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.

money money money.

I don't read many blogs, but do keep up with the wisdom that Phil Galfond likes to spew every now and then. He's probably just very bored, but this article was something that I think needs talking about. It's a part of the poker world that happens all the time, and something I think non-poker people would be intersted to read about. Obviously as a true hustler I've already thought this over but it's something that I don't think my fellow professional poker players consider enough.

Back in the day I used to be super lax about lending money or even really keep track of it. I'm pretty sure I'm out at least 3k+ in chinese poker debts I've never chased up. Oh to be young, dumb and printing money like it was 2007 again!

I've come to realise that making transactions to help people is generally a loss. At best you can really only break even. If you break even you still got negative freerolled. As Phil says in his blog though, it is a necessity of the industry. There are many instances where I can be short and needing money, it happens to everyone. 

In my old age these days I actually employ a strategy that annoys some of my friends, and also puts me in a spot where maybe I don't always get as many financial favours as 'I should'. However this is fine by me. In the modern poker world, we essentially operate with two devices, online money and cash. There is a 3rd, bank transfers, but it loosely comes under online money due to it's nature. 

Online money is easy to move because of peer to peer transfers via several poker sites, and currently one in particular (it used to be 2 sites, but RIP FTP). There are also online wallets that have found themselves a strong niche in facilitating gamblers around the globe, neteller and skirll.

Cash however is quite a lot harder, as it's actually a physical thing. In the modern tournament poker world, we need to have access to euro, USD and a little sparingly GBP. Sometimes we need stuff like aussie $, DKK, czech crowns, etc. As a British resident, GBP is a lot more important to me than most of my peers, and is both a bit of a hinderance and a blessing at the same time.

My long term base currency is GBP, because that's what currency my living expenses are in and where I can make my ~4% a year in my bank account. USD is important to me because of the 6-8 weeks in Vegas every summer, and/or God forbid I go back to PCA. Euros are obviously needed for most EPTs and many major traditional tournaments like the Amsterdam Masters, Irish Open, WSOPE, etc.

With this comes quite serious logistical problems, as one needs access to all 3 currencies in cash.

 So I need some reserve of each in order to be fluid for each tournament I want to play. As someone who is decently well known in the community (mostly amongst online players of course), I am constantly asked for help swapping money. This is rarely useful to me.

Hence my policy is to charge people 5% vig for any exchange that they make with me, even very close friends unless it's a transfer I need to make (eg. I have too much of one currency and want another).

 This EPT Madrid, even though I didn't go, I made 3 seperate tranactions selling euros to people to make the vig, and get rid of all my excess eurosbefore the summer. The best time for me is actually EPT London, when everyone needs GBP and I can get some vig for online money. It used to be so much better when the WSOPE was ibn London. I was absolutely killing the vig market.

Even with all this though, I very very rarely make transfers with people I do not know pretty well, or am very very sure are legit trustworthy. I think that it's so absurdly important to not get scammed in transfers now that I do my very best to reduce that risk to zero.

I've been burned several times albeit in different ways from scammers. One time I was looking to get a transfer from party to stars. Some dude I didn't know contacted me and convinced me to do a smaller xfer for $1k in two batches from party to cake. He sent first so I wasn't too worried. However apparently he used a stolen credit card and I got fucked out fo the 1k I sent, as cake took the money back and locked my account. To this day I still cannot make deposits or withdrawals on that site because I was involved in this incident, even though they took the money and I'm actually the real victim of the crime. This is probably a huge indication of why their poker site is such a failure.

The other main way I got scammed was during the 2010 WSOP. I bought a lot of action on twoplustwo.com staking forum, and at least 3 seperate people scammed me by stealing my money. One of which was old school legend HIV, whom I'd met several times and even hung out a little with that summer. Another was one whom JohnnyBax had actually vouched for is character Fergwrx. He owes me ~$2.5k still.

Thankfully none of these instances have broken me, but as I'm currently on the absolute worse downswing of my life it does annoy me a lot sometimes when thinking about it. It would be nice to eventually get this money back.

On to the next one

Since my last blog post I've played relatively little online poker. Probably my biggest leak as a poker player is my complete lack of grind. Mostly I think it's work ethic, much of why I decided to do this pokerthing rather than get a job :(

Live I've played two £1080 Palm Beach Big Games, cashing both but not really doing any damage. I think I've kinda figured out how the tournament should be played, and I'm also very confident in turbos in general. The only live series I've been to so far has been UKIPT Galway which was a 770 euro main event. I roomed with Ben Dobson, a relatively new kid on the scene, but one I like and who I think can easily put a run together and do good things. Day 1 wen't without much happening before I made quite a bad decision on day 2 and busting early. I had a quick nap and jumped into the 2150 euro 'high roller' side. Kind of a stupid tournament, we started with 20k chips and I ended up in true hero fashion ending day 1 with 14400 chips. Luckily on day 2 I went on a rush early and ended up coming 3rd for some pocket change. There were only 30 runners and 5 paid so it wasn't exactly setting the world alight, although I'd obviously prefered to win...

Although I've had quite a disappointing start to the year, it has been smart of me to cash the biggest tournaments I've played. I'm still rather upset with the whole live circuit in general, upcoming EPTs at Madrid and Campione both having their severe problems. Madrid there's the issue of how far away it is from the city/most of the hotels, and Campione their payment proceedure is going to be in CHF rather than euro. Then the Grand Final is in Monte Carlo, where I'd have to figure something out as far as expenss go. So I might end up skiping all of them.

One tournament series which I just missed was EPT Copenhagen. Certainly not one I'm disappointed to miss, and I'm extremely happy that the kid I'm living with here in 'sunny' London won it! <3 mickeydp

quite the threesome imo

I watched a decent amount of the FT. Very very pleased for mickey and it now puts him in the 'live' spotlight, something which was always coming.

I really might end up only playing the Irish Open and EPT Berlin before the WSOP. It's quite sad to me to think that, considering the last 2 years I played as much as possible. Tomorrow I head off to IPT Nova Gorcia for their 2.2k euro main event, and a 1.1k side. Not necessarily the smartest of trips, but I'm in the mood to play something so was easily convinced by Rupert Elder to go. At least it does usually get a large field. Hopefully it goes well, and if not I will be back in time for the March episode of the tufat23 invitational, aka Palm Beach Big Game.

2012, what a terrible live schedule.

so I missed PCA and I've skipped Aussie millions. I'm also the mug that skipped WPT Ireland. I am quite A grinder normally when it comes to live tournaments but the current look for 2012 is pretty shocking overall.


Why one skips PCA and Australia


Well PCA sucks. It’s in a 5 star resort in the Bahamas and this sounds like a good idea. They have a fun pool and great tournament series, as well as having probably the biggest satellite schedule of any EPT in any given year. However it is also really really expensive. Not just the accomodation, as a poker player one usually only leaves the resort to go to senior frogs.
Now I actually don’t mind to pay a little more if I am getting something better in return. Nope the service is in fact, a little worse, and in some cases is just shocking. For example to buy a burger at break, you must buy a ticket, take the ticket to the burger place, then eat outside as food is not allowed in the tournament area. You probably only lose 15mins tournament time if you try this.

It is kind of a unique experience though as far as poker tournaments go, and should probably be experienced at least once. One of the most unique aspects of PCA is that thousands of poker people either spend their time in their rooms, in the tournament area or looking for food.
Because the resort is so big, this involves a lot of walking to get between places. Since there are so many younger poker players at the PCA and really only 1 main super long corridor, this generally involves doing your best to mutually blank people you have known for years as you have both already said hello to 25+ people and now you are bored (and late). I will of course stop to talk to people I know if they want to and I'm not late for something, but I also appreciate the people who know that a head nod or quick fist bump/elbow nub is about the max either of us is looking for most of the time.
Australia on the other hand is much more like a normal tournament series. Just in some random city in the world where we go to a pre-existing tournament room. Melbourne is a beautiful city and pretty good weather for the time of year. An absolutely great break from the cold northern hemisphere.  Also for me the food court above the tournament area is just super clutch, with meals around $10-$15 a piece this is really good value for the convenience and quality of food.
Unfortuanately Melbourne hosts it’s worldwide tennis open at the same time, and prices of accomodation in the city just skyrocket. Also even prices in the supermarket are just absurdly high, in many ways even more expensive than England. It was not a pleasing experience. Oh the flight is probably £1200+ from England. 
They have a good main event and a decently sized side schedule, but the problem is the sides are relatively spaced out. I'd much prefer a slightly more packed schedule, $500 tournaments are necessary overall and I appreciate that but I'm not getting out of bed for them.

What I like to play. 

It's usually summed up in an EPT schedule. However I am having real problems this year, for the first time in maybe 3. Part of this could be because of age, I’m getting old. Disillusion has set in.
The next plausible EPT is in Deuville. Last time I was there was 2 years ago and I really had a good time. However that was probably because I ran pretty good in the main for the most part.
Looking at the cold facts though. It's a really really shitty place to go in late January. It's probably a really beautiful seaside town in the summer, but in the winter the whole town is just shut down. I would imagine the EPT is here at this time because it has a very suitable location tournamentwise, and is much more accessible to both staff and players in the winter as it is cheaper. BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO GO. Mickey went last year and called it the worst poker trip of his life. This seems about right.
So after that is EPT Copenhagen. Again a straight no. There's an added govt tax. and also it's in some stupid currency that you just get raped on. Also again cold. Even more cold than elsewhere, with 1/2 foot of snow/mush layering the ground. ffs. (I hear it's a great city in the summer). The one time I've been I obviously ran super good but fell short of a final table in the Main Event, and I had a great time because I stayed for free at Mickey's place. However he now lives in England with... me, so doesn't have it anymore. Did I mention it was cold?
Then it's EPT Madrid. This would be great but there's no hotels near the tournament area and it's like a 30min shuttle bus each way every day. If I was gonna do a job that I have to commute 30mins/day each way to, I’d have actually worked hard at university. I may still have to go just because Spanish people are not very good, but this might go against my currently very strong NO SPAIN policy which thinking again, I should never break. Spain is the worst fucking country in the world. Good paella though! NO SPAIN tho.

What I actually will play...

EPT Campione is next. Sounds good. EPT, check. Italy, check. Poker check. Hope their economy doesn't fall apart in the next 3 months, or maybe I do. I dunno, whatever it's in the book. I've also never been so even more reason to go as I have no idea how terrible the city/tournament area can be yet.
The Irish Open is in early April. I love it. Great tournament, the locals speak English, poor side schedule, but I am there. Put me down. The place kinda sucks overall though, and also the side schedule is super light. Beggars can't really be choosers though.

A week break and then its EPT Berlin. Another great stop, great city, a little cold as its still not quite Spring but I will live with it. See you there buddies!
After this is probably gonna be the grand final. Location as yet undetermined. I may or may not play based on this, but I may be forced to go just because I've skipped like 4/6 epts for the start of 2012. Not a fun spot and with it being the grand final, it's always a fucking expenses nightmare. Please be in London or Dublin. London pls, with that kind of run good already I’d be pretty much a lock to win already...
WSOPwise on the Harrahs total rewards website they say the wsop.com schedule would be out already. Get your shit together Harrahs pls. I can not fucking wait for the WSOP its my favourite time of the year. It’s summer, I get to drive a car and I am amongst the absolute elite $1k-$1.5k players of all time. Maybe an overexaggeration but close to true, somehow I feel like the exact setup of the tournament, location, timing means that no one is better than me over the series at those specific tournaments.
I rarely turn up tired, hell I don’t even really like to drink, I know exactly how to negotiate my way through the pack and also I’m pretty decent (actually excellent against the competition) when it comes to the mid-late stages when it’s actually a real torunament again. I actually welcome it when I bust early in these because it happens so rarely, I think last year I missed 2 (maybe 3)  dinner breaks playing a full schedule of them. Even when I’m tired, I’m such a live pro I can easily manage grinding out tournaments whilst napping at the table.

My new favourite tv show is Pawn Stars, who's main shop is in Vegas. I cannot wait to go shoot the shit with Chumlee. I might even try and find something to sell (and get ripped off by) them.

What else?

On a side note I got super excited for the UKIPT season 2, then find out its not even on Channel 4 in the UK. I've already satted into the Galway tournament, now trying to skip the rest unless there's a good one nearby. fml at least there’s still satellites to grind online.
Maybe there will be some cool WPT stops coming up. I'd be especially interested if they pulled a Prague and scheduled neatly with the EPT. Why hasn’t there been a WPT in England again? I mean come on there was one in 2010 and not one in 2011. How about something soon?
I'm currently look at something like 3/4 overseas trips for the next 5 months, and thats really depressing right now given I have a huge amount of euro cash burning a hole in my pocket and I've already lost chunks because of the recent EU crisis.(#fuckyougreece)

There is gonna be a GUKPT from 27-29 of Jan in Manchester for £1070, but no one worth their salt is gonna turn up. Why? the TCOOP online on pokerstars.com If people aren’t still in Australia then they’re coming home to play a great onlnine turbo. Only fucking idiots are gonna turn up for GUKPT Manchester which means it’s a good tournament to go to if you aren’t super good but better than the fish.

All in all it looks like I am gonna be spending a lot of time this winter at home in London. Hopefully this means I get a good amount of grind in. The plan is to just play a lot online for the rest of January and see how 2012 unfolds.

It's the New Year!!!

Happy New Year etc as we go into 2012!

2011 was my best year ever in many ways. I made the most money ever and had a lot of fun meeting some great new people, many of whom I'm sure will be great friends for a long time.

I can't actually remember, or be bothered to look up, what my goals for last year were. Suffice to say I've met some of the goals and failed with others.

Some of the highs this year include watching Rupert Elder win San Remo, watching James Keys start everyones year off great with a $1m score, and finally reaching a real final table of my own in the summer. I had a few lows but really the only big one was FTP being bitches and stealing/holding a lot of my money.

I don't really do New Years resolutions because if I need to do something I aim to just do it, I don't need some arbitary moment in time to change my life for the better. However establishing goals are fine... so here goes!


Live:

• -play 50+ live tournaments
• -play 200hrs+ of live cash.
• - be ready to play 2 non holdem games for the WSOP.

Online:

• Play a minimum of 4 days a week for the year.
• Play 4k+ online tournaments.
• Play over 100k hands of cash

Personal Life:

• Get in shape. I've been super lazy for too long, time to get buff (fat chance?)
•  Spend a lot less non-poker time at my computer.
• Come up with a business project that actually starts/happens.

 I really don't know how much live cash I will play, but when I go to live tournaments I will try and fill my spare time grinding. I'm really the worst grinder ever, and this has to change. I should easily make the 50 live tournaments I think, I'm generally always intersted in playing when I'm at a location.

Last year I wanted something like 200k of online cash hands, erm I didn't even get 50k. If I can get my sleep schedule close to something 'regular', I should be able to make my online goals easily.

I would also like to be competative again athletically. I played a lot of sports as a kid, and through my teans, but after university it's just been non-existent.

I'm not sure exactly what kinda schedule I will be looking at but I want to play football again, probably some 5 a side thing, and maybe even play some table tennis again since it's by far the sport I've excelled the most at lifetime. I really hate running, but I will have to get my ass on a treadmill a lot for any of this is possible.


This is probably the most boring blog post ever, but as the year progresses hopefully I can provide some interesting updates and god forbid something insightful.

Craped Out in Greece

So, the other week I was in Loutraki Greece playing live tournament poker for some series under the EPT Banner. I guess I will start from the beginning.

I was rooming with Rupert Elder for this one. We caught the same flight and then drove over from Athens. It's about a 150 euro cab ride either direction and we were all up for saving money so I rented a car for a whole week, 2 named drivers, for only £71!! Grinders.

food in Loutraki!!

When we got to Athens Airport it was only to meet some crazy lady holding up a sign with my name on, which all the poker reporters on the same flight had already seen and were laughing at. They jelly. We went to get our car and it is definitely one of the smallest 5 door cars on the market. It also had a pretty dodgy tire.

Regardless it was a fun mini road trip through some country neither of us had ever been to before. At the gas station I asked a lady how to say "thank you" in Greek, and having heard the answer knew that speaking Greek was over.

Anyway we got to the Casino pretty easily and got settled for the poker the next day. Day 1A did not go great, I played ok for the most part, maybe 3 hands early I wasn't pleased with but in the end it was just some idiot who thought he made a "perfect read" that really cost me a lot of how my tournament could have been.

(note: tune out for a few paragraphs if you don't understand poker talk)

At 200/400/50 some stupid aussie guy opens utg+1 to... idk 900 and 2 people flat. He has 12k total and I flat the button with AQo. Kinda weird spot, I just don't think I should be stacking so if I squeezed it would only really be to fold to more action. Both blinds call and we see a T94r flop. Everyone checks. Turn is a Q, checks to the aussie and he shoves??!

In context there was a previous hand where he'd limped UTG, I'd isolated button with AT with a tight image and he peeled. On a K9x89 board I checked back twice and folded when he shoved river for 4x pot and showed 98 after I asked him what he had.

Anyway back to the hand, the first flatter calls off maybe 40k stack and everyone else folds. The aussie has QJ and the caller has KQ. So fml the only exact hands I can beat, they have. I was pretty sure I was calling off the aussie, given that he would have bet an overpair on the flop and it did seem like he almost definitely had a Q. The KQ guy though has to realise that the only Q combo he can beat is QJ though. If the aussie was opening Q5s or something there's no chance I would have missed it, and really QJ was too wide as it is anyway. If he hadn't shoved and bet smaller, or checked I would have ended up winning that pot. Or the KQ guy actually playing correct when he beats exactly one combo of hands for a almost a 2x pot shove and then has 4 players still behind, any of whome could have some kind of nuts.

Talking to him after the tournament, he said he'd talked to his friends and they all concluded it was a perfect read. I'm just like wow your friends are just as dumb as you. Dude came 5th obv and I busted early day 2 after taking ~22k stack into day 2 from 30k starting.

So yah I built a little early on an absolutely great day 2 table, but flipped AKs into QQ vs Roberto Romanello btn vs sb. Pretty much the most standard spot in the world, if he hadn't deicded to 4-bet click it back, and then put not enough money in the middle. lol
He's a good guy actually. I saw him at the airport with his friend Ranni, and hung out with Roberto a little on this trip.

We actually happened to play a few tables together this trip too. We both ended up final tabling a 300e turbo, where I came 5th for 1.3k euros. Was kinda meh since one dude folded JJ pre in a stupid spot and cashed for more, and on the FT I lost AJ to 34s, AK to JTs and then watched someone else punt off then win. Just got raped on the ICM, still happy to put up a greek flag on hendon mob though.

After busting the main event, I hemed and hawed before entering the 2200 euro side event. It was soft so was ok, but I'd just bust the main that day then played till just past midnight and busted 2nd last level of the day flipping 55 into AK for 25bbs each. Good times. not. Missed most of the stars party and then they ran out of beer.

I actually played pretty well and just bricked everything else, including bubbling a 500+500+100 euro bounty turbo, where I had zero bounties. Yep that's how it was going. Even lost 1200 euros at 2/5 cash, where I lost a ~1500euro pot with TT ai vs AK pre, when AK overflatted btn pre, sb 3-bets redic small everyone calls and I fistpumped it in like I had the nuts :(

In other news Rupert went deep in the main event, but busted 13th, to the eventual winner Zimmy! Zimmy was a university friend of Rups at Imperial and I'd met him  a few months earlier in the first San Remo of 2011. Nice guy and very happy to see him win.

mr nico, zippy zimmy, tricky ricky, rup the greek , me, big bjorn. bunch of fucking heroes.

On the way back our front left tire was flat. Like totally flat. But we only had 90mins and 118km to get to the airport. there was no other option. We loaded all our stuff, packed David Vamplew in too, and pumped the tire up at a gas station and just crossed our fingers. At the first toll I even sent Rup out of the car just to give it a once over! The lady in the toll booth just looked at us like we we're morons. Too right imo!

So since then I've finished unpacking most of my stuff, and built a desk! I finally have a proper grind station again and look forward to some internet poker in the short future.

wut up grindstation!

I've totally given up on going to Prague this year. It seems like a great festival of poker with WPT, EPT and GSOP (plus ipops!) all working together to put a nice little trip together. However recent trips have taken a lot out of me, and I don't really think I'll always be very happy whilst in Prague. It's cold, it's problem. So I'm staying at home (where I guess it's also just as cold), playing the £2500+125 GUKPT Grand Final this Friday and just having a relaxing winter break overall.

I will also be skipping PCA, and a trip to Australia. Last year was super fun, but I would dread the long plane trip and expenses were super high. A ticket would be at least £1200 return, and Australia is a suprisingly expensive country. The trip for me was only really salvalged because James Keys 1, decided to bink, and 2, decided to let me have 5% one lazy afternoon whilst we were just sitting on the couches shooting the shit.

yes my first trip down under ends up being saved by the idiot on the right

I will enjoy counting the money I will save. WPT Ireland is early January, and I will give it a blast, although it seems like it's just one quickie weekend and no side events :(. At least it will probably just be me Jake Cody and a bunch of Irish people! Always sounds good to me.

I'm unsure on EPT Deuville in late January. I went 2 years ago and really liked it, but only because Timex was there, I met the beautifull Melanie Weisner for the first time, and I ran deep in the Main Event. hence my mind is biased.
 

<3 you MEL!! The only American Jewish Princess for me!

Mickey went last year and rated it as worst trip of all time. He might be right because it's in essentially a French town the other side of the Channel from Brighton, and is just a miserably cold little seaside town that I remember being shut down for the winter.

I can't wait till the Spring already. In the meantime I will probably go ahead and try to play all the UKIPTs coming up because the buyins have gone up, they've added a "High Roller" event and also I want to be on Channel 4. Gotta prove to my mum I can get on TV too!

Skill Games in San Remo

Well I wasn't as excited for this San Remo trip as normal. For a few reasons, the main one being my lack of success live recently.
I hadn't cashed since late June at the WSOP and came into this not playing super good. However 2 "winning" online sessions in a row and I was quite into it. I played reasonably well day 1 of the Main Event, peacefully grinding my way into 60k for day 2. However this was a fustrating day where I wasn't really bringing any heat and busted relatively early.

I kept bringing fire in the sides, making day 2 of the 2.2ke with 22.8k from a 20k starting stack....
In the win the button 330e turbo I vpiped 2 hands, one where I lost 42% of my stack with KK pre and then the last one to bust when I'd just decided to blind out.

On day 2 of the 2.2ke I also busted a 1.1ke with the turbo in the evening. Therefore I bust 3 tournaments in a day. I was thrilled!

A little drained for the final 1.1ke side I almost didn't play but forced myself into it. The 80 total field I think reflects how lethagic everyone was. At the start of the day I was already wishing I hadn't registered.
To sum up day 1, I waited around for a long time, had a 30min heater and ended the day with ~60k from a 10k starting stack. With only 80 runners though, we came back with 12 when 8 paid.
With 11 left I called off a bunch of my stack with TT vs AJ and AK and held on a board similar to 9436ddd when AK had Kd and no other diamonds were dead. I lol'd. This meant I went into the bubble quite big, but my seat draw was bad with 3/4 other best playes left directly to my left, and all with stacks. Everything to my right was short.
I was holding it together, and then 5 handed raised CO with 30bbs, and called a 3bet with KK. Was a pretty bad call in retrospect and I knew it immediately. The opponent bet twice on AxxT and I folded turn. He later revealed he had AK tho! I was definitely freerolling the rest of my tournament and ran good enough to win. We chopped HU and played for 2.5ke instead of the 10k difference.
HU we started even stacked  80bbs deep, but it didn't last long. It defintiely didn't feel like it took more than 40mins. I was very pleased to win and actually put my 2nd ever 1st place onto the Hendon Mob. It also meant I got unstuck for the trip, needing 3rd to breakeven :(

On the IRL front I now live in bayswater! A bit of a struggle getting my shit together for the move, but I managed to move all my stuff from A to B! Of course I realise now that 40% of my things are useless to me; I only hope I can it ebay away.

I still need a desk, and also actually finish unpacking. Mickey has been really good to put up with all my boxes everywhere, although he's probably just happy to have internet!

My week is basically to fully unpack, play the pokerstars.fr FCOOP 100e rebuy on Thursday and then play some live poker Fri/Sat. Sunday I play online obviously, then EPT Loutraki. I wasn't super into this trip, but I have Euros to blast right now. With the Euro dying on our television sets, I might as well get rid of the excess I'm holding.