SCOOP Bink, UKIPT Cork & Barcelona

SCOOP Bink, UKIPT Cork & Barcelona

Monday 23 May 2011 | 1 comment Tweet

So far my prediction for May has come through perfectly! I won the SCOOP $16 double chance turbo (luckbox I know) for $35k and the old heads up SNGs have been going alright too although I haven't been chipping away at Will Hills $10k bonus nearly as much as I'd like but anyway - I can't complain!

Far too many people to congratulate on having a sick SCOOP. Jake and Pab get wins too (in proper tournaments obv). Dual final tables for Luke Fields in the $5k and $530 6max PLO a couple of days ago. Ben Martin and Rick Trigg to name just a couple made high final tables too - wpwp

I decided pretty much at the last minute to go to UKIPT Cork which I think was a good decision. The main was pretty gross, played day 1a and won one showdown in 9 hours, ran up a twice average stack though with a ridic number of 3bets, 4bets and cbets getting through. Unfortunately once average stack got a bit short and I needed to win some all ins all we got was a big pile of fail. Someone finally decided to quote "make a stand" by raise/giving it the 5 minute tank/calling off 22 bigs bvb with 66 and 89dd doesn't win flips so that was gg.

The cash action was pretty good the whole weekend with 2/5 holdem and 1/2 PLO that was playing like 5/10 running pretty much always. I ended up a 2.3k euro winner after a 1.7k loss the last night playing 2/5/10 PLO 5 handed at a private club in the city centre once the stars games had closed. Really tilting game, pretty much summed up by the first hand where villain peels a 4bet with Q883 and flops 336 vs my AAxx and a few hands later the same guy peels another 4bet with KK76 and I have to bet/fold 458ccd with AAJJsshh

Now I have the fun prospect of attempting to get from Cork to Barcelona. I'm going there for a week for a heads up SNG boot camp run by Pistons87 (Stars) / ftpballerstatus (FTP) and Raised by Jews (FTP). Pistons is a $5k HUSNG sicko so should be a good learning experience. The WPT is in town too so we'll be hitting up some sides and mayyyyyyybe the main, i'll probably play whatever live sats they have and play it if I ping one.

From what I've heard Barcelona has some of the softest cash games in the world and I've definitely got the live cash bug at the moment so looking forward to scouting out some soft games. If I can manage to come back with enough cash for customs to pull me over that'd be awesome

gl guys

Dan

Running Good Live

Running Good Live

Tuesday 10 May 2011 | No comment yet Tweet

I've had a couple of live trips in May already, first GUKPT Walsall and then the Oxford Cup

GUKPT Walsall was pretty huge for The Firm - Ben Jenkins finalled the Main but ran horrible on the final table and came 6th, Mark McClusly chopped the £200 6max and cashed the £250 re-entry and I won the £100 bounty event for a nice 1st on the old Hendon Mob. The final table of the bounty was pretty funny, 7 paid so everyone was playing ridic tight but I couldn't find many spots because the two guys on my left were limping in ~75% of hands and they were both showing down top 10% hands every time. I was pretty card dead too, probably got 3 jam spots in about 40 hands when average stack was only ~15bbs.

A couple of guys let themselves blind down to <5bbs so I was kinda handcuffed by ICM but once the bubble burst and guys on my right tightened up a bit or their run of cards dried up and in the last 50 hands of the final I was probably all in pre a good 60% of the time. I picked up a few hands but that didn't really matter. There were just so many any 2 jam spots because they were calling so tight so it was pretty much a case of hoovering up all the chips pre.

I was pretty fortunate heads up to get 99 vs 77 20bbs deep and held so took it down for £1700. Nice to finally win one after a couple of seconds in UKIPT and GUKPT sides.

That put me into the Walsall Champion of Champions online £10k freeroll which was pretty strange. We were all supposed to start with different stacks (10k for the main event winner, 4k for side event winners and 2k for some other qualifiers) but we all started with 4k stacks and they cancelled the tournament just after we got in the money with 4 left. Grosvenor ended up doing the right thing though and paying out anyway. I was 2/4 when they pulled the plug so £2.5k I think was a fair payout.

This weekend was the Oxford Cup, the biggest student tournament in the country that The Firm sent a few coaches to since the student market seems pretty lucrative and a good one to get into. It was a £20R that got ~250 runners and generated a £15k prize pool which was a lot more than I was expecting. There was a £50 bounty on all of The Firm coaches so everyone was gunning for me which actually made for some really interesting situations. Gus Hansen was also there - he gave a speech on the Saturday night mainly because he is a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, a pretty well known Atheist and lecturer at Oxford. The talk mainly centred around what in his opinion it takes to be a professional poker player and was pretty interesting although not much of it was new to anyone who reads about the game a fair amount but was worth a listen nonetheless.

The tournament structure was pretty shallow and once it got down to the last 3 tables average was 10bbs. There were quite a few young guys that were competant with shoving ranges etc so I got into a couple of tricky spots but won some flips when I needed to and had JJ vs 77 with 12 left to get a big double up. From then on it was foot on the gas and I never lost a big pot.

Heads up was pretty interesting, we started pretty even with about 18bbs each. I ran pretty well and picked up some hands, jamming lots as expected and eventually got it in with AJ vs QT for the win and obv I'm golden enough to just flop JJx and have him dead on the turn so won that for £3600 and two trophies in two weekends! Congrats to Kate Langshaw who came third too. To have 4 players in and two final table is pretty big for The Firm so keep crushing.

I'm in Leeds at the moment grinding SCOOPs with Jamie Sykes and lil Dave - had a decent run in the $55R last night but couldn't win the flip for twice average with ~200 left.

Heads Up SCOOP tonight thought which should be fun. The structure is excellent with 100bb starting stacks and 10 minute levels. I've always done pretty well in the WCOOP heads up events and this will hopefully be no different

Happy SCOOPing

Dan

New Beginnings

New Beginnings

Sunday 1 May 2011 | 1 comment Tweet

So I haven't written an blog in nearly 2 months. This is pretty much because I've been doing my brains in. Nobody wants to read about me complaining and I certainly don't want to write about it. I just flat out haven't been playing well and combining that with a bit of runbad makes for pretty depressing results and worse reading.

As gimmicky as it sounds I've kinda had an apiphony in the last few days and been thinking about things way more objectively, especially poker. In the last few days I've been feeling really in the zone and been running a little better so I feel like now we're over the disasters that were March and April, May is gunna be awesome. A few really good things have happened to set this up so here goes nothing

I spite quit playing on Will Hill after losing about $15k in a few weeks and them messing me around over $1.4k of disconnection refunds. That saga is still ongoing despite the original complaint being lodged 6 weeks ago.

They lost a 16k/month raking player to Paddy Power so they've given me a $10k clearable bonus that on top of my original deal with them works out at me getting a 93% return on my rake (its on ipoker so we can't say the real "r" word) for the next 30 days so I'm pretty much gunna be a lock in to try and clear as much of that as I can. Clearing all of it is gunna take huuuuuuge volume but I'm gunna give it a shot.

I've been at GUKPT Walsall for the last few days so trip report from there is going up soon but don't want to make this too long but heres to an awesome May. I'm super optimistic about it and with good reason. I feel like I'm playing the best I ever have right now and that can only mean good things for May so lets gooooooo

Also GL to Luke Fields (LFmagic) he is 1/6 in FTOPS #44 as I'm writing this with $200k up top so win please

I'm at Mark McCluskys house at the moment, staying tomorrow for a BBQ and a team grind session with Mark, Ben Young and potentially Jamie Sykes and lildave too so should be fun

Next weekend is the Oxford Cup which The Firm is sending 5 coaches to. Its a £20R for students so should be fun, Gus Hansen is playing so it'll be cool to meet him and be back in the student crowd after being a year removed from uni

Heres to an awesome May

Dan