Friday 31 July 2009

Day: 0/61. Profit: $0

It all kicks off in a few minutes then...

Here are my first-day plans:

Saturday 1st August

1. Sleep for a number of hours.

2. Get up bright and early (midday at the earliest) for a trip to the gym.

3. Sleep for four or five hours.

4. Win the Supernova freeroll, cashout $10,000 of the prize money and book a two month long holiday to PORTUGAL without my Dad.

5. Sleep.

I'll let you know how it pans out.

Ps. Hannes, I'll happily teach you O8. My lessons are free of charge due to the fact that I may or may not know what I'm talking about.

PPs. Stodgy, I'll answer your questions soon, mate.

Thursday 30 July 2009

A $4 Bathmat, $200s worth of Prop Bets and an impossible $10,000 Penthouse Challenge

Yesssssss, another blog post title without a swear word in it! FUCK ME, I'M CLASSY. Well, that’s what I’m posting to talk about, so I guess I’ll just tick them off in order.

Mitchell Street Masters, which was held this year at Dickie’s house in Norwich, turned out to be well worth the trip. I lost a bit of dosh in the two events I played, and made some dosh at cash, but the big winner of the weekend was the banter. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I did this weekend (especially at Sunday’s cash game). I had a fucking great time, cheers Dickie.

To explain the 'Bathmat' bit in my title, my pokering highlight from the weekend was the £2.99 bathmat I sh1pped for winning a pot with J2. It doesn’t matter that I risked £10 worth of chips to win it, it’s mine now, the nutter folded.

A couple of prop bets with Keysie:

1. Nothing fucks up my health on a day-to-day basis more than alcohol. So, when Keys expressed his wish to quit drinking for a while, it was always going to be prop-bet time. It’s a $100 bet that we can go without booze until the start of October. First one to crack ships the other $100. I fancy my chances of getting through this one and really hope I can.

2. Nothing fucks up my health on a day-to-day basis more than lack of exercise. So, when Keys expressed his wish to exercise more often, we both snapped up another prop bet. We must go to the gym at least three days a week for at least an hour a time until the start of October. Keys will be getting a personal trainer so he’s offered me 2:1 on the bet - $200:$100. Again, first to break the rules ships to the other. Seriously don’t fancy my chances here. WP Keys.

The Penthouse Challenge is certain to be my toughest and most time consuming challenge to date. It came from an alcoholly conversation I had with my mate Ben who was trying to convince me to move into the same block of apartments as him.

Ever since I spent a week on my own in Evesham earlier this month, all I’ve talked about is moving out of my shared house in Bearwood and into a place of my own. The house I’m at in Bearwood is filling up rapidly with only one of the seven bedrooms now unoccupied so this place is now far too crowded for my liking. Having never had a place of my own, that’s what I want to do next.

The only ‘must’ for my new home is for it to have a nice outside bit, either a garden or a massive balcony. We quickly decided that the only suitable apartments in his block are the penthouses on the top floor which have a big outside bit to waltz about in. Unfortunately, at £1150 pm, this 20hr a week 10c/25c grinder simply cannot afford it.

Not playing less than 20 hours a week anyway…

Earlier that day, I had been looking back over my year playing O8 and my lack of volume depressed me a bit. I had made notes at the start of the year, writing down how much I could make if I played 100k hands a month, or 125k hands per month running at so many ptbbs/100. Some of the regs I know find the time to play 100k a month so I was horrified when I looked back through my poker tracker to see that I haven’t managed to play a single 50k hand month yet this year.

Between April 1st and May 11th I played less than 7k hands, ffs!

I’ve managed to play over 40k hands in each of May, June and July, playing a lot better and feeling much happier than at any time in the year. But, the truth is, 40k hands a month is less than 20hrs a week. I can hardly claim to be working my bollocks off at the moment. And, obviously, my laziness is costing me a lot money.

So, with plans of a serious grind in mind, I decided to finish the conversation with:

“But if I make $5k in both of the next two months, I’ll live in one of those penthouses for six months.”

And the fucker’s holding me to it.

If I stick to playing 10c/25c for the next two months, this is going to take a hell of a lot of hard work. In fact, barring another result in a freeroll, it may be impossible, but I’m giving myself the option of moving up if I feel like it.

This could be my most embarrassing challenge failure of all time but, to summarise my plans:

If I make $10,000 profit by the end of September, I’ll piss it all up the wall living in a ridiculously expensive penthouse.

And everyone’s welcome to the massive pissup I’ll be holding on October 1st!

I hope to be blogging regularly over the next two months,

Sorted.

Sunday 12 July 2009

I’ve found my spiritual home - Evesham

Okay, so I’ve got no idea what that means. And even if it does mean something like what I think it means it certainly isn’t true. I just thought it would make a change to have a nice title for one of my blog posts. Some of my past efforts, including ‘CUNT’, ‘Fuck me, I run like a cunt’, and ‘Tanni Grey-Thompson’, are just ugly, ugly, and ugly.

Not that I’m saying that I think Dame Tanni is ugly, you understand.

In fact, I’m sure I remember watching the Olympics or a marathon one time, when I was much younger, and feeling a little attracted to a young Tanni. Erm, actually, thinking about it, I was probably a bit too young to have fancied her but I definitely felt something.

Pity? Perhaps.

Or maybe I was just gagging for a go on her ‘little bicycle thing’. But, either way, I was far from repulsed by Tanni Grey-Thompson back in her hayday and, as far as female athletes go, if she could stand, she would definitely have been up there with them. Literally.

What the fuck am I on about? This is not what this post is supposed to be about at all. But, while I’m on the subject, I might as well tell you that, back in my marathon-watching days, I was also partial to a bit of Paula Radcliffe (only OBE btw?). When I was that age, the London marathon was just a 7hr porno as far as I was concerned. Ahh, to be eight again…

Zwei words for you Joanne Pavey, nein danke.

FML, who am I kidding? I love you Jo. And your socks.

After deciding that factor 50 sun block was, let’s say, a little too safe for my tanning needs, I made the trek into Evesham town centre in search of something less sensible. The only thing steeper than the price of the bus fares into town here, I’ve discovered, are the hills the bus has to climb to get there. So you get what you pay for, I suppose, fuck walking it.

£3.90 though? Come on, really?

I got into Evesham and the first thing I noticed was that the place was full of birds. Women, I mean, town was swarming with them… Brilliant.

And butterflies as well (actual butterflies), there were millions of them.

Yep.

I’d say that they were pretty much my only two noteworthy observations of Evesham town centre but, quite frankly, what more do you need to know? Nice women AND butterflies. In the Midlands. Who knew?

I snapped up some factor 25 on ‘buy one, get one free’ in boots, window-shopped an iphone and got the bus back home through the mountains. I added the newly acquired sun block to the already unnecessarily large collection I’d started two days earlier on the kitchen side and sat and waited for it to stop raining!

And waited. And waited. And waited.

Today is the last day of my little ‘holiday’ in the country and I’d say there’s been an average of one hour of sun a day. At an average time of 7.30pm on the night. All four bottles of sun block have remained untouched and I haven’t bothered to sit out in the garden at all. My skin is still as white as the snow that rests on the garden this morning. (Okay, okay, I’ve exaggerated there…it’s just frost.) Seriously, though, I’ve been so unlucky with the weather and it’s been by far the second most depressing thing about this ‘holiday’.

The most depressing thing about the ‘holiday’ (which, despite how I come across, I’ve really enjoyed by the way) was the book I decided to read on Friday while I sat and waited for the sun to come out. My dad and his lovely partner have an impressive collection of books here in the house and I had a lot of greats to choose from. There’s some Conan-Doyle up there, a bit of Tolkien. There’s even some Dickens I could have opted for. But what does this bright spark decide would make a suitable Friday afternoon holiday read?

The Diary of Anne Frank.

Great choice, son. I was pretty much in tears from about page four onwards. It really affected me. I read it all in one sitting and I was still not feeling myself come Saturday afternoon. It reminded me of watching Titanic years ago. Except Titanic wasn’t a book. And is completely different, but you know what I mean. Relentlessly fucking depressing.

Luckily, I found ‘How to lose a guy in 10 days’ on DVD late Saturday afternoon and I laughed my bollocks off watching that so I’m back to normal again now. But it was touch and go as to whether I would ever smile, or even enjoy anything, ever again for a while.

If you know someone that’s going on holiday any time soon and fancy playing a little practical joke on them to completely ruin their fun, buy them a copy of Annie F for the plane. IT WILL FUCK THEM UP. But you’ll probably all laugh about it in years to come.

It’s looking more and more like I’ve really got nothing to say in this post actually, this is just blogging for the sake of blogging so I’ll bring this weirdness to an end. But I might as well take the chance to wish Keysie good luck on day 5 and beyond in the main event in Vegas. He in the money and still has a stack to do some damage with.

So run good, mate.

Monday 6 July 2009

Grass and fields and that.

“Is factor 50 sun block good or bad?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the highest they do, mate, you’re not getting tanned with that shit.”

Well, I wish some fucker had told me this before I went out and bought two litres of the stuff. I’m going to end the day whiter than I started it walking around wearing this greasy layer of concrete all day.

So, I’m in the lovely Midland countryside this week, looking after my Dad’s house in Evesham while he’s away. Okay, it’s no Portugal, but I’m looking forward to having a nice house to myself for a week or so. And, provided the sun stays out (and I buy some sensibly factored sun block), the spaciousish (try saying that word out loud) garden should provide the perfect place for me to top up my tan. (Though by ‘top up my tan’ this reclusive grinder, of course, means ‘start a tan from scratch’).

This week has turned out to be great timing for me to get away because I’ve put myself in the nice position of not feeling under any pressure to play cards. A few of you know already that I had a nice run in the weekly Supernova $75k freeroll on Saturday night, scoring my biggest ever tournament win of $5,437.50 for a 4th place finish.

I was an ‘orrendous nit literally all the way through the tourn because that’s the only way I know how to play hold em nowadays but it did the trick. I was lucky enough to get it in good AND HOLD in almost all of my all ins.

It was an outdraw that got me going:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437421

But after that, I'm no expert, but it seemed like a fairly standard run to the final table:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437433
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437475
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437517
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437551
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437625

where everyone was guaranteed $1k.

This massive hold early on at the ft:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437756

sent me on my way to four handed second in chips. But then this flop, sadly, spelt the end of my tournament:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437857

Obv.

I’ve played four of those tournaments since I was gifted Supernova status, and had two top 40 finishes. Easy game! So, with 52 of them a year (on top of the 12 $100k freerolls), I should be able to add a few hundred thousand $$ a year to what I grind out at cash.

A couple of people have asked me whether I’ll be moving up in stakes with this win, but the answer is no.

Firstly, I need most of that money offline for now so I’ve cashed out over $5k of it, leaving myself a comfortable $1k bankroll to continue playing $25 O8, completely worry-free.

And, secondly, I don’t actually want to move up yet. I’m still learning things about O8, and getting better, and learning more and earning quicker with every month I play. Until I feel completely happy that I know everything about every situation Vs every type of player, I’d rather carry on playing low stakes. See you at $2/$4 in the year 2147, folks.

I’m currently running at over 12ptBB/100 at 10c/25c, with over $700 coming in per month from Supernova bonuses. So, Dstar and Jeesus and co, you'll be happy to hear that I'll be sticking around until I’m winning at at least 20ptbbs!

I hate to be the kind of blogger that only posts a serious post when he’s running well… but that’s the way it is, I guess. Sorry.

Well, I’d better get going, I’ve got to go and look for the nearest shop that sells factor 0.0000005 sun block. And, by the look of the endless sea of grass surrounding me for miles in every direction, I could easily be traipsing around in the sun for days.

Luckily, I’ve got three or four pints of factor 50 to keep me safe.

See you later.