Just finished the Manchester UKIPT. It was the second leg of the tour but the first in England and it looks like this tour is going to be a full on ride. Originally we’d thought about 300 players for the event but ended up with 520 with poker tables spilling onto the gaming floor and everyone struggling to keep up. Not only that the atmosphere was great – already the tour has a great mix of serious poker and people looking to have a great time. I’m seriously excited by the potential of this tour – I think it’s going to set records on a regular basis and discover lots of new playing talent. More than that I think anyone that comes to an event is going to have a really fun experience. On the first morning of the weekend I hosted a poker tutorial where online qualifiers could attend for free and discuss some tournament hands and share their ideas – Julian Thew (just signed to Stars) was there to lend his expertise. Doing this sort of thing and when people get together to talk poker new ideas always emerge – they’ll be one at each UKIPT event so hope you can catch one.

In other news my own poker playing is suffering at the moment. I’m struggling to find time to play when I can be fresh and focused and it’s so tough to do well against good players when you’re not at your best. Having said that I’m running horribly in 2010 – way below expectation – and I’m only slightly down so I feel like I’m playing okay and it could be much worse! Had fun the other night where at one of my tables a reg was abusing a fish for his ‘bad play’. This is a massive pet hate of mine – first because he should be encouraging the bad player if he says anything – and second because its full on rude and borderline pathetic to do it behind the safety of an internet connection. Anyway this reg was already tilting and after I stuck my oar in he went off the deep end jamming away a couple of buy ins before quitting….it was something so see

Away from a frustrating run and aggression in the chat box I was reminded in Manchester of the charms of playing live. At the end of the tournament I sat down in a late night low stakes cash game with some locals. The emphasis was on fun and in the space of a couple of hours I was slow rolled with Aces, offered to be set up with a 24 year old Russian model and bought Don Perrignon… I swear the game was low stakes! Sometimes poker is just the most fun you can have in the world – even on Valentines day!

So I’m at the PCA which is pretty awesome.

Don’t know how many of you listen to the EPT live broadcasts but I just love doing them. One of my favourite work jobs of all the ones I’m lucky enough to do – hope that comes across. We’ve got 5 days of broadcasts out here and I enjoy them more than the days off…..which having just written in out loud probably makes me slightly odd.
Writing this as the final table goes on and I’m on a break from commentary and the play is spectacularly good. I’ve said this before but it’s great to watch and talk about players that are so much better than I am – it makes it super tough to analyse and makes you think about what they’re doing and I’m not. Hope it’s the same for you guys watching – I’ve got no doubt watching cards down poker either on ept live or railing high stakes on line can help your game.

Bizarrely – to make you feel better if you’re struggling through the long snowy winter – it’s cold here. Still a cool place to be but it’s literally cool. I went out for a walk last night and wore the same coat I wear at home in London. … I know boo hoo right?!
Anyway I’ve been thinking a lot about expected value and value generally. I heard this pod talk about value in life and pricing. And the guy was talking about how people are terrible at estimating the value and also estimating their odds of reward

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html

Some of it is very basic for poker players but you might enjoy thinking about Value in real life
I’m going to write a column about it soon where I’ll rip off some of this talk – but don’t tell anyone….
I was thinking about this as I stood in the queue at Heathrow to check in.
I had a 9 hour flight to Miami and about a 16 or 17 hour journey in total ahead of me. I was also exhausted and wanted to sleep on the flight so I started thinking – upgrade. As the queue went down I decided to try and put a value on the ‘premium economy’ my high maintenance ass so desperately craved.

This dilemma backs up the problem we humans have with assessing value in our day to day lives. The main thing being I’ll only ever take the trip once. I can’t compare how I’ll feel taking it in economy vs taking it in premium economy.
I settled on a figure of £200 – which I figured is the price I’d pay for arriving with some sleep and stretched out legs. As I type this I realise that 22.50 an hour for a comfy seat is a bit much – maybe 150 is the number.
Anyway I got to the desk and asked and the number was £239. I knew I was going to do it as soon as I heard the number. Maybe it was worth more to me than I thought, maybe I was always going to do it regardless of the number, or maybe the cash desk assistant was just fit. The point is I didn’t abide by my initial value assessment.
After the event I still can’t say whether it was good value or not. I had a comfy flight – in economy I may have had a huge person or screaming baby next to me in which case I’d have paid 239 to get out but I also could have had 3 empty seats next to me in which case I wouldn’t.

I’m aware this might be the dullest blog I’ve ever written but the whole idea and challenge of assessing value in life fascinates me. It also fasicantes me how bad we are at removing emotion from decisions…. Anyway I’ve already started thinking about whether to do it on the way back…. My journey to geekdom is complete I think

I thought for my benefit and maybe for your interest I should analyse my poker playing in 2009.

The exercise has actually been beneficial for my state of mind as it’s made me realise I’ve done a little better than I thought. Our perspectives often interfere with the truth and its important to see thing as they really are good and bad. At the end of October and the beginning of November I had a big downswing playing in games I know I can beat. Funnily enough this was the point at which the main tracking site started following Omaha so after 4 weeks of losing I was confronted by a big downward graph on this site and anyone who knew my screen name and looked me up would see me as a big loser in a game that’s relatively easy to beat. This was a low point in the year but I’m happy to say I took a week off refocused and won it all back by the end of December. The point is this downswing knocked my confidence and halted my moving up limits so I was feeling a little down about my year until I stepped back and remembered where I was.

At the start of the year I’d been playing Omaha seriously for 3 or 4 months and was just about breaking even at .5/1 – through luck rather than judgment. 12 months later I’m winning at 1/2 though I’ve yo-yoed between limits and endured some downswings I’m certain that when I play well and focussed I’m beating 1/ 2 and ready to seriously tackle higher.

In addition I’ve had an amazing year in PLO tournaments – running extremely hot in the few events I’ve played. I finished 10^th in an ftops, very deep in a wcoop, 13^th in one of only 2 live plo tourneys to date. Also – when playing for fun – I’ve final tabled 4 or 5 low stakes plo tourneys online and won one (the amount of dead money in these events is ludicrous).

In total this year I’ve won a little over $22k in cash and tournaments playing almost entirely PLO.

The truth is I have to be pleased with that result. Looking back I realise how little I understood the game at the beginning of the year and the exciting thing is there’s still a long way to go.

My frustration is that I thought I’d be playing 2 / 4 regularly by now but I have to recognise several things. First of all I simply don’t play enough. My other work and commitments mean I play on average 15k hands a month which is okay but nowhere near what a pro would play if he was trying to beat a new game.

The second thing is Omaha plays so much bigger than holdem. 1/2 or .5/1 with an ante are games where you can win or lose 2 or 3 thousand in a night on a lucky or unlucky day. It’s impossible to avoid big swings in your bankroll and it’s a mental and money management adjustment that takes a while to make. The biggest thing for me has been increasing my patience with the game and realising there are spells when you never make a hand or where you constantly run into the nuts and these are just a part of the game. Omaha is a much more enjoyable exciting game but it’s also a harder game because it’s a much bigger test of character. At times I’ve failed and losses have made me play worse and created big downswings – however I feel like I’m ending the year a much stronger player in terms of my self management and overall playing ability.

Out of interest you might like to know I now have a stop loss when I play a session of 5 buyins. I’ve never had one before believing the old mantra that if you have an edge in the games you should keep playing however you can lose so fast at Omaha and its so hard to play badly when you’re behind I think a stop loss limit for a session is essential.

I need to credit Brian for helping me so much this year. I know how lucky I am to have such a good player as a friend and someone I can talk to about the game and hands. If I took his advice and quit all my work and played plo with him as my coach I’m sure I’d be killing the 5/10 in no time. Sadly that’s not going to happen but I know I wouldn’t have made the money I made without his help so I am lucky. As a side note I should mention how awesome it’s been to watch him kill the big games this year – no one works harder at their game or deserves the success more.

I also played the main event this year. As I’m sure you know I had quite a dull event in terms of my play and the cards and result but the experience was great and I’m glad I won’t shuffle off this mortal chaffinch without having played it.

And so for this year I have a couple of clear goals.

Firstly I want to continue to improve my Omaha cash game. Its tough to set definitive targets as it’s dependent on how much time I have to play but by the end of the year I want to be a winning 2/4 player taking shots at higher. I think it will take most of the year to get my game to that point as I need to do the work – if I can do it faster I’ll be delighted. I hope to win more than this year but I’m not setting a target instead I’m going to set a target number of hands and hopefully the money will follow.

I’ll also be playing more live tournaments this year (which means more than the 3 I usually play each year). With the UKIPT job I’m playing some events Stars are kindly putting me into (which is super lucky for me) and I’ll also play a few more off my own back. Being sponsored for a few events is an opportunity for me to work on my tournament game and get the monkey off my back of not really having many live tourney results. It’ll be interesting to see how this goes and if I can keep my focus in the long live events!

Right longest blog ever so better end it.

Hope your poker was great in 2009 and 2010 is even better – if not I hope you run like the little baby Jesus.

Hope you’re well and enjoying the 17 week run up to Jesus’ birthday.

I’ve just come back from the first UKIPT event in Galway. (that’s U K and Ireland poker tour for those who aren’t sure – it’s a poker stars tour).

I’m working on the tour as tour ‘host’. To me it sounds like I should wear a burgundy smoking jacket and great everyone with a stiff brandy on arrival. Actually that sounds kinda cool…. maybe I’ll pitch that.

To be honest I’m really excited to be doing the job. Stars do a great job of their tours and hopefully this one will be a big boost to U K poker. It has buy ins that are accessible – or easily satelliteable to – but they will also be really prestigious events to win I think.

Part of my job is to relay what players think and want back to Stars so do get in touch if you’re interested in the tour or if you’ve played Galway or satellites and let me know any questions or feedback you have.

I’ll also be doing a ton of media stuff for the tour including a podcast and a new web show called ‘on tour’ which is partly poker magazine show and partly me titting about – aces!

Galway was great. Good atmosphere, top venue and a really high standard tournament. I have no idea how some of the Irish players drink and party like they do and still play well – but they clearly do. I’m such a lightweight, one Coors light with lunch and I’m ready to fall asleep face forwards on my chips.

Also this is my second poker trip to Ireland this year and both times the friendlieness of everyone and the atmosphere has been fantastic. You hate to slip in to cliché but it’s hard to find a bad word to say about the hospitality over there.

My poker’s going pretty well. I had one of those brutal PLO downswings recently so haven’t updated much on here – all too depressing. But I’m now enjoying the flip side which is a 20 buy in up swing (yay) and feel like I’ve really improved my game by working and focussing…..and catching some cards

I’ll do a playing blog soon and through some hands in – it is PLO but hopefully it’ll still be interesting.

There were Christmas trees and lights everywhere in Galway which is nice and all but I’ve never been able to get into Christmas until about the 23^rd – sorry I love it but I love it for 4 days not 40. Also I’m old school it starts when I go back to my family home not really before.

In other news I’m super “stoked” as the kids say to see Avatar. Ever since I heard Cameron was planning this I knew he’d deliver something we hadn’t seen before – I’ll be there on Saturday night with 3D glasses on and chocolate raisins in hand as excited as a 10 year old…. Now that’s the real meaning of Christmas.

Apologies for not “blogging” for a while. I haven’t been doing too much of substance the last couple of weeks…

….but enough about me what about this Isuldur malarkey?

Just in case you’ve been living in a poker free world for the last three weeks you’ve missed some of the most amazing events in the history of the game/sport/big gambling laugh.

Quick potted history…

A young Swedish player – whose identity still isn’t 100% confirmed brought a bankroll over to Full Tilt from some of the euro sites. He started cleaning house against the 25/50 regulars before quickly moving up and going on one of the biggest heaters in online poker history.

At his peak he won a ludicrous $5 million in 10 days – including doing the unthinkable and kicking Durrs ass at NL Holdem for over 2 million. Of course he has now fallen to earth.

I’ve written about positive tilt a lot and this clearly happened to Isuldur as he started playing PLO (he still seems great at the game but not as good as NL) and started playing the best in the world simultaneously.

Last night he lost over 3 million (including the biggest pot in online history at over 1.3 million) playing Phil Ivey and Patrick Antonious heads up on 5 or 6 tables at the same time. Playing either of these two at poker can generally be described as ‘a bad tactical move’ – but playing them heads up at the same time at not your best game at 500/1000 blinds with a 200k buy in on each table. Well let’s just say Isuldur must carry his balls around in a wheel barrow.

It’s been quite something to watch. And I have no shame in admitting that for the first time in my life I’ve been a railbird.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this week or two of online poker will be remembered for years and years to come. Up there with the classic heaters and matches in poker history.

Quite where Isuldur will land in terms of poker ability and longevity who knows. That’s not really the point, the point is the excitement and eye popping money that it brought to the game – online, accessible to everyone. Before the internet rare games like this happened almost in secret – now you can see every hand history.

The real sadness of it is that these stakes online and this level of competition will rarely happen again.

High stakes games will slowly die as players discover each others level and, as has already happened at No Limit, refuse to play each other.

And who really is going to put millions on the line against the best like this again?

I hope I’m wrong but I think the last year or so will be seen in the future as the golden age of internet poker.

I don’t know if I’m in awe of Isuldur’s gambling balls and fearless play or derisive of his lack of self management and disdain for money….probably all of that.

What is up and so forth….

Just got back from a really fun weekend in Dublin at the Boyles Irish Poker Open.

These weekends are awesome – like the Virgin Poker Festival and APAT events they’re the present and future … we need more.

Mass participation tournaments with affordable buy ins and a good prize that can change a casual players bankroll are great for poker. And if they have a top atmosphere around them like this one they make an awesome weekend.

This tournament is huge and if you weren’t there this year you need to get involved next time. I think there were 1300 plus runners which meant that for jus a $250 buy in you could win a $60k plus first prize.

Obviously I came really close but got bad beated near the big money….. That or I lasted a grand total of 28 minutes. Which is … you know….. shit but wahddayagonnado

My Kings ran into Aces and that was me all done. I did this in a Teddy KGB accent ‘Eiy Feel So UnSchatisfied’

I retired to my room to play online before the cash games and fun started in the evening where I watched my beloved LFC lose to a goal scored by a beach ball…that’s proper running bad!

Actually I ran bad all weekend live and made up for it online. My friends – a lot of the on the rail bloggers…you know who they are – also ran bad. However that did very little to dampen the weekend. We had a good ‘craic’ – which I’m told is a real thing.

Dublin was a lot of fun but weekends like this one remind me it’s really who you’re with that’s important we could have been in a 5 star exclusive beach club or a caravan park in a rainy Paignton it wouldn’t have mattered.

I’ve eaten and drunk a bit too much of good stuff lately (ie things that are bad for you) – so I’m going on a health kick until December and the Christmas onslaught. It’s actually fun doing this after a lot of abuse – also good for your poker! At least that’s what I’m telling myself…. Got to have some compensation for giving up the good stuff.

So it’s the WSOPE – which sadly I’m not playing in. It’s a great event but I’d be an underdog in it as the field is really strong. Or at least it certainly seems this way as only the best come over from America and only the best Europeans can manage the buy in. It’s definitely one of the big ones all the pros are desperate to win in the calendar and hopefully it will get a great champ as it has in previous years.

Apparently Phil Hellmuth rode a chariot round Leicester square and came in as a centurion or prefect or whatever that ludicrous garb is supposed to be. So … um… why did this happen exactly? This is the same ‘entrance’ he ‘performed’ at the WSOP in Vegas – so obviously it was such a hit that we needed to see it again. Clearly Phil is hoping that the continued and increasingly preposterous entrances will mask his obviously dwindling abilities and the incontrovertible fact that he enters these non-big field WSOP events as a huge underdog to the field. It’s a bit like the Burnley team turning up at Anfield dressed as super heroes and being choppered in to the centre circle with accompanying fireworks only to be beaten 6-0. I guess it’s too much to ask when he gets knocked out this time if he’ll fall on his sword?

In other news I was making the short walk from my flat to my local Waitrose when I spotted someone coming the other way and had that ‘I know him who is it’ feeling. It was one of those situations where it was so unlikely I’d see this person I couldn’t place him. He was looking at me similarly. Anyway we were almost past each other when I blurted ‘you’re peter eastgate’ (I suspect he already knew that) he replied ‘you do the commentary’ …. We had a nice chat mainly about the docklands light railway and that it transpires he lives about 5 minutes walk from me. As I left the conversation with a smile on my face I slowly realised the creeping truth of it all – I was no longer the best poker player in Canary Wharf. In fact he lives so close that I’m now only the best player in my block of flats. That is until I find out Cole South is renting the penthouse two floors up.

I will – of course – be moving

This is a bit rushed as things have got busy as I thought they would

First up the PLO tourney went pretty well.

I finished 33^rd out of almost 2800 for just under a 2k cash.

Obviously I’m pleased but it’s always a bit disappointing when you make a deep run in a tourney and don’t have a huge score.

I got off to a fast start – tripling up early with Aces vs 2 optimists. And was able to build on that to be in the top 10 for a long time

I lost a couple of big pots and then had to grind for the last couple of hours. Ended up getting it in with bad Aces fro 15 big blinds vs tw others. Only had 38% equity but if I’d have holed up I would have been right back in it – all pretty standard

This finish goes with my deep run in the FTOPs event last year and in a £500 live tourney in the Vic. I’ve also won two small PLO buy in events online.

So in my short PLO career I have a ludicrous ROI in tournament and am showing about a $10k profit.

Clearly I’ve run very hot and gotten lucky so far however I do think theres a lot of money to be made in PLO tourneys. The play is much too passive with very little non AA 3 betting. There are also a lot of players taking a shot at the game and a ton of dead money

I’m going to play more (obviously) hopefully with one of the live events at the London EPT or upcoming Vic festival.

In other news I’m sure you all saw the Derren Brown predict the lottery results programme.

I love Derren – especially his book – not only is he great at what he does he’s also funny and is clearly on a mission to expose the nonsense people believe while simultaneously taking advantage of it.

Though I wouldn’t care to guess the logistics -it’s pretty obvious the lottery prediction show was a form of past posting (knowing the result before declaring it).

However the interesting thing was the ‘explanation’ show. I thought it was pretty funny – actually hilarious.

Then on a train journey yesterday I heard a woman explaining to her friend how he’d used the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to predict the lottery. I was actually shocked anyone could view the show as credible or anything other than funny – as I’m sure it was intended. But then we live in a world where people believe in astrology, homeopathy and who knows what else so I shouldn’t be.

Like everything it relates to poker and the scores of players who refuse to approach the logic of the game and blame anything but bad decisions for their bad results.

Wisdom of crowds?! I can think of other words….

Can’t wait for what Derren has next

Poker in the park happened in Leicester square this week. Hope you made it down – if not you missed out

I think it’s the 3^rd year Bluff have run it and it was as big a success as ever. I have to hand it to them the idea of a poker festival in the centre of town free for the public is a great one. This will sound inane but I had no idea that bit in the middle of Leicester square was so big! It is though you know they had a tonne of marquees in their and still had room for general milling about.

I did a talk in the ‘lecture tent’ which was reasonably intimidating given that I’ve barely ever sat through a lecture let alone given one. I was a big fan of the plinth they gave you to lecture behind – I felt ready to stage a coup. We could have totally taken Leicester square and then together….half the west end…before everyone got a bit tired and stopped for a pint.

My talk was on ‘luck in poker’. Luck fascinates me and I’ve been writing bits and pieces on it for a long time now. It’ll be a book when I get my arse in gear – somewhere around 2013 I reckon. Anyway the talk was filmed and I hope to have it up on my site in a few days so check it out.

I finished my day by powning the special invite donkament – hey they don’t just give away 3^rd place in those things you know! Given that a large part of my talk was about luck/variance in live tournaments I’m not sure I can attach much significance to it…

Speaking of variance I had my worst single session in my online career last week in terms of buy ins lost. It was totally horrific. I’ll save the details for another blog or maybe a column but I played on far far too long something I almost never do. The next day I felt horrendous about it but I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve been winning so easily that I’d got complacent and poker hates it when you do that and gave me the thrashing I deserved!

Anyway I punished myself with a few days off and I’ve been catching up on work and seeing friends. Apart from some writing commitments I’m going to try and take it as easy as I can for the rest of August and get playing again. September has a ton of poker work and other good stuff so will be flat out so I’m gonna try and enjoy whats left of summer.

Hope you get to do some of that.

Play well - run better.

I’ve been playing a lot of poker lately

It’s weird it comes and goes for me but for some reason at the moment I’m loving it.

Lately I’ve had a couple of all night sessions. Which in my ridiculous world means until 7am or later. On both occasions I’ve been winning and the games have been ridiculously good.

Omaha on the weekends is crazy.  The more solid regulars often don’t play the weekend evenings – which I think is a huge error. I understand that they probably want to have social lives or something but if I was trying to earn my living playing online poker I’d make my weekend Tuesday and Wednesday or something because there are just so many drunken gamblers on the weekend – god love em.

I’ve been running well since Vegas and playing pretty well to. My results are great – I’m beating 1/2 PLO for 11bb/100 over almost 20k hands. (for those of you not from planet poker anything over 4 is great – 11 is really killing it)

 This win rate is really high and not sustainable BUT I do think it’s a realistic win rate for me in the games I’ve been playing on a weekend night.

I’m getting to the point where I’m taking shots at 2/4 games. Of course the problem with Omaha (like life) is just when you think you’ve got it licked it’ll make you look a fool. I’ll keep you posted!

I’ve been trying to regulate my sleep patterns recently and finding it a real challenge. I’ve always been a night owl which is never going to change but I have no regular sleep schedule and it definitely impacts me and how much energy I have during the day. The worst thing is when I pull an all nighter for no particular reason other than I fancy it…. Actually wait that’s not true.

I love it too much. I love the feeling when it’s so late that you’re head hurts a little and your eyes hurt a lot. First light is breeching the curtains and the sounds of traffic are just beginning. The world is still asleep but I’m playing. And I’m in flow. Too tired for proper conscious thought but my unconscious brain has long since taken over. My numbed brain only occasionally punctured by the adrenalin of a big pot. And the money is racking up because I’m running good and I may be tired but I’m still together where others are tilting or were never together in the first place. And in a few minutes I’ll get breakfast and sleep while others wake and do whatever regular people do ….

…

Sorry – you lost me for a moment there!

Hope you’re having fun too - play well and run better.