December write-up

I've not been playing much recently due to another bout of man-flu - I've only been to Gala once since my back-to-backs and I busted approx 20/90 shoving 12BB with KJ and the SB looked me up with an equal sized stack holding A6. I think calls like that deserve to be punished, but on this occasion it wasn't. Perhaps I do shove when too deep - and I'm fully aware of the weakness of KJ.

I've won a couple of pub games this week though - I think they had about 18 and 23 runners. The first one was a weird game - I got very short on the FT bubble - I got it all in pre with AQ vs Q8 and he rivered his 3-outter which left me 1400 chips and I was straight into the SB on the FT @ the 800/1600 level. I built my stack back up and on the way busted the Q8 guy when his KK were no match for my AJ. This time the karma gods were watching though as he raised and I shoved for not much more, it folded back to him and he thought for a bit and then said 'I guess I have to' and flips the cowboys. I had my coat on by the time I binked the river. He had a moan about being unlucky in a typical short-sighted poker player kind of way.

I then get crippled yet again with QT on a KJ9 flop versus A9 and then it comes running Jacks. By the time HU started I was short yet again - the other guy is a bit of a skinflint and wanted to deal for the £40 or so in the pot but I refused cos I didn't want him to go gung-ho on me. It seemed to work as I shoved every single button and he folded hands he shouldnt be folding. There were only 20bb in the game. Eventually he decided 97sooted was what he had been waiting for and my Q6 held.

As it happened, I got up against the same guy HU on Tuesday. He hadn't bought in to the pot though so the dynamic was different and I chipped away at him before he once again decided 79 was the hand to go with. He doesn't grasp the difference between a good all-in-pre showdown hand and suited-connectory cards which play better post flop.

I also binked a 220 player tourney online - shame it was only for €26 though. I've been losing for the past four or five online sessions and am down around €200. BRM means I can take a several month losing streak like this though - but I want to use some of my roll to fund some UKIPT and CBMPT festivals in the New Year.

January and February looks to be a busy month for me right now poker-wise. There are both the APAT and Not-the-APAT team events in Bolton and Birmingham, plus a UKIPT in Nottingham. I'm also in Amsterdam for a few days and one day I'll be all alone but I've sniffed out a €100 f/o which looks promising. I run good when playing in other countries so I hope this continues!

I'm off to Tanzania for the majority of March and then April-onwards I'll be playing the festivals.

One area which has been bad for me this past quarter are Bristol Poker Meetup games. I think I'm down around £200 when usually I'm a winning player. I'm not sure why that is. I offset that loss at a cash game the group hosted which is unusual cos my cash record isn't the best.

I hope both my readers have a very Happy Christmas and New Year.

Flaming Galah

I won the Saturday afternoon game in Gala for the second week on the trot - 88 runners meant there was £610 up top but after savers and suchlike I got £530.

I made a special point of playing it this week because it seems whenever I get a result anywhere I always follow it up with another result a week later. This is true of both pub and casino games. I'm not sure why it is. I've won 8 tourneys this year in Gala from approximately 50 attempts and 6 of these have involved some kind of back-to-back action.

Alas I am unable to play this Saturday as I have plans.

I have a question to ask about deals though.

When we got to heads up play the blinds were at 8,000/16,000 and the 350,000 chips were split roughly 250,000/100,000 in my favour. The payouts, taking into account a £20 saver for tenth, were £590 & £360. I offered him £60 to walk away and he accepted. I was prepared to offer a little more if he pushed but this wasn't necessary. I figured I was offering him a quarter of the money-in-play and he was just a double up from us flipping stack sizes. Does this seem reasonable?

I managed to squeeze in 29 hours of live poker this weekend. That’s as much as I’ve probably ever played in a 48 hour period. The time was spread over 7 different games and from a total stake of £91 I had £740 returned to me. The bulk came from winning the 62 runner Saturday afternoon game in Gala for £420. Just before the final table I got rather lucky when I shipped it in over a button raise with A9 and he had AK. I naturally binked the river. He looked about as angry as I’ve ever seen anyone and an hour later returned to the card room to shout ‘lucky’ at me. I think he suffers from short term memory problems cos the last time I played on a Saturday we were on the final table and he busted my Queens with QT all in pre and then backdoored a straight in another hand when I had him pretty much drawing dead. I didn’t shout at him then.

I went in to the final table second in chips. I really open up on final tables – the prizes are so top heavy that I tend to be all-or-nothing. My aggression built up a stack but then it also resulted in someone getting it all in pre with KQ vs my A9. KQ always beats a weak ace and sure enough it did this time too. I was left with 1.5 big blinds and had to then post two thirds of my stack. I won that hand and then picked up a seemingly endless run of small pairs which managed to hold each time and when we got to heads-up I had towers of chips and the other fellow had about 4bb. I offered him an extra £30 to take second but he refused. HU lasted one hand as he shipped it in with Q6 and I had yet another pair which held.

Of the 7 sessions I played, three were cash games. I tend to dislike cash as my main strength in tournament play is understanding the importance of stack dynamics and this is pretty much irrelevant in a ring game. My biggest cash game win came in a 25p/50p PLO/NLHE game. Perhaps I was fortunate in that I had clear cut hands – I was either way behind or way ahead and I only paid someone off one time all night when I had K8 on a KQJKT board and the LAG villain had bet every street with 89. Having said that, the pot wasn’t too big. I think I lost £20 in total. I possibly should have check-raised the turn but the guy likes to fire in so I decided to let him hang himself. I was pleased with my Omaha play – I tend to be pretty weak at this game but I seemed to be synched in to betting pattern and squeezed out some thin value bets.

My plan for this week is to try some of the Christmas games on poker.co.uk and to use my €700 step ticket. In my mind I’ve already won EPT Prague so I guess I should get my skates on and try and qualify.

Photos from Tanzania

Yesterday I received a bunch of photographic negatives from Tanzania showing how various small pots of money have been spent. I try and get photographs as often as possible as it is interesting seeing the actual people involved, plus they are useful when providing feedback to people who provide the money in the first place.

This is Catherine - a visually impaired ex-student of the blind school and an albino. Money raised by guys on the forum at gamblingnetwork.com was used to buy her a sewing machine which'll enable her to earn a living and become independant. It'll also ensure she is not reliant on farming and so she can stay indoors protect her skin and her eyes from the sun.

The two on the left are new kids at the school. The boy on the right is Thomas. Some money was used to buy them skin cream to give them a little protection. For people who have read pre-blog updates about Tanzania, you may recognise Thomas from other pics. I first came across him when he was at another school in the region which had a unit for the blind which I visited in 1998.

This is just a random shot of some of the kids at the blind school with Mr Julius on the right. The kid third from the left standing in the line is Salim. I helped locate him in a remote village and got him registered at the school. When I last saw him in March he was tiny, having been kept at home and fed barely anything by his family. Blind children tend to be treated poorly as they are unproductive. I can see he has shot up in size in this pic.

I was given a chunk of money raised by the children of Ampleforth College in Yorkshire. Some of the money was used to set up small farming projects in Buigiri village. This is Mr Kusenha outside his home with his flock of chickens.

Flora made quite an impact on me in my recent trip - she is young and was a student at the blind school until she got pregnant. Her child is blind. She was given a room in a nearby house to live in but she had no possessions of her own. Courtesy of Ampleforth, she now has two piglets and she is being taught how to rear them. It looks like her handling technique needs a little work though!

The third animal rearing project was set up for Sarah. That is her daughter in her lap. When I spent a long period in the village over 2008/9 I employed her to do things like cleaning and washing. I'm pleased she now has an income generating project.

On the left is David - he is a good friend and the guy who I use to distribute various funds/items around the village when I am not there. He doesn't know it yet but I'm hoping to get him over to the UK next year at some point. I think it'd be fascinating to see what he makes of England. The four kids on the right, Jose, Emmanuel, Kenny and Saidi are the ones I probably spent the most time playing silly games with so it is good seeing a piccy of them.

David's letter. His handwriting is better than mine and he can barely see anything :s

I got knocked out of a live tournament by a friend last night. It was really frustrating. In brief the hand went down like this.

I raised 3xbb in late position with JJ. SB calls and everyone else folds. Flop came down 7s3s2x. SB checks and I lead for 60% of pot. SB check raises me. I ship it in for a pot-sized four-bet and he pretty instantly calls me for most of his stack. I'm thinking I'd walked in to a set but he turned over AQ. The turn was another spade, killing two of his outs but he binked the red queen on the river.

I asked him after the game why he thought he had the best hand with Ace high and his answer was 'I thought I had a reasonable hand'.

This is someone who plays several times a week and has down for more than two years. Yet it seems he doesn't understand pretty much anything about the game.

Poker can be the most irritating of games.

Back in the land of the living

I've been able to grind away this past week due to manflu. I go through fits and starts with online poker. Earlier in the year I put in some serious volume in the evenings but ever since poker.co.uk lost their €20 deepstack I have lost my motivation. I would use that one game as the anchor for the evening and then play the micros either side of it. They have recently reintroduced a €10 game with the same structure. I think I prefer this as it is more affordable and sits snugly amongst the level of buy-in I am comfortable playing at.

I am definitely a bankroll nit online. I’m rolled to play €30 freezeouts but this past week I’ve played 90 MTTs where the average buy-in is just one tenth of that. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly I like multi-tabling. I play 8 games simultaneously. I know full well that my results are a lot worse when playing this many games, but this is offset by the volume which means I’ll go deep in one or two. I get bored just single or double tabling.

Secondly, the standard in the cheap games is laughable. There is some ability around, but it is pretty diluted. I tend to play strong hands far far stronger preflop as it is an easy way to accumulate chips. I’ll often ship all-in pre into an unraised pot with AK, JJ & QQ for 15-20 big blinds cos some muppet will decide his AT, KJ or 66 is good in this spot. Of course this means bad beats happen quite regularly, but the plusses outweigh the minuses, and there is always going to be another tourney just starting which I can join.

One way I release the tension when having a bad beat is writing ‘wp’ in the chatbox. I find this far more effective than giving abuse or saying nothing at all. I get to feel all superior for being sarcastic and the person at the other end might have it reinforced in their mind that a middle pin straight draw really is a good hand to call your chips away with.

So to my session this past week… I played 90, final tabled 21 and had 6 wins with average fields of 136 runners. Giving me a profit of €600. I’m happy with these numbers. I’ve also spun up 15FPPs on Stars into a €700 Step F ticket. That’s about a 4000x increase in value. If I make it through this step I’ll be into the final step for a €7000 EPT Prague package. I have unsurprisingly run like god. I have had far more than my fair share of high pockets and have binked turns and rivers when required. I just hope the luck holds out for a little bit longer.

I’ll finish up with my sharkscope graph. I like how I am a losing player but all of a sudden it takes an upwards tick. I think someone must have died and passed their luckbox on to me.

I've been sick for the past few days and so have had some time to play online. On Friday I ground out 26 MTTs on poker.co.uk and turned a €200 profit overall. I won two of the tournies, including a HU game with 35 runners. Today I'm mid-grind but have already taken down another two of those €1 HU games so am something like 18-0 in individual matches. In one game I was down to a single BB but came back and I won the final tourney when I flopped a set and checked across to him expecting a shove but he checked and the turn filled his middle pin straight draw. We get all the money in (I had him 4:1 in chips anyhow) and I river quads. Booom.

For the rest of the day I'll be playing every €0-11 MTT I can find on Poker.co.uk and hopefully I can end the day in profit.

On Sunday I dragged myself down to Gala and played a long session - I cashed in the afternoon game for £80 with a 5/60 but donked the evening game. I played like an idiot and got what I deserved. I play best when (a) sober and (b) focussed and I was neither. I then played some cash and lost £30 over about 7 hours so finished -£6 overall. I did get to see the various boxing matches though. The casino was crammed for the Harrison-Haye fight. There were so many people it got crazily hot and some young guy, who apparently was sober, fainted and faceplanted the table next to me. So at least I got to see some action.

I was going to go on a pub crawl this evening but am feeling a little under the weather. A friend is trying to get me to go play cards through the power of rhyme:

There was a man who went to try
the Gala Casino tenner rebuy,
He mucked face up
two aces yielding
Sick, his name Tom Feilding
At last the end of my brainwash saga,
to make Tom stop drinking lager,
tonight no more upon bar stool,
instead donk fishing in Gala's pool.

And so begins a new blog

I tried writing a poker blog a couple of years ago but it went the way of many blogs - I was eager at the outset but then would post less and less frequently until things came to a halt in April 2008.

Will this blog go the same way? Probably. Let's see what happens between now and then though.

So a little about me and the games I play. I play live poker 4 or 5 nights a week. Local games range from £2 buy-ins at my local pub to £33 at the casino. I've also had a shot at playing bigger games this year, up to £500 buy-ins. I enjoy playing the game, regardless of the standard of opposition. Sure it is fun to play against excellent players, but there is also a lot to be said for kicking back, having a drink and a laugh with a bunch of guys in the pub over inconsequential sums of money.

This year I played five out of the six legs of the Coral British Masters Poker Tour. This sprang up as a result of a last minute decision to play the opening leg of the season in my home town of Bristol. I rather surprised myself by finishing second in the main event for a £9000 payday. Previous to this my biggest win had been approx £850 in a bizarre tournament in Uganda. I was spurred on to try the further legs by the tour’s sponsored pro who said I had the game to compete at that level. I’d always suffered from self-doubt when taking a shot at bigger games (which for me at the time were in the realm of £50-100 buyins). I went on to make two further Main Event final tables in the tour.

My hope for 2011 is to continue playing the £500ers, possibly with some UKIPT events thrown in to the mix as well. If I don’t get any results then I have no problems at all dropping back down to the sub-£50 buy-in games. Whatever happens, I’ll document things on here.

This blog won’t solely be about poker though. My other passion in life is Tanzania. I have been out to a village there four times, totalling over a year. I’m involved with several groups of people out there, most of whom are blind. I’ve sorted out the funding for 12 children to continue their secondary education this year, have started over 20 small businesses which have been passed to families to generate incomes from, supplied countless white sticks and talking watches, built several houses for the poorest of the blind and been involved with well over a hundred small projects ranging from supplying exercise books to getting people cancer treatment. A fair chunk of what I do out there is funded from poker. Some friends have also become involved and contribute money directly or help raise money through things like raffles, poker challenges and half-marathons.

I’ve also set up links between the school for the blind in the village and a regular London primary school. The children have written letters to one another, held conference calls and made friends. They do a sponsored walk in the summer and that raises a healthy amount of money. I’ll be back out in March with a bundle of cash raised in this way and I’ll also be able to see how the projects are proceeding whilst I’m in the UK.

So should you decide to follow this blog, then expect a mix of the two things. And now to click ‘publish'and make this blog live.