Vegas Update

Still a pile of bricks on the tournament front. Made my first day 2, and in the $5k triple chance too, but sadly bust about 20 mins in after QQ < KT. Probably just flop 3 tens, why not.

Thankfully cash has been going very well, I'm up about $8k at 2/5 and 5/10 over 8 sessions. The games are mostly very good I've been running well too - hoping it continues.

In non-poker news I went to Electric Daisy Carnival, the world's biggest dance festival, which was suitably electric. A hundred thousand people dancing they're socks off, very good fun. Also went for a meal at the rotating Top of the World restaurant at the Stratosphere with Dan, Luke and Gavin, and Dave and Becca who'd just flown in, which was excellent. Lovely food and an incredible view.


Off for a meal/night out for Gavz' birthday now, day off tomorrow. A few small events next week and then The Main Event begins! Haven't decided which day I'm playing yet, but looking forward to a long, long tournament grind...

June/wales/vegas

So a few days into June I carried on my good run winning the Party Highroller for $27k and change, and then last week I won a $12k Main Event package. I was planning on heading to Vegas anyway for the series, but it's always nice to have the seat locked up before going.

Barely played apart from those two sessions, mainly doing things like packing and spending time with uni friends who've finished their exams. Went on a lovely holiday to a cottage my grandparents own in Wales with some chums


where we did lots of this


ate a fair amount of this


and I did this


which was shortly followed by this



(thanks to ali for the pics!)

I arrived in Vegas on wednesday, jet lagged and mightily confused by how bizarre this place is. I'll do a full Vegas blog after I get back, but it's pretty mental.

I managed to mess up the bank wire to the Rio, so I'm here with basically no money, a tiiiny tactical error there. Managed to borrow some/had a bit of my own. So far I've played the $5k 6max series event which was pretty tough, played pretty well but couldn't win the flips and lost TT < AQ on 9TJ to bust. Yesterday was a $1.6k in the Venetian Deepstack series, which I played less well in (mainly just fudged one big hand, but it was pretty bad). The taxi queue at the Venetian was huge so I decided to play some cash with my last $600 and managed to spin it up to $2.4k meaning I could play the $1.5k series event today, though sadly just bust running kings into aces for heaps.

Probably will play some cash now and try to win enough for the $1k tomorrow...basically hoping a bank wire can get through soon - or I'll just have to hang on until Dave arrives with money.

Anyways, to the tables!

yaymay

Ireland was fun, although kinda frustrating. Bust the main pretty quickly, won a bunch playing cash, lost a bunch playing cash (to Luke), had half the chips 4-handed in the Highroller event - came 4th, lost a bunch playing acey deucey (to Luke) and lost a bunch playing whist (also to Luke. BASTARD!)

I've played exactly once since coming back and that was yesterday; managed to finally do a win after months of near misses. Two wins actually, won the stars $8r 2x turbo for 7.8k (2nd time I've won it this year!) and then...


Bink! So that gets me out of makeup and pads the liferoll. May I think has been my best month ever in terms of results, although I don't get to see all of it by any means with the staking. Still, pretty fun to have a $50k month!


Dan Dave and Luke have been pestering me to go to vegas this year which I've been resisting until now mainly because of money issues, but I feel like I can head to the series for a few weeks and have enough left over for the rest of the year and winter travels if the series goes badly. Haven't 100% decided or looked at flights or anything, but the vague plan would be flying out on the ~20-25th, there's a dozen or so $1-3k events between the World Series and the Venetian Deepstack series, then play the MAIN EVENT, then fly back. Then head back in November for the final table...

Mayday mayday mayday!!

So I had a pretty terrible stretch a few weeks back, taking shots at the new euro-only 100rs and things on stars which went horribly despite numerous near misses and ended up losing about 3/4 of my roll (bankroll management ftw!) so decided to get backed again by Dave.


Like what happened last time Dave started backing me I instantly had some nice results; 5th in 2 $162s on tilt and managed to bink a 4th in the $1.6k ante up SCOOP event which I satellited into, so those netted Dave and I about $12k each which was very welcome. Think I'm going to continue being backed for the foreseeable, I'm liking the idea of not worrying about having any money online at all, and just cashing out whenever I get above zero makeup! Of course it sucks when deep in makeup and I might change my mind, but now that I've got spending money to keep me ticking over (and enough for travelling this winter) I think it's best like this for now. Less pressure is good.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Cork with Luke and Dan for the UKIPT which will be great - events in Ireland are always great fun, lots of drinking and soft games. Got the live itch too so hoping I can do some work at the tables, although some big SCOOP events are overlapping, especially on the sunday for me so that will limit the amount of live games I play. Also big congrats to Luke for winning the FTOPS multi-entry brawl, and then degening it up at 25/50 HU PLO and just winning all the money. Just saw him finish a ~$120k+ session, so there should be some fun rails in Ireland too.

Anyways, next post will clearly be me detailing my UKIPT win and the SCOOP main event win that immediately followed. Please?

Monte Carlo and April

So I'd meant to do a trip report of the 1k Monte Carlo event at DTD, but kinda didn't feel like writing it up after I bust... I'll put a few of the key hands for fun anyways.

200/400/50, tight lady opens UTG to 1k, UTG+1 flats, aggro young guy flats button, I flat SB with JJh, BB calls.

Flops: 3h 7h 9h,

checks around.

Turn 5o, I bet 3200, UTG+1 calls, button calls.

River 7. Check, check, button bets 10k, I call, UTG+1 calls.

I called the river pretty quickly, I'd planned to c/c almost always on blank rivers and c/reevaluate on less blank rivers. I'm not sure if this is spew though, button showed 55 and utg+1 showed AQhh, so I felt pretty silly. Might be one of those spots where I convince myself of all the draws button can have but he actually just always checks them behind because it's live and no one folds and he knows this.



1200/2400/300, 90k effec.
EP limps, MP limps, I limp T6dd in the CO, button limps, SB completes, BB checks.

Flop: 6h 8d Jd

Checks to me, I bet 8500. Button raises to 21 (and covers). Everyone folds, I make it 65, button tanks and shoves, I call.

Pre is definitely debateable... but I was bored and it's live and I can 'do stuff' post. Or just flop the world. Button was a fairly tight lady who I'd spent a lot of the 2 days playing with, she knew I was active but she could also mix it up a bit herself and I'd seen here make a multi-barrel bluff. She was also maybe the type to raise AJ here 'for info' and then fold to the shove so I was happy getting it in here. Of course I was fairly surprised when she opened...7h9h.

Turn Ah for the sweat...

River Ac.


1500/3000/300, 240k effec.

MP opens 7500, button flats, I make it 27000 from the BB with AKo and a very laggy image. MP flats, button folds.

Flop: Ac 5h 2h

I bet 33, MP goes 70, I shove, MP calls.

Villain is Wadey, a familiar face in the UK live poker scene, and though I don't have many hands against him I'm told that my line is absolutely fine/standard here , especially given my image at the time. Super sigh when he opens 55, then, and rockets to a huge chiplead with 40 left.

I sigh and wish everyone good luck, etc, and then go get drunk.



Online, April has been fairly similar to the last few months. Lots and lots of near misses (I'm restraining myself from a very prolonged rant here!), although not a great deal of volume. Stayed pretty well clear of the cash tables, though did do a post-sunday spinup from a loose $200 on ipoker to $7.2k in about 20 minutes... frankly I was due.

I'm now thinking of relearning sngs to reduce variance a bit and so I can put in shorter sessions, but my enthousiasm for them might easily disappear once I remember what grinding sngs is like...

March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, and one of the seven months which are 31 days long.

Sooo March was a weird one. Put in about the same volume as February (ie I was lazy), didn't play great, had an absolute shedload of 10-18ths in tournaments with $15k+ to 1st, and tilted off $4k playing cash games. That last one is by far the worst; haven't touched online cash games in maybe 2 years (for very good and self-apparent reasons!) and pretty much promised myself I wouldn't ever again, unless it was in some learning to play properly/grinding out lowstakes/etc capacity. So a disappointing lapse.

Despite all of the above I managed to win a fair amount - not entirely sure how much as there's some discrepancies in my spreadsheet and real-life balances but pretty sure I made back roughly what I lost in February - about $9k, maybe a little less. So yeah, I feel like I had a pretty terrible month but clearly I didn't!

Still, not feeling particularly motivated at the moment. Wish there was something I was motivated by - time is crawling at the moment, each day feels like a week and I'm just permanently exhausted.

Guess I've been doing quite a lot of JuJitsu recently which has been good and meant I've stayed active, and I got my orange belt a week or two back. Also I've just uploaded 50 of the 130GB of music I got from Neil who I met in Diu. Was frankly a bit intimidated by that much new music but finally gotten around to it so for the foreseeable I'll be busy discovering gems!


Anyways I'm rambling, so instead here is a video of a pigeon on a train.

The Cheesies Recession - February Roundup

Sooo a less good month. If I could work out how to create reliable graphs on HEM 2011 would look something like this:


Dropped about $9k online which sucks, didn't put in enough volume (about 2/3 of January) and lots of the sessions were short or tilty, often both. I did end the month up a few £k live though, so not too disastrous.

More worrying is that I've just generally been feeling sporadically awful recently, winter's starting to get to me I think. Felt fine all of January but had some pretty rough days last month, and they definitely affected at least some of the sessions I played. Hopefully the start of Spring will help and I'll get back into a decent routine, not really feeling it at the moment though. Doing better than previous winters in some ways which is a positive I guess, although drinking/smoking quite a lot. Self-medication for the lose? I think coming back from travelling for Christmas might be something I have to reconsider this year.

Anyways, here's to a sunny March!


(yes I know it's green, but its also an ace picture)