Goodbye Nottingham!

This week marks my last few days as a resident in Nottingham. I moved here in 2008 to attend University and have lived here ever since, but it's time for a change so come Friday, I'll be officially homeless and just living out of a suitcase for the next 6 months! My rough plans for the next 6 months are Macau, Vegas, Barcelona, with various stoppages elsewhere depending on what I fancy. Where I live after that depends on how things go...

It seems right that my last few days have been spent hanging out with my friends and playing live cash games. It's been so much fun. The guys in Gala/ Alea really feel like my Nottingham family. I love going down there and catching up with all of them - they've been there since the start for me and I've shared some great times in cash games there over the past 5/6 years. Probably my favourite guy from there is Ali Ayub, he cracks me up no end and on Monday I had one of the funniest nights of poker I've ever had, getting drunk in a 50/1 cash game with a load of heroes, including Ali who had me in stitches all night.

Living in Nottingham has been a blast. I guess I don't really love it as a city, I'm not particularly attracted to any house / street / restaurant or anything like that. But I love the community in DTD, Gala and Alea that I feel part of and I've met all my closest friends here. I've lived with Stato, Thigh, PJ, Fred travelled all over the world with people I've met here and will certainly continue to do so and this isn't goodbye to any of them.

Last night Keith had us all round for pancakes and then watched / coached as we all grinded online. He decided to play himself and obviously got the lot and was the only winner! I went to Alea and made a bit playing DC. Unfortunately lost chunks tonight at DTD but I feel a good one is on the way in tonight's game...

It's just been a really fun time playing cash games these last couple of weeks, the games have picked up again and I'm definitely leaving hoping to be back soon, rather than leaving happily, which is a really nice feeling.

Not much else has been happening since the UKPC but I felt it'd be remiss of me to not blog about me leaving the country! So it's short and sweet today, I'll leave you with this one meme which just keeps making me chuckle.

SKY UK Poker Championships

The UK Poker Championships, hosted by Sky Poker and Dusk Till Dawn last week, could be the single best development in UK Poker since DTD itself opened. 

Alex Spencer, who won it, can now call himself the UK Poker Champion! How cool is that?! He can legitimately tell his friends and family, that he is the UK Poker Champion! God I'm jealous! That sounds better than EPT Champion! People from outside of the poker world can relate to a UK Poker Champion, they don't know what an EPT or WPT is. They can tune in to Sky Sports and watch the Championships of UK Poker being played out and that means something to them. 

They can watch the story of Deborah O'Connell from Stoke who spent £1 on a satellite on DTD and turn that into a seat into the main event, and turned that into £16,000 for coming 7th. 

They can watch Allan Graham from Leicester turn £2.80 into £12,500 for 8th. 

James Rimmer was just coming up to Nottingham with his mates who'd all won seats. He wasn't going to play but was there for the craic, and didn't mind spending £50 on a satellite just to see what happened. He won a seat and got 4th for £37,500. 

These guys battled it out with the biggest names in UK Poker - professionals who've won millions in their careers. So many great stories came out of this week. The club was absolutely buzzing all week, side events were booming, cash games non-stop, plenty of socialising at the bar, everyone having a good time - It was a fantastic week. 

On a personal note my week was financially not too bad- I played the hiroller, 6max and the turbo and didn't cash, but got 24th in the main event which got me out of it and did OK in the cash games so it's been alright. I was chip leader in the main event for the last few hours of day two and the first level or two of day three. So I'm pretty disappointed to come 24th. 

Yes I've put on weight :(

Everyone says the worst day of the year is the day you bust the WSOP Main. The better the event, the more painful the bust-out. That's why 's why it hurt so much to bust this. I so wanted to be on the final table, to have that bracelet, to be the Champion! GUKPT, UKIPT, GPS doesn't even come close to that feeling. The prestige can't even compare. 

I think there could be a boom in the UK poker scene when this airs on TV next month. It's so good for poker. I really hope the UKPC is here to stay and will be an annual event on the calendar. I think it'd be a massive shame if it wasn't. Thank you DTD and Sky Poker! 

Deauville!

On the face of it, the Deauville leg of the tour should rank pretty low amongst the others. It is out classed by almost every stop in almost every category. Its a massive hassle to get there, there's nothing to do and the weather is shite! 

After an 8 hour ferry, crazy golf in the rain
seemed like the natural choice of activity

Yet it keeps dragging me back and will definitely be the first date in the diary for 2015. 

Because there isn't anything else to do you end up grinding every day and the trip ends up being an actual serious poker trip! Prague, Barcelona, Vegas etc all carry numerous distractions so Deauville has that "appeal" of probably being the most +EV stop of the year (if you're into that kind of thing....) 

Bracelet hunting - the French way

Deadman, Stato, Keith, Mitch and I made the trip this year and as a group we all felt we were due a trip where we got the lot. We kicked things off with a 300 turbo in which I got my first ever French flag in style by chopping the bubble for €265! A winning start...sort of! Enjoyed it a lot (especially stalling antics near the bubble!) and Mitch got another 8th place finish on his hendon mob! 

The FPS main went pretty good, built up a big stack on day two, then lost a key hand to leave me short and having to grind into the money. Never recovered and although I kept my stack alive - I grinded 10-20 bbs for about 8 hours, well into day 3, but lost the first time I was all-in with 88 vs QTs and finished 44th for €3300. It felt great to run deep, get another cash/flag and was great for the confidence. However, in such a soft field it was an amazing chance at a huge score (€175k ftw) and it was kind of demoralising to think that it had been a year since my last cash in a 1k+ comp, I really didn't want to wait another year for a shot again.  

Luckily I didn't even have to wait a week... 

The EPT main was the next day and I was raring to go. In between these events Keith had shipped a €500 PLO turbo side for €15k and a trophy! Skill game!  

I busted EPT Prague in level one and had a nightmare start in this one too - down to 7.5k from my 30k starting stack. I grinded it back though and finished the day nicely on 71k.

At this point Deadman was on the final of the FPS hiroller (wait a minute, I thought he had 4bbs a couple of hours ago?!) so we went straight to the bar and got in a few rounds of €8/pint beer and got on it! Some excellent ladder and flip tekkers saw Deadman into 4 handed play where we were confident he was gonna smash it. Unfortunately our dreams of seeing our hero ship the trophy were dashed by the lame French laws that said we had to leave the casino at 4am. We weren't happy about this and, led by stato, protested that we should be allowed to stay and watch. Security man-handled us out and I snapped a selfie of me being evicted (for the blog ldo)! Alas, he caught me and made me delete it, then took my picture! I was sweating whether I'd be allowed back in to play my day two!

Deadman came back a few hours later and with tales of how this French guy had owned him heads up and how he only got 2nd. Just €87k. Pfff. What a trip this was turning into though! 

Luckily we had a days rest before day two to recover!

The days "rest" involved us playing some comedy €800+200+100 random bounty turbo where a randomly allocated 1/10 bounties were €1k and the rest €100. Pretty cool concept. Sadly bricks all round (including a Keith Johnson pure bubble!) except trusty min-cash Mitch holding up the fort with a strong 11th place finish.  

The next day, Mitch and Keith and I all made day three of the main, I had a healthy stack and I started well on day three, smashing every flop and that gave me a stack to abuse the bubble which was incredibly fun and useful! Mitch sadly busted 20 off the money but Keith cashed but bust soon after. I finished on 700k, and was to be on the TV table for day four. 

It was the toughest table in the room and I ended up getting involved in the biggest equity pot of my life (at the time...) in a huge AKs vs JJ classic coinflip. I'd be down to 10bbs if I lost, but winning it would send me to 1m - 100bbs. Ace in the window was so nice to see! It held up and I was top 3 stack now. Nice!

However probably the highlight hand of that table came an hour later, when I rivered quad nines and got a river raise to 475k paid off! Rivering quads, deep in an EPT, getting paid, on TV! I felt pretty blessed right then! 

I was chip leader for a while, chipped up to 2.5m, then ran QQ into AA to go down to 2m, chipped back up to 2.5m, then ran AQs into KK, back down to 2m. Then finished the day badly and bagged up 1.4m for day five.  

I'd struggled to sleep all week, but it was so hard to fall asleep that night. It was so exciting. I'd had problems during play of feeling really anxious and stressed. It's kind of hard to explain, during hands I was completely in the zone and played my best. But once I'd folded, every moment spent waiting around was so awful, I felt terrible. Like I wanted the next hand straight away, like I wanted whatever was going to happen to happen now- almost like i wanted it all to be over! It was strange. I went for walks during the breaks. I skyped people like Julian Thew who've had experience in these situations and that helped a lot. Having the boys all still around to chat to really helped too. I went for a beer with Deadman and Ben Jones that night and that really helped distract me, just chatting about anything except for poker- was really good. 

I had 2-3 hours sleep I guess. Not ideal but it was all I could manage. I went for a morning walk to the beach, listening to music that inspires me (don't ask!) and then did the morning ritual that we'd done every day of the trip at 1130. Walk to the same little shop and get une crepe with strawberry jam. 

As it turns out, all the preparation and advice in the world couldn't help me win the crucial flip I couldn't avoid. AQ vs 88 blind vs blind for 33bbs.

I came 11th out of 600+ players in an EPT for my 2nd biggest cash of my life. I'm proud of that. There's a lot of disappointment though too - I could never get this close to an EPT final / win ever again. This was the biggest sweat of my life by far. On days 3-5 I was involved in 7 allins and lost 6 of them. Of course the one I did win was absolutely massive, and I ran great in all other areas, but felt hard done by to come 11th. Especially when I saw 1m stacks on the final, a 2.5m stack 3 handed - a stack I had on day 4! 

It's weird how winning a side event for say €30k would feel so much better than 11th for €40k.  

I was very lucky to get there anyway, and enjoyed the run immensely - it gives me great confidence for the future, and great hunger to keep playing tournaments in search of more success.  

Just got back from a little break with Victoria in Riga. It's so gorgeous on the coast this time of year. 

Snow, Sea and Sand is an odd combination,
but makes for a nice photo!

I'm on the SKY Poker TV show on Tuesday being a guest analyst (!), then it's GPS in Birmingham then it's UKPC week in DTD with SKY Poker. Very exciting few weeks ahead!

Good luck everyone sorry this blog has dragged on so long!

When things fall apart!

For my birthday my Aunt bought me a book, pictured below. 

Maybe she'd been keeping an eye on pocket fives, or maybe she's friends with one of the cashier's at DTD who've been worried about my lack of visits to the cash desk lately. 

Either way, despite it being rather an unusual gift, she's bang on the money - it's been a bad time lately. Problems both personal and professional have made it a tough time. 

I try and keep my head down when going through a bad patch because that's generally the best way through it. Nobody likes reading about it, and it doesn't really help much at all to vent and moan - and you always regret it later and when you look at the bigger picture (and you look silly when you moan in a ridiculously lucky bink the week later!). Also the variance police are always about to tell you that you haven't actually been running bad, you ran well in x tournament or in x cash game, they run worse etc - it's just not very helpful all round.

So what does the book say? What do you do when things fall apart? 

Well, I haven't read it yet. But my answer would be "Put them back together again!". Do whatever you can, or whatever you need to, to get back to winning ways.

Here's a few things that work for me-

• Having a HH review /coaching /sweat session with someone you respect and who understands you. Done quite a lot of that this year already. In fact a lot of the material of this blog is advice given to me by others! 
• Dropping down stakes, playing smaller field tournaments - more manageable and softer fields make it easier to win, and although 1st prize might not be what you're used to playing for, it's still a very nice feeling to actually win something, and very good for the confidence.
• Taking a break or choosing a different form of the game to play for a while. I switch regularly between tournaments and cash, live and online and generally find the low variance of say a £1/1 game where I feel really confident at any table is really good for confidence and just winning a few hundred quid in a fun live game feels really nice after knocking it in online. 
• I watched the PCA live stream for many hours this week and found listening to Ike Haxton talk extensively about hands and his constant reference to GTO play was really interesting and inspiring. And it's also nice to watch sickos battle it out and seeing all their hole cards and see that they're not doing anything massively out of the ordinary or different to what you would do.

What doesn't work

• Cursing, shouting, slamming the mouse down, telling your friends bad beat stories, whining, moaning and just generally feeling sorry for yourself! 

Since a coaching session on Monday, changing my schedule a bit, watching the PCA stream and doing some personal work on my game (and improvements on the personal front) - I've booked 3 winning MTT sessions in a row! Might be a personal record streak for online tournaments!

Now I'm not one for incorrectly linking correlation with causality and being results orientated - but the some of the results have come from tournaments I've never played before - a lower buyin or a site I don't usually play on. And although I could have easily lost every day this week and not done anything wrong - I feel like the things I've adjusted and the work I've done has definitely helped my confidence and I'm enjoying it a lot more. Playing with confidence and running well - a powerful combination - just ask Simon Deadman!

Another little thing I did today which I don't normally do - cook Vegetables! Now I'm not saying that they made me run well, but they might be the key ingredient...

In short, don't get mad at the things you can't change, look at the things you can. Good luck at the tables! 

Run better everyone!

Birthday shenanigans!

Funnily enough since my last blog post, there have actually been some amazing games at DTD! I've been a bit busy with other things so only played two sessions, but I understand from Thursday - Sunday of last week there was at least one incredibly deep and juicy 1/2 game every day, with 3k 4k stacks around and some huge swings.

I enjoy these games, because the banter is always great, the adrenaline rush very high, and the metagame wars between regs always very deep and complex - it's all very high octane. However it doesn't allow me to play my game, I would usually rather be table captain and be the one raising and 3betting rather than taking the passive options, but in these games it seems like the correct way to play, even though it feels a bit weak.

I've taken a bit of a back seat in the dick swinging wars and just spectated really as Mitch and Fred go at it every hand, every night. I've been the guy that's sat there waiting to find Aces and get caught up in the crossfire and luckbox a cheeky double up! I hate that guy!

It's not been intentional, I've just had aces two or three times and everytime I have either someone has gone nuts (Fred) or had a hand too and gone with it (Mitch). In the last session I actually doubled up three times but ended up winning about £100!

In between these sessions has been my birthday, a couple of nights out and Sunday bloody Sunday.

On my actual birthday I went down to London to see some family. My cousin Amy had a baby last year who is so awesome I love him!

I got back to Nottingham for the evening and had a very messy night out with Fred and Tom and loads of Fred's mates from Derby which was good. I unwisely mixed beer with wine with vodka with jaeger which proved to be a disaster combo for the hangover that followed. I don't usually get hangovers but this one was pretty horrific and it was on a sunday so had to man up and play a proper session with it too :(.

Last night I organised a meal for the birthdays of Sean, myself and Mitch - it was quite short notice but we got 10 people out to Iberico World Tapas in Nottingham, which is absolutely amazing, definitely my favourite restaurant in Nottingham now. The last time I went was when we celebrated PJ winning a live tournament. So it's been fucking ages! I had forgotten how good it was.

Yes that's Fred with the beard at the back. 

The banter at said meal was first class, a really really good time was had. The bill was £400 and 7 of us bought out for £40 (I know, everyone's too under it to degen flip for this like we used to!) leaving Fred, Stato and Linton to flip - first card out pays nothing, then it's a heads up flip, winner gets the £280 buyout money, and loser pays the entire £400! Against the run of form, Fred lost and Stato won!

I've played two online sessions in 2014 so far, both have been disastrous, not cashing a single tournament on Sunday (ouch) and cashing almost nothing in the other one. So the makeup is ever rising, but some good chances to get out with the GPS this weekend and a big trip to Deauville in a couple of weeks for the FPS and EPT. Hope to start the year off with a bang! 

Good luck everyone this weekend, it's going to be a sick tournament :)