Italian Vegas

Sports Betting: £42.20. Poker: -£186.27. Total: -£144.07

Made a stupid mistake on the wsop main event field size when not taking an arb, but just laying one half of it on betfair. Which needless to say cost me badly.

Almost all the poker loss was down to playing the forum fre online game at DTD Nottingham, very nice place, would like to go back there again, may get an account there and try to qualify for a big event. Speaking of which, I am taking a real break from online poker (besides the pca fpp qualifiers) My balance on stars is zero, and it’s going to stay like that for a while I think until I get some enthusiasm back.

I got through to round 6 (12,000 fpp) of the PCA, another 4 more wins, and the Bahamas here I come. Well, you can dream can’t you I note all of the remaining rounds are on 28th August, and like the previous ones approximately 1 in 3 advances each time. I really like that structure, what I am not so keen about is the fact that all bar the final one (321,000 fpps) are turbos with only 1000 starting stack, leaving very little room for play. (Probably a good thing I hear you say )Am I hoping for too much to ask for the poker gods to be with me on just one single day this month?

I’ve also had another go at qualifying for round 6 again to see if I can build an fpp stack.

Going to do the (eagerly awaited) pre season footy preview on Wednesday, anyone who has followed it the last couple of years should be nicely in profit with almost every selection coming in the top 3, yes, except Arsenal

Website Network

Media Man International

Media Man News

Media Man

Media Man Australia

Media Man Canada

Media Man Games

Free Online Casin News Media

Poker News Media

Global Gaming Directory

So, new begginings in my new round of trading and pokering, small beginnings to be precise. Rome wasn’t built from tiny acorns, as they say. Something like that anyway.

I finally got round to playing some poker last night, although I was only 4 tabling as I watched a superb film, “The Fighter” during my free online games.I also scored some nice solid and now that I only smoke at weekends there were a few misclicks and wtf moments when I thought I’d won a hand and found I’d lost instead.Stars speeding up the time it takes the cards to fall and discovering the option to close the virtual online games right away when I crash out means I’ve still no idea what went down in many of my knockout hands!

My first fre online game of the night was a bit of a sickener.It was a 575 fpp satellite into an MTT Burnley Mik had mentioned was on tomorrow night on Stars.It was a 6 max virtual online games and the other players were probably all spoon fed their dinner as they were so bad I thought they were just randomly mashing buttons for much of the fre online game.

I got heads up with a total drooler and probably blew it by getting a bit impatient when I had been easily outplaying the guy.He had just under 10bb when I shoved with K10s,hit a King on the flop v his A5 and of course watched as the Ace fell on the turn.On checking the main tourney lobby it looks like there’s late registration for 3 hours after the main online game actually starts so it would probably be a very late finish anyway.( and that’s no good with work the next day)

When playing donks at low level sngs there’s really no need to over think situations much of the time.I did note down the hand below from a $15 sng and remember thinking it was interesting as it went down.Looking back now though I’m struggling to remember why I played it as I did.I do vaguely recall that Maddi was a loose agro donk and the other villain was a tightish multi-tabler.

When Maddi donk led the flop I think I felt it was unlikely he had a Queen and on such a draw heavy board my hand was still good.When the button flat called my reraise on the flop and the donk called too I was ready to give up and didn’t intend putting another chip in the pot.When the board got even scarier on the turn and river and it was checked to me I felt it was worth shoving to try and get the button to fold a weak Queen as I’d already shown real strength on earlier streets and could have slowed down on the turn due to potential draws hitting.I could also have hit one of those draws and I was hoping he’d be asking himself what he could beat and he’d fold when he realised the answer was not much!I probably had the best hand anyway….

Away from the poker I was at the Rangers online game on Tuesday night and I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry at a virtual game before.Most of the team looked very rusty and despite missing a few chances in the second half,Malmo probably deserved their 1-0 first leg lead.We did win 2-0 today in the league but I can’t see us turning things round over in Sweden on Wednesday in the second leg of the Champions League Qualifier.I hope I’m wrong!

Not much else going on.My wee nephew started crawling this week and I’d like to pass on my thanks to Bullmeister and Burnley Mik for helping keep the wee man entertained with the hard work they put into job of sharing the voice of Big Chris in Roary the Racing Car! Their duet on the theme song is definitely destined for chart success…

In my last post I mentioned the online dating thing can be soul destroying and as soon as I posted it I felt it was a bit over the top.Anyone who regularly plays sit and go online games or poker in general through a long downswing knows what real soul destroying is like and in some ways I think playing poker has helped me bounce back quickly after some of the crappy failed dates I’ve been on.It’s not all been bad, afterall I’ve had a few shags ( and could have had more if I’d been less fussy!),seen a few good movies and had some nice dinners!

It was only when I went back to work fulltime in April that I completely stopped smoking weed during the week and without getting too deep about it all I think it’s taken me a few months to discover what kind of person I am without it as I was so comfortable with how I am when I do have a smoke.I just thank my lucky stars I never got into alcohol in the same way or I doubt I’d be here to write this!

Still I am here and it is the weekend so I’m off to roll one up….

I started off my summer over at Las Vegas with Mark, I won’t go into any detail of the trip during this digest. For those that haven’t read it already, check out the link below which takes you to my trip report and has a detailed analysis coupled with some ace photos.

Las Vegas 2011 Trip Report

A few FTP followers that have had the pleasure of reading the report, have approached me asking if Mark and I were disappointed with the lack of results across both tournaments and cash?. My answer to the aforementioned question was simply no, but I’ll take some time out to go into more detail behind my answer. Yeah I guess we both underachieved on the felt during our ten day stay over in Las Vegas, but I mean whatever we don’t look to bemoan our luck or seek sympathy. We both felt extremely fortunate to be in a position where we could fly out there, further more grateful to have the opportunity to stay at the beautiful Bellagio. I regularly read back over some of my blog entries since launching FTP in November 2009, and smile reminiscing about all the great opportunities poker has given me and not forgetting all the good times before FTP. I’ve been playing poker for almost a decade now, and if anything I’ve learned to accept the variance involved. Our schedule out in Las Vegas was really intense, collectively we played 25+ tournaments and 70+ hours of cash. Our total tournament outlay was somewhere close to $10,000 and we only cashed for $4,250, whilst running way below expected value on the cash tables. Combined a considerable net loss but this in reality is a very small sample size, of almost zero significance. So yeah I can take the lack of results with a pinch of salt, the disappointing aspect for me was my performances out in Las Vegas. I’m likely playing some of my worst poker since I began all those years ago, I feel it’s predominantly down to a lack of patience and playing way too loose which although I understand this I’m having a really tough time taking my foot off the gas and slowing down. I mean of course poker is evolving and I guess I’ve maybe just made the wrong adjustments, I’m confident I will over come this hurdle and in time go back to playing an optimal strategy. Finally back to the question and no I wasn’t disappointed with the lack of results, I feel very humbled to have the option to head out to Las Vegas as and when I please and it’s perennially awesome to spend time out there with family and friends irrelevant of results on the felt. Upon returning to the UK I came down with an illness, I don’t know for sure what I was suffering from but the symptoms included being exhausted, waking up in hot sweats (quite common after I holiday), no appetite, vomiting, shaking, and a temperature. I mentioned the first time in my adult life I took ill was in Macau 2009, well I wouldn’t consider this on the same level but definitively the second time I remember being bad.

This kept me bed bound for almost a week, but slowly I made a full recovery and returned to my normal routine of weekly casino visits and nights out. Saturday 23rd July I hit it up over at Newcastle (Gosforth) racecourse for beeswing ladies day with my friends away from the felt, we spared no expensive with the £180 all inclusive hospitality package. The talent on show looked phenomenal and the banter was electric, just a fantastic day. We moved onto Jesmond and ended up in city centre until the early hours of Sunday morning, my only complaint is every horse I backed failed but M’EH whatever.

As far as poker goes I’ve been playing a three day week schedule all of which are over at Circus and include their £1,200GTD (Sunday), £2,000GTD (Tuesday), and £4,000GTD (Friday) with around a break even ROI since returning from Las Vegas. Whilst loitering around the card room I had the opportunity to catch up with Jimmy Brown, who gave me a little heads up on what’s going on over the next couple of months. September 2nd they will host a £70,000GTD link virtual game including nine casinos and their online site, with players advancing to day two heading to Liverpool on Sunday 4th September. They are also exploring the possibility of a £250 (+£25) buy in two day event with a £20,000GTD, to be held in the back-end of the year with the dates subject to research on other similar buy in events around the UK. So yeah some exciting tournaments ahead at Circus, lets get over there and give them the support they deserve guys.

I’ve been quite active with FTP recently so I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading my articles, also hoping to continue the traffic as I look to publish another Las Vegas trip report and have a very exciting guest lined up who I’m sure you’ll all find entertaining. I mentioned in my TDV3 (Trett Digest Volume 3) that I had recently bought One Tree Hill series one through to seven, I’ve been spending some of my downtime away from the felt enjoying these episodes. I’ve just finished season three which had a captivating series finally, so looking forward to several more hours of entertaining TV over the next few seasons. Moving forward and next Friday (August 5th) I’m off to Ibiza with the lads for a week of hard drinking and partying, the undisputed party capital of the world. The worlds best clubs hosting the worlds best nights performed by the worlds best DJ’s, as you can tell I’m well excited. Needless to say I’ll not be around the casino’s that week, below are a few photo’s from previous visits In 2007, 2008, and 2009 just so all FTP readers can be at peace that I’m fine and having lots of fun out on the white isle.

2007

2008

I’ll be playing the Circus £4,000GTD on the day I return (Friday 12th August), so no doubt I’ll catch a few of you there.

Thanks for reading everybody.

I have been nominated for a British Poker Award in the category of “Best Social Media User“, which I’m lead to believe is the most prestigious of all categories.

Please vote for me at http://www.thebritishpokerawards.com/

And be sure to join the other thousand of people following me on the twitter: @Daleroxxu

I am up against Kieth “The Camel” Hawkins, Sam Trickett and Team PokerStars Pro UK’s Vicky Coren and Liv Boeree. I have my work cut out for me as the pesky blondites over at the Blonde Poker forums are starting a campaign to vote for The Camel who is well known to be ‘anti-poker awards’.

My visa for Thailand runs out on August 1st so I have get my ass out of the country. I can’t be bothered with the awful bus trip to Cambodia that I’ve done twice already. It’s time to turn visa-runs into fun little vacations! So, I’m taking a direct flight from Bangkok to Macau which is only a couple of hours and $100. I’ll be staying for 2 nights at the Lisboa hotel where I famously reported on it’s “Hooker Mall” in my Macau Trip Report from earlier in the year.

I’ll be playing the Monday night knockout MTT at PokerStars Macau at the Grand Lisboa. On Tuesday I will be doing a 4 hour tour of Macau during the day, then attending the Cirque du Soleil show ZAIA in the evening at the Venetian Macau Resort.

My friend Eric from Miami who I met at the World Cup in South Africa last year (see trip report) and celebrated new year with in Prague (see trip report) is coming to Bangkok for 5 days in a couple of weeks time so it will be good to see him again.

In a few weeks time I will be traveling to New Zealand where I will be playing at Queenstown Snowfest which is a APPT and ANZPT tournament.

I’ve been in touch with the APPT team at PokerStars to find out more about the event. They are putting me up in the luxury 5-Star Sofitel Queenstown Hotel & Spa. I did ask about extending my stay there with days before and after the event, as flight arrangements proved imposible to make for my check-in and check-out days. They came back and said it’s $431 NZD per night, which is kinda expensive, so I chose to extend my stay in New Zealand by flying in and out of, and staying a few nights, in New Zealand’s two largest cities, Auckland and Christchurch.

I will fly to Auckland and spend 2 days there, before taking a 2 hour direct flight to Queenstown for the 6 day poker festival, then taking a 1 hour flight to Christchurch and staying 3 days there before flying back to Thailand.

Satellites are running for the event on PokerStars now. There are sats for ANZPT Queenstown Snowfest and sats for APPT Queenstown Snowfest. These are the same tournament, but the packages are different.

The PokerStars package for APPT Queenstown Snowfest is worth $4800USD includes Buyin + Hotel + Tourism. I asked the APPT team what tourism includes and they said that you can “select from a PokerStars snowboard, concierge/room credit or room upgrade.” The satellites for this package award $1000 cash from the sat prizepool

The ANZPT Package is worth $3800USD for buyin + a less expensive hotel + tourism. The satellites for this package award $500 cash from the sat prizepool.

There are also some seat+hotel only and seat only sats. Go to EVENTS->APPT and EVENTS->SPECIAL to find the satellites.

I hope to see some familiar faces in New Zealand. One person that I know is going for sure is Team PokerStars Asia Pro Bryan Huang who I met in Singapore (see trip report) and Macau earlier this year. I have already challenged him to a snowball fight.

Queenstown looks to be an amazing destination for a poker tournament, as with so many of the PokerStars tour events. It’s great to go play an event where there is a big tourism aspect to the trip. I know that if I happen to not do well in the tournament that I can spend the rest of my days snowboarding and having fun, rather than being stuck in a hotel/casino somewhere I don’t want to be. So I know that I will be having a gret time in New Zealand no matter what (ok, I need to fade breaking my leg on the snow slopes!!).

It sucks that I will be flying while the Supernova Million freeroll is running on August 20th. GG to ~$300 equity If you are a Supernova on PokerStars make sure you play this quarterly tourney because it’s the sickest value freeroll that you’re likely to play.

A really cool online tournament that is coming up this Sunday night is the Red Spade Open. It’s a $55 buyin tourney with $1,000,000 guaranteed and at least $200,000 to first place. There will be many famous faces from the Pokerstars Team Pro and Team Online roster playing in the event and if you bust one you get a $100 bounty. The event is 3pm ET / 8pm BST / 2am here in Thailand.

Unfortunately my flight to Macau leaves very early Monday morning so I can’t play this time around. You will need to hope that PokerStars runs this event again if you want the Daleroxxu $100 bounty. I really do hope this tourney is a success and is run regularly as it would be a great replacement for the Turbo Takedown.

Many have noted how the structure for the World Series of Poker Main Event is utterly unique. Two-hour levels with gradually increasing blinds and antes, stretched out over ten long days of play, themselves scheduled over two weeks in July then two more days in November.

By most measures, it’s the longest tournament around. By far.

Speaking of, this week I began reading through Colson Whitehead’s account of his having played in this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event over on the new Grantland site that launched in early June.

I say I’ve only begun the account. Still a ways to go, though. Let me explain.

Grantland — so-called in homage to early 20th-century sportswriter Grantland Rice — is an ESPN-connected portal that features a lot of examples of that variety of sports writing well exemplified by its Editor-in-Chief, Bill Simmons. (I referred to another interesting piece on Grantland last month by Rounders co-scripter Brian Koppelman titled “The Beauty of Black Friday.”)

I imagine many readers of this blog are familiar with Simmons, although perhaps not all. He’s a sports columnist who has written for the ESPN Magazine and a few other outlets, though is best known for his regular columns at ESPN.com that address sports but also incorporate tons of personal and cultural allusions in a somewhat idiosyncratic way. Simmons also does a podcast for ESPN (“The B.S. Report”), and I believe he was also involved in coming up with the idea for the often-excellent “30 for 30” series of documentaries ESPN has been producing over the last few years and for which he’s the executive producer.

To me, Simmons reads like some sort of superblogger, one of these endlessly passionate fans who will go on and on and on with little acknowledgment that it might seem self-indulgent or obsessive to do so. I don’t mean that as a criticism, actually. And as someone who himself writes a lot (and at length) on his blog, I’m fully aware of having been guilty of the same from time to time.

That said, I sometimes find Simmons a bit overwhelming. I remember once last fall getting bogged down in a 3,000-plus word piece of his in which he was defending his rooting for Michael Vick. I think I stumbled most noticeably when he began to pursue an analogy between O.J. Simpson and Vick, noting how the former had “unwittingly” raised awareness about domestic violence while the latter had done something similar with regard to animal abuse. Frivolous at best, tasteless at worst, and (most problematically) not much relevant to his thesis.

Not fair, really, to single out one misstep like that, though. I do find Simmons to be a bright guy who often has many good, even highly original ideas. But you have to be willing to edit yourself down once in a while — to realize that not every thought that occurs to you necessarily deserves to make it to the final draft.

So when I say the writers at the new Grantland site are following the Editor-in-Chief’s lead in terms of their chosen style, I’m referring mainly to what seems to be an absence of editorial restraint being exerted upon them. Having made the cut to be chosen as contributors, they are subsequently forced to endure few if any further cuts. That is to say, I’m guessing they are being mostly encouraged to write as much as they like and about whatever they like in the features they are producing.

All of which is to say, I’ve begun Whitehead’s piece about his experience playing in the Main Event this year, but it will be a while before I finish. That’s because the four-part feature is nearly 20,000 words long. In fact, he doesn’t get to the first hand of his adventure until close to the 10,000-word mark.

Whitehead is a novelist, and indeed his story, titled “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia,” seems to be more closely following the formal guidelines of a novel than a magazine-style feature. The idea — i.e., for a writer with an interest in poker to go play the WSOP Main Event and tell his tale — isn’t new, of course. James McManus was the most famous (and most successful) to do so back in 2000. Heck, even Simmons did it once for ESPN back in 2006.

Still, as a poker player who also likes to read (and write), I like the idea of the WSOP getting the literary treatment. Thus do I look forward to making my way through Whitehead’s lengthy piece.

Still a ways to go, though.

Photo Courtesy of Greg Wallow (@TournamentGreg on Twitter)

I played in the Legends of Poker Mega Million event on July 28, 2011. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to day two; but I did outlast 319 players for a min-cash. It's always better to win a little some some than it is to walk away empty handed.

♠ ♥ Wait! There’s more… please keep reading ♦ ♣