Been a while...

So, where am I at?

I haven't played a single hand of poker now in two weeks and I am not missing it, which I feel is a shame, I secretly hoped I would.

I have 3 new hobbies:

1. Family - obv. Kids are growing up so fast and the new stuff they learn and do each day truly blows me away. They are awesome. Xmas is going to be the dogs bollocks.

2. Matched betting - really getting my teeth back into this. So much left to go at yet. Should be plenty of money to be made and to be fair Jon's recent results are inspiring as hell (made £10k+ in about 6 months).

3. Modern Warfare 3 - I lavvvvvvvvvv it. ATM my favourite is the Survival Mode in Spec Ops. Hard as fuck and very challenging, but great fun. Also it's pretty tactical because after the early waves of bad guys, you then need to work outa strategy to survice as long as possible. Right up my street.

So thats where I am at right now, how are you all doing?

Glad to see a lot of the old faces still blogging away merrily. If you haven;t checked them out yet then I recommend: (all links on right --------->)

Littleacornman
Rossi
Amatay
Rubbish
NoCash
Soap

Lots of the other good ones seemed to have wained off. I guess it's like poker, once most have the fish and the soft games have gone, then so have lots of the old faces.

Still got my fingers crossed that at some point Poker has another boom. Thanks for reading.

BM

Bored...

What else can I say, I don't have the motivation to play at all. My roll is smashed to shit due to real life stuff and I just CANNOT push myself to play the micro's again ATM.

I am bored with it all right now again, hence the lack of updates.

BORED

BORED

BORED

BORED

I have considered staking so I can play at decent stakes again, but most of the staking company's I have looked at want too much commitment time-wise.

Where from here?? Fuck knows....

Laters

NL50 6-max cash vids

I forgot I had done these!

Ignore the lovebirds cheeping oin the background! :)

live donkament report pt 1

Finally got to a live game, weeeeee.

I played the £110 mega-stack tourney in Blackpool. I got there late thanks to the illumination traffic, which insta-tilted me. Took ~45 mins to travel less than 2 miles.

I finally get in, get registered and take my seat. First two hands in I pick up 77 and 33. Take a flop with both and whiff both flops so just get out of dodge.

We lose a player in the first hour when he gets 200bb's in with 1 pair [ ] wp donko.

I then tighten up for a while, before I open 99 UTG 7 handed. I get one caller on the button.

Flop comes 9TA. Perfect flop for me to lead at so I do. He thinks and flats. Turn is a brick. I fire again, he again flats. River comes K, bit shitty because the way this guy has played so far JQ is definately part of his range, but so is two pair type hands. I make a smallish value bet, which he snaps off and proudly tables AQo. I show my set and he shrinks a little. I had to lol to myself because virtually the only hand in my range he beats there is AJ.

I then sit tight for a short while, just watching the other players. I remember one big pot, where the board was Jack high and a low straight possible and the two players were geting frisky. I genuinely thought Set vs straight on the river, instead the both table J9 for top pair and split the pot. Haahaha WTF? Unfortunately it would be one of the guys in this hand the lead to my demise.

So with my nice tight image it folds to me in CO and I had 43s (dd), so I open for 2.5xBB. SB decides to call.

Flop comes Jc 9c 4s

He donks leads into it for just over half pot, given my image I reckon I can potray a very big hand here, so I re-raise him as a bluff. He doesn;t like it immediately, but finally makes the call.

Turn is 6h

He checks, I lead out for half pot. Again he doesn;t like it, he is clearly drawing in my mind and I think I can get him off it with my turn bet. He thinks for a while and once again calls.

River 6s

I have now decided to give it up. I am thinking it must be something like AJ that he hates folding because I think the draw gives up on that turn bet.

He checks, I check. I am reluctant to turn my hand over immediately and he says "you got it, I missed, what you have KK?". Then proceeds to show me TcQc, for the OESD on the flop! wow.  My lowly pair of fours scoops the pot and I can see the whole table thinking WTF is going on here! lolol. Getting frisky FTW.

Must have been a very tough spot for him on the flop when I re-raised.

part 2 to follow

WP Jared Tendler

Thanks to YorkyPuds and Busterlavista we have managed to get the top Poker Physcologoy Coach, Jared Tendler to nip onto the forum and answer some quetions for us.

Today he has been on and answered numerous questions and has said he'll swing by tomorrow to answer more! So if you have issues with tilt, degenning, over cautiousness etc etc, get yourself over and ask whilst you can.

Here is the thread for your questions: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13384

booooyakkashaaaa

It was inevitable

tonight variance came and gave me a good dry humping from behind, yes dry. Brutal brutal brutal, thats all I can say. Everytime I got it in, i'd wait for the inevitable river to come and fuck me out of yet another pot. lol. Thats the nature of the game, but a fucking joke all the same. Tonight because it supports me downswong, you wilol have to suffer my all in EV graph, muhahahahahaha oh and FUCK YOU STARS RNG.. lol at the Random  bit :)

Stats:

ALL IN EV

Lick my salty balls Stars. I did warn you this was coming though, three winning sessions in a row meant I was due a good fucking over.

ok finances:

Challenge Bankroll: $439.32 (+$19.32)

Total SnG's Played 149

Better turn around tomorrow or I might send them a special email!

Tuesday Night results

No poin with all the graphs. Went ok, made profit, which is the main thing.

Challenge Bankroll: $561.39 (+$141.39)

Total SnG's @ $7 level = 110

Getting my grind on

Well ok partially lol!!

Played 38 SnG's tonight and unbelievably managed to grind out a profit of $59.08, which is incred considering I was taking it dry in the ass for quite a while early doors. Including two horrible coolers, but I came out on top, so no bad beats ;)

Tonight was the first night I managed to grind SnG's. Last couple of nights I have played some MTT's and I have to say that I run worse on 888poker than I think I have ever ran anywhere. My short term EV there is incredibly bad. I just could not win a showdown, but fuck it, I decided to take out what I had left there and blow it right off. Can;t see me playing there again tbh. I only deposited for APAT and for some reason they seem to hold everything on DTD these days, despite supposedly having a deal with 888??

Anyways, to the stats:

Graph for tonight

Stats

Bankroll = $518.53 (+$98.53)

Total SnG's : 73 @ $7 level



I am waiting the inevitable crushing downswing, usual case, eat like a bird and shit like an elephant.

Laters

BM

Happy Birthday

31 years young today.

Nice day out and Dinner with family and tonight some poker and bikage!

1 month plan

I have had such a lack of direction for so long that I have jumped all over the place. This week I have played HU cash, HU SnG's. HU PLO SnG's (rotfl I am a knob). I played a few MTT's and some SnG's, which overall is pretty ridic. I am looking to start building my roll again, but tbh I am not that confident in any game right now, as I feel I am pretty damned ring rusty.

After reading Acornman's blog and his comment I am going back to SnG's, but to get my game back and get used to grinding and multi-tabling heavily I am just going to start at the $7 STT's (turbo) and take it from there. Once I am feeling it again,I'll move back to the $15's and possibly into the $30's BR permitting. I am probably going to adapt something like a 60 Buy-in strategy for my BR management. So, I am gonna start with a starting balance $420 for the $7's, if I can make that upto $600 playing just those, I will top up my roll to $900 and hit the $15's, but if my roll drops to $210 I will either move down to the $3.50's or just give it up as a bad habit!

I think for me that sounds sensible and it's nice to actually have a set plan and direction.

So far I am just 12 tabling as I find that quite comfortable and I have started my little challenge:

and it wouldn;t be my blog if I didn;t moan like fuck about something, so just to show I am still running well below EV on my all in situations:

Current Challenge BR = $459.45 (+$39.45)

It will tail off now as I am at work next 3 nights so I doubt I'll find any time to play.

ok Laters

Sighhhhhhhhhhh

FFS. I have absolutely fuck-all direction at this moment in time. I don;t know what I want to play, where I want to play or what I want to focus on. I am getting like Yorky Pud and really starting to piss myself off.

MTT's - I simply don;t have time to grind these properly to eeek out a bigger bankroll, they just take too fucking long and you really have to luckbox a bink to make it worthwhile, pretty much impossible in Stars 120394871239857389457839457 runner fields.

SnG's - I really thought I was gonna grind these after my last post, then hit a stinking downswing (something like $35k chips below EV) getting slaughtered by the RNG and it put me right off and add to that, the last stars update fucked up Table Ninja, so No SnG Sensei. Immediately I lost motivation.

Cash- To be precise 6-max cash. I am really really toying with the idea of going back to this, but fuck knows if I actually will. Had a convo with Snake Eyes on the phone and he reckons I should head back in that direction and he could be right.

I simply do not know as of this moment, fuck knows what I want to do.#

Suggestions? (and don;t bother with quit poker!!)

On a seperate note, I like those new table themes Stars have added, the Nova ones, especially the black, if TableNinja worked with those, they would be my defaults.

Righty, off to try and make up my mind.

Laters

p.s. Kronsdat - I still think they are pretty soft mate, I saw tons and tons of people playing post flop poker throughout the early levels, so absolutely horrific. At one point I got it all in pre with KK vs TJo for 40BB's and I was an uber nit. Obv he got there. lolz. There is money in them for sure.

Old Stomping Ground

At the end of last week I played some SnG's that I hadn't player for a long while, the $15 18 man games on Stars. On first impression it looks quite soft. My BR is ~100 Buy-ins so I will probably give these a shot and see how they go.

I'll play 100 first and see where I am at and whether I think they will be profitable. This is the plan:

Number of Tables: 12-14
Stop Loss - 30 buy ins ($450) - If I lose this much i stop playing.
Software: TableNinja and Poker Tracker

I have no idea if they have gotten softer because of Black Friday or not, but I will find out. I will mainly be grinding from 7pm UK time to coincide with when most casual eurodonks are online, as I feel that has to be the most profitable time.

Only time will tell. Fingers crossed I can keep the tilt monkey at bay.

On a seperate note, well done to NoCash for luckboxing two fucking huge scores Live in August, raggy bastard!! wp sir.

Righty Laters.

Playing and railing...

As you saw in the last post I played a small MTT session Saturday and made a profit, but nothing really noteworthy. Sunday we went over the the in-laws for the day and got back a little late to play a session so I ground out some SnG's, 40 x $7 Turbo STT's and again managed a profit, so no complaints.

Monday I saw a deal on hotukdeals for an X11 Turtle Beach Headset for the Xbox360, which I though would be ideal as I could use them for both the PC and the Xbox, but mainly so the Xbox sound comes through them and not the TV, which for anyone who plays Call Of Duty, will realise having good sound quality/volume does give you an advantage, you'd be amazed how much more perceptive you are! So I ordered myself some to be picked up Tuesday.

Monday night I decided to play another MTT session, but before I started I saw our resident MTT Pro had started a thread over on RTR starting his session. I started and my session just went to absolute ratshit. I played fucking awful, no excuses, making moves on people and them just having the goods everytime. So dumb really. Anyways my session ended early so I was railing kenn and chatting with him at the same time. His insight is pretty incredible, situations I thought were close were so black and white to him, I remember one hand on the bubble of a tourney where he opens in EP and the BTN ships on him and has him slightly covered. Kenn has TT and the villain had A9. I thought it was a fkin terribad shove vs an early opener who had about 20 BB's, but kenn told me it was a super standard spot... I have a lot to learn about higher buy-in MTT bubble play :)

Back to the story, anyways he only goes and binks the $55 1r 1A for over $4.5k, just like that! I have never seen a final table domination like that it was fantastic, check out the thread and see for yourself. Final hand was incredible, 3 handed it all goes in AA (kenn) vs KK vs KJhh, flop comes two hearts, but somehow kenn still holds and takes it down weeeeeeeee.

I think I am his lucky charm, last time I railed him properly like that he binked the major on Party for about $40k. lol mbsfn! The best thing though is he is so open to sharing thoughts and advice, something I really should take more advantage of, but I know he plays for a living, so I understand how precious his time must be, especially with such a young family. Keep up the good work kenn.

Tuesday night I just wasn't in the mood for poker, so I picked up my new X11's and decided to crush some Black Ops instead :) (beats watching that big brother shit) I railed Kenn a bit too, he chopped a $22 big antes, but ran pretty bad when deep all over the place.

That was bascially my weekend poker-wise.

In other news have you seen this shit Microgaming are introducing? LINK HERE  you have to be fucking joking right? Seriously this is basically a bot that can play the early stages of an MTT/SnG for you. It will only raise the range of hands you tell it to and will fold for you. It even comes pre set for you! wtf, fucking idiots. It's obvious why they have done it, it's so more people can play more tables and create more rake, but what it also does is remove the human element from the game. It removes the tilt, the frustration, the inquisitive nature that comes along with poker.

 Not only that it means the donks and fish can now play a pretty much un-exploitable game because they won't be entering pots with all sorts of shit they normally do. It's an absolute killer for me and whover thought this would be a good idea at Microgaming needs sacking immediately, this will kill their games as who wants to play against a huge set of bots?

If you look at that image you can even set it to make the folding times random, so it's not obvious who is using it and who isn't. Wankers. This is basically a poker bot and thats it. Unbeliveably stupid on Micro's part.

/rant

:)

Righty thanks for reading.

oh and if you want a good laugh check out a thread one of the poker lads on RTR started over at 2+2, rubbish, you are a genius!

Satuday Nightaments

Going to try and update thoughout the night as I play. No idea how it will go though :)

All MTT's on stars tonight (Because I can use tableninja for ease)

18.50 - $11 turbo sat to the Big $55 won seat +$44
19.00 - $1.10 World Cup Of Poker Thingy 94/791 +$0.64
19.00 - $11 $50k GTD 639/8673 +$6.34
19.30 - 100FPP VIP Platiunum Freeroll $30k GTD 812/15525 +$3.00
19.30 - $4 Turbo $10k GTD 748/3531 -$4
19.40 -$16.50 Double Shootout lost HU first round.
19.45 -$3 rebuy 2x Turbo $10k GTD - 459/1062 -$12
19.45 - $4 2R1A 22/299 +$11.91
20.00 - $22 Big Antes 360 Cap $5k GTD 13/360 +$75.70
20.00 -$5 turbo $20k gtd 1678/4668 -$5
20.00 -$55 Big Game 260/2539 +$46.46
20.15 -$5 Turbo Knockout $6k GTD 1355/3258 -$5.40
20.30 $11 $20k GTD 938/2729 -$11

OVERALL +$134.25

Some sats in there and other bits and bobs.

Lets gogogogogogogogogo


edit 18.55 - trebled up straight away in the 55 sat with AA vs QQ vs TT. weeeeee

19.55 - got seat into 55. Nothing else of note. Curry due in ten mins weeeee

20.25, lost HU in fist shootout AT no good vs Q6, going ok in est


23.39, sorry been very busy! all oiver shop earlier, down to last two now.. $4 2R1A, sat 8/34 and 22 big antes 9/24.  cashed in big 55, 50k gtd, VIP thingy and 1 othe I think. will update after

00.01  it's all gone pete tong. Got into a raising war BVB in the big antes with a guy who has a 3 bet of 21% over 111 hands from blinds (I was SB to hhis BB) I raise 88, he 3-bets which I fully expected, so I 4-bet shoved, he had QQ. FML! less than 10 BB's in that

in the $42R1A it was pretty weird and maniac hit the table playing over 70% of his hands and raising like 55% of those, he was nuts. I open 55 from MP, get flatted in LP and maniac shoves. I decided before the hand if he did I was calling, so I did. He had K2 soooooooooted. Flopped a 2 and rivered a K. gtfo. Guy was a total fkin drooler, but mbn to run that hot.

 00.11 and out, shove J9s into AQ and suckout for a double, then shove KQ from button and BB calls with A6 (the BVB twat from earlier) and binks an ace. gg me.

Decent night overall and in profit so can;t really complain, just a shame a little more luck could have meant at least two decent scores. oh well.

also cheers for the railage from gorvacofin and bullmeister.

Platinum VIP :)

Poker is going ok ATM, I can;t really seem to get anything going though. I have just been pissin around grinding some $7 Turbo STT's. No idea how many I have played right now as I don;t have Poker Tracker to hand, but I know that I am a mighty $9 in profit, plus two stellar rewards of $10 each. Obv I can almost retire on that mightily impressive performance!

Just a change of scenery really and to get the Platinum Star and try and accrue some FPP's whilst I have the decent multiplier. I have been fairly comfortably multi-tabling 16 tables, although I am going to have to drag out my second monitor in future I think as when it tries to auto-reg for the next games it seriously pisses me off keep popping up over my tables, much easier if I hold the lobby on the 2nd monitor.

Got one more night at work and then finally a few days off, in which I hopefully want to grind some MTT's as well, whether I actually will is anotehr matter.

Been working hard on the forum and trying to code new stuff in, mainly SEO stuff to try and help the search engine rankings for the site, but it's a slow process ATM, some of the stuff I am struggling to get my head around, like Apache for the re-writing of URL's, bleh. Managed to sort a few things out, but will keep trying in the short times I have to get stuff done.

Another thing I have been doing is listening to quadjacks radio and a lot of their podcasts and I have to say it's my new favourite poker podcast over 2+2's. Here are some links to the better stuff..

Devilfish Interview

Gotta say the Devilfish really cracks me up. Some of his one like are fkin brilliant, but the Canadian and Yank hosts just don;t get it at all, mainly due to the speed in which he fires them off. Wp Devilfish, great interview.

Mike the Mouth, Negreanu and Matt Savage including lots of talk about Full Tilt.

This one starts off with the no talking rule in a hand with Savage and Negreabu, but then The Mouth comes on and they get him talking about Full Tilt and it's very interesting.

Righty offski now

Enjoy

BM

Contemplating

Bored at work (I have grafted like a bastard for the first 10 hours), I am sitting here wondering what is going to happen with online poker in the next year or so, there are so many directions is could take that it's pretty hard to fathom, so although these could be way off the mark and complete bollocks, these are my thoughts...

1. Good Scenarios - Europe: Recently there has been some movement in all the ring-fencing that was going on i.e. France, Italy etc and Pokerstars has helped convince these two governements that they cannot run a viable business with the tax rates they are charging and their licensing and as such there are talks of them merging into one, which may pave the way for slowly but surely allow them to start opening up to the rest of the Euro zone, which is fantastic for us because we all know how spewtastic both the French and Italians were when playing.

USA: They get online poker regulated and there are not ringfenced off to the ROW. Meaning we get thousands and thousands of casual donks once again hitting the virtual felt with us and giving us a licence to print money.

Obviously thats a very optomistic view, but with the Epic poker league stuff recently and such it really does look more and more likely the US are going to get their regulation sorted and get back online. Some even predict it could happen in 2011!!

There are various thoughts as to who would be the major online players, but I genuinely think Party will be there or there-abouts and almost definately a could of the big land based Vegas casino's. I think they will force pokerstars out of the market for X number of months to give the competition time to get on their feet. Just my opinion there.

2. Pessemistic view: Europe:  We have recently heard of the government thinking about stepping into look at online poker and the licencing and the way it was explained (or how I read it), that we too could go down the route of France and Italy and be ring-fenced off and they would use the excuse as to protect their citizens from situations like Full Tilt, because the Sites would have to have a specific UK Licence and be based in the UK (which is pretty tough given our tax rates).

I worry that they will just see pound signs, especially in times of economic hardship and whether it's in our interest or not, screw us over. IMO that has a very real chance of happening under this government, but I really hope it doesn't.

As for Europe, I think more and more countries could follow the lead of France and Italy because they are so concerned with money leaving their economies at this time and make sure that the money and taxes all stay sort of 'in-house', which will obviously shrink the overall player pools even more!

In regards to the US, IMO they are so fucking corrupt, that it will be basically about who has the most money and political influence as to what happens, nothing to do with their citizens. It could very well head down the route of inter-state poker, where players could only play online vs other players from their state, which would suck balls for everyone else. It could also be just US only, it's so vague.

I hear that it has sort of been agreed poker can come back online as long as it's regulated, but there ais lots of in-fighting in regards to the actual wording of these regulations and basically all because of the financial impacts to the bigger corporations, obviously everyone wants their slice of the pie...

It's a serious transitional period for online poker right now and if it goes the right way for the players it could be incredible for us.

Fingers crossed eh?!

Work and play..

Not posted for a while, but poker wise there isn;t an awful lot to say. I have definately been playing, but nothing consistent, I have ranged from MTT's, to cash and to Hyper Turbo Heads up SnG's!

I have probably only managed one or two nights of playing MTT's since my last post, mainly due to just not having the time to sit down for a very long session, so instead I have been doing other bits and bats, to try and get this Platinum Stars status with Pokerstars' VIP special for August.

I started playing some NL25 6-max Cash, did ok, but down overall, mainly due to some ridiculous aggression on my part, but only lost about 2.5 buy-ins over ~3.5k hands, so nothing major.

I then played a few SnG's for fun, $15 Heads-Up Hyper turbo's and tbh they are just variance fests, whoever runs best makes most money. I started off well and then went on a pretty shitty run where I just couldn;t get a hand to hold for love nor money. I then set up a challenge on the forums, basically, starting at the $3.50 HU Hypers, see how far up you could go winning games in a row, once you lose you go back to level one. I managed to get as high as as the $60 and then lost when I basically got owned on a low flop by a set of 6's..lol. I played quite a few doing this until I started getting tilty and fucked it off.

I next moved onto the $7 STT turbo games and had to work out how to use the SnG opener on Table Ninja (I used to used StarsFSO in Hotkeys) and managed to play 14 tables fairly comfortably tbh.

All in all for all the tourneys this month so far, ~170 I think, I am a massive $5 up! rotfl. FML.

I am considering a lot of live events that look really good this month,. but no decisions yet.

So that in a nutshell has been my poker for the month so far.. yawn, boring.

On a none poker front I got a lump on my scalp, which over the course of a few days got more and more painfull and felt like it was full of liquid, so  I tried numerous times to pop the fucker with needles, but without any success, all I ever pretty much got was blood. Eventually, after a week I resigned myself with a visit to the doctors to be informed I had a Sabateuos Cyst that was infected, no wonder I trouble sleeping because of it. She gave me antibiotics to treat the infection and then hopefully I could have it lanced at hospital in a few days . Anyways I managed to burst the bad boy today and you should have seen all the shyte come out of it...eurghhhh, my little lad was fascinated!!. Actually feels a shitload less painfull now, but has left a small bald patch on the back of my head. Bastard. I'll bet your glad I told you that eh? lol.



Been extremely busy at work because of all the holidays and covering off extra shifts. Been pretty much working Mon, Tuesday days all day and then Weds, thurs fri night, as nights, rinse repeat. Not too bad though because the weather has turned to rat shit, so not an awful lot to do anyways. Looking forward to my September pay packet :)

Onto these riots... wtf is going wrong? Society is so messed up right now and so many scumbag opportunists got out onto the streets to loot and vandalise anything they could, it was so demoralising to watch and see developing. Imagine those small business owners...


I did see one thing that left tears in my eyes, in London these morons looted...wait for it... POUNDLAND! loooooooool. There is a picture of a black lady running from, the stare with what must be a fiver's worth of crisps in her arms! lolololol. Seriously, if you robbed the whole fucking stock you would have about £200 worth of gear. Let me try and find the pic...

At least loot a shop worth looting ffs! Daft cow.

Seems to have all calmed down tonight and rightly so, I hope the coppers nail some of these idiots to the wall, but most likely as usual their human rights would be infringed in some minor way and the PC brigade, with nothing better to do, would jump up and down and defend them in every possible way.

offski now, if yopu read all that shit, thankyou!

good month's FTW

With having a little time off work I managed to actually play some poker this month, namely MTT's. Had quite a few decent close calls, but the payout structures of the lower buy-in tourneys often meant a tonne of hardwork and time rewarded with like 3 or 4 times your buy-in, which is soul destroying, but on the flip side the times when you do make it to the top 3 it becomes extremely profitable and one of those runs is the reason for such a good month.

As you will have seen a few posts back I got second in the Stars $20k, picking up $2.8k and giving me a nice score.

I did a tiny bit of grinding today and yesterday in the $18.77, 6-max Hyper games to the red spade tourney, which I found that it was a nice way to accumulate some T$ and also qualify for the big tourney on Sunday night.

anyways, brag alert..... Stars Tourney stats for July:

EZ Game Obv!

At a wedding all day Saturday, so will be gearing up for a big grind Sunday, will try playing some Sats to the bigger games and see if I can bink more decent scores.

Back to work on Wednesday, but it's nights, so I expect to be able to still grind a couple of nights per week.

Also really getting into this Twitter malaraky...Follow me bitches!!!

http://twitter.com/#!/big_mikky

laters

Bridesmaid

Played a small MTT schedule last night, for a change and things ended up going pretty well. Ended up playing 9 tourneys in all, min cashed in 3 and had a deep run in the $20k on stars.

Played really well throughout the tourney, including eliminating most of the players on the final table, but then tilted HU when my oppening hit a gutterball on the river when I had him all in for the tourney. Either way I didn;t play well HU and a combination of constantly whiffing and my opponent never folding when i was making moves, meant I started to become frustrated, eventually pushing it in with A9o when I knew he had a big hand and he did he had AQ, but I didn;t manage to get there.

Had some awesome railage from Amatay and from Marky147, so cheers fellas, although Amatay did vanish when Marky put him onto a new pornstar... loilololol. Probably wanked himself to a frazzle by now :)

Anyways, $2.8k is not to be sniffed at, but couldn;t get in the binkage thread.

Vote Of No Confidence

***WARNING POLITICAL POST****

Are you, like me, completely dismayed with how the ConDems are destroying and privatising the country?

I am not gonna rant on about the specifics I am sure we all have our own thoughts/ideas, but get yourself over here and add your vote. Not sure what good it will actually do, but it;s better than doing sweet fuck all.



Get these tossers out. The rich are getting richer, the poor are affected quite a bit, but the folks in the middle are getting crushed to shit.

decisions...

Dilemma 1:

APAT Worlds

or

GUKPT Goliath?

(I can't play both because of work, would only get enough time off for one or the other.)

Dilemma 2:

Grind Tonight

or

FM2011?

 

Dilemma 3:

Brunettes

or

Blondes

Decisions, decisions, decisions....

lol donkaments

With the last 4 days off work I was looking forward to grinding MTT's for the next few nights, unfortunately things didn;t quite go as planned....

The first night I was too fucked after the back-to-back at work and then the stag do, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the total amount of hours sleep I had over the last week and it all caught up with me. I basically got in, had a brew watched a bit of shitty TV, shower and bed, so bang one night gone.

Second night I registered for  a few MTT's across Laddies, 888poker and some Sats on Genting (also bumping into AwesomeHutch the fish!!), I think it was only about 6 total, unfortunately it all went to rat shit and I basically couldn't get a hand to hold. So frustrating when the first time you put your entire stack on the line after 5 hours of an MTT your AK loses to AQ when you get it all in pre. Fucking donkaments. Basically nothing went my way and frustration got the better of me and I think I ended up with 2 shitty min cashes.

Third night, I really couldn't be arsed, I registered with good intentions, then unregged again and just played a super turbo satellite to Megastack event in either Blackpool or Manchester, obv I run like a dogs dick again the satty and no way my AK can beat KQ and then 77 to beat A5s at the vital part. Didn;t even rebuy for 3k when the blinds were 200/400. Ended up dragging the Strongbow out and getting Football Manager 2011 on the go, whilst watching season 2 of Rescue Me.

Last night - Chilled, played a little more FM2011, knocked the back out of the wife and slept like a log, until that bastard alarm went off at 6am for work.

back at work for the next three days, so definately not enough time to play any MTT's, although I do play to play the Poker Player Magazine Grand Prix thingy and prolly a few small satty's and finally bink a seat, because none of those take too long or take that much concentration.

Finally anyone not a member of Raisetheriver, then get your ass over and join, the non poker chat alone is worth it.

Spunkmoneys

With working my back-to-back this weekend, I am not getting much time in the evenings to play poker, but I needed my fix, so I decided to grind some SnG's on 888poker. I haven;t played SnG's for ages, but I still remember a huge amount about push/fold spots and ranges to shove and calling ranges etc, so i felt fairly confident.

I decided to just straight into the fire and play some $20 games, mainly the 6-max turbo games and a few 20-man Nitro's thrown in for good measure.

I was blown away! I have never seemn anything as bad as these fucking morons I will just list a few of the things I saw:

1. Limping in with 3 BB's
2. Calling off with any ace on the bubble of a game.
3. Limping with less than 10 BB's on the bubble and folding to a push.
4. Limp calling any raise size
5. Chasing gutters all the way to the river
6. As above but with flush draws and for large protions of their stack.
7. I 4-bet shoved one guy and he insta snapped me off with A7o vs my KK and we were the top two stacks in a nitro at that point.(obv flopped an ace)

It was absolutely mucking fental! TBH I didn't adapt well at all, I was still shoving what should be normal ranges, but it doesn;t work when these mugs are calling so wide and I didn;t tighten up approriately.

I ended up 7 buy-ins down and steam pouring out of my ears. In reality though I think it has to be a goldmine, yes it will be high in variance given the standard of play, but surely very exploiutable if you can adapt better than me. I also didn;t notice many regs, in all the games I have played I can only think of one guy I came across a few times.

I am going back for more punishment tonight and just gonna make the neccessary changes. Fingers crossed, mixed in with a little run good I can smash it up.

On a none poker front, I am on a stag do tomorrow. Haydock Park in the day and then Chester for the night out, I can see it being carnage already. 8.30a,m meet for breakfast.... I'll be lucky to see Sunday!

laters

Wp Bullyfish

you lucky bastard!

2nd in the APAT Team championships Individual event, picking up a few quid and a silver medal for that and a gold medal for his team winning the team event itself!!!

Always good to see a mate doing well. Followed his progress from Day 1, where he got into one of the top 5 in chips and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the tourney. Definately his best live score to date and I am pretty sure it will have given him the poker bug back. n1 mate.

here is the jizzmeister in action:

Obviously this has now given me a taste to play some live poker, something I rarely get to do with my daft work shifts and the young family, so I have been looking around for events.

Definately gonna try and play the APAT Main Event at DTD in August, also looking at the Gala casino one over in Leeds in July and might have a gander around for a few more. I fancy UKIPT TBH, but  with it being in Brighton next it's a bit unfair to fuck off for a full weekend and leave the Mrs with the liitle ones.

Gonna have to venture to either Manchester or Blackpool for a few local games, probably the week after next as it's a stag do this weekend, which will definately get messy.

reet oh, congrats to Bully and Kronsdat (he was team captain)!

laters

Bubble Boy

I did manage to play some more MTT's on Tuesday night, but tbh it was a washout, including being the bubble boy in the 3k GTD I had won the night before when my AJ was no match for K6 AIPF :)

I also played a few on 888poker and was the bubble boy again in another of those. I think I only managed one min cash out of the 7 tourneys I played, which I felt was poor, but tbh I wasn;t playing very well.

This was the first time I had played on 888poker and it took a lot of getting used to. I am still undecided if I like the software or not, it feels very 'clunky' on first impressions and I timed out numerous times, which pissed me off, especially as one time I had Aces fairly deep into one oif the rebuy tourneys.

The schedule looks ok, much better than Microgaming if I am honest, a few games ranging from $5-$50, which is what I am looking at in NLHE and starting betweeen 7pm-9pm, which is usualluy the time I register for the games so that none of them finish too late into the morning.

In work today on overtime, so hopefully should be able to play a few tonight and see how I get on.

On the downside I ended up having a go on their live casino and blew ~$300 through chasing my early losses, sigh, I really piss myself off sometimes.

Right, better get some work done.

Ship It!

Decent Night last night, my second night into the MTT's!

Shipped the €3k GTD on Micro:

Took it down for €900 ($1289)!

Also had a deep run in the €16.50 rebuy, finishing 25th of 481 for just over €100. Came 42/209 in the €10 bounty and 12/44 in some €5 donkament. Also, I played a €16.50 carnage satellite for the €10k GTD €100 buy-in and just missed out on a seat, but got 2nd for €88. So overall a good €1000+ for the night! weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Obviously poker is great when you are winning as we all know, so I'll take the good times when I get them.

Tonight will be the last night I can play again until Saturday because of work, but I'll have another go and see if I can retain my crown :)

Ok, Brag over, time to assemble the table and chairs the Mrs persuaded me to buy, sigh gg this afternoon!

Hopefully I am back!

I have decided to pretty much move all my cash back to poker for now (until the US Sportsbook's are in a much better place). I have done lots and probably most of the UK/Euro sign-ups and was getting very bored with it tbh as there was hardly anything new popping up, so I ended up having punts on the nags at Ascot all week and it's been a bloodbath! I have dropped quite a bit of dosh and I am very pissed off at myself for the lack of discipline. So I figured the best thing is to get all my cash of Betfair and move it to an ewallet for now until I decide which poker sites I am going to frequent.

I did move some money to Ladbrokes to be able to play the Microgaming MTT's and I would ideally have liked to have put some on Full Tilt as I like their schedule and not huge fields, but I don;t feel they are trustworthy enough ATM with all the shit being flung in their direction.

I have been toying with the idea of 888 (mainly because they are associated with APAT and I want to play more APAT events this year) and I might take another look at Betfair.

I still like Pokerstars, but still despise their enormously huge fields for most tourneys upto $50 buy-ins, which will be my main staple.

I am going to see what deals are out there and read some reviews before deciding.

I decided to play some games last night, including a turbo feeder to the Sunday Million on Stars, which I got a seat from 1st attempt, but then managed to play like a fucking moron in the actual Sunday Million and bust out within the first two hours.

I also played some games on Laddies, including a €20 rebuy 6-max, which I final Tabled and lost a big flip my AQ vs TT for the world. Ended up with €233 instead of the €2.4k up top. The standard in that was truly awful, so many people open limping and then calling a raise. I just kept chipping away at them whilst they were giving away the free chips, so thankyou to them :)

Going to get back to the tables tonight.

Right, off out now to take the little lad to a big play facility in Preston.

Laters.

MTT + Some good TV

Decided to play some MTT's, both Thurs and Friday night, but without any success. IU have decided I absolutely fucking suck at winning flips for big stacks, including one where I think I could have done especially well on full tilt in the 6k GTD, when approaching the final 40ish I got it all in with a super Italian donko (fuck knows how he was playing main full tilt site??) with TT vs his 99 and guess the river. Sigh. I was pwning that one too. W/e, only problem was that I didn;t enjoy these sessions, I just got super bored and fed-up after the first couple of hours.

My mindset that whenever I got it all in I couldn;t win prolly didn;t help a thing, but it just didn't do it for me this time.

I did however have a little fart about with some 6-max RUSH, just NL25 and did pretty well, winning over 6 buy-ins in just a few hands. Helps too that I hit almost one mirrion sets! Thats really all the poker I have done.

I finally managed to bust out of 10bet in my matched betting adventures, it felt like I had been in there forever and I just kept winning and almost had to turn over the full wager requirements, which were pretty fucking huge. I finally got out on a basketball game between Dallas and Oklahoma. Not sure where to next tbh, gonna have a look at a few deals, maybe even take a look at  the spread-betting offers Snakey has done.

Away from the computer I have been watching a series called Burn Notice, which I am really enjoying ATM. First episode, the main character really got on my tits, he seemed a real smarmy annoying twat,  but the character really does grow on you, I am now into the 4th season and tbh I sort of don;t want it to end, much like you feel when all the good ones are coming to an end.

Here is a list of some of the better series I recommend:

Burn Notice
Sopranos
Sons Of Anarchy
The Wire
Breaking Bad - AWESOME
Dexter - AWESOME
The Shield
Southlands
Deadwood
Entourage
Band Of Brothers


I have also seen:

Mad Men - just couldn;t get into this.
Lost - It lost me after 1st season..
Boardwalk Boulevard - Didn;t do it for me tbh
Californication - Started it, but not finished it. Like Hank Moody a lot tho
Pacific - good, but no Band Of Brothers

LOl, Thats all I can think of right now. Definately worth checking some of these out, they piss all over films, they are so much more!

Oh and finally Ryan Giggs is a knob. Why all this super-injunction bullshit? If he was happy enough to go fucking around behind his wife's back, knowing what it will do to his reputation etc, then he should take it on the chin. All he has done with all this bollocks is make it even bigger news, what a complete tosser.

MTT Sesh

Yesterday (Saturday) I felt like playing a qualifier for a SCOOP event, with the intention of playing the big one, so I navigated my way around the pokerstars lobby, (does anyone else have trouble finding which scoop event is starting that day?), Anyways, I managed to almost register for a few sats for the Sunday night SCOOP, but realised and unregistered and found two stats to one event yesterday. First sat was a hyper turbo that went to shit and then there was a $11 double shootout, with one seat and $191 for second, which I happily binked.

I was auto registered for the SCOOP event, then noticed the start time... 4pm, lol not a fucking China Mans chance I could make that. With the kids bathtime and storytime etc I would end up having to sit out for at least an hour around 7pm, which I knew was no good, so I unregged and took the toruney dollarios.

I then registerd for quite a few smaller stakes MTT's. I think 8/9 in total.

started off ok and steady and was still in everything at the first break time. Was just doing what I always do in MTT's, stay active and fairly loose early to try and pick up the chips of the droolers who happily put all their stack in with gutshots and top pairs. I know lots of people play tight early, but that just doesn;t work for me, I am still fairly comfortable post flop so I am happy to get involved. My problem is I don;t stay loose enough when the blinds get big, I have a tendancy to tighten up rather than change around with my gears, it is something I need to work on. Anyways, like I said it was going well at first and then my monsters started getting smashed and the red mist started to descend, in fact I started this thread at RTR: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=12883

lol, I am such a fucking tilt monkey.

EvertonYorkie popped into the chat and saw me on tilt and put a few sensible words of encouragement into the chat, which helped me see sense when I was in a "fuck it" mood. Cheers for that EY.

I managed to chip up well in two events ( I think I tilted out of at least 2 :) ). One was the daily $50k , $11 buy in and the other was the $4 rebuy. I was playing well and doing ok, until I made a pretty bad error in the $50k, mis-read ma hand and tried to make a hero call, basically it went like this:

I min raise in LP to $10k with A6s
BB calls.
Flop comes K45.
He checks, I C-bet half pot, he calls.
Turn comes 8, but now putting two of a suit out there.
He checks again, I thought about stabbing, but opt to see the river.
River is a blank and he makes a half pot bet.
I sat for a while and didn;t know

It just didn;t make much sense at the time. He was fairly active, so figured a bluff was in his range. Didn;t think a set or strong pair because of his turn check, and surely a hand like 2nd/3rd pair or a pocket pair just check behind because they have showdown value, so I hero called with ace high, doh.

He had KJ, never expected that, but w/e. That cost me half my chips. Little later on I push AQ from BTN and BB wakes up with AK and it's curtains in about 70th from just over 5k entrants. Sigh.

In the other all was going good guns, with just twelve left, when BVB, SB raised into me and I looked down at AK...weeeeeeeeeeee. Obv I think a while (Hollywood baby) then ship and he thinks before snapping me off with AQ. For a top 4 stack at a crucial point, he binks his 3 outer on the turn and I go to the rail after 4 and a half hours of good poker. Sigh. Fuck you Pokerstars, scummy bastarding twat-faced cock-suckers. ahhh feel better now :)

Overall though I made a nice profit on the night and actually enjoyed the experience in a sadistic kind of way. I'll probably have another sesh next Saturday.

IRL things are ok. Little one is still not getting the hang of this thing called sleeping at night. We have tried allsorts, Collief, Dentinox, Gripe Water, Gaviscon, hungry baby milk, doctors etc etc and it's just one of those things. She just cannot settle for long periods of time and it's brutal, especially on the wife when I am working nights. I feel awful and try and do what I can, but it's tough ATM. I am praying she settles down soon and gets over whatever this is as it seriously takes it out of you.

Matched betting - I have really slowed down, stupidly, as I just don;t seem to be able to sit down and start trolling through the deals I need to do. No idea what it is, instead I have been doing lots of mug punting, which was going ok until today when it backfired on me, costing me probably the best part of £250. An expensive lesson learned. Need to go back to MB'ing with the safe easy money ASAP.

Right this post is getting ridonkulously long.

laters.

BM

I played, I Played!! Wooooooooo

Haha, I finally hit the tables today, albeit very briefly because I had read elsewhere that Stars had introduced Hyper Turbo SnG's and this fast paced insanity sounded fun to me, so I had a game or two.

Played a Heads up one, which I won when i shoved my open ender abotu 3rd hand in and managed to suckout :) Played a 6-handed one, which again I crushed, lol. I couldn't miss. I doubled up early when someone shoved their JJ into my AA and then I just shoved my stack around and proceeded to knock out pretty much every other player when I smashed the shit out of every flop. lol.

Maybe thats the key? stay away for ages, then just play some big stakes stuff and keep blasting? ;-)

Finally I played a 9-manner too and guess what............. I crushed. Lol poker is a peice of piss when you cannot miss. All over in about 15 mins, which suits my schedule at the minute as I hardly get fuckall spare time!

I then went to sleep for a few hours before work tonight. When I woke up I had a brew and played a few more turbo's, 6 total I think, with two more 1sts and the rest nowhere. EZ game.

Just fancied something quick and easy. In reality I haven;t got a scooby doo about Hyper Turbo Strat, I just played it like a standard SnG, continuosly sticking my stack in everyone's eye.

Maybe I'll play some more of these and possibly even grind them....hmmmm decisions decisions.

On a none poker front, I have been running a hthread over at RTR looking for good value footy bets and so far, so good.

5/6 wins for a £44.80 profit. Only small stakes stuff obviously, but I'd like to see what I can get it too., or stop if I hit zero.

You can follow that here: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12848

Also been playing lots of Black Ops on teh Xbox360, when all the ki8ds are finally asleep and the Mrs lets me have the TV! Just started Prestige Level 2 in the multiplayer mode. Man I am getting quick at that running around like a chicken and stabbing everybody!

Also, I don;t know why, but ATM my favourite weapon is the bog-standard M16, with a supressor and extended mag. Anyone fancy a game, then hit me up on Xbox, my username is, as always, Burnleymik.

Right, offski now

laters

Still toying

..With the idea of coming back to the tables, just haven;t made the jump yet. I keep getting inspired by Kenn and co posting up their MTT Successes on the forum, but then when I come to actually play something either crops up or I haven't got the motivation to fire up a load of tables and plough on.

The matched betting has slowed down as the number of UK/Euro sites I have left to do the sing-ups for reduces. Instead I spend more and more time trading on Betfair on Tennis, Basketball and football mainly and to be honest as of this last week my results have been mixed. I started off well and then a few things went against me including one tennis match where I lumped on the favourite, with the intention of trading out when his price moved in, but it went completely pear-shaped and he got beat by a fucking nobody. That cost me quite a bit.

TBH I don;t fully know what I am doing, I am just pissing about following my instincts. One of my favourites is to look for games that are a draw with about 60 mins gone. Back the draw and at that point the price usually starts moving in pretty quickly, so hold your nerve for 10 mins or so and then trade back out for a small profit and thats the one where I ahve made most of my coin so far. Obviously sometimes one team scores and it fucks you up a bit, but you still have the ability to trade out for a small loss.

Think I am gonna focus on finding new sign-up bonuses again this weekend as they are guaranteed easy money. I know Eurosportbet.fr are doing an €80 one and I might have a look at a couple others.

Right oh off now

laters

BM

Life after poker

Hope you are all well!

So what an incredible couple of weeks it has been for online poker. I have been truly amazed at what has been going on. The way the American authorities has gone after the big poker sites is incredible. The big sites have obviously shit in their pants and immediately banned all US players playing for real money, which is a huge backward step considering how adamant they were the the UIGEA didn;t apply to online poker.

Good old American shock and awe!

I feel very sorry for the American players tbh, I have met quite a few being involved in online poker for so long and they way their government is treating them is a fucking joke in my eyes. It's their money, their time and they are harming no one else doing it, so just fuck off and leave them alone, you greedy bottom feeding bastards. Obviosuly they are mad as hell because they can't get their share of the money and IMO thats what it all boils down to.

That said it has definately turned the online poker world upside down and it's going to be extremely interesting to see how this plays out. If this means some legislation and getting the casual US players back online then it would be awesome, as long as they didn;t get ring-fenced off like the Italians and French. I remember just how juicy the games were back when all the Yanks were casually depositng a few hundred dollars here and there and donking it off. It would definately draw me straight back to the tables to get me some action.

I have also heard from numerous people that the games are softer now, can that really be the case? If so there are quite a few reload bonuses around at the moment for none US players, thanks to the Black Friday incidents, which might be worth taking advantage of.....hmmm I will ponder making my return for some bonus whoring????? You never know, watch this space :)


On a none poker front, life is very busy and very hectic.The new arrival is being a nightmare at the moment, she is a bit of a screamer and it gets extremely draining after a while. You cannot do anything to sooth her really once she goes beyond the point of no return. Hopefully that will settle down in time.The little lad in contrast has been incredibly good, he's taken to her really really well and loves being involved in everything. Here is a picture of my two little ones, luckily they have their mums looks :)

Also been really enjoying this lovely weather, can;t get enough of it.

On the Matched Betting game... well I am doing really well ATM and have introduced a little bit of my version of Betfair trading and so far I am about £2k up, which is awesome and I haven;t had to put in anything like the time I would have had to playing poker. Winner!

Hope you guys are all well and hope you are smashing feeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

No Poker at all!

I have hardly played a hand now for weeks and the truth of it is that I am not missing it! I have withdrawn the remainder of my poker bankroll and used it to help with my float for matched betting. I don't miss the variance and I certainly don;t miss the grinding like an idiot to break even and make money from rakeback. It was boring, time consuming and if I am totally honest, not much fun.

This matched betting is fun, a lot less variance and a more regular income. I think it was miles easier to get into having come from a poker background, so for that I am grateful.

I do plan to play the odd poker game recreationally and even take it more seriously again if they ever bring back the Yanks, French and or Italians. All these governments have basically ruined poker IMO. Everywhere the tables are pretty much rock gardens full of regs grinding their asses off to break even. Fuck that.

I hope you are all well and thanks for reading.

BM

Life tilt!!!!

It just gets worse and wrose..mutther fukker!

Sunday teh TV blows up and tonight I jump in thye car to set off to work and something really doesn;t feel right. I jump out and have a flat tyre near-side rear. The only problem with that is... offside front tyre is getting low so needed changing, offside rear has a really slow puncture, so I was going to change those two, but instead one of the good two goes and gets fucked! arghhhhhhhhhhhhh

So thats £180 for two new tyres fitted and £500 for a new TV. GG bankroll.

FMFL.

Trying something new

After hearing about this quite a few times, I have decided to have a go at Matched betting in an attempt to build my roll back up. It doesn;t help that I have just had to make a sizeable withdrawal to help pay for a new TV as the old one went kaput. FML.

So with some great help and advice from Jon (Snake Eyes) I have proceeded to have a go at it and it looks like if you get it right you can make a few quid, depending on the bookie offers.

I have started a thread on the forum to track my progress. Would be interested to hear if anyone has done/is doing it:

http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12511

The hardest bit of it all seems to be keeping up with the T+C's of the bets themselves, but I think this will get easier and more familiar with time.

Fingers crossed it goes well!

BM

Jan Round Up

A little late but here goes:

Jan was pretty much a washout. I played plenty of hands, but sort of feels like I was pissing in the wind as I never really got very far.

CASH GAMES:

Pokerstars.fr: 6,584 hands for a $137.54 loss, but Bonus earned: $70 = -$67.54

Ran like shit, paid an excruciating amount of rake so just fucked it off and wiothdrew most of what I had made in profits and bonus.

Full Tilt RUSH (NL25): 26,415 for a $167.04 profit + $117.44 = + $287.48

Obligitaroy graph:

My BB/100 (1.27/100) was a sack of shit, but tbh RUSH is so variance ridden that I don;t think my results are that far from the norm for an ok player.

Total = + $216.94

Tourneys:

Didn;t play a single one! Something I plan to change this month tbh.


Summary:

Small RUSH profit, which is a first because before this month I just basically spewed cash in RUSH, I  simply could never beat it over a decent sample. Luckily I have added a lot more discipline into my game this month and thankfully it is paying off a bit. Will it continue?, I just don;t know, what I do know is that bigger downswings occur a lot in rush, so I simply now never count my chickens, I just take each session at a time and try to play as optimally as I can.

I also re-joined Dueces Cracked and plan on watching quite a few different series to try and keep building on my game and adding new plays to my arsenal.

Ok, lets hope February is profitable for us all.

BM

Live Poker...LOL

This weekend was the APAT Team Event, being held at the G-Casino, Manchester. Our poker forum had a team over there, but it was pretty touch and go!

A few months ago we asked people to register interest for the tourney, which was a £50 buy in as part of an 8 man team. We had ~14-18 peeps interested. As such we ran a playoff for the spots in the team. Luckily I had an automatic seat, as that is the advantage of being admin, weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Anyway as time got nearer it was pretty obvious there were some guys who were really keen to play and when I got offered overtime at work to work the Friday and Sunday night the same weekend I agreed thinking we had plenty of reserves and it would allow one of the others a chance to play and be part of these great weekends. (plus I can;t really afford to turn the overtime down right now, so it;s a win win)

My plan was to go over on the Saturday to rail the guys and play a little live cash.

Anyways by the time the event actually came around we had 6 dropouts and 2 in the last two days before the event FFS!!! It was an absolute fkin nightmare to try and get the team sorted in time, I ended up getting up at 11am on Saturday after only getting in from work at 5am trying to sort out replacements. Let's just say I wasn;t fucking best pleased. Fortuantely we managed to get it sorted and had a team to play the event.

So saturday evening myself and Bullmeister went to Bolton and met up with the guys and unfortunately the tourney wasn't going well. Amatay had donked off most his stack, we already had 2 busted and the rest were not in great shape.

I decided to play some live cash, but only table with a decent waiting list was a 0.25, 0.25/0.5, which I though was 0.25/0.50 NL with a 0.25 ante. It actually was just 0.25/0.25 and max buy-in was £30. sigh. It was interesting though to see how lolbad the live donks are. Seriously we had one guy who for like 5 or 6 hands was raising to £20 pre flop, blind! lol. The standard opening raise was £2 and that normally got between 3-7 callers each time. These guys HAD to see a flop, it was almost like the law!

After a while the table broke up a bit and it ended up infested with nittier fish. Who loved to see a flop, but just folded when they missed.I ended up with about £70 from my original £25 so all was'nt lost. It was incredible though to see how bad they all were!

As for the team event.... well I think we were 16th/25. Obviously the reason we were so shit was because I wasn;t there as team captain to drive us forward and motivate! Our best players were Ant66, Dream Of Vegas and Krosdat, who managed to go deepish, so well done to those three for helping us save a little face!

Bit of luck Newcastle Poker Forum will hold another event at some point this year and I'll go and play that one and obv crush! :)


Right, that turned into a much longer post than I anticipated.

cheers for reading

BM