In It For The Money
William Hill confirmed my sponsorship for another year last week. How I got the deal in the first place is simply a tale of right place, right time. It all happened at around the time the EPT started up in 2004.
I didn't go to the first event in Barcelona but decided to play the London leg at the Vic. The entry fee was a huge three grand, which at that time represented about a third of my bankroll but I managed to sell 50% of my action and I was in.
After a very slow start where I'd dribbled down to 6k I sneaked a crucial move past Bambos Xanthos in a big pot to get me going. After that everything fell into place and I managed to finish the day as chip leader with about twenty five remaining. I carried that right through until there were nine of us left. I bet you can guess where this is going...
Well if I can't pass a hand now, I certainly couldn't pass one then and the first accident occurred when I ran tens into aces and then a few hands later when John Shipley raised I gave it the big heave-ho with an A-Ks only to see the same two aces yet again.
I felt near suicidal for a fortnight, but now with a little padding to the bankroll I headed over to Dublin for the next one. Early doors I cracked Rob Yong's aces with tens and then two tables out, after sitting next to Xuyen for six hours I cracked her kings with queens; she still mentions it from time to time, titter, titter.
A couple of hours later we were, once again nine-handed and I had a relatively straightforward pass with J-J thanks to my position at the table when the the action went all-in, call. The all-in's A-7 cracked Burnley John's Q-Q and we were all set for a final.
Low stacked I was the second man out for another modest cash, but when I got back into the office the next day I was perusing the Hendon Mob forum, (as you did back then) and I noticed that Steve Vladar had put a post up asking for me to contact him. I called him up and he mentioned that William Hill were looking for a third person to sponsor and that I should call up Phil Quayle, the poker boss.
Well call him up I did and thanks to some kind words from Steve and Xuyen plus a nice mention in a piece the Camel had written I was offered a few months to see how things panned out. To say I was shocked is an understatement, as barring a £100 comp at Sheffield and a sprinkling of £20 and £30 re-buys at Nottingham I hadn't won much.
The main event at the Masterclassics in 2004 was my first outing as logo'd up player and I remember feeling very uncomfortable and imposter-like wearing a shirt with my name on it, when on my opening table were big guns Marcel Luske, Lucy Rokach, George Mckeever and Christer Johannsen.
Over time I of course got used to it and lets be honest it ain't exactly the worst hardship to have to endure.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Ramble On
I did an interview for Gambling Online Magazine a couple of weeks back. The list of questions was fairly broad and amongst them was this little gem that's been on my mind a bit since;
“How do you keep in top shape to be a better player?”
It is oh so easy to just move on from one comp to the next in this game, without ever really reflecting on the key hands that could have been played better or should have been passed.
I went out for dinner with Andy Black in Amsterdam last year - now here’s a guy who really does work on his game and he gave me a few pointers on better pre-match preparation and post-match analysis. God only knows what I’d have answered if it weren’t for that conversation. Talking of post-match analysis I really enjoyed reading Andy Ward’s thoughts on his WPT debut. There’s a link to his blog(s) on the side.
Interestingly, Andy (Black) used to do a bit of canoeing himself and we sort of promised to do the Liffey Descent in an open candian boat this September (worryingly he was sober). We’ll see how good his memory is.
Well it shouldn’t surprise but during this curfew I have been significantly upping my online comp sample size. I played about twenty five over the past five nights, ranging from $50 to $500 and rather frustratingly I bubbled or thereabouts in three, made six semi-finals and just one final, out ninth for a whopping £240.
Big stack or small, it mattered not as it all went poo-flavoured, like clockwork, at the last two tables. Don’t get me wrong, I mean this represents a significant upswing in my online stats - I’ll crack on this week and see if we can get out of it…
Back to reality then with some live musings and my exit hand from the Bolton leg of the UKPT:
It had been a pretty dull first four hours but I’d just started to get going during level 5 and I was feeling very comfortable and full of confidence; I really fancied I could win the whole thing.
At 150/300 and sitting on 18k I raised to 800 with Jc-10c. Lawrence Gosney called and then Theo Dalton made it another 2500 to go from the BB. Theo’s a very solid player and whilst I really couldn’t see him re-raising into the two of us without a big hand I felt like a punt and figured Lawrence would come in behind me.
What I didn’t take into account though was that with three of us now in a re-raised pot, the pot was getting very big which meant there would be little room for manoeuvre after the flop.
Well the flop came down 9,J,Qc and Theo led out for 4k into a 10k pot. Sitting on 14k, the 10k re-raise all-in was just too tempting to me and I pushed. Lawrence ducked and after the longest of dwells Theo called with K-K. I hit a ten but that was no longer an out and I was home within two hours.
Whilst I had no regrets with the play of the hand at the time, with hindsight I didn’t need to gamble everything against an effectively pot committed tight guy at that stage of the tournament. Busy players tend to get more opportunities to acquire chips than most and I’m sure I could have found plenty more better spots with less risk.
The other tournament I played was a 500 freeze-out at Luton two weeks back. Whilst chip-wise I never really got going, I felt I got the balance between carefree abandon and proper tournament strategy just about right; all being well I’ll grant this mindset another airing at the Broadway’s main event next week.
I did an interview for Gambling Online Magazine a couple of weeks back. The list of questions was fairly broad and amongst them was this little gem that's been on my mind a bit since;
“How do you keep in top shape to be a better player?”
It is oh so easy to just move on from one comp to the next in this game, without ever really reflecting on the key hands that could have been played better or should have been passed.
I went out for dinner with Andy Black in Amsterdam last year - now here’s a guy who really does work on his game and he gave me a few pointers on better pre-match preparation and post-match analysis. God only knows what I’d have answered if it weren’t for that conversation. Talking of post-match analysis I really enjoyed reading Andy Ward’s thoughts on his WPT debut. There’s a link to his blog(s) on the side.
Interestingly, Andy (Black) used to do a bit of canoeing himself and we sort of promised to do the Liffey Descent in an open candian boat this September (worryingly he was sober). We’ll see how good his memory is.
Well it shouldn’t surprise but during this curfew I have been significantly upping my online comp sample size. I played about twenty five over the past five nights, ranging from $50 to $500 and rather frustratingly I bubbled or thereabouts in three, made six semi-finals and just one final, out ninth for a whopping £240.
Big stack or small, it mattered not as it all went poo-flavoured, like clockwork, at the last two tables. Don’t get me wrong, I mean this represents a significant upswing in my online stats - I’ll crack on this week and see if we can get out of it…
Back to reality then with some live musings and my exit hand from the Bolton leg of the UKPT:
It had been a pretty dull first four hours but I’d just started to get going during level 5 and I was feeling very comfortable and full of confidence; I really fancied I could win the whole thing.
At 150/300 and sitting on 18k I raised to 800 with Jc-10c. Lawrence Gosney called and then Theo Dalton made it another 2500 to go from the BB. Theo’s a very solid player and whilst I really couldn’t see him re-raising into the two of us without a big hand I felt like a punt and figured Lawrence would come in behind me.
What I didn’t take into account though was that with three of us now in a re-raised pot, the pot was getting very big which meant there would be little room for manoeuvre after the flop.
Well the flop came down 9,J,Qc and Theo led out for 4k into a 10k pot. Sitting on 14k, the 10k re-raise all-in was just too tempting to me and I pushed. Lawrence ducked and after the longest of dwells Theo called with K-K. I hit a ten but that was no longer an out and I was home within two hours.
Whilst I had no regrets with the play of the hand at the time, with hindsight I didn’t need to gamble everything against an effectively pot committed tight guy at that stage of the tournament. Busy players tend to get more opportunities to acquire chips than most and I’m sure I could have found plenty more better spots with less risk.
The other tournament I played was a 500 freeze-out at Luton two weeks back. Whilst chip-wise I never really got going, I felt I got the balance between carefree abandon and proper tournament strategy just about right; all being well I’ll grant this mindset another airing at the Broadway’s main event next week.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
ArrivalThis is Barney at three days old. It's weird just how much he reminds us of our #1 son, Reuben, when he was born three years ago.
This baby-making stuff is pretty amazing - check this out;
I've got a tiny Spock-like nodule near the top of my left ear and young Barney's got just the same perfect-imperfection. So sweet.
Oh and clearly I'm thrilled that his hair is coming on so well so soon...atta boy.
Right, enough gushing & who knows I might even get around to posting some thought provoking tales of daring-do in the near future.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Oi! Online! No!
Woke up this morning and as sometimes happens I really had the urge to post, but as I haven’t been up to much recently I was struggling to think of anything even remotely interesting. I then remembered that I’ve been shying away from an accurate bottom line for my 2006 online antics.
This is how it all pans out, in glorious pounds sterling;
PokerStars -5700
UB -600
BlueSq -1420
WilliamHill +8788
Ladbrokes -2844
Total -1766
(the nice draw on laddies that I recently reminisced about actually occurred in the dying days of 2005).
I can cope with a fairly modest deficit of two grand, but I’m pretty sure there’s anything up to another two or three grand of affiliate money that’s found it’s way, unaccounted, onto the tables over the year. Promises have since been made to fast-track those monies into the joint account as soon as they touchdown.
I’m also ashamed to admit that I got a healthy two grand cash injection into my stars account about seven weeks back thanks to (another) saver that came good. This seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, but it didn’t take long to see the back of it; $500 SNG’s when under the influence really aren’t very clever.
There was then one embarrassing, but enlightening moment on stars recently when, whilst on the tear in the $50 re-buy I was calling, hitting and outdrawing everybody and had amassed a 100k when the nearest rival had just 50k. The chat box was raging with the usual cretinous rants, but I sat up when one drone typed in the following;
“Microdisney, $2012 lifetime winnings on this site“.
Now, not even I knew that and I have since found out that on sites such as Sharkscope this information is readily available. Wow, a service like that has to be a necessity if I’m ever gonna take this venture seriously.
It’s far from all bad though and signs of what lies ahead are promising:
a) on the first hand dealt to me in 2007 at the 300 freeze in Walsall on New Years Day, I limped with a 3-3, flopped a set, turned a boat and trebled up.
b) some very iffy calls of late have either been good, or if momentarily suspect, have come good in the end.
Ahh, sweet form, you're almost within my grasp.
Woke up this morning and as sometimes happens I really had the urge to post, but as I haven’t been up to much recently I was struggling to think of anything even remotely interesting. I then remembered that I’ve been shying away from an accurate bottom line for my 2006 online antics.
This is how it all pans out, in glorious pounds sterling;
PokerStars -5700
UB -600
BlueSq -1420
WilliamHill +8788
Ladbrokes -2844
Total -1766
(the nice draw on laddies that I recently reminisced about actually occurred in the dying days of 2005).
I can cope with a fairly modest deficit of two grand, but I’m pretty sure there’s anything up to another two or three grand of affiliate money that’s found it’s way, unaccounted, onto the tables over the year. Promises have since been made to fast-track those monies into the joint account as soon as they touchdown.
I’m also ashamed to admit that I got a healthy two grand cash injection into my stars account about seven weeks back thanks to (another) saver that came good. This seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, but it didn’t take long to see the back of it; $500 SNG’s when under the influence really aren’t very clever.
There was then one embarrassing, but enlightening moment on stars recently when, whilst on the tear in the $50 re-buy I was calling, hitting and outdrawing everybody and had amassed a 100k when the nearest rival had just 50k. The chat box was raging with the usual cretinous rants, but I sat up when one drone typed in the following;
“Microdisney, $2012 lifetime winnings on this site“.
Now, not even I knew that and I have since found out that on sites such as Sharkscope this information is readily available. Wow, a service like that has to be a necessity if I’m ever gonna take this venture seriously.
It’s far from all bad though and signs of what lies ahead are promising:
a) on the first hand dealt to me in 2007 at the 300 freeze in Walsall on New Years Day, I limped with a 3-3, flopped a set, turned a boat and trebled up.
b) some very iffy calls of late have either been good, or if momentarily suspect, have come good in the end.
Ahh, sweet form, you're almost within my grasp.
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