RunGood - things heating up!

Hello everyone!



Sorry it's been a while since the last blog, it's been an absolutely hectic period, but I'm alive and well, and still loving the game of course!



During March and April I put in more volume than I ever have before, entirely live cash, playing almost 400 hours of live cash in that period with almost no days off at all. I took a break from online poker, and that has continued well into May, missing SCOOP entirely, something I haven't done for 2/3 years.



I returned to life in Nottingham for the UKIPT two weeks ago and played a lot then too, and since then been pretty much on holiday. The weather has been amazing, and this past week or so has been some of the best times I've ever had in England.



On Saturday I had the absolute perfect day in the Peak District, the hottest day of the year so far, and the scenery around there is just spectacular.

We did some walking for a couple of hours, through some hugely varied landscapes, had a picnic, chilled with the sheep, played games - it was so perfect.



In the evening I met  up with some of the boys for a night out in Derby!



Last week I'd been in Cambridge with my Mum for a lovely dinner with her and her fiance (getting married in July!) then went to Oxford for my cousins 21st, and had a huge dinner / night out with all the Nottingham Crew.

Just every day has been so so good, I've loved being back in England.



Now, alas all this stuff hasn't exactly been paying for itself on the felt, I've been running bad for the past 4/5 weeks, but some heat during March has made up for that, and all the stuff above really takes the sting off a downswing so I've been very happy.



Speaking of Run Good, I met a lovely guy recently who's built what I think is a really sick app for tracking Live poker results. I think the ones on the market are so so poor in comparison and this guy felt the same and built his own app, calling it "RunGood".

I'd thoroughly recommend it if you play a lot of live poker, cash or tournaments. It's just on iphone/ipad at the moment, but will be on android soon I'm told. You can try it for free here http://itunes.apple.com/app/rungood/id625738400 or pay £6.99 for the full version here http://itunes.apple.com/app/rungood/id556317356



Tomorrow I'm off to Morocco for some hilarious poker festival plus electro music festival for a 4/5 day holiday / business trip! Pretty random but can't wait! Then my plans are pretty up in the air, but Vegas is all booked for 19th June! This Summer is gonna be awesome!

Let's keep passion in fashion!

Nothing like a cheesy lame title to draw in readers eh?

A recent channel 4 EPT episode contained a hand between Timothy Adams and Eric Seidel in a super hiroller where they get it all in preflop with KK and AA respectively. A cooler in any situation, and especially nasty in a tournament with €100,000 buyin. The board bricks until the river which is a King. 
 

A hand that makes for great TV, or it should have done. Without the commentary, it would've been barely possible to notice who was involved in the hand, let alone who won and lost! 

Not a hint of a reaction from either player when the cards were revealed, nor as the board was dealt out. 

Whilst I admire their coolness and professionalism under the circumstances, and this is absolutely not a rant about how players should "entertain" on these TV shows - I want to see more emotion in the game! 

Bring back the fistpumps, the cries, the cheers! We all do it in our homes whilst playing online and everyone feels the highs and the lows inside, so why is everybody so concerned with bottling it all up now!?  

I understand why it's not the done thing to celebrate in front of people, and of course it's "cool" to not care about a suckout - but I'd much rather that people were allowed to ENJOY winning off me and didn't feel pressured by current etiquette guidelines. I genuinely enjoy seeing someone be made happy by winning at cards, even if it is at my expense. Because if people are made to feel bad for enjoying their good fortunes, they're not going to stick around too long. 

This is what I'm talking about! You have to at least crack a smile at this, even as the loser.

And believe it or not, I really don't mind if it makes my opponent happy to slowroll me on the river (unless the pot is really big!). I play so much live poker that I'm more or less immune now. I've been slow rolled countless times, and 95% of them have not been in the slightest bit malicious. Mainly in places like Spain France or Italy - they love it - it's just part of the game to them, they have fun revealing their cards how they want. They play the game with passion and emotion at every corner, and showdowns are no different. In most cases they aren't trying to piss you off at all. It's not even an issue there, just part of the game.  

So if you're happy that you've rivered me in a big hand, I really won't mind you showing that emotion however you wish. We want our opponents to enjoy playing the game don't we? So let's stop being so sensitive and self conscious and have a bit of fun ourselves.  

The TV shows are for the most part useless at attracting people into the game. They sure make poker look boring to someone channel flicking. Imagine if Adams and Seidel were replaced with Teddy KGB and Havad Khan? Or Rastafish and Phil Hellmuth? Then it would look fun! "Wow what a sick hand, look how happy that guy is and how pissed the other guy is! This looks fun".  

Instead it's like "who won? Oh the young guy, well he doesn't look very happy about it". That's what my mum would say!  

Joe Stapleton (who is a cut above the rest by a million miles in terms of appealing to the masses and making the best out of some pretty lame material) hit the nail on the head with his commentary. 

"Seidel, would it kill you to berate the guy?". Tongue in cheek, but got me and my good friend and first class DTD Dealer George thinking. 

The fro got me thinking

Hence this blog in fact.

Pros are never going to act differently towards each other, I understand that. But let the recreational players have their fun at the table. Get befuddled by an Ian Gascoigne check raise and enjoy his "boom shackalaka" celebration. Get rivered by Rastafish and enjoy the moment with him as he sings and shouts about it! 

Pokers a horrible game sometimes but can be made that little bit easier if you ease up, relax, enjoy your wins and even enjoy your opponents joy at your losses. 

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!