£10/£25 PLO8 Cash Games at The Vic!

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

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

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

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

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

Damn you real life!

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

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

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

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

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

January Goals Review

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

1, $2.5k Profit

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

2. Two Red Label Final Tables

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

3. At least one four-figure score

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

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

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

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

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


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

Deep TCOOP Run : $109 PLO8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trip Report: UK Omaha Series £220 PLO8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did it again!

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

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

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

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

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

The Red Label Roller Coaster!

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

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

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

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

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

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