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!

$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!

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!

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

£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!

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!

Back on the Grind!

Hey everybody! As you probably guessed from the lack of blog posts over the last week or so I haven't been around much. Real life kind of took over in the form of temporary work and visiting my "in laws" (quotes used as I'm not actually married). Even though it was nice to get out from behind my computer screen and see the outside world for a little bit I am back at it now and raring to go!

Poker went very well either side of the break. Just before I left on Friday I shipped the $11 NLO 6m for around $280 and the yesterday, the first day back grinding, I took down the $8.80 PLO 6m for $340. Not huge scores but it keeps the scoreboard ticking over nicely and profit is good no matter how much. Also it's really good for my confidence levels to actually have won these tournaments outright. I obviously ran well in both tournaments but I did feel like I was playing my A game and making the correct plays. Especially in yesterday's PLO, I really stepped up the aggression on the final table when possibly in previous months I would have sat back a little more and picked my spots, maybe costing me the tournament win.

I'm also showing good results with my higher buy in shots, in fact my highest ROIs are in the games with buy ins of $11+. I've been slowly increasing my average buy in over the last couple of weeks and it's now creeping up to around the $15 range. I'm hoping within a few months this rise further and buy the end of the year it can be closer to the $30 mark. It may mean having to diversify my games over different sites but I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Currently PokerStars offers more than enough games at my buy in level, but more couldn't hurt!

I haven't got anything pressing to do until Sunday so hopefully that means a solid few days of grinding with a ton of volume and great results. With a bit of luck and run good I can start cashing out enough by the end of the month to comfortably afford the vast majority of my action in the £220 PLO8 at the Vic at the end of the month. I don't particularly want to completely raid the small live roll I've started to put aside in the first month of 2014 but if I can pad it a little before that time then I'll feel a little more comfortable. I'll be sure to keep you all updated with how the week goes, and if you want more current updates then be sure to follow me on Twitter (@Grimiscool). Good luck at the tables everybody and I'll speak to you all soon!

Ask and you shall receive! UK Omaha Series 2014 confirmed!

So literally hours after I published my post yesterday, the Victoria Casino finally confirmed their UK Omaha Series 2014 later this month! Far be in from me to question the PR department at Grosvenor Casinos only advertising a tournament series two weeks in advance of it's kick off event but nevertheless here it is. Here are the highlights:

Thursday 23rd - 7.45pm - £100+10 - PLO - 1 re-entry - 10k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Friday 24th - 7.45pm - £150+15 - PLO 4/5/6 - 1 level of each - 15k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Saturday 25th - 4.00pm - £250+25 - PLO - 1 re-entry - 20k Starting Stack - 40 minute levels

Saturday 25th - 7.45pm - £100+10 - ROE - 1 re-entry - 10k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Sunday 26th - 4.00pm - £200+20 - PLO8 - 1 re-entry - 15k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Needless to say, I will be doing my utmost to attend the PLO8 event, work and real life commitments being the only excuses, and I really want to encourage anyone and everyone who reads this blog to attend as many events as you can. With a nice spread of buyins there should be an affordable tournament for any bankroll. Even if a £100 is a bit outside of your normal buyin, consider it a once in a while treat. I will try to get down there for as many events as possible and expect a trip report for the PLO8. Thank you to the Victoria Casino and Grosvenor Casinos for putting on this series and hopefully we can get enough numbers out to convince them to run these kind of events more often.

Link to full schedule here.

Live O8 Events, or lack there of.

I'm a big advocate of trying to get as many live O8 MTTs scheduled as possible, especially ones that I could possibly attend! Over in the States, PLO8 is spread pretty wide which is understandable given how many more card rooms and live players they have. However, over here in Europe the game is pretty much bound to the big festivals and recently, we haven't even being seeing those!

Around two/three years ago when the Fox Poker Club opened here in London, they a schedule that included a monthly £45 PLO8 event. Personally, I couldn't have been more thrilled and I tried to get down to as many of these tournaments as I could. Unfortunately, over the months numbers dwindled compared to their NLHE counterparts and it was changed to a bi-monthly event. Eventually it was dropped all together. In the UK, nothing has even come close to this since. 

I created a thread on the TwoPlusTwo O8 forum about the lack of O8 events at EPT Festivals and it caught the eye of NeilJ, the PokerStars representative for live events. He was actually quite keen to spread the game and at a few stops, most notably EPT Prague in seasons 9 and 10, an NLO8 event was added which proved to be a success. Prior to the recent EPT London, two O8 events were scheduled but unfortunately one of those was changed to a PLO event shortly before. The EPT Deauville schedule was released recently and zero O8 events would be taking place and, even more worringly, at the PCA currently ongoing in the Bahamas, which is supposedly the biggest poker festival outside of the WSOP, there is only one event which is a Big "O", a discipline the O8 community generally dislikes. I don't want to just single out PokerStars, they just happen to run the biggest festivals, the GUKPT, SPT, APAT etc all don't seem to want to give O8 events a chance. 

I know I come from a greatly biased standpoint but I can't see why O8 couldn't be a success in the live arena. If we take the example from online, the game is narrowly 3rd in popularity behind PLO and, of course, NLHE. There are three Red Label events per day, all of which garner huge numbers and three other Weekly Red Labels of differing stakes, which we very much thank PokerStars for. All online sites spread some form of O8 games and, in general, see good numbers. The game creates action, encourages a looser style preflop, which is good for the recreational player, and is very fun to play. 

Anyone reading this from the TwoPlusTwo Forum will know that I bring up the topic fairly often and probably am sounding like a broken record at the moment but I really want to see as much live O8 as a possibly can and will support the game whenever I can. Supposedly the Vic in London is running another Omaha Series as they did last year concluding with a £220 PLO8 event so if that is the case I will definitely be heading down to that. Aside from that I will keep campaigning for events at EPT festivals and other major tours and hopefully by the time EPT London comes around in October we could see multiple events, both PLO8 and NLO8. I urge the regs reading this to continue supporting the game, show the game to your friends and should there be a live event near you, to make your best efforts to play them. 

Thanks for reading my little rant guys, for those interested I will post the PCA and Deauville schedules below and should the Vic PLO8 event be going ahead I'll advertise it here. Til next time, good luck at the tables!

PCA

EPT Deauville

January Goals

What's up everybody! I hope you all enjoyed reading my 2014 goals post. If you haven't yet had a look then you can find it here! A lot of my monthly goals this year will relate to those yearly goals so be sure to check it out should anything I say here be a little confusing! So without further ado, let's get stuck in!

1, $2.5k Profit

Hoping to get 2014 off to a good start. Around $500 per week I think is a very attainable target given my stakes, volume and ROI. If I play smart and grind hard I should hit this no problem. Recently I've had a few deep turbo runs only to falter towards the end so I hope to put those near misses behind me, learn from them and finally take one down sometime this month.

2. Two Red Label Final Tables

I'm using this goal to refocus my efforts on the Red Label tournaments. Recently I've been busting these too cheaply in my opinion, either by getting it in on a flip way to early or wasting away a decent chip stack towards the bubble or soon after. I usually play 6 of these a day and with the Omania's only having small fields, I believe a solid player should be making the Final Tables of these fairly regularly.

3. At least one four-figure score

This definitely ties in with the points I made above about deep turbo runs and Red Label final tables. Although I've had some great results in the past few months, I've had no scores over $1k. The closest I came was a $950 score in the PLO8 $16t 2x Chance. I play so many tournaments a day where four-figure scores are available so if I can ride the variance and play well, a $1k+ score shouldn't be too far away. I'd say my best chances for this would be said $16t, the morning PLO8 Omania or possible a random micro stake turbo.

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

I pick up a couple of waiter shifts during the week and normally I make about the same from tips as I do from my wage. Unfortunately, while my wages go straight into my account, my tips normally stay in my pocket ready to be spent on whatever I fancy walking home. Even today, I've counted out the exact change to order some Chinese as soon as it opens! Goal starts tomorrow lol.

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

I had my boiler fixed today and the plumber needed the closet completely cleared out so he could get to it. I have far too much junk. Correction, my girlfriend has far too much junk! I actually hate having too much stuff. I moved to London with just a backpack, that's genuinely all I needed. I need to spend one day this month having a total clean out of all the excess in this flat and actually make it look nice again.



So there you have it. A couple of Poker goals and a couple of Non-Poker related goals too! Who said Tales of a PLO8 Grinder had to be solely about PLO8 grinding! Let's make sure 2014 gets off to a great start! Hope January goes equally well for all of you too! Til next time, later y'all.

2014 Goals - Wish me luck!

So first of all I'd like to apologize for this post being slightly late. I know goals posts and threads are usually put up before the year has started but I really wanted to get these right as I fully intend on maintaining and achieving everything I set out this year. So far in my poker career, barring my initial miracle bink the first time I played, my results have improved year on year and despite having a very good 2013, I fully intend on continuing this run into 2014. So without further ado, here are my goals for the year!

Poker:

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

Last year I unofficially set myself an approximate goal of $25k total profit. I ended up making just under $20k which I was actually very happy with. This year I feel I'm a much better player, I have a much better schedule and I am altogether much more focused on poker and thus $30k genuinely should be attainable

2. £5,000 live profit

Up until now I haven't really ventured too much into the live arena but recently the Hippodrome here in London announced a weekly £100 PLO tournament at their Pokerstars Poker Room so I'm hoping this will be a springboard into a better live poker career. I hope soon to separate some living funds to create a live bankroll which should also allow me to track my results better too.

3. To become a regular at the $55 level

I've always mentioned that I want to move up the levels and eventually become a mid-stakes MTT reg and this is the next step up. There's only one PLO8 and one PLO $55 that run during the schedule (two on Saturdays) but I'd like to play up to these games and show a profit on them long term.

4. Take 15 "shots" at Weekly Majors

This includes the Sunday Million, Weekly PLO8, Weekly PLO and possibly the Weekly NLO8. The satellite schedule for weeklies aren't great but there are still soft enough $3r's and maybe if I continue to progress through the levels then weekly shot taking could become part of my stake package. I know the games are tough and it's a long shot to become a long term winner in these but these tournament's have huge prize pools so bink potential is there.

5. Play one live "Main Event"

Building upon my earlier goal, I feel a good way to progress with my live career would be to play a tour main event. Obviously a £5k EPT Main is a little far fetched but the UKIPT run £700-£1ks, the GUKPT run £1ks. There's also the other small tours like the SPT which have £200-300s, APATs have £100-200s and other one's pop up continuously. I'll keep an eye out for events near to me and take appropriate shots based on the "live" bankroll.

Non Poker:

1. Maintain a running average of 100 readers per day

This might be a low number but on the days that I don't write a post or mention the blog on the forums or Twitter, the readership is actually very small. Granted this is a personal blog and the subject matter is a little niche but I still hope to increase the readership and hopefully make many more contacts within the poker community.

2. Have an actual grind setup

Currently I'm grinding on my 17" laptop, using the touch pad because my mouse is broken and sitting in a chair which if described as "uncomfortable" would be a great compliment. I don't particularly want an office to grind in as I'd never want to be completely shut off from my girlfriend in the apartment but I'd like to have a space for maybe a little desk with a purpose made grind PC. It wouldn't need to be spectacular or to cost very much but I really think it would help my game, especially multi-tabling.

3. Organise and structure my time more efficiently

I've never been much of an organised person, I've gotten a little better as I've aged and I'm far and away more organised than all of my Uni friends but compared to the rest of the planet, I'm pretty bad. My normal schedule is to wake up "whenever", shower "whenever", eat "whenever" and start grinding at 3.30, ish. Obviously sleep schedules have to be a little fluid when you play poker but I'd like to at least try to wake up before 9am every day and actually plan out days. Hopefully a little routine will improve my mental game.

4. Improve my writing skills

As many of you have probably guessed, I'm not much of a writer. I always took Maths and Science based subjects and throughout my time at Uni I only wrote 2 full papers, and even then, scientific writing is a completely different kettle of fish. Hopefully just writing here often will do a lot but I'd like to be a little more proactive about it, maybe read a few books and watch some videos.

5. Start "saving"

So after all the profit goals I've set out I should have some money floating about. As I'm getting older, I've become a little less frivolous with cash and I don't go out quite as often. That means I should have a little spare money to put away. I haven't got anything in particular on the horizon that I think I need to save for me if the few months after Uni without a job taught me anything it's that having a little extra cash tucked away can be a great help.

So there's my goals for the next year ahead. I hope reading these will inspire some of you guys to think about your own goals and I wish you all the best with them. There has to be a huge N.B. with this list though. I am still on the hunt for a full time career and should I begin one with absurd hours then poker will have to come second and I won't be able to put in my full time and effort. All the best for 2014 and feel free to leave a comment with your goals or even what you think about mine! Later everyone!