OK so I did my tale of the tape in my last blog and said I like Hatton ftw @ 9/5, I've been thinking a bit more and the best conventional line I can see is Pac 11/8 by KO TKO or DQ (numerous UK bookmakers have him at this). Hatton cuts up and Pac wins a brutal fight with a late stoppage. I'm going round to a friends now to watch the undercard and sink some beers, super excited, I even went out to my garage and did some weights in preparation.

Whilst the popos work a blackball.

If you cannot decipher the jumble of words above plz to be educating yo self. http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

I'm not going to go on about this programme to death since I think it's become fairly standard to reference the wire in some way in the modern poker blog (as oppose to the traditional poker blog) and it's obviously important to keep things fresh. That said here is one of my favourite scenes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsn...eature=related. Not the most interesting/meaningful scene I'm sure but you've gotta respect writing like that imo.

Tomorrow evening is ppv time with Manny Pacquiao vs Ricky Hatton from vegas and what looks like a decent domestic undercard. Williams vs McDermott has the potential to be pretty explosive (fwiw McDermott is an excellent price at 7/4) and I'm looking forward to seeing Tony Jeffries in action although I have no idea who the guy is who he's fighting and it's only Jeffries 2nd pro bout so he's prob a bum.

Re the Hatton-Pac fight, I don't really have much of a clue. It's so close to call, although if I was betting I would def back Hatton @9/5. Apparently bookmakers in vegas have Pac @ 1/3 which is absolutely redic given Hatton has owned 10st for the last 7 years and he looked much better vs Malignaggi in his first fight under Floyd snr. I think part of it is that Pac is so popular (probably more so than Hatton worldwide) and a lot of the 'hope' money is going on him this time whereas it usually goes on Hatton hence he's typically a really bad price. I guess he's probably still a little underrated in the US as well although I can't say for sure, I mean he got well beat by Floyd, but Floyd is Floyd.

Also I don't buy **** in to the fact that Manny won't get walked down b/c he took a much bigger De La Hoya apart. DLH was so undercooked in that fight it was unreal, it was hardly even a contest. If I were Hatton I'd be a little more concerned about Pac tkoing Barrera/Marquez/Morales when all those guys were still at their prime or pretty close to it. Anyways should be a reaaaaly good fight unless someone gets stopped early, the styles just clash such that it can't go 12 and not be a good fight. I'm not betting on it though, just gonna sit back and enjoy. Dropped £1k randomly betting on Barca to beat Chelsea in midweek and they did everything but score. This one doesn't need a bet to make it more interesting anyway.

Anyway, back to the grind that is Jean Baudrillards' "L'esprit du terrorisme". I have to write stuff about reality. wtf is that?

P.S. There is a £1k at Dusk Till Dawn at the end of May (Nottingham) and the inaugural European Short Handed Championships at the start of June (Dublin) both of which I'l probably be attending. If anyone else is down shoot me a pm.

P.P.S. I hate to use pps since ps should obv be included in the main body and pps promoted to p.s, but I think this qualifies enough for a pps:


Kind regards,

Flinton
PokerStars Security

So I haven't updated in a while since I haven't been playing a whole lot and nothing very interesting has been going on. I'm still trying to grind out a degree somehow and hopefully that all works out because I've done so much of it it would be ridiculous to fail at this stage. I won't bore everyone with the details but I'm resiting some stuff I didn't bother to do last year because I'm a failure.

Sooo, exciting stuff is that once I have this out of the way I will be free to have a really great summer. A lot of my old friends will be finishing their uni stuff off in a month or so time and will be looking to have a few months fun before they nosedive in to jobs so it will be great to catch up with them. We've already booked a week in Ibiza at the end of June which coincides with my birthday (in fact it's two of our birthdays, back to back days while we're out there) so if I survive that I am planning on heading out to vegas for a couple of weeks at the start of July. I'm still not 100% on this, it really depends on what is going on and who I can get to tag along but I feel like I should at least get out there for a week or so just to experience the city and see what all the fuss is about.

After July I imagine everything will be settling down a little and I'm hoping to get a new place with a few friends in Leeds (yep Yorkshire>rest of world). Nothing is really planned yet but I'm really looking forward to a change of scenery. I wish I had some interesting poker content or something but I don't, this is the best I can do:

$2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $939
SB: $940.40
Hero (BB): $1,572.20
UTG: $875
MP: $400
CO: $334.80

Pre-Flop: K K dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, BTN raises to $14, SB raises to $56, Hero raises to $144, BTN folds, SB calls $88

Flop: ($302) K 4 2 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $176, SB calls $176

Turn: ($654) Q (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($654) Q (2 Players)
SB bets $620.40 and is All-In, Hero calls $620.40

Results: $1,894.80 Pot ($3 Rake)
SB showed 6 8 (a pair of Queens) and LOST (-$940.40 NET)
Hero showed K K (a full house, Kings full of Queens) and WON $1,891.80 (+$951.40 NET)

Until next time...

edit: to the person who was wondering what spinning was, a circle of ~15 pedal away on exercise bikes while the instructor guy plays dance music and barks orders to adjust the resistance on your bike.

Lots of things have been going on since I last updated, I think this is my longest break from blogging since I started a little under two years ago. So here is what has been going on in poker and in life:

February:
Started off well. I was feeling the strain from playing so many hands every day and trying to keep up sne pace but I was doing ok. First week of feb I took my first weekend off to go play some live in Nottingham. Didn't go well, I got back on the Monday tired, hungover and poorer. I also felt like I needed to get loads of hands in having just taken a few days off, so I played and ran pretty bad for a few days and lost quite a bit.

Eventually I realised how bad this bazzilionty tabling no life tilt fest was getting for me and decided to 4 table for the rest of the month. I was trying to change some things that had crept in to my game due to laziness and think I did that pretty well for those few weeks of 4 tabling. I wasn't having great results but was pretty happy with how I was playing and felt I had a much better review/playing time ratio than before.

Here are two graphs taken from the same time period of my attempt to be a grinding superhero vs my attempt to play good poker:

9-15 tabling 2/4


1-6 tabling 5/10


There are obv a handful of players who make loads playing huge volume low variance crushbot. F knows if I know how they do it though, I'm def not cut out for it.

Soooo, my plan for poker is just to play whatever I feel up to 10-20 and no more than 6 tables. I have been dabbling practising my multi tabling at 1/2 but it's a pretty big cut to my hourly and probably not worth it.

Other things good about playing higher and less tables is that I get to do things other than playing poker:

Today I was up at 9am, played a two hr sesh between 10 and 12. I watched some tv and had lunch, have just been for a run and now I've got some time to put in a blog and chill out before I go to my first spinning class at 7. I mean it's pretty lame but I figure once I sit down on that bike I'm not going anywhere for an hr so it's a lock that I'm going to get some decent cardio in. I'm thinking of going to buy a bike at Halfords at the weekend so this should be good practice and hopefully mean I'm not super stiff after my first ride. Cycling is definitely something I want to get in to and do a lot of over the summer months. I'm a novice (talking about proper cycling I know how to ride a bike ldo) so if anyone has any experience or some good ideas for what sort of bike I should be getting comments would be much appreciated. I want to do a few hours 2 or 3 times a week out on the road. I have no idea how far that would be since idk how fast I go on one of those things but I guess it would be ~10miles?

Anyway my point was that this is what a proper day should look like, rather than roll out of bed in to office chair and 12 table until bedtime. It is really making the world of difference to my general mood day in day out so I'm going to continue to try and look for other things to do that don't involve poker that will hopefully keep me on a healthy sleep pattern.

Aside from this I've also been doing some coaching and making a few videos. The coaching is good and I'm learning new things about 'how' to coach all the time. At the moment I'm in the process of doing a few video reviews. They're very time consuming and a cut to my hourly but I enjoy them and I think it helps my game to go over other players' games in such detail. With the videos I just finished up a 2 part 200nl video where I did pause and record analysis. I think it turned out ok and I spent a **** ton of time on part 2 so hopefully there is some good in depth stuff in there to get people thinking better about the pokers.

In other fairly rigged news, my hair is going grey.

p2k

So, I went to Elland Road on Wednseday with my Dad to watch Leeds vs Southend. I'm not a Leeds fan (Everton ftw) but my Dad is a lifelong fan and used to go to every game before he got lumbered with a familly. For those not familiar with the English football league there are 4 professional leagues each consisting of ~20 teams. The teams are promoted/relegated based on their performance in the league and once they get in to the top division, the Premier League, they can qualify for european competitions and the like. Leeds United are currently in the 3rd tier of English football, League 1 as it is known (top is premier, 2nd is championship, league 1, league 2 etc). They were in the top league for many years and have had great success, but due to some financial mis-management and some poor transfer decisions they have gone from one of the top 6 teams in the country to mediocre League 1 obscurity. They also lost a playoff to get in to the Championship last season to my hometown team Doncaster Rovers so needless to say the fans are pretty pissed and they are getting 1/2 the attendance they used to when they were in the top league (averaging just over 20,000 this year I think).

Anyway Leeds won the game 2-0 despite not playing too great and now sit just outside a playoff place. They have just got a new manager who I think has the capabilites to get them back in the championship so even though I'm not a fan it would be nice to see them go back up and start doing well again (particularly when there are such minion clubs like Nottingham Forest in that league )

Fantasy Football is getting exciting again at this time of the year as well. I'm in a $200 2p2 league and currently sitting in 3rd/28. There is quite a bit of dead money but the top end of the league is very competitive and high scoring. It's all very close and I just hope I don't finish 4th and bubble. Also the person organising let some guy who finsihed 3rd overall last year and top 10 the year before (out of over 1m players) play and he is about 100 points adrift at the top. Catchable but ffs seems pretty rogged to me. Here is my team, if you are familiar with fantasy premier league and have any suggestions let me know:

1: Reina

2: Konchesky

3: Bosingwa

4: Vidic

5: Young L

6: Arteta

7: Lennon

8: Ronaldo
(C)

9: Denilson

10: Defoe

11: Robinho

12: Sorensen
Goalkeeper
13: Figueroa
Defender
14: McCann
Midfielder

So on to a brief poker update. I f'd myself in the A after cashing out a sizable chunk of my stars roll when the x rate looked good at ~1.45/1 about mid jan. Doomswitched straight after that and had to deposit or play 1/2 for a week or two. Ended up making a smallish deposit with the £ at a 23 year low vs the $, fml. I try and keep an eye on these things and read up as best I can so it is v frustrating to get pwned like this. Oh well, I had a good week after that and am up about 10k since so that alleviated some of the life tilt issues of the whole incident. I also played betfair a few days while I waited in vain for the £ to pick up. PLO games seem pretty incredible on there and 5/10 is significantly softer than stars 5/10. The regs are fairly decent for the most part but there is just so much more dead money. Unfortunately there isn't enough traffic/the software is too tilting for me to make it my regular site but I'l def be checking out the action on there from time to time.

And finally I have a 5/10 vid out today, if you have any thoughts plz to be pming me/leaving comments in the forum.

Gl all,

Rob.

Edit, almost forgot, fallen a little behind pace due to stars hiatus:

VPPS for the year:

65,444.

Sorry I've been a bit lazy with the updates lately. I haven't really been in the blogging mood lately and I think it's down to the fact I'm putting in so much time actually playing, and when I do take a break I just want to relax and do none poker things.

Anyway, I've played my most hands ever in a month already so I'm pretty pleased with that. Up about 20k so far. Playing pretty decent and am particularly happy with my lack of tilt, although I'm still trying to get better at improving my reads and interpreting stats and things when playing so many tables. It's frustrating at times to be perfectly aware of the small mistakes I'm making but it's all about the bottom line and at the moment grinding out lots of midstakes hands just seems like the right thing for me to do.

I'm also going to dip back in to sngs this year to pad the vpp count. Sngs are silly but you get lots of points for them (!) so I'm going to brush up on my ICM and play a few hundred 114s-335s a month. If I get too owned/super tilted by them then I will knock that one on the head.

Anyway apologies I suck at teh bloggage. Gl everyone who is not wader.

VPPS for the year: 47,072

Jan didn't start out too great, it took me a while to adjust to how retardedly aggressive stars 2/4 plays, I think it has changed quite a bit since I last put in volume in these games. I also took some time adjusting to 12 tabling but I think I'm getting more and more comfortable with it. So anyway I started the month on a 10bi downer and since then I've tweaked a few things, seem to be playing a little better and running a little better and am up about 6k through too many hands. I say too many b/c my brain is pretty frazzled from attempting SNE pace already although I'm hoping I will get used to it over time. It could go the other way and I just burn out. Either way I'm gonna give it a shot.

On the video front I had planned on doing a small stakes hu series since there wasn't too much of that content when I joined and I have quite a bit to say about the process of moving through the limits and adapting to different levels. I made part one at 50nl and also did a 50nl 6max.

Having spoke to a few people though there seems to be more demand for me to do mid stakes 6max which is fair enough since that's my regular game at the moment. With that in mind I intend on putting out some 3/6 and 5/10 content and releasing the series later in the year. I also am thinking maybe a video with two tables of 2/4 and 2 of 5/10 on stars might be good, to compare the limits. I think there are some interesting differences but maybe people wouldn't like mixing limits in a vid. If you have opinions post away in teh comments.

I'm gonna do this gay VPP thing at the end of each blog from now on too:

VPPS for the year: 21,436

As planned I've been doing mostly uni work and xmas stuff the last week or so. I made a couple of videos (50nl hu and 50nl 6max) when I got the chance and I think they turned out decent so look out for those. There seems to be a ton of good mid stakes videos at the moment so I thought I'd do something at small stakes which fit with my 'not grinding' schedule nicely.

I feel like my game is pretty sharp atm and I am pretty excited to put in a load of hands. Whenever I take a week or so off I always seem to come back with this renewed hunger to crush and decisions always seem a little clearer in my head, so that's something to remember if I'm downswinging in future.

NYE I spent with a few friends in Hull which isn't exactly #1 nye city to hit but the old town is pretty nice and we went to some decent bars and then a club. Pretty standard. I find it difficult to get excited about new years eve and I often just stay home and be boring, spending new years day hungover and miserable seems like a lol way to start the year but w/e. I think I mentioned I was going to cut back on the drinking and try and lose some weight in 09. obv got hammered, nailed a pizza and then had a fry up in the morning. I'm told Jan 1st doesn't count though so it's all good.

Hope you all had a good one,

Rob.

I'm officially wrapping this year up, zero play until probably the second week of January. So since I can't sleep for thinking of what next year has in store, I'm going to write down some of my goals for 09. No pretty 08 graph since I have dbs on different computers all over the place, although looking back at last years poker goals:

Play 250,000+ hands of NLHE 6max or full ring
Make 200k+ vpps
Beat my 07 tournament leaderboard score of 7325.85
Cash in an mtt for 5 figures ($)
Make $100,000+ total profit
Start coaching (I have decided to put the mentor thing on hold because I have too much stuff to do with poker, uni and marathon, but there is a chance I will do it in after I finish uni).

I achieved all of these and then some (lol at tlb thing). I'm setting some pretty lofty targets for 09:

Play 1mill+ hands of NLHE 6max of hu
Achieve SNE status on stars
Don't play above 5/10 for the first 3 months of the year
Don't play PLO for the first 3 months of the year
Don't play an mtt for the first 3 months of the year
Make money money make money money.

Other goals:

Grind schedule that includes getting up before midday every day, an afternoon session of around 2hrs and a night session of 4-6hrs. (will be more specific with this when I decide on it)
Do more running and go to the gym at least twice a week.
Lose 2st by June (currently at 13 1/2)
Cut down on drinking (most people who know me irl will lol when they read this but I am DEADLY srs mkay)
Find a place to live in July/August, must fall under the very specific category of 'balla' and be in a kickass location. Prob be a medium-large city; currently Leeds at the top of the order although I'm open to ideas to live basically anywhere in the world. If anyone is doing a similar thing and you are a cool guy like me let me know; I already have one poker buddy penciled in, thinking 3-5 would be ideal.

Soooo I think that is all for now, if I think of anything else I'l edit it in between now and the new year. I have some degree work to do for mid january which I'm making some progress with atm albeit slow. The plan is to not play a single hand of poker until I get it done. If anyone sees me playing on stars (I have search activated) between now and the time I mention in my blog I have finished the work I will xfer $1000 to the first person to ship a hh to the comments.

There is one exception to this. I am now making vids for leggo and if I have to get some done in this time frame then the shippage will be waived to allow for me to complete my duties as a leggo pro.

Since I won't be playing I will prob not update till the new year.

I hope you all enjoy my first video and have a great christmas and new year!

Seasons greetings,
Rob.

As planned, I haven't been playing much recently aside from some PLO and a NL session yesterday. I 6 tabled 5/10 and 10/20 PLO most of last week and was doing pretty good. Confidence was up and the games looked decent at 25/50 so I hopped in and got demolished as usual.

After this I ended up at another drinkathon weekend over in Leeds. Friday night was the last big student night at the union before the end of term so I went to that and it was a decent night. Saturday I slept till about 4pm and rolled out of bed straight in to teh shower and then out again. My friends' gf was cooking this epic Xmas for ~13 people. I have no idea how someone can blow up a jacket potato one day and then come up with such an amazing meal for so many people the next day. W/e it wasn't my potato so I'm not complaining.

After this we hung about the flat for a while and went out about 10ish and got moderately drunk. The evening culminated in 50p/£1 at my friends' flat the low point of which was my 8d6d (favourite novelty hand) bricking vs some donks AJo, and me picking all the wrong times to run stuff multiple times.

This week I've played a couple of sessions 9 tabling 400nl without a HUD and I'm loving it. It really forces me to pay attention to important stuff rather than the dumb numbers that just get in the way and don't really mean too much. I'd advise everyone to at least give it a go, I found it very refreshing and will probably play this way in future. Also the games are gooooooooooood.

Other than that things are pretty steady and most of the month has really been winding poker volume down for Xmas. I obv don't have to take a break but I feel like I want to/have earned it. My brother is home and has saved up 3 weeks holiday from work so I should get to do some fun stuff with him (mainly involves thrashing him at PES09) as well as some other friends who are back to see family.

I went to the gym today and had a decent workout. It's going ok but I need to get a bit more structure in to when I exercise to make sure I'm gettting at least 3 decent ones in each week. That will def be on my 09 goals list.

Ok since this has been a generally pretty boring update I'm going to recap one of my LAPT hands since I've been promising that for ages.

day 1, 100/200/25. 7 handed young azn who has recently moved to the table (turns out to be azntracker high stakes sng player) opens HJ t600. I flat otb with A7s local station tard (lt) calls in bb. (azn had 13k I have ~13 donk has 10). Flop is A24r, lt checks azn bets 1100, I call lt folds. Turn J azn bets 1900 I call. Really not enjoying this call at the moment as it feels like a vbet but at the same time I know he expects me to peel him with some pps on the flop and he has been pretty barrely/good aggro so far (and I'm also beginning to have thoughts of jamming the river if he bets smallish). River 10, he bets 2250 I slide my remaining 7750 over the line after about 10 seconds, he looks absolutely disgusted and folds. I am met with a series of wat expression after flipping up the A7 and proceed to roll over the table for the next hr until it turns pretty nasty as a slow procession of 2p2ers/decent live pros arrives and we end up with the most ridiculous table. At one stage it looked like this (bear in mind this is mid day1 and there are a ton of local and recreactional players left in)

1: Really good online mtter, staked by evanski
2: JMPRODIGY, came 2nd, hu snger, very good.
3: 20 something nosebleed pooflinger.
4: Humberto
5: Me
6: Thuy Doan
7: Some old nit woman with a stud bracelt can't remember name but categorized as 'good nit'
8: unkown hsnler
9: Booshiet

We also had Stevie444 but he didn't last long after getting pawnted by seat1. Since the tourny was generally pretty soft this table was a hudge beat. I'm also used to been surrounded by morons whenever I play live so it was quite surreal playing at a genuinely tough table. I got moved to a table of idiots about 2hrs before the end of the day thank god (I should mention where I managed to get 88 in vs QQ for a bunch of chips and suck out). And I also spoke with azntracker in the bar a few nights later and he told me he folded AT. Maybe some more nuggets from my trip next time:

Later,
Rob