Moving Up, Moving On

In mid to late September I embarked on quite a grind, moving house from London to Edinburgh. I’d lived in London for 9 years up to that point, ignoring everybody's assertions that London was expensive and that I could live absolutely anywhere in the world. Well the current poker climate means that I can’t quite live ‘anywhere’, but most places are still available. Hilariously I ignored anywhere tropical or particularly glamorous, and moved directly North to exotic Scotland!

I’d never actually been to Edinburgh untill we went flat hunting, although I’d heard good things from everyone who has ever commented on it, so got on a plane and headed up with Rupert Elder to do some flat hunting. We found a decent place above his friend Tommo’s, in our chosen location so just went for it.

We moved up just before San Remo and have been here since coming back from the tournament series. So far it’s been pretty enjoyable. I have a hell of a lot more space and for much much less rent than I was paying in London. The only downside so far really has been the temperature. It is a hell of a lot colder here than London. Took us a few days to really figure out the central heating system, but now we just blast it all day. If only we had double glazing though, THE WINDOWS ARE JUST TOO THIN.

Pokerwise I had a decent time during WCOOP. I didn’t do well at all in any of the main events, but managed to win a 109 turbo to get out of it for the series. During this time there were some awesome live tournaments in London. The EPO was a £2180 and the GUKPT was a £1070 re entry. I did terrible in both, I played well, mostly, just some huge errors which cost me. The GUKPT was a reentry and I tried to go back for 1b, but ended up unable to as I got locked INSIDE my own flat and was totally gg by the time I could get out. #reallife

EPT San Remo was much of the same. I played a hand on day 1 of the main event, where I got top 2 in vs a straight for all my chips on the turn, and won ... and I thought I might make a run. I ended up not progressing further than late day 2 and proceeded to go 0/7 in the series. I was expecting better, as I usually do well in San Remo, but always next time I suppose.

Live poker has been pretty demoralising recently. For 2012 I’m on a massive downswing live. I’ve cashed a total of $31k this year, and believe me, had way way more in buyins. Saying that, at least I have also played a lot less than the previous 2 years.

2013 Might be quite a busy one for live tournaments, with a pretty exciting schedule coming, but for 2012 I’m mostly done. I’m going to UKIPT Bristol in early November, then the huge festival in Prague. Apart from that I’m just gonna sit at home and play online tournament poker, which should be quite thrilling with the return of everyone’s favourite, Full Tilt Poker.

Catch Up!

Wow it's been a long time since I last blogged. In between we've had a SCOOP, WSOP and Olympics.

I really only had one good look all summer, but it didn't work out and I ended with just 2 mincashes in the smaller events. I stayed in a house this summer with Rupert Elder, David Vamplew, Melanie Weisner, Dominik Nitsche and Scott O'Reilly. Summer 2012 #teammiramare.

It was a good time overall, and we even had a bracelet winner in the house!

who won tho?

 


Unfortuanately Rupert also broke his leg. We'd gone to play football for the first time during the trip, and it had been a lot of fun. However near the end, one of the other players went through his standing foot and broke his tib and fib.

rup does look vaguely worried here.

 It was a really bad break, possibly career ending for any professional footballer and made me quite sad. At least he had the rest of us to cheer him up and help him around. He was only out for a couple of weeks before he was back playing poker events again.

A day or so after the injury occured.

We obviously took many trips to the hospital for a few days, even Rups mother had to come out for a week or so just to help him manage. Quite the ordeal but he's getting through/over it well now.



This summer my home town, the big LDN town hosted the Olympics! You already knew this. Well there was great coverage by the BBC where we could watch many different sports on many different channels online. At peak times I could have picked between over 20 sports to watch. For the first 4 or 5 days I was totally hooked watching table tennis to handball. It did get a little boring after a while, there's only so much judo one can watch.

Walking around Bayswater a lot of people seemed to have gotten into the whole Olympics spirit. A lot of people with team GB clothing etc etc. I have to say it has worked on me! Team GB sucked at table tennis but maybe they'll be better once I take up the game again!

Team GB did very well this summer! I wonder exactly how well, given that they definitely missed out on some medals. However watching things like the mens gymnastics team getting third im sure was quite an upset. Was also actually great to watch, even though it's not a sport I'd usually pay much attention to. The power in the gymnasts appear almost super human to me.

Pokerwise I'm excited to get back on the horse this weekend, and grind as much volume online as possible. Definitely gonna be some long sessions to make up for skipping EPT Barcelona. I probably should go but I didn't have a good WSOP at all and I've played virtually zero poker, so I should really get back into the game before wagering too much money in a single tournament.
The next tournament might be the DTD £500k guaranteed in Nottingham at the end of the month, depending on how much I can be bothered really. I am very interested in going to France though for the Partouche Poker Tour in Cannes. I've never been to this tournament before, even though I'm sure it's super soft. I've also never been to Cannes before and I assume it's definitely worth going since the whole coast is very nice.

I'll post more soon with a tonne of brags about winning poker tournaments or something.