The Real World Called

Hey guys, it's been a while. As I'm guessing most regular readers, or anyone who follows me on Twitter, would have guessed, the blog had to take a back seat for a while because I finally managed to get a real job! Pretty soon after I made my last post I got a call from a large online gaming firm in the city offering me the position of a marketing analyst. The company focuses mainly on online Slots and Casino sites with a little bit of Poker and Bingo thrown in, so I'm still in the general industry not far away from the eventual dream. We're even looking to get into real money Poker in the U.S., which is pretty exciting, so you never know, I could still make it in.

Needless to say, grinding has had to take a bit of a back seat for the past two months. I started the job fully with the intention of continuing to play at evenings and weekends but it soon because apparent that it wasn't going to happen. On a regular day I'm working 9am-7pm, occasionally longer, so by the time I get back to my place at around 8pm, I've missed basically the whole evening MTT schedule, not to mention the fact that I'm constantly shattered.

I have managed to play every now and again though, but not seriously. Recently I've been enjoying jumping into 8-game cash games, purely for enjoyment sake. Now that I don't have to rely on poker to make a living, I've felt that sticking to one game can get a bit monotonous really quick. My first thought when getting back to the games was, naturally, to just into PLO8 cash games as O8 is still my best game by far and I've pretty been successful at micro stakes. I managed to beat NL10 O8 Zoom for a pretty substantial win rate but after a week or so I found the games tedious and uninteresting. It also felt a bit strange playing for such small stakes again after playing low/mid stakes MTTs for so long. With 8-game cash, I've yet to become bored because the games are constantly switching and every time I sit down, it feels fresh. I think I'm also liking it at the moment because I know I'm not very good at most of the games, and the thought of getting better at the likes of Razz and 2-7TD excites me. I've been reading a lot on the games and watching a few videos online on how to improve and so everything feels new again.

In terms of blogging, obviously I haven't had anything much to write about recently so I felt like it would be a waste of everyone's time to read articles that had no substance and we're literally just my random musings, even more so than before. Now that I'm learning games and thinking about Poker a bit differently, I thought it would be a good time to get back into the swing of things and give writing another go. I've had some good conversations with players recently exploring hands and talking strategy about mixed games so maybe you guys would like to hear some things too. Don't worry though, O8 is still part of the mix, so I won't be abandoning the old girl just yet!

For now though, it's Sunday evening, so methinks I should be hitting the tables. I hope all you grinders out there are doing well and maybe I'll catch you at the tables sometime! Good luck for now and I'll speak to you all soon! Take care.

SCOOP is here!

It's finally that time of year that every MTT grinder waits for, it's SCOOP! With $40 Million up for grabs over two weeks and 45 events, I'll be looking to get my hands on as much cash as possible. Granted a huge chunk of that will be reserved for the high buyin tournaments that I won't be touching with a barge pole, but nevertheless I'll be doing my best. And the greatest thing about this SCOOP series, I actually get to play it!

Regular readers of the blog will know that I've been a student for the past 5 years, so come SCOOP time, without fail, I am smack bang in the middle of exam period, so I don't have the time to invest in 12 hour long tournament, let alone two day events.  I'd normally attempt to make a bit of money in the satellites during the day when I'm building up to the hardcore revision evenings but generally they haven't gone so well, mainly because I'm trying to split my focus too much. This year I can give the festival my full attention and put together some solid runs.

Obviously the O8 events will get the focus of my attention. This year we have more events than ever thanks to the inclusion of 5-card events. Needless to say, I'll be playing all of the low buy in events but also I'll be attempting to play as many of the medium events as possible whether it be by satelliting in or buying in directly. Traditionally the satellites have been pretty soft so I'll be hoping to secure a few seats in advance and also giving the great value deadline satellites a shot. In the last couple of years I've managed to satellite into SCOOP and WCOOP events pretty successfully so hopefully I'll be repeating that this year.

With so much money up for grabs I wish you guys the best of luck with your SCOOP schedules, just so long as I run better! It's always great to see hard working grinders from the community make big scores in festivals like these so I hope to be throwing some well earned shout outs in future blog posts.  I wish you all the best of luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

My Top 3 Scores

As a little celebration of hitting my $100k badge on PocketFives, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and share with you guys my best scores online. All three tournaments were a fair while ago so I may have forgotten a few of the small details but in general I think I can remember the interesting points as, with good reason, all three were pretty big moments in my poker career. I'd love to hear some of your reactions in the comments below as I know some readers who aren't tournament grinders may think that these numbers are huge and others who have been around the block may laugh at me being proud of these modest scores. So without further ado, let's get to it.

1. $11,586 - 3rd Hotter 11 NLHE Turbo

So by far and away my biggest score ever was this Hotter 11 score just over one year ago. I actually chopped the tournament three-handed as the chip leader but soon after I 3-bet jammed over the BTNs min open with A5s and called off with TT and held to cripple me. The next hand I got in whatever random two cards I had and busted.

Obviously I ran absurdly well to make it through the almost 10,000 runner field and nothing summed the run up better than a hand on the final table bubble. As you do in turbos, I ran a little card dead with about 18 left and by the time we were down to 10 players, I only had about 6-7BBs. I picked up QJo in the small blind which is normally an any two shove so I was very happy to pick up a real hand. I was less happy though when the big blind snap called and tabled AQs. I bricked the flop and turn but binked the beautiful Jack on the river. That pot gave me a solid stack for the final table which I managed to ride all the way to the final three.

I remember sitting in my front room on the sofa next to my girlfriend, one-tabling the tournament as I'd become uber focused and nervous about the possibility of this big cash. Every time I played a pot I practically held my breath until the hand was over. When I finally busted after we made the deal I just sat back in shock and disbelief. My girlfriend, who'd been railing the whole time, asked me over and over if I was sure that I'd just won real money!

It was a truly great moment in my poker career and I really will have to go some to eclipse that feeling in the future, but I definitely hope I get the chance to.

2. $3,977 - 1st $11 NLHE Turbo 


Unlike the Hotter 11 which I one-tabled for hours and really did sweat, this score sort of came by surprise. Most Euro grinders will be very aware of the late night $11 $18k GTD turbo which comes near the end of most peoples schedules. It does tend to be a bit reg heavy, or at least heavier than the average turbo, but there's still more than enough recreational players to make it profitable.

On this particular night I remember having a pretty miserable evening's grind and my table count was pretty low by the time the tournament actually started. About an hour into the tournament I'd busted everything else and I didn't actually have a big stack so I took the laptop to bed and watched a bit of TV. If I'm brutally honest with myself I'd say I definitely didn't pay full attention to the tournament until we were down to about the final 100. 

I caught a wonderful heater and rode it all the way to heads up. Normally in a tournament like this I'd be begging for a deal but for some reason this time I just carried on playing without thinking about it. Maybe I was a bit tired or possibly I'd focused so much on not letting the money get to me that I'd completely forgotten about it. Afterwards I noticed that the difference between first and second was over $1k so I'm definitely glad I managed to take it down. A few grinders railed the final table and pointed out a few mistakes I made, including the final hand which I didn't particularly play well, but my opponent played worse. It involved me three-betting the flop with top pair weak kicker and the villain calling down with second pair. I was happy nonetheless.


3. $3,296 - 1st $5 NLHE 2R1A 

Now this tournament was memorable in two ways. Firstly, it was a big score in a non-turbo NLHE tournament, which traditionally aren't my forte, even though I do actually do a lot of work to improve in them. Secondly. I didn't actually want to play it!

The tournament started pretty late on in the schedule and by the end of the rebuy period, the average stack was somewhere near 200BBs, so I knew that going deep would require a LONG night. Thus I decided to go big or go home. I played near enough every hand, making wild three-bets and overbet jamming flops left and right, in an attempt to either build a huge stack or bust. Fortunately for me, it turned out to be the former. My stack rarely dipped under 100BBs for the whole tournament, even at the final table. I tightened up a bit towards the late stages but once I still tried to maintain the hyper-aggressive tactics that had got me that far.

The tournament eventually finished at around 5am, so even though usually I can't sleep after a big score, or even anything exciting poker-wise, I fell right to sleep and celebrated the next afternoon.

So there was a little fun post for you guys. I've been told that the "Top x" lists I've done in the past were pretty interesting and the reader numbers seem to back that up, and most of all I quite like writing them, so it's a win all round. It's been fun to take a trip down memory lane but I think now it's time to get back to the grind and start adding to the next "Top 3 Scores" list, and with SCOOP just about to begin, I'll have many chances to do just that. Good luck to all my fellow grinders for the next few weeks and I hope not too many bankrolls are destroyed. Speak to you all soon!

$100k Badge on PocketFives and the road to $250k!

Very much like it says on the tin, this weekend I hit the milestone of $100,000 in prizes cashed for as tracked by PocketFives.

In actuality, I've cashed for a lot more than this, in fact OPR has my total winnings on PokerStars alone at around $140k, but it's still a nice accolade to have. PocketFives is one of the premier ranking sites for online MTTs and many people in the poker industry use the site to characterize players and search for information so having this badge by your profile can really solidify your place as a skilled and respected player.

The journey to $100k cashes hasn't exactly been linear. For the first half of my poker career I barely played tournaments, and it was until around 2011 that I started notching up the cashes. At that time I was lucky enough to be picked up by a Turbo 180 stable run by brad2002tj called Team LAGtard. It was here that I learnt most of what I know about tournament poker including the fundamentals of aggression and pot odds. I can honestly say without Brad and the team I wouldn't be at this point today where I can make a living off this game so for that I thank them.

After that I broke into small stakes MTTs and that's where I've been for the past two years where I imagine the majority of my cashes have come from. With small stakes MTTs, it's pretty simple to steadily accrue a large number of cashes thanks to the great volume you can achieve, even if you just stick to PokerStars.

Moving forward on the road to $250k, I expect to move up in stakes and get there much quicker than I did $100k but I'll never rack up the big time cashes like the NLHE sickos do, even though it would be nice. I'll stick to what I know which is grinding out the profits slowly playing my games, hopefully with the odd turbo here and there. I'd like to give you guys a time estimate of when I think I'd making it but honestly I'd just be throwing out numbers. I think by the end of the year would be very optimistic but not all together impossible. If I'm still playing pro by this time next year though, I'd expect to have hit it. If there's a site out there, or even an option on SharkScope that can show a graph of cumulative cashes over time please let me know in the comments because that would be pretty darn interesting to have a look at.

Even though I'm now more profitable than ever thanks to the switch from primarily NLHE to where I am now where the majority of my volume is in PLO8 and PLO, the payouts are normally much less because of the drastically reduced field sizes meaning that I may be accumulating cashes at a slower rate. In the end though this game is all about the bottom line, so even though having the accolade of a huge amount of prizes won is nice to have, I'd still rather take the larger profit margin. I feel very blessed that I can subside on the money I make playing a game I love so it would be wrong to bemoan the fact that I don't make more. It could be worse, I could be grinding 50 hours a week at MaccyDs (Yes, the term "grind" is necessary).

Anyway, I'll leave it here for now. I have a few ideas for more posts coming, and people seemed to react well to the "Top ___" lists that I've made in the past so I'll be putting out so more of those. Tomorrow I'm back off to the South Coast to visit my family which normally leaves me a bit of time to knock out some writing so hopefully there should be so nice content to read soon. Good luck to all you grinders over the weekend and special wishes to all the UK players taking part in the WCOAP at Stratford. Speak to you all soon!

My Favourite Poker Goals and Challenges Threads

Poker Goals and Challenges is a sub-forum on the popular TwoPlusTwo Poker forums where players can create a thread and discuss their poker related ambitions and dreams. Essentially it works as a blogging platform with an extremely large readership and much better interaction with those interested. I enjoy reading these threads almost as much as I enjoy writing this blog myself and as such have become a pretty avid lurker on the forum, weighing in wherever I feel I can be of help or just leaving messages of support for those players whose thread I have enjoy reading. I thought I'd share a few of the most interesting ones, or at least in my opinion, to help these amateur bloggers and maybe even get them a few more subscribers.

1. Flixxx - Grinding It Up

Many of you may already be familiar with xflixx's Grinding It Up series of videos on YouTube as their very well promoted by PokerStars due to Felix being a Team PokerStars Pro. The videos themselves provide great strategies for the beginning player while being presented in an engaging and humorous manner. However, while the videos are a great draw to the thread, its the post themselves that I actually find the most interesting. Many beginner players that view the thread take the opportunity to post questions to the author, some of which he answers in forthcoming video, which provoke some pretty interesting discussion, much better than the average garbage you tend to find in the strategy forums. Id genuinely suggest to any players new to the game to check the thread out as you'll get some very clear and concise answers to your questions.

2. Nikachu - I AM A BUM PLAYING BUM STAKES

I first came across the Nikachu a couple of years ago when he produced a video for CardRunners as part of their promotion to find new video producers. The guy is crazy, truly crazy, but he's hilarious. He's actually a very solid player, so you do find some decent strategy content in the thread but the thread is meant to be more humorous than anything, which it delivers. My favourite part of the thread? The paint-drawn pictures of bunnies scattered across graphs and hand histories. Trust me, they grow on you.

3. Yazzx and Izzit - Broke Brothers Grinding and Partying in Cambodia

This is by far my favourite thread in the forum. The thread follows two brothers from the UK who moved out to Cambodia for the women and crazy partying lifestyle. Now you may say that a thread about kids getting drunk out in South-East Asia isn't exactly new, but what makes this thread stand out is that these guys are living on, and comfortably mind you, the money they make from grinding 2NL! Where they're living in Cambodia is so cheap that they've worked out they can live on around $10 a day, which includes rent, bills and partying! It's a brilliant story and the two authors are great at posting interesting and regular updates, along with pictures of hot Asian girls. And of course, there's the odd discussion about whether they are ladyboys or not. Don't be fooled though, these guys are serious grinders and continually put in 8hr + sessions while 24 tabling. The thread delivers from a poker playing point of view as well as being a great story so I'd definitely give it a read if I were you.

So there's a few interesting threads I reckon you guys should check out. I also want to give an honorable mention to another thread written by skele701 where he blogs about his own O8 MTT grind so if you're here for the mixed game content then you'll definitely enjoy that too. While you're on the forum check out some of the other threads too, there's usually something to fit everyone, whether it be someone playing you're particular games and stakes or maybe it's someone local to you. I hope you enjoyed my little summaries and I'll be writing again soon with some more poker stuff. Good luck at the tables!

2014 Goals - Quarterly Update!

So we've just arrived here in April and that means we're official a quarter of the way through 2014, damn that went quickly! That does mean though, that it's time for a quarterly update of the year's goals so far. Here's hoping I've actually made some progress this year!

Poker:

1. $30,000 online profit as recorded on Official Poker Rankings

OPR currently has me running at just over $5k in profit while my tracking software has me closer to $6k. Even though it'd be a little better for my ego to use the $6k figure, I did after all specify that it had to be on OPR, besides, even that figure wouldn't have me on track. To be on pace for a $30k year I'd need to be at around the $7.5k mark so I'm behind pace using either tracking method. I had a really good start to the year in January but then after that I went into a pretty long break even stretch and am now just coming out the other side. I am still working hard on my game and putting in good amounts of volume so I hope to catch up very soon.

2. £5,000 live profit

So I set a goal of £5k profit, so far I'm throwing up a bagel, £0. On the bright side though, I'm not actually lose either so I suppose I can't complain. So far the only live poker I've managed to play has been the Coral 30/30 that I got into for free last month and seeing as I didn't manage to cash the tournament, it leaves my yearly total at nothing. I am looking to put this right though as a friend of mine is constantly bugging me to play some live tournaments here in London and I'll definitely be taking him up on the offer very soon. I may even get around to it this weekend.

3. To become a regular at the $55 level

Now here's a goal I'm actually making great steps towards. Since my TCOOP score in January, I've been speaking with my backer about slowly increasing the stakes of our backing agreement. So far I've been increasing my average buy in, and actually satelliting in to the $55 PLO8 regularly on a Saturday, so I definitely feel like I'm making progress. I'd like to keep up the success I'm having in the $33s and $11r's for now such that I'm on a solid footing when I do finally make the move up.

4. Take 15 "shots" at Weekly Majors

Another quantitative goal which is easy to assess the success or failure of. I'm failing. Quarter of the way through the year I should have taken 3-4 weekly shots by now and unfortunately so far I've only managed to take two, bricking both. The weekly O8s are actually a bit tougher to satellite into than I had initially estimated so I haven't had too much success in them and I'm still not too comfortable punting the $11r turbo satellites, even if they are as soft as I've been told. Hopefully though, if I manage to make more progress with the previous goal of increasing my average buy in then I should be able to play some more satellites to these events and maybe take some more direct shots.

5. Play one live "Main Event"

Even though it's by default, I'm calling this a win. If you haven't read it by now, be sure to read my trip report of the Coral 30/30 held at Aspers Stratford last month. It was a £300 buyin and also the Casino's premiere monthly tournament, which definitely qualifies as a Main Event. I'm also heading back to Aspers later this month to play the WCOAP series and so I'll almost definitely be adding to the success of this goal.

Non Poker:

1. Maintain a running average of 100 readers per day

We're well on the way to hitting this figure. I'd like to say it's due to the quality content and great output of posts, but it's probably just because I'm spamming Twitter a bit more! In actual fact, recently a good friend of mine began a job working for a media company and has learnt a lot about how to increase the readership of websites and blogs through a technique called Search Engine Optimization. It works by improve the site's Google Pagerank through strategic use of key words and hyper links. He's taught me a lot about how to better utilize this blog and I hope to continue implementing new strategies in the future.

2. Have an actual grind setup

This has been a tough goal to achieve as it's hard to balance having an actual grind station or office and not completely shutting yourself off. What I have tried to do though is make the best of the situation by buying better peripherals. I've invested in a better quality wireless mouse, along with a ton of spare batteries so I'm never caught short, and purchased a set of noise cancelling headphones so that should I desire to be completely shut off in my own little world, all I need to do is flick a switch. I also invested some time into creating a mega long grind playlist, which while not contributing to a grind setup per se, helps me to focus better.

3. Organise and structure my time more efficiently

I feel like I've made some strides forward with this goal. I actually have my part time job to thank for this because, as you may have read before, I have been working far more hours than I had originally anticipated. This does however mean that I am getting up early most days which eventually becomes a habit, so even on my days off I'm managing to be awake, fresh and alert by 9am. I also tend to finish at around 3pm, which means I get home at the perfect time to put in a solid evening session. What I'm especially pleased about is that I've made great strides in making the correct decisions when I'm too tired or not in the correct frame of mind to grind. I can only the imagine the amount of money I've saved through only playing when I'm feeling 100%.

4. Improve my writing skills

I suppose this is one for you guys to decide. Much like poker, I can definitely get a feel of when I'm writing interesting content which actually makes sense, and when I'm writing complete garbage. The problem is that the garbage volume tends to outweigh the quality content and as such my delete key gets a good workout. I do still intend to working on my writing skills and this post has encouraged me to continue to improve and maybe even purchase some books on the subject.

5. Start "saving"


I haven't actually managed to do anything proactive about this goal, like open an ISA account or invest money somewhere, but I am managing to keep some money behind at the end of the month, which keeps me comfortable. The part time job helps to cover the rent and bills but I do still rely on poker to keep me afloat, which it manages to do quite nicely. I did especially well in January but had a very disappointing February so the two seemed to cancel each other out, but March got things back to normal so now the Poker and bank accounts are both very healthy. I'm also keeping my tips tucked away in a pot so if there's ever an emergency, I should have a little bit of cash handy to fall back on.

So there you have it, an update on my 2014. Like a report card from school at the end of term I think the summary of the last few months would be "Could do better". It's good for me to take stock of how my progress is going every few months because it gives me perspective, and encourages me to work harder. Even as I write this, I'm raring to get back to the grind and start raking in the money. If there's one thing I've learnt from all this grinding is that volume conquers all. If I'm a winner in the games, then the more I play, the more money I make, it's as simple as that. Speaking of which, I better get playing! I hope 2014 is going well for all of you guys too and if not, then it turns around soon. Good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

3rd in $33 Omania - Biggest PLO cash to date!

As you know, the Omanias are always on my daily schedule, be it the $5 PLO, the $8.80 NLO8 or the $33 PLO, and they are some of the softest tournaments all day. Along with the smaller rebuys, like the $3r PLO and the $5r PLO8, they seem to attract the largest amount of recreational players, mainly due to their large prizepools compared to the rest of the schedule, thus it's pretty simple to go deep, and even win these tournaments without ever having to play tricky. Simple ABC poker and playing a slightly more aggressive style than your average fish will show a healthy ROI.

I've had a fair bit of success in the Omanias, most notably shipping the morning $16.50 PLO8 twice and the NLO8 once as well as numerous other final tables but this one was by far the biggest. In fact, the top three prizes for this tournament were bigger than the first place pays out normally in any of the other Omanias I normally play. I would get into a discussion around this point that the Omania prize pools are slipping but that's something for another post. All I'll say here though is that unfortunately many at the moment are not hitting their guarantees during the week, especially the $5 PLO which seems to be missing it daily.

As for the actual tournament, like I discussed before, I didn't get up to anything fancy. Chipping up in the early and middle stages seemed to be a breeze as people seem very happy to call off with very little equity quite regularly. By the time we hit the bubble I'd managed to grind my stack up to a healthy 30k, approximately 25BBs. It's around here that the field seems to massively tighten up, with good reason sometimes as the min cash tends to be around $70. For the more experienced big stacks like myself, it's a great opportunity to put some pressure on the weaker players and the short stacks. I tend to take advantage of my HUD stats at this point because they can instantly tell me what my plan of action is against certain players. Against the loose passive fish which have lucked their way to this point by limping any four cards and smashing the flop, I can raise to isolate them into heads up pots and simply bet out small on all flops expect to get a fold a very large percentage of the time. Against tight players in the blind I can simply raise any unopened pot to steal the blinds and against better players I can tighten up and play solid poker.

By the time the bubble burst, the average stack was around 10BBs and we lost half the field within two orbits. Due to the fast structure and the general tight nature of PLO MTTs, the stacks never really consolidated and even up to the final two tables, average stacks remained short. I manage to keep a top 5-10 for the majority of the late stages by playing tight aggressive poker against the weaker players and managing to get AAxx in a fair few times preflop and holding. In fact, I manage to burst the final table bubble by doubling up through one of the bigger stacks while holding AAxx, and finishing him off the next hand with KKxx.

Nothing particularly special happened for the first part of the final table. The big stacks kept piling on the pressure and one by one the short stacks fell. By the time we got to four handed play I was the short stack myself but once again I managed to double holding AAxx and the chip leader finished the villain off to set up three handed play. Now here's where things got interesting.

The chip leader was a solid reg that unfortunately I didn't have many hands with but luckily a fellow grinder had, so he was able to give me some good reads that I felt I could use. I was second in chips by around 6-7BBs and the short stack, who was only around 5BBs behind me, was a weaker player who was probably a recreational poker player at best, and probably had very little experience playing PLO MTTs. The short stack immediately suggested a chop and as the money on the line was getting pretty big, I agreed to have a look at the numbers. The moderated posted the chip chop figures of $1.9k for the chip leader, $1.8k for me and $1.7k for the short stack. The other players quickly agreed but I hesitated. The original payout figures stood at $2.3k for the winner, $1.8k for 2nd and $1.3k for third. Although the deal would guarantee me a 2nd place payout, I believed I had a huge edge against the short stack, and between myself and the chip leader, we could apply a lot of pressure on him, grind him down and eventually bust him. At that point I could deal with the solid reg for a figure around $2.1k. It seemed a bit risky to pass up possibly $500 for a chance to win an extra $300, but I felt confident in my short handed PLO game and so believed it was right to turn down the deal. I still do.

Unfortunately for me, the best laid plans don't always turn out the way you want them to. A few hands later the weaker player opened from the SB, I 3-bet with KK87s and called his 4-bet jam. He flipped over AJ87ds which made me a small favourite but he managed to river a straight to take the pot and leave me crippled. The next hand I got it in with the reg with some decent equity but he held to send me home in 3rd for $1.3k.

I've gone over the deal discussion in my mind time and time again and even talked about it with some other MTT regulars who had more deal making experience than me, but the general consensus is that rejecting the deal was fine and that I shouldn't be disappointed that the risk didn't pay off. I'd probably do the same if I was put in the same position again and who knows, it may work out better for me that time. For now though, I'm pretty happy to get my biggest PLO cash to date, and first four-figure PLO cash, and look forward to possibly racking up a few more. My confidence at the game has shot up now that I'm winning at it again, and I genuinely feel like another big score could be just around the corner. Of course, should that happen, I'll let you folks know straight away! Until then though, I wish you all good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

The Week of the Turnaround. Possible Heater?

I'm sure you're all getting a bit sick of me moaning about results not going well, or at least those of you who follow me on Twitter are. So here you are, a blog post where I'm happy, cheerful and not banging on about how bad I'm running!

Of course, I'm only considering the short term and essentially the 150 tournaments in the past week is nothing in the long run, but from a mindset point of view, it's really great to start putting up some numbers. In the past 7 days I've manage to ship the early $22 PLO8 twice and the $11 6max PLO once, all for scores of near enough $500 each. I've also managed to final table the $5r PLO8, possibly the softest tournament on my daily schedule.

I can't exactly put my finger on why I'm suddenly winning again but even while I was breaking even/downswinging, I felt like I was still playing a solid game and that the dead money was still there. All I needed to do was win the important flips down at the business end, and as we all know, poker still has that element of luck. Building stacks in tournaments doesn't seem to be an issue, early on the fish will always give up their chips easily before possibly tightening up later on, but towards the end, especially in red labels, luck becomes a pretty huge factor.

Thankfully I've been working hard on my short handed game and I think it's paying off. I noticed that I was particularly busting a lot of PLO MTTs in short handed spots, i.e. FT bubbles and final 2/3 tables etc, so I did a lot of HH reviewing on it and changed up a few things in my game. Luckily for me I have a great group of players around me to give me advice on certain spots as well as posting their own hands, allowing me to learn with them. I've specifically spent a lot of time looking at how to play draws out of position, but that's a discussion for another post.

So there's a little update as to what's been going on recently. Make sure to stay tuned though because I'm going to make another post today about something particularly exciting which happened this week. My followers will already know what I'm talking about. I'm just starting my Sunday session now so hopefully I'll have even more good news for you very soon, although we all know how fickle Sunday's can be. I hope Sunday goes well for you guys too and I'll speak to you all soon!

Trip Report: Coral 30/30 at Aspers Stratford

Apologies about the lack of warning that I was going on a trip to a live tourney but in my defence, I only had about twelve hours notice myself!

So it's Friday afternoon, I'm sitting in the waiting room of the doctors surgery waiting for an appointment, and I see this peach of a tweet:

I was absolutely gobsmacked! I then got contacted by a staff member at Bluff who went over all the details with me, confirmed that everything was above board and that I'd really won a £330 tournament entry just for retweeting Bluff Europe. Included in the deal was a little section in next month's issue of Bluff with my picture so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Onto the trip report. I arrived at the casino a little early to sign up for a membership, which considering it was possibly my tenth trip to Aspers was quite strange. I love the casino. It's located on the top floor of Westfield shopping centre, right next door to the Olympic Stadium and it really is incredible. I particularly love the sport betting area where there are rows of insanely comfortably leather chairs pointed at around 30 TV screens. I had a little chill out while watching the first half of the Hull-Man City game before we got down to business.

The tournament had a 30,000 chip starting stack and 40 minute levels beginning at 50/100. This allowed for tons of play in the opening levels and, what you might have thought, made it very difficult for people to bust early on, yet that didn't seem to bother some people. Within the first level, we'd already lost about three or four people, but thankfully they reached back into those deep pockets and bought in again. I'd normally be a proponent of late registering a tournament when the starting stacks are so deep, but in fields like this one, where players can honestly stack off 300BBs with marginal hands, you'd be missing out on so much value.

I proceeded to get stuck in, opening a ton of pots with a wide range of hands looking to get paid off. I managed to stay around even for the first two levels orso, winning and losing my fair share of small and medium sized pots, until my first decent sized pot of the tournament.

I open AQs from UTG+2 and am met my a 3-bet from MP. The villain seemed around his late twenties/early thirties and had a PartyPoker cap on, I'm assuming from playing some sponsored live event. He seemed like a solid player so I wasn't going to get too out of line against him. It's folded back around to me and I make the call. The flop comes 9 5 4, I check and he checks behind. The turn comes a Q and I lead out. I'd been pretty aggressive so far so maybe he could see this as a steal attempt and I can get two streets from a mid-pair, maybe 7s/8s. Tens and Jacks probably continue on the flop, likewise decent suited connectors. Villian then raises, but I'm still not too worried as he seemed competent enough to try and make a play for the pot like this. I called and the river bricked. I check and he bets big. Looking back on the hand, I think it's at this point where I can lay down the hand as it's early on in the tournament and we're now looking at a pretty big pot relative to the blinds. I called anyway hoping that he got carried away on a bluff with AK but he flipped over 5s for a flopped set. I think he played the hand really well and got paid the maximum, courtesy of this Omaha donk!

I wasn't deterred though, I kept up the aggression and got right back into the swing of things. My next big pot came about twenty minutes later. I raise 23s (LAG ALERT!) from LP and only the big blind calls. The villain is an older, very talkative gentlemen. He clearly had a lot of experience playing in a live setting but was definitely a recreational player. The flop magically comes 4 5 6 and I'm doing a little dance in my head. Even better, the villain leads out! My hand is still vulnerable though so I put out a small raise which he quickly calls. The turn is my worst nightmare, a 7. The villain checks to me and I have no choice but to check back and give him a little rope with which to bluff the river, which comes a 9. Villain bets just over half the pot and I call, after the appropriate amount of sighing and bemoan my luck when he flips over K8o. Solid flop bet/call.

From then on I tightened up a bit, found a copy of Bluff Magazine and settled in to wait for push/fold poker to start, my wheel house! I managed to bleed down to a low of about 6k before finding a sweet little double up with AQ over AJ which got me back up to around 25BBs. I managed to grind back up a little bit until I got coolered to bust, 3-bet jamming QQ into AA. Unfortunate, but nothing you can do about it. I was hoping to go a little bit deeper, or at least to have lasted until the end of late registration but I suppose I can't bemoan my luck when I got into the tournament for absolutely nothing.

I really enjoyed myself for the brief time I was there. The table was really friendly and chatty and the atmosphere in the room was really relaxed and laid back, more so than some £25 tournaments I've played before. As I've said before, the casino is fantastic and the dealers were fast, friendly and engaging. I'll definitely be heading back and the APAT WCOAP Series in April seems a perfect time to do so, not to mention the fact that they have a £55 PLO8 event!

I really want to thank Bluff Europe for buying me into the tournament and Aspers Stratford for running it. For sure I'll definitely be entering any future competitions but hopefully run a little bit better in the actual tournament.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed the trip report and I hope I have a few more for you to read in the near future, after all, I still a way to go to achieve my 2014 goal of £5k live profit. Normally I bit of a bad taste in my mouth about live poker after busting a decent tourney but this time all it's done is wet my appetite, I guess that's what happens when you don't spend anything to get in! Until next time though I wish you all good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

Playing a little more NLHE. And enjoying it!

Forgive me readers who are die hard four-card fans and cringe at the thought of Hold'em but it's true, I am really enjoying playing a little bit of NLHE recently.

My evening MTT schedule is made up of pretty much every PLO and O8 tournament starting on PokerStars up to around 10pm, with the exceptions of the high stakes games and 3x-Turbos. However, I also add in the Big 5, 8, 22 and 11 as well as the Hot 11 and 16 because these tournaments are just insane value. Obviously the value is more long term than regular tournaments but the bink potential is too much to give up, and as you all know my biggest score comes in the Hot 11. Even though these crazy scores may only come once in a blue moon, there's still enough of a draw to pull you back in. I was lucky enough to win the Hot 11 once in the hundreds of times I've entered it and likewise in the Big 5, I've managed to make one final table, but those two scores were enough to completely reshape my year.

Recently I took the decision to add in two $2 rebuys to my early schedule. I played these tournaments regularly when I was solely grinding NLHE last year and they are packed with value, for reasons not too dissimilar to the $3 rebuy PLO that we grinders love so much. What's changed in my mindset though is that I'm starting to enjoy playing with deeper stacks. Almost all of my NLHE experience and knowledge comes from turbo tournaments and as such I've become used to, and adept at, wielder a short stack but I've been far too ineffective with anything bigger. That sounded a bit dirty....

I think it might have something to do with the fact that my average buy in has been higher recently and in the low to mid stakes tournaments you tend to get a bit more play when it gets to the final stages. In micro stakes MTTs, players are so tight around the bubble and in the money that stacks never consolidate and the average stack tends to remain around 10-20BBs. Because I've been playing deeper than normal recently, I've had to think more about my opening ranges, about value betting correctly and generally just about playing better poker. This has translated over to NLHE where thinking about ranges is slightly easier and value betting becomes a bit more of an art than simply "I have 2 pair or better, I must bet".

Don't fret though Omaha afficionados, I won't be hanging up my four card boots yet. I still feel much more comfortable playing PLO and O8 and, to be honest, I don't see that ever changing. Besides, that'd mean giving up my little niche of having a PLO8 Blog rather than just a general Poker Blog, and I gotta keep you guys happy! That's enough random musings for now, I better get back to work! So for now, good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

Note Taking

So as my break even February turns into a down swinging March, I took a little step back yesterday to go over some of my play and have a look at some areas of the game at which I need to work upon. While I poured over my HEM database and went over a through hand history reviews, a fellow grinder made it to a decent Final Table so I jumped on the rail for support and, as there is with most low-stakes Mixed Game MTT tables, he was sat next to a reg. I knew the reg well from both PLO and PLO8 and had around a 2k hand sample on him. I had him tagged up as a reg, and a winning reg at that but I didn't have a single note on him. How can that be right, how can I have played over two thousand hands with one player and not picked up a single read on him other than the fact he was a decent player. So thus I've decided that my note taking skills need to be worked on.

Now this isn't the first time I've though about how to improve my note taking. During Andre Coimbra's $100k bankroll challenge last year I watched a ton of his videos on his Youtube channel and I noticed that even in low-stakes MTTs that he wasn't likely to play regularly ever again, his note taking was very detailed. Whenever he was down to a few tables, say two to three, he could pretty much manage to make a note on every player left at his tables.

Now while I didn't agree with some aspects of his note taking, such as merely reporting hands that said player was involved in rather than gleaming reads regarding his range over a sample of similar hands, I did really the way he was noting every hand of interest, regardless of whether he was in it or not, as well as he noting of bet sizing and position. I started incorporating some of these note taking skills into my game but I feel I've become somewhat lazy recently and started to rely more on my HUD for reads than actually watching hands. The HUD is great for generally tagging up what kind of player I'm up against but the specific reads you learn through actually paying attention are where the money is made.

I'm going to be working on this a lot in the near future and I'll let you guys know what kind of effect it has on my play and on my results. Feel free to leave a comment below on how you take notes and maybe what steps you're taking to work on your notes. For now, good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

My Breakeven February

Normally at this time of the month I'd do a short review of how my previous month's goals went but because of an insanely busy start to February and far too many real life commitments getting in the way I decided not to write any for last month. I did however manage to rejig my normal schedule and organise things a little better so that I could play consistently again and in the past two weeks or so I've managed to keep up a decent amount of volume.

Unfortunately though, it's not been all roses. For various reasons including being a little rusty after a few weeks off and also running pretty poorly, granted over a limited sample, so I haven't managed anywhere near my January results. It's not really a sense of a few near misses like it has been in past months but more generally bricking everything and managing a few select tournament victories in order to keep myself afloat.

I still feel like I'm playing well though. Whilst I was writing my previous blog post on 5 things I know I'm doing wrong I thought a lot about my focus and genuinely thinking through every hand I play and so I've found so many more spots where I can pick up chips by considering what kind of player I'm up against. They're mainly hands where, in hindsight, it's obvious that a small bet would have picked up the pot but at the time I was auto-piloting and simply mashed the check button because I hadn't hit the nuts. I'm sure if I could find out how to see my red line for tournaments like HEM does for cash games then I'd see a marked improvement over this time last year.

I've also started mixing in a few more 18 man NLO8 SnGs. I wrote a post many moons ago about PLO8 SnGs any many of the same points I made back then still apply now. Unfortunately nowadays the games can very reg heavy at peak times so for now I'm game selecting which ones I register for which tend to be at the very beginning of my session or just as I'm winding down, which I don't mind at all. For now I'm showing a decent ROI in the $15 games but I'm still aware how brutal the swings can be so I'm keeping grounded. I'm also finding interesting spots almost every day where I'm still not sure what the right line is but thankfully I have a few friends who are real SnG grinders to advise me. Cheers lads.

So that was my February in a nutshell. I'm still not entirely sure about how much I can play in March so I'll hold off for now on writing a March goals post. For now I'll be playing each day as it comes but I still will be keeping an eye on my 2014 goals for a little direction. I hope maybe February went a little better for all you guys and here's wishing you all a big March! Until next time, good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!br

Top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong!

I read a blog post on PartyPoker's site recently where numerous UK Online Pros gave their thoughts on the best tips they could give on how to be a successful online player. These weren't strategy tips i.e. 3-bet more in position etc, but more on the poker lifestyle and mindset and how to prepare yourself to win at the game. It got me thinking not only about which of their tips I was already doing but about those I was not as well as many others. So without further ado, here are the top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong.

1. Playing Tired

Over the past couple of months I have worked really hard on getting a routine in place and organising an actual schedule of when I play poker.  It's helped me to treat poker more like a job and to take it more seriously, however, it does have it downsides. Much like a real job, if you feel tired or ill, you feel compelled to still play, especially as you feel that you miss value by not playing. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Again, much like real life, you performance is greatly hampered by feeling tired and the usual win rate just doesn't exist. As a poker player, I am blessed that if I am tired, I am not forced to play and I think I should take that one day off to recover and feel fresh, rather than continuing on and maybe playing 3-4 days straight tired.

2. Chasing Losses

I think every poker player out there has felt this at some point. You have maybe two or three losing days in a row and then suddenly you're not thinking fully about winning the tournament you're playing, what you're actually thinking is where in the tournament you need to finish in order to get back to even. It's a truly terrible mindset to be in. The focus of every tournament I play should be to win, end of. I spend a lot of time working on my mindset and this is just the next hurdle to overcome.

3. Holding onto small stacks

This is a lesson that I've taken off some of the well known NLHE grinders. There comes a stage when the tables start to build up and it's hard to focus equally on each one. It's at this point that I start to build up 10BB and less stacks on some of the smaller tournaments approaching the late stages. It's in situations like this where I should be getting aggressive and attempting to shove and reshove my chips in order to build a decent stack, after all, I'm aiming for first, not a min cash. I know that keeping my eye out for spots like this will get me to more final tables and increase my ROI, even if I bubble tournaments a little more often.

4. Not paying full attention

Again, a problem I'm sure other grinders out there experience. I have a pretty short attention span at the best of times, so grinding for hours on end gets somewhat monotonous after a while and I tend to resort to watching TV as well or sometimes even playing other games. Needless to say this is diverting my attention away from the tables and directly affecting my bottom line. To combat this I've recently bought a pair of high quality, noise cancelling headphones and put together a super long grinding playlist that should keep my focus on the tables. I'm always for looking for new tunes to add by the way so feel free to suggest your favourites!
5. Autopiloting

This is somewhat different to not paying attention. Even when I am focused on the tables, I tend to get into a stretch where I genuinely am just clicking buttons. It's a mindset that's easier to get into with Omaha games which is a lot more dependent on showdowns and making the nuts. I definitely can tell when I've been doing it for a while, at which point I snap out of it and start thinking about each hand again but I'm still not entirely certain how to eliminate it all together. Hopefully some of you other grinders have experienced similar and can give me some advice!

As you can still see, I'm working on trying to eradicate these issues from my game but it's a long old slog. At least the first stage of identifying the issues is out the way, so I can work on techniques to focus more and improve my bottom line. Hopefully this helps some of you who feel that you're doing the same thing. That's it for now, so good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

£10/£25 PLO8 Cash Games at The Vic!

So around ten days ago I'm riding the bus on the way to a friend's birthday and, as you do, instead of using the half hour to do anything productive or the least bit useful, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed. Interspersed between the football headlines and poor sports betting tips was a wonderful tweet along the lines of this: (Note: This is just a tweet from yesterday, too lazy to search the exact tweet)

I was just in shock. You barely see PLO8 as part of a mix, let alone a high stakes game in it's own right. Those who follow me on Twitter could see how excited I got and, even now, the prospect of high stakes PLO8 games in London is huge for our little game. Over the next few days the game seemed to continually run, sometimes changing to a PLO8/PLO ROE game and sometimes changing fully to PLO but, in general, for a stretch of time every night since I first saw the tweet, the game has run.

I know a little bit about how the high stakes cash games run at the Vic, mainly through the stories and blogs of some of the cash regs and via hearsay through the community so I'm taking an educated guess that a businessman or wealthier individual is in town and wants to play the game. I've read some sick stories of Russian businessmen coming over for a few weeks and looking to play high stakes Stud so it makes sense that something similar is going on here. If this is the case then these PLO8 games will drop as soon as the individual leaves town but I can't help but hold out hope that cash game regs in London fall in love with the game and continue to play it year round.

Obviously the best case scenario for me would be that some of the lower stakes players fancy a go at the game and a £1-£2 PLO8 game starts running. In that case I'll pack my bags and go live in the Vic! Unfortunately I can't see that happening and unless any ballers out there fancy staking this low stakes PLO8 player into the £10-£25 game, then it looks like I'm just going to be a rail bird. If any of the players in the game or people passing through are reading this then please feel free to post any details of the games in the comments, maybe who the players are and possibly even some interesting hands!

Well that's enough dreaming for me, back to the grind. Hopefully I'll have some nice little binks to tell you all about soon. Until then, good luck at the tables everybody and I'll speak to you all soon!

Damn you real life!

Hey everyone, really sorry for the lack of posts recently. As some of you may have gleamed from my constant moaning on Twitter I've spent practically the entire last two weeks at what is supposed to be my "part time" waiter job. I've barely had time to play poker, let alone write about it, but I should be back to the tables now and thus should have lots of time to moan about that instead!

As I've mentioned before I started the part time waiter job mainly as a good way to show employers outside of the poker industry that I am out there working and employable. To companies within the industry, which I'd definitely prefer to work within, being a professional poker player works to my advantage, but to some gaming and statistics companies all they see is "gambler" and "degenerate" so I try to steer clear of bringing it up in cover letters and interviews. However, it leaves me open to the inevitable question of "What have you been doing for the last few months?".

The last two weeks the hours really stepped up, in fact I worked 13 of the 14 days possible mainly because some staff took some leave and I'd now been there long enough and learnt enough of what needs doing to fill in competently. It's my own fault really, I should have remained next to useless! It's now got to the stage where myself and my girlfriend, who I live with, were having a serious discussion that I need to work less so that I could play more poker! Not gonna lie, I had a beaming smile throughout the whole conversation.

I've just now got back from a quick weekend trip away to Copenhagen and I had a bit of time to write a few blog posts, so all I need to do is a little editing and revising then there should be a solid level of content production again, provided I don't get snowed under with shifts again.

I hope everybody's been having good luck at the tables since I've been away and I look forward to joining you all tonight! Speak to you all soon!

January Goals Review

It's that time of the month! Hmm, maybe that wasn't the best choice of words for the intro..... Anyway, it's time to review my January goals. No point in messing around, let's just get into it!

1, $2.5k Profit

In a nutshell, this goal got crushed! Not only did I hit the $2.5k goal that I set myself, but I almost doubled it. Even without the TCOOP score which in itself was almost enough to make the goal, I would have hit it, just through solid grinding. That in itself is a great mental boost as it tells me that it wasn't just by luck that I managed to surpass my profit target for the month.

2. Two Red Label Final Tables

Huge success, solely due to the morning $16.50 PLO8 Omania. In total this month I final tabled the tournament three times, one outright win, one chop and a ninth. I think the Omania is the softest tournament on PokerStars right now due to it's start time and, obviously, the fact that it's a game very little of the field have experience with. It plays relatively deep in the early and middle stages which gives me the opportunity to apply pressure to weaker players and consistently build large stacks to take into the shallower late stages. Hopefully I can continue my great run in this tournament in February.

3. At least one four-figure score

Another success! I wrote a post a few days ago about my deep run in the TCOOP PLO8 event on the blog so I won't go into too much detail on it. If you'd like to read about the run you can find my post here. The score was for $2,163, which definitely qualifies as a four-figure score. The two Omania ships just managed to scrape under the four-figure threshold, both scores were for around $990 so if I didn't make the TCOOP run then this paragraph would probably be trying to convince you that they count!

4. Have developed an organised system of what to do with tips

I'm not sure whether to quantify this as a success or not. I keep tips and spare cash in a pot on my window sill, and although I don't simply dip in whenever I fancy a drink or something, I have tended to use it every time I need to top up my Oyster Card when I'm going somewhere. So although it's not an organised system, I'm counting "used as emergency on-hand" cash as an acceptable use. Recently the pot has never had more than about £20 in it but should it build up the goal may have to be revisited.

5. Have a full clean out of my flat and throw away as much as possible

Well, not everything can't go to plan, this was a massive bust. As I write this I'm staring at a pile of empty suitcases which we had pulled out because we went away for the weekend, and now I have no idea where they're going to go. Why would two people need seven suitcases? It's a  wonder. I definitely need to get around to achieving this goal in the next few days.


So there you have it, a pretty successful January wrapped up in a nutshell. Just putting the finishing touches on February's goals so they should be up, probably by tomorrow. I've also got a fair bit of travelling to do in the next few days so chances are I'll use the opportunity to write a few posts. Until then, good luck and the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

Deep TCOOP Run : $109 PLO8

So sometimes, when it comes to PLO8 MTTs, you can go months without any sort of interesting big buy-in tournament, and yet somehow I managed to play two in the space of three days! With the NLO8 offerings being a $82R and a $109 Hyper, this was the optimal O8 tournament of the series for me.

The day started perfectly. PokerStars set a brilliant satellite schedule with tons of $11 FOs and $5r's which were just beyond soft. I only managed to play 11 satellites in the afternoon as I was busy for most of the day but I still managed to ship four seats and truly free roll the event and start the week with a ton of T$.

In the actual event, much like the £220 PLO8, I managed to chip up a lot early on while the blinds were small and double my stack without having to play an all-in pot. The field was a lot more passive than expected from a mid-stake buy-in online tournament but sometimes that's what these xCOOPs are like and I was definitely thankful for that. I flopped well, ran good in all-in pots and and consistently managed to increase my stack over the first hour and a half.

The first problem I encountered was this hand. Like I said, I'd run really well in all-in pots beforehand and built up my stack nicely, but this guy took the biscuit, he was running like Usain Bolt. This pot was just before the bubble so it was a bit disheartening to watch but thankfully I had enough chips left to recover.

Because this pot was just before the bubble, it actually forced me to calm down, and stall a little bit unless the money, which thankfully meant I didn't punt off my stack which usually happens after spots like this. A min cash in this event would still be a decent chunk of money so taking a flip here would have been quite silly, especially with the pace at which people were busting and the average stack which was around 8BBs.

I made it into the money with around an average stack and got to work. I got a ton of steals through and used my above average knowledge of pre-flop equities to get into favorable situations and build my stack. In tournaments like these, fold equity is everything, so sometimes it's worth passing up on a near flip when being shoved into in order to preserve a large enough stack size to win blinds uncontested. It's a concept well documented in NLHE turbo tournaments but is definitely under utilized in PLO8.

I carried on chipping up and up until there were only nine players left. I was definitely getting nervous and a little excited about possibly final tabling a major tournament. Then came this hand.

It was definitely a spot to get it in, even if I were deeper than 6BBs. I was pretty happy with the flop and still quietly confident on the turn but the river was truly gut wrenching, needless to say, a few things on my desk took flight. I wouldn't call it a bad beat considering the equities pre-flop, near enough 50/50, so although it's a bit disappointing to miss out on the big money, I can't be too upset.

It's my biggest score in O8 and even though it's tough to be only 8 players away from $24k, I'm still very happy with a $2k score and TCOOP isn't even over yet, I still may have a shot at a big one! I'm planning to take a long weekend off poker so I don't get burnt out and thankfully this bink affords me some room to do that, however I'll be back on the grind next week, ready to make even bigger and better scores! I hope I'll have more posts like this for you guys in the future, but until next then I wish you all good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon!

P.S. Big shout outs to some of the O8 heroes having great TCOOP scores! Congrats to bokkie87, trelskig and Giffordonian who all had big five-figure scores in the past week! Good job lads!

Trip Report: UK Omaha Series £220 PLO8

So this past Sunday I made the short trip up to Edgware Road for the £220 PLO8 at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino. I use the term "short" loosely as London traffic decided that getting to tournaments early is uncool and thus I should spend an hour on a bus rather than the usual 20 minutes, and also that it should terminate 3 stops early. Running bad before I even step in the door, great sign of things to come!

The structure of the tournament allowed for a decent amount of play early on. We started with 15k chips and starting blinds of 25/50 and 30-minute levels normally after which the blinds doubled. The table was what I expected from a live PLO8 tournament, mostly older live players with a lot of NLHE experience but close to none when it came to mixed games. Everyone was very friendly and the atmosphere at the table was pretty jovial, they all seemed to enjoy having a splash around at a game many of them barely played. Only one player at the table seemed to be completely useless and he managed to bust within ten minutes. After a casual limp pre-flop, he called the full pot raise from the BTN and proceeded to get it in on the J86ss flop with a bare J6xx hand, no ace, no low draw. The BTN flipped over AA2Kss and scooped the lot after the 3s turn and blank river. Those of us actually playing attention to the hand shot everyone else a look and smirk but no one said a word, never berate the fish they say, especially when there's the possibility of a re-entry.

So with literally hundreds of BBs, it was time to get to work. As you'd assume, there was a lot of limping and generally passive play, so isolating wasn't really the way to go. I raised up my premium hands as per normal and limped along with any semblance of a decent drawing hand. Again, the passive play made it easy for me to take away pots on flops and turns so I kept up the aggression, my red line would have been sexy. I got to the first break with just under 30k so I'd near enough managed to double my stack without needing to play a big pot. I hoped more was to come.

After the break the table started playing back at me, or so it seemed that way. I got 3-bet two or three times and played back a little on a few flops so my stack dipped a little over the next two levels until the table eventually broke. The new table seemed to be a lot more competent, the average age was a little younger and everyone was actually focused on the game rather than reading their iPad or breakfast. Yes, I said breakfast, at 7pm, yes. It was here that I got into my first big pot of the tournament. I flopped trips on a JJ3r board with AJ45 and improve to a boat on the 5x turn. I didn't manage to get any flop action but on the turn I managed to get most of my stack in check/raising the quite loose passive BTN. I wasn't too thrilled about the 8x river as I thought A2xx may be a decent part of his range but with at least half the pot locked up there was no reason not to get the final third of my stack in but somehow the BTN found a fold. I literally have no idea what kind of hand folds the river after getting the majority of effective stacks in already but I wasn't going to complain.

After that hand things got a bit dull, at least from my point of view. I lost a semi-decent pot raising AAxx pre and bet/folding the flop to fairly loose player who later on told me he'd flopped two pair. Then there was a lot of folding, or raising it up, flopping air and getting full potted into, not a lot to be done. Then finally, my bust out hand. So a little back story, the LAG opener had managed to amass a huge stack, close to 100k, mostly before I'd got to the table. He lost a small flip to a short stack, maybe only a 30k pot, and then  somehow managed to bet/stack off on a J224 board with AJK6 against a truly terrible player's AJJ3 in a huge pot, close to around 100k. The terrible player was a much older gentleman who clearly didn't know the rules of Omaha, let alone Hi/Lo and half slowrolled the LAG by only showing the AJJ after they got it in, it was left to the dealer to reveal that even the LAG's low draw was no good. This was the hand immediately before my bust out hand.

The LAG pot opens UTG with blinds at 600/1200, the newly crowned table chip leader folds while stacking his chips and I look down at A35Ks with my stack around the 25k mark. Previously, this player had only min-opened and after the previous few hands I thought it quite possible that the player was on tilt and would happily get in a less than premium hand. I also thought that 20BBs was probably not a large enough stack for me to assert my skill edge over the table given how loose/passive the game was pre-flop. I discerned that this was definitely a great spot to take a shot at doubling up, probably as a favourite but not by much. I pot raised, it folded around to the LAG who was all too happy to get it in with me and revealed A2K9s, having me pretty much dominated. The flop came K29r drawing me all but dead to a chop and the Tx turn and 8x river sent me home in 19th out of 33 runners.

Looking back at the hand now I'm still fairly happy that I got it in there. If I stayed short for too long I wouldn't have been able to play a good loose-aggressive game and use my experience and skill edge to my advantage so taking a gamble was the right choice. The tournament was very well run and everyone seemed to enjoy it so I hope this encourages Grosvenor to run similar tournaments in the future and I'd like to thank them for putting this one on. I'm sorry this wasn't a brag post complete with winners picture but there you go, we'll get 'em next time! I'm back on the online grind now which as you know comes complete with regular blog updates so expect to read some more soon including a deep TCOOP run summary! Good luck at the tables everybody and speak to you all soon!

I did it again!

OK, this is going to be a little bit of a brag post, but for the second time in four days, I shipped the morning $16.50 PLO8 Omania! The score again was just under $1k so for the second time in under a week, I came within a whisker of hitting one of my January goals of making some four figure scores, but the month still has over a week left so hopefully there will be some more shots at it.

Like I mentioned in posts before, the Omania's do get really shallow in the end stages so I won't pretend that I didn't run exceedingly hot. I managed to scoop almost all of the important all-in flips that you inevitably encounter and heads up I managed to hit a fair few important cards when short. I actually made it to heads up with a large chip disadvantage against a decent opponent so again I got lucky to win two or three flips to get back to even and from then on could use my edge to grind him down. Eventually I managed to induce him into shoving his weak flush into my flopped quads and ship the tournament.

And luckily for you guys I remembered to take screenshots this time so enjoy!

It hasn't all been roses this week though. Apart from this major score it's actually gone pretty badly, but this is only talking about the last two days so as they say on 2p2, "[  ] sample size".

Just want to take the chance to again remind all you Omaha grinders about the UK Omaha Series starting tomorrow at the Vic in London so make sure you at least get down to one event! And also be sure to follow me on Twitter for live updates. Until next time, good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon!

The Red Label Roller Coaster!

Wow what a week it has been! There's been success, there's been heartbreak, it's had it all. Overall I managed to put in a ton of volume and showed a pretty decent ROI so all in all it's been a great week results wise but how it could have been so much better!

So we start our roller coaster of a story on Wednesday for my first grind session of the week, thank you very much real life, with the $5.50 PLO Omania. I'd flipped like a hero for the whole tournament and from the final four or five tables down I'd played very aggressively and managed to take the chip lead. From there I may have taken a few spewy lines and looking back I may have reigned in the aggression a little bit. Going into the final two tables I was 2nd but the blinds were high and I only had a 25BB stack. I then got myself into a few awkward situations where I had to raise/call off the short stacks given correct pot odds and got short myself. Eventually I ran AQQ2ds into AAxx and busted in 15th. I was furious with myself because I definitely could have been a lot more discerning with my spots to get aggressive and easily made the final table. $25 was not much of a consolation for getting that deep. But we battled on.

We then move onto Friday. During the day I'm normally busy running errands and completingy job applications but I like to load up the $16.50 PLO8 Omania and the $13.50 PLO8 KO on the side to keep me entertained. I regularly make deep runs in this Omania because the start time is so early that almost no regs like to play it. I managed to ninja stack my way to the final two tables but once could not finish the job, finally busting in 14th shoving 3BBs UTG. Like the $5 PLO, the stacks get very shallow towards the end of the tournament so running well is very important.

Moving on to Saturday, now this was one hell of a day. I made the decision to grind the whole day as I wouldn't be able to play Sunday and I needed to take advantage of the weekend MTT softness while I could. Again I started out with my usual PLO8 tournaments and again I made a deep run in the Omania. I built a pretty huge chip lead with around 40 remaining and wielded my stack like a weapon all the way to the final table.  With only 8 left between myself and victory I could only see one player who I could see causing me any issues. He played the final table very well and eventually we went into heads up with around even chip stacks. I think I may have had an edge heads up but with fairly shallow stacks and a fair amount of money on the line, making a deal seemed like the best play. He actually asked to look at the numbers with three left but I felt the odd man out was so much weaker than us that dealing then would be throwing away too much equity. We chopped for aroun $1k each. A fantastic start to the day and it wasn't even 4pm!

And sure enough, Saturday didn't end there. I then went on a very deep run in the Hot 16.50! Turbos have been truly heartbreaking for me in the past but the bink potential is just so huge that I can never pass them up. Of course, I ran amazingly well to get deep but I just couldn't keep it going. I ended up 15th out of almost 5k runners after my 9BB shove from MP with AQo lost a flip against 99. I even flopped trip Aces but my opponent went runner runner for the four card flush. The $300 was a little more of a consolation than the PLO but with over $10k up top, I just can't help thinking of what could have been! Thinking about it now, even a final table spot would have put me in a great position to move up in stakes and cash out a fair chunk for the live roll that I'm building, but there's no use crying over spilled milk. There will always be other turbo runs.

So there's my exciting week. I finished up posting a solid four figure win and putting myself well on track for achieving my January goals. I don't have any shifts lined up for the next week so hopefully I can put in a huge amount of volume and really push the profit for this month. Remember to follow me on Twitter (@Grimiscool) for the live updates on how my grind is going and definitely watch it on Sunday as I attend the £220 PLO8 at the Vic! I will posting chip counts, interesting hands and maybe even some pics with some of the UK regs I hope to meet there! If any of you guys are reading this then be sure to give me a shout and maybe we can go grab a drink after! Until next time everybody, have a great week and good luck at the tables!