Here it is.... it is the same post as on my Vegas package thread, as the threads and the topics within overlap each other.
Sky Poker Tour £1K NLHE, £1M Gtd, at Dusk Til Dawn, Nottingham, England 27/2/15
Finished approximately 600th of 1000 entries, rating of my own play 1.75 out of 10
Tournament and Trip Report
I am left feeling really disappointed at a wasted opportunity because I prepared well for this comp and had a lot of good coaching from four different coaches who between them had about 22.5% in me for the coaching. I also ran a free lottery here on 2plus2 and the winner won 2.5% in me so I am disappointed for all 5 equity holders and apologise to them for my poor performance.
Ironically, apart from 1 hand which I played very well and in which I used a technique coached to me, every other hand in about 8 1/2 hours of play was basic, straight forward stuff, and apart from TheMcC, Dave McConnachie,
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?n=190582 (my main coach and who had 15% in me) I didn't see any players who I thought were the kind of on line ballers for whom the coaching was specifically taken by me.
This underlines how badly I played, if I'd played half decent I may well have cruised through to day 2 with a reasonable sized stack.
Things start badly.......... an unwanted 40/1 shot lands immediately
I arrived 45 minutes before the start time, I had revised and re-revised my coaching notes and I'm ready to play well. The first thing I do is look on the display screens to see the table draw and to research my opponents. There are about 40 tables, I look up and I and am on Table 33, Seat 6. The screens scroll around and I gradually spot and note down my opponents names and their seat numbers. Then up comes a screen with Dave McConnachie, Table 33, Seat 2...........
Awkward.
Not only is this awkward in a general sense but it caused me to change my psychological mind games strategy for day 1. I don't use and I don't need to use psychological mind games in an Omaha MTT because I have a big edge, although I wouldn't rule it out if I am up against some of the world's best players at some point in PLO/PLO8, but in this quite big buy in NLHE I planned a while ago to use some additional skills and techniques.
My plan for the 3 days was thus:
Day 1: Act as if I have lost my voice and can barely talk and maintain this act at all times to all people from the moment I walk in the door until day 1 is over. I figured that by doing this that it would both annoy opponents and that I could weave this act into fake acting dumb or disorientated in certain pots or spots to throw off my opponents and upset their balance.
Day 2: Be super chatty in a very annoying way, verbally grill my opponents when they make river bets against me and generally wind them up and try to confuse them with verbals.
Day 3: Play the strong, silent, angry role. Act unfriendly and try to portray an image where people would be more likely to be bullied by me and less likely to try to bully me.
I though this would be the best act to put on if playing day 3 because it would also give me more time to focus on actual plays as I would be expending less time having to table talk a lot or having to maintain the act of having lost my voice.
But as soon as I saw that Dave was on my table I had to abandon the planned day 1 losing my voice act as Dave would have smelled bull$hit within 3 seconds, having already told him previously that I'd be using some weird psychological mind games.
So instead I just decided to combine some table talk with some other weird and off putting stuff that I have learned and devised myself over the years.
Table talk I do not need to cover but the other weird stuff for example was this....
(in no particular order)
1. Pinging one calling chip flat on the cloth using the nail on the index finger as a flicker.
Surely every player on planet earth (apart from those who do this themselves) must find this flicking thing annoying, even slightly tilting. (I did it a couple of times)
2. Knowing that all I am doing is calling a pre-flop open of 400 plus two flats of it, I deliberately picked up 4 x 100 chips and 3 x 1000 chips in a little stack being careful to make a small separation between the 100s and the 1000s. Then holding the whole stack above the cloth as if to drop them all, I just dropped the 100s. This got a laugh by the way, but it has to be slightly annoying as well. Incidentally, it is quite a good legitimate technique (making sure you look deadly serious when you do it) to look stronger than you really are so that if you are not closing the action it makes it less likely you'll face a 3 bet or 3 bet squeeze. But I did it on that occasion with the sole purpose of trying to annoy people and I think I was closing the action anyway.
3. General stupid play acting with my scarf. I think some of the players just found it entertaining but some must have found it a bit annoying, and both groups are being distracted by it, even if they are unaware that it is subliminally distracting them.
4. There were one or two other things that I did or was planning to do should the situation or opportunity arise.
All of the above was done on a pretty friendly basis but still had some kind of effect on others. I was prepared to step up the needly element of it but was waiting for someone to get in my face first or to show me some kind of tilting tendency that I could then tip them over the edge with.
The scarf thing is interesting because I lost a 68K pot by not putting my scarf on as by this time the heat and lack of air flow was starting to affect me really badly and in a pot against a player where I tried to 4 bet him off with my AJ what I thought was his middle pair (he turned out to have AQ) he told me after dwelling and then calling for his tournament life that he only called me because this was the first time that I hadn't put my scarf on so thought that this was a tell of weakness.
He was wrong, it wasn't a tell, I had put the scarf on in every other pot and in some I was strong and in others I was weak.... call it "scarf balancing" if you want.
So the heat in the room cost me that pot. -34K in chips instead of a pass from him and +10K to my stack.
This brings me on to the heat and lack of air flow in the room.
Before I tell you about that, here are all the live in play update Tweets that I sent under the hash tag #FishToBoss. It's a snap shot of the day. (times are approximate)
SageDonkey (9.30 am):"Brought my bow and quiver wiv me from London's East End and will be taking aim in Nottingham @Dusk_Till_Dawn_ in less than 4 hrs."
SageDonkey (12.30 pm):"The waitresses are semi naked here. Somebody get me some blinkers quick."
SageDonkey (1.30 pm): "Donked off 1/4 of my stack in 1 hand playing badly."
SageDonkey (2.10 pm): "Back up to starting stack."
SageDonkey (3.15 pm): "56K ave 52K 200/400/50 ."
SageDonkey (3.15 pm):"On break. Played a bit rubbish in 1st 3 levels tbh but I have picked up a few live tells and I have the average of 54K."
SageDonkey (4.30 pm):"Down to 30k bullying play gone wrong"
(This was the AJ<AQ play where the lack of scarf punished me.)
SageDonkey (5.45 pm):"Played bad and got there. 70K. Ave 59K. 400/800/100£
(This was one of two hands where I sucked out on Dave McConnachie)
SageDonkey (6.45 pm):"Weeeee, I played 2 hands well. Up to 93K, Ave 71K."
(one of these plays was as a direct result of coaching that I got)
SageDonkey (7.45 pm):"I rate my play as 1.5 out of 10 so far in the SPT £1K £1M Gtd. 90k ave 83K. 800/1600/200"
SageDonkey (8.45 pm):"Not playing bad any more but am finding the hot and airless conditions quite unbearable. Circa 77f and no oxygen"
SageDonkey (9.15 pm):I'm out, played badly as a whole but climate conditions @Dusk_Till_Dawn_ are a 70% contributory factor & I'll expand on this formally."
So on to the conditions in the room.
I should first point out that I feel the effects of hot and airless conditions a lot more than most other people do, I always have done.
For example, on The London Underground when it is hot in the summer, I am sweltering in a thin T-shirt but I often see people in the same temperatures in the same carriage (which I know are around 90f at times) who are wearing 2 or 3 layers of clothing and are completely happy with it.
It was similar at Dusk Til Dawn. It was bloody hot in there, believe me, but as on the underground I saw a variety of clothing layers from 1 through to 3 layers, and quite a lot of people wearing one layer that was reasonably thick such as a sweat shirt or lumberjack style shirt.
The other thing that I find uncomfortable, much more so than the heat, is when there is no air circulation, and the air circulation was exceptionally poor in the room.
The heat and the lack of air flow affected me really badly. I wasn't completely aware of it affecting my concentration and ability to think straight until about 15 minutes after play had started, because think about it, if you step into a hot environment (such as a sauna) your body copes for a little while and then it suddenly hits you.
To make matters worse for me, as a last minute decision I decided to supplement my wrap around shades and my scarf with an officially merchandised "Mind The Gap" red London Underground baseball cap.
I had this with me because my company had run a London Underground themed event on Thursday night that awards various prizes and this was a piece of spare merchandise that we did not award, so it was in my bag that I got on the train with to Nottingham straight after the event and finished.
When I added it to the shades and scarf and looked in the mirror in my hotel room, the ensemble looked really good and effective. Red is a danger colour, "Mind The Gap" is a warning within itself and Mind The Gap is a bit like Mind The Gap.... Principle for pre flop in NLHE.
So it was a good get up to wear and after a few hands of the comp a player was surprised when I first spoke that I was English. He said by the way that I was dressed and by the way I was generally acting that I was an Italian player.
So this goes to show that had I done the pretending to lose my voice thing that it would have confused some opponents a little.
With the very warm conditions and it affecting me more and more, after about 1 1/2 hours I abandoned the scarf all together, undid my top shirt button and rolled up my sleeves but I still felt very hot and uncomfortable. I retained the baseball cap because my hair was all squashed underneath. I guess I could have sacrificed vanity and got rid of it but I was s hot in that room that it wouldn't have solved things for me.
The problem with the heat and lack of air is that simply could not concentrate properly at all times, plus where I would normally watch every player really closely pre-flop to try and pick up a tell when they look at their hole cards, I only did this about 20% of the time because I didn't have the concentration levels to do it every time.
Another issue is the lack of water machines (there are none that I spotted) and having no drinks/cup holders fixed into the tables. Last time I played at DTD it was just as hot and there were no water machines. I didn't expect it 3 years later to still be as bad but just in case I took three 250ml bottles of water with me. With no drinks holder I am squeezing the bottle between my thighs or it is rolling about on the floor between my feet. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
There were a smallish number of little tables on casters but these were few and far between and the poker tables themselves were all pretty cramped together so having an in built drinks holder is the solution here IMO.
If the reason for not having water machines is purely commercial to get people to pay for drinks more often, then the policy is being counteracted by not having drinks holders for the players to place their drinks in once purchased!
I may be wrong, but my instinct is that the temperature, air quality, water and drinks holder issues are most likely things that have just drifted into a state of inertia over a period of time and that as DTD has become more successful and busier that they are now issues that have more of a direct negative impact on players than when the venue was a third full and not packed out as is often is now.
A couple of the scantily clad waitresses when they saw me gulping down water to cool myself down also said that they felt really hot even in the outfits. The taxi driver on my "Taxxeeeeee!" exit ride back to the hotel who made the fatal error of asking me how I had done, so had to endure 10 minutes of moaning from me about the heat, also told me that as soon as he and his colleagues walk into the venue that they notice how hot and stuffy it is.
He may have just been bluffing me that he really walks all the way into the club, if he was then he got it through, because I tipped him £3 on top of the £8 fare.
So why if the conditions are as uncomfortable as I say they are (and apparently have been so for at least 3 years) aren't droves of players pointing it out to the management or complaining about it? Well firstly it affects some player more than others, but I am sure that at least 1/4 of players must be at least a bit unhappy about it, but the main reason I would think that people aren't complaining is that the venue is the premier poker venue within a huge geographical catchment area, and arguably the best poker venue in the whole of the UK and possibly the whole of Europe.
So if you are a cash game player (the cash games there are great) and in particular if you are a NLHE MTTer, definitely some of the best and biggest prize pool NLHE comps are held regularly and frequently at DTD, then why would you want to complain about being "a bit hot and uncomfortable" and risk being shown the door. In other words people are wary of taking the risk of "biting the hand that feeds them".
From everything I've seen about DTD and the owners/managers etc I doubt the showing of the door thing would ever happen.
I met and chatted to Simon "Aces" Trumper the manager at an EPT London Omaha MTT in October/November. We were adjacent, had a good chat and he is definitely a good bloke and is friendly, professional and helpful to all players. I have exchanged a few Tweets with him, including in the run up to the SPT comp.
Rob Yong who I have never met, but from everything I have seen, is also the same, a great poker person and people person and very customer friendly and customer focused.
So it all seems a bit strange to me that the blatantly uncomfortable climate conditions in the room have not been addressed. By the way, someone told me that on the top deck that it was cold up there. So there is clearly an issue with the air con or something, and without being an air con engineer or anything, the volume of players in the room at any given time and things like outside temperature also affect things.
But surely some kind of total solution, or even partial solution must be able to be found.
Who knows, it may be too expensive to fix, but if this is the case it's a false economy IMO because nicer playing conditions will encourage more players and keep player sitting for longer hours in cash games.
So why would the heat and air affecting me even be important. I mean maybe I am just moaning because I played badly, lost and didn't cash, so it is pure sour grapes on my part? This would be an easy conclusion to reach but it is simply not the case.
I have openly declared that I played very badly and this is my fault and my responsibility, but I have also honestly stated that the conditions were a significant contributory factor to this. I am making no different a point to a golfer who shot a 7 over par 79 in very windy conditions.
I wish it had been windy inside DTD, it would have cooled me down.
When the dinner break was called after 8 levels I think, I went straight outside in the cold, with just my thin rolled up sleeved shirt on and stood there for 10 minutes to bring my body temperature down to normal.
When I returned after he dinner break I felt like I could not survive the heat for another 4 levels so I deliberately looked for a high variance spot to try to flip a pair against 2 overs or vice-versa when I was on 70K (blinds 800/1600/200) so that I could double up, and semi fold my way into day 2. I figured that if I could get to day 2 I could go out and buy a string vest, not wear the cap and bring 3 or 4 x 2 litre bottles of water with me and maybe have a chance of ding well.
I did get extra drinks of water/lemonade from the waitresses but there was of course a slight delay each time and again it's awkward with a pint glass without a drinks holder and in cramped conditions.
Because of the perpetual taking on of fluids it also meant that I was up and down to the toilets a few times which is also not good for trying to play optimally.
No venue has a continuous perfect climate, many tend to be on the cold side, but at least you can put a jacket (and a scarf on) and they do tend to correct by adjusting the air con.
Should I be aggrieved by the heat and lack of air flow? It's gambling isn't it? "You pays your money and you takes your chances"
Well yes, but I paid £1000 for the entry (actually £330 total satting in) but still £1K effective as what if I hadn't satted or spent more, I also spent about £350 on travel and accommodation, I took 1 1/2 days off work, and lie all players I wanted a shot at some glory and a big prize pool.
So to come across conditions that were way less than ideal fro me was very disappointing and made the trip for me a less than happy and enjoyable experience.
My suggestion is to give DTD members an anonymous questionnaire and ask various mutually beneficial questions and include in them some about the temperature. Probably have a questionnaire for staff too.
You will the find out very quickly if this SageDonkey character is talking sense and/or of he he has some kind of rare body temperature condition. If it turns out that I am talking rubbish then you'll have some other useful answers and data from other questions you ask.
Again, I am no engineer or architect, but maybe an easy thing is to cut some windows into the side(s) of the building or some sky light windows and when it gets too hot inside open some windows!
Back to the tournament itself
Not "curse of the massage", but "calling for the massage"
I know my own self very well and I have a strategy, moreover a policy regarding getting a massage from one of the very good massage girls that are present at most poker venues. I even have a standard answer when asked "would you like a massage?"
My answer is that: "if I reach the Final Table I will definitely have one." This is not a "don't call us, we'll call you", deflect the question answer, it is a genuine answer in a very polite way by me. Because massages are expensive, they are extra juice in effect.
So when I deliberately sought out a massage at about 6 pm, 5 hours into the comp, I knew deep down that the outcome of the comp would not be a good one for me.
Because on a sub-conscious level I knew that the 10 minute massage would be the only nice experience of the day for me. And I was right.... especially my favourite part, the karate double-handed chopping motion that you get in the final minutes. (I once requested a full 10 minutes of chopping!)
My overall strategy was good but I failed to execute in easy ABC situations
I played very well from an overall strategy point of view in so far as I took the advice of my coaches and got involved in lots of pots in the early levels because this is the time you an afford to do it and for it to go wrong but still have plenty of chance to recover from it. I also stole a reasonable amount from late position throughout because the table was playing pretty tight.
My problem throughout was very poor execution in what were mainly ABC straightforward spots as my concentration levels were weak throughout. Compounding this was my inability to watch all players at all times to get reads on them both pre flop and post flop, which is usually one of my major strengths.
So why did I even play this NLHE event when my absolute strength is PLO and when I seem to be a bit of a fish at NLHE MTTs?
I have mentioned in previous threads/posts that I am very good at shallowish stack, fastish clock on line NLHE sats.
A few months ago I thought I'd have a crack at some £9 Sky Poker on line Super Sats to this comp. I did quite well, I think reaching the £45 sat to the £220 sat either once or twice but then not getting further.
I was playing well and getting close, so I bought straight into a £45 but them didn't make it again.
I'd now spent about £110 in total, it was getting quite time consuming and tbh was quite boring as well. I had always intended to quit trying to sat once I had spent £300 so I decided that to save time I would just pay £220 straight into the main satellite.
I did this and coasted through to the £1K seat with relative ease.
Now that I'm in, I know that I need coaching so this is why I "sold" about 22.5% in exchange for coaching.
A bit like Frank Worthington
I mentioned earlier that I am a flair player and an extrovert, similar to some of the flair British football players of the 1970s and early 1980s. I named a few but I did miss out some others such as Tony Currie, Keith Weller and Charlie George.
I alluded to the fact that when I played as a forward at school boy level that "there was not a lot of passing", "it was just run through the whole defence by yourself".
To be more specific, this was not the default style of play in football, it was what
I did and how
I played.
Other players were not that happy about it and the school team manager, who was also the games/sports master in the sports lessons, was really unhappy about it and used to often drop me from the school team.
I was very effective, used to score a lot of goals and I used to embarrass defenders by landing them on their back sides with a simple body swerve without me having to actually touch the ball. It was far easier to land on your back side on a school football pitch in those days because pitches were poor (even at professional level they were poor) they were muddy for about 2/3rds of the season.
In the sports lesson within school time the sports teacher often demoted me into the 2nd group for the 2 hour session. This was the group with the non-athletic people who were not good at sports.
You used to have about an hour of coaching, practice and physical exercise and warm ups in the sports lesson and then the second hour was a match within your group.
So when the sports teacher demoted me from the top group for being greedy and not passing enough and I played in the 2nd group it became totally comical when the 2nd group match started.
I wasn't passing much in the 1st group match so in the 2nd group match, where most of the players could barely run, turn or control the ball, I used to literally walk through the whole defence and score at will. I would score 5 to 7 goals in each of those 2nd group matches.
Now I wasn't the best player in the 1st group or in the school team itself, I would rate myself as easily the most tricky player and the equal best player in terms of skill and tricks, but there were two players who were better than me overall, one of them who was incredibly good.
One of the reasons why I was not the best player in my school team and was never good enough to play at a higher level is that I am incredibly left footed, can do almost anything with my left foot, but I can barely kick a ball with my right foot.
I left school when I was 16 and always wondered what had happened to the player (I'll just give his first name, Richard.) who to my mind was as good as any of the professional British players that I used to go and support at matches and watch on TV.
I never saw his name mentioned for a professional league team and was surprised.
About 12 years later (aged 28), I got off a train and walked through the barrier. I looked up an handed my ticket to the ticket collector, it was him Richard. I was shocked, not because of the job he was doing, it is a perfectly worthy job, but I just thought to myself, "what happened, why are you collecting train tickets when you were such a gifted footballer". He clearly didn't recognise me.
It all happened so quickly within a few seconds, and 21 years later I have never seen him again.
If only I had paused for one moment..... I could have said to him
"here, I'm passing you my ticket..... because I never used to pass you the ball"
Bad Knees
From the age of about 7 until 16 I ran everywhere. I used to run 1 1/2miles each way at full competitive running speed to and from each school each day to save on the bus fare, I would run up every flight of stairs in daily life at top speed, and every day after school had finished in the the nicer weather I would play football or cricket with my friends until it got dark because we all lived in a group of houses that were integrated into a golf course so there was loads of great outdoor space.
At about the age of 15 I starting getting aches in my knees. My parents took me to see a specialist in Harley Street in London. (For those of you that don't know, this is where the top medical specialists who practice privately have their practices)
My parents were able to do this because one of them had private medical insurance included with their job benefits that covered the whole family.
The specialist did all the test and X-Rays and I was told that I had, Chondromalacia Patellae in both knees, which means softening of the cartilage and which had been caused by the cartilages literally wearing out through over usage. It is an injury that many professional footballers used to get at the time.
All of the continual running around and flying up and down stair cases for 10 years had taken its toll.
I had the operation which the surgeon said was a success, but for the next 7 or 8 years my knees always ached after walking for more than 20 minutes and if I did any running they would be really sore for about 3 days afterwards, so that was the end of playing sports to any sort of reasonable level for me.
I will give you some extra information about the events that I was good at in athletics at school because this may help you to decide whether to take me on in my 6 Pack for Vegas challenge and/or to determine the trading odds for any side bets.
It will also help you decide whether to take me on in my 100 metres sprint challenge which is something I may do after I have got myself into shape.
At school (aged 11 to 15) my best running event was 800 yards, I ran it basically as a two lap sprint. I am sorry but I have no idea what times I used to run as I only officially ran it once per year at school sports days and times varied of course from year to year.
My second best athletics event was the 100 yards (as it was then), which I always made the final of at school sports day but used to come about 5th or 6th out of 8 or 9 people.
I always had the lead at the 50 yard point because my reactions out of the blocks were very good and because I had the best initial acceleration, but by half way the boys with much more muscular and stronger upper body strength than me had built up momentum and a head of steam and cruised past me.
30 plus years later I am now pretty solid in my upper body, particularly my chest and shoulder areas so bear this in mind when considering whether to take me on in my 100 metres sprint challenge.
This challenge was under discussion about 3 1/2 years ago with a great guy and a fellow PLO live cash game player Gabriel Forde who was convinced that I could nor run the 100 metres in under 12.5 seconds, aged 45.
For various reasons the challenge never went ahead. I am now 49 so the time may have to be adjusted up a little, or maybe not, I will see how I go in training and then issue the challenge.
I do believe that I am one of the fastest men in the world in my age group.
10 years after the cartilage operation my knees no longer ached after walking distances and still don't to this day, but they do still get injured easily if I run for any length of time, e.g. running for 10 minutes.
Last piece of athletic information is that in my mid twenties my work colleagues nicknames me Jumping Jack Flash and in my early forties come people called me The Flash because I was still flying all over the place at high speed.
I will message Gabriel who is exceptionally fit, he does Cross-Fit, and used to encourage me to eat healthily as I think he will find these physical challenges I am doing very interesting.
Unfortunately back in those live cash game grinding days I ignored his advice and used to eat at odd hours and my weight went from just under 10 stone to just under 12 stone in a two year period of grinding live cash games.
Brilliant or Useless
The "Frank Worthingtons" of 1970s British football did tend to be brilliant or useless in a match . The main reason for this was their lifestyle off the pitch, burning the candle at both ends. They could also sometimes lose interest in a match of the weather was bad, if their team was taking bad beating, or if the match was simply not entertaining enough for them.
Their natural instinct was to play with flair, enjoy themselves entertain the crowd, and show off.
I have many of these tendencies myself, in life, not just in poker.
So what this means in life for me is that I am often either brilliant or useless. For the vast majority of day to day, week to week life I an just ordinary, so neither brilliant or useless, but in that let's say 10% of life and life experiences where the more important or significant or event extreme things come into play, I am am usually either brilliant or useless, and nothing in between.
I would like to think that my brilliant to useless ratio is 3 to 1 in favour of brilliant so overall this does make me both an investable commodity (in a poker backing sense) and by being 3 to 1 in my favour it makes it easier for me to accept the 1 in 4 useless occasions.
Playing poker, in my opinion, is a deliberately created, volunteering yourself, microcosm of life itself.
It condenses down, using the vehicle of a cash game session or a tournament, "incidences" in life, and it creates for me some of that "10%" period of life where I become either brilliant or useless.
Chess, which I used to play a lot until I realised it was full of nerds!, is similar to poker, it also being a microcosm of life. But I feel that poker is far more combative than chess because more human feelings, emotions and aggression seep into it.
I would compare poker to the combat of professional boxing with no head guards, and chess to amateur boxing wearing head guards.
Boxers rarely get hurt in amateur boxing and there is little or no animosity between the fighters, but in pro boxing the opposite on both counts is often true, and the same can be said about poker..... people getting hurt and animosity sometimes being present.
So what is it whether in my "10% of life" or when playing poker which simulates the 10% that determines whether I will be brilliant or useless?
Well it isn't going out partying (I wish it was!) and it's not the other things that used to affect the flair footballers, apart from maybe the weather!!
When I say weather, what I really mean is outside unpredictable forces, such as travel difficulties I had for 2 of my recent EPT Deauville tournaments and the playing conditions at Dusk Til Dawn.
When I was affect in this way at Deauville I still managed to put on quite a good performance in the PLO comp I played and my rating of my play was 7.5 out of 10 and I finished 29th of 73 having made a poor start but then knuckling down an recovering from it.
But then when I went and played in the NLHE comp after busting the PLO (the NLHE was a back up comp) I couldn't cope at all and was absolutely useless, finishing 245th of 260 with a playing rating of 2 out of 10.
The thing is that I have big edge in PLO so even when outside forces etc are not perfect I can still potentially battle through, but in NLHE where I most likely have a negative edge against the field, I have absolutely no chance when things go a bit against me, as in what happened at Dusk Til Dawn.
I bought and read Jared Tendler's (+Barry Carter's) The Mental Game of Poker book just before Deauville to help me with these exact situations and it definitely added a few percentage points on to my game/
The book covered tilting, due to hand situations, which I don't do. But I did apply some of the techniques to my general overall feeling of well being that I have before, during and after tournaments.
Unfortunately "Mind Over Matter" techniques can only take you so far, there is a finite amount of weight that you can bench press however much you tell yourself that 5KGs more is nothing and can be added no problem, and similarly mind over matter will only get you so far when you are sitting in stifling hot airless conditions and are susceptible to such conditions.
I will link Jared and Barry to this post, and maybe and hopefully he/they can suggest a technique or a book of theirs that helps cope with outside forces, rather than with tilting.
Incidentally in the £1K NLHE comp at DTD I executed what I think is the very rare skill of playing consistently very poorly in nearly every single pot whilst at all times being exactly
0% on tilt.
One very positive thing that I am aware of is that I am not at scared or nervous at the table, even in fairly big buy in comps or in big pots. The majority of players are quite scared or maybe not scared but a little nervous.
So this is an advantage for me over the field as a whole, because to play your best poker the best combination is to be totally relaxed but at the same time totally focuses, a bit like an airline pilot who knows he is a great aviator so is very relaxed at the controls of the aircraft but at the same time has all decision making optimised.
(we don't want a capable, but at the same time scared or nervous pilot, do we?)
Feeling bad about letting others down
So it was a big disappointment for me not cashing, but I feel 10 times worse for letting my NLHE coaches down by so badly under-performing. I can live with my own performances and accept them and take them on the chin but I feel really bad when I let others down, as I have done in this NLHE comp.
My main coach Dave McConnachie also had 3% of my Deauville package as part of the deal I made with him for coaching and that returned him £180 so I am pleased that I could at least get him some deserved payment for the great coaching he gave me and the excellent poker camaraderie he has had with me since the coaching.
And this brings me on to my next topic....... Dave McConnachie!!
Dave McConnachie -: I kid you not, this man is a brilliant NLHE MTT player.
I think he wanted to kill me!
That's right, had it been within the law and had he had immunity from prosecution I reckon he may have killed me there and then.
Okay so he's my NLHE coach and we get on well together, gl messages exchanged on Twitter, you know, the normal kind of poker stuff.
So I arrive at the venue and quickly find out that he is at my table. Awkward, as I already said earlier.
Players start to take their seats. The comp starts and he is not in his seat. This is not exactly unusual. especially as it's a 45 minute clock and 50K chips.
I think nothing of it, fully expecting him to arrive soon and I get on with the game. By the way, we have no contact with each other since the coaching a month earlier, other than by Twitter. I know he is paying the comp but I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he is getting to the comp, where he is staying or anything else.
Here's where and why it gets strange.....
I have been trying for weeks to get Twitter working on my phone so that I can Tweet tournament updates to backers. In the end I found out that my older HTC phone has a software update issue that is basically unfixable without restoring factory settings and wiping a load of other stuff, so more trouble than it's worth.
So I went out and bought the bottom of the range Samsung Galaxy solely for the purpose of Tweeting, and within 2 minutes I get Twitter working.
As you can see I successfully Tweeted updates and can now do so when I play in Vegas.
So I am kind of pre-occupied (at least from which is my primary phone point of view) with my new phone for Tweeting and my main HTC phone is taking a back seat, or to be more specific is on silent and in my trouser pocket.
As well as this, I have been working very hard over the last 2 weeks to secure some new business deals to sell more tickets for my London events through third parties I got all three deals signed to completion in the last 3 or 4 days which I am happy about.
One of these deals was for a 2 for 1 offer. The deal went live on line on the morning of the comp. I know fro previous 2 for 1s that I have run with this company that on the morning of the offer when it first goes live that loads of people are lazy and instead of reading the offer details clearly they want to phone me and ask lots of questions.
Fair enough, that's business and customer service for you. I adjusted my answer phone message to encourage callers to email their questions or queries and then planned to have a quick listen to message during the first break, after 3 levels, and call anyone back who appeared to have an urgent query for a big booking or someone, so this is another reason and the main reason why I never looked at my main phone until the break.
In the mean time Dave arrived in his seat about 20 minutes late.
So it;s the interval after 3 levels and I take my HTC phone out of my pocket and sure enough there are a load of voice mail messages from customers relating t this 2 for 1 offer. The kind of "froth" I knew I would get on day 1 of a special offer.
But there is also one text message that says: "Cliff - Dave McConnachie here. Could you make a note of and text me my table and seat no if poss? Stuck in traffic about 15 mins away. Thanks."
I immediately thought "Oh fu*k", this looks really bad. This looks 100% like I saw he was on my table so ignored his message so that I could steal his blinds or something.
Clearly Dave was trying to save a little extra time when arriving by being able to go straight to his table.
As soon as I saw the text message, I found him during the break and said I'm really sorry but I haven't looked at my phone for a couple of hours so have only just seen your message.
He dismissed my explanation as total bull$hit, and who can blame him, I would have done so had it been the other way around, because let's face it >90% of the time this kind of I lost my phone, had it switched off etc is total bull$hit, but this was not one of those occasions.
I think he answered something like "Oh forget it mate, forget it, it's done", but by the look on his face I suspect that he was thinking to himself, "you dirty little double-crossing %$£$"
At this stage I don't think he wanted to kill me, but he probably wanted to badly hurt me!
So the game resumed after the break and stacks are now shallower in level 4 and the game is warming up.
I have already been playing badly for 3 levels and Dave by contrast has been playing absolutely brilliantly.
He now has about 110K and I have 30K. He limps from EP (my mind thinks "suspicious") but I am already heat exhausted and affected so I don't give this the limp the full and proper thought and analysis that I would other wise have done.
I come along for the ride in MP with AJo. I think blinds are 300/600, not sure. But I know there was about 3.6K in the middle (loads of 1 handed antes in the pot)
It;s 3 way to the flop. Board comes J33 with two spades. Dave leads for 2.8K, next player flats, I shove, Dave calls, other player folds. Dave has Queens, instant service for me with an Ace on the turn.
I don't think he wants to kill me yet, maybe just to rip a limb from my body.
There was then one other pit a while later where is was winning all the way to the river, pretty much knew what I had, I called hid flop and turn value bets (he was OOP) and the he had to check fold the river when got there. I was actually a very good fold.
By this stage he for sure wants to kill me!! And we are not talking about a quick death either.
Not only has he run really bad twice against me in big pots, but he has also been consistently running bad in pots against players who has outplayed...... and of course he thinks that I deliberately stitched him up, hoping that he would get lost on the motorway or something.
A the next break I tried talking to him again, but I could see that he was absolutely fuming.
I don't mind this, as I think that it is a very quality for a player to have, t want to win so badly that they are angry and really determined when things don't go right and then channel this anger into playing better and better and fighting back,
This is exactly what Dave did. At no stage did Dave lose one iota of composure at the table and despite all of the run bad, the worst of which from a psychological point of me was against me, he fought through to day two with a stack of 99K, with blinds at 2.5/5K.
As
PREDICTED by me on an earlier post, he is that good that he could still win from that position. And sure enough he starts day 3 later today done to the last 32 with a stack of 1.25M. He peaked at one point to around 2M in chips (which is now the ave) but clearly has a great chance today as I believe one of the best players left in the field and with a lot of experience of getting the job done. Massive gl to him today of course.
I have joked with him a few times on Twitter by saying that he only has to turn up to a comp and he will win or chop it. He really does have an impressive percentage of wins on his record in big sized fields.
I think it is only a matter of time before he strikes big, it could be today, or if not then not too far away.
Why do I rate his play so highly?
Well I knew a while ago that from a pure mathematical stand point that he had to be playing at a very high level of skill to be doing so well, so often, in big fields,
I then had 2 hours of NLHE MTT Deep Stack coaching with him and this re-enforces my view as he explained to me some great and very clever concepts, some of which are in the public domain on training sites and some of which I am pretty sure are not.
Then yesterday I watched him play at close quarters for 7 hours and his play was awesome, as was his table presence and everything else. Add to this the fact that he was also able to curb the impulse to kill me during the second interval, and you have a really good guy as well as a great player.
Now I am very good at analysing stuff and even in NLHE where although I can't play well I can see everything and analyse plays and hands. I am not going to analyse hands of another player but suffice to say that if you have any confidence whatsoever in my judgement then believe me he was absolutely brilliant.
The highlight of the day's play was him over the course of a 4 to 5 hand period, completely and utterly destroying, crushing, outplaying and ultimately busting the player immediately to his left.
Yes, from OOP he repeatedly destroyed his opponent. This was an ongoing feature of Dave's play , that he can play great, great poker from OOP.
I do not dish out praise lightly, I am actually very, very difficult to impress, but he fully deserves the praise.
If ever he offers some kind of package (and I assure you that he hasn't pit me up to this, remember that deep down he probably still wants to kill me!) then seriously you should bite his hand off. (not literally)
I would certainly be an investor should an opportunity arise, especially as he has a particularly good record in Vegas itself, in Deep Stacks.
The last thing I will say on this is that in all the NLHE Poker (both cash and MTTs) that I have watched on TV or have been in the actual game of, there have only been 4 players who I have been mightily, mightily impressed with and those 4 players (in no particular order are) Mike "TImex" McDonald, Scott Seiver, Nicodemus Protopapas and Dave McConnachie.
Nicodemus Protopapas I only played against a few times so I am guestimating/extrapolating a little here, but he did have an incredible skill of being able to work out a way to win almost every pot he was in, and he was brilliant at betting for super thin value of the river.
From what I know, he was more of a backer than a regular player, and when he did play MTTs he often ran really bad in key big ICM spots.
I'll be linking Sam "The Squid" Grafton to this thread who I know knows Nico well so that he can pass on my compliments to Nico or even post ITT and agree with my take on Nico.... or rubbish it!!
So what have I learned from this poor NLHE performance at Dusk Til Dawn?
1. That playing NLHE is badly ruining my overall live career stats. Maybe it is not a bad thing in the long run what happened, because say it hadn't been hot in there and/or I played well and finished 50th, then I may well have falsely convinced myself that there was a future for me in NLHE comps. There clearly isn't and I will never be playing NLHE again, even within an 8 game format.
2. The comp has reinforced that I am super calm, focuses and not at all scared in a big comp and that my profiling and acting/psychological warfare skills are top notch and effective. So I will carry all of this through to the Vegas PLO and PLO comps.
3. I do need to be even more aware, and develop more and better coping systems for when outside uncontrollable forces affect me. I have heard that venues in Vegas can be like sitting in fridges so this will kind of suit the scarf etc but I will make sure that I pack a variety of warmer scarves, hats and jumpers in case conditions are cold inside. I would much prefer it anyway to be too cold rather than too hot. The hotel I have booked is very close to The Rip so even if get the clothing slightly wrong I can quickly go back to my hotel and correct it.
4. I need to get myself into peak physical condition for Vegas. Of course doing this is an excellent life choice, plus I feel that by becoming a lean, mean fighting machine I will cope with all aspects of the whole 3 weeks, travel, playing the comps and everything else, that much better and it will increase our chances of prospering and of me having a really fantastic, memorable and enjoyable 3 weeks in Vegas.
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Now on to my 6 pack for Vegas challenge....
I will be hash tagging this #Omaha6Pack on Twitter, which is where I will be posting the starting pics of my belly, with a dated newspaper in view to prove authenticity, and then weekly photo updates of my progress.
So the challenge is this:
I have to display photographic evidence on Twitter
@sagedonkey by June 8th 2015 of a clearly visible 6 pack, or even 8 pack (are there 8 ab muscles that can potentially show? I am not sure, I will clarify this soon)
You my investors or anyone else are of course free to arrange your own side bets.
But my bet wit you the investors is this:
I am giving you the option, not the obligation, to gamble with me for a small percentage of the stake back profit share that you have with me for this Vegas package.
Currently you have a 70/30 profit share in your favour.
I am giving you the option to not gamble at all, or to gamble either 1% or 2% of the profit share profile with me, for your particular piece of equity.
So the options are gamble 0%, 1% or 2% by betting against me succeeding in my 6 pack challenge.
If you gamble 1% of the profit share profile with my and lose then instead of it being a 70/30 split in your favour it will be 69/31, but if I fail to achieve the 6 pack then you will improve to 71/29.
If you gamble 2% against me on the challenge the the outcomes are either 68/32 or 72/28.
Remember that your percentage of equity in me remains completely unchanged, you are only gambling with a small percentage of your profit share profile.
Each investor can make their own decision on whether they are not gambling or are gambling 1% or 2% against me by posting in this thread.
But first of all I need to get back home to put the images on Twitter and declare my starting weight. Then you can start posting your betting intentions. I will give maybe 48 hours from the weigh in/image posting for everyone to make a decision.
I am still in Nottingham and will be railing Dave McConnachie, and then go home tomorrow.
This 6 pack challenge is kind of a win/win scenario for investors whether you bet with me or not. If I don't make the six pack I will still be in great shape and if I do and you lose the bet then you have got a very small amount less of profit share but a much fitter and sharper player playing for you.
That's it, I hope you enjoyed my post, and apologies again to my NLHE coaches for not producing for them.
(P.S. The 100 metre sprint challenge is for a later time)
