Uncle Ben!

Again!

My sister managed to pop out her second child last week, this time a baby boy, and even managed to do so without being filmed for national television! Luckily for me my sister gave birth on Friday, meaning me and K were able to zoom down on Friday night and spend the first 3 days of his life with my folks. See cutie in pic below - and the baby :-)

Since we came back I've been informed that the baby boy has now been named - Jet Johnson. Although I personally think that he now sounds like a cartoon character from the future, my sister and her fella are angling for the 'rockstar' sound to his name - let's hope he prefers guitars then and not flying scooters! I'm just pleased I (i.e. Katrina is pleased) that we can now buy baby boys clothes (ie miniature spurs football kits).

On poker front, things have been quite good actually over the past couple of days. I was struggling at the beginning of the month but now up to a healthy 1k profit - including rakeback. This has been primarily due to 2 awesome sessions at Aspers playing 50p 50p - I followed up my £290 win with a £220 win and am thoroughly enjoying the live experience. I should try to get there more really but there's just too many other things to do in the evenings.....

Been blogging here while playing some Sunday freerolls and just busted out in 4/21 with top prize being an ipad - bit gutted as was leading going in to the last 4. Still hanging around though in the Full Tilt one though so hoping to sneak in to the cash to add $50 or so to my roll. Will no doubt bust just before the money but can always hope for that big score :-)

EDIT - just busted 3bet shoving with AQ only to run in to KK in the small blind - AND AA in the big blind!! I run so bad :-(

Rising from the dead....

I'm going to try and kick start my blog again. I've been a lazy bastard and it really only takes a few minutes to write an update so I figure I should really do it. Reasons are as follows:

1. I think I run better when I think about poker / write about it

2. It gives me an excuse to have a nosey at how well other poker players are doing through my following list

3. Main reason - I'm becoming more and more stupider, with my IQ actually dropping 8 points in a year since I've been full time pro. K (psychologist) says this is the rate of dementia, so I figure I need to do something quick as I'm only 31 and don't have too many IQ points to keep losing at this rate!

So how has May started poker wise? Shit. At least it was until yesterday. I ran terrible, trying to run up my Full Tilt balance to play NL100 rush again but as soon as I tried to play it I lost 3 buy ins in 20 minutes so been back grinding the NL50 again. I'm now £236 up for the month from online, and won £290 at Aspers yesterday playing 50p/50p - hitting EVERY draw and getting paid in every spot. Makes a change as I lost £64 at Aspers at the weekend, highlight being getting all in (bar £5) for a £140 pot with 93 on a 9935 board versus A9 - only for him to bink on river. Such is poker....

Anyway - all in all I'm about £400 up now for the month - and hoping yesterday (and this blog post) will help me run good for the rest of the month. I definitely need it as have some wedding deposits to pay for. And I REALLY want to buy some new golf clubs too :-)

April 2011 Review

What a crazy month!

First and foremost, had a great 9 nights in Vegas with the mrs and booked up the wedding venue for next year - the Wynn. The chapel looks pretty good, but the main appeal was the terrace with open bar we've booked up for the reception that looks on to the 'lake of dreams' - proper swanky. Very much looking forward to that next year :-)

With the US government then fucking over the entire online poker population, my money has also been in and out of limbo all month. I withdrew the lot from Full Tilt on the day the shit hit the fan, but have since reloaded £300 to try and rebuild a roll there as now hoping everything is sorted legal wise. I'll not be keeping as much on there as have done in the past, that's for sure.

By about the 15th of the month, I'd been able to do fuck all work, bar a couple of live sessions in Vegas, and with online off limits I was forced to get out of the flat and play some local live poker. Went OK all in all, with only 2 losing sessions out of 7 and a tidy profit. Nice to know I have an alternative income possibility if online does die permanently.

Anyway, here's the final P&L:
Rush: £586
Rakeback / Bonus: £98
TOTAL ONLINE: £684

Live Tournaments: -£12
Live Cash: £657
TOTAL LIVE: £645

OVERALL PROFIT: £1,329

March 2011 P&L

At last - a good month. Rush Poker: £1,578 STT: -£4 MTT: -£3 Rakeback / Bonus / Freerolls: £294 Total Online Profit: £1,865 Live Cash: £170 Total Profit: £2,035 Online Review: I ran like god for the first few weeks, winning £1,000 at NL50 rush but being about £500 above EV, then took a shot at NL100 for the last week and played well / didn't get shafted to make over £500 there too. I feel a lot better about my poker life having moved back to NL100 as although it is definitely tougher than NL50, I think it's still beatable for me and can provide me with a livelihood that doesn't involve 50 hours a week and running awesome at NL50. I'll be starting April at the new level and hope to carry on where I left off. Live Review: Played 4 sober sessions of NL50 at Aspers and one highly intoxicated one. Profit for sober sessions was £330, loss for drunk session was £160. Lesson well and truly learned. On plus side I'm feeling miles more comfortable live and do enjoy (most of) the banter so will be heading there a fair bit more in the coming months. They have a NL200 game there which I'd love to have the bankroll to play in comfortably, as sure there is money to be made there, but until I get a roll I'll be grinding the lower level tables to iron out any live tells I'm still carrying. There's a £500 UKIPT game at Aspers in May so ideally I'd like to be a live expert by then and rolled to buy myself in to that one if I can't scrape a satellite seat. We'll see.... Life Review: Everything going well at the moment, happy with life. Off to Vegas on Sunday for 9 nights with mrs to sort out wedding plans for next year, so that should be a class holiday, and got 2 more long weekends away booked in for June / July. Would LOVE to qualify for a WSOP package in Vegas but with all my holidays I don't think I'm going to have time this year even if I did make it! Guess I'll have to wait until next summer to win the $9 million main event jackpot. One more thing - COYS!!!! (we're crocked with injury so expecting the worst but still can't wait to see us take on Real Madrid)

Feb 2011 Results

This has been a really weird month. I started it grinding the NL50 rush tables well, storming to a healthy £400 profit in a week, looking pretty for a good month and hopefully taking some shots at NL100.

Then things went tits up:
1. my internet crashes, leaving me without connection for 5 days
2. my HEM dies, leaving me HUDless for a week and effectively unable to play rush poker for a further week as I try to get it sorted
3. I get dreaded man flu, which mostly stopped me playing, but I couldn't stop myself as bored at home so logged on and lost a fair bit of my profit
4. Full Tilt spazzes out on me, leaving me without a site to play on for 3 days too!

I've also finally started to play a bit live and really enjoying it, however I'm not running the greatest, losing nigh on every race / 70:30 in cash when get it in with the short stacks. TT vs Q2, AJ vs 44, KK vs 99 etc etc etc - all for £40+ pots that would definitely help my P&L. I also had to ship £125 to share luckbox Brennan after we went halves on a cash session at Aspers after I won £175 and he lost £75. As if he needs the money!!!

With all that in mind, here are the final results:
Rush: £219
STT: £40
MTT: -£45
Rakeback / Bonus: £116

Total Online Profit: £330

Live Tournaments: -£12
Live Cash: £110

TOTAL PROFIT: £428


Now for the good news. With about 10 days to go of the month, in the middle of my slow death from man flu and bitching about my shitheap of a computer not working, I get 3 pieces of mail through the post that cheer me up. 2 decent wins on premium bonds (that I kind of forgotten that I had) and a well deserved tax rebate for OVERPAID tax in FY 2010. I definitely didn't know that was coming, but all three combined came in at close to £1300. Helps me through the low income month that's for sure!


Next month:
DEFINITELY get my black card status on Full Tilt - low volume means I'm further away than at the start of last month, but I hopefully will get there towards the end of March.
Keep on playing live cash at the casino.

Jan 2011 P&L

Laziness knows no bounds in terms of this blog.... however have been proper busy this month sorting various shit out, including:

2 broken cars

1 broken laptop

1 set of flights to Las Vegas (April)

9 nights of hotel accommodation (Desert Rose - just off the strip)

All of which finally got completed around mid month and managed to salvage somewhat the losing month that it threatened to be, however not exactly groundbreaking results:

Rush: £755

STT: £15

MTT -£27

Rakeback / Bonus: £242

---------

Total Online Profit: £985

Live Cash: -£41

Live Tournament: -£22

Overall Profit: £922

Rush Poker continues to pay for itself, and now that I have consolidated my bankroll to exclusively Full Tilt I'm aiming to be playing NL100 full ring pretty soon. I'm also very close to getting the Black Card there, within next week or so, which will mean extra points and therefore bonuses, which will help with the low rakeback I'm getting at the moment. My iron man and Full Tilt academy balances are pretty decent too now so should have more bonuses from then soon too so looking a bit rosier on that front.

Live cash didn't exactly go to plan this month, due entirely to one night where I lost £160 playing NL50. I ran QQ in to AA on a T44 flop, then AK in to AT in a big 3bet pot - only for flop to come out AT9 leaving me in a shit spot. I recovered a bit in the last week though and starting to feel a bit more at ease playing live. I'll be heading down to the casino again this weekend and hope to start showing a profit there soon!

Anyway, for any poker geeks out there, including myself when I look back at this in many years from now, here is my HEM graph for Rush last month. Check out the return of the gay red line!!!

2011 - New Year, New Me!!

Biggest news that I have failed to report on here, mainly due to my shockingly poor dedication to this blog, is that I got engaged over Xmas to my gorgeous girlfriend, now fiance, and we've (nearly) set a date for April 2012. Great news for me is that K is keen on a Vegas wedding - not my idea honest - but also means we'll need to go over this year to check out possible venues etc etc. For 9 days. Nightmare :-)

With 15 or so months to go to the wedding and a Vegas holiday this year, and a stag do to go to it's clear I need to make some serious money to help fund all this! Hopefully this will give me the motivation and kick up the arse I need to push on and move out of the low level grinding mode I'm currently in.

How am I going to do this?

2011 targets:
1. STUDY MORE!!!
One of the main reasons for my fall from grace has been my abject laziness to study poker for over a year. I logged on, played my hands at 6 max, and was on lazy boy mode. When I started losing I didn't have a clue why and felt completely all at sea as hadn't been thinking about hands at all and just played auto pilot. This will not happen in 2011

2. Play live cash
Having visited the casino a fair few times at the back end of 2010, I just can't get over how poor some of the live play is. On Friday and Saturday nights I don't think half of them can even see the cards let alone know how to play properly!! I want to be crushing the low level cash games at the casinos regularly and looking to move up by the end of the year to 1/2. I'd like to think I have the game now to play that level but I know psychologically I'm not ready to risk the £800 in one night I'd need to have to feel comfortable playing there (2 buy ins of 200 bb's). I'll get there though.

3. Play more tournaments - successfully - including some satellites
I'm learning here and now have think I have a much better grasp of what's needed in this sphere. I'm not there yet though so will need to make sure I keep up to speed with target 1 in order to continue my progress. I don't think I'm a million miles away though and as tournaments are something I enjoy I'm going to keep going with this.

4. Maybe (maybe!) learn some PLO
Only if I'm feeling adventurous!