would be to check behind here on a deceptively bad flop but actually my first thought was to shove all in for the SB's remaining 3500 chips as I felt he would fold a lot of the hands he might be shoving on me if I bet, and I felt a check behind would yield poor value since imo he would never risk firing a bluff on the turn with an underpair and he would bet the pot with anything that beat me, forcing me to fold my straight draw. It's close between check and shove I think, but for some reason I threw out 1000 as a bet instead, which he duly raised all in. I obviously called and he sighed hard, shook his head and tabled AK, which I am 43% sure he would have folded if I had just shoved. I was left with 1500 after that which I ran up to 4000 then lost running AQs into KK as I said before.

Still, the biggest mistake I think was the original raise, with no antes and given the nittiness of the table it just wasn't profitable, just unnecessary variance with shallow stacks. I also went out of yesterday's £500 EPO side event by making a big error that had me on life tilt for hours after. I 4bet shoved 40bbs with 77 after opening the hijack and getting 3bet by the button. Away from the money I could make a case for the shove, but ICM considerations made this a clearer fold than 72o UTG+4 after Malcolm "The Rock" Harwood, Andy "The Rock" Bloch, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Chris "The Comedian" Rock have shoved 100bbs already. I ran into QQ and was knocked out in 9th place for £980. 1st was £17k. I am beginning to realise that tournament poker is a lot about avoiding big mistakes. I miss value and make bad bluffs all the time, but I can't remember the last really big mistake I made before the 77 hand, which I think is why I've been feeling like I'm playing really well at the minute. I mean those mistakes where you get up from the table and walk away feeling winded, knowing you just blew up and wasted a shitload of money. Other players are making these mistakes constantly, about enough that at a table of 9 players I reckon someone makes a potentially tournament ending mistake about once every 5 hands. It's enough to just be there for these mistakes to make a big profit from tournaments.

I'm going to play a bit of cash tomorrow to get some bluff practice in and hopefully make a bit of money before playing the £1k in the Vic on Sunday. I've still got £16k+ of buyins left to play in the next 3 weeks so hopefully I can run good and there's a big result in the pipeline.