Hi Everyone!

Long time lurker in here and always drew a lot of inspiration from these threads so decided now was the time for me to attempt my own and try and document my progress and get my thoughts out there for people to view.

Info about myself:

I am 25 from the UK living just outside of London and have been a full time poker player since November 2017, having been profitable since January 2018. I have always found poker fascinating but didn't really start taking it seriously or studying until November 2017, where I started off as a backed player playing $2.50 sngs (180 mans ftw!) on Stars, which in hindsight was a really stupid idea given I had no savings at the time and had to play 13-14 hours a day pretty consistently for months at a time.

After swapping from SNGs to MTTs I had a lot more success, having multiple 5k months at a $11 ABI (Mainly due to sun running I think in retrospect but at the time I felt like microstakes Fedor) and was quickly up to high stakes (firing 215s and some 530s) by April of 2018. We ran super bad in our highstakes sample and quickly got buried 15k in MU (have always played backed) and then had to move back down to stakes where it felt impossible to get out the hole so decided to make the swap to cash. I have always preferred cash games just had more tournament success so decided to stick with that format as long as I did.

So I actually started playing cash at 100z on stars, that was my first stake level (MTT fish joins zoom pool, sounds familiar?) and actually held my own and did reasonable well, I was able to creak out a 3-4bb winrate and hold my own vs the regs, and found the grind to be so much nicer then MTTs in terms of being able to take breaks regularly, scheduling your life a bit better and being able to go outside more and also the fact that cash style suits me better in terms of I enjoy playing deepstack poker a lot more and have used PIO since I was a microstakes reg so I felt against these player I had a better understanding of their strategy then donks in $22 tournaments (also kinda silly in hindsight but hey its how I felt!)

I have had a ton of issues with burnout, depression, being busto and feels like I have gone through a lot of worst case scenarios as a pro and come out the other side ok and always found a way to pay the bills. So at the moment to make sure I build myself good personal finances I have been playing on app games and occasionally mixing in Stars to keep the brain sharp, starting at 60nl and right now our primarily limit is 400nl with some 200nl in there as well.

Goals for 2019

• Get to 1knl (On apps ofc!)
• Build my own roll and stop playing backed
• Clear all MU owed
• Return to playing on stars at around 200nl level
• Grind a few live stops in Europe with plans for Vegas next year

What I hope to achieve with this blog is somewhere I can post my thoughts and hands and give general updates as a way to decompress and hopefully help some people going through mental issues as well, I always have believed since I was a microstakes player that my journey to high stakes is in a therapy chair and not a solver and still stand by that statement.


And of course, heres the giraffe for the lads of my most recent sample on app games.




Esketit boys glgl to us!

Good luck and nice redline !

First time I've opened 2p2 in ages.

tl;dr. I'll be awaiting you at the high stakes marbles whenever ready.

Good Luck !!

Good luck my fellow brit, nice graph as well.

Gllllll boss

That redline tho! you must know all the HoTsPoTs
4dChess/10

Cheers mate! Actually have a breakeven blueline these days and playing a hyper aggressive style

Not sure I want to grind marbles with no HH's available so I can verify integrity of the run

Cheers bro!

Thanks mate, only a small sample for now but good to be winning!

My winrate just increased by 4bb/100 by having a Jose post in here pepega

can confirm I am a hotspot MDA wizard


Haven't been playing too much volume this week due to mood and in general having a weird ass sleeping pattern, I was thinking of posting some stories from me playing Live Poker or general musings such as mistakes not to make as a new player and optimizing your time best when studying as well as few hands and results and stuff, which would you guys prefer or think I should prioritize?

Is your SN public?

gl to you!

Would love to hear some live poker stories mate.

i vote for live poker stories starting... 'So I finished my 6th beer and...'

Your wish is my command boys, not too many interesting spots to post, been playing low and haven't been getting much action in so just spent a week getting back to normal and back to schedule where will get people willing to sit me

Thanks dude, I enjoy your posts/streams and my SN isn't really public but hang out in a few community spots, once I get back to stars will probably post SN as don't see any reason why not but for now playing on apps screenname is super irrelevant anyways as I rotate accounts fairly regularly



Live Poker - The Hearthstone Whale

So when I play live I tend to prioritise clubs or home games rather then the big casinos for the following reasons;

• Games are way softer
• Get treated better and valued as a reg (table starters super important at these places)
• Everyone tends to be more personable and you play with same people regularly so to me becomes a good social thing

I need to be careful not to reveal too much info because could imagine some of these guys reading 2p2 so I'll try to keep it vague enough but the group I found myself in was a bunch of drug dealers, degenerates (people who had self excluded from everywhere in London so could only go to clubs or home games), the occasional businessman and the house had 1 or 2 props who where winning players, and even they probably couldn't beat 5nl on stars or something to give an idea of skill level (stakes would be anything from 1/2 to 5/10 holdem, and have seen 60k+ on the table before in their PLO games)

As many people who have played the live circuit I think you realise that a lot of money in live poker at low stakes defo comes from drug dealers, from observing these guys a lot of places where cash in transfer out, so they would have 2-3k in cash to exchange for chips and would then would keep majority of it in pocket and put 500 on the table, then at the end of the night taking rest as a bank xfer, so provided they didn't do their absolute bollocks and lose it all they where happy to keep giving you money if you keep the games running.

One of the players who would come in was a younger guy, about 19-20 who had money from either parents or some other **** (defo wasn't a drug dealer type or talked about bitcoin once so didn't think was into crypto). He was an OK player who could beat up on 1/2 whales but could not handle his own against anyone who understood how to play at like a reasonable level, he used to tell people unironically that he was the greatest and he could "see the matrix" and this kind of hype stuff, so we used to always hype him up and call him Neo and would usually dust off in some crazy spot. I remember him over betting against me once in a spot which was set over set (he had the bigger set) and after dragging the pot he stood up and exclaimed "NO ONE EVEN THINKS OF OVERBETTING FOR VALUE IM ON ANOTHER LEVEL" so needless to say I used to really enjoy playing with this guy

So due to the competitive nature of this guy we used to shoot the **** about video games, bet on random crap all the time, you see live regs bet on anything after a while and one of the subjects we bought up was Hearthstone. I was an ok hearthstone player at one point, pretty much just used to be a ladder hero who climbed to legend once or twice but didn't want to take it seriously at all, was happy to play meta decks. If you remember a few years ago there was all this hype that DNegs was playing Hearthstone and I want to say he did a showmatch against ElkY back when they where both stars pro's so he was one of the people who got caught up in it, the only problem was he never looked at streams or meta decks and insisted on crafting his own **** and not looking at what pros do.

So the idea came up that we could play a point system for Hearthstone, you cant use the same deck more then once in a row (so we had a rotation of 3 decks generally) and if you beat someone you won the amount which was their life left. So for example in Hearthstone you start with 30 points of life and if I beat you and have 15 remaining life then I beat you for 15 points, if I beat you and have 3 points then its only 3. This was around a time where the meta was super aggressive decks and he had no idea what the counter is, so I went through about a week of playing him on my tablet at the table whilst we where also grinding cash, and almost never losing - it would be like me almost never dropping below 25 life and just crushing him 90% of matches, we where playing 2 pound a point so he got buried 4 figures really quickly and I felt pretty bad about it after a while so stopped playing with him because he was losing so much it was actually causing issues with action on the table, and sometimes would just come and sit down to play hearthstone instead of playing Poker so was becoming an obsession. He kept begging me to keep playing with him to give him a shot to win it back so just to get him to leave me alone agreed that he would only pay half of what he owed and he felt was a good compromise. Live players seem so stupid sometimes that you have to save them from themselves.


I used to get a lot of crazy situations like this for side hustling where a lot of people had a crazy ego so where massive propbet fishes and I think you can make a ton of money doing this live for sure.

In for this - super interested to hear more about live clubs, sounds like a different world!

lol more please. I have only played in London a few times but defo noticed a lot more dodgier clientele. The guys I played with looked like they were on day release from Belmarsh

Thanks for the compliment!

No worries, that sounds fair

Gooooood luck!

Thanks mate, I'll make sure to keep posting some updates when I can be bothered to write them out! Hopefully you guys continue to do your podcast, cashyboys need more representation in poker for sure, enjoyed the last one for sure!

Too true, although the guys who always caused the most **** from my experience are squaddies, normally the dodgier guys try to be a bit more low key to avoid any trouble

Cheers mate, and too you!




Poker Update

So this thread is about poker and poker we shall have!


Was struggling for volume a bit but have been able to get my fill of 1/2 and 2/4 past few days so been nice to battle with the boys. Finding there is a lot of weak regs on here now (TBH weak regs are my favourite type of player to play against, less random **** and lower variance then battling some of the sicko whales) so have been the robin hood of the club games this week, taking from the regs and donating to the whales.


Some fun hands;

iPoker, Hold'em No Limit - $2/$4 - 5 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

UTG: $395.00 (99 bb)
CO: $681.00 (170 bb)
BU: $529.00 (132 bb)
SB: $338.00 (85 bb)
BB: $833.00 (208 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($6)
1 fold, CO raises to $10, BTN 3-bets to $28, 2 players fold, CO 4-bets to $78, BTN calls $50

Flop: ($162) J♣ A♠ T♦ (2 players)
CO bets $81, BTN calls $81

Turn: ($324) 2♠ (2 players)
CO bets $522 (all-in), BTN calls $370 (all-in)

River: ($1,064) 5♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $1,064 (Rake: $12)

Showdown:
CO shows A♣ A♥ (three of a kind, Aces)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 88%, Flop: 96%, Turn: 100%, River: 100%)

BU shows A♦ 6♦ (a pair of Aces)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 12%, Flop: 4%, Turn: 0%, River: 0%)

CO wins $1,052

Thanks for the money m8, wasn't too sure if I should blocker or just go allin on turn, villain is a massive station so figured that allin was fine against opponent


iPoker, Hold'em No Limit - $2/$4 - 4 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

UTG: $387.00 (97 bb)
BU: $838.00 (210 bb)
SB: $386.00 (97 bb)
BB: $372.00 (93 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($6)
UTG raises to $10, BTN 3-bets to $30, 1 fold, BB 4-bets to $70, 1 fold, BTN calls $40

Flop: ($152) 7♦ T♥ 8♣ (2 players)
BB bets $56, BTN calls $56

Turn: ($264) 6♦ (2 players)
BB checks, BTN bets $176, BB raises to $246 (all-in), BTN calls $70

River: ($756) (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $756 (Rake: $12)

Showdown:
BB shows Q♣ Q♠ (a pair of Queens)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 84%, Flop: 79%, Turn: 75%, River: 75%)

BU shows 5♥ 8♠ (a pair of Eights)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 16%, Flop: 21%, Turn: 25%, River: 25%)

BB wins $744

Weird spot against a super whale, kinda just a close eyes and put in in spot, what a lad (HH thing doesn't save hands properly so missing river but we held)


iPoker, Hold'em No Limit - $2/$4 - 3 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

BU: $1,101.00 (275 bb)
SB: $400.00 (100 bb)
BB: $391.00 (98 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($6)
BTN raises to $10, SB 3-bets to $44, BB calls $40, BTN calls $34

Flop: ($132) 2♥ 5♥ Q♦ (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, BTN bets $66, SB folds, BB calls $66

Turn: ($264) 4♣ (2 players)
BB bets $4, BTN raises to $991 (all-in), BB calls $277 (all-in)

River: ($826) J♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $826 (Rake: $6)

Showdown:
BU shows 9♥ Q♥ (a pair of Queens)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 32%, Flop: 93%, Turn: 95%, River: 0%)

BB shows J♣ J♥ (three of a kind, Jacks)
(Equity - Pre-Flop: 68%, Flop: 7%, Turn: 5%, River: 100%)

BB wins $820

Here is the same guy drilling us back, Alexa play the titanic music.



Not sure if the Q9 hand is a jam but seems fine I guess? kinda weird spot where if we get called chances are they have a better queen but still have a ton of equity.



But yeah as you can see games are pretty good


For next story can go into either The One Handed Pool Player or Darky The Roulette Pro, which one would you guys prefer?

Can I be greedy and say both
I play roulette so would love to hear that one first.

Ask and ye shall receive! Will do full writeup of June tomorrow, just chilling out today, had a decent morning session so will do it tomorrow before getting in the mix.


Darky The Roulette Pro

Darky was one of the regulars that used to play in the club games, he was a black dude from North London who was defo on the spectrum, and a complete arsehole but I used to find him hilarious to be around. You may think "hang on isn't calling him Darky a bit racist if he is black" however he insisted on it and got actively annoyed if you used his real name (which was also great if you wanted to needle him cause you would just use his real name) and thus we all referred to him as this.

Darky was an interesting dude, apparently he had 3 girlfriends, an apartment he owned outright in London and a wild nightlife yet used to regularly do his brains playing 1/2 and normally run out of money and his card would fail. The cornerstone to this which we used to give him great **** over was that he would tell us he was a roulette professional and just played poker for side income. He never told us about his betting system as he was mentored by "one of the greats" whoever the **** they where but apparently it made profit 80% of sessions and he kept turning up and giving us money so we always used to play along.

There was always a few logical flaws with this in my opinion, outside the obvious one of it being impossible, the main two that come to mind are

• Why would you play Poker in a club when you could just use a Casino Cardoom in Central?
• Why would you decide to play poker for side income instead of doing something that isn't doubling down on variance?
• How can he constantly be going busto yet live the high roller life and do table games for a living?

He used to always berate certain fish or try and bully people pretty regularly, hence why a lot of regs used to hate him and would constantly slowroll him whilst using his real name which used to send him completely off the deep end and would sometimes end up just open shoving 500 with hands like A4s when he realised there was no possible way he could win postflop so "Had to play the odds" and was also the ****test tipper of all time, to the point where sometimes if he won a 500 pound pot we would grab a red and throw it to the dealer from the middle of the table because he would not himself and in these clubs tipping is a huge deal and pretty much mandatory (something yanks might understand a bit better but in most UK casinos its not a huge deal if you don't tip), so all in all a polarizing figure. He was also a smoker but never bought his own cigs and tried to ponce off everyone, which just used to piss us off after a while and then one day when asked about it said "there's no point buying them if you guys are just gonna give them to me"


So one night Darky is stuck about 1k playing a 1/2/5 game which we called winner straddle (any winner had to straddle in the game, losers could skip if they wanted to) and was trying to get everyone to go for 1/2/5/10/20 straddles and do blind flips, as a general rule I do not flip unless its a mandatory like 20-30 quid bomb pot to keep everyone happy so I was just watching this horror show unfold where some of the other regs got bored and decided to go Degen and where flipping 500 a hand 4 ways for about 90 mins.

At one point I just racked up and had a few beers waiting for my cab and Darky went from stuck 1k to up about 6k very quickly, one of the guys I was playing with was a businessman who made it his goal in life to send people broke and cause maximum pain (there where plenty of these dudes who made variance huge but also games so juicy, its somewhat common live) and he goes, enough of your crap darky, your running hot so I want to put down 8k and we flip or I'm just going home. Now any sane person on this hotstreak should probably just give up, but Darky being the genius he is goes "Man I have to wager 2k out of my own pocket to win 16? your on pal". The whole table is quiet for the first time in ages and I'm just kinda sat watching feeling pretty sick at this point, our flip game of choice was always 6 card PLO as well because that's way more of a sweat then NL and the dealer decided to screw with them by taking like a minute for each card when dealing the board out. Darky of course gets absolutely drilled, and when the dealer ships pot over to business guy he throws 500 over to the dealer and goes, "I hate c**ts who don't tip" and racks up. That has to be the single coolest way I have ever seen a game break, he winked at me when he was walking out and I was laughing pretty hard at that point. I'm pretty sure Darky ended up agreeing to go on a payment plan for that other 2k not on the table as well as turns out he may not have had it at the time so that defo is one of the more memorable moments I have had playing in the club for sure.

In, these are crazy stories! Glgl.

Thanks m8, maybe some day we can grab a beer in London, will probs be hitting up the Vic or hippo soon for some action!

June Results

Hey everyone!

So, June was a tough month for me in terms of volume and playing, was having some issues with anxiety and forcing myself to play so whenever I would I ended up dumpstering stacks so just ended up taking a break for a week or two to reset the brain (and grind Path of Exile). On top of this 2/4 has been running pretty meh and 3/6 so a lot of my volume has come from 200nl and 100nl, I think I am going to cut 100nl unless there is a super juicy game running as would rather focus on just open sitting and waiting on tables as I think games are actually softer the higher you go up (or you get the sicker whales anyways)


Here is my giraffe for the month



Still a good winrate all in all, ran a bit under EV but volume so low I don't really care, still made decent money with RB and enough to pay the bills!

Goals for the Month

25,000 Hands
Finish Elliott Roe A Game Masterclass (Highly recommend so far, been very good for me)
At least 5 hours of study a week
Don't die in the heatwave

Here are some fun hands or some of the bigger pots I played last month 4 the boys;


(We have the KJ here)

(We have 56 here)

(we have 55 here)


Peace boys and I shall continue with the fun live stories next post, defo have plenty of characters to work through!

Crazy story mate defo want to hear some more.
Can you also explain a bit more about these clubs as most of us probably know little about them.
Thanks Billy.

Sorry for the delay in updates fella, have been enjoying getting wasted and acting like a Degen instead of playing too much poker, that and PPP saying that HUDs are against ToS means getting HHs is a lot tougher now, will do my best to save some though, major pain in the ass though - makes you dream of the ez life in the stars zoom pool.


Live Poker Story - Irish Dave

Irish Dave was one of the worst poker players I have ever played against, vs any bet sizing on any street in any spot he would do this weird shrug then call, he would call with nothing and just jam any river and whilst it was great fun watching him destroy people like an absolute clown it was also extremely painful to be on the receiving end, me and Dave got along well though because I'm half Irish so would talk to me about "taking all these English suckers to the bank" and I would be like, yeah for sure mate you sure you only want to sit 100bb deep gotta cover the table right.

I have no idea what he did for Work, I think it was something tech related and he had the cash to splash for sure, would always be drinking Guinness the entire time, no empty drink in his hand at any point in the night and he would put them back pretty quick. I can recall nights where he lost over 6k playing 1/2 6 card PLO (I never played 6 card because the variance was insane, but it was some of the sickest games to watch - future story can be about how a 1/2 game ended up with 60k on the table)
The sickest thing about Irish Dave by far was his pool playing ability though (English pool, not that stupid American **** where the tables have no corner cushion and your firing bowling balls into buckets basically). I used to play pool at a county level so felt pretty confident playing against most people but you learn in these clubs very quick that snooker/pool and poker has a very big connection, a lot of the biggest whales would also be snooker players so it was worthwhile to play some of the pool comps to get games running and just have a beer and socialise, I very much enjoy the game so I didn’t really care paying 20 quid to enter a comp even if I would have to run like god to actually make money in it (lot of variance in Pool as well)

Irish Dave used to play hammered at 100 pound a frame (A match lasted at least 10 frames usually, with mercy rule if someone gets 6-0’d and wants to quit) and he was the scariest pool player I have ever played against, easily could have been national level, he used to just finish from the break at some absurd percentage, if you gave him 3 shots in a game you were guaranteed to lose, because we where friendly I would only play for like 2 pound a frame and just shoot the **** if we wanted a break from playing poker. He didn’t try and hustle me but one of the unique things Irish Dave could do was play 1 handed almost as good as he played 2 handed, a lot of his hustle came from this where he would appear drunk and challenge players who thought they where at a decent level that he would play them 100 pound a frame only 1 handed. You almost felt bad for the people who agreed to this but in my mind, they thought they were hustling some drunk idiot out of his money so fair game I guess.

There was one night where Dave cleared up 4k in cash on the pool table and dumped 3 of it back to the poker regs (hence why we liked him) and it was super memorable because a group of lads came in who where all pretty young, looked like drug money to me and where super arrogant about how sick they are at poker and pool and will take anyone on (usually this is the type of fish you want at your table, provided they aren’t being ****s). The 3 of them decided to pool their money into just battling Dave at Pool thinking it was free money and he managed to clean them all out, even dropping stakes a bit to keep them playing longer. There was an issue with collection where they said that they got cheated and they had no idea he was good so didn’t want to pay up. Once they started getting aggro a group of massive black dudes (I mean like 6”7+ and where defo not on the right side of the law) came up and said to Dave “Hey mate, if you want to talk percentage we can help you get this money” whilst the lads where there and I have never seen anyone pay up money owed quicker. You might say well why didn’t they just run? But the way this club works is that its a little compound, the main door is shut but once your inside there is a smoking area, main poker room and then snooker room, to leave the club you have to talk to whoever is running it that day and get them to sign you out and also you have to submit your passport to get membership in this club so everyone was on file, this meant people couldn’t get grimmed easily and people where easy to track down. The black dudes where an interesting bunch as well, one person would play with us at the table and he had 2-3 hanging around at all times as well, usually big muscle guys but everyone was pretty friendly and have a chat and a smoke outside and shoot the ****

He is defo one of the most memorable characters I remember from club days, still see him in the pub occasionally and say hello, and still can drink 14 pints of Guinness in an evening without throwing up (I drink it when I’m patriotic but really hate the taste of it)

Another fine story mate. Would love to hear that 60k 1/2 story. That irish dude sounds fun, I like a guinness myself but 14 pints that's some next level ****.

Love these stories man! Not sure I'd have the heart for it but this poker club scene sounds like something out of a movie. A far cry from my experiences of live poker. In for the 60k 1/2 story!

Yeah can you please explain a little more about this club scene cause most of us probably haven't played in one before.

Thanks Billy.