The £5k gtd at Luton last night made a sweet £9k and was obviously worth fighting for. My tournament was uneventful till, when holding KK i raise and get min raised from a short stack. Another chep behind goes all in and im not good enough to pass, even though i suspect shortie of the boots. Sure enough he has them, as does the other player. Board brings 9,10,3,Q and just as Jim is saying "any Jack", i peel one off :) Now thats form.

2 hands after and holding 2* the average stack of 15k an early position loose player raises to 3.2k with blinds at 200/400. I opt for a shove, hoping he has a medium pp and puts me on the AK. He thinks (?) for a while before saying "you might have AK" and calling his stack of 15k off with 33. 3 on the flop and thats all she wrote. Marvellous.

Cash game was fantastic, i limp re-raised UTG with aces and still got 2 callers. Hilarious. Walked away 1 up :)

Off out for a night on the lash now, was gonna play Luton but cant be fecked. Liverpool street for sick drinking games with old un i buddies sounds more interesting.

Will deffo be playing the £100 FO there this Sunday however............and this time i am GOING to play mistake free when down to the final 2 tables.

Send it. Ended up playing a round of each last night in the cash game, got Ivey and co playing Omaha. :()
Ended up £900 up on the night and came 4th in the PLO comp after losing the usual made hand v big draw bollox near the end.

After running so bad lately its nice to get a big of large in the back pocket, makes up for the two huge pots i lost to perfect runner runner last week. Iv run bad before but this one went on a LOT longer than ever before. Still, out of it now and looking forward to the Summer. I'v been invited to a £700 private SnG sat for the WSOP, where apparently there are some real numpties. Maybe i will give it a shot, probably my best opportunity at a seat.

Signing out, thankyou for the comments.

Poxy Luton Sundays. Came 11th for diddly squat, AQ being the hand of my tournament highs and lows. After winning 2 pissing and one KK v A3 contest/ts 3 tables out i got up to the safe hights of 40k. 412k in play so i reasoned i wanted (ideally) 70k for the final. With blinds @ 600 1200 i made mistake no.1
Only the blinds in the hand i raise it up to 3.6k to play with AQ sooooooooooted. Now tightish player wants to shove for 14k total. I deliberate as he is a pure rock and end up calling. Im up against the boots, marvellous.
I then win an all-in from the blinds war v Tracey Dell with AQ (i had her well covered) v 66 and get back up again. Then i lose a pot (that got bigger than it should have) with 10h9h on a 1074,Q board v Jim Mcbride. Must learn to control pot sizes much better when i dont have the nuts.

Then this hand, which im still unsure about. Holding AQspades i raise to 7k in the cutoff (blinds 1/2k my stack 28k before raise). Then loose/weak player shoves for all his chips. Should i pass?

He previously showed down KQs in a showdown. The problem is, THIS time, you can tell he likes his hand. You probe and ask him if he has a big pair, to which he instantly replies "not that big". I ended up thinking there was 40k to win and i only had 20 held back so called. He had QQ and perhaps it was a poor call. Thats what im thinking now.

Thailand in a couple of weeks although id much rather be at the Luton fessies, i reckon im running well enough to go deep if i had the chance. Moneys drying up now, lets hope the 24h VC crusade this evening goes well.

Second in the £5k gtd on Thursday @ Luton. But my main gripe has been my horrible form on the cash tables. Feeling physically sick at some of the ludicrous 2 outer jobbies that have come along.

However, thems the beats and every time it happens i remind myself that this is EXACTLY the reason why i play poker. Gonne do another 24 hr marathon on VC this week to raise some funds.

The luton £250 FO this weekend, could use a win :)

With regard to finishing 4th on Wednesday, here is the hand that i think i really fucked up 4 handed. CL has 120k, me and the others have 40-60k. I have 60 exactly.
I raise with AJo to 20k (blinds 3/6k) on the button and the SB shoves for 50k. I managed to fold reasoning i could nick the blinds uncontested the next 2 hands. Which i didnt.
But the point is, to win it im gonna need a lot of chips. And getting 2.5-1 odds i shouldnt be folding many hands AT ALL in this spot. Lesson learned, wont do it again. She had 1010.

Back to the top of the Luton Leaderboard with another final last night. Made one poor laydown later on when 5 handed but apart from that i was happy.
With regard to all the comments about the A8 hand i welcome the constructive criticism, but live poker isnt just the ABC of online play. Chris Eddleman is a very active player who i respect but, he is an at it merchant. Im pretty sure he was pot commited on the river as he had to take the blinds the very next hand, so thought i could eliminate him or at least split the pot.
Live and learn and thankyou for your careful insights.

Sadly, even 8 tabling 5c/10c i dont think i could make a living.

Cheers for the advice though, im off to Luton after the gym :)

Rough week but im dealing with the ups and downs quite well nowadays. Sunday night @ Luton £100 rebuy and im chip leader with 10 left. Then this bitch of a cooler. Chips in play= 250k, i have 55k. Holding A8c i call a percieved button thief when blinds are 1k/2k. He raises to 6k on the button and i play the guy a fair bit. Flop comes AAK. I check, he checks. Turn comes a brick 3. On the turn i check, he bets 6k into a 15k pot. I call. River comes a 4. I check, he bets small, 8k. I go all-in??????? What a brain fart. He had pocket kings and suprisingly called :(
Shortly afterwards ran 66 into Paul Altermans QQ and no help came.

Cash games online have taken a slight downswing but im grinding out of it whilst watching Anchorman.

So Cardiff at the end of this week and i have a lot invested in this, basically i need a decent cash to keep morale up. Sadly, i think there are softer fields. BUT, the saving grace is M3Boy will probably win it and 15% of £120k is, well, a lot.

Happy Days and hopefully ill see a few blondies and bloggers in Wales.

OK i havent got the hang of their tournament structure yet but cash games on Ipoker are proving VERY profitable. 8 tabling 1/2 NL is easy and (gradually) getting easier. I am constantly amazed by how easy players get all their money in drawing dead or very thin.
Most of my crying calls with overpairs on the river are profitable. Plus, with 8 tables going at once and a relatively loco image on them all you do find yourself wondering why you didnt switch to an 8-max site years ago.
At the moment current strategy involves raising to £8 preflop with all playable hands I LIKE. This 4*BB thing annoyed me at 1st but it does a lot of good. Firstly, most of the players think its a large opening bet, therefore if you get raised you know they have a strong hand from the off. Also, it builds the pot nicely to something worth fighting for. As im a flop/street player this works in my favour.
Im raising with any pp, any suited connectors 45 and above, any 2 connecting broadway cards plus the cecent unconnected ones. Hands im limping in with are few and far between but A10 seems (from pokertracker) to be a shit of a hand for me.

So, im off to coach a few kids in the art of clay pidgeon shooting today. After its a toss up between gettign sloshed in a country pub or coming home and earning a grand, let me see....................

Well im halfway through March and the live poker experiment is starting to drag on a bit. I havent won a comp in a while although iv come close again twice when 1 pot away from a big stack. The cash games have been relatively profitable but, again, i have had some rough luck in a couple of £1-£1.5k pots which has dampened my spirits somewhat.
A few other niggles are the whole drive to + back from the casino, the fact i smoke when im there and (mainly) the abundance of crap talking monkeys who want to know why i made such and such a play at such at such a time...........
I think familiarity is building mild contempt so im having a night out with the missus tonight, doing a fair bit of shooting/boozing tomorrow before getting into it again with the £100 rebuy on Sunday eve.

Cash games on the net have been great value. I havent logged enough hours but im slowly building the roll up again. I can manage 7 tables with reasonable comfort and can abc 8 now.
Im sure im missing bets and plays however so id be interested in what others think regarding this. Is there an inflection point that is passed when multitabling?

A couple of other points of worth, live poker really does give you much more feel for where you are in a hand. Also, its remarkable how many players make no effort to disguise their hand with body language etc. If you are gonna play in a live cardroom, read Caro.

Iv recently purchased a ton of new books, namely The Prof, Banker + SK, Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells, Pokers Strangest Hands, The Science of poker, Poker Face and TJ's latest offering.
This should make the train journey to Cardiff more interesting because, although its way out of my roll and level of expertise, im going.
M3Boy and a couple of other blondites are journeying westward so ill be going down too, staying with Artist for a day or two before i win the whole caboosh and the (probable) £120 grand 1st prize, no deals :)

So wish me luck, because without it im history..........................

Bah humbug. Went out for a mate's sisters B-day on Friday night. Went to school Disco @ the new venue and had a blast. Somehow managed to do £250 buying the gang sambuca's and meself double JD + C's followed by triple V RB chasers. Had a quality night but as im out of practice had to do the old fingers down the throat routine when we got home. The lady was not amused.

So this morning (well, afternoon really) decided to come back to the land of the living. Did my ma a favour and went to pick up my pesky kid brother from his GF's. Hoppers road in Winchmore Hill. Whatever plank designed the house numbering system deserves to be given extra maths lessons or else be given a minder. 157. You'd expect that to be somewhere between 156 and 158 right. Wrong. About 1/2 a mile down the road as it happens. I bet delivery men on tight schedules have slit wrists after trying to drop off the latest amazon offering.

So i get the shitbag home and then realise i have precisely 36 minutes to get to Luton for the £100 Deepstack PL FO. I have to rag the shit out of the Honda CRV that im currently driving. So im doing, like 90mph in the fast lane when i see a police-lookalike car ahead of me. Ok now Alex son i tell meself, just slide past @ 73. So i slide past and its not a "proper" copper, just a rent-a-cop highways officer. Pedal to the floor baby. Anyhow, the git gets up my arse and flashes his lights. Piss off would you, i recognise im in the wrong but i have to get somewhere. He carried on for a bit and i ended up having to use the old windscreen washers trick. That'll teach you ;)
Nothing more satisfying than seeing someone up ur arse have to turn their wipers on. He gave up. Incidentally, for anyone thats interested, the M1 roadworks section has a 40mph average speed check. Been going there 6 times a week for a couple of weeks now and its fairly safe to assume..............its bollocks. Havent had any DVLA letters through yet. But if ur scared/think im bullshitting/conservative you can try one of the following.

a) get really tight up to a lorry when you approach the overhanging cameras, shielding your plate.

b) If its late @ night, turning your lights off is an idea.

c) Failing that you could be sensible, plan better and allow enough time for your journey therefore negating the need for speed.........................


Back on the poker front i really shouldnt have bothered with the comp but i feel i should really attend all of the March ones to win the leagues. Sadly i made the FT with below average chips and then made a fking stupid crying call into a lady who could only be betting with the nuts. Marvellous.

Looking forward to my Bday now. 28th April which incidentally coincides with the blonde bash. Im going Southend on the Friday night and will probably do something nice with the wife on Sunday so Saturday can be my fun day.

Rant over.

p.s. All link whores.................you have been added :)

Had an interesting week this week. Sadly ended with me losing a ton of cash in the Luton 1/2 game last night. I feel i have the Luton cardroom pretty sussed now, but to get better you have to learn from better players right? Sadly Luton has a large proportion of monkeys shrouding the few gems- so its hard to improve your game there.

After the losses last night i decided id have a bit of fun online. 6 tabling cash games @ 1/2Nl and playing like a rock. WOW. This is easy money. I think ill earn the grand for Cardiff this week online then buy in next weekend.
8-tabling cash is too tricky no limit i think, but ill try tomorrow afternoon before the Luton sunday £100 PL comp.
Im currently top of the Intermediate league but the Freebies are not as good as i thought they were. Therefore, it could well be back to the net for a few nights of the week from now on, in addition to a couple of afternoon hours i think that its about time i got this roll up and played slightly higher.

Won the Monday £50 FO @ Luton outright, no mofoing deals. Went to Bath with the missus for a couple of days- WOW what a pretty city. Had a cracking time but after only 2 days the poker pangs are back.

Havent been playing online of late as the structure of the Luton comps combined with the softest cash games on the planet (aside from HU v Daveyboy) means its better value for me to go there. I guess ill log a few hours of 8 tabling 1/2 cash this weekend just to keep my VIP status high.

Cardiff is definitely beckoning now, im in form and playing better than ever. Im gonna try and convince artist to come along. That way we can have a couple of days fishing in Swansea for fat Bass before tearing up Cardiff. I keep having visions of outplaying Phil Ivey, Marc Goodwin and Ram Vaswani..............and thats just on the golfcourse, because, if you havent noticed, Spring is well and truly here. That means plenty of revealing clothing and superb sunshine, best modelled by this young lady.

What a good week so far. Finally got the hand of VC cash and have been steadily grinding away for small profits.
On Wednesday night i went to Luton for their £50 Rebuy and had a lot of fun. 70 odd runners and a cracking structure.I was cruising for a long time till i lost KK to A4 on the bubble. Very next hand i run QQ into the KK of Lalit Khajuria, but the gods smile and we split it. I finally end up on the FT with average chips. Sadly the blinds had got very crapshooty and i was being forced to push with any 2 cards pretty quickly. I lost a bit pot with (ahem) K2 v AK (marvellous) then lost another when some mug spiked a str8 on the river to knock me out in 8th.
Luckily i had swapped 5% with Lalit, 15% with Paul Garner and 10% with Justin (unusual for me). They all made the Final table. ROFL. After Justin came 5th, Lalit 4th and Paul 2nd i had a nice little earner. Shiiiiipiiiiiiiiit.

Tonight was a cracker. Won my 1st comp at the new Luton. Well, chopped it HU anyway. £2k will do nicely. I played super aggy at times but also had a lot of luck too. I won a massive pot with AK v JJ. The best bit was getting a guy (who i think saw me as a soft touch) to re-raise me all-in with 97o preflop. The 1 time i had a hand. Yummy. Was sorely tempted to bite the bullet there and then and buy in to Cardiff but i decided ill wait for 1 more cash then do it.
Possibly holding 60% of the chips in play i should have gone for the outright win but im not fussy. I think (despite Kev having tonnes of experience) that i was the better player. I decided to not be greedy.

So the wheels are back in motion both on and offline and im loving this poker lark again. I give it 2 weeks before im posting a whine......................