If you knew where the title came from before reading this blog, then well played, you have your priorities correct in life.

Good evening and good morning to the world of online poker. Over the years I have mainly used my blog to post my results but recently I've been thinking that its a bit mundane doing so, because its either boasting about how well your doing or complaining about how bad you running. That being said, I have no issue with anyone else posting results, and I will no doubt one day in the future post some graphs either telling you all how much of a champ I am or complaining about how bad I run.

Anyway, a lot has changed for myself recently. I feel as if I have hugely improved on the mental side of my game, probably due to being in a more stable living environment at the moment. In days gone buy I would go on a standard down swing and then would totally collapse, torturing myself for a month turning what should have been a ten to fifteen buy in downer to a twenty to thirty by in downer. But these days I feel much more comfortable dealing the swings of poker. I have found my Sam.

Samwise Gamgee, among the rubble and chaos of Osgiliath told Frodo Bagins something along the line of in the great stories the good guys had many opportunities to turn back and give up, but they didn't, they kept on going because, and I quote, "there's some good in this world, and its worth fighting for". I have always been Frodo, battling with the power of the ring, but I have never had that voice in my head telling me not to give in, to keep playing well and hope for a better session tomorrow. I feel like I have found my Sam.

Which leads me to my next point. How similar are poker players to the races in the Lord of the Rings. I shall elaborate.

First we have goblins, small orcs, clatty we creatures, similar in how they make you feel about short stacker's, leeches, sucking life out of the game. No one likes them, and if their honest they probably don't even like themselves. And then we have the evolution of the gobline into the orc, or should I say fish. Men who have no intention to play well, or work hard at improving their understanding of the game, they just simply want to go a bit crazy and see what happens, often hunted and dominated by more dominant species. They have their moments when they get it in bad deep and get there, but sooner or later, they will be disposed of.

We then make our way to a slightly more noble race, the dwarfs aka the rake back grinders. As Lord Elrond once said "they hide in their mountains seeking riches, they care nothing of the troubles of others". A man who is a self confessed rake back grinder sits in his house, not giving a fuck if he wins or looses, he just want to break even and take advantage of the juicy rake back deal he has been offered. A sad but proud race, who every now and then produce the odd champ.

Then there are men, or regs you could call them. Proud, greedy, skilled hunters, but so easily seduced by the powers of evil. They make a good living, they try to learn, and they fight for what they believe in, but will they make it too the top? Only few can. Then come the elves, the ballers, the dudes who have played all sorts of stakes, played all kinds of crazy pots, and have made multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, many even millions, legends of the online game. aejones, luckychewy, king dan, full flush, dudes like that!

We then have wizards, players who can produce true magic, Sauce, Jungleman, durr, Phil Ivey, Isildur. If you have played in Rail Heaven then you my friend are a wizard, but as Saruman the wise displayed, not all wizards work for the forces of good, they can be turned, and sometimes these high stakes nutcases get evolved in gear that just ain't right.

There is one last final race, one so frequently forgotten, but too important to exclude. Hobbits. Simple folk, who despite their best efforts, will never dominate their world, but they put in a shift non the less. They try to learn, they try to improve, but sometimes that shit ain't meant to be. I don't really know who in the poker world the hobbits are, but they will one day shape the fortunes of all. a high five goes too the best suggestion as too what group within the poker world hobbits are!

One final shout out goes to a true champion of the game who took down a side even at the ESTA Valencia, jamjam818, we solute you!

In no particular order:

1. The television

John Logie (Carren) Baird gave us the television! On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London. What would we have done without this magnificent device?



2. The telephone

If you have ever met a Scottish person you may have noticed that we are not the best communicators. However to adjust to this leak we decided to invent two of the three greatest communication devices ever made, the television and the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was such a boss that he decided to invent a telephone.



3. Banter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5-z4iMBFZA

Enough said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni6XbU76SQ0

Fast forward to 14.28 for some must see banter.

4. Moonmen

Definition: when a man is such idiot, he is bordering on retarded.





Scotland has the ability to produce an irregular number of high quality moonmen

5. Football fans.

As you may have guessed from the above pictures, Scotland contains an irregular amount of moonmen who like to gather together at football matches to sing songs! Possibly the best moonmen in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybjcc...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT4-N...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAFte...eature=related

6. Paolo Nutini



Only a man from Paisley could sing about his joy of having the following things:

"I got legs on my chairs and a head full of hair
Pot and a pan and some shoes on my feet
I got a shelf full of books and most of my teeth
A few pairs of socks and a door with a lock
I got food in my belly and a license for my telly
And nothing's gonna bring me down"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-xd3NuWQI0

7. Penicillin

Sir Alexander Fleming, born August. 6, 1881 , Darvel, Scotland, invented or discovered (not sure which) Penicillin, a drug vital for many life saving surgeries.



def looks like he's on the plasmo's.

8. Potato Scones

Some of you may not have heard of this Scottish delicacy. A tattie scone or potato scone is a regional variant of the savoury griddle scone which is especially popular in Scotland and the Isle of Man. Many variations of the recipe exist. They generally include liberal quantities of boiled potatoes and salt.



9. Square Sausage

The sausage is produced in a rectangular block and individual portions are sliced off. It is seasoned mainly by pepper. Despite its unique flavor square sausage is rarely seen outside Scotland and in fact is still fairly uncommon in the Highlands.



10. Irn Bru

Irn-Bru is a Scottish carbonated soft drink, for long advertised as "Scotland's other national drink".

The drink originated in Falkirk where it was particularly popular among the town's thirsty foundry workers. The name Irn-Bru is said to have originated during the re-building of Glasgow Central Station in 1901. When workers from the William Beardmore and Company Steel Works in Glasgow were dying from the large amounts of beer drunk to quench their thirst from the heat of the steel works, an alternative was sought. A local soft drinks manufacturer, A.G. Barr, approached the steel works and a contract was created to provide the workers with this drink. This unnamed drink later went on to be known as Iron Brew because of its connections to the steel (and iron) works



I rest my case!

Don't really know where to start with Vegas, it was pretty fuckin awesome. If you haven't been I would recommend putting every other aspect of your life on hold, grinding out some cash, and buying a plane ticket to McCarren (Baird) International Airport.

To sum the trip up, I will tell one story:

After 15 or so hours of travelling, I finally arrive (on my own) and I text dougie something along the lines of where will use pick me up. He text back saying we are at the pick up bit in a gold Escalade. My first thought was "what the fuck is an Escalade?" lol I'm not a car guy. Anyway, turns out an Escalade is a big fuck off jeep. I load my suitcase, get in the car, exchange pleasantries with Jeff, Sarai, and Eric and say yo to dougie and jamjam. Dougie had mentioned something about going to a party at Vanessa Rouso's house, I thought he was kidding, but turns out we were in fact going to a party in a 1 million + mansion, with some of the richest, most famous poker players in the world. It was straight up ballin! There aren't many straight up ballin parties in Scotland, your Junglemans, Isildurs and Negreanu don't normally attend, so myself, dougie and jamjam were all quite star stricken. We drank, we pointed, I smoked many cigarettes, then we finally asked one of the bosses for a pic!



Me, Sarai, Mr Negreanu, dougie

We were also introduced to Austin and Jordan who would be staying with us for the next 2 weeks, however Jordan had passed out in Vanessa Rouso's back garden, something that would happen several times in the next 2 weeks.

The rest of the holiday was extremely awesome. We eat in some cool restaurants, went to the Rhino, went clubbing at Surrender, went to see Mystique, played in Bobbys Room, played some live cash, and railed Luckychewy at the final table of the 10k 6m.



jamjam, me, dougie at Surrender



James, dougie, Austin, Jordan, Eric, jamjam and me having a 50plo grind



the big man in Bobbys Room

The trip was very eye opening for me. Seeing the life that poker could potentially give me was extremely overwhelming (not sure if that's the correct word). I kind of felt like I could never moan, or feel unhappy about anything ever again since I have experienced such an enjoyable period of time. It has definitely given me motivation to work much harder at my game, and go back next year with no financial worries.

I have to thank the house also, Jeff, James, Sarai, Eric, Austin, Jordan, dougie, and jamjam, tyty! We couldn't of picked a better group of people to live with. I didn't get any pictures with Jeff, but I can guarantee you he was there lol

There was one negative. Matt Probability had to go home early, and we ended up missing him by a couple of days! Until next year my friend.

Since I got back, all I've done is grind. I'm so determined to be playing mid-high stakes this time next year, purely to go to Vegas, and ball the fuck out. I've had a good start. Not had a proper months grind since the tail end of last year so I'm really happy with my results last month.



Life is good, and there's no reason it shouldn't be!

pEACE!

It's been a while Leggo. From June 2011-June 2012 I have been in voluntary poker exile. At the end of June 2011 I moved out of my family home into a flat in Glasgow with my good friend dougiedan.

I recently read a poker article written by Taylor Caby and a couple of other high stakes guys whom I had never heard of. Anyways one of these guy said that there is no point becoming a professional poker player unless you had no other choice ie you were making so much money that continuing at your current job was pointless. I agree with this statement 100%, because I am one of those people who decided they could go pro where I could have easily grinded out a part time job making a similar amount of money.

At the time I was playing 50 and 100nl, taking advantage of the generous rake back deals on ipoker post Black Friday. I was making just enough and no more to make ends meet, but it was getting increasingly stressful. After a couple of months the pressure was just too much and I caved.

Fuck. Bastard. Fuck. What the fuck am I going to do now? lolol that was a brief summary of my thoughts at the time. Anyway I decided that the most +ev thing to do was to get a job, and double my efforts at university, however the job market is pretty fucked at the moment so it didn't really go as I'd planned. The fact that I pretty much told my previous two employers to go fuck themselves probably didn't do me any favors either lol eventually I got a shit Christmas temp job in Next (a fashion retail store) for five weeks between December and January, but unfortunately that's all I could find.

After that I got my head in the books and studied my ass of for my third year exams (my second attempt). I had 10 exams in 4 weeks plus two other classes were 100% course work. I was pretty disappointed with my results, but I did OK. I got an A (my first and only at uni) 3 Bs, 3 Cs, 4 Ds and F (fuck it I passed 11/12). And that's that.

I then got staked a few times by dougie to play sit n goes (I was not on life tilt I just felt like a change) and then again to play 50nl, both on stars, and both were very successful. Then in February or March Sergeant Matt Probability staked me for 25 and 50nl on Merge, which has also been very successful.

Next thing I knew it was Vegas time, and for a while I though to myself "Fuck man, I simply can't afford to go", but really I was just thinking about Vegas and the fucking Mirage lol My mum paid for my flights, dougie helped me out with rent money, and I grinded out about $1200 worth of spending money on Merge, and off I went. Dougie and jamjam went direct from Manchester, however since my flight were cheaper I ended up all over the place. On the way I went Glasgow > London > Washington > Las Vegas, then on the way back Las Vegas > Toronto > London > Glasgow. The journey kind of put me off even going, but at the same time I was quite looking forward to the adventure.

Well that's what I was up to during my year of exile. I will post another blog at the end of the month telling you all about what I've been up to post June 2012.

Keep the mind on the grind.

pEACE!

Good afternoon laddies and gentlemen, it's been a while since our last conversation where I think I got into a rant about love and Harry Potter lol I often find in blogs that I just talk allot of shit and never include many facts about myself.

I am in limbo living wise at the moment. My family home was recently sold and I was pretty much told to find myself a new place to live by August, so I viewed some flats with dougiedan which are situated near to my university and we found a place we both liked. Unfortunately after 1 day living in our new 24 hour grinders bachelor pad we were told that we would soon have to leave. The owner of the flat had told our letting agent they wanted to sell the property a few months ago therefore our letting agent should never have put the flat on the renters market, and should never have let us sign the 6-month lease.

So as you can see we are in a bit of a pickle. For the last few weeks I feel that all I've done is pack shit up, take it to the dump, take stuff between my flat and my house, unpack, then pack again, it's becoming extremely hard to fully concentrate on anything else. Legally we do not have to leave until our 6-month lease is over, but we have decided that the sooner we move the better. If anyone has any legal advise, feel free to share because I'm like 80% sure that we have valid grounds to feel aggrieved, and could be entitled to x, y and z.

In other news I randomly decided to show the world how good I am at poker by posting all my hands and some stats for 50nl, not quite a brag, not quite a beat, it just is what it is!

We also had a home game in the new pad where I was seated to dougiedans right which made the nights grind extremely difficult, and ended in a 13 buy in loosing session, gutted!



PEACE \./

Dear leggo, I had a sort of epiphany tonight, which I felt the need to somehow document, and share. My first thought was facebook, however there are simply too many words, and I also didn't feel as comfortable sharing my thoughts with people I knew so well out of sheer embarrassment. This is very ironic, that I felt uncomfortable sharing my thoughts with those closest to me, yet I decided to share them this a group of relative strangers. Fuck it!

I am a great fan of fantasy movies, where there is some kind of good vs evil war, Solomon Kane, Price of Persia, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Batman The Dark Night, etc. and after waching one tonight I kind of got lost in my own thoughts about the world, and life, and got into all kinds of philisophical shit.

My first thought was how boring modern life has become, how people can get excited about going to university, working their asses off for four years, only to be rewarded with a shitty 9-5 desk job, or some other random job they never thought they'd do. But in my negativity I wandered over another thought, that maybe this dullness was perhaps a source of peace and safety. Back in the days of Frodo and Gandalf, you could step out on your front door, and be killed by some mysterious creature, even 500 or so years ago, the average life expectancy was around a quarter or what it is today (these are extremely inaccurate figures, just of the top of a bro's head). So in between all the corruption, war, global warming, famine etc. there is some good going on in the world.

I am not a religious man, nor an atheist, I'm kind of undecided. At the beginning of our time, a man called Jesus Christ was killed for speaking his mind, and fighting for his beliefs (at least I think he was). Whether Jesus had healing powers or not, we now live in a world where things like this does not happen, people can speak their minds, believe what they want where ever they want, and fight all kinds of battles with society without the worry of prosecution or death. Which leads me too my next thought.

I may earn a gayboy badge here, but fuck it, I'm just going to roll with it. As I have previously stated I am not particularly religious, and the fact that science has disproved many stories from the bible, just makes me think that it's all a load of shit. However the lessons the bible aims to teach cannot be regarded as "a load of shit". In my opinion, time has taught us that too much anger, grief, greed, jealousy and evil has no place in this world, justice will be served! But it's the other side of the spectrum I feel allot of us have forgotten. Yes we are not evil, but at the same time, would you honestly consider yourself a good, honest person? Things as simple as treating others as we would like others to treat ourselves, love, kindness, purity, and honesty have been too easily disregarded, and perhaps the key to moving all of our lives in a positive direction. We should all show love where we can, and if we find any kind of love, we should fight to keep it as it is, because it may not be there forever. Anything in life that is worth living or dyeing for, will not come easy, and you have to fight like fuck to keep it alive.

What I think might be my final and closing thought, is a sort of reference from A BOOK WHICH MANY OF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF, SO IF ANYONE IS PLANNING ON READING ANY OF THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS FOR THE FIRST TIME, PLEASE LOOK AWAY.

In this particular story, for the first seven books Harry Potter continually questions the loyalty of Severus Snape, who is continually backed up by Albus Dumbledore, the smartest wizard of his time. The fact that Snape had a very suspicious past, and was apparently a spy for the good guys, did make for a very interesting debate as to which side he would inevitably choose. This conflict was in my opinion an extremely crucial part of the story and I believe that J. K. Rowling made by far the most +ev decision. One of those things you see dudes do in videos, you would never in a million years think to do it yourself, yet once you are aware of the line, you realize how it is by far the best play. So what happens is Snape kills Dumbledore at the end of the sixth book, only for stunned readers to find out that Snape was ordered to do this by Dumbledore himself as part of his own elaborate plan. The next question that needs answering (and the main focus of my point), is how could Dumbledore trust a man such as Snape, when it was clear the more +ev move for poor Severus, was to betray Dumbledore, in favor of the Dark Lord Voldermort? The answer is love (yes, ok, gay boy badge for Mark). As it turns out Severus loved Harry's mother Lilly and after Snape had lead Lilly to her death, swore to Dumbledore that he would do Dumbledore's bidding in order to make right his mistake.

Again, this long winded point leads to another Harry Potter related question, how could Dumbledore really, really trust Snape? Not because the man was a genius, but because he understood that love is the most powerful energy created my man, and there is no evil in the history of world cinema, or world history that could ever come close to this crazy little thing called love. It makes us laugh and it makes us cry, but I feel as a group of young dudes who come across a ton of money very quickly we should see past logic at times where logic is not needed and simply share and cherish any kind of love we have.

Anyone who has reached the end of this blog is a true champion, and I hope they have taken something (amusement if nothing else) from this blog. I fear I have come across as an over sensitive bull shitter, ready to burst out the closet, but for those who know me personally I think you will agree that I'm just a weird dude with some shit on his mind! Peace!

yoyo leggo, march has been as the title suggests, mad! had some good days, and some bad days lol I officially moved up to 50nl after a few days after my retreat to 25nl, and this month I definately mixed up the stakes due to my participation in JaymesBonds Bankroll on Swole series, which I am very thankfull for.



I would also like to share some man love for mr matt probability who at 6am yesterday morning helped me out with a few computer problems which were driving me insane. and another shout out to two fellow grinders jamjam and dougiedan, who, along with myself have been destroying some KFC and putting in some serious volume lol and also to mr dudu who is now on the full time grind and is therefore now a rolemodel to myself

keep the mind on the grind!

yo leggo, it's been a while lol not posted any results or thougtfull thinking recently, mostly because my results have been shit, and my thoughts clouded with other stuff. was playing 100nl at the end of last year and got crushed, so I made a few changes toward how I go about playing poker.



those are my results from September to 3/4 through January lol fuck my life!

I dropped down to 25nl recently because I am a lemon. tried out some proper bankroll management, and it has been going very well lol



as I read through this epic entry I can see how dull I sound lol

keep the mind on the grind!

peace \./

As usual a losing/break even month takes a little bit longer to put in a blog. My results for July and August were kinda disapionting. Had my biggest losing day ever at the end of July, and I think I just had other things on my mind during August, which can be seen in the massive up and down swings I had. I would like to think these are more a reflection in my mood than my poker skill.

July



August



My good friend dougiedan has had some recent success playing rush. Previous to the last week or two, I have always hated rush, but I started playing and have found it an extremely successful venture.




I think I may start grinding just rush from now on, as I feel I don't realy tilt or sprew whilst playing. I do occasionaly missclick quick fold when the rush takes over. I misclick folded a set the other day, however two guys got it in with top pair vs nfd and the nfd got there so no harm done

I have been very hesitant in posting my results for May, mostly because they weren’t very good. I had an awesome start, and then who the fuck knows what happened. As you can see I broke even. Not terrible, but not so good.





For some reason I thought playing rush was a good idea. It wasn't. I just kept running into the top of peoples ranges and getting some really strange bad beats (shown below), but such is life.

However my result for purely 25nl (my main limit) were, what I thought very nice, and from the 1st May to today have been rather good imo.



Below is proof that poker will always be profitable, but also why my bankroll was looking very squeemish at one point. These hands are funny.

No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($26.65)
Button ($27.21)
Hero (SB) ($25)
BB ($87.11)
UTG ($39.74)
MP ($45.72)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, K
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, 2 folds, Hero bets $1.40, BB calls $1.25, MP raises $2.50, Hero raises $8.25, 1 fold, MP raises $17.75, Hero raises $15.25 (All-In), MP calls $4.50

Flop: ($51.50) 10, K, 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($51.50) K (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($51.50) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Results: $51.50 Pot ($2.57 Rake)
Hero showed A K and LOST (-$24.90 NET)
MP showed A 2 and WON $48.93 (+$23.93 NET)

nice call sir.

Pot-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($33.96)
MP ($47.99)
CO ($25.58)
Button ($18.32)
Hero (SB) ($73.47)
BB ($30.26)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7, 7
1 fold, MP bets $0.85, 1 fold, Button calls $0.85, Hero calls $0.75, 1 fold

Flop: ($2.80) 4, 2, 7 (3 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $2.80, Button calls $2.80, Hero raises $8.25, MP calls $5.45, Button calls $5.45

Turn: ($27.55) 8 (3 players)
Hero bets $13, MP raises $38.89 (All-In), Button calls $9.22 (All-In), Hero calls $25.89

River: ($114.55) 5 (3 players, 2 all-in)

Results: $114.55 Pot ($3 Rake)
UTG showed 3 A and WON $111.55 (+$63.56 NET)
BTN showed J J and LOST (-$18.32 NET)
Hero showed 7 7 and LOST (-$47.89 NET)

ambitious float on the flop my friend.

Pot-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (4 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($31.78)
UTG ($58.94)
Hero (Button) ($25)
SB ($33.51)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 5, 5
UTG bets $0.85, Hero calls $0.85, 1 fold, BB calls $0.60

Flop: ($2.65) 5, J, Q (3 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $1.75, BB calls $1.75, 1 fold

Turn: ($6.15) Q (2 players)
BB bets $6.15, Hero calls $6.15

River: ($18.45) 7 (2 players)
BB bets $18.45, Hero calls $16.25 (All-In)

Results: $50.95 Pot
BB showed 7 7 and WON $51.15 (+$26.40 NET)
Hero mucked 5 5 and LOST (-$25 NET)

hmmm interesting.

The main message that you all should take from this blog is that I am a baller, and no matter how much Howard Lederer tries to put me down, I will always bounce back hence I am fist pumping and loving life.