From the top.

We get into Delhi after an 8-hour plane ride (on which I get NO sleep). I'm amazed at the airport; it's all changed massively in the 6 months since I was here last. The Commonwealth Games are here next month and it's clear they've spent some serious money preparing - all shiny marble and perfume shops. The taxi ride into Delhi is striking as well, construction everywhere you look. I ask our taxi driver if it'll be done in time for the games, he laughs and shakes his head.

We wander around Paharganj (the backpacker area I'm familiar with), dump our bags at a guesthouse and grab some tasty samosas on the street. This is also undergoing major renovation - about a metre has been ripped off the front of the buildings on either side in order to make the street wider.

A rickshaw ride later and we're in the Chandi Chowk - a big network of markets near the Jama Masjid. I'd heard of a mystical, heavenly street that just sells paranthes of various shapes and sizes where you can choose any filling (image all the things you could put in a paranthe! peppers... peas... cashew nuts...!) called Gali Paranthe Wali (the lane of fried bread). So we went on a mission to find it, did eventually and had a fantastic aloo paranthe. Shame I didn't know the Hindi for cashew nuts.

At this point I'm an absolute wreck from lack of sleep, so we relax in a cafe and hide from a thunderstorm before heading to the station to get our train to Haridwar. I'm out cold for the whole ride (my dad doesn't fare so well) and we have chai and share a rickshaw with a friendly German to Rishikesh (which I describe in my blog from last year).

We find Enfields to hire pretty easily, from Ranjeet Motorcycles (recommended!) which is actually the place I bought my bike last year. If he remembers me and my... clumsiness last year he doesn't show it. Quite a few shop/cafe owners remember me though which is nice - one remembers both my name and what drink I'd order ('Ah, Mr Ben! Lemon tea?') which I'm mightily impressed by.

Oh if only I had a handlebar mustache.

We decide we'd like to head up to Joshimath, towards Hem Kund and The Valley of Flowers, where I actually went with Tyler and Gribb last year. So, after a few days rest, we set off from Rishikesh and have a great day's riding. A few scary patches, but mostly fine, and some nice sun. We also see many incredible road signs, my favourite being 'Driving and drink: a fetal combination'. Drink driving as a method of conception? Interesting...


That night it absolutely pours down, and after a few kilometres the next day we reach a few major landslides. We sit in front of the first, eyeing it up, when an Indian biker with a passenger rides up and sails through, as though the huge rocks and foot-thick mud were nothing. Fine, we think, we're just being wusses. After bumping around like crazy and getting stuck a few times we manage to get across and stop at a chai stall - by which time the guys in front returns saying the way forward is totally blocked. It's safe to say they weren't exaggerating.

Since we can't head onwards to Joshimath we decide to head back in case the road home is slow too. Turns out to be completely blocked. The next three days go pretty much in the same vein. Every day we get up early, get about 10km down the road, get confronted by ridiculous landslides; navigate our way through one to be met by a bigger one a few minutes later. Some of the things the locals are doing are truly staggering though - basically carrying entire bikes over huge mounds of slippery mud or zooming along foot-wide paths of mud and running water, both just a few feet away from hundred metre drops... Wish I had my camera handy!

Many bikers got through this, and it wasn't the worst by a long way.

It's getting to the point where we're not sure if we'll be back in time for my dad to get the train back to Delhi and catch his plane, but luckily by the fourth day the roads are pretty well cleared, and we bomb back to Rishikesh, the 'scary' parts of the first day barely registering in comparison to the landslides further into the mountains. Pretty dusty though.

The Masked Banditos

Just time for a bit of shopping and a nice hike into the hills (where I get attacked by one of the supposedly docile white monkeys) before heading back to Delhi.

2010 roundup, plans

Soooo, I'm done for the year. I haven't actually quite updated my spreadsheets yet, but I think it's going to end up something like breakeven on my own coin, and about in about $5k of makeup, over maybe 500hrs and 6 months. I've been much worse about keeping records of the live stuff, but I'm guessing roughly breakeven there too, maybe down a little.

So, fairly disappointing. I was playing well for large parts of it, probably the best I ever have, although there were definitely times where I let the downswing get to me; -$35k at one point, so about 400buyins over maybe 2000 games. Fairly unpleasant. Luckily I had a nice score recently which helped wipe out most of my makeup: Bink. Then last weekend I got coolered for the chiplead with 15 left in The Sunday Million (and I don't capitalise lightly), which was pretty crushing, but reassuring after a bad spell (for those who don't know, The Million is the biggest weekly tournament online, 1st being ~$250k. Coming 15/8000 players and breaking even on the day is pretty devastating considering that my place in the tournament was worth maybe $70k in equity - in effect, I lost $70k in one hand). Finally, my coach Matt LaGarde, after looking over the hand history of the 320 score, said he didn't have a lot of advice, and was impressed with how I played. I think being told by mlagoo that I play pretty well is a major achievement!

So all positive signs. Shame I don't have any money really. The 28k score didn't get me out of makeup so I didn't see any of it, (despite my mum suggesting I could pocket a few $k of it for myself! shocking) and The Million was stupid and evil. Even a 9th would mean I actually made some money, y'know, for food and stuff. Oh well, it was probably the last tournament I'll play this year, as next week I'm going away. For the best I think, I doubt I'd be playing well, at least for a little while.

Which leads me to the next bit - I'm off to India again. Yay! Going motorbiking with my dad for a few weeks in the same area I was biking last year (I'm far far more prepared for the biking, hopefully no more crashes to write about...), then he's heading home and I'm off down south along the coast. Pretty excited, getting itchy feet here, in need of a break/change of scenery. I'll be turning this back into a travel blog for the next 3 months, so come look at purty pictures and read about me almost dying in a myriad of strange ways.

Sooo... that's about it, back a week or two before christmas. Might get a few sessions in then, but I'm pretty much calling 2010 closed for business. I'm distantly looking forward to getting back to it next year; assuming I can earn some moolah there are some fun trips lined up - PCA, vegas for the WSOP, probably some EPTs, and obviously the GUKPTs and UKIPTs again. But before then I'm definitely in need of some space.

Bring on the curry and motorbikes.

Live games

I had a live cash! I made a day 2! I made a day 3! I MADE A FINAL TABLE!!


So the past month or so has been mainly live games for me. All have been great fun, and I've met a lot of people that I know through forums and stuff which has been awesome. Back in June was the UKIPT Killarney. It was a €1k event, and I hoped I would be sensible and do good here. Unfortunately I got my fancy-pants syndrome again, and ended up turning QQ into a bluff on a T-high board against a range that was {AA,KK}. It was actually an interesting spot, and I think it would work against the right player, but I need to remind myself that the average live player doesn't fold, and they really really don't fold aces or kings. So that got me short and I lost a flip or something.

Played some cash, lost a €800 pot to a 1 outer on the river, that was fun. Then played the €500 side. Played pretty good, made a few spewy plays early on, but luckily they worked out this time (floated a small CR from aggressive russian dude with A5dd on 24K one diamond, binked the 3 on the turn and stacked QK) and managed to make my first day 2. Came back, made a few nice calls, generally just chipped up slowly, then went a bit card/spot dead and made the final table as the shortstack.

The final played soooo slooowwwlly, we we're 8 handed for several hours. Eventually people started busting, and I managed to win a flip QQ>AK (after an A flopped too, Q on the river!). I was the only one doing any raising really, and was just collecting everyone's blinds. Knocked out a few shorties to take us to 3-handed, and I had a nice chiplead. Then QQ < A5 (to get HU with a huge chiplead) and JT < Q5 on 9TQ and I'm done. boooo! Still, was a nice cash and felt great to get the monkey off my back.



Went down to brighton feeling good. Despite being very hungover I had a great day 1, ran good, played ok, and ended the day 2nd in chips. Made just the 1 spewy play, 4bet shoving QKs over a 3bet from a young guy who had aces... I got there. I'm getting better though, finding more patience... Day 2 went well too, with me being chipleader for large parts of it, I was playing well and just gradually collecting chips. Unfortunately I lost a few large pots towards the end of the day, and ended up coming back with 13th left on day 3 with about 20bbs. Made a few slight mistakes to start with (r/folding button vs an aggro guy in BB with KTo and 20bb) and ended up jamming 15x with qjs over a CO open. He thought for a bit before calling with AQo, and I can't get there despite the 9Tx flop. Oh well, gg me. Kinda frustrating to come so close to the £65k for first and not win, but still, 13th aint bad I guess. All positive signs. Congrats to Andy Youens (AKA 'clunged') for coming 7th!


Got the sheffield £500 summer series this weekend, then GUKPT luton the weekend after that, then UKIPT edinburgh the weekend after that. Hopefully the run/play good will continue!

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=167630

lol juneaments

Soooo, been a quiet month really. Went up to sheffield a few times, once for SUSOP - the annual sheffield student poker tournament. £50, usually gets about 40-50 people, a good laugh. Standard was pretty hilarious. The game was open to anyone, so there were quite a few casino regulars giving free poker lessons, raise/folding with 8bbs and tutting when people moved allin pre. I bubbled, which lead to a chorus of smirks and smug comments after I'd declined to agree to pay out the entire final table (they were suggesting paying 10 out of 44!). Oh well.

I actually did pretty good out of the weekend though, made a few hundred playing 10p/20p (/40p/80p/1.60/3.20....) with my poker mates up there, and won every single flip for drinks and food; won 3 meals and a large number of drinks, so worked out a pretty cheap weekend. Thanks guys! :)


Went up again the next weekend for Peace in the Park, a mini-festival which is always fun. Nice music, sun shining, sitting on the grass. All good. Then was Peace After Dark which is the unofficial rave in the peaks afterwards which was great fun too.


Aaaanyways, so all this means I haven't played much this month. Played half a dozen sessions I guess, was breakeven until yesterday, which was the worst sunday EVER. The worst of all the sundays. Played 60, had about 3 mincashes. So I'm basically taking the rest of the month off. Got UKIPT Killarney in a few days which will be great, Dan Dave Luke and Steve will be there for some pokery drinkery funtimes, and I feel like I might actually be able to stop myself spewing all over the place in the main event. Maybe. Another good thing is that a lot of the UK based sickos will be in vegas so should be even softer than normal which is nice.

May roundup

March continued in a similar vein to the rest of the year, and by the 14th I was up to $35k in makeup. Luckily we had a family holiday planned in Greece for a week, which was just was I needed. Spent the time reading books in the sun and floating about on boats in the med, very nice, very little to do. Barely thought about poker once, which is unusual for me!

Came back ready to play, and I started binking. Think every session I played in the week days after was a winning one, and I had 2 $6-7k scores. Made ~$17k, bringing makeup down to $18k, which is seeming more manageable now. Didn't play as much as april because of the week off.


Hours: 76
Results: +$9k


Apart from a luckbox, the other thing I brought back from Greece was a different sleeping pattern - started having siestas every day now. Quite nice as it lets me wake up at a vaguely civilised time (11-12ish) and actually see some of the day. I need to remember not to play poker unless I've had one though, I'm usually too tired.

Hope you all run good in May! (though not when you're at my table obviously)

April Results

Sooo April didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. I mean, in some ways it was awesome because of the two scores I had online whilst at the Irish Open - I had 100% of myself in them and personally I made $12.8k on the month. Which is obviously great - that puts me a little bit in the black for 2010. However I'm also in $27k of makeup (about -300 buyins). My backer now has all of my action as well, so basically that means I have to earn 27k before I actually get to see any money. Which could take a while. Because I made money personally that's not a huge deal right now thankfully, but if this downswing continues I could be in a spot of bother...

Ftops went pretty poorly, didn't really make many runs. Scoop so far has gone very annoyingly, had several deep runs and big stacks only to lose in very frustrating ways. The only solace I can take is that my backer has railed me deep in a few mtts and seen some horrible suckouts in 10-18th, etc so hopefully he knows I'm not just spewing his money away!

Did the DTD 300 a few days ago - went pretty standardly. I 3bet pre oop in the first level with 68s and fired 3 barrels. I even brought a book to stop me doing crap like that!!! Luckily I r/red the straight - oooops. After that I buried my nose in my book and nitted up, actually worked quite well for a few hours, but then I couldn't resist 4bet shoving 88 and forgot live players always have aces. Congrats to my mate Dan who came 4th though. He has much patience and crushes live imo.

Anyways, there's a bunch of scooooops left, scoopscoop! So I'll just scoop one of those and all will be well.

Cognitive Dissonance and Poker

So in one of my insomniac wanderings of the internet, I started reading some stuff on cognitive science, and more specifically Cognitive Dissonance. For those who don't want to read it, simply put, it's about easing internal conflict. One example is the old sour grapes fable - the fox can't reach the grapes, and so concludes the grapes are probably sour anyway. The conflict of wanting the grapes but not being able to get them leads to the rationalisation that he doesn't want them, thereby making him feel better.

As with most things, I thought about how it applies to poker - and I think it does in a big big way. Think about it - how many times have you recklessly fired the 3rd shell, got called and thought 'Man, what an idiot, how can he call there'. Or made a fancy move which didn't work but rationalised that it was good because the guy played the hand weird and normally it would work great. Maybe it's just me (!) but I think it happens to most players, and I think a lot of players use these rationalisations a lot to make themselves feel better - often about their bad play.

Say you make a calldown in a spot where you're vaguely aware that he probably has it, but you haven't mentally set in stone that this type of situation is a fold - so you just press the call button (certainly happens to me a lot...). There is huge dissonance here - you're supposed to be a thinking, intelligent poker player, you're aware he usually has you, but you pay him off anyway. This internal conflict, this contradiction is unpleasant to you, so you rationalise it. You think 'He could've had the busted flush draw' or 'he probably isn't good enough to value bet top pair here'. You focus on the few times you've seen people show up with air here, even though it's far less common than when they have you beat, and decide the call was probably fine, you just got unlucky to run into a hand. This means you'll continue to make the same mistake, until you address the problem and actually stop calling in these spots.

The idea of lying to yourself isn't exactly new, but I think being aware that it's an inherent human trait, and not simply some vague thing 'that some people do' can really help to identify when you're just trying to make yourself feel better. Earlier today I made a pretty bad call with a flush on a paired board where it was pretty much never good, and rationalised it by thinking about players from years and years ago who could show up with weaker flushes in this spot. I knew it was a bad call, but I sort of decided it was more of a cooler since maybe he can have lower flushes, maybe a straight... and I sort of pushed it from my mind. Then I decided discussing the hand was probably a good idea, and my coach verbally slapped some sense into me!

So, that's the lesson for today kids. Be aware when your mind is simply trying to placate you - ignoring or rationalising your mistakes away or blaming them on others is easier, but it wont make you a better player.