I busted the WSOP Main on day 2. Nothing went right for me on day 1; I had a tougher than average table and ran poorly. Mclean Karr was on my direct left playing laggy and flopping sets for fun. I was happy just to survive the day after some of the spots I was in. My day 2 table was much better but I was too short to fold overpair vs set and that's all she wrote. It was just about as unenjoyable an experience as it could have been, but even so I'll be coming back next year for another crack of the whip.

I ended up breaking even on the trip which is a decent result all things considered, and I had a great time. The big trip saving score was a 6th place finish in a Venetian tourney. I was a bit gutted with the finish considering the softness of the field and $25k up top, but you have to run pretty well to final table any tourney so I wasn't complaining.

Post-Vegas Swings

Slightly bizarrely, I have been having the biggest swings of my career in these few weeks since getting back from Vegas, not actually in Vegas itself. While out there I wanted to focus on the main, and not play big cash games that could potentially have a detrimental affect my mental game. On my return, I found some huge games in London and felt well-positioned to take some shots.

I've been sitting in the big game at the Vic with some regularity. Many days this means playing £5/£10 in reg heavy line ups, but on others the game is £10/£25 or £25/£50 with a VIP.

I started out running pretty hot, including my biggest winning day (around £12k) and my biggest pot won (£13k). It couldn't last forever though, and my upswing was terminated abruptly with a £15k losing day, most of which came at £25/£50. I lost my biggest pot that day, which went down as follows:

A good reg opens 200 UTG. I call on the button with 77. The whale calls out of the blinds (as he is liable to do with 80% of his holdings).

Flop J97ccx. The whale donks 400. The reg raises to 1100. I flat. The whale shoves (he is £20k effective with the reg). Reg folds, I call for my last £5.5k.

Turn 2.

River J.

I show my 77. At a leisurely pace, he flips over his J9. NH sir!

What a way to start my first ever session at £25/£50. Sigh!!!

So, that day I haemorrhaged money like never before. I won and lost a lot relative to my roll. It was, and still is, my opinion that it's fine to take big shots as long as you are prepared to come back the next day and grind your original stakes without feeling tilted. The guy that game was built around is out of town now, but when he returns I'll be ready for another shot. In the meantime I'll grind £1/£2 - £5/£10 like before, just focusing on finding the best game.

This last weekend I hit a decent score in a tournament, winning ~£20k. The timing is absolutely perfect, being the first tournament I played after my disastrous £25/£50 shot. In 2014 I've played six live tournaments with five cashes and three final tables, so I'm obviously on a pretty big heater, and long may it continue!

All in all the last three weeks have been exceptionally swingy. I've played in the biggest games of my life, and regularly faced some of the toughest cash game players in London, but I haven't felt over matched. I'm sure that I'm a dog playing deep against some of these guys but I know that if I focus and play my A game I'm not giving up much 100-200bbs deep, and there are plenty of fish in these games too. And anyway, if the game is really terrible I can always play lower.

The coming weeks will not involve much poker. I have a bunch of work with the theatre company for the rest of the summer. When I do play, I'll be focusing on the Vic and my private game.

Was tourney score from GPS?

Gl op

the dates suggest GUKPT but im sure you can work that out

good tournament results, an amazing year especially with no big notable cashes previous

you do know playing 25/50 is absolute mental, sell some action but even then a reg heavy game with one russian whale is suicide! plus too many of them players sharing the same bankroll so at times you'll be up against 2/3 players who don't care as long as you don't win.

you should deff make your way to Barcelona for the Estrellas, 1,100 euro buy in, 3 start days and expected to be 3m+ prize pool

im out there sunday to sunday and will extend if im running good, but its by far the tournament of the year, the value and huge prizepool is worth going for, plus its only 2 hour flight.

GUKPT. ty sir!

Yeah I'm on a little tourney heater. Shame that the only tourney I've busted before the money in was a $10k though!

I did sell action, so it wasn't quite as suicidal as it might seem. I've got a good group of friends, many of whom play higher than me, who respect my game enough to talk hands and take a piece of me when I get in these spots.

I'm aware that some of my opponents swap action, and it is something I keep an eye on. The variance in those games is bigger than anything I've played in my life up to this point but I'm much more mentally tough than I used to be and I can have a bad session at high stakes and play a smaller game the next day without it hurting my play too much.

I've got some stuff on this weekend, but I don't think I'd have gone even if I was free. I'm going to try and travel for tournaments as little as possible; I have no delusions of being a live tourney pro. It's easy to get overexcited by the prospect of soft fields and big pay days when, in reality, it's incredibly hard to make a good living with all the expenses involved. I seriously doubt if I'll go further than Nottingham for a tournament until Vegas next summer.

GL though, I'm sure it'll be amazing value and Barca is a great city. I've bought some pieces so maybe I'll have a profitable 'trip' myself

I'm going to be making a few more entries here in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, here's a story from a game at the Vic that I thought is worth sharing. I hope it's both interesting and illustrative of what a weird guy Devilfish is.

It's a quiet morning at the Vic, and there's only one game still running: a HU £10/£25 PLO match between Devilfish and Player X. Player X (a reg who grinds small and mid stakes PLO around town) is stuck, steaming, and has around £7k in front of him. Devilfish has more, around £25k, but is less than fresh at this point. The following hand goes down:

Player X opens BTN, Devilfish 3bets and Player X calls. The flop comes down Q72r, and Devilfish check-calls a cbet. The turn is a K, and that's when the hand gets interesting.

Devilfish, who is messing around with his breakfast, double checks his hole cards and does such a sloppy job of it that he manages to show Player X that he has KK. Oblivious to this, he leads the turn.

Player X then shows him QQK and says, "I think you just one outed me buddy, I fold".

Devilfish replies, "that's a pretty sick fold that is, pretty damn sick. I didn't have it though, I just had this" and shows three cards - a K and a gutshot.

Player X tries to remain calm for a moment, but the tilt in him is too strong and he loses his mind "I KNOW YOU'RE LYING YOU F*%KING IDIOT YOU SHOWED ME YOUR GOD DAMN HAND. YOU ONE OUTED ME AGAIN IT'S TOO DAMN SICK", and gets up to storm off.

Devilfish looks at him and says "well you didn't see it did you, cos I didn't even have it", shows him the KK and gives him a wink.

aspers poker isnt great, lots of wanabe grinders, stick to hippo and empire if you wana make money, there 1/2 is a joke

Any updates from the London Luckbox?

2014 Review

Last year my poker playing followed three distinct patterns:

1: Crushing lower stakes. At 2/5 and below it's possible that I was the biggest winner in London poker. I posted regular £1k+ winning sessions at 1/2, and multiple ~£5k wins at 2/5, with very few losses. I couldn't miss a draw, every bluff worked, every cooler went my way.

2: Giving most of it back at 5/10+. In the bigger games at the Palm and the Vic I got absolutely crushed. In all of the £10k+ pots I played I had a set or better, and in all but one of them I did my stack (maybe five pots in total). I got set over set at least five times at these stakes, which is ridiculous. All in all, my shots at playing higher were a complete disaster, but I wasn't dissatisfied with my play.

3: Tournament luckboxing. I made four live final tables, including a third place for over £20k. I played very few tournaments and I think I cashed in over half of those I did play, so clearly I ran exceptionally well.

Aside from poker, I probably had the best year of my life so far. After a slightly rocky start, things are going better than ever with my girlfriend of 5+ years, and we recently moved in together. I holidayed in Rome, Cornwall and Vegas, where I played the WSOP for the first time, which was an incredible experience. I went to three music festivals including Glastonbury and had distinctly brilliant experiences at all of them. I formed much stronger friendships with people within the poker world, while maintaining the ones I value in the real world.

The outlook for this year is pretty positive. My results in the past few months have been solid, and I'm happy with my current lifestyle. I still see myself being a poker player in 12 months time, which I'm not sure I did this time last year.

I'm spending next week in Paris, grinding poker and seeing the city with a friend. I've previously posted my thoughts on travelling to play poker (it's stupid and 99% of people who think they're making a living doing it are delusional) but with no accommodation costs and the holiday element this looked like a good time to break my own rule. Let's hope I run good.

Nice one buddy! You know all of us on the London grind love you and enjoy your company on the tables (when you're not beating us up). Hopefully catch up with you soon and maybe we can start those coaching sessions that we persponed.

good update, keep us posted on your next big tournament, seems like there's plenty of £400-£1k events to keep us all busy until WSOP

NH!
What has your volume been like?
Do you play with regular routine or just when you feel like it?

keep crushing

Yes mate let's catch up soon.

Next tournament for me is probably UKIPT nottingham, last year was just amazing value. If it's anything like as always soft as that then it's unmissable imo.

Volume has been pretty good - usually hovering just north of 40 hours per week. I used to really struggle to play so much and maintain A game but this has become less and less of a problem.

My routine is a bit all over the place. I'm a reg in a couple of private games that run all night and often get great when deep and short handed in the early hours so I always want to be fresh for that, and when I'm in this sleep pattern I might play nights in a casino also. But at the same time other areas of my life suffer if I'm just nocturnal so I'll spend my part of the week playing a days - sometimes in another private game that runs weekdays or sometimes at the vic or lsq. It all adds up to a bizarre sleeping pattern and occaisional bouts of sleep deprivation!

Read the lot mate, enjoyed it. Doubt you are ever going to have a 9-5 though, i bet this live style is ingrained now

GL

Thanks for reading!

The point you make about not being cut out for the 9-5 lifestyle makes me uneasy, and I hope it isn't true. I like to think that hard work and discipline isn't a major issue, it's more a question of finding something that truly motivates me. There is at least some chance that you're right though.

So, I'm sat at my laptop when I should be in bed. I'm going to a funeral tomorrow, and times like this in life make me reflective, uneasy, and, most of all, unable to sleep.

I started this thread when I was 23, and now I'm 25 and will soon be 26. I feel like I have changed a lot in this time. When I made the OP I felt like I needed to reach a turning point; that playing poker had to become a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Poker had to become a vehicle through which I discover what I really want to get out of life and give me the means to achieve what I want. When you put it in these terms, I think I've only achieved mixed success.

I think I have a better idea of where I see myself in the future than I did before. I want to settle down with my girlfriend, buy a house, have a family and be comfortable, and I want to maintain the strong relationships I have in my social life. I think this makes me incredibly - perhaps disappointingly - typical, but there we are. Honestly though, I find the idea that I am the same as most other people oddly comforting. I've always found the idealised 2p2 vision of the poker baller completely absurd, it holds no appeal for me.

Is poker the thing getting me there? Not quite. Realistically, it is incredibly hard to fund an independent and comfortable middle class lifestyle living in London, where the cost of living and house prices are ridiculously high. I do fine - better than most people my age, and better than most poker players - but I will need to do better in the future.

Maybe I'm at another turning point now. At the start of this thread I was a low stakes reg trying to ascend to mid stakes, while taking time to find the drive to work out what I want in life. Now that I am a 2/5+ reg and I have a better idea of what I want, I need to keep on climbing the ladder in order to achieve it.

Private Games

I play in a lot of private games now. The rake is usually (but not always) higher than a casino game, but they are far softer. The people who run them are experts at pulling whales out of casinos and into their games. There's a good chance that the whale who used to dump money into your regular game but doesn't turn up any more gets his regular poker fix in an invite only game.

For a winning player, it is easier to get into these games than you might think. The key thing to remember is that the professional player is the least important equation in any game. The game will run with or without you. Therefore, you need to give something back to the game. Some do it by giving more action than they normally would, some do it by being an entertaining, fun person to play with, and some do it by simply showing up bang on time every time and not leaving until the very end (any private game host will love you for this alone, for obvious reasons). There are plenty of nits in private games who secure their seat simply through being reliable and not acting like a tit when they lose.

The way to stand out from the crowd and be invited in the first place is to show these qualities in the casino games you play. Give a little bit of action, be friendly and respectful to everyone, don't sit there with headphones on staring at your iPad. If someone suggests a round of straddles, say yes! You never know where it might lead.

Once you're established in a private game, your chances of getting in another increase massively. The dealers tend to work several of the games, and some of the hosts play in each other's games from time to time. It's very easy to make connections and make yourself available for next time someone needs a player.

I do the rounds now in a bunch of different games, and I love this aspect of being a live player. While I've heard a few horror stories and have heard of a few bent or downright dangerous games, the ones I play in are well run and safe. I've always been paid and have never had any major problems. They are also a lot of fun to play, especially compared to places like the Hippo or the Vic where they get very nitty about the rules on prop betting, limiting the number of straddles, and showing cards. I think it's a large part of what has kept me interested in grinding live poker.

stakes???

be wary of home games

it does surprise me the amount of people who play them regularly, when the rake is much higher than a casino, and has no security or no fresh new punters

i avoid them, as i have seen/heard plenty of dodgy things go on and you have no leg to stand on when it comes to making a stand if you think you been screwed

You're right, in that for every private game that's well organised there's a couple that are either incompetently run or downright bent. In hindsight my last post seems to be saying that you should dive into whatever private game that'll have you and I don't want to suggest that at all. Before you try out a new game you should be asking a lot of questions to as many different people as you can, and during the game keep an eye out for anything unusual. I'm certain that the ones I play in are not bent, but I've heard A LOT of horror stories about others. The worst thing that's happened to me in one of these games is slow cash outs, but I've always been paid by the next game (again though, I know people have been screwed in different games, so be careful).

1/2-5/10 (mainly 2/5), some NL, some PLO, some DC. A mixed bag

Mixed Games

I have a love/hate relationship with mixed games, yet I find myself playing them more and more.

I'm an occasional player in a 2/2/(5/10/20) PLO/PLO8 private game, a PLDC game, and I've been regging the PLO/DC at the Empire lately. The game at the Empire has increasingly become Triple Flop PLO (either 1/2 or 5/5) and we have been seeing a lot of action there.

The triple flop game has one huge selling point - it is filled almost exclusively with non-pros. People play the game because it's fun, and because no one knows what the correct strategy is. No one has written the book on triple flop. So you find a situation where a few of the biggest punters in the room are in one game and all the grinders prefer to play smaller, drier games rather than hop in. And, even better, the game plays deep and plays big.

Mixed games are fun, both to play and to study, and break up the tedium of grinding NL, which is by comparison pretty dry (this isn't to say I don't like playing NL, but any change is nice I suppose). The problem I have with them is that we play a very low number of hands per hour, particularly in triple flop and split pot games. This can lead to ill-discipline pre flop, and some sticky situations post.

I love diving in to something new when I see there's a bit of value there. I'm sure it has something to do with ego, and something to do with being a bit of a degenerate, but the feeling of joining a game where you have to work out a lot of it on your own, playing for significant stakes, and winning, is a lot of fun. The flip side of it comes when you hit a downswing. When you go on a bad run playing a game where you're sure that you're playing winning poker, like NL or PLO, it's easy to come to terms with it and ride it out. With a game like triple flop, you're much more likely to begin questioning yourself, and there isn't really anyone with any great authority who you can turn to. I have a couple of friends who are winners in the game but do they really know what they're doing either?

The triple flop game at Empire is building a bit of a player pool, so I don't think it'll die any time soon. There will be swings to come!

Update

I went the whole year telling myself and anyone who asked that I wasn't going to Vegas this summer. Expenses are huge, tournaments are dumb, and London is great that time of year, both in terms of cash game action and general things to do. Needless to say, I got talked into it, and just two days after Glastonbury I was boarding a plane at Heathrow to play a handful of bracelet events including, for the second time, the WSOP Main Event.

I bricked the 1500 bounty and 777 events in fairly short order. I played a few cash game sessions, mainly 5/10 at the Wynn, and broke about even in fairly soft but unspectacular games. Leading up to the Main I felt like my game was in reasonable order, and mentally I was in a good place.

I played very little in the days before day 1C. We went clubbing, ate some fancy meals and played disc golf at Las Vegas Ski Resort. I am officially the world's worst disc golfer, but I did manage to win a little bit gambling on it (it's all in the negotiation, obv). I also discovered craps, which is by far the most fun -EV gambling game I've ever played. My friend and I toured around some of the older/weirder Las Vegas casinos on the strip and downtown rolling dice, drinking, chatting with locals and generally having a blast.

When day 1 arrived I felt nervous but positive, and after a few orbits I really liked my table. The line-up was mostly amateurs, and a few of them were quite whaley. Unfortunately I ran pretty bad in the first few levels and ended up with just 16k chips from 30k starting, which is basically what happened last year. While I was disappointed, I wasn't quite as gutted as after day 1 last year. Even with that short a stack there's a lot of play left in the tournament, and the size of the prize on offer really helps to focus the mind!

At the start of day 2 my table was also great. There were two decent tourney regs on the table but they both got bashed up and busted early in the day, and were replaced with weak players. I was able to chip back up to 50k at dinner, and was feeling good. Finally I had something of a stack with the money about 5 levels away and a good table. Time to get the lot.

After dinner it all went wrong. I ran AK into 77 on A72A to get short and then busted soon after with top pair/gutter/fd vs set. Hilariously, I busted to an Indian banker guy from London who I've played with dozens of times at the Empire. He'd ran up a big stack and was loving life. When I shook his hand and wished him all the best I actually meant it, as he's a good guy.

So, once again my WSOP dreams were crushed pretty quickly. Maybe next year.

On my return to London, I dived straight back into the cash game scene. I'd broken even in June and then done quite a lot of money in Vegas on buy ins and expenses so I felt motivated to grind it back. Luckily the games have been pretty good this summer. The Palm tends to warm up this time of year and has been true to form, and the main private game I play has been consistently excellent. It only runs once or twice a week but it's a gold mine. I decided early on (3 years ago now) to really make an effort to prop that game well and be a good reg, and it seems to have paid off; the number of pros in the game is strictly capped but I always have a seat if I want it. My strategy has been to be friendly, polite, never kick up a fuss, straddle, play lots of hands and gambool it up. It makes what is already a big game more swingy than it strictly needs to be, but if it assures me a seat then I figure it's a price that needs to be paid. It's also enormous fun.

I worry slightly about this winter coming up. The Palm will drop off when all the Arabs and Indian high rollers leave town, and games at the mid-stakes have dried up an alarming amount. The Vic still gets a decent 2/5 at night but it starts later and later since the day game has disappeared. The bigger action at Aspers came and went very quickly. Neither of the LSQ casinos seem bothered about pushing bigger games. If I hit a bad run at 5/10 it's a long way to fall down to the low stakes games, and it might be harder to climb back up than before. Hopefully it's just a phase and the mid-stakes action will return in time.

Other than that, life is good. I've done a fairly terrible job at keeping a good life/poker balance but I took a while to realise it because I'm pretty happy in general. I'm going away for the weekend with some old friends which will be fun. After that, I'm content to put in more hours at the Palm for the rest of the summer and try to get the lot. Let's hope I run good...

Good job man. I remember Ike saying in some nvg thread that 10bb/100 is an optimistic win-rate for a live $2/5 grinder. I always thought the win-rates at live would have been way higher than that, like closer to 10bb/hour (at least the £1/1 and £1/2 games I've played up North feel that way, although I hear 2/5 is a big step up in standard).

How tough would you say the nl cash games are in London, like £1/2 - £2/5?

I agree with you. Potential win rates in London are def higher than general 2+2 consensus would have it. This is because the games play unusually deep at all levels. The best 1/2 grinders are making 25-30 per hour and I think that's sustainable. I'm at 35ish lifetime but I think I've ran a bit good. At 2/5 I think 60 is achievable. I'm not there personally but I think I've ran kinda terrible! I'm less firm on this figure because the only regular 2/5 is at the vic and I haven't properly grinded that game in well over a year.

Basically all the games are pretty soft. 1/2 is obviously the softest; you get grinders but most of them are basically just very nitty ABC and no real threat. You don't want them filling up your game because the stakes are so small that you can't exploit them for a good hourly but they're super easy to play against and won't give you a hard time. Crucially, they're bad at making in game adjustments so if a whale comes along you can iso almost as wide as you like without too many worries.

2/5 is the smallest game that you'll find good regs in but they're still not very numerous and there's far more bad regs than good.

Hope that was useful, happy to answer any more Qs you have about London poker

Against my better judgement, I've been playing lots of big 6 card PLO recently. I don't how much money you need behind you to play 5/5/10/20 but I feel like it's quite a lot more than one might assume.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to some big pots. The following hand was the biggest pot I'd ever played at that moment in time (I have since broken that record several times), is somewhat interesting and I think captures some of the dynamics of a game like this for those who are interested.

First, a little background. This is a private ROE game, with the button choosing how many cards on the omaha round. The NL orbit is playing fairly big but it feels small compared to the PLO, which is going absolutely insane. X (not his real name, obv), a smart, fearless, over-gambley super LAG is doing his absolute pieces and is very tilted. He's in the mood to get even or lose £50k. He's probably about £20k in the hole at this point.

*I have basically no memory of the exact sizings involved, this was very late and the hand happened very quickly, for a pot of this size.

5/5/10. There's a bunch of limpers to X otb who pots it. I call from the straddle with KJT976ccddxx, and we go about 5 ways to the flop. I'm nearly £9k deep with X.

Flop AQJscd. Good flop! I check, and it checks all the way round to X who bets. I flat, the rest fold.

Turn 8c, giving me the second nut flush draw. I check again, and he bets again. I opt to flat again. This decision is not necessarily obvious and not what a lot of regs would do in this spot but I had good exploitative reasons for doing it here. Aside from the obvious one that villain is on monkey tilt and has tonnes of bluffs, I felt like this line sets up some very profitable river situations. Importantly, I think that X 100% does not expect me to take this line with the nuts, and is most likely to put me on a set. This means (I hoped at the time) that I was unlikely to get bluffed on a board-pairing river, but more likely to get another barrel on a brick or a club.

River 3x. I check a third time. He bets. I raise. He snap shoves. I call, sighing internally because it's clearly a chop. He shakes his head and mucks... and I ship an £18k pot. He had KKK. Blockers, innit.