Bink Holiday

Today was a Bink Holiday! Two nights ago I won my biggest tourney yet, not in prize money, but in field size. It was a çn $11 freezeout with 2498 players. It was a challenging tourney, partly becaues of the external circumstances. These included:

1) Being tired after already finishing 24th in the 32k GTD earlier that day
2) Almost ditching the tourney as I was nearly persuaded to go out that night
3) Constantly having to move around the hostel to find powerpoints and free rooms
4) Being HU whhilst in the common room that I wasn´t supposed to be in at that time of night, with my drunken m8 asleep next 2 me and 2 ppl shagging in the kitchen to my left. However it was impossible to move though as my battery was low and I would´ve got blinded out!

These are the trials of a travelling poker playr I spose. Neways, as I mentioned today was a ´Bink Holiday´ so me and my m8 Tahti decided to ditch the traditional Kebab, Fries and Coke for lunch and headed for a nice resteraunt for a lush meal:

- Partridge Salad with Almonds, Dates and Parmasan.
- Iberian Ham Croquettes.
- Goats Chees, Grilled Bacon and Fried Onion on Toast.
- Baby Artichokes and Prawn Cassarolle.

Yesterday I moved into a shared flat in Malaga with some ppl we met at the Hostel. One is Danish, another English and there´s a Hawaian guy too. The English guy, who wants poker lessons, is training to be a bull fighter! He´s hopefully gunna find me some tickets 2 a fight as well! The flat has is 200 euros a month and has a class view, the only problem though is there´s no internet. So here I am in an internet cafe updating my blog and trying 2 work out if I can play poker here. Adios!

Spain Part 2

2 weeks have passed and we find ourselves back in Malaga. If I were to sum up the last two weeks on the Theo's farm in a sentence it would be: 'Hot hard work in a beautiful scenic place interspersed with a challenging atmosphere'. What do I mean by 'challenging atmosphere'? Basically there were several arguments while we there including the owner having a go at us. Apparently this was commonplace though according to a family who lived on the farm. This put a bit of a downer on the whole experience tbh. However we gained a lot of experience from this this farm.

So far we´ve seen a snake, many lizards and lots of wasps. There was actually a wasp nest in our accommodation with wasps in it that liked to build cocoons in our clothes around dead spiders to feed their babies eggs on, harmless though.

One of the best things we did during our stay was go to the local village festival. It's an annual event called a ´feria´that every village has. There was singing, dancing booze and food, much fun :)

Our plan is to use the hostel in Malaga as a stepping stone to make plans about where to go next. A strong possibility is that we´ll go to the South of France to do some grape picking. The season for this begins very soon and we have a contact there to help us find work. In the meantime Tahti (my m8 who I´m travelling with) will be working part-time in the hostel and I´ll be chilling out and maybe playing a bit of poker :)

Spain Part 1

We have only been here for a week and a half but it has been eventful! We arrived in Malaga on Wednesday at 8pm local time. A friend of mine who lives in Malaga picked us up and took us to a hostel. After seeing Malaga from a vantage point (beautiful!) we went for Tapas and drinks.

The next day we walked around the centre and had our introduction to Spain which included heat and the language barrier. This was swiftly followed though by an evening swimming in the sea and enjoying a beach bbq with some very friendly Spanish people.

The following morning it was time to move on and begin ourr WWOOFING experience up in the mountains. It took an entire day to travel there via 2 trains and lots of waiting but on arrival we were met by a friendly Belgian man named Phillip who drove us tot he farm. After days travel an early n ight was in order.

In the morning we began work. The job we were given was to shave the bark off of 30-40 logs using spades, 6y days on we are half way through. Most days have consisted of waking up at 7am and doing this job until midday when it becomes too hot. At this point we sleep, swim, eat, play games with the kids etc. until it cools down in the evening.

Some of the best points about the farm are (in no order):

1) The view over the valley
2) The pool
3) The Charecters
4) Cats and dogs (many)

Today we have a day off as we have worked 6 days straight so we are relaxing by playing games until it cools down and we can go for a walk, possibly to the river at the bottom of the valley.

'Liars Dice' (Drinking version)

I have been playing various games with mates recently including: 'Risk' 'Gin Rummy' and 'Liars Dice'. One of the most fun games we played though was a home made adaptation of Liars Dice into a drinking game. 5 of us had a mint time playing this game last night so I thought I share it with you. Be warned though, if you're a bit of liteweight like me then you can easilly end up drinking half a bottle of Whiskey to yourself in an hour or so = messy! :s

RULES:

The rules for Liars Dice that we used are pretty simple. We started with 5 players (any amount works), each of us getting 5 dice. All players roll their dice at once but conceal the dice they roll.

After choosing who goes first at random, the first player then makes a 'bid'. For example if 2 of his concealed dice are 3's then he might guess that there are 3 or more 3's on the whole table combined (including his). The next player then has 3 options:

1) Bid that there are 3 or more 4's, 5's or 6's
2) Bid that there are 4 or more of any face value (or any number above this)
3) Call the previous bidder a 'Liar'

Play goes on with players upping their bids until a liar is called. At that point the player who is wrong in this dispute must discard a die. After a player has lost all 5 dice he/she is out!

DRINKING:

Now the fun part. With 5 players we used thefollowing rules which can easiily be adjusted for different circumstances:

1st out - rolls 2x6 sided dice and drinks the number of shots they roll

2nd out - rolls a 10 sided die and drinks the number of shots they roll

3rd out - rolls 2x4 sided dice and drinks the number of shots they roll

2nd place - rolls one 6 sided die and drinks...

1st place - rolls one 4 sided die and drinks...

One final rule we added to this was that before downing each shot the drinker gets to roll a 6 sided die and if they roll a 6 they get to nominate someone else to drink that shot.

1 bottle lasted us 2 games but a second bottle is always handy ;)

ENJOY!!!

Chopped $42k GTD HU Weeeeeeeeeee!!!

Varience is my new best friend, I know we've fallen out before but we're getting along like a house on fire again! I can't believe how the last 2/3 months have gone :s As I mentioned in the last post I didn't even have a bankroll very recently, instead I was treating each buy-in as an entertainment expenditure... now I'm paying off my student loan with my earnings :D

I choppped this for $6.9k (using ICM) he got $7.5k... Basically I did not want to play HU for $3k! Probably could have squeezed an extra cupl of hundred out of the deal but was too overwhelmed to bargin!!

UNREAL is definately the word 2 describe the past few months of poker for me UNREAL

Time to reflect and plan!

FULL TILT PROFIT GRAPH



POKERSTARS PROFIT GRAPH



IPOKER PROFIT GRAPH



After my recent success with online MTT's and because my blog posts of late have been poor, I decided to reevaluate my results to date. With the help of sharkscope I've been able to get together these 3 graphs that show the sites I have played the vast majority of my poker on. I have played on other sites but only for relatively small amounts and and few games. As for live poker, I have been keeping records almost since I began going to the casino and overall my results are about break even, mainly due to a couple of long l8 night losing cash sessions that were balanced out by tourney scores.

To cut a long story short I've played about 2000 online tourneys on the main 3 sites I play and am about $14,000 in profit. I'd say about half of these were SNG's and later on the other half were MTT's. If it wasn't for MTT's, something I gained a taste for whilst playing for Bankroll Supply these graphs would look somewhat less dramatic!

More to the point though if it wasn't for the handful of big scores I've had lately they would look pretty depressing! However, I wouldn't have played 1000 games at the stakes I do if I hadn't continually been running deep.

In acctual fact if it hadn't been for Paul Jackson at Bankroll Supply (the company who sponsored me on the basis of 500 SNG's at the $5 level and below) I would still be grinding small stakes SNG's for a tiny hourly rate! It was Paul Jackson who persuaded me in my first few lessons with him to move up and play $20 SNG's with the odd MTT, which is when I got the bug!

My roll is now sitting at around $10k, as $4k has been spent along the way :) As such the time has come to make some decisions about my next move. I woulld love to continue with my current plan of playing tourneys between $10-$100 (i.e. max buyin of 1% of my roll) with the odd shot at a Sunday major or medium live tourney, but...
I have just completed my degree and really want to do some travelling, for which I have some savings but probably not enough.

Thinking about it now I think the best move would be this: withdraw (reluctantly lol) half of my bankroll and put this in a savings account to keep me going on my travels and until I find a job. This would still leave me with a $5k roll which would be enuf to play up to $50 tourneys which tbh above which I'm probably punching above my weight at this stage! Any advice on this decison is, as ever, appreciated :)

In summary as tempting as it is to push up the tourney ladder as fast as possible, finishing uni is a rare oppurtunity to travel b4 I get tied down to a job. On top of this realistically I should probably not get too confident and start skipping levels just because I'm doing well atm. Instead the best decision seems to be to attempt to consolidate my recent sucess by staying at the same level and taking the oppurtunity of a lifetime to see the world!

Running like GOD!!!

Special thanx 2 the NPF rail who nearly made me pmsl!!!!!! :D

What next? More/bigger MTT's - sounds like a plan!