Okok fish im writing for you. Been pretty tough @ martin towers last few weeks, my opr on fulltilt is ridiculously bad and iv worked out why. I kinda treat mtt's as a little joke at the end of a cash session, which is really not clever. These things are pretty tough now and unless you put in the effort you aint gonna make the grade. I normally reg, then about 1 hour in think hmmmm, something decent on tv, want to go out etcetc and just donkoff. Not clever. Im gonna be a little more focused in the future, playing the smaller fields in the rebuys and 6m arena (long-handed nitfests with super slow structures are like pain personified, where is the skill in waiting for your opponent to make a mistake?) and hopefully bink something.

Played last night, had one hand in the 80k on betfair that i just cannot understand and i see more and more. Like regularly now i see the BB snap calling button shoves for huge chunks of his stack with no hand. Last night, ave 10k, i got 6k @ 400/200/50 and open shove btn. BB snaps me off playing 8k with Q8o. I dont get it? Is that really the best spot u can find for making chips? Calling off 75% of ur stack with Q8 in a $500 comp. Gimme a break. He then justifies by saying "the last 2 times i 3b shoved and u folded, so i figured this time u would shove" well thats all well and true mate, but ur forgetting you have QUEEN 8! He probs stoved it and given he dominated 70% of my 8's it was a close but correct call. fk me.

Anyway, unregged from stuff on fulltilt and 1 tabled a little comp on betfair, which boxerdean from bb was railing me (cant say coaching :) ) through and i utterly crushed. I made some ridiculously huge laydowns v other bigstacks in the runin simply because i didnt want big chip confrontations. AQs v a sb call and a bb squeeze sticks out in the memory. I was allowed by some fantastically weaktight players to dominate and felt in complete control till hu when even with a 4:1 lead i was tired and made mistakes. He was vul to lose. Still got there in the end and had my second online mtt win of the year wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii lol.

Cash has been interesting, had some bad runs @ 500nl a little while ago but now back on track, need to really pull my finger out in remainder of march to get back on target. Im running at 11bb/100 over 100k hands so far, which is lovely but i need to put in more hands, i play everyday but im still lazy lol, especially when it comes to playing at the peak 7-10pm twilight zone.

On the coaching front, i now have my two students for now (out of 3 enquiries, sigh ;) ) and hopefully they will get what they want out of it. Putting a lot of time in and taking an effective paycut but i hope to learn a little too whilst im at it, so can cost this several ways.....

Badbeat poker grading takes place in a couple of weeks. As one of the 50 i sevretly think i will crush, but am a little concerned with the amount i have to outlay in week 4, hopefully ill run good up till then. Writing some stuff for their website today which hopefully will meet snoops+co's criteria :)

London gukpt stuff this week, unfortunately im pretty skint at the moment after various bits and pieces so wont be attending, but good luck to all in attendance, take home mad dimes!!!!!!!

Time for an update. Firstly, coaching enquiries please just email me at alexander_martin@hotmail.co.uk , i dont have time to be messing about on various forums pm'ing blablabla. I will respond promptly.

Month has been reasonable, had my 1st serious downswing of the year last week, think i logged 4 losing days before coming good again. wiiiiii long live short ds's. been doing my absolute conkers on fulltilt mtts of late, cant seem to catch a break in the endgame and its getting a little frustrating. I went deepish in the 750k on sunday but alas my exceptionally spewy bluff didnt get past top 2. Infact i got slowrolled. The most infuriating thing about tilt imo is immediately after busting a comp it closes the table. So unless you know someone on your tables name you cant go back, find them and abuse the hell out of them (not that i would condone that fo course ;) ). Anyway, mtt's seem a lot tougher now on the us sites, which is a bit depressing.

Went to the launch of blackbelt poker on monday, went for a beer w JimJam before and tried to steal raaby's little comping book in the vic. Didnt get it but ill try harder next time :) anyways looks like mr. channing+co have made some pretty shrewd observations about the uk poker scene. I have been asked to contribute some strategy stuff and will probably have a go at their grading system when it is released. Looks like a pretty generous vegas package they are offering (50 ppl go for grading, 8 ppl get a 20k vegas package (brown belt), rest get something or other, think green belt? gets $1500 a month for live donkaments. Basically, they are launching a site on ipoker, plus they are setting up a training site/forum specifically for pros and neil is giving away 250k in vegas but is going to judge ppl over 4 weeks on his site....smart idea see. Anyhow, i like the idea and my experience with all of this kind of stuff is put something in and somewhere down the line you might get a favour elsewhere, so iv told nick and neil ill contribute some strategy and put some money on ipoker, again.... Obv night got pretty messy pretty quick so i stopped drinking and then just milled about in the empire until 1st tube.

Off to Venice on weekend for a little r+r and some nice grub. One of the few euro cities im excited to be visiting so hopefully that will be sweet. Setup our little vegpatch on the weekend with some railway sleepers, really itching to move in but gonna be a while yet. Looks like we could be getting a dog, but to be honest depends a lot on how much i can clear this month. Obv black and white springer for general crazy excitability and awesomeness for flushing/retrieval. Will update soon....

cya.