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!

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!

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!