Spiders, flush cards, goals, goals, goals

Picture the scene…

It's 2.30 am

You're sat a home in front of your computer with everyone upstairs tucked up in bed.

All is quiet but you're down to the last three in a 100+ runner tournament.

You are dominating the table, your hands are holding up and everything is going great.

You own the table.

It's just a matter of time before you finish them all off and collect the 1st prize.

You've got superfast reliable internet connection.

What can go wrong?

Well that's exactly where Phil (an ex colleague of mine who I have been advising out on the poker front) was last night.

That is until a spider decided to crawl across his keyboard!

Now he's stood up on his chair, yellow pages in hand, unable to do anything as the clock is ticking down.

Harrington, Sklansky, Hellmuth et al. never mentioned anything about how to deal with this situation!

I'm happy to report that Phil managed to scare the 25mm beast away and ended up coming second.

It just goes to show that the hazards of the modern day poker player should never be underestimated!

Liverpool 4 Arsenal 4

As for the game tonight, there can't be many arguments that Liverpool are not providing some entertaining games of late.

Scoring 4 goals every time they play helps.

Tonight was just fantastic viewing for me and, no doubt for the neutral.

I just hope this season goes down to the wire as it could be really exciting!


GUKPT side event

Played the £200 freezeout last night.

After seeing someone exit first hand with set over set I nearly went the same way myself.

I received JJ in mid position early on with the blinds at 25/50.

Earlyish local player raises to 400 and I call, as do two others.

Flop comes As Js 4s and raiser cont bets 500 which I flat call, other fold.

Turn is a nasty 6s and he bets 600 I call hoping for the board to fill up.

River is T diamonds and he bets 1000 into about 3000ish.

Don't think he has Ks but think there is a fair chance he has either 2 pair type hand or a smallish spade so call to see ThTs but I've still got 3600 out of a starting stack of 6000.

Not many other hands played and final hand is seen from the bug blinds with 9c3c and the flop is T high, all clubs. I check raise all in against a pot sized bet and he calls with KdKc. The turn brings the fourth club sealing the higher flush for him and an early exit from me.

I played this on the back of a good result at Leos a week or so ago where I finished third for £500. Hoping to continue the run but it was not to be.

I have now received confirmation that I have been confirmed as a trader with bad beat which means my daily limit will be increased to $750 per day and I will now get rakeback. I'm also entering the Dream Team V on Grandslam as per my last post. So far I have 5 players interested, so only 1 more minimum, 3 more maximum for a team.

Anyone interested, let me know.

That's it for now...

Dream Team V

I am looking to enter a team into Dream Team V which is being hostedby Grandsam Poker (Mostly $44 buy in).

It has a guaranteed prize pool of $40,000 and runs every Monday from May 4th leading up to the live Grand Final on October 24th and 25th at the Star City Casino in Birmingham.

If anyone is interested please comment or e-mail me.

The event is being run in conjunction with BadBeat Poker, full details are below.

In Dream Team V you and your team will be playing for a $27,000 "Bellagio" Package which will include 6 entries to The "Bellagio" £500k Guaranteed £2,000 NL Hold'em Tournament and approximately $5,000 in expenses/cash (depending on the exchange rate).

The individual winner of the Dream Team Live Final will also receive a $4,500 "Bellagio" Package unless the winner is in the winning team, in which case the $4,500 will be added to first place prize money.

The top 10 individual players from the 22 weekly online tournaments will play a Sit 'n' Go for a $4,500 "Bellagio" Package.

Players to reach the final table in each weekly tournament will be awarded with 1 point per position - 10 points for first, 9 points for second and so on...

The top 10 players to receive the most final table points throughout the 22 on-line weekly tournaments, and who attend the Live Final, will play in the Turbo Sit 'n' Go which will take place at Midnight during the Dream Team Private Party in the Vegas Lounge on Saturday 24th October (on completion of Day 1).

Should the remainder of the Prize Pool reach $25,000 then the team package will increase to 7 packages, should it reach $30,000 then it will increase to 8 packages, all remaining cash from the 22 weekly tournaments (estimated $25,000) will be awarded to the final table (or more depending on the number of entries) at the Live Final.

$40,000 Guaranteed Prize Pool

BadBeat's generous Guarantee includes 8 Bellagio Packages (6 for the team) and at least $4,000 cash for the Live Final!

The "Bellagio" Festival This is a £2,000 + £150 No Limit Hold'em Tournament that takes place at Nottingham's Dusk Till Dawn Poker Club from the 16th to 20th December 2009 and has a mammoth structure with 50,000 starting chips and a 90 minute clock!

What is Dream Team?

Teams of 8 players (minimum of 6) will play 22 online multi table tournaments on GrandslamPoker.com where 50% of the prize pool will be held back for a live final and the other 50% will be paid out on the nightly tournament, players will be awarded points based on their finishing position and the total accumulated points at the end of the 22 weeks will determine the team's starting chip stack for the live final

- each player will start with a minimum of $5,000 chips at the live final, then the points collected by the team will be divided by 6 and added to this starting chip stack, meaning each team will start with different amounts.

Only 6 players from each team will be able to take part in the Live Final.

Further information can be found here

http://www.badbeat.com/Ease/servlet/DynamicPageBuild?siteID=1867&categoryID=1937

April 15th, 1989.... We will remember them.

You'll Never Walk Alone

Ups and downs.... Poker and odds

First off and Liverpool scored way too early on Wednesday.

I believe that 0-0 at home in the first leg is a good result.

It means you get the win or draw in the second leg and so I'm relatively happy with tight games when playing at home first.

Obviously scoring first and going ahead is great but it changes the game.

Guus Hiddink has done remarkably well at Chelsea and all credit to him because they played exceptionally well.

I've heard some of the Talksport presenters talking about Liverpool saying that they should leave Gerrard and Torres out next week.

Well that's a load of rubbish!

Firstly because it's only one game if they believe Liverpool are going out and secondly because it is incredibly rare for us to go behind by a distance and not come back.

You only need to think about 3-0 in Istanbul and against Man Utd a few years ago to see that.

The other ray of hope is that Liverpool will be able to play without fear.

After all losing a goal next Tuesday will not make much difference since we've got to score 3 regardless.

Even if we lose 2 goals, scoring 4 will take us through.

Benitez is a master tactician and I am certain that we will come back into the tie at the very least and then who knows.

What I do know is that 50-1 is very good odds for us to win the Champions League.

Speaking of odds, I mentioned on January 31st that the bookies had Liverpool's odds to win the Premier League very wrong at 10.5/1 and they are now as short as 5/2.

Man United are going through a bad spell at the moment and they have serious problems in defence until they can get the Vidic and Ferdinand partnership restored. If only we could change the rules to let the referee decide how many minutes of injury time should be awarded rather than Sir Alex it should give us an even better chance.

Now I'm not saying that we will win the league because, whilst I think Man United will drop enough points for us to win, I can't see us winning every game. United have a couple of tricky fixtures including Arsenal, Man City and Middlesborough - yes that's right, Middlesborough who will be fighting like wounded animals trying to stay in the Premier League.

Poker wise I had a great day yesterday winning $300 but dropped $200 of it today by not cashing in a single STT out of 12. That's how it goes though, rough with the smooth and all that.

Until next time...

End of the week

Day 6 first,

On Friday I won a total of $120 in the following games:

4 MTT's for a total buy in of 46.2 and a profit of 24.8
4 STT's for a buy in of 55 and a profit of 95

Saturday I didn't play because I took Julie and Emma to the Empire to see the witches of Eastwick which was not bad. Julie was a big wet wet wet fan when she was younger and so was made up to see Marti Pellow in the lead role and, to be honest he has a good voice and the show had it's moments of humour too.

A great result by Liverpool eventually after hitting the post/crossbar so many times it was looking like another one of those days. I can still see Man Utd dropping enough points for us to win the league but I can't see us winning 100% until the end of the season.

Today started off with a hard earned point for Lewis Hamilton in the Grand Prix with a poor car and a second win for Button in a better car. How long it will take for the big boys to catch up I don't know but it's nice to see Button's loyalty paying dividends.

Thought the day was going to get better when Man Utd started off looking like they didn't know each other in defence. They then got a lucky break and capitalised with ruthless efficiency but Villa did really well to deservedly take the lead in the game through the devastating pace they have up front.

Last 20 minutes though and United were piling the pressure on and it was no surprise when they got their equaliser. Even less of a surprise was the 5 added minutes at the end of the second half when there was hardly an injury in sight. It was a great game to watch and a really good goal at the end.

No online play again tonight as I was out playing in the Circus in Liverpool.

Somehow I managed to lose 75000 chips with 16 left when my decent hands in position were getting called by the chip leader 3 to my left and I just couldn't hit a barn door. I probably did miss one opportunity to continuation bet that might have taken the pot down but judging by the way things went, no doubt he had hit anyway and would have called so I went out in 13th when in the big blind of 6000 with 10000 behind and I felt priced in to call with Q9.

So to round up my week I played a total of 75 tournaments as follows:

Tournaments
Double Up Played 16, buy in $836 profit $124, ROI 15%
STT played 39, buy in $975, profit $390, ROI 40%
MTT played 20, buy in $337, loss $319, ROI -95%
Total profit for the week $195

In all I'm happy with my STT performance and I went pretty deep in a few of the MTT's that would have have made a huge difference.

So it's back to work tomorrow whilst also looking out for a permanent job.

Days 5

Thursday (day 5) saw a bit more volume with a total of 22 tournaments played.

Unfortunately I registered for 4 MTTs at lunch time only to realise that I was supposed to be picking up my son, Andrew, from school at 3pm so had to play them fast and loose to either bust out or get chips to justify getting Julie to change her plans and pick him up.

Suffice it to say that no plans had to be changed and I didn't trouble the scorers!

Later on I played another 4 MTTs making it a total buy in for the day of $102.3 without success.

I played 4 double ups for a buy in of $220 and a profit of $80 and I played 10 STT's for a buy in of $297 and a loss of $63.

That made a total loss of 139.3 for the day.

I also had a mentor session where I was playing really well and it looks like I am going to be confirmed as a Badbeat trader with my daily limit being increased, to what I don't yet know.

I had 2 reasons for joining badbeat, one was to enable me to play bigger online tournaments without the restrictions my bankroll was placing on me due to the amount I have withdrawn to pay for our extension, and the other was to improve my game in through the aid of a mentor.

I believe that even the best players in the world can continue to learn at poker and to do that you need to be able to discuss hands and situations with good players. This is something I've not yet really been able to do with badbeat but once my trader status is confirmed I hope that is something I'll have more opportunity to do.

Today, Friday, I haven't played in the day because I went to Aintree for the Ladies Day at the Grand National Meeting with Julie and had a great time. We only backed one winner and a couple of places saw us only £12 down in betting so not such a bad day. Just a shame the sun didn't come out!

I'll update tonights games tomorrow because ipoker's tournament histories don't give you the results of tournaments still ongoing and I played 4 MTT's tonight that haven't finished yet.

I also received details of the blackbelt poker grading scheme today but it requires a hell of a lot of playing time so I won't be able to get involved.

That's it for now, Murray had nearly win his semi final then it is bed.

Day 4

Even less volume today which is disappointing but the interruptions of family life and the England match meant I couldn't play as many hours as I wanted to.

In the end I only managed to play 7 tournaments as follows:

2 Double ups for a buy in of $110 and a loss of $10
1 Jackpot SNG for a loss of $23.5
2 MTT's for a loss of $61.5
2 STT's for a buy in of $55 and a profit of $17

So in all the day was a loss of 78 and a profit on the week of $214

So up early tomorrow to get in a shed load of hours as I am going to Aintree on Friday.

Day 3

Not too much volume yesterday.

Played a total of 10 tournaments as follows:

2 Double ups for a buy on of $66 and a profit of -$6

1 MTT for $22 that I got nowhere in

2 Jackpot STT's where I came 1st and 2nd (more about that in a minute) for a but in of $47 and a profit of $49

5 STT's for a buy on of $121 and a profit of $59



Making a total profit on the day of $80 and a cumulative profit from the poker week so far of $292



So, going back to the Jackpot STT's.

For those that don't know this is a promotion being run by ipoker whereby anyone who wins 6 of these 6 seater tournaments in a row wins a progressive jackpot of at least $25000 and if you finish in the top 2 6 times in a row you win $300.



So far I have managed a 1, 2, 1, 2 so two more needed for the $300.



They also have a $50 jackpot STT that I once managed 4 1st places in a row and then came fifth in the fifth and actually would have won my sixth. At the time the jackpot for that was over $100k.



Thankfully the loss was in the fifth and not last tournament otherwise I would have been gutted.


Well done to the bloggers who have pulled off a couple of good april fool jokes. Especially the Hit Squad which was excellent. If only they had put on comment moderation they would have had a hell of a lot more comments from people who would have fallen for it.

Anyway, that's it for now, back to the tables.