Always look forward to your updates!

Good luck in 2019 with all your goals, make sure you make some time to give the boys at The Vic a spin!

Nice update man! Best of luck with everything over the coming months. I’ll be trying to update my thread when I can. Props to solid who updates on an extremely consistent basis.

Sooooooo in the spirit of bettering myself I got smashed at my birthday dinner last night and here we go!

Should be some good updates....




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We’re back in London and back in the games, been a long 6 months!

let'ssssssss fkinggggggggggggggg gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oi question m8, what is the highest stakes live cash going regularly in london? anything big during the day? private games 25/50 and bigger at all?

No idea about private games but £5/10 and sometimes £10/20 run in The Palm Beach and The Vic. Never seen higher personally although I've read in some other thread about £25/50 PLO occasionally. The bigger and better games tend to be PLO in general I think.

how regularly would you say 5/10 10/20 gets up per week?

10/25 runs daily at palm beach but there are a few regs who basically run the game. You can play there 4 or 5 times before you gotta justify where your money to play with is coming from. I've heard that even if you got a lot of money in the bank it isn't good enough.

Vic has 5/10 most days and frequently gets up to 5/10/25 straddle.

is this to keep pros out or something?

cheers for the info m8

Time for a yearly check in!

Another year of a lot of change, biggest being I've left Financial Services and find myself with a lot more time to myself. As of the beginning of this month I've passed my probation at my new job (in Fine Wine and Spirits) and am settling into the new role. So much has changed in life over the last three years and I've found myself in a place where I'm not sure what my next move it. Having moved into a a career that doesn't offer as much in terms of money or progression, but also doesn't ask me to give my life up, I'm feeling like I don't have a huge amount of direction. When the time comes that we have children I'm really happy that I'll be able to be more present but I want to keep pressing on and achieve something in my own right too.

Poker has really been on the back burner for the last couple of years with everything thats going on and I'm not sure how much that will change. I've had some casual discussions about playing live staked again but I haven't pursued it with any real vigour. Maybe now I have more free time I will start playing again?

I'm hitting the big 30 this year and am definitely going to be trying to act more like an adult now. Having been married a year and settling into a new job routine that gives me more free time I don't want to slip back into my ways from my mid twenties, spending all of my free time in the pub or out with friends. I've moved gyms to one near my office, E by Equinox, which is absolutely awesome. I meet my trainer a couple of times a week and try get in there a couple times a week more as well. On that I've made a real conscious decision to be more aware of my drinking and am on my longest (although not that long at all) dry stretch probably since I was 18. I think at 30 the pressures to drink really drop off and once again, should kids appear any time soon that's as good an excuse as any to cut down more! I'm not looking to actually go dry but cutting back can't hurt.

I'd like to get back on 2p2 more and keep following the threads of those I've followed over the years, BenaBadBeat and Meale to name two that have always been a good read. I'm going to be playing some online 6+ holdem so there is a little poker content for me to post but I'll probably keep that to monthly updates as there are enough micro blogs on here and there isn't really much different. I'll try to update with the travelling and more fun things going on in life, hopefully something later today if I can find some photos of trips since the last update.

Anyway, onwards - Life and Poker in London continues, hopefully with more updates and much more poker....

First fun thing over my 2p2 break - new car!

We'd had our old Jag for a while and we looked at so many different cars but in the end stuck with Jaguar but upgraded to this:



It is unbelievably impractical in London (it doesn't fit in parking bays or most garages) but given the majority of the trips we do are long trips out of London to Yorkshire and the West Country this is perfect. I'm slightly concerned I'm going to lose my license as it cruises very comfortably above the speed limit but should that happen, at least the back is a comfortable place to be.



Some poker sessions have definitely taken place in the back but I don't get to spend as much time there as I'd like...

Unfortunately that means we had to say goodbye to our old car but we had them together for a little bit.



I've come a long way from sleeping in my Renault Clio in multistory carparks and service stations in Swansea and Bristol during poker trips!

Nice and gl
What are those jags worth in the uk? I ask out of curiosity because cars in Australia are very expensive.


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I think they start around £60k for the base model.

Sweet whip! Also shows how awol you've been lately if you think reading my pgc is anything other than cancerous :')

I hope you find something fulfilling to do with your time; people need growth (among other things) in order to be happy!

Thanks!

Ha, well I do have a lot of catching up to do...

Growth is really important to feel like you're doing something productive with your life, I just need to find what it is. I think I really underestimated what a big part of my life work was up until now and I need to replace it with something. I love my job but the dynamic there is so different to what I'm used to and I think the potential of what I can achieve there is orders of magnitude less. I need to fill that void because I can sometime spiral downwards a little if I don't think I'm moving forward.

$1k --> $1m bankroll challenge, do it!

I mean, I have time but I don't have that much time.... (or ability)

Potentially something live, maybe £3k -> something, just enjoy live more and my lack of ability is less glaring.

Welcome back.

Assuming you’ve kept your money in the equity markets, life can’t be too bad...

Definitely in for the next year.

Thanks, good to see you here again!

Yeah, 2019 was a good one! Actually have some pretty big news on this kind of stuff but I probably need to hold off another week before it is all confirmed.

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Been a good week here, getting back into the swing of things at work after the Christmas holidays. Even thought this new job is a lot more chilled I treat it the same way I have any job, giving it 100% which does lead to some seriously long days. The experience I'm getting is definitely different to what I've done before but if I want to run my own business in the future having this kind of exposure will really help.

I've finally got around to playing some poker again. Ended up having a small home game with some friends, I don't really have any poker playing friends so any games end up being pretty tiny but still a good laugh. I won a whopping £35 in a 10p/10p game at mine but it seems they all enjoyed it and we should have a small game like this running more often now.

I also made it down to the Vic for a short session on Saturday night, played around 3 hours and won £100 in a 1/1 game. Games were pretty much as I remember them. Didn't make any real money with premiums but played a few suited hands cheaply in position, flopped or turned flushes and got paid a full double.

I've been working on being more mindful of my drinking and keeping that in check. I haven't had a drink in January and I don't miss it at all. I do miss the big old pub sessions and heading out to the clubs but I'm finding other ways to fill my time and playing poker sober was definitely a welcome change. There were a lot of drunk guys at the table and the game was good but I called it around 3:30 when my friend wanted to head home. I think the plan is to try and get down to the game a couple times a month and get some quality time in rather than quantity, as well as being more compos mentis.

The gym and stuff has being going well - I'm getting down more often than ever before and combined with not drinking seems to be having a good effect. I'm not at all seeing the massive changes and benefits that I hear people talking about but mentally I feel a lot better and I think with time I'll fill the gaps with more positive things.

I have fallen back in love with video games again - it's definitely a time sink but it's good to be able to switch off every now and then. I bought a Nintendo Switch at the airport before a long flight and I thought it would just keep me amused for a couple of days but I've ended up actually loving it. Given I'm a boring old man now I can't just play for days on end so casual gaming that I can just pick up and put down in short bursts is good.

One thing I want to try and do is to book some more trips. The last 12 months have been awesome for travelling and I want to keep it up. If anyone's interested I'll drag up some photos from some of last year's trips. A lot of our friends were getting married so we had a lot of excuses to travel

I'm hoping to play some more online too soon. I'm enjoying playing 6+ on Pokerstars and I'll try play a few tournaments on Sundays to go after a bigger score. Good luck to anyone else playing today!

Took a swing at the half price Million this evening - had an awesome start and was in good shape before losing a big AKs vs KK pre and then getting the rest in AJ vs 42. I don't think I'll be playing many MTTs this year but it was fun despite the result.

I suppose it shows how long I haven't really been playing for that I didn't know the Sunday Million had been halved in entry? Why did they do that?

Another week in the books!

Firstly on this, we bought a house! We've been looking on and off for a couple of months but we weren't really sure about what exactly we wanted. Our plan was to look for something that was likely going to be our last house in London for when we have kids etc. We looked at a load of different places but finally settled on a place in Parsons Green, where I used to live. We're pretty much completely there now, just waiting on the results of a survey but I can't see the guy who sold it doing all the work he did to the property if it wasn't structurally sound.

This has pretty much completely cleared us out in terms of cash. We're looking to sell a rental investment property in the London suburbs to help with the stamp duty and then we're likely going to rent this new place out for a couple of years to build up some reserves. If and when we have kids running around we'll probably look to move in. This will almost certainly be our last place in London before moving out to the country, I just want to move in right away to be honest but not the best financial decision.

Fitness

I've been really trying to make more time to get to the gym and I think I've found a decent routine. I have a couple of PT sessions a week in the morning before work and head to the gym to run a 5k a couple lunchtimes a week. I'm feeling stronger as time goes on but I'm struggling with my 5k times still, here are my first three times of the year:







I'd love to get this down into the low twenties this year and I think that's probably achievable. I like running the 5k distance, I can fit in runs in a lunch break and it's a common distance used for charity/corporate/fun runs. I've still managed to keep off the booze, 27 days and counting. This weekend was a bit of a struggle with work drinks, catching up with friends and a dinner party but got through it and it's getting easier every time.

Poker

I'm trying to get a few more hours in on the felt this year and got a couple sessions in this week.







No real memorable hands - it's all as you would expect at £1/1, getting value with premiums and playing a few more suited/speculative hands on the button or vs people who are torching money.

I had the pleasure of playing with a gentleman who would lose a hand and spend the next hour muttering and swearing and proclaiming he might as well just flush his money down the toilet, while losing and rebuying again and again. It ended up extending my session as I wanted to make the most of the money floating around as at £1/1 I'm going to want to make the most of people who are happy to get some money in.

I've been working on a vague plan for poker this year. I'm starting out at £1/1 with £400 on 1/1/20 and I'll add another £400 to the roll on the 1st of every month, regardless of results. If I'm winning and comfortable I'll move up and make the next level up my game. I'll mix in some £1/2 from the start if the game is ok and there is no £1/1 running but I'll move across once I get a seat in the smaller game. I think I'm probably +ev in the £1/2 games but being well rolled is important and will stop me from being a nit. If I can end up rolled to sit comfortably in the £1/2 games this year and turn in some nice results I'll take that as a win as a very recreational player.

I'll finish with a couple quick photos from when I was last in Moscow. I love it there and looking forward to being back later this year!



Not a bad way to start the day, a kilo of caviar and a litre of vodka!



Went to see The Nutcracker at the Bolshoi, if you ever have the chance to see it I couldn't recommend it highly enough. I'm not a big ballet guy but it was a bit of a bucket list thing for me, The Nutcracker at Christmas at the Bolshoi in Moscow.