SCOOP!

Scored a seat for the SCCOP $109 main event (on pokerstars) last night via a satellite. I only opened the $1 rebuy sat. to keep me entertained whilst grinding. But it soon sucked me in and I finished in the top 13 of 300+ runners :D

The main event is held on the 12th of April and runs for 2 days! There's $1M garunteed but there could be up to 15,000 players which is putting me of a bit. However, I just found out that I can exchange the ticket for such things as a WSOP satellite ticket, hmmmmm...

(Vince) Argh Poker Clash

Introducing: Vince Bell

Vince is a good friend of mine who loves this game probably more than I do, although I haven't played with him a lot I respect his play a great deal from the hand examples he sends me and the results I know he's had (see the photo of the £20 freezeout results at the bottom of the page, he's in second - for the record we split the pot so it was on a technicality!)

Writing a blog is a bit hard by youself so I decided to invite a friend to contribute as well. So without further ado here's his first post:

This Thursday the Royal Holloway Series of Poker was taking place and because I have no money I wasn't going to take part. My friend Sam whined at me for 20mins and gave me the money to buy in and I held out until the last minute then thought I'm addicted to poke so why not lol.

The tournament was a £30 freezeout which is continuing this Thursday night there were 27 runners an 12 remain sharing 1.35M chips. Obviously because I didn't want to play in the first place I dominated the first session wiping out player after player with hands like J3hearts against KJo hitting the flop J83 and my favourite hand AJclubs.I'm second last to act and raise 4.5BB with 2 limpers the button and the blinds to get past, I get called by all but the SB. The Flop Ks Qs 4h checked all the way around. The Turn 2d BB bets 1/3pot fold fold hmmm, I call button folds. The player betting is Jake, aggressive at times. The River Js, Board Ks Qs 4h 2d Js, Jake thinks and goes all in for just under pot... My gut instinct is call but my brains going "are you mad?!", I think and call whilst saying "this is either genius or just plain stupid" I wait for him to show he turns over 66, relief and quite a large pot to start my rampage up to 337,500 just under 25% of the chips with only 12 players left =).Now here's the other thing...

I have just been invited to play in the Poker.co.uk Invitational Freeroll Qulifier. 10 players are invited only and the top 2 enter the Invitational Freeroll which is only offered to the top 35 players of February and the Director of the company. It's a 110euro buy in with 2000euro added so the prize will range from 2300 to 5600 euro depending how many play (theres a 200euro bounty on the director too lol), this is also on on Thursday night =S

So I have a big day on Thursday and I have to get up to do a 7hr laboratory session before the games =S

Lets just hope I remember to have my Weetabix!

It was an eventful weekend for me as far as poker goes. Beginnning with a trip to Aspers on Friday night to play ythe £20 freezeout. Unfortuneatley I only lasted about an hour and a half as I did my best to accumulate chips before the blinds forced me into push fold mode!

Feeling disappointed I decided to take out £50 and sit down at the cash table for the first time. This proved a good investment as I soon found myself with KK in early position, with a limper in front of me. I raised it to 4x BB preying for action, only to find i got 4 callers! A low ragged flop followed and the UTG limper bet into the pot, I moved all-in over the top and got 1 caller with a flush draw, KK held :D and I nearly tripled up. For the next two hours things went well and a coulple of well timed bluffs and all-ins saw my sack increase to 4x my buy-in at which point I decided it was time to call it a night.

In other weekend news I went to the match (Newcastle Vs Arsenal) for the first time in ages and thouroughly enjoyed the first half, I won't go into the second though.

Finally a quick update on my sponsorship progress, I've been playing mostly $10 STT SNG's and I estimate I'm down about $30 but theres plenty of time to turn that around by the 21st of April, when the profit is paid out.

Today I got my first ever sponsorship deal :D with BankrollSupply.com. This is great news for me as bankroll management has been my most pressing problem of late. Particularly playing MTT's has damaged my income from grinding thus hindering any possible rise in stakes :(. However this is no longer a problem as my daily limit will be increased as I improve.

I'm really looking forward to the next period of my poker career which will involve playing a minimum of 90 table hours per month i.e. if i play 3 tables at once 30 hours per month. To begin with I'll stick to my usual $5/$10 SNG's until I'm comfortable with the system and then move up! I can't really express how pleased I am atm because I've just had a bottle of Champers, which I've been saving, with my friend Tom :)

3 out of 5 :)

Won my local pub tournament again last night, making it 3 wins out of 5 :) I'm very pleased with this as my success rate in the past has been pretty poor in these games. I attribute my increased success to loosening up as I pretty much have an image of a total rock. I think this was becoming too predictable amongst a regular crowd of players unlike online SNG's where it's the best way to play early on as you rarely play the same player twice. Anyways £50 profit was another welcome payday for me! :D

56s got da FUNK!

Played at Circus last night for the first time and really enjoyed it! :) I went with my 2 m8s Rob and Taty. We were havin a few pints and decided we fancied a SNG but when we got there all that was on offer was a 64 man tourney, £15 buyin with 1 rebuy or addon which none of us had enuf for (the R/A that is). Any way we sat down on a newly formed table together and proceeded to play some loose 'pissed' poker lol. Then came my favourite move of all time! Enjoy:

All fold to Taty on the button. Blinds are only 50/100 and stacks are 5000 average. He raises to 1000! hmmm... Wonder what he's got. SB folds and BB re-raises to 3000, oh dear me-thinks he has a MONSTER! Taty snap calls. Flop is something like J78 and BB quickly goes all-in for 2000 odd more. Taty calls and flips over 56s giving him an open ender. BB has KK, turn is blank and river a 9 completing his straight. Needless to say the BB is gutted and Taty somewhat embaressed! Taty went on to come 4th and win £180 his biggest cash yet and his first live MTT. He gained a bit of a reputation to say the least. His last hand was fitting as it was against the same guy who called his all-in post flop after asking 56s again???

On a lesser note I had my first ever royal flush! :D Can't remember where I finished but was pleased with my play overall, although I was a little timid as usual in a live game.

Won a 90 man at last!

Last night was a small milesone as I won a 90 man $2.20 tournament. It took me around 20/30 attempts with about 6 final tables but I kept finishing either 5th or 6th! I finally cracked the nut last night ironically whilst only concentrating in part as I was running deep in a 5000 man $5 freeezefout. Unforttuneately I had to settle for 84th in the end but I'm very proud of yet another deep run at the big money! :)

Just for posterity I thought I'd show off some of my best big MTT results on Stars too:

On Full Tilt:

One fine day! :)