James Atkin's Poker Blog

2016 Update

2016-07-25T20:50:00.005+01:00

Towards the end of last year me and my wife were deciding whether to cash out our chips and stick with 2 children or take the gamble and go for three. As well all know gambling is a risky business, non more so than when it results in a lifelong commitment. In the end we rolled the dice and here is what they landed on:

Orlanda Casey Atkin born on the 18th June 2016.

Having had a look through the blog archive I see that I went into some rather graphic detail when I posted about my first and second children being born. This birth seemed very normal, but then I suppose when you're doing something for the third time it does feel more normal. I'm sure having three children as opposed to two will throw up some challenges for me and my wife as they grow up, but needless to say we feel very blessed with our family.

Online poker has been up and down this year, or I should say down and up. Three months in it was looking like job-time for me, things were not going well and I had made approximately £0, which does not a nappy buy. But I sort of re-set myself on the first of April (a fool-proof plan). I vowed to exercise before each session I played, made some study-based goals as I had been getting lazy at studying (this tends to happen when running bad for a while, but it is the most important time to study), and essentially forget the first three months of the year really happened. Fortunately, since then things have been going much better so I have put the McDonald's application form away for the time being.

I haven't dabbled in the live poker arena much this year. I travelled down-under for the Aussie Millions for the third consecutive year. I did manage to secure my first Australian flag on Hendon Mob after this visit, but unfortunately it was only from a min-cash for 20th place in a $2.5k side event.

New look, and yes I'm still alive!

2015-12-02T17:21:00.000+00:00

It's been rather a long time since I posted on the blog, almost 18 months, and in truth I haven't really been active for about 3 years. I don't have an especially good reason for the absence except that I'm a fairly busy person, and the time I don't spend either playing poker or studying poker I try and spend with my wife and two children. On the other hand, half an hour here or there isn't exactly a huge commitment! Given the amount of hits the blog still gets (I surpassed one million hits earlier in the year, having hit half a milly in July 2012) it would be a shame to just let it die.

So whilst I had a couple of days spare with the PokerStars strike going down at the moment I opted to completely revamp the design of the blog. I must have had the old design for about 5 years, and a lick of fresh paint seems like a nice motivator to post a bit more often.

So my last update was my Aussie Millions report from 2014. I've managed to go on a few other poker trips since then. I went to Vegas last year, in which I got my first two WSOP event cashes, but unfortunately my 208th and 604th place finishes didn't exactly set my world ablaze.

I attended the Aussie Millions for a second consecutive year in January this year having won another satellite on PokerStars. Unfortunately I bust the Main Event pretty quickly, and I think I set a record for least time spent in Australia as I left 3 days after arriving! Yes, this meant I was in the air nearly as long as I was on the ground! This might seem kind of silly to many of you, but I was on my own, had already done a bunch of stuff the year before and wanted to get home to my kids. I'll actually be returning for a 3rd time next January, so hopefully next years exploits warrant a longer trip!

Me on the Melbourne Star, Jan 2015

I've also been on two poker trips this year with my old friend Dan Carter, who I actually met on a final table back in 2005, and another mate of ours JP. We went over to Marbella for a few days for the Estellas Poker Tour event there in June which was very nice.

Dan, JP & Me, Marbella, June 2015

Ultimately though it was our latest trip that proved to be the most successful. With Dan living in the Netherlands at the moment, the Master Classics of Poker festival in Amsterdam caught our eye, and Dan managed to win the 2nd event (€770 8-max) for a nice score. He even got a novelty cheque (helping him transport this home was a fairly comical scene, featuring a random lady on the tram asking to take his picture with the cheque because her son liked poker, lolz!).

Dan is victorious, November 2015

The week looked to be something of a wash out for me except for the small % I had of Dan, but in the final event (€825 NLH) we were going to play I managed to pull a 3rd place out of the bag for my biggest score since my final in the Monte Carlo tournament in which I also came 3rd nearly 2 and a half years ago. It was a somewhat disappointing result as I began the table chip leader but lost all my important showdowns. Most notably with 6 players left someone decided to make an ICM-suicide jam with AJos when I had Jacks. This was for nearly half the chips in play and would have put me in a great spot to win, but alas he got there. However I could easily have finished 6th at this point so laddering up to 3rd wasn't a bad result in the end, and of course I had run well at times earlier in the tournement to make it to the final table.

Online poker has been ticking along for me. Lately I've been reducing my table count to around the 8-9 mark which I'm finding quite enjoyable. I'm also playing a few less turbos these days. It is unquestionable that poker is gradually getting tougher, so it is imperative to stay ahead of the curve. Also PokerStars is doing its best to squeeze out as much money as it can out of the poker economy, with Spin & Go's seemingly its main focus these days. So I'm trying my best to make sure I can still earn money from this game which I've been playing professionally for about 10 years now!

Aussie Millions & general update...

2014-05-01T12:24:00.001+01:00

Right off the bat in 2014 I had some rather odd fortune. I played a feeder satellite into a satellite that looked like it was going to get cancelled (so I played get the Tournament $ if I won. I won. Sweet! Except, it didn't get cancelled. So in I go to a $700 Aussie Millions Satellite with 1 seat. I won that too. Sweet! But now I have to go to Australia at the beginning of February.

Now that sounds pretty awesome, but it was a bitter-sweet feeling for me as I'd be leaving my 2 young children behind for the first time, with my wife having to cope with the little monkeys. My compromise was to only go for a few days. I actually only ended up being there for 6 days, which is a bloody long way to travel for such a short time!

Actually, though, I didn't find the journey too painful. When you have two kids you never really get the time to just sit down and do nothing. So I was actually pretty happy getting to sit, chill, do some reading and watch a film or two that weren't made by Disney for a change!

I was regged up for 1C the day after I got there but fired away at 1B on the day I arrived instead, which was a bold move but I slept really well on the flights and felt like it would be fine.

I actually took what I consider to be the worst beat of my poker career. Maybe not equity wise as it was still early on in the tournament. However, this was the biggest buy-in tournament I'd ever played, I just traveled 24 hours solely to play it and just a few hours after landing I get this beauty:

Tim Slater (a British reg) of all people opens from early position in Level 5. 778 rainbow flop. Oi oi! Tim bets, I peel, BTN peels. Turn is a Jack. Tim checks, I check, BTN bets, Tim folds, I raise. He tank calls. River is a J. I put him all in for 1/2 ish pot. He calls with J9os. FML. That crippled me, but I managed to spin back up and finish Day One with about a 2/3rds average stack. Unfortunately a couple of hours in to Day Two I got it in with a combo draw vs 2 pair and didn't get there.

So the Main Event didn't go according to plan, and unfortunately nor did the $1k Super-KO, the $2.5k 6-max, or either bullet I fired at the $1k re-entry. It made sense to take a shot in a few tournaments while I had the opportunity in soft fields given that I had traveled all the way to Australia, but after not having the best 4 months online prior to this the bankroll depletion wasn't particularly well timed.

The few weeks after Oz didn't go particularly well either, which equated to about a 6 month spell of suckiness, by far the worst run in my poker career. Fortunately April was kind to me and things finally started to pick up, so hopefully I have turned a corner and I won't have to go job hunting just yet.

Here's a few pics of Australia. I enjoyed the few days I was there, although being on my own was a bit of a bummer. Melbourne is a really lovely city though, I enjoyed the touristy bits that I managed to do and it was pretty sick going for a morning jog alongside the river.

Sick view from my room!

Chocolate & Headphones in exchange for rake!

My jogging route

1 millllllion VPPs & My biggest ever downswing

2013-11-28T20:19:00.002+00:00

Last week I passed the one million mark of VPPs earned since I began playing on PokerStars. Although there is no tangible reward, aside from my lobby and VPP count sporting the 1 million Hall of Fame badge (booooommmm), it's kind of a cool milestone to reach.

The good sports at PokerStars support provided me with a lifetime audit so I could work out a yearly breakdown of VPPs:

Reaching this milestone would have felt rather underwhelming had I not recently managed to dig myself out of my largest ever downswing (or at least after my high stakes cash game days pre-2008). It has been quite the most extreme ride on the variance rollercoaster over the last 2 months.

It all started after I binked a $109 turbo on the 4th of October. I have been doing particularly crap in $109 turbos all year, and this was my first outright win since January. Consequently I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I even made a couple of frivolous purchases; something I rarely do just because I happen to have experienced some positive variance. Little did I know I was about to be brutally punished for this. I went on an absolute death run in everything.

Those of you that have followed my blog (when I used to update much more regularly!) will know that I am generally somewhat of a variance nit. I was always pretty proud that my Sharkscope graph never shows me going on more than a $10k downswing. Still, I've taken a few swings that felt kind of rough before. Actually in October 2012 I grinded through a $7k downswing and wrote a small article about mental fortitude and such (see here). In late 2011, I asked Father Christmas for my sick graph back after a long break-even stretch, featuring a 200 buy-in downswing in $60 18-mans (see here). I've never experienced anything quite like this, though.

Perhaps I have been particularly fortuitous in my poker career to have avoided such a death run until now. I can't deny I have had the odd particularly lucky bink (Winning the Sunday Supersonic was ridiculous, so was my 3rd place in the Monte Carlo although it was kind of due but that's a difficult claim to make when it comes to live poker tournaments), but when you go on a death run, any previous fortune is quickly forgotten.

Epitomised life-time graph on PokerStars

Whenever I encounter someone who questions my job, or the ability to support my kids via gambling (a fairly common occurrence when speaking to those who know little about poker), I tend to throw them the statistic that I hadn't had a losing month in 4 years. I suppose I was technically stretching the truth, as I did actually have a losing month in February 2012. However I only played 500 games that month because my daughter was born then. Other than that though, it was true.

Monthly Profit Chart (does not factor in rakeback)

Well October changed all that. I sat down at my computer and just started losing. For the first few sessions it was a bit annoying (as anything other than winning tends to be!) but it was standard and to be expected. But then it kept happening. Repeatedly. Not just losing but on a complete free fall where I couldn't win anything. The more it went on, the more I struggled to believe it was possible to run quite so bad. We've all talked about the mythical "doom-switch", well I was starting to become a believer in its existence. Had someone at PokerStars read my petulant comments aimed at the PokerStars SNG rep on 2+2 and pushed the button on me??

It's a common theme amongst recreational players to say that sites are "rigged". You see it all the time. The "Poker is rigged, collected threads edition" on 2+2 has 60,000+ posts and 2.5 million+ views. Obviously this is a completely ridiculous notion, and it's difficult to show anything but complete contempt for people that say anything like this. However, I got a glimpse into the mind of someone that does think like this last month. What I mean by that is, I am extremely well educated in variance, I have been a professional poker player for ~6 years, I've played more than 80,000 SNGs/tournaments. I've seen it all. Yet I ran so bad in October that I was seriously beginning to wonder whether there was some kind of virus on my computer or something! If a fish was to run anywhere near as bad as me over a short space of time (which is more likely assuming they are playing much worse than me...well, probably!), I can see where this unreasonable train of thought might arise.

$25k for the games I was playing was pretty ridiculous, with an average buy-in around the $35 mark. I wasn't doing anything too much different than I had for the previous couple of years. I guess the only thing which did change was I really went for it on each Sunday. Under the guise of working harder to try and grind through the downswing, I think I was looking for the easy way out. Just a quick-fix Sunday bink to get out of it.

Unfortunately Sundays went disastrously, and were pretty soul destroying. I kept getting to 2 or 3 tables out in huge fields where there were big prizes on the final tables, but I diddn't quite get there.

Sunday November 3rd seemed to be no exception. Except this time I was blanking everything. I had just a handful of tables left, and it wasn't looking good. My cashier balance was $25k down on what it had been just a month earlier, and I was psychologically preparing myself for a drop in stakes, and heading to Grindsville Central for the rest of the year.

Epitomised 2013 PokerStars graph

After a month of running like death, I finally had a turnaround in fortune, and managed to run really well in the $109 Cubed Turbo (not a tournament I recall playing before. I played it as a squared, but still, I wouldn't recommend flicking this one in, the field is ridic) which was one of the few tables I had left. Something strange was happening, I was winning showdowns, left right and centre. Even a couple where I got it in kind of bad! I could easily have finished 7th for $4k when I jammed A9 into tens, but I caught a miracle A on the river, which inevitably led to me finishing 3rd for $13k.

Although it only dug me out of half of my downswing, that bink was pretty damn good for morale, and was definitely a huge turning point for me. I had got to the point where I didn't feel like I could win anymore, and I certainly missed that feeling. That bink made me feel like I might actually win again. Although I'm sure that feeling doesn't help you actually win, coincidentally this time around I actually did start winning again. I'm not sure 'momentum' is really a thing in poker, but I seemed to have it, and November has ended up being really kind to me, and I dug my way out of my worst downswing ever.

Normally two months of breaking even would feel prettttty shitty. On this occasion though, I'll definitely take it. It actually feels like a pretty good achievement grinding out of such a hole. I definitely feel like I have learnt a lot from the experience. I think in the future I will be even more battle hardened against variance. I also learnt the perils of shot taking, something I tended to avoid most of the time, so I think I'll go back to being a more careful in this regard.

My online results this year haven't been all that spectacular, obviously this 2 month blip hasn't exactly helped, so I'm hoping I can end the year on a high note in December.

Win Coaching
Just quickly, on another note, I will be donating a couple of hours of my time along with a bunch of other UK Pros to raise money for the charity Crisis. It's £21.84 to enter the draw (which is the cost to give a place to a homeless person in a Crisis centre over Christmas) to win a couple of hours coaching with one of us. If you are interested, check out thread here: http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=62691.0

Monte Carlo

2013-05-14T11:29:00.000+01:00

I have yet to blog about my 3rd place finish in the Dusk Till Dawn Monte Carlo tournament in April for £45k, which is the biggest result of my poker career. Given that the big tournaments at DTD are my only real chance to play live poker without being away from my kids (it's only a 50 minute drive away), I tend to play the bigger tournaments there when I can. Having said that I was taking a bit of a shot buying in direct and not selling any action given that it was a £1,000+£100 buy-in. I also dropped $3k in my online games immediately prior to it, so it really felt like taking a shot, and given that I'm quite a huge nit, I could easily have decided not to play.

However, I did. I played the first live Day One, and bust out to John Eames in a standard rejam spot after getting short somewhere in level 7 or 8 or so. So that was Game Over. Except that there was a satellite for the second Day One (re-entry was allowed), where late registration was just about still open as I bust. There was some overlay in the satellite, so being the grinder I am I sought out the small amount of value there was in playing, despite the dejection from busting out and that inevitable feeling of just wanting to "go home" that I tend to get when busting a big live tournament. Fortunately I ran like God in the satellite and won a seat. I would have never re-entered the tournament if it wasn't for this!

It didn't look like my second shot was going to go much better. I was down to a 10k stack from 30k starting stack on the first day. Somehow though, I avoided an all-in showdown for the whole day, and grinded my way back to 50k. I really don't know how I went through so much of the tournament without being all-in and called. My only single all-in confrontation until Day Three was a double through AIPF with AKs vs QQ at the beginning of Day Two.

I played pretty solid without getting too out of line, at least as far as I recall. I do remember making a six bet shove with AQ from the button versus the big blind where I felt pretty sure he didn't have it, and he snap folded. I didn't get much going my way towards the end of Day Two and ended up coming back 25th/30 and about 18 big blinds.

I travelled back to Dusk Till Dawn fully expecting to bust out in a short space of time, as I have done many times in the past. This time, though, I went into full on God Mode. When we merged into 3 tables I made a standard cut-off jam with J9s for 16bbs or so (antes were in play of course). In a spot of irony John Eames woke up on the button with Pocket Tens and was ready to bust me for the second time, but I managed to spike a Jack.

I then (quite literally) went on to bust a couple of Fish. First, I bust the legendary Devilfish when he squeeze jammed the big blind after I had opened with 99. It was a pretty close spot, but I went with it. He had AK and I just boomed a door card 9, and had him dead on the flop. I then went on to bust local legend 'Rastafish', who had previously won this event. I 3-bet his cut-off open from the big blind with JJ, and he jammed over a c-bet on a 246 rainbow board with A7os. Rastafish has a reputation for running rather well, so I was somewhat relieved to hold there, even with ~85% equity!

I think it was the next orbit of the table where I opened the cut-off with Pocket Fours, and had John jam on me again for about 12bbs. I made the sigh call, and he tabled Pocket Sevens. I somehow got there again and bust out John in brutal fashion.

Now with chips, I sort of cruised through to the final table bubble, picking my spots with a decent chip stack to utilise. I then made a fairly standard rejam with 66 with 10 left, and managed to run into Aces. Nevermind though, a miraculous 6 on the board gave me the chip-lead going into the final table.

The final table was really tough, with 4 heroes (Kevin Allen, Richard Trigg, Ben Jenkins and Jamie Rutherford), and everyone else was pretty decent as well. I wasn't overly pleased with how it went, basically because I kept giving chips to Kevin Allen, who went on to win. On 3 separate occasions I called him down 3 streets and he just had me by the conkers each time. In each case I could have folded the river, as my hands essentially shrivelled up into bluff catchers. But he was opening so wide, virtually ATC at times, it felt so difficult for him to have the top of his range each time, but I guess I may have made a misjudgement about his 3 barrelling tendencies vs me.

Thankfully, to offset this, I was fortunate enough to run really well with the cards I was dealt preflop, I got in A9s > Q8s to bust 9th place. I picked up KK in a spot where I could have been abusing my chip position, and was able to 7-bet jam vs Trigg and pick up a bunch of chips. I also cold 4-bet AK and made Allen, who had opened, fold AK.

My luck sort of died out 4-handed. Trigg doubled through Allen with ATs vs KK, where if he bust in 4th it would have enabled me to come 2nd really often as the other guy (Rutherford) was short. Also a bit of a misunderstanding occurred at a bad time. A few minutes after my 3rd aforementioned 3-street call down of Allen, I was heckled by a DTD reg that I had played with a couple of times. What I heard him say was; "How could you call down there with Q9-off". This is the hand I was holding in the hand, and I assume he had seen the live feed. This was about the most brutal thing he could have said at that very point in time, and I had a pretty major rant at him from the table, and was pretty steamed. However it turns out that he couldn't possibly have known this, as my cards on this hand didn't show up in the feed. I saw him a few weeks later and did my best to offer an apology and explain what I thought he had said. It turns out he had said "How could you play Q5" or something similar, where he was jokingly referring to a completely insignificant hand in a different tournament he'd played with me where he though I'd played Q5 questionably. Oops :-/

I guess it didn't really affect things as I bust in a standard spot a few hands later, where I raise/called off about 20bbs with 55 3-handed. I couldn't hold vs Trigg's KJs and I was gg'd.

After I bust out, I was completely mentally exhausted. I'm not sure if it was the feed, the high pressure situation of so much money being at stake, or the quality of the final table, but I was completely knackered and almost in a trance.

As is generally the case with poker tournaments, especially those you go deep in, I was pretty disappointed not to win. I certainly had a very decent chance of it, and it sucks that a couple of questionable decisions I made perhaps restricted my chances. With the payout jumps being so massive (£120k, £70k, £45k) it's hard not to think about what might have been. On the other hand, I played great poker for 3 days and ran the hottest I ever have in a live tournament, and had my biggest ever pay day, so I can't really be too disappointed.

The live feed was uploaded onto YouTube if you're interested, but it's bloody long! (I join somewhere at the 2:12:00 mark, and it's 9 hours long in total!)

Overdue (but brief!) update...

2013-03-26T10:43:00.002+00:00

I'm very aware that it's been a long time since I've posted, but I'm managing to finally update when I'm really short on time, as I'm about to take the wife and kids to Disneyland Paris for a few days, so I'm going to have to be brief (I realise I could have posted sooner when I had more time, but this is pretty in keeping with my reputation to leave everything until the last minute).

Year so far...

I'm doing decent overall this year, but it could certainly be going much better. Unfortunately I'm also getting absolutely pummelled in >$80 buy-in games, down a whopping $11.5k for the year. I actually didn't know it was quite that much until I just looked it up. Ouch. That's a result of not doing well in my $109 Turbos, the hypers I've played, and I've taken a couple of Sunday shots that went rather badly.

Also, my finish distribution in scheduled tournaments this year absolutely sucks, which isn't helping at all.

PokerStars scheduled tournaments 2013

It's a wonder then that my 2013 graph actually looks pretty reasonable, a break-even February aside:

PokerStars rep vote

Back in October I entered a vote to become a player representative at PokerStars meetings on the Isle of Man and bubbled. I'm giving it another shot for the April 2013 meetings. Voting is open now on 2+2, and I would really appreciate any votes. I think I'd be a great person to represent SNGs and MTTs.

Vote here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/poll-12208-my-first-choice-vote-user-rep-meet-ps-april-goes.html

My first 10k

I'll be entering my first 10km race, the Lincoln 10k (conveniently located where I live), on April 7th. I have run 10km a couple of times in my training which is a great milestone to pass, and I'm really looking forward to my first race. I haven't sorted out sponsorship just yet, but I'm sure I will when I get back from Disneyland.

That's all I've got time for! I'll try and get back to updating more often (and in more detail!). GL at the tables!

October Review & New Column

2012-11-02T18:42:00.002+00:00

Well October pretty much sucked donkey balls. One of the annoying things about poker is that variance and effort do not necessarily correlate with one another. I was rather lazy in September, but made a bunch of money running like God. Conversely, I grinded my titties off in October, and winded up doing only a little better than breaking-even. Fortunately I'm in more decent spirits than you would imagine for a break-even month, as I've dug my way out of a majority of a pretty soul-destroying $7k downswing.

I realise the flow of content from this blog has been a little dry recently to say the least. But I've undertaken a new column, so I will be writing a bit more often at least. Here is a snippet from (and link to) my first piece:

I think people who don’t know much about poker really underestimate the hard work and the emotional stability that it requires to be a professional poker player. Some of my friends give me the impression that they consider my job to be doss; the equivalent of playing Angry Birds on the iPad for a few hours a day, whilst they toil arduously in their respective 9-to-5 jobs... Read More

I've started mixing in a few non-PokerStars tournaments into my sessions, so I'm quite looking forward to seeing what Full Tilt games I might be able to add to my playing schedule when it relaunches next week. Hopefully I can avoid the pain that was October and get back to winning. The wife has turned into Santa Claus at the minute, so I could do with earning some money before Christmas roles around!

A bit of a sweat...

2012-10-06T15:33:00.003+01:00

I went for a sort of multiple meaning title for this blog post. I've currently got a bit of a sweat trying to get voted for something, I had a bit of a live tournament sweat, and this last week I did my first 5km run :)

Vote for me :)
I'm hoping to get voted to represent players at some PokerStars meetings on the Isle of Man in a couple of weeks time.

The main aim of the meetings is two way communication between PokerStars and the players. We can discuss future plans and development priorities for new client features, game offerings, VIP Club benefits including 2013 changes, promotions, or pretty much anything the players care to discuss.

I think I'd be a good person to rep SNGs and MTTs, given that I have played a wide variety of these formats on PokerStars, and I have always taken an interest in software improvements, game offerings and such. Some of you may remember me ranting when they bumped the rake up in SNGs last year, but it was meant to be constructive.

Only 3 people on 2+2 will get voted in, and at time of writing I'm currently in 4th place with 51 votes, just a few votes behind 3rd place. I think I've been hurt a little by my completely irrelevant 2+2 username, whereas some of the guys have the same name as their PokerStars screenname. ~~If you have a couple of seconds spare, I'd really appreciate your vote (vote for "theMBK") here.~~ (voting now closed, I bubbled after having 5 votes deducted). A big thanks to anyone who voted. .

~~If I do get "elected" I'd be happy to share any ideas or suggestions anyone has. Feel free to leave a comment or tweet me or whatever if you notice that I do make it through.~~

Live sweat
I made my first live tournament final table since December 2009, but then again it did only have 31 runners. It essentially played like an 18-man semi-turbo, so structure wise I was in my element. We chopped 3 ways and I took home ~£4300, the reason I dealt being the added value of a £5000 satellite package to play in the Dusk Till Dawn Carribean Poker Party. So we played it out for that, and despite being a reasonable favourite against the last two guys I managed to finish 3rd in a sort of sigh spot where I got it in against the big fish with 5% equity. That was obviously rather disappointing, so it was sort of a bitter sweet result.

Although that had temporarily improved my attitude towards live poker, I managed to bust both Day 1s of the most recent DTD £500 over the last couple of days, so I'm back to wanting to just grind online and forget about live poker again.

First 5k
In my last blog post I talked about my desire to get fit, and how I was doing the "Couch to 5k" program. I ran my first 5km a couple of weeks early (It's a 9 week plan, but you're running 4.5km by week 7 so I just took it a bit further). That felt like a nice achievement, but I am really getting into running and have already set my sights on running 10km.

Whilst I feel much fitter and better about myself, the idea that it would help me play better poker has kind of backfired. I'm so super motivated to run and get fit, it seems to have stolen away my motivation to grind poker. I'm hoping this is just a temporary problem, and am going to work on finding a nice schedule where I get up perhaps even earlier than usual, grind for ~7 hours, exercise (run or swim, I'm planning to start swimming as well) and then do some study afterwards, because I just haven't been finding enough time to study recently and that isn't good enough as gaining leaks is just inevitable without enough study.

GL at the tables...

Couch to 5k

2012-09-13T10:46:00.000+01:00

My apologies for such a large gap in updating my blog. I had temporarily lost motivation in that area. Fortunately my golfer's elbow problem that had benched me from playing poker for 2 or 3 weeks now seems fully healed, and things are back to normal in that respect. My Evoluent 4 mouse is working out nicely, and I purchased a Razer Nostromo Keypad to help take a little pressure off my right hand/arm, which is very useful.

Although blog motivation has been lacking, a few weeks ago I developed the motivation to try and get fit. I think it stemmed from my lack of stamina putting in long poker sessions, and I read somewhere that good fitness can really aid concentration. It's been many years since I belonged to a gym, but the last time I did I remember it having a positive effect on my poker. Coincidence or variance, perhaps, but I think there is merit to the phrase "Healthy body, healthy mind".

Not really having time to trek to the gym all the time, I decided to start running, and stumbled across a running programme as I did a little research. It is called "Couch to 5k" and is a 9 week programme where you gradually build up from being a complete novice/couch potato, to being able to run 5km. You download the podcast on iTunes, run when the (rather lovely sounding) lady tells you to run and walk when she tells you to walk.

I am now on Week 4 of the podcasts, and I am rather proud of myself for sticking with it. I am actually really enjoying it. I have experienced a few "runners highs" along the way, and just generally feel better about myself. It's also nice to be able to race with my son in the back garden without wanting to collapse after 5 minutes :)

Poker is going okay at the moment. I'm still not putting in the volume I would like, but I have found a decent schedule which is basically MTTs mixed with the occasional 45 and 180-mans. It means I get lovely sync breaks, and my table count has gone down a little which makes sessions a little bit easier going. On the flip side, I can expect bigger swings than when my sessions were mostly SNG filled.

It's been a while since I posted my 2012 stats (since April I believe). I'm doing very nicely, but am well aware that my results are propped up by my bink in the Sunday Supersonic in May, which was essentially just a lucky break.

Hopefully I can continue to run good in more ways than one :)

Armistice...

2012-08-06T17:00:00.001+01:00

I have temporarily had to cease from engaging in ~~war~~pokerfare at the tables as I have buggered up my right arm. Unfortunately for me it hurts to manoeuvre a mouse for any length of time (and tbh typing isn't exactly a trip to Disney World either, so this might not be the longest of blog posts).

After several days of pain I decided it was time to go to a doctor. Unfortunately I couldn't get an appointment for 4 days so I went to a walk in clinic instead. The nurse practitioner told me that I had Repetitive Strain Injury, which was a concern I had from Googling my symptoms. FML, that's not going to be good long term for the pokerz.

Whilst not being able to play I did a few things to try and sort out my poker setup to be more friendly to my body. I don't think I have been sitting very well (slouching), which really can't be good for my back considering the long periods of time I'm in that position. I recommend everyone spend a little time looking into this and getting their set-ups to be a bit more ergonomically friendly.

I also did some reasearch on some mice. I tried using my Logitech M570 trackball for a while, but I just can't get on with it sufficiently. So I shelled out and replaced my haggered Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 with a Wireless Evoluent 4. I haven't had chance to test it out fully yet, but I do really like it, and it might even give me some extra hotkey options as it has buttons that can be assigned a shift/toggle function.

Out ----------------> In

I decided to still go to my Doctors appointment. This Doctor actually examined me and diagnosed me with Golfer's Elbow, instead of RSI. Whilst I think this is positive for the long term (hopefully it will go away in the future and not be a continual problem like RSI) for the short term I think it's pretty shitty. I've played almost no poker in the last 2 weeks and I anticipate it not being healed for at least another 2 weeks. I'm in a bit of a tough spot because. I don't want to exacerbate the problem and prolong my agony, but nor do I want to make no money for a whole month. I'm going to have to suck it up soon and just do what I can to put some volume in.

To prevent me from feeling like a complete bum, I decided to go an play some live pokerz in the form of the £430 Genting Poker Series event in Stoke, where I lived for a year whilst studying at Keele University. I had a friendly table, upon which I had a "Moneymaker moment" waiting what seemed like an age for a short-stack to make a decision for all his chips (having led out on the flop and then being raised), to the point of me considering calling the clock on them, before it being pointed out to me that the action was on me, FML (ironically I was listening to a song on my iPad called "Wait for You" whilst I was unknowingly tanking my Ace high hand).

As usual there are pros and cons with live poker, I enjoyed the social side and it was nice to see some friends there, but I busted twice (it was a re-entry tournament) and the first buy-in felt somewhat spewy, and the second one I got sicked in an AKs vs A7os AIPF spot, so it was a pretty disappointing day from that perspective.

I'm really anxious to get back playing online, and it's really frustrating not being able to. This is one of the downsides of being a professional poker player that I first came across when a severe case of conjunctivitis put me out of action for a couple of weeks in 2010. No play, no pay :(

Half a million hits?!!

2012-07-18T15:23:00.003+01:00

Now seems like as good a time as any to post an update, as I've surpassed the rather impressive milestone of having clicked the F5 button 500,000 times on my blog :-D ... For real though, I feel somewhat humbled that my tiny piece of the internet has managed to accumulate some pretty decent traffic, so thank you to anyone that reads regularly/not so regularly, or even those who just like to use it as a link to read ~~other~~ better blogs.

I've been blogging since 2007 and it's nice to have a record of things, as you do tend to forget the details. Occasionally I'll read back my old posts and think "wtf was I doing at that time". Certainly in my early blogging days some of my reported hands are questionable! But I've come a long way since then, and I think it's important to remember the journey :)

Anywayz...

Since I binked the Sunday Supersonic I feel like my poker play has lost a little direction, and for the last few weeks I've been trying to determine what games I should play going forward. I've kind of had 2013 in mind, and whether there is a realistic way to attain Supernova Elite whilst still playing the off-peak hours that I play which enable me to have a somewhat normal family life.

Consequently I decided to take a crack at 6-max Hyper-Turbos for a while, but ultimately I decided that they weren't for me, for a number of reasons:

I don't like the sheer quantity of all-in showdowns. Obviously this is tantamount to saying you don't enjoy playing football because you don't enjoy the movement of a ball or something, it is an inherent part of the game, but I found myself sweating far too many showdowns which I think is a mental game leak.
I don't handle swings all that well. Again, another mental game leak, but certainly the variance in Hyperturbos is bigger than in other formats that I've played. I'm just not used to a $6k downswing being uber-standard.
The ratio of regs:fish can suck, and table selecting is somewhat annoying as it distracts you from the games you are playing while you study the lobby.
I also don't feel like I enjoy the games as much. I guess as a SNG player it's somewhat rich complaining about a lack of postflop play :-) but just so much of hypers is to do with pre-flop and assigning people ranges. To stay on top of your game this requires a shit-load of studying.

A few former 18-man regs, such as Quadchrazs and $indabank111 have found real success in the games since moving over, and I'm sure have increased their hourly rate. But I fear I was guilty of "grass is greener" syndrome here, and I don't think I have what it takes to tough out the 6-max hyper-turbos. I only played 2,300 games, so I think my results were somewhat inconsequential; I roughly broke even before rakeback.

After deciding against Hyper-Turbos, the decision I'm currently struggling with is "to sync break, or not to sync break?". 18-man SNG traffic seems to have dried up a little recently, at least it has at the times I play. Consequently I have been back-and-forth with myself over whether I should drop them from my sessions (18-mans don't have sync breaks). I have been trialling sessions where I mix 45-mans, 180-mans and MTTs (all of which do have sync breaks). It might mean sacrificing a little off my hourly rate, but that 5 minute break is so appealing. It allows me to eat a little better (am able to go and grab food other than that I have put within reach of my desk!) and really eases the stress of playing a session.

If only PokerStars were to introduce sync breaks in 18-mans, I think all my problems would be solved!

I'm not exactly sure which way I'm going to go on this yet, and I still have an eye on next year. But for SNE to be viable next year, I need to find an extra 1,500 or more VPPs a day from somewhere, which I think will be difficult. Nevertheless 2013 is a long way off yet, and I just need to keep playing and paying the bills!

Holiday in Ibiza
In the middle of all this uncertainty I went on holiday for a week with my wife and kids to Ibiza. Anyone who has been on holiday with a baby and a toddler will know that I use the term "holiday" somewhat loosely! Aside from the place we went to (Portinatx) being a little on the quiet side, with nothing much else to do other than be at the hotel or the beach, we had a really nice time and it was good to get away, and not think about anything poker related for a whole week.

Before we went, I got a few odd looks when I told people I was my family for a weeks holiday in Ibiza.

No, we weren't going to do this:

This was more the scene:

Tbh I think at 27 years old my own pictures are much more appealing (bikini glad girls aside) anyway :)

Further reading:
If you haven't heard about the ridiculous ruling made in a cash game at the WSOP (which was tantamount to theft), read about it here.

Also, Dave Nicholson has posted up the first of his blog posts about his trip to Vegas, which are always somewhat epic. Check it out here.

Winning the Sunday Supersonic...

2012-06-22T21:01:00.000+01:00

My apologies for the gap since I last updated my blog, I was just concentrating on playing for a while. Perhaps it had a little something to do with the disappointment in being rejected for PokerStars Team Online, as that motivation is one of the reasons I keep this blog. It also took me a while to get around to making the video that I've posted below, and I wanted that to be the feature of my next (this) blog post.

For those of you who don't know, I was fortunate enough to win the $215 Sunday Supersonic on PokerStars a month ago. It by far exceed's my previous online tournament win ($5,745), and live tournament score ($16,000) as it was $51,303 FTW.

Actually, though, I only ended up taking ~$22k after clearing make-up and shipping the other half to my backer. I had an ongoing deal where I was staked for $40+ MTTs only over the past year or so. In many ways, it was a bit of a leak of mine. It wasn't that I needed to be staked money-wise, it was more of a mind-set thing. It allowed me to grind $109 Turbos alongside my normal SNG schedule, without getting too beat up about the variance in them.

In some ways, it seems silly. I never encountered more than a $6.5k downswing, and I generally just kept sending my backer some money here and there. But then again, I've always liked the steady earnings of playing SNGs, and was aware of my own attribute of not dealing with big swings very well, so I don't regret doing it, although I have decided to grind them on my own dime for now and see if I can handle the added variance (I will be listening to The Mental Game of Poker Audiobook soon, that ought to help!)

So I was of course ecstatic to win a Sunday Major, and it felt like the first time for ages where I had a decent amount of spare cash. I've since invested in a new car (nothing too fancy, it's an '09 Toyota Corolla Verso for jetting the children around in), a new corner settee for the living room, and a new dining table. So pretty ridiculously sensible purchases really, but then again I am married and a father of two now so I suppose it comes with the territory.

It was cool to be able to watch a recording of my final table victory on the PokerStars client for the week after I binked, and I thought it would be good for my blog if I recorded it and did some commentary over the top. So here is my final table performance (with all player's hole cards exposed):

SNG Superstars 2012 (Part 3 - MTTSNGs)

2012-05-18T12:12:00.000+01:00

Here is Part 3 of my look at how the top 5 SNG players stack up for the first four months of 2012 in a variety of different formats on PokerStars. This part is focused on Multi-Table SNGs. Use the link below if you missed the earlier parts in the series.

Part 1 - HUSNGS
Part 2 - STTs
Part 3 - MTTSNGs

Multi-Table SNGS, or MTTSNGs (yes, one of the "T"'s in the generally used acronym is somewhat superfluous) have risen in popularity over the last few years. I think this can largely be attributed to 9-man SNGs becoming solved/reg-infested/unbeatable, with players looking for a player-pool with a better fish:reg ratio and higher attainable ROI's. They can also be good for recreational players, as 180-mans especially have some of the attributes of MTTs that can see a massive return on a small investment for winning.

45-mans and 180-mans also have hourly sync breaks so can be mixed in by MTT players. I've been praying multiple times a day for sync breaks to be added to 18-mans, but alas, PokerStars have so far decided not to add them for these games so far.

18-man SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $200

1500 Chips, 5 or 10 Minute Levels

1st - live@pompeii

'live@pompeii' is American Poker Pro Darren Maroni, who relocated to Mexico in order to grind for Supernova Elite this year where he is sharing a house with another sick SNG grinder, 'jdawg91'. He's not too far behind SNE pace, and is having an extremely consistent year at the 18-mans so far.

18-man results 2012

Interestingly he started out on this year's SNE challenge with just a $1500 bankroll! Maroni, who goes by the screenname 'starting gun' on the 2+2 Forums, is regularly keeping track of his SNE progress in this this thread. He certainly has a solid work ethic! You can also find him on twitter @MaroniPoker

-----------------------------------------

45-man SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $60

1500 Chips, 5 or 10 Minute Levels

1st - JayPez

'JayPez' is fellow Brit Jon Parsons, and similar to 'live@pompeii' is keeping an interesting thread on 2+2 (here) detailing his progress throughout the year. He has been using 45-mans as a platform, in order to take-shots at bigger MTTs and bigger stakes MTTSNGs, and has been very successful with this approach for the year so far (aside from having to rebuild his bankroll last month!), having earned ~$40k for the year so far.

One interesting thing about JayPez is that he chooses to play on multiple different poker sites as a means of table selection and to get in extra volume. I respect this as personally that would tilt me too hard: I like the smoothness of the PokerStars client and the functionality of TableNinja too much :). Across all sites Jay-Pez has cashed for over $1 million in tournaments.

-----------------------------------------

180-man SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $2.50 - $60

1500 Chips, 5 or 15 Minute Levels

1st - stimme38

Unfortunately 'stimme38' is the only player I wasn't able to find out too much about. He is a German native and the vast majority of games he has played on PokerStars are 180-mans. He is having his best year by far, and based on his ROI, his game has really improved, as he has earned more in the 11,000 games than he had in the 35,000 games he played before this at similar stakes.

'LilBigKahuna', in 2nd place, won this leaderboard in 2011 with just north of $100k profit, and it looks like stimme38, him and several others are vying for 1st place, and a similar profit, in this leaderboard this year.

-----------------------------------------

...Apologies for taking my time to release this part. I'm thinking I might do a fourth part, with some observations from the series, so look out for that if it happens :)...

Note:

*Leaderboards based on January 1st - April 30th 2012 results

*Players who block themselves on Sharkscope aren't included

SNG Superstars 2012 (Part 2 - STTs)

2012-05-07T16:16:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Part 2 of my look at how the top 5 SNG players stack up for the first four months of 2012 in a variety of different formats. This time I'll be looking at Single Table Tournaments. Use the link below if you missed Part 1.

Part 1 - HUSNGS
Part 2 - STTs
Part 3 - MTTSNGs

Whilst the Turbo 9-man STT was probably the 'original' SNG many years ago, it is gradually dying, and has been for a while. It has become somewhat of a solved game, and under the current rake structure, is barely beatable. The vast majority of high-stakes SNGs played these days are 6-max SNGs, although Hyperturbos have become very popular at the lower stakes since their introduction.

Turbo 6-Max SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $100

1500 Chips, 5 Minute Levels

1st - WushuTM

WushuTM is Austrian Poker Pro Thomas Muhlocker. Muhlocker is actually more of an MTT and 6-Max Hyper Turbo SNG reg, but has managed to run rather well over a small sample in the high-stakes 6-Max Turbo's he has played this year, presumably with some table selection involved.

Leaderboard stats on top (left graph), Lifetime stats beneath (right graph)

Muhlocker has earned ~$850k in profit across multiple sites, with his single biggest score being $84k for an outright victory in a $150 MTT on Full Tilt at the beginning of last year.

-----------------------------------------

Hyper-Turbo 6-Max SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $7,140

500 Chips, 2 or 3 Minute Levels

1st - jellycz

No, you haven't read that wrong. I've double checked it. Twice. 'jellycz', who is Poker Pro Petr Jelenik from the Czech Republic (I did double check this too, I didn't just assume it from his screen-name), has played over 50,000 SNGs already this year. It perhaps won't surprise you that Jelenik is a Supernova Elite player, who last year played an enormous 114,000 SNGs in his quest to become SNE in 2011. Apparently he has managed to avoid burn out as he is on course to play even more than that this year.

Jelenik has also had reasonable success in the MTTs he has dabbled in, including a win in the $215 Sunday 2nd Chance tournament at the end of 2009 for $46k. When factoring in rakeback, Jelenik has made a about $300k on PokerStars. You can follow him on Twitter @jellycz.

-----------------------------------------

Turbo 9-Man SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $1,000

1500 Chips, 5 Minute Levels

1st - tonkaaaa

Although from this chart alone it might not seem like it, 'tonkaaaa' has had an incredible 2012. tonkaaaa is Canadian Poker Pro Parker Talbot, and in mid-February he finished 2nd in the $215 Sunday Warm-Up for $88k. In the ~10 weeks since then he has doubled that in the MTTs and SNGs he has played.

Perhaps what makes this more impressive is that Talbot has only been playing professionally for a little less than a year. $300k for a years work doesn't sound too shabby to me! You can read more about Talbot's story, and success, by clicking here.

-----------------------------------------

Hyper-Turbo 9-Man SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $100

500 Chips, 2 Minute Levels

1st - L.A.Ruseman

Perhaps a bit less glamorous of a leaderboard compared to some of the others, but it definitely includes some sick grinders, with almost 100,000 SNGs played between the top 5 in just four months, with a majority of those games being played at just the $7 level, as that is where most of the traffic lies in these games. Atop them all is Andrew "L.A. Ruseman" Russell. A former Double or Nothing grinder, it seems he has transitioned well into the 9-Man Hyper-Turbos, and has a very consistent graph to show for his efforts.

-----------------------------------------

Fifty50 SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $200

1500 Chips, 3 Minute Levels

1st - ICANTSNG

Fifty50 SNGs are the bastard offspring of Double or Nothing SNGs, which were discontinued by PokerStars in February 2011 because of their susceptibility to collusion, as was evident when a Chinese cheating ring was uncovered to have stolen $750,000 from the Double or Nothing games. Fifty50's were a direct response by PokerStars to this, and rather than the top 5 out of 10 players doubling their money, half of the prizepool is distributed in relation to the number of chips a player finishes the SNG with.

ICANTSNG is the sick grinder in this category, playing over 25,000 games so far this year. ICANTSNG is from Australia, and achieved Supernova Elite status for the first time last year, and isn't too far behind pace to repeat that feat this year. SNE is worth $100k-$120k, and ICANTSNG seems to have found a somewhat variance free way of getting there, based on his results over his last 75,000 games.

Note:

*Leaderboards based on January 1st - April 30th 2012 results

*Players who block themselves on Sharkscope aren't included

SNG Superstars 2012 (Part 1 - HUSNGs)

2012-05-02T11:36:00.000+01:00

Approximately at this time last year I did a blog post looking at how the Sharkscope leaderboards shaped up for each category of SNG on PokerStars. I thought I would do something similar this year, taking a look at the first 4 months of the year so far. I'll be breaking it down into 3 separate posts:

Part 1 - HUSNGs

Part 2 - STTs

Part 3 - MTTSNGs

I'll post up a chart of the five biggest winners in each format, and then take a more in-depth look at the biggest winner.

First up then is HUSNGs, and there seems to be an incredible amount of money circulating in them.

The top 5 players alone have made a combined $450,000 in Turbo HUSNGs and an incredible $900,000 in Hyper-Turbo HUSNGs. It is evident that there has been a shift over to the Hyper Turbo format since they were introduced on PokerStars in July 2011, and a majority of the Top 20 players in the "Any Game, Any Stakes" list on Sharkscope are Hyper-Turbo HUSNG players.

Turbo Heads Up SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $5,000

1500 Chips, 3 Minute Levels

1st - Adonis112

'Adonis112' is 31-year-old Poker Pro Olivier Busquet from New York. He is also well known as 'livb112' which was his Full Tilt username. One might surmise that Busquet is pretty good at poker. For a start he has won just shy of $3 million in SNGs and tournaments since he began playing in 2006, mostly in Heads Up SNGs.

Not only that, he has accrued just over $3 million in live cashes, including a victory in the 2009 WPT Borgata Poker Open for $925,000. Also, just a couple of months ago, he finished 2nd place in EPT Campione 2012 for €430,000.

He's hasn't done too badly online this year either, as he is the biggest winner in the High Stakes Turbo HUSNGs this year. If you are interested in finding out more about Olivier Busquet, his website is here.

Hyper-Turbo Heads Up SNGs

Buy-Ins available: $1.50 - $1,000

500 Chips, 2 Minute Levels

1st - Serkules

'Serkules' is a 23-year-old Poker-Pro based in Germany. Since September 2009 he has earned $1.25 million between his PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker accounts, mostly in Hyper Turbo HUSNGs.

2012 has also been rather kind to Serkules. Not only is he up $365k in the first 4 months of the year, he also chopped the $2k High Roller event 4-ways in the inaugural TCOOP in January 2012, worth ~$165k. You can read a little more about Serkules here.

*Bear in mind the leaderboards don't include anyone who has blocked their stats.

Sickest Sunday ever?! (stpauli111 wins 4 tournaments)

2012-04-30T11:50:00.002+01:00

Scott Hall, better known as 'stpauli111', played 32 MTTs on PokerStars yesterday. He won four of them:

The $215 Sunday Supersonic for $42k
The Bigger $162 for $41k
A $55 Rebuy for $24k
A $200 Rebuy for $23k

Scott Hall

Hall is an American poker player from Arizona, currently residing in Spain. He has over $2.5 million in online winnings to his name, although I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb by saying this is the first time he (or possibly anyone else for that matter) has binked four huge tournaments in one day!

Must be nice!

Congrats to Mr. Hall.

Edit: I have just discovered (thanks Amatay) that he also won the $100 Rebuy on PokerStars on Saturday for $16k. #runbetter

The positive side of variance!

2012-04-29T11:39:00.000+01:00

Variance is a funny thing. I went through 4 or 5 months of what seemed like continuous pain with no sign of reprieve. But apparently I've paid my dues, and I'm running really well recently. Overall I'm probably running to expectation, it just took 6 or 7 months to even itself out.

That is why getting frustrated with the short term in poker is so futile. Don't get me wrong, I get annoyed with the short term plenty (as you'll know if you read this blog regularly!), it's just generally a waste of energy.

The graph below shows the extremity of what I'm talking about. Okay, this graph includes all the turbo MTTs I have played (as well as SNGs) which are naturally high variance, and doesn't show rakeback, but still...

epitomised, All Games, PokerStars, Last 6 Months

It's very possible that I'm playing a whole lot better now than I was during the bad patch, as I really think success breeds confidence in poker. Obviously thought I'm not playing that much better, I'm just running hot as well.

PokerStars taking over FTP speculation
I'm eager to find out the reality of the possible PokerStars takeover of Full Tilt. I think if it were to happen it would probably be a good thing in general. It obviously would be for anybody with money on Full Tilt. The only downside I can think of is it diluting the player pool, but Full Tilt and PokerStars managed to run alongside each other perfectly well for a long time so I can't see that being a huge problem.

The thing is that PokerStars is almost perfect, certainly in terms of software. So it seems almost silly to have a slightly inferior (imo) software running alongside. They will probably end up improving everything though, so then potentially you just have two virtually identical poker sites, which seems a little silly. I'm also interested in how the VIP system might work. If PokerStars owns both sites, will they merge the VIP system somehow? At least if I'm not able to make it as a PokerStars Team Online Pro, maybe the chance is there to become an FTP Red (Spade?) Pro?! Although if PokerStars have any sense (which they obv do), I don't think we'll be seeing quite so many sponsored players on there!

It will certainly be interesting to see see how things play out...

2+2 Hacked - Advice...

2012-04-27T11:07:00.000+01:00

I realise this is my second blog post that isn't really a blog post, and probably isn't giving you any new information. If you aren't aware, the 2+2 poker forums were hacked yesterday, and all e-mail addresses and passwords have been compromised.

Still, I thought it was worth referring you to this very useful article by NoahSD on what to do if you have a 2+2 account:

"2p2 Hacked–Do This Stuff Immediately" by NoahSD

PokerStars to purchase Full Tilt Poker?!

2012-04-24T15:45:00.002+01:00

A thread was posted earlier today (at 11.45am) on 2+2 was posted which states:

"PokerStars has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to buy FTP. The things I heard:

* All players will be refunded 100%
* Both sites back online
* Both sites have promotions
* Employees remain in both places

Expect more news today."

It has come to light that there might be some truth to this post, and much speculation has occured since. Click here to see the thread: Big News: PokerStars Purchases FTP(?)

Edit: Development #1 (3.45pm)

A tweet from the ChiliPoker CEO seems to give further weight to the rumour:

Edit: Development #2 (4.45pm)
It has become clear that the potential Group Bernard Tapie buy-out of Full Tilt Poker has fallen through, after they released this statement.

Edit: Development #3 (5.30pm)
Poker News site PokerFuse is reporting it as a done deal, saying that "sources have corroborated the story with Pokerfuse that a deal has indeed been reached but could not confirm any specific details".

Edit: Development #4 (8.00pm)
Shaun Deeb has posted on 2+2:
"The deal is already done by what I am told;

Players will be paid within 90 days
FTP will be open in the US market"

Edit: Development #5 (9.00pm)
PokerStars release a statement saying that they are unable to comment.

See this thread on PokerStrategy for more info on this story.

Team Online?

2012-04-19T11:41:00.002+01:00

Not a whole lot has occurred since my last update. I did play a couple of live donkaments, including the £1 million guaranteed UKIPT event at Dusk Till Dawn. It was great to see the club so insanely busy with tables everywhere, and it was nice to have a shot at winning £200k. Unfortunately I bust 20 minutes before the end of Day 1A, but it was one of those bust-outs where you can be happy because I felt I played really well, including folding KK correctly on a J963 rainbow board. I managed to avoid the call-because-you-can't-really-fold-even-though-you-know-you're-beat call that I've been known to succumb to before. I also had a really fun (although not soft enough for my liking) opening table and got into some fun battles, and enjoyed chatting to 'Pinchop' who was on my right.

I've also sent in my application for PokerStars Team Online, although I'm not holding my breath as I expect they would have approached me before now if I had a real shot at it. Plus I'm sure they've had thousands of applications for only a few spots. On the other hand I think I absolutely slam dunk all the criteria, except for perhaps the number of hours I have played being down this year. This is somewhat down to having a newborn though, and I'd be more than capable of grinding out the hours required of me if I were to make it on-board. Here's hoping I at least stand a chance or get some kind of sweat, even if only a couple of outs with one card to come. If any of you feel like visiting my blog for no real reason to boost myt hit count, every little helps ;-P

Speaking of online pokerz, I've finally got my Sharkscope graph looking somewhat pretty again. I realise it's a bit of a brag, but after a 12,000 game break-even spell, I think that's okay!

I will just be trying to play a decent amount online over the next couple of weeks, and will probably give the £500, £200k Guaranteed tourney at DTD a shot over May Bank Holiday weekend.

I have to post this cute picture of my 2 and half year old son Clark giving his 10 week old baby sister Alaina a kiss. Aside from trying to bosh her with a wooden ornament giraffe when she was a couple of weeks old (probably our fault for having a wooden ornament giraffe in all fairness), he really has taken to being a big brother better than we could have hoped :)

First Quarter Review...

2012-04-03T17:57:00.000+01:00

January 1st - March 31st

Things have finally started to turn around after a fair few months of treading water, and March turned out to be my best month at the tables since May 2011. It might seem a bit rich to reflect on the last 3 months when I actually barely played in February due to my daughter's birth, but meh, there's a few things I haven't mentioned on the blog yet, and I've made-up a new graphic to depict how my year is going so it makes sense to deploy it now :)

Although I don't play a whole bunch of MTTs generally, usually just a few turbos a day, I've had some nice results that I haven't ~~bragged about~~ mentioned yet on my blog.

1. My 1st Sunday Major victory!
Ok, it's a slightly misleading headline, that might lead you to think I've won "mad dimez", when actually I didn't. I also only sort of won. On Sunday 22nd March I chopped the $215 Pacific Rim Special Heads Up for ~$4,300 vs another SNG reg who got $90 more than me. We flipped any two cards for the TLBs (Tournament LeaderBoard points) and somehow the hands ended up being JJ vs A3 (rigged) and therefore PokerStars accredits me with a 1st place finish. Wiiiiiiiiiii.

Ok so with 103 entrants it's not quite the Sunday Million, but it was still a very welcome bink.

2. My biggest ever field victory
Prior to this bink, I believe I had never bested a field of more than 300 players. Consequently it felt very empowering to finish 1st of 4250 entrants in the Hot $2.20 on March 16th for ~$1,350. It was pretty fun dominating the final table in the knowledge that the money would likely mean a lot to the other finalists. After the tourney I Sharkscoped the rest of the top 5 just for the craic, and one had this particularly sick graph:

That's a lot of grinding right there. But wiiiiiiiiiiiii @ him finally being in the black :)

3. Two TCOOP final tables
Back in January I played a fair few of the TCOOP tournaments. I obviously bricked every Hold 'em event I played, but somehow managed to luck-box my way to a Limit Omaha 8, and a HORSE final table for ~$4k and ~$5.5k respectively. Further bragaments, I recently got sent these sick card protectors in the post :)

SNG Results:

SNGs have started to go nice and steadily for me again. Steadily, that is, except for a little experiment in $100 6-Max Hyper-Turbos I had (fwiw, although I would understand your scepticism on this matter, on this occasion 'experiment' does not mean tilting my nuts off at them after having a bad day elsewhere. I set out to give them a go, and just happened to run deathly at them, it was at this point I started to tilt my nuts off...). Unfortunately this 'experiment' led to me having my worst ever day on PokerStars yet :(

Fortunately I recovered some money in them, but have ultimately decided that they aren't for me. I'm such a variance nit that such a trial was probably ill advised anyway! I've also ran fairly Godly in other games since then, so if anyone would like to go and reassure the me of March 15th that everything will be rosey in a couple of weeks time, you might spare me some anxiety :)

So the graphic (now revamped) that I last posted towards the end of January now looks like this:

Not too shabby!

<--- Week 4 review | Future review --->

Lol (live) donkaments...

2012-03-16T16:01:00.000+00:00

In the last couple of weeks I took a shot at a couple of big live tournaments at my local cardroom, Dusk Till Dawn. I don't really get the chance to play big live tournaments very often, as I don't like to leave my wife and kids, so took the chance to play these two that were close-by, where I can sleep at home, and I happened to go deep in both of them.

First off was the £500 Monthly Deepstack that this time around drew 643 entries for a ~£320,000 prize-pool. Being a re-entry tournament, I went into it willing to fire the full 4 bullets over the 2 starting days. I busto'd my first bullet in a standard flip, and re-entered when a stack was worth about 30bbs. I ran pretty good, and I ended up going into Day 2 12/186 remaining.

Day 2 was pretty fun. I was playing well, I picked up some big hands in good spots, and I was in or amongst the chip leaders for much of the day. I bust Roberto Romanello when he shoved something like 9 bbs in MP and I called with 33 in the big blind, and the board ran out K, 9, 3, 3, x. I also ended up sharing a table with the legendary Devilfish.

The structure of the tournament meant it kind of descended into a crap-shoot from 3 tables out, where the average stack became ~15bbs. Of course, this suited me fine and it was highly likely I was the best player left with this kind of stack. Unfortunately for me, I saved my run-bad for the most pivotal point in the tournament. I lost a flip when I opened KT in the cut-off and Maria Demetriou made the obligatory 7bb shove with 88. Then with 16 left I made a reship on the button vs a 6bb UTG shove with A8 and was up against 89s, only for the door card to be the 9. With my remaining 7bbs I somehow managed to pick up AQs in early position when I was just hoping for cards that were in some way connected! Obv the eventual winner is sat to my left with KK and it's gg me.

With payouts of £85k/£50k/£30k/£20k for 1st-4th respectively, I was pretty gutted when I bust for a paltry (relatively speaking) £2.5k in 15th place. I have to play A LOT of SNGs to make that kind of money, and I was starting to smell it. Win any one of those 3 hands and I have a decent shot, but sigh, that's tournament poker for you. As they say; standard.

After deciding I was going to retire from live poker that evening, I managed to perk myself up again to come out of retirement and play the next tournament (The €700+70 Poker 770 Mega Poker Series) 4 days later. With starting stacks of 770 big blinds, and 77 minutes per level, this was set to be a gruelling affair if things were to go well (despite this sick structure I still managed to not get dealt AA for the whole tournament, FML!).

And go well they did. I got an excellent first table draw, with only a couple of good players, one of which was on my right. I built my way up to 180k (from 77k) in chips in Day 1 and was well above average going into Day 2.

I managed to bodge my first hand back on Day Two. I 3b an oldish guy who raised the C.O. from the button with 58s. My c-bet on 9J7 didn't work, but I binked the T on the turn. He check-raises me and I want to puke. Maybe I can just fold against said villain. The board paired on the river and he bets. Easy fold right? But sigh, he bet small and I was getting 4 to 1 or something and called. He obv had KQ and the table immediately broke after this hand. It was probably a good thing to prevent me steaming after losing 2/5 my stack in a stupid spot.

From there on in though I played super well for all of day 2. I made what was a really good call all-in for my tournament life with 2nd pair in a 4-bet pot as reported here:

Most will probably know James Atkin as "epitomised" and he has been a force to be reckoned online whilst trying to find the way back into the grind at the live tables. After the spectacular 3way set and River Quads, the Belgian Xavier Charlier has been using his big stack to push around the table, but he was just caught by Atkin with the fingers in the cookie jar. Preflop, epitomised raises from the Hijack to 4,200 in Level 10 at Blinds 1,000-2,000 / Ante 300 and the 770 Pro reraises to 10,000 from the Button. The Blinds get out of the way, but Atkin 4bets to 22,000 and gets called to go Heads-Up to the Flop 10♠ 3♦ Q♣.
The Brit check-calls 30,000 and once the 9♥ hit the Turn, the 770 Pro fires the next barrel for 60k. Atkin only had 80k behind and didn't even think about folding in the spot, the Belgian has to call off another 20k and flips over K♣ 5♣for a total bluff on the flop and a gutshot on the Turn. He is not drawing dead yet against the K♠ 10♥ of Atkin, but he cannot scoop the pot anymore and only split with a Jack on the River. The miracle doesn't happen and James Atkin bumps his stack up to ~290,000 in Chips, whereas the 770 Pro falls below that stack.

Fwiw he had 3 bet me on the bottom the previous orbit with 37s :)

I made another good play 2 or 3 levels later where I peeled an EP open with AJs, only to be 3-bet by an overly aggressive bad player in the CO. When the original raiser folded I made what would be a suspicious 4-bet, intending to induce. He obliged, and shipped all-in for just over 100bbs total. I snapped and he had ATs. It felt pretty heroic to call a 5-bet shove with AJs for a ridiculous amount of big blinds and be right, but obv he binked a ten.

From that point on in the tournament I was nursing an under-average stack, but this was still 20-30 big blinds and I clung on and clung on mostly in preflop wars. I survived with 66 vs AJ when I 3b jammed on the #1 ranked PocketFives player Chistopher 'NigDawg' Brammer, and later just about survived the money bubble which is where the day ended, with me placed 32nd/36 remaining.

Early on in Day 3, expecting the min-cash and the drive home 30-minutes later, I actually managed to win a couple of flips to keep me in contention. 55 vs A6s blind vs blind, then AK vs AJ & TT. Day 3 was all about preflop wars and I barely recall showing down a hand after these two flips. I clung on and clung on, and I was about 8th with 10 remaining, and happy to have a shot at making the final table.

I'd shipped the button vs the cut-off for 20bbs the orbit before, and he opens the cut-off again for 40k at 10k/20k(2k). I look down at JJ and I'm like, wiiiiiiiiiii. I jam again. He calls and I'm still reasonably happy, but he has QQ, FML. So I bubbled the final table and again fell short of the big money with £35k/£21k/£13k the payouts this time.

Despite feeling pretty crushed at missing out on two big final tables, there were good things to take from all this live poker. It was really good to catch up with some of my friends on the circuit. As many of you will know, grinding online is so bloody isolating, and it was nice to have some real humans to talk to. It was cool to share a table with some guys I get on well with, like Simon Deadman, Marc Wright, Andrew Hulme (who came 2nd, congrats!) and I even got to share a table with my old friend Mickey Wernick who I hadn't seen in a long time. Not to mention managed to grab a Nandos with my long-time friend Dan Carter and the hero that is John Eames.

I was also pleased to get the proverbial "duck off my back", in that I hadn't cashed in a live poker tournament since I binked a side-event at the Galway UKIPT in December 2009. That featured 26 tournaments without a cash which must be somewhere around the bottom of variance considering how 'lol' live poker is (although the last 12 or so of the Poker 770 were incredibly tough, shows that cream rises to the top in a structure of that nature!). At least my Hendon Mob page now reflects that I am still around.

Also, 2 small cashes is obviously better than just losing. Although it still doesn't quite seem like sufficient reward for approximately 45 hours of gruelling live poker!

Oh well, nevermind. It's back to the online grind for me after seemingly having barely played this year. I don't think I'll retire from live poker again just yet, as the £700+70 UKIPT in Nottingham has just been guaranteed at £1 million by Dusk Till Dawn. Third time lucky?

Volume fail, TV & taking a shot

2012-03-01T22:09:00.000+00:00

After more than 3 weeks off since my daughter was born, I've started to wean my way back into playing on-line. I'm struggling to find an exact routine that I want to play. I feel like I need to put in more full day sessions, after relying on just morning sessions for too long.

Infact I just had a look at my volume since Black Friday, and it's rather pathetic. I've only played 15,000 SNGs and 2,000 MTTs since that fateful day over 10 months ago. ~1,500 games a month average just isn't sufficient. I'd really prefer to see that I was in the 3,000-4,000 range.

Admittedly in this time I have moved house, gotten married, been on my honeymoon and a trip to Vegas, and had a daughter, so there is some explanation. I can't imagine any more major life events coming up in the near future though, so there is no excuse but to get grinding. I really need to put some volume in at the tables, and make some money, after not doing as well in that period as I would have liked, as well as not playing enough.

Before I get fully back into things I'm planning to take a shot at two big live tournaments happening closeby to me at Dusk Till Dawn (wiiiiiii @ the recent dualling of the A46 making it only 45-50 minutes away now) in the next week.

There is a £500+60, £250k Guaranteed tournament starting tomorrow, with two Day 1's, and 1 re-entry allowed each day. So I get 4 shots (hopefully not necessary obviously) at a big tournament. Then next week there is a sick tournament being run there by Poker 770 with a buy-in of €700+70 in which you get 77,000 chips, and levels lasting 77 minutes. It should be fun to play a tournament with such a sick structure.

It would be nice get a live result, as it is over 2 years since my Hendon Mob page got an addition (no I am not counting 394th in a €60 tournament, how tilting that gets displayed!). This is result of not playing a whole lot of live tournaments, and running deathly when I have bothered, but it would be nice to have some kind of bink so that people don't think I've gone busto :)

On another note I had fun appearing on the Sky Poker TV show for the second time last week. It's quite a slog appearing on a 4 hour live show, but I can pretty much talk about poker ad nauseum so I didn't find it too difficult.

My second-born...

2012-02-19T22:59:00.000+00:00

I haven't blogged in a while as I have been busy taking some "paternity leave" over the last couple of weeks. My wife gave birth on February 2nd, 3 days overdue, to our beautiful baby daughter Alaina Julie Atkin.

I was definitely less panicked this time around than I was with my son Clark. I heard Liz get out of bed at about 4am and I mumbled something along the lines of "you aren't going into labour are you?". She said "yes". I did the natural thing that you would expect in this situation, and snap went back to sleep :-)

She woke me up at about half seven, and we got all our stuff ready, took Clark to my mum and dad's house and drove to the hospital. Of course there was no-where to park and we ended up having a fair trek from an outer car-park. This especially sucked for me as I had to carry all the bags. Why do us men always have to do the heavy carrying. It took a long time to walk there as Liz was lagging behind and had to stop occasionally, which I thought was rather inconsiderate given that it was about -2 degrees or something. ;)

Turns out the hospital was pretty rammed with other people in the same situation, so got a bit of a poky room in the hospital. Liz was a bit bummed that there wasn't a bath as they helped her through the last time she was in labour. But meh, it was fine, and we got a really nice midwife assigned to us.

Me & Alaina

The next few hours were basically me trying to help Liz through her contractions, and her telling me to GTFO and not touch her! I just about managed to talk her out of having any drugs, which she had been adamant about (until her contractions started). I'll give her some major credit though, she did the whole labour without any drugs whatsoever. What a hero(ine).

The whole process was a lot quicker than last time, and the actual birth seemed insane. She was 'measured' for only the second time at about 1.40pm, and it turned out she was fully dilated. About 90 seconds later, there was a screaming baby on the bed! The mid-wife and student doctor were still trying to put their gloves on! It literally fell out lol. I can see the hea...oh she's here!

I've been pretty busy since then, it seems that having two children is a lot harder work than one. Liz is basically taking care of the baby whilst I take care of Clark. He's dealt with the change pretty well so far, aside from trying to feed her from Cheese and Onion crisps when he met her for the first time, and trying to bosh her on the head with a wooden giraffe ornament (and being adamant that he wanted to do it, when he was sternly told no, lol).

Brother & Sister

Liz had to have a few stitches as a result of the hyper-turbo birth (poker references ftw) so she found the first week pretty tough going, but I think we're getting into the swing of things now, and hopefully I can get back to working full time as I rather need to earn some nappy money!

Week 4 review - "Confidence Boost"

2012-01-31T10:44:00.001+00:00

January 22nd - 28th

I only put in a low volume week this week in SNGs, which was a result of me dabbling in the TCOOP, and taking a bit of time off to help my wife out who is now very heavily pregnant. I had some positive TCOOP results, which I will write about in my next blog post where I am going to review how MTTs went for me in January.

After what feels like months and months of running bad, I am currently running really good. Dropping down in stakes, forgetting about SNE and avoiding STTs has worked out really well for me so far. Although we're dealing with small samples here, this graph still paints a telling before/after picture (I quit SNE, STTs and $60+ 18-mans somwhere in the red circle).

My 6-man to 45-man SNGs Jan. 2012

Although I'm running above expectation over my last 1000 games, it is definitely the confidence booster I needed. I was feeling pretty miserable about poker and questioning myself as a poker player over the last few months, but this has been a catalyst to regaining my confidence, which I think is important as I believe you tend to play better when playing confidently.

It's a shame that results are the only tangible gauge that we have to measure how we are playing in poker.
Results are riddled with variance, and therefore provide unreliable data over the short, medium and occasionally even the long term. I think it is so difficult not to be affected by results, but the consequence is your mind-set is going to be hugely affected by variance.

I'm just hoping this positive variance continues :-)

<--- Week 3 review | 1st Quarter review --->