Welcome everyone,

This is a thread to document my poker exploits throughout the year. A bit of background first. I'm 19, have been playing poker for over a year, mainly online. I've played a mix of cash games and been successful up to 25NL over about 250,000 hands, and amassed $17,500 in online tournament cashes.

Having recently moved to the city, Newcastle (UK), I'm going to make this year all about live poker. I'm also going to focus on MTT's, seeing as I enjoy playing them more.

I'm going to start off with very small tournaments compared to the size of my bankroll, playing anything from £0 up to £20, excluding registration fees. All updates will be given in both GBP and USD, for American readers. I'll be playing at all the big casinos in the city, Aspers, Genting and Grosvenor, giving me a choice of games to play any night I want to.

I'll try to fit in 2 or 3 tournaments a week, and go from there, with maybe the occasional cash game.

With the fields in my target tournaments varying from 25 to 100 on average, I'm hoping to accomplish the following this year.

1) Win 5 tournaments.
2) Cash in 20 tournaments.
3) Become better at reading physical tells.
4) Develop my live style of play.

These are just some rough goals, not set in stone. By the fourth one, I mean I want to be able to develop the areas of my style that are applicable to live games. As you may have guessed by my screen name, I'm quite talkative, and use this to mask my own physical tells, chatting to my opponents when in a pot with them to confuse and rush them into bad decisions.

Tonight, I'm aiming to play a £10+£5 rebuy tournament at Genting, starting at 20:00. Starting stack is 5K. We are allowed one rebuy, for an extra £10, to get an extra 5K, which I will be taking right away. It has an £800 guarantee, so we can expect about 35-45 runners. So, I will be spending £25, and hoping to win. My golden rule is to never play to just cash (unless I'm either super-short on the bubble or it's a satellite tournament). This means that I tend to be ITM (in the money) less than most players, but when I cash I usually have a large stack and often make a very deep run. I do this by playing very aggressive poker near and on the bubble and on the final table.

I will not be re-entering, as that is one of my poker superstitions. I have a few more, if you're interested. I never run it more than once in cash games, I never look at one card and then the other (always both together) and I never cut deals at the final tables of tournaments.

I'll update you with the results when I get home. Wish me luck!

LoudMouth2121

Tournament 1

Just got back from the £10+£5 tournament at Genting. I bought the £10 rebuy immediately, and so started with 10K in chips. My total outlay was £25 ($36). I played the first hand poorly, making 2 pair on the river and raising the bet of my opponent after the flush had come on the turn. In hindsight I should have just called. After this I played very well for the next couple of levels (which were 30 minutes long), making a couple of excellent bluffs and maximising value on my strong hands. I continued to play aggressively but my stack was dented when I made 2 pair on the river and bet it, got raised and called the raise, running into a flopped set. This left me pretty short and I wasn't able to recover, calling a 10BB shove with KQs and running into AK, and then shoving my AJs in a limped pot to pick up the blinds when I had about 20BB left, and running into AK again.

So, all in all, I played decently, just ran into some coolers, and made a few mistakes along the way. If I can just play consistently at the level of play I reached at points today, I feel very confident about being able to beat these sort of games. But, an early bust for me tonight, was sat in my seat for less than 2 hours. Better luck (and play) next time I guess!

LoudMouth2121

Tournament 2

Today I visited Aspers to play the £10+£3 ($19) Afternoon Tournament, one of the smaller ones I regularly play. I ran well, and played well and managed to take it down. 39 players with 12 re-entries made a total of 51 entries, so to not only get my first live cash, but also my first final table, and my first win was really pleasing. After playing for over 7 hours, I took down the 1st prize of £200 ($285).

The heads-up game was intense, I was against an experienced and very good player, who played very aggressively, but after around an hour-long battle I managed to overcome him.

There was a real turning point for me in the mid-stages of the tournament. I was on about 20K, around the tournament average, and the player to my left had about 15K. I had A6 and it got to the flop heads-up. It was A5Q rainbow and I check to him, he checks back. The turn is a 7, and I bet my ace for about 1.5K, he raises me to 4K. My hand looks weaker than it is, so I call. The river is another Q and he moves all-in. I make what I think was a great play by calling his 6K shove. I do this because he would most likely have bet an ace on the flop, and he wouldn't have raised a Q on the turn, which is clearly what he's trying to represent here. So a large part of his range is bluffs, and that's exactly what he has.

Anyway, great day, I'll try and fit in another one this week!

LoudMouth2121

Planning to play in another tournament at Aspers tonight, the same casino where I picked up my first every MTT win on Wednesday. It's a £10+£3 ($18) tournament, with a £1,000 ($1,418) guarantee. With around 100 entries, there should be around £300 up top. Hoping to use the image I've begun to build at Aspers with my tournament win this week to bully people into fearing me as a player. It's often the same people playing in the tournaments here, so I'm beginning to build up some reads on familiar faces, and I have quite good reads on all the players that made the final table on Wednesday. Wish me luck!

Tournament 3

So, jumped into the above tournament and busted less than half an hour in. Got 50BB in with middle set and ran into top set. Nothing I can do there so I took it on the chin, had a little break to recollect and then decided to buy in to the £0.25/£0.25 ($0.36/$0.36) cash game. It plays like a higher stake game with standard opening raises being around 5x to 15x and the average stack usually about 300BB deep. I bought in for the table max of £75 ($107). I won a huge pot when I flopped bottom set with 22, turned a full house when the board paired and stacked a player with trips and another player with AA. The pot was probably about £400 ($570), although it could have been slightly less or more. In total I played for about 8 hours, but got quite unlucky running a flopped J-high flush (the 2nd nuts seeing as Ad and Qd were both on the flop with 2 more diamonds into the Q-high flush, and playing a big pot with JJ when I flopped an overpair and ran into AA. Despite these setbacks I ran a couple of good bluffs and played some good poker (although towards the end tiredness and fatigue showed as I made a couple of bad plays. I finished with a stack of £179 ($255), leading to a profit of £104 ($148). Not a bad night all in all. I think I'll play some more cash games as well as MTTs. Probably won't be playing again until Monday or Tuesday though as I have a lot coming up over the next few days.

LoudMouth2121