Live MTT pros don't exist. They're just called degens

I may have been extremely drunk and had a prop bet with my friend (which he broke immediately)...that being said I did top up once I witnessed a guy spaz out with J8o! (only to be disappointed once he simmered down). Did you see me in the side rooms or on the main poker deck? If you bump into me say hello!

And yes, I think I'll feel roughly that way after 3 months but we shall see...

Update time!

Bricked the cash-race again in a typically brisk fashion; was card-dead for practically all of it before standardly blinding down to 10BB and getting A high in the middle.

In this particular cash-race, there are 2 bounties worth £500. I think this is a fist-pump spot, but would appreciate confirmation from any MTT players; we are far from the money such that ICM effects are negligible, and the bounty is your typical TAG MTT reg. We have about 25% equity against AQ+,JJ+ which I think makes it a relatively triviial call. I think AJo could be a fold UTG even for 40BB (Id fold it in a cash game), but I could be wrong.

10 Handed 40BB effective, I open AcJs UTG, CO Reg calls, BB Bounty ships 20BB, I beat him into the pot (and lose :< )

Other than that, cliff notes:

1. Been standardly bleeding away £50-100 or so a day mainly through card deadness/poor flops which are bad for my range/lack of spots/annoying spots where I have to fold.

2. Opening too wide in the CO in loose games. I don't think opening hands like Q7s, K4s are particularly profitable when it goes four way to the flop. I think this is a leak so I'm going to try and tighten up my opening range a bit. If you're opening £8 every few orbits in the CO/HJ with these type of hands, its not going to have a great effect on your hourly in the long-term. Someone told me that £1/£2 with short-stacks is 80% preflop, and I think its advice worth reiterating to yourself.

3. Overlimping with suited hands too frequently in the CO or BTN when stacks aren't really THAT deep. (see above....)

May as well post a few hands here too. As always, I'm always interested to hear what people think.

Hand 1

A fairly common spot in deep-stacked games. I think in a vacuum people make enough 3!/call 4b "mistakes" with AK and occasionally JJ with few enough bluffs that 4! is the way to go. Theres also the benefit of reducing the HJs positional advantage.

Live £1/£2 with £5 Straddle. HJ (600 eff) looks reggy I guess, athough I don't get the impression that he plays that much. H has a relatively nitty image so far,

Open £17 EP with KK, HJ 3! to £50, Hero 4! to £125 (???)

Hand 2

I thought about 3!/squeezing pre here, but thought I'd just flat and see a flop. I am going to check-raise at some point, but not sure whether its OTF or OTT. I think alrhough the flopnis quite dry stacks are deep, the board is rainbow, my hand is well disguised with a gutshot and BDFD, and I can apply a ton of pressure here. I think in a normal £1/£2 with £400 stacks or against a good reg Id flat here woh 100% of my range as I don't have TT or T5s or the 65o combos. Interested in what ant online guys would do in this spot.

Live £1/£2 with £5 Straddle. BTN (600 eff) azn businessman has played pretty solid so far. SB spazzy guy but not a calling station.*

BTN opens £15, SB calls, I call straddle 97ss

Flop Ts6c5d, xx BTN bet £30 I XR to £100, BTN folds.

glgl

Anyone familiar with London LLSNL can probably guess that I put in most of my volume at The Empire and Hippodrome in LSQ. From time to time, I like to mix things up a bit so I thought why not nake a trip report out of this for you guys

ACIDHAUSS TRIP REPORT TO THE VIC!! (in lieu of a more interesting title...)

First stop, LSQ to pick up some cash from deposit. I like to take cash in excess if what I'll lose on a bad day, for what is known as your "pocket bankroll". I usually bring about £2k with me which I think is a good number for £1/£3 buying in for £600 or so. I should be bringing more in theory with me as it’s a disaster if you can't match a monster whale sitting in on £1.5k+

Then I'll head down to Picadilly Circus, and get on the Bakerloo line up to Edgware Road, where the Vic is situated. While Central London will now forever (for better or worse) symbolise Live Poker for me, I always that little touristy feeling as soon as I leave the outskirts of Soho/LSQ.



Edgware Road is a place that thrives with middle eastern/lebonese/arabic culture, and is packed with shisha bars, trinket places and alternative medicine shops. Its all a bit like being back in Holiday in Turkey and I love it. If you mainly stay within one place in London its very easy to forget how diverse the city is.





I don't like eating in casinos, and like the local cuisine here so wolfed this down and checked up on the usual time-wasting stuff on my phone as I ate. I try to minimise going on my phone while playing, as this denies you information (in practice though this is very difficult), so this helps a bit





Next stop, the Vic! (Known to some as the birthplace/home of London Poker, modestly sitting on top of a rather delabidated Argos...)





After getting some chips, I'll sit down with a coffee (non-free :< ) and write down my session goals. Also pictured: those nice sweets they have in bowls everywhere, £too paaand and my members card with a keyring hole in it in case you're dumb enough to lose it all the time like I do.

I've grown to the like The Vic chips a bit more, but the blue £25's always seem greasy to me.







Having a quick rollie on the smokers terrace...



I think I'll leave the actual poker and session review for part 2, as this was surprisingly a bit of an effort to do.

I sat on the £1/£3 for about half of the session; the games were on the average side with only one or two regs about. I bumped into Daynnight again who posts on here occasionally who is a much better player than me, who I'm pretty sure is one of, if not, the biggest winner here (nice guy too!).

This part was pretty zzzzzzzzzzzz, with only a couple of interesting hands

Hand 1

£1/£3, £600 effective.

A lot of people will hate this overlimp, but it falls within the realm of hands I'm not in love with raising or folding. It plays decently well IP against very loose competition assuming you're competent post-flop, and can easily get 2/3 small streets of value. As a live player your job is to play as many pots with fish with semi-playable hands IP, even if it means sometimes encountering awkward post-flop scenarios.

OTF my raise really looks full of **** as it doesnt hit my limping range at all, so I should raise bigger.

OTT its starting to look a little thin, but I think he's going to raise some of his combos of AJ pre.

OTR I think I can get away with betting smaller.

Very loose fish limps LJ, I overlimp the CO with Q9 with very loose passive players behind me, SB fish completes, BB presumed reg checks.

Flop AQ9 Pot £12. BB leads £10, Fish calls £10, I raise to £50, BB calls, Fish folds.

Turn J Pot £124 BB checks, I bet £75, BB calls

River 2 Pot £275, BB checks, I bet £150, BB folds.

Hand 2

£1/£3, £300 effective.

Preflop-wise, much of my reasoning behind Hand 1 applies in this hand. With a competent player in the BB this is a very poor cold-call.

I decided to flat OTF for two reasons:

1. The BTN had played on the snug side meaning hands like AK, AQ, AJ make up a huge part of his range with this sizing.
2. The BTN was short-enough such that I can comfortably check-jam any turn, especially if the CO fish calls too. I look full of **** if this scenario happens, so I think I get called a lot wider OTT.

The BTN actually asked me about this hand later in the evening, and I told him I had AT for flopped two pair; he actually told me he contemplating calling with King high so maybe not such a bad line after all!

CO fish limps, BTN makes it £12, I flat SB AT, CO calls.

Flop AT 4 Pot £40. I check, CO checks, BTN bets £31, I call, HJ folds.

Turn 3 Pot £101 I check, BTN checks.

River 4 Pot £101 I bet £100, BTN folds.

Awesome stuff man.

I went to the Vic to play a donkament last Wednesday, I should really take more pictures for my TRs.

I love how diverse London is, the thing I love about big city's is that you can walk for 5-10 minutes and be in a completely different environment. It's amazing.

Thanks dude, how did the tournaments go? Going to check out your thread and see if you've posted your experiences with them : ). I'm not a live MTT guy but if you ever want any live poker rule of thumbs and the like don't hesistate PMing me.

And yeah love walking around London, tbh don't do it enough. I don't play Pokemon Go but I think it really encourages people to tourist their city and explore the nooks and crannys people never even think to go down.

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

As the £1/£3 games began to dry up, I started looking at other games to see if there was any value knocking about. Even in £1/£1 games, there is value to be had by walking around the room looking for extremely deep fish who are 100's of BB deep.

Eventually I sat down a £2/£5 which degenerated into one of the most obscene games I've ever played in. The game played extremely deep, with most players sitting on £1.5k+, and raising as much as £30 pre when there was no straddle on. In all honesty it was probably more like a reasonable £5/£5 or £5/£10.

For most of it I was only the reg/pro, until later on a very talented MSNL/HSNL scandinaian sat down with £1.5k (luckily on my direct right).

I managed to run really well for the session, as the below hands will show. I was playing on the tighter side, as I'm not used to playing such big games. The amount of money changing hands was almost stomach churning, with pots regularly playing over £400. I ended up leaving before the game broke; if it was a £1/£2 or I was shallower I would have stayed but I was sitting on a massive amount of money and was tired.

There were many more hands, but I can't remember the board textures or preflop action enough to adequately describe them. This is a shame because these are the hands that make you 80%+ of your profit e.g. AA on 9xx, Jxx in 3bet pots.

Hand 1

£2/£5 £700 Effective.

A million limpers, I raise to £50 with QQ, UTG+1 calls, Moby Dick SB jams £350 effective, I rejam £700, HJ calls (covers). I scoop a nice £1.7k+ pot

Hand 2

£2/£5 £2.1k Effective.

I probably got a bit greedy OTR, although he was playing extremely deep.

EP limper, HJ (Canadian recreational player, probably on loose preflop-tight passive spectrum) raises to £20, I call CO with 87, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop AT9 Pot £85. SB checks, BB checks, CO bets £60, I call, SB and BB folds.

Turn J Pot £205, CO checks, I bet £175, CO calls.

River 4 Pot £505, CO checks, I bet £400, CO thinks for a while and folds.

Hand 3

Thank Chr*** for the turn and river. I think in this spot I should be raising aggressively IP, although I think its very easy to do this because of how many offsuit gutshots I have, and I probably 3! JJ preflop and folds 83s preflop. Folding is probably ok too as I'm playing against a good live reg who plays higher games.

I'm not really sure what my frequencies IP should be on very bricky turns like this one. I think maybe checking back my entire range and making a massive bet on the river for maybe 2x pot with all my J8, 33 combos and balancing with QcTs type combos is the best. Maybe even overbetting this turn is best, although I can see an argument for the SB flatting his J8 combos OTF.

£2/£5 £2.5k Effective.

SB raises to £20, I call BB with T7

Flop J83 Pot £40, SB bets £30, I raise to £90, SB calls.

Turn 8 Pot £220, SB checks, I check.

River 8 Pot £220, SB checks, I check. SB shows down 33 (phew!)

In the end I managed to cash out about £4.3k, amounting to a nice £2500 session.



=



In summary....

• Ran like GOD in a very good game
• I'm not entirely happy about the way I played some spots, but on the whole I think I played very well and got a lot of nice value in OK spots
• Probably overdid it straddling, raising £25 blind once or twice, but I think its par for such a good game. Overall its probably -EV considering how aggressive the game played on my right, but is no doubt great for the forever declining poker eco system
• I was acting a bit weird towards the end, mainly because of the enormous amount of money I had won, and saw lost by particular players and the way they reacted to it.

gl at the tables!

Very nice session. Wpwp

Thanks man! Any chance of a coaching freebie, by evaluating whether the T7o on J83ssd hand was wp or not ? And whether or not you have a betting range IP on the 8 turn as the bloke was the PPR?

Great trip report bud and amazing session! 1st pic of Piccadilly you're staring directly into my office window

In a live game like that I think it's definitely worth getting heavily involved in the straddling/blind raises! Giving rec players the impression that your gambling it up too will definitely get you paid in the long run. No one enjoys playing a tight pro!

Great trip report and well done on the session. I used to be a reg at the Vic but I've only visited once in the last 12 months as I live equidistant between it and another G casino that is more convenient for me to visit, and sadly I just don't enjoy the Vic anymore.

Bet river with T high ldo

Thanks, not a bad place to work fyi the 2/5 PLO game looked insane when I was there! ; ) And yeah 100% agree regarding giving action.

Interesting is it Queensway? I think the Vic gets a lot of flack based on people I know IRL and on here, some of it deserved but on the whole think its a good place to play. My mild complaints:

1. Sometimes it can take forever to get on a game
2. No points earned while playing poker
3. Not being offered change back from drinks - I'm not a cheapskate and will often give it anyway but the effort is appreciated.

I think my opinion of the Vic has definitely improved over the years though!

+1

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I think I'll do another of these this weekend; will let the audience decide here...http://goo.gl/3WdMpi (I'm not bowl enough to give the G ago, nor am I going to do my plums against the 5/10 wizards at palm beach!)

I'll also try and take some more photos within the decided venue as I was a bit late this time...was a bit of a pussy last time as cameras are banned etc. Had a horrifying experience where tried to take a selfie of myself, and ended up shooting some poor punter with the flash on...did not buy that I was trying to shoot myself, and kept reiterting he didn't mind :/

Do you have to carry such wads of cash around London?? Can't you have deposits taken from and put into your bank?

Yes you can take deposits from your bank, but most casinos are awkward about putting it back into your bank unless its a £15k+ bank transfer. Although you're doing nothing illegal by regularly transferring to and from your bank account £1000's, you can apparently only do it up until a certain point at which it gets complicated.

I'm not the best person to ask about this I'm afraid!

What I currently do is keep it all on deposit, which also comes with some obvious disadvantages despite the apparent convenience/security:

1. If the casino goes bankrupt you lose your entire deposit.
2. The moneys not accruing interest.

I've been meaning to get around to putting it in a Lloyds Savers account which offers 5% which SootedPowa recommended earlier, as well as put a small amount of it in gold/BTC/etc. Keeping some biscuits/1k chips at home is also an option as they are more portable (and easier to lose!)

I always take Uber's around whenever I'm carrying significant volumes of cash around.

No mate I've never played at Queensway. The Vic still appeals in terms of game availability and free parking in Central London which is handy with getting around the last train home problem, but I never really feel happy when I'm sat there. Maybe because I'm a bad player

Some £1/£2 hands taken from this week, as well as a few I've had on the To-Do list to review:

Hand 1

£1/£2 with £5 Straddle.*

l2 limpers, I call SB JsTs, Celebritiy maniac checks straddle

Flop Tc9s3d Pot £23 I check, manaic bets £10, 2 callers I call.

Turn Td Pot £63, I check Maniac bets £25, fish raises to £50 (150 behind), hero?

Hand 2

£1/£3 6max

Folds to me, I open 86ss to £10 in MP 6-handed (£1500), BTN LP fish calls (£500), SB LP fish (£1100) raises to £25, I call, BTN calls

Flop As9h5d Pot £75, SB bets £50, I call, BTN calls
Turn 6c Pot £225 SB checks, I check, BTN checks
River 7d Pot £225, BTN bets £75, Hero?

Hand 3

£1/£2 with £5 Straddle,*

UTG+1 (assumed tightish guy talks ranges blah blah) (£250) opens to £15, fish calls (£250), another fish calls, I flat BTN (Covers), Straddle jams £60, UTG+1 thinks for a whole and calls, Fish jams £250, hero? *Straddle lost a big pot prob has ATC you can assume.

In other news, I think the next trip report will go down at the Empire which dominates the poll I set up a massive 4:1! Generally not compiling the trip report for myself, so if there are any aspects you'd like me to include feel free to leave your thoughts below.

gl

Hand 1: Can't see getting away from this considering stacks are ~40BBs deep with the straddle in play, even vs a fish. He can always turn up with some nonsense FD+Overs or something. Flat to induce the Maniac into calling behind and allow the fish to blast the river as well.

Hand 2: Assume it's the SB leading out not the BTN? If so, his play seems super weak so can't see him calling any kind of raise to be honest. Maybe flat to draw BTN into calling behind.

Hand 3: I'd ask the dealer for two cards first before making a decision about calling the jam

The formatting of those HH's is atrocious even for me, sorry bud!

Hand 1

I actually folded this in-game, but out of curiosity ran the numbers. tl;dr I don't hate/love folding it :/. Making the following assumptions we need about 40% equity to call:

• The maniac's £25 is dead money
• Its a shove/fold situation i.e. the fish is effectively jamming £200, we need about 40% equity to call.

The frequencies are a bit arbitrary and can be debated all day long, but I think he can certainly have all the off-suit Tx Broadways in his range. He was last to act preflop so as you said can for sure sometimes have some weird backdoor straight draw thing OTT so lets throw in a few combos of that. The swing factor really is whether or not he's slowplaying any premium pairs preflop; if he does this with 33% of AA-QQ then it looks like a close call...meh!

Hand 2

OTR the SB bet out not the BTN sorry; I think flatting is actually a really interesting play to get the SB to come along. I actually really like this and would never have thought of this myself, wp.

Hand 3

I had TT ; )

Interesting analysis on Hand 1 there. Like you said, could sit and argue those frequencies all day but won't Interested why you don't think calling is an option though?

Haha I laughed

Regards the hands I'd call and revaluate the river in hand 1. Possible he has a combo draw or something but I think he's raising a lot of broadway with diamonds hands pre and not impossible hes checked 33, T3, 9T type stuff in the straddle. I'm proceeding with extreme caution after fish check/min raises which is so often the nuts. Hope for the Jd on the river

Edit: Stroooongly doubt he's ever checking QQ-AA pre in a 4 way straddles pot when any raise will look fos. Think it'd be terrible if he did!

Would def call the SB lead in hand 2 and hope the button figures "well he never has a straight" and decided to try and get creative.

Anyway I don't play nearly as much as I'd like to live but London is a cool city and really nice thread You seem to have a good mindset and take the grind seriously but still have fun with straddles blind raises and what not.

Pictures always make things more interesting as well so subbed and glgl!

sounds good mate best of luck with it IN

Dude, do you mind sharing how much money you're up right now?

Thanks!

I think AA-QQ can definitely be at least part of a fishes range especially when a maniac is in the straddle.

To be honest afaia the straddle is dead money in this pot.

Im not sure if you play london live poker much but limping a big prt of the LLSNL games here!


Ty

Along with game recommendations not willing to discuss this sorry, gl!




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Just a quick one to say I just read the whole thread and enjoyed it a lot. Hope you crush during your three months off (great decision btw!)