Same old, Same old

Very unenjoyable tournament for me. Completely card dead the whole day and surrounded by people speaking a different language which does my head in. Got AQ twice, lost both times. Got JJ, took down the blinds. Never got AA,KK or QQ the whole day. Eventually busted in level 6 when I got AK for the first time of the tournament blinds 150/300 25 ante, playing just over 10k, raised it up from utg +1 to 800 got reraised from a guy 3 to my left to 2300, I shipped, he dwelled for a while before calling with 77 and held. gg me. I really dont enjoy playing when English isnt the first language at the table. Havent a clue what people are talking about and constantly having to ask the dealer how much is the raise can be very annoying. So not gonna bother with anymore poker. Just gonna enjoy the sun and a few days off.

Off to Alicante

Had a nightmare coming home from Nottingham last week. My flight was at 06:15 on Sunday morning so I decided to do an all nighter rather than going to bed and risk oversleeping. Everything was going fine, arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check in and that so Im standing in the queue 15 mins before take off waiting to get on the plane when CANCELLED!! appears on the screen. UUGGHH... Stressful stuff. Had to take a bus,three trains and a ferry before eventually arriving home at 8pm. Turned out doing an all nighter wasnt a great idea....

Had big expectations for the Dusk till Dawn club cos all Ive ever heard about it was good. Wasnt overly impressed by it tbh. A good club yes but plenty of room for improvement. The tables were a bit tight for a start. Not sure if its always this tight or they crammed a few extra tables in because of the UKIPT. Its in the middle of nowhere.£8 taxi journey from the nearest hotel. Soft drinks and tea arent free. Alot of people were complaining about the food service too over the weekend as it was very slow. And the rake in the cash games is 10%!! capped at £7. The £7 cap is great for anyone playing £2 £5+ but for the small stakes players playing £1 £2 it must be crippling. Not complaining about the club at all as I thought it was well run etc. just pointing out a few things.

Just being grinding away online the past week or so with no live play. Not a great week overall. Played 6 step 6s in total and won 1. Which isnt great but kinda expected as my results in them couldnt keep up. Still 14/28 for the year so far which isnt too shabby. Played a decent amount of mtts too with no real success. Alot of deep runs but no big scores unfortunately.

Off to Alicante now for the Estrellas Poker tour. Never been in Alicante so looking forward to a bit of sun and chilling out. Dont plan on playing any online over there. Playing tomorrow which is day 1a so Ill do a quick report tomorrow night with my progress.

Another one bites the dust

No mircale comeback from me on day 2 despite getting up to 40k I was eliminated in the 3rd level of the day. Eventually getting my last few chips in with A8s which was in bad shape against 66 and A9. Didnt end up playing the £200 6 max event which I was looking forward to playing. Ended up hitting the town instead. Theres a £300 2 day event which starts today and Id imagine will get a big field but I dont think Ill be playing cos Im due to fly home at 8am tomorrow morning. Played a bit of £2/£5 cash the past couple of days and Im glad to say Im in profit. A whopping £200! Still profit though. Probably just play some cash later before I head home in the morning.

Day 2... Wuhoo!!!!!

Made Day 2 of a tournament for the 1st time since the NAPT in Vegas back in February. Ok so Ive a measily 12,300 with the average bein over 30k but anything could happen tomorrow. Started off on a really nice table which was broken after an hour unfortunately. Got moved to a much tougher table which included Jude and a number of other capable players, so I had to pick my spots wisely. Didnt go great for me but happy enough with how I played and glad to be still in. Jude busted in level 3 losing the majority of his chips in a sick cooler hand. He had As 8s on the bb with an ep raise and 3 callers so he calls. Flop comes Js Qs Ks. And he leads every street before getting it all in on the river up against 9s 10s. Ouch!

Played a few mtts online last night with a few decent runs. Had a sick misclick in the $50 1r1a with 12 players left. Guy goes all in, I snap call him as quickly as Ive called in my life with the old K4os. His A9 held and that was me done. Pretty sick but couldnt help but laugh after I got over the initial disapointment of it. No plans for today cos theres no side events worth playing until tomorrow night which Ill probably give a go if Im not still in the main event. Anyway goodluck to any Irish playing today

JP Masters

Another bad festival for me and I yet again failed to make day 2. To make things worse I cant just blame running bad on this one cos I played pretty awful too. Played several hands poorly in the 1st few levels and so my stack was steadily dwindling. Exited in level 7 I think it was when I decided to 4bet shove the old A7. Ran into KK and so it was gg me. Silly move brought on by sheer impatience and dare I say it..... tilt! Was really dissapointed after my exit as I was determined to get back on track in this event with it bein such a good structure and having a decent amount of value. Drowned my sins afterwards and decided I was gonna try make the most of the weekend. Great bit of craic anyway to take my mind off the poker.

Decided to play the €300 side event the next day which started at 6. I gave the tourney my full attention and played really well. My stack increased from the word go and I picked up alot of chips early on. (It was a 10k starting stack and I got up to 40k with the average bein 20k. Found AK on the button, raised, the Dokester reraised from the sb, I shipped and he called with JJ which held. Just under 80k pot with the average bein 20k so that sucked. I was left with a couple of bbs after the hand but no miracle recovery and it was gg me a few hands later.

So another 2 tourneys with no cash. Ive lost count at this stage how many live games its been since my last cash but dread to imagine. Off to Nottingham tomorrow for the 4th leg of the UKIPT. Looking forward to playing in Dusk till Dawn as all Ive heard is good things about the club. Hopefully this will be the tourney where I finaaly bring to an end this awful live run.

Grinded a few hours online Sunday, pretty much the whole day yesterday and a few hours today in an atempt to recoop my live loses from the weekend which I done with ease. Makes me wonder why I bother with live donkaments. Had a couple of nice runs in mtts which is a needed confidence booster to prove to myself I have the game to crush mtts and Im not just a sng grinder. Only small buyins unfortunately but still feels great to come through decent sized fields. Won a $20 tourney with 360 players for $1,500 and came 2nd in a $30 one today with 500 players for $2,200. Also grinded hyper turbos steps and sngs. Passed the 300k vpps milestone today which is good for $3,600.

Quick congrats to Sean penderville on winning the Jp masters to follow on from his win in the cpt final last week. Sick run by him, back to back live tourneys for around €80k

And of course Thaddeus on chopping SCOOP event 19h for a nice $106k. Sick sick man just never stops

Back to normality

Well Monte Carlo certainly didnt go as well as I might have hoped. Played 6 tourneys in total. The €10k main event, 2 €1k events and 3 €300 turbos. Didnt have a single cash! Oh! I also played the Supernova Elite freeroll and got beaten heads up. Which kinda sums up how Im running live lately. The freeroll had 45 players. Each player had a €100 bounty on them and if you made the final table you got a $215 or a $530 tourney ticket depending on if the eventual winner beat Barry Greenstein in a heads up match. The winner got $2.5k or $5k again depending on if they beat Barry Greenstein. So I got heads up and we were fairly even in chips so we done a bit of a deal. We gave $1k to whoever came 2nd. Anyway I ended up losing but still got $1k +$500 from bounties + a $530 tourney ticket because the guy who beat me beat Barry. So wasnt too bad for a couple of hours in a freeroll.

Played a few hours online 2 of the nights over there and done much better luckily enough. Played 2 step 6s. The 1st of them was a 9 seater wsop. Got 1 outered on the river in a big pot when we were 6 handed which hurt real bad. Managed to grind my way back into it and eventually finished 3rd for $3k. Played another 9 seater wsop 1 and managed to ship it which felt great considering how shit I had bein doing over there. Putting in a decent amount of hours the past few days since returning home. Doing well across the board. Playing a real mix of games atm. Mtts, regular sngs, hyper turbos and steps. Played 2 step 6s since returning home, a 6 man scoop 1 which I finished 4th in and another 9 man WSOP one tonight which I won. Wuhoo! So thats 2 wsop seats so far. Hoping to win alot more though. And 13/22 for the year in step 6s which is soooooo sick! Especially considering that 16 of those 22 had only I package. I said earlier in the year when I wasnt planning on going for sne I was gonna hit the steps hard and theyd either make or break me. Well so far so good, Ive got off to a start that I couldnt have dreamed of. Not only in the step 6s but in all them. I seem to be constantly accumalating step 6s from step 3s. Hopefully this can continue

The SCOOP is in full flow atm but Ive only played 1 event, 03m. It was $50 rebuy 6 max. 4444 players. I finished 993rd with 660 paid. Planning on playing a few more though but dunno which 1s.
Ive 288k vpps for the year so far which is a fair bit of sne pace, so I need to start grinding more if Im to stay in contention.

Very busy few weeks ahead of live poker. Starting tomorrow with the JP Irish Masters which is being held in the Maldron hotel in Tallaght. Its a €750 buy in with 200-250 players expected. Ive played this event the past 2 years and its great. Excellent structure and alot of recreational players who wouldnt usually play a €750 game make it an excellent tournament. Funny memory from this game last year. Its 1 hour levels and were in level 3. Its a 3 day tournament btw. An old guy calls off his whole stack (which was just under what he started with) facing 2 all ins already with AQs. Needless to say he was in bad shape and was eliminated. When the cards were turned over he says "I havent had a hand all day"!! I thought it was a classic.
Anyway hope I can get back to winning ways on the live scene. Then Wednesday Im off to Nottingham for the 4th leg of the UKIPT. Thats it for now Ill do an update on my progress tomorrow night if Im still in