stoked to follow along, gl and subb'd

Cheers and best of luck with your health.

No More Berri

So I battled some 5card this morning, few legendary line ups in the mix. I did well at some 25/50 but proceeded to play Deldar at 50/100. I don’t want to say too much but I think my game matches up alright with deldar. I think I was probably up 2k or so on Deldar after beering him a 45/55 for $21k and then battling back. Berri sat and tbh I think 3 handed with Berri I’m gonna be dead as Deldar better than me 3handed. Should have continued HU with Deldar but meh in the end got into a really gross spot vs Berri and Berri did what Berri does and made me fold river in a big one to end the session like -2k. Enjoyable morning Rolfing.

Solid game selection



If anyone finds a better spot than this this year you can unlimited free beers on me



Online Tournaments

Vic was dead as a dodo last night and so I ended up coming home and grabbing some Stars $ off Bena and proceeded to enter the $2100 turbo. Really fun tourney, got pretty deep but ran out of run good petrol at the end to bust in 14th for like $8k total inc bounties. Big shout out to the OG that is Gazzy for trying to propel me some stream run good. Much love brother.

Vic

Vic was a shambolic piece of time management by me, I turned up way too early, sat around for about 3 hours on my laptop punting a little off on Party and then eventually we got a £5/10 running. I played pretty solid and was on the good side of a lot of spots but ran bad in all ins, won about £800 but ran a couple of bags below for sure. It’s a shame to see the live game dead like this, I really like live poker, not only is it my bread and butter £ maker but I just enjoy the banter, the social interaction, table talk and whatnot. Looks like with fish and regs few and far between that we’ll be struggling for a game for a while but we’ll see how we go.

Yeah so that was my day’s play, won a few bags and can’t complain. I’m thinking about a Vegas trip so if anyone is keen and wants to chop a nice condo or whatever holla at me.

Good luck on the grind everybody.

Haha very fair point. Mix game players not big on giving up the edge! Just glad I parachuted out in time. Hope you're well mate, miss your strategy posts.

Thanks bro

For a player on Sol's level undoubtedly.

As Validand noted, it was purely disastrous.

Highly praised or sick burn, not sure which

It always strikes me as a strange that OP says stuff all that time that basically amounts to "man the games are so dead, now I'm going to tell you about the game conditions, how much I won, and how much I ran under or above EV, from which you can decduce that I think my EV in that game is probably 100+/hour!". :P

Games are dead for everyone else bro, also...100 an hour...must be a savagely bad month.

Minimum wage is <8 an hour broski, where's your northerner pride?

Acceptable flop.

Paying For the Thrills and Paying for the Bills

Yesterday was the 3rd day in a row where I’ve gone in to play live poker to sit around for 3 hours+ with nothing happening.

Issues at hand:

- [ ] There isn’t enough regs or fun players right now. Some regs have moved on, some have had to drop down, some have moved back to their homelands. That’s mainly the regs anyway. The fun players have been snatched up by private games that are probably more prominent in London now than ever, many have probably just done their bean too fast in ever toughening live games.

Killing Themselves

The Vic hasn’t helped however, jobsworth staff, ridiculously stringent rules that really kill any gamble in the game; ie not allowing straddles etc. The room itself is drab and lifeless. The atmosphere and tables seem worn and out dated. No innovation, no VIP seats, no starting games rake free for an hour to get things going etc.

The Main Effect

For me this really sucks. I probably haven’t been helping taking my laptop in and playing high stakes. To your average rec seeing obvious pro sat on his laptop playing multiple tables whilst waiting for action isn’t going to be that appealing but I can’t sit there and do nothing for 3 hours. A friend yesterday said ‘why do you play high on Stars and then wait for a £5/10 here?’. Fair question, I explained that with Stars I’m paying for my thrills, aka I like the competition, I don’t mind aggressively shot taking and treat it like a very volatile investment, most of all it’s fun. Live poker I said pays for my bills, it’s the rainy day money, my long term hourly there is very good and it’s about as well a paying job as I could possibly wish to have. If the games don’t return to the Vic I don’t see a lot of value in my long term future playing poker. The Vic is my bread and butter. At stars I’ll always consider myself to be a recreational player on there, primarily playing for fun above all else.

Health Affecting my Game

Last night after the Vic was a ghost town I decided to come back and play the 1k PLO tourney on Stars. I registered from the very start because it was a PKO. I was running good and playing fairly poorly to be honest, think I was burnt out a little. Towards the end I had a very good stack and was like 5/40 with a ton of BB’s. Anyone who has read past blogs knows I struggle with health anxiety enormously. I had been having some headaches and neck pain since a head injury in football a few weeks ago and haven’t been able to take my mind of it. I had a fair few coffees yesterday and I think that was probably a mistake. All of a sudden I was very edgy and shaky, which led to me shaking violently. I basically lost my head and just busted myself from the tournament in order to get out of it. Author Note: This was incredibly stupid in many ways particularly as just shutting computer down and letting myself blind off would have probably allowed me to ladder 2 more pay jumps or whatever. It’s a shame as it’s the first time I’ve had health effect my poker for a long time. Something I’ll have to be diligent of in the future. Still no complaint, couple of $k profit and also I’d given 2 friends 10% each as a free roll so good morale to make them a little cheddar and have them part of the sweat.



Cash Games

I didn’t get a ton of interesting hands down from yesterday. I swung back and forth quite heavily, primarily playing 25/50 and 50/100 5card. I managed to snag $2.5k playing some 2/5 zoom whilst grinding the tourney. When the dust had settled I’d won about $10k on the day.

Plan today is to chill and see a buddy for some Fifa and then we’ll likely chance our luck at the Vic later on and hope we can get an incredibly rare game, would be nice as I miss live poker .

Seem to recall you wanted to keep your SN private, might want to delete that screenshot if that's still the case

I think most people know it to be honest I just didn't want people (namely who aren't me) posting it for no reason.

I completely agree with your comments on the vic - the Cardroom is in need of a complete overhaul. It is a very depressing place with no life to at all. Everyone in there seems depressed most of the time and it doesn't make it a fun place to grind. It is probably partly a by product of games getting tougher but the Vic is probably #1 on the list of the least enjoyable places to play poker. They should make some effort to introduce rules to benefit the games such - banning ipads at the table for example (waiting for someone to finish playing his hand online before acting is going to be very off putting for recreationals and is generally disrespectful to the rest of the table anyway)

Does 5/10+ PLO run anywhere else in London or is it just the Vic?

I think they just need better food. Avocado shakes & vietnamese coffee please!

Shame about the bustout, but didn't do too bad!

Noooo, trust me this is the worst. My casino doesn't even let you use your phone at the table when you're not even in a hand - used to have to stand up and move back a couple feet to send a text or floor would be in your ear. This is without a doubt the worst cardroom in the world imo - making rules like that is the nutworst for everyone imo.

I think phones are OK although nowadays everyone is on their phone and it does take away from the social aspect on the game. I do think Ipads should be banned though.

Imo it should be no using phones when you are active in a hand with first time you’re told being a warning, after that your hand is killed every time you delay the action.

Super massive +1 to banning iPads.

(Sorry for weird quote, Tapatalk app isn’t great)

Creatures of Habit


Humans, by nature, are considered creatures of habit. We come up with habitual routines in order to have purpose and structure. Myself, for example, I have started coming to the same coffee shop every morning, pretty much ordering the same thing and I sit here and I’m trying to bash out daily blog posts (or somewhere close to daily). I consider it a healthy habit. It allows me to do some writing, which is an area I’d most like to move into post poker, it allows me to track and be accountable for my poker and I think in turn that leads to a more polished, professional me.

The issue with some habits is that not all of them are great, as a society we’re plagued with what many would consider unhealthy habits, from eating, to drinking to smoking etc. My worst habitual habit is that about twice a year since I’ve been a pro I’ve punted off in the pit. Last night was the first time this year, the only certainty is that there will be a second time later in the year. After a few drinks we hit the blackjack and we lost £10k each in the space of one pint. Not ideal. The funny thing is I really don’t like gambling. I’m the proverbial when I win it doesn’t feel good and when I lose it feels really bad. I do enjoy the company of people and one some level I think we played blackjack because it was time hanging out and that felt fun. The vacuousness of the activity can’t be ignored however and we took a good day and turned it into something disappointing. That’s something that’s a habit, a bad one.

Losses like this push retirement back each time and that’s probably the saddest thing.

Disclaimer: Gambling stories, in this author’s opinion, are always boring. I apologise for spouting it but a healthy habit is to stand accountable for downfalls as well as successes and I hope my consistently shaming myself it’ll stop a bad habit.

Poker, a Lighter Topic

I played the Vic Thursday night and we had what was close to a 10/25 for the first time in a long time. The game was soft and fairly fiery at times. I got to meet a fellow stars PLO grinder in Naktro91, a man who has fleeced me hard at 2/5zoom and unsurprisingly played very well live also, nice dude too. For me the night was pretty drab, I’ve been back in the lab looking at pre flop stuff and as a result I think I remained pretty solid on my hand selections. I booked a modest £1650 win and that was that, solid night at the office. No interesting spots though unfortunately.

Last night after the blackjack disaster I returned to my lonely flat and bashed out the $1k turbo on Stars, I really like these turbo’s, I think they suit my reckless style very well. The run good continues as I managed to cash my 3rd high roller event out of 4 played. Disappointing again though to be well situated only to end with a min cash but I couldn’t complain as I booked a hell of a lot of bounties to make it an ok score. I also won about $4k @ 2/5zoom on the day, which was obviously very welcome after the pit dust.



My brother is in town from Manchester today so I’ll be fading any tournaments but I’ll likely be back at it tomorrow playing the $2k PLO. My buddy wants me to play the main too so I’ll possibly flick that in for morale.

Have a run good weekend everybody.

in, this one is gnarly. glgl man

Me reading:

Woahhh there

Oh okay

If it’s not about the gamble why don’t u just play stakes where I can lose up to 1k rather than 10k? Sure it’s still shyte but much less so than what happened

Disclaimer: I have never gambled on pit games so no idea what I mean talking about