£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!