Friday 11 March 2011

Lost my first £10k pot :(

Played in a £5/10 no limit hold'em game at Dusk Till Dawn (Nottingham) tonight. The game was pretty big with a constant £20 straddle for last 5 hours of game, a regular £40 straddle and sometimes a £80 then £160 straddle!

I got off to a bad start and was down about £1.5k with a bit of a misread bluff....was right on flop and turn but didn't put him on backdoor flush on river!! I rebought for another £2k and worked a bit of a stack back up. Sam Trickett proceeded to sit down to my right....I proceed to get no hands for next 4hours of sam being at the table. He leaves and I work my stack up to a peak of £5.5k and hovering a little bellow that.

The Hand: It's 5 handed at this point with blinds of 5/10/20/40(me)/80 and the small blind is asleep. So we wake him up and he makes it £250 blind (he was stuck quite a bit for the night after running terribly with AA several times) I look down at 2h2d with a £4.9k stack. I raise to £800, everyone folds and he calls and covers his eyes and checks blind lol.....flop 8s8h7h, I bet £800, he looks and moves allin for £4.1k instantly....I do the maths and I'm getting 2:1 and make the call after about 1minute of thinking he has QhTh for ''thank god he doesn't have a pair but crap I only have 40% equity''. Turn Ks, river Qc........sigh

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Poker Roundup Since UKIPT Nottingham

Since the UKIPT Nottingham poker has been pretty kind to me and I feel like I've played pretty well. I've played a reasonable amount online and a couple of live cash games.

Online: I have mostly been playing PLO and have been feeling confident about my game and pushing the stakes a bit with my luck running out at 25/50 :(


This year I've started getting into 2-7 Triple Draw and I'm currently up $1310.5 since UKIPT but am about -$1400 since I started playing the game. I really enjoy learning/playing all the games so I hope I can get into the black for this game.

I've played a small amount of stud when I played mixed games and am -$561.5 for that....I hate stud. It's tough to multitable and I don't seem to naturally take to it.

I've been having poor results in No-Limit Hold'em for quite a while now and have am -$493.5 for that and am -$672 for Omaha Hi/Lo.

For Limit Hold'em I'm $544.5 up which continues my good run in this game. I have only started playing it a bit more often in the last 3months and have enjoyed it and feel like I have a good edge at the $5/10 stake level.

Live: Have only played 2 sessions of live cash game with good results in each netting £1190 profit at the £2/5-5/10 stake levels. Again I managed to hit some strong hands and get paid off.


Am going to really focus on PLO for next few weeks and work in some Heads Up games to try and spin up some dough for WSOP in las vegas

Thanks for reading, Good Luck!!

Thursday 3 March 2011

UKIPT Nottingham

This was my first UKIPT and was at my local poker room Dusk Till Dawn. I had a few friends coming up to play in it so it looked to be a good weekend. I was my usual unorganised self and didn't preregister but thought I would be allright on the day.....I lended up being 46th alternate on the 2nd day lol Luckily it went up to 80 alternates!! So I got in.

I managed to have a pretty non-eventful first day and get through to day 2 with an average chip stack. One of my friends (Sim Mahon) was on the same table as Devilfish and went from shortstack to busting Devilfish in about 15hands and a very comfortable chip stack going into day 2.

Day 2 our table broke pretty quick which was very welcoming as I was to the left of a very aggressive young player with a huge stack and to the right of Romano Pizzo who plays a lot of hands so I was stuck with a just below average stack and no cards/good spots. I then got moved to a table with Maria Demetriou, some other players and an Irish Pokerstars Pro who was very chatty/offered out bananas. Can't remember too much about the rest of the day other than I outlasted Sim :) and was down to the last 2 tables of the tournament!!

Day 3 we started off by getting some small interviews, video shots and photos. It's pretty strange getting this done as I don't ever have to talk in front of a camera to go out on channel 4! The poker started pretty slow with out table gradually knocking out most of the players to get to the final table. With 11 to go I was very lucky with and allin where the button opened and I 3bet shoved KQo for 14bb from the small blind only for the big blind to wake up with AKo.....I flop 2 pair :D and get to the final table with a good stack.

Final Table: This was the first time I had played on the TV table all tournament, it was bright and had comfy chairs. Everyone was playing quite tentatively until we skipped a blind level due to time constraints. This put everyone quite a bit shorter and we lost the first player. This set of a chain of allin coinflips with 4 people at risk with no knockout until it was my turn; 66 vs AQs was pretty annoying to lose but I was really happy to reach 7th out of 1058 people!! for the biggest live UK tournament field size. I got £13.5k (£11k for me after I paid out a % swap with a friend).

Would have certainly taken 7th at the start of the tournament so i'm happy with the result but it would have been sweet to win!

(Me busting out on final table >>>>)

Sims blog on the UKIPT Nottingham