Italian Vegas

Hey Guys. I mentioned in my latest entry ‘Grosvenor Club Championships’ I’ll not be looking to update FTP with summarizes of our monthly scheduled tournaments, due to lack of motivation. I will however look to substitute those with monthly recaps where I’ll brush over all events played, and any novelty event’s will still be summarized as per usual.

All though this is my July recap I’ll briefly go over June’s exploits, as my very busy poker summer began. I played eight events across three festivals, this is a product of them being local and thus little travelling. I can say with confidence that I would be a long term winner in all eight events, despite the increased buy in the fields are still littered with soft spots. The reality is one month of live tournaments is such a small sample size, all things said/considered I’m completely satisfied with how things went. I cashed in three of the eight events, which I would have snap accepted if offered ahead of the busy month. Tournament poker is as such you need to make very deep runs to cover your buy-in, fortunately all my cashes were top end with one final table and two splits. In total I invested £1,805 in buy-ins and found £2,600 in cashes, as a result I was in profit by £795 which although nothing fantastic showing a +ROI is always better than losing and coupled with my side action whilst at all these events I made approximately £2,000 during June. In a nutshell I personally feel I’ve ran below expectation over June’s small sample, if all festivals continue returning year on year I hope to have a much higher ROI.

Moving onto July and the first fortnight of poker events/exploits can be found in our ‘Live Events’ section, detailing five events;

Gala £50 (+£5) +1 Rebuy “Unplaced”
World Cup Tag Team “Winners”
Circus £50 (+£5) NLH F/O w/£500 Added “Unplaced”
Grosvenor Club Championship “Unplaced”
Liverpool CBMPT Trip Report “Unplaced”

The weekend after Grosvenor Club Championships commencing Friday 16th July, I decided to head over to support the £10+R over Grosvenor. I had arranged to collect Mark from an evening wedding reception over Tyneside around 22:00 and take him home to Stakeford, this would interrupt my time on the felt but wouldn’t be too detrimental if I could spin up early. However after Mark text me asking to delay collection until 23:00 I kind of couldn’t really win the tournament without accumulating north of 15,000 chips before leaving at 22:45, which considering I had even managed to spin up a tenth of that I decided not to bother rebuying are seven failed bullets. Fortunately I recouped some of the damage over Aspers 50NL, before heading over to collect Mark and turning in myself a little after midnight.

Gala £100 (+£10) NLH F/O w/£1,000 Added
The following day (Saturday 17th July) both Mark and I were down Teesside for the monthly £100 freezeout, this was again well attended with 76 runners generating £8,600 including the added £1,000. I’m certain I’m cursed down Teesside as I have zero luck, several times I’ve been bust before end of level one;

TJs vs. Xenophon Constantinou QQ: 50/100 “18,000” (I open 250 from middle position with TJs, this is folded around to Xenophon in the SB who 3BETs to 1,250. I sense he’s pretty strong but happy to peel in position, it’s marginal considering the over 3BET but I’m cool with it. The flop comes AxKss giving me a flush draw, gutshot, and Qs for the royal draw, after Xenophon checks I bet 1,500 which after some deliberation he calls. An off suit queen hit’s the turn and I’ve found the nuts, after it’s checked to me I bet 3,000 (50% of my remaining stack) and Xenophon check raises me all in. I of course make the call and looking to dodge the board pairing on the river, this unfortunately doesn’t happen as a king hit’s the river to fill Xenophon up.)

Oh well another sharp exit, the most frustrating thing about busting in Teesside is car sharing with Mark means I can’t just head home. Anyway I quickly explain my exit hand to Mark before heading over to Showcase Cinema (I was bust too early so their was no cash virtual games) next door to watch Inception, I’ll give a brief review below;

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief with the ability to enter people’s subconscious thoughts, this allows Dom to access information otherwise unavailable. He’s lost coveted things through delving too deep with his ability, but is offered a second chance to right his wrongs. Dom Cobb and his team off specialists are assigned to plant an idea in a targets subconscious, in essence creating an dream rather than stealing once which many believe to be impossible.

I guess I haven’t described it brilliantly but it’s kind of difficult in a brief synopsis given the detail the movie goes in to, but it’s well worth seeing and special effects are phenomenal. So I was back over Gala for approximately 22:00 and caught up with Mark who was on a fifteen minute break, after a quick chat and wishing him good luck I wished him good luck and sat at the 100NL. More cold decks as I miss another royal draw;

QJh vs. 35h vs. AKo: £0.50/£1.00 “£350” (I raise £12 from middle position behind a £2 straddle and one caller, this gets called in two spots behind and the big blind. £52.50 in PF before the flop falls AxKhh giving me nut flush draw and gutshot, after it’s checked to me I bet £30 which get’s shoved on by short stack for £51. The BTN smooth calls which of course has alarm bells ringing but I’m never folding with two draws to the nuts, anyway after the big blind gets out the way I call the extra £21. Side pot is now £205.50 and both me and BTN are playing like £75 behind, the king of hearts on the turn gives me the flush but also pairs the board and if you ask me the BTN has kind of played AK face up. Anyway I of course can’t fold so check/call all in to see I’m drawing dead to the ten of hearts for a royal flush, no miracle and I bust my first buy in.)

Rather than auto reload I’m feeling a little hungry so head over Pizza Hut for a sixteen inch cheese stuffed crust pepperoni for supper, after this it’s almost midnight and I’m beginning to feel Mark is good for decent return so back in the casino and name back on the 100NL list.

I sit down for a little while longer before I notice the final table is short handed so cash out and go sweat the action, and for all my bad luck in Teesside it’s compensated in how well Mark run’s, after navigating the 70+ strong field he eventually agreed an even three way split for £1,960 each. Our good friend Sam Akkary was also part of the three way split, so congratulations to those two and keep up the good work guys.

Other than that things have been pretty quite on the poker front during the tail-end of July here at FTP, the following weekend (Friday 23rd July) I hit it up in town with a bunch of the NPF crew for Neil Harvey’s 20th which was good crack from what I can remember. Both Mark and I have played a bunch of the Sunday/Tuesday Circus £20 +1 rebuy with zero success of late, but still hold a very good ROI in this virtual game so looking to get over as much as possible. Anyway moving forward and tomorrow there is a £250 (+£25) NLH F/O ‘Yorkshire Cup’ in Grosvenor, Leeds which I think I’m playing but don’t know for sure yet. Mark is in Nottingham playing the third leg of the CBMPT and the ‘Yorkshire Cup’ didn’t really get met with much interest when posted over NPF so guess I’m bordering on giving it a miss, can’t really be arsed to twiddle my thumbs around Leeds alone if I’m felted early. Assuming I don’t go I’ll be hitting it up with some old school friends tomorrow for an all day Saturday session drinking which is always a great laugh, albeit a little damaging to the pockets but M’EH. Then a busy start to August as Newcastle is playing host to four great events of which I’ll be playing all;

Sunday 1st August (Afternoon): Circus £30 (+£3) Heads Up Tournament
Sunday 1st August (Evening): Circus £20 +1 Rebuy “£2,000 Guaranteed”
Monday 2nd August: Aspers £50 (+£5) NLH F/O “£500 Added”
Tuesday 3rd August: Circus £50 (+£5) NLH F/O “£500 Added”

Then of course the rest of my monthly schedule as well as ‘The G Cup’ towards the end of the month on Saturday 28th August which being a team free online game will be great crack.

That’s all folks

I’m moving house! We exchanged contracts yesterday so obviously we’ve got a busy few weeks sorting everything so we are ready to go. Or…not, as we are moving on THURSDAY. OMGWTFBBQs! It’ll be fine, what can go wrong, moving isn’t stressful, at all *feints*. TBH I can’t wait to get in as it’s dragged on and on with the exchange date slipping further and further back towards the completion date, which itself has moved by back by a couple of weeks.

Been meaning to update for a while, but nothing of note to report.

The WSOP as come and gone with just the final table in November to look forward to now, all in all a good year for the Brits and hopefully I’ll get a crack at it next time.

I replaced reading various web based updates on the WSOP with Vicky Corens book, which I have meant to read for sometime. A different angle from other poker books and worthy of a look if you haven’t already done so.

On the playing side, I actually took down a tourney at the AOC last Friday, its been a while, and for once luck was on my side as I managed to crack AA with 99, AK with A5 and even got my 3 bet with the hammer through on my way to victory.It seems like its normally been me recently who’s gone in best and come out worst, so nice to be the victor for a change.

Normal service was resumed the following evening online though, when deep in a PLHE virtual game, my flopped 2 pair with 94o on a 942 rainbow flop led me to get all my chips against JJ, only for a K to come on both the turn and the river. Possibly my only “free” look at the flop from the BB all virtual online games and obviously my last.

And thats it, back to the grind. Ciao.

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 online 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 that could’ve gone wrong – I went to sit at my usual $25nl Rush virtual game but misclicked and ended up in the BB in a $200nl full ring Rush game online! It was folded to the SB who raised, and I 3-bet with the mighty A2o and took (thankfully) it down to raking a $6 profit, woo! No idea what I would’ve done if he had called and I hit a half decent hand…lost 1/3rd of bankroll probably!

Note to self: You know that the vast majority of the players at $25nl Rush are nut-pedlars, so what do you think it means when they start putting in MASSIVE bets post flop!? Stop playing like a TIT.

I’m going to grind the 210FPP 20 player satellites to earn as much T$ as I can then sell it off to start a bankroll.

I haven’t got much to say at the moment.

But will do in the next couple of days.

I’ve made many decisions and uncovered many truths about my game online and I look forward to sharing them with you shortly.

But for now, bookmark this post, it may be worth looking back on in times to come because aside from the FPPs, this time I start with nothing except my will to win.

Custo

Not blogging for a start.

As you know, I’ve started a part time job since coming back from my hols. That’s been taking up a lot of my time but for good reasons. I’ve done a fair bit of overtime (both paid and unpaid!) from my scheduled 2 days a week. I’m migrating the systems to Adobe CS5, learning how to use InDesign and Illustrator to an expert standard, and creating new templates and layouts for the newspapers. I’ve really enjoyed doing this mainly because InDesign (and the whole of CS5 for that matter) is so powerful and a joy to be able to use well. I can’t understand how some people still “hate computers”, if you’re reading this now… they sure make your life easier! Anyway it’s a parallel run next week then we make the switch the week after, so my life will be a lot easier after that. More time for other things…

Like golf. I watched a bit of The Open today (I’m not an avid golf fan by any means) and LOL at that wind and people putting from 50+ yards. One guy made an immense – what must have been nearly 100 yard – putt from a members tee spot back onto the adjacent green and straight in. Bosh! Dunno his name though :-/

I’m going to Edinburgh with the lads for a weekend of being drunk and hungover with some golf in between at the end of the month. Something about a triangle too. I’ve had a couple of golf lessons at my local course from the club pro in the last two weeks. I can hit the ball but I’m pretty shit at golf. I’ve got a good base ability at sports so I kind of adapted my cricket teachings and developed a swing that would allow me to hit the ball as hard as possible in a general forwards and up direction. Turns out this wasn’t that bad but with an hour of professional correction my new ‘pro’ swing is coming along nicely, still feels slightly alien but it’ll come. I’ve hit the ball in the nets and when I connect it bloody flies. Looking forward to another couple of lessons before we head off. I want to hit some balls properly as I’ve only done net sessions in the two lessons I’ve had. Hopefully some driving too. I’ve never been on a range and have only hit a driver messing around. I am (was) terrible at it, hopefully I’ll be somewhat improved and would love to be able to hit a ball 200+ yards away in Edingburgh… straight into the car park and smash Azz’s windscreen whilst he’s asleep in his car.

So I’m learning golf and CS5 so my mind has been quite engaged of late. It’s not really the same for poker anymore. There’s been no “a ha” moments for ages now. I’ve been playing a lot of RUSH lately and there’s some interesting dynamics to that, so maybe I’ll get one soon. I’ve also been playing some Colin McRae Rally on the PC and plugged in the joypad for it. I wondered if Tableninja would pick it up and unfortunately it didn’t, until I googled and downloaded an awesome piece of software called Xpadder. Only a tenner for a real clever piece of kit.

So with basically no eye movement (stacked tables) and buttons covering all my betting options, I’m suddenly 12 tabling RUSH poker. That’s INSANE! I reckon with this setup I could 16 table Full Tilt and 24 table Stars full ring 9 seaters (40 tables total) all at the same time. Not ideal, but doable. I found myself getting a bit frustrated – I put this down to getting used to the new setup – but I really shouldn’t be. I’ve just bought the new Logitech Performance MX mouse too and this would more or less nullify that purchase. I broke even after finding myself wanting to call and see flops far too much. Button clicking is so easy and when the table moves behind a stack it doesn’t quite register as hard that you’re making mistakes. You miss so much virtual online gamesflow too and stat reading goes out the window after 15 minutes.

I had my tea and reverted back to the normal mouse setup, and just 4 tables. Totally crushed it for 11 buyins and £500 for the day. So now I have nearly my ‘standard’ bankroll back online after it became depleted before hols and my extended break. A lot of that is in Full Tilt and I shan’t be moving it anytime soon. The RUSH fre online games are so good, especially this week with the promo. I’ve just checked my stats and am surprised at what I’ve seen. I’m at £1k for the month, having barely played in my eyes, but I’ve played 42k hands… that’s almost a standard month of volume (3 months Ben) in just 8 days of play this month (and some of those very short sessions). Rakeback is shit on Ladbrokes now too so there might be something to this ‘big site’ mentality.

Unsure of my plans for the weekend, might just stay put and hammer RUSH while the promo is still running and the fre online games are so good. Enjoy your weekend and stop by 27bslash6for a read, really funny stuff, it’s been plugged a lot lately, but wanted to post my approval I made the mistake of reading on my lunch at work and couldn’t stop giggling for ages at a time!

The lines (yes, plural) to each entrance span the length of two football fields!