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.