WPT Bootcamp

In so many walks of life you are advised that you need to set yourself goals if you wish to achieve something. Well I think I've just found the ideal thing to set myself as a goal.

Goals need to be something of value to you, have a fixed time limit and a course of action to allow you to achieve them and they need to be difficult but achievable. It's the achievable part of this one that's going to be really difficult. OK, I'm probably living in cloud cuckoo land but you've got to set your sights on something big.

As you can probably guess from the image, my goal is to earn enough from online poker to pay my way to the World Poker Tour Bootcamp in the Caribbean in early December.

That means I'm going to need to win about $6,000 ($4K for the bootcamp + return flight to Florida + spending money) oh, and I'd better win some money for the lovely Lorna too so I can restore some of the brownie points that buggering off to the Caribbean on my own is going to cost, better make that $7,500 then.

A quick glance at the calendar and I see that I have 10 weeks to achieve this, so that means $750 profit per week, hmm...never done that before. So if I play five nights a week that's a consistant $150 profit per session. That means winning 4 x $10 Sit & Go per night. So I would need to play perhaps 8 of them each session.

When you break it down like that it almost sounds achievable, who am I kidding!!! Maybe I'll just have to settle for a weekend reading Dan Harrington books on a park bench at Rothsea.

Suckouts

Having hardly played this week I was really looking forward to getting some games in this weekend but now all I feel is a sense of growing frustration, Arrrrghhhh.

I played a few $5.00 games on Saturday trying to qualify for the Party Poker Monster but alas never made it through, which is a bit of a nightmare because the quality of the other players was for the most part, awfull. Every time I ghot my chips in I was well ahead and then Boom...rivered.

Then on Sunday I played a few Ladder Sit & Gos on Party, it was like Deja Vu, more good hands getting rivered.

I think I'm going to have to try playing higher stakes games or just give up on Party Poker as I seem to keep getting rivered by numpties.

Poker Magazines

This week I have discovered two new poker magazines, one of my work colleagues picked them up as freebies in the British Midland airport lounge at Heathrow. Nice one. I haven't read them both cover to cover yet but first impressions are very good.






The first magazine is Flush, it's nice and glossy and had a good variety of news and articles. This magazine isn't 100% dedicated to poker, there are some articles on other sports but I'd say about 80% of the magazine is about poker. It looks like the magazine has been running for around a year but I've never seen it in any shops, guess I'll have to subscribe to it if I ever want to see it again.

The second magazine is Poker Pro Europe, it's also nice and glossy but it has a rather more authorative feel to it then Flush and runs to a perfectly respectable 100 pages. The news coverage and articles in the magazine are very detailed and most have a British or European focus. There is a diary column by Des Wilson as advice from a variety of pros including "Devilfish" Dave Ulliot, Harry Demetriou and Juha Helppi. This is definately one I'll keeping an eye out for in future.

Ladbrokes Poker Ladders

I fired up Ladbrokes poker last night for the first time in a while and I was pleased to be greeted with tons of new features. Along side all the poker games there is a new "Casino" tab that leads to a long list of casino games including blackjack, slots etc.. that you can launch from inside the poker client. Very good but I'll be keeping clear of them, you probably know I don't really like games of chance when the odds aren't in my favour.

What really caught my attention was some of the new poker game options. There were more big tournaments than last time I was on, but it was the new Ladders that caught my attention. I liked the look of their structure. In a normal satellite only about 10% of the field goes through to the next stage, e.g. 1 player in a 10 player tourney, maybe 3 in a 30 player one. The Ladders on Ladbrokes reward three out of the ten players with a ticket to the next level and on some levels the player in fourth place gets a ticket to replay the level they are on.

There are two different ladder events, one starting at $3.00 with four levels and a first place prize of $500, the other with a starting price of $9.00, five levels and a first prize of $3,000. I like the structure, it looks a little easier than the big guarenteed prize MTT's with huge numbers of players and crazy satellites.

I've played my first $3.00 level 1 event and won myself a ticket to level 2. I'll let you know how I get on.

Ladbrokes Casino Paddington

It's been a really busy and exciting week but sadly not much time for poker, it wasn't for lack of trying though.

I was down in London for a few meetings midweek and the hotel I was staying at was just around the corner from the new Ladbrokes Casino at Paddington.

It's 10:00pm, my flight was late and I had been travelling for 6 hours despite the fact that the time in the air between Glasgow and London is only about hour. Air travel certainly aint glamerous, quite frankly it's a pain in the a$$ with all these new security restrictions.


SECURITY - "I'm sorry sir you can't take that cigarette lighter through security you'll need to put it in the bin",
ME - "but I can just go into the W.H.Smiths on the other side of security and buy another one",
SECURITY - "Yes sir, but you still need to put this one in the bin"

What a ludicrous farse. However I got my own back, my cabin baggage was at least a centimetre bigger than the regulation size and I had a blunt pencinl in my bag too. W@nkers.

Sorry, got a bit side tracked there.

We popped into the new Ladbrokes Casino for a drink and perhaps a little flutter and we were immediatley impressed by the service and decor, very friendly, professional and tasteful. We stuck our heads into the Spoorts bar for a quick look then decided to go downstairs to the main area.

The first thing you spot when you enter the main gaming floor is the plush decor and subtle lighting. There is a small well stocked bar and a comfortable seating area around the bar. Steps lead down to a lower level that with more seating, a restaurant and private dining booths.

We order ourselves a couple of drinks and wander through into the gaming area where there are a few roulette tables, four of five blackjack tables, one bacarat table and a 3 card stud table, beyond the room we are in there is another room with slots and the cahier's cage. Sadly no dedicated poker room running cash games, tournaments or Sit & Go but then agin I wasn't' really expecting there to be.

I'm not really one for the games of chance in casinos, I would far rather gamble on something where I feel there is some skill or I have a bit of an edge and the casino always has an edge in the games they offer. But now I was here it felt only right to have a litlle flutter, little being the operative word. First up we decided to have a little shot at the roulette table. So my colleague and I sat down at a table with a £2.00 minimum bet and did nothing to aid the image of the Scots being tight by buying a mere £10.00 of chips each. I tried to put £2.00 on Red only to be told that the minimum bet of £2.00 only applied to the numbers on the inside. Well you don't need to be Einstein to work out that with odds of 35/1 my £2.00 chips weren't going to have much chance of winning on the centre numbers. So what the heck I stuck the £10.00 on Red, one spin, caput, chips gone. My colleague chose to loose his chips more gradually on £2.00 centre bets, he lasted all of five minutes. What a pair of cheapskates. While we were at the table a couple of ladies next to us were dropping £4.00 chips all over the board. They took there winnings up to about £1000 and back down to about £400 in the 5 minutes we were at the table. Another chap turned up with a single, big square £1,000 chip and a handful of pink £100 chips, he lost half of that in the five minutes we were there. My god, complete lunacy throwing big lumps of money like that at roulette.

Time for another drink and a wee shot at the 3 card stud, again not a game that I approve of as it's complete luck but what the hell. We sat down at the table, £5.00 minimum bet or £10 if you play the dealer (£5.00 ante and £5.00 if you play your hand). I bought £30.00 of chips and sat down, couldn't really afford to lose them all but pretty much resigned to the fact that I probably would. Well we played a few hands, at first I was up, then my chips started going down, got to about £20.00 was just about to cash out and I started winning agin. I built my chips back up to £60 and decided to cash out. I'd doubled my money so I could go home with a spring in my step and some crispy new notes in my wallet.

Got back to the hotel and I was just about to settle down to read my book for an hour, "The Great Casino Heist", but decided to blip through the TV channels and found that the classic moview "The Sting" was just about to start.

OK so I haven't managed to play any Internet or Live poker for a few days but I've been to a casino, I'm reading a book about casinos and I've watched a movie about gambling. Do you think I'm getting addicted or is somebody trying to tell me something.

I'll finish this post with a useless fact. Whilst watching "The Sting" I spotted a sign above a door that made me sit up and take note. If you are ever talking to anybody about "The Wabash Club", a poker room in Glasgow, you can smugly inform them that the club takes it's name from the sign above a club in one of the establishing shots of "The Sting".

PS> If you're in London and fancy a relaxing drink or a little flutter in comfortable, cool surroundings then I can recommend the Ladbrokes Paddington Casino, it's really nice. Next time I find myself spending the night in London I'll have to try and locate the Gutshot or the Vic and take a look.

The Cincinnati Club - Second Visit

I enjoyed my Saturday night Freezeout out at the Cincinnati Club in Glasgow so much last Saturday that I was really looking forward to going back again. I did alright last week finishing in about 15th out of 36 and was confident I could do better. I did still feel that I was one of the least experienced players though so wasn't expecting to make it into the money.

I think we were about the first to arrive at 7:30 and it definately wasn't as busy as the previous week. In the end only 21 players signed up for the game and it was suggested that we take the buy in up from £10 to £20 as it was so quiet, everybody agreed.

We were split across three tables to start and given 6,000 chips each. Play was nice and solid and sensible and we had nice deep stacks which were to make for a very enjoyable evening. We had three Norwegian guests in the tournament, livened up the banter at the table a bit, they were over visiting Strathclyde University. The Scandanavians are known for their aggressive poker style and the three young lads took a little bit of good natured banter about this. One of them went out within the first hour or so and I would eventually knock the second one out when he pushed his short stack into the middle and I called him with pocket Aces. The remaining Norwegian played a good game and despite finding himself short stacked a couple of times used his aggression and picked his spots nicely to build his chips back up.

Once a few players had been knocked out we were whittled down to two tables and my mate Andy ended up at the same table as me. I had position on him but he arrived with a pretty impressive stack of chips. I hoped we didn't run into each other too heavily at the table as the journey home might be a bit frosty if one of us knocked the other out. With that in mind, I guess it was almost inevitable that we would run head first into each other. I had been laying down junk hands for what seemed like an eternity and finally picked up a nice starting hand K-Q hearts in late position. Andy had been playing quite tight but he decided to bet the flop this time and raised the big blind three times, I called and down came the flop with two more hearts in it. Andy bet the flop and I raised him hoping he would jump out of the way, he called and the turn revealed another heart giving me a King high flush. I guess he could have had the Ace of hearts but I was pretty sure he didn't. Had it been anybody else at the table I would have tried to get all my chips in and bust somebody out but I showed restraint and checked the turn and river before scooping up the chips.

Play continued and more players dropped out until Andy and I found ourselves at the final table of nine players, we both had pretty reasonable stacks probably about the middle of the field. I continued to play tight, steal a few blinds and see what happened. I built my chips up a bit more, caught a few nice cards and increased my stack some more until we were down to five players. Then Andy and I ran into each other big style once again. Andy raised preflop and I looked down to see Pocket Aces, naturally I called. The flop came down, Andy checked and I raised hoping once again that he would jump out the way but he didn't. My Aces held up and I took a large lump of chips from him. Once again I could have been more agressive but held back a bit. None the less that hand left and seriously short stacked and there was no way back from there for him, he busted out in 5th.

My stack was now quite healthy, the chip leader had an enormous stack and there were two smaller stacks than me. Number 4 busts out and I know I'm in the money. The short stack at the table now is the remaining young Norwegian lad, we treated his pushes with some respect not wanting to let him double up and finally the chip leader wiped him out on one of his pushes. I'm now heads up and out chipped by about 5 to 1. We play a few hands relatively passively each player folding to the others raises and trading blinds. Then I'm raised in the small blind with Pocket fours and decide to re-raise in case my opponent was just trying to steal my blind. He calls and the flop comes down with lots of face cards, 2 Queens and maybe a Jack. He puts in a small bet and I see this as an opportunity to push hard and try and take down what is now a big pot. I raise, he calls and down comes another face card, a King this time. He checks and I put in a big raise which causes him to fold showing pocket 10's as he does so. Everybody at the table is putting me on trip Queens or a full house of Kings and Queens I just agree with them for now pleased that 4's didn't get called all the way :-). That hand helped a lot and I was sure I had some good reads on my opponent and could force him to fold good hands. I had just increased my stack nicely but I would need to do this a few more times to equal his stack, so be it. The very next hand I picked up A-6 offsuit, not a hand I would get behind on a big table but more than sufficient heads up. I raised it up 3xBB then he re-raised twice the pot, the pot is now huge. I thought a long time about my next move, I stared him down and picked up the tells I was looking for. I knew he had something but I also knew he was pissed that I was being aggressive and trying to eat into his stack. There's a lot in the pot, if I go for it and win I'll have matched his stack, if I lose I'm crippled, or worse. If I pair my Ace I'll probably take the pot, I'm in the money, got further than I expected, it's late, I'm tired, what the heck. I shove. I knew I probably shouldn't have, if I'd stuck to the patience and discipline that had got me this far I woud have layed it down, but my agression had been building and working and I had to try and command the table if I was to overturn his chip lead...here goes. We flip our cards over and he has pocket Kings. If I hit my Ace I'll take the pot and pull up even with his stack, if nothing improves I'm busted. Well no Aces came down har turned his pair of Kings into trips on the turn... Doh!

Never mind, that's the way it goes. In hindsight I should have got out of the hand when he re-raised me and played with a bit more patience, but heh...that's poker. I picked up my £120 winnings and went home with a huge smile on my face. I had done far better than I expected to and I didn't feel dominated or outplayed heads up...I feel I had a good chance but blew it. I am also rather chuffed because I would consider myself to be one of the least experienced players at CinCin's listening to the bater around the room. There's maybe hope for me yet.

I'll be back at CinCin's again soon, can't wait. I want to try and prove to myself that it wasn't just a fluke and see if I can make the Final Table and Cash out again. I might need to leave it a couple of weeks though. A slap up lunch at Ben & Jerry's with the family on Sunday paid for from my winnings should help win me a few brownie points though.

First Impressions - The Cincinnati Club

I've been wanting to visit the Cincinnati club in Glasgow for a long time now and earlier this week I made my mind up that I would take the plunge this weekend.

Apart from the fact that I enjoy the odd game of live poker there were a few other reasons I wanted to get out to the CinCinnati club. Firstly the schedule changed a couple of weeks ago and there are now more Freezeouts on offer. I'm not very fond of Rebuys and the £10 Freezeout on a Saturday night looked promising for my fist excursion.

Secondly, due to the uncertainty over the future of some of the UK poker clubs because of the current gaming laws and the test case at the Gutshot, I wanted to make sure I at least got a chance to play at the Cincinnati. The club was raided back in June and it would be a crime if it were raided again or had to shut down and I certainly didn't want to miss the opportunity to play there at least once.

So my mind was made up, I was going to play in the £10 rebuy. I double checked the start time, parking and dress code online then texted a couple of mates to see if any of them wanted to come along too.

Arriving at the club we parked around the back and ventured inside to join and get our names on the list. Joining was a breeze, just bring along some photo ID and your fine. We put our names down on the list and paid our buy in then took a seat until the tournament started.

The tournament started at 8pm and there must have been approaching 40 players seated at four tables. The tournament structure was good with 4,000 chips to start and blinds increasing every 15 minutes. Play was quite sensible and conservative, no mad all in merchants throwing there chips around. Being new to the club I just kept my head down and played really tight at the start whilst trying to get a feel for the playing style of the people at my table. I won a few hands early on, one with A-J when an Ace and a Jack came out on the board giving me two pairs. I raised it up on the flop but didn't get any action. I also took down a pot with A-6 from the Big Blind, not a hand I would usually play early in a tournament but I was in the Big Blind and nobody raised it up before the flop so I limped in and paired my Ace. I then raised it up with a pot sized bet, and once again everybody folded. I continued to play tight for a while and didn't really build my stack or lose very much.

The next notable hand I played was a bit of a bummer, I played it badly and lost some chips. I was on the big blind again and I got A-5. Nobody raised the betting before the flop, I limped in and the board paired my Ace again. I bet out from my early position with a 2/3 of the pot bet and everybody folded except one lad in a lte position who called. The turn card came down and didn't help and I decided to check to see if the other lad would bet, he did. At this point I thought I should probably fold but against my better judgement I decided to call. The river card wasn't very inspiring and once again I checked and the other lad bet. I put him on an Ace with a better kicker than me or perhaps a mid pair or maybe even a stone cold bluff. I thought about it for a few moment and decided he probably had me beat with a pair of aces but with a better kicker. Even though I was pretty sure I was beaten the bet was only small and I decided to call just to see his cards, remember I'm still trying to get a feel for the people at the table and the range of hands they play. We flipped over our cards and sure enough he was holding A-J, he head me beat with his stronger kicker. Ok so I played the hand weakly and lost a few chips but it didn't make much of a dent in my stack, just took me back to around my 4,000 starting chips. A frustrating hand though, I should have played it better and just put it down when he bet into me on the turn.

The play continued until the break with players gradually dropping out and the tables getting shuffled about a bit. One big lad at the table in the middle could be heard above everybody else in the room. Sounded like he was giving a commentary on the play at his table. He had ammassed quite a huge stack of chips but I couldn't tell from where I was sitting if this was through luck or skill.

A few more players dropped out after the break but nothing much happened, the blinds were starting to creep up and it wasn't long before we reached 150/300 and my stack had dwindled to about 3000. It was time to ammass some chips before my chips atarted dwindling too much more. The hand that would knock me out is approaching. I picked up K-Q in mid position, no callers before me raised, I raised it up and a lad behind me went all in. I thought about it for a few moments, I've got a drawing hand, he could have a better drawing hand or a nice mid or high pair....but he has gone all in a couple of times recently and built back up from being seriously short stacked so it could be a bluff.....if i fold I'm down to 2,000 chips or less, if I call it's probably going to be a coin flip as to whether I bust out or double up. Do I want to potentially bust out at this stage, hmm, I shouldn't play it but what the hell. I call his all in and we flip our cards K-Q versus A-K...it's a coin flip and he ends up pairing his Ace and I'm out. Not to worry, it was a good game and it was my own fault I busted out, should probably have stayed tight and just folded to his all in, but that's poker. I think I busted out in around 15th position.

It was a thouroughly good evening. Great tournament structure, pleasant surroundings and a friendly bunch of players. The level of play was good and I had a great time. I'll definately be going back. If we want poker to flourish in Glasgow and have a choice of different places to play we have to try and support our local card clubs, so for that reason and the fact it was a great night and good value, I'll definately be back. Next time I'll know what to expect and will hopefully manage to go a bit deeper in the tournament.

New tactics

I decided to modify my playing style a bit at the weekend as mentioned in my posdting here. I had considered myself pretty tight and agressive but I did seem to keep losing out by playing the odd bad hand. It seemed to be happening on or around the bubble or if I'd limped in on the big blind and hit something mediocre against fellow limpers.

With a little advice from a friend I decided it was time to try a few things. I know some of the poker books advise that you should change just one thing at a time so you can monitor the results more accurately, hmm, I guess I neglected to heed that piece of advice.

1) I should start playing even more tight/agressive. Therefore a narrower range of starting hands and getting even more aggressive when short stacked to steal blinds wherever possible.

2) My patience in tournaments is pretty good but my discipline seemed to be letting me down. I could play well for an hour and not make what I thought was a bad decision and then one moment of madness and I've blown it. So in my new regime I needed to try and be a lot more disciplined, we'll see how that works out.

3) There's something that had been bugging me for a while. I consider myself to be a reasonable player, certainly considering that I've not been playing very long, however many of my friends seemed to be doing rather better than me online. I've been consuming as many books as possible and am pretty comfortable with a lot of the theory but my results weren't as good as I thought they ought to be. I guess that's true of a lot of players but it was starting to bug me. I had wondered for a while if my I should try dipping my toe in the water at a higher level because I feared that perhaps my opponents at $2 & $5 Sit and Go tournaments weren't paying enough attention to the play to understand my moves. So I decided it was time to tentatively dip my toe in some $10.00 Sit & Go's

Only time will tell if these changes improve my ROI and ITM (In The Money) ratio but the early results are looking promising. The sample set is still tiny and it's way too early to make a call but the early signs are encouraging. I've now played five $10.00 Sit & Gos and finished in the money three times (2nd, 2nd, 3rd). Buyins $55, Winnings $80. That's an ITM of 60% and an ROI of 45%. I'll keep plugging away at these and record my results here.

Wish me luck...

Gus Hanson wis $575K Pot

Wow, just spotted this over on Blonde Poker. Gus Hanson the "Great Dane" and Daniel Negreanu get into a pretty major hand against each other while playing on the High Stakes Poker TV show. You may think you've taken a bad beat and lost a few chips before but this is awesome. I can't believe how calmly Daniel takes it, he just keeps repeating "That's Sick" and even Gus has to agree. There's a video of the hand over on YouTube if you want to take a look.

The Circuit - Podcasts

I was over at the excellent Betting for Value blog last week and I found a posting about The Circuit Podcasts on the Cardplayer website. I've now listened to a few and can't recomment them highly enough. As well as being informative they are great fun to listen to. It really sounds like the guys doing them are having fun. Make sure you get yourself over there and check them out, you won't be disappointed. They're great fun and there's plenty of interviews with top professional players.

Irregular Postings

I started this blog with all the best intentions of trying to post something every day or two to serve as a diary or record of my poker playing so I could look back on it when I win my WSOP bracelet and remember how it all started. Removes tongue from cheek! I guess I'm going to have to get a bit more disciplined and try a bit harder, sounds a bit like my poker game :-)

Things have been a bit up and down in the last week or two, more down than up I'm sorry to say. I've been taking a look at my game and where I thought I was already pretty tight aggressive I've decided to modify my style a bit and get even tighter and more aggressive. Interesting to see how it pans out.

I've spotted a few things that I was going to blog in the last few days but just never got around to, so expect a flurry of posts today.