Yorky Pud

Mid afternoon yesterday I decided, on a whim, to go and play some live poker in Leeds. Despite the fact both my live and online game is rustier than a 1972 Ford Cortina I was really looking forward to sitting down at the felt and putting into practice all the things I have seen on the World Poker Tour this year.

As mentioned I only decided to play around 90 minutes before the tournament was due to start, it was a little bit of procrastination that lead to me making the trip to my home town. You see, I had just written a story for SportMoose (a project I am working on at the minute) and was checking out Facebook when I saw a status update from Mel Lofthouse. Although I have never met Mel, until yesterday at least, I know she is a poker supervisor and has been part of the game for an age, so when he status said she was in Huddersfield (10 miles from me) and was involved in a “20/20” tournament I made some enquiries.

To cut a long story short it turned out Mel was in Huddersfield but was actually working a tournament at Gala Leeds which was a £20 Second Chance with £2,000 added to the prize pool and an expected turnout of at least 250. This sold it for me, people on Christmas holidays, a decent prize pool to start with then £2k added on top meaning around £4,000 FTW. Ship it to the Pudding!

At the casino I signed up for membership with a pen that the woman had obviously found at the very back of a drawer somewhere as there was a big blob of gelatinous black ink on the end that refused to budge no matter how much I picked, rubbed and nipped. At least it made my illegible handwriting even more incomprehensible so the chances of me receiving spam to my inbox has been drastically reduced. Anyway, after my ink-related mini drama I bought in and after sinking a glass of Pepsi that cost £1.95 and tasted the same as the free Pepsi given out by every other casino I have ever graced with my presence I took my seat on Table 19 Seat 6.

We started with 5,000 chips and played to a 25-minute clock where the blinds started at 25/50 then went something like 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 150/300, 200/400, 300/600 and after that I'm unsure because I busted out but it is safe to presume 400/800. You get the picture. My table looks pretty good, one 25-ish dude who gives the early impression he could know what he is doing, an Indian dude with big biceps to his left, a gormless looking 30-something to his left, a 40-year old baseball cap sporting PokerStars T-shirt wearing Cockney in Seat 4, a spectacled 40-year old geezer to my right, a granddad to my left, a young lad with an Emo haircut in the eight seat, a 50-year old bloke in the nine seat and some young pup in the last seat. Yes we were ten-handed, not ideal but whatever.

First hand I look down and see 7c3h staring back at me and I fold from under the gun. For some reason I hate having a playable hand on the first hand so was quite happy to find rags in the hole. I was also very happy to see three limpers and then a 1/4 sized bet on the flop from the first limper on a ten-high board. If that pleased me imagine how happy I was to see the gormless looking bloke open from the cutoff the very next hand to 7bb and receive two callers! As 70% of the table had decided to use their second chance I requested chips and took on the mushrooms 200bb deep.

My first and only playable hand of the first level saw me make a mistake. I opened 3x with 6s6d from UTG+1 and was called in three spots. The flop came down Ks-10s-4c and for some unknown reason I c-bet and all three villains called. I check-folded the Qc turn and saw the hand eventually won with Ts9c. I made amends in the next level when the baseball cap wearing man open-limped in middle position then called when I raised it up with AhKh. He check-called a bet on an all low rainbow flop, then again on a Qs turn but he check-folded my bet on a Ad river stating he thought I had king-queen.

Then in the 100/200 level it all went downhill rapidly. The baseball cap dude two to my right had continued to open-limp so I raised it up to 600 with the monster that is 6c3c, only to see the young pup move all in for 1,250. Limper dude folded and I said something like, “this should be good for my image” and called. Young pup shows As9s, flops an ace and fades the club flush draw. “You have an image?” quizzed Limpy McLimpalot, “I have a red nose in the car you can borrow if you like.” Quite the joker.

Young pup then chases a flush draw and misses leaving himself with around 1,200 again when I get into the Christmas spirit and double him up again. He open-limped from early position and the guy to his left, the only one at the table who seemed to know what he was doing, min-raised to 400. It folded to me in the big blind and I called with 7d5d only to see young pup move all in. The decent lad glanced at me before folding and Limpy Limperson said, “will this be good for your image too?” I call and find I am against QcJs, really, and although I take the lead on a Tc-7s-3d flop the turn is a queen and I drop to 8,300.

I then make a really stupid call on the flop when I opened from the hijack with 8h7h and then called a three-bet from the nine seat (small blind). He checked to me on a Ks-Qs-7d flop and I checked behind. The turn was the 3d and he now leads half pot and I should have folded I suppose but called. The river was the 6c and he fires again and I get out of the way.

That left me with 4,550 at the break with the blinds 200/400 upon our return. After slurping another overpriced Pepsi the break was over and I discovered I had lost the racing off of the 25 chips so was on 4,500. The granddad told me my 11bb stack “still had plenty of play in it” and that all this moving in with 10bb stacks was completely wrong because you luck can change any second. OK. I fold complete rags for a couple of hands before open shoving from middle position with Th7h and I pick up the blinds. A couple of hands later and I am on the button  and a fellow shorty, a guy new to the table, open-limps two to my right and I jam JdTd and pick up another pot. An orbit later another player new to our table, a 75-year old man, open-limps from the hijack and I find 9d8d on the button. I was going to shove on him but couldn't pull the trigger. My spider-sense must have been tingling because he had open-limped pocket kings it turned out.

My exit hand came just as the blind were about to increase to 300/600. Everyone folded to me in the cutoff and I moved my 14bb stack with AsTc and the granddad to my left snap-reshoved, covering me by around 1,000 chips. The blinds fold and granddad flips over red queens, which hold and I am busted something like 203/274. Not my finest hour that is for sure.

Regardless of the tournament not exactly going to plan I did enjoy it and will certainly be playing live a lot more in 2012. Until then it is back to the online grind!

The live tournament calendar has been completed for yet another year and that means that the various outlets have all announced their Player of the Year. There two main distributors of such awards are CardPlayer Magazine and Bluff Magazine. Continue reading to discover who won what!

The Bluff Magazine award is seen as the industry standard due to the fact it has been tweaked and fine-tuned over the past fie or six years so that it gives a sound representation of the best player of that particular year. Bluff use a special formula that takes into account the buy-in of the event, the number of entrants and the finishing position of the player in question. Also, only the top ten results of the year are taken into account so it levels the playing field somewhat when it comes to high volume players.

Using Bluff's scoring system Euguene Katchalov is the 2011 Player of the Year having amassed 1,089.28 POY points throughout the twelve months of 2011. Katchalov's year got off to a flying start when he won the $100,000 Super High Roller event at the PCA for a cool $1,500,000 then cashing in the PCA Main Event before coming second in the $10,000 PCA High Roller. He also won a World Series of Poker bracelet, reached the final table of another WSOP event, final table bubbled the Six-handed Epic Poker League event, finished third in the EPT Barcelona Main Event and came second in a €2,000 side event during EPT Loutraki!

Just behind the Ukrainian was Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier with 1,071.67 POY points. ElkY had an amazing year that was topped off by completing the Triple Crown of live titles. Making up the top ten are Ben Lamb, Matthew Waxman, Stephen O'Dwyer, Sam Trickett, Marvin Rettenmaier, Chris Moorman, Elio Fox and Pius Heinz.

The CardPlayer system basically awards points for any final table reached, as long as the tournament has a set number of players in it in relation to the buy-in. Using this system the Player of the Year is Ben Lamb with 6,036 POY points. Lamb completely crushed the 2011 WSOP in a way we probably will not ever see again. He was the runner-up in the $3,000 Pot Limit Omaha event and a week later he took down the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Championship. A few days later he reached the last two tables of arguably the toughest live tournament ever held the $10,000 Six-Handed Championship. Most players would take their foot off the gas at this point but Lamb is not most players, instead he entered the $50,000 Poker Players Championship and reached the final table before busting in eighth place. And last but certainly not least Lamb was the third place finisher in the Main Event! His winnings in 2011 alone were a staggering $5,352,970!

Trailing Lamb in the CardPlayer rankings were Moorman, Oleksii Kovalchuk, Rettenmaier, Sam Stein, Jason Mercier, Fox, Galen Hall, Katchalov and O'Dwyer.

The race to become the Player of the Year restarts again in just a few days time when the 2012 PCA kicks off on Paradise Island in The Bahamas (January 5-14) then with the Aussie Millions (January 12-30). Who will take an early lead in the battle to be recognised as the best player of the year and who will be left playing catch up? Here on the Betfair Blog we will bring you all the news from around the world over the coming 12 months and beyond.

If I had to sum up my playing of online poker during 2011 in a single word it would have to be "disappointing" mainly because non-existent is essentially two words! In cash games I bet I have not played 35,000 hands across the year and counting all forms of tournament poker collectively would see me arrive at a figure of less than 300. Disappointing.

My plans at the start of 2011 were to play a lot of poker but for one reason or another it just has not worked out as I had anticipated, especially over the past few months were I have seem to have done nothing but work, work and work. But fingers crossed that there is a little lull over the next six to eight weeks so I can make up for lost time and get this show back on the road.

One of the main reasons for the lack of volume, the last few months especially, is my workload. Taking the PokerNews gig and a sports betting role have proven to be time consuming but enjoyable so I shouldn't really complain and working on the World Poker Tour, although immense fun, is massively time consuming and simply does not allow much free time to do anything other than work or sleep.

For example, I recently covered WPT Venice which saw me away from home December 12-19. Two complete days were taken up by travelling then the rest of my time was spent working in the casino 1300-2330 and beyond every day, not to mention sites such as Betfair Poker are blocked by our Italian cousins so I couldn't have played even if I could have kept my eyes open long enough to play a few orbits. But other people manage to fit poker into their schedules so why haven't I? Honestly, I think I have simply been more motivated to do other stuff instead of playing. Why that is the case I do not know but I just have not had the urge to play much poker and I think a lot of it is down to my lifestyle.

Once Christmas is out of the way I will be making some sweeping changes to my lifestyle that I hope will give me a renewed enthusiasm for life and get me back on track to where I would like to be in the poker world. I am going to incorporate some exercise into my life which in turn should help me to lose weight. I've become such a bum lately that it is not even remotely funny and I want to lose two stone at least, possible as much as three, and be back down to my so-called fighting weight. Something that will help me do this is cutting down on alcohol, possibly even stopping drinking all together, that last part freaks me out a little if I admit it because alcohol has been part of my life for so long in one way or another, but that is for another blog post altogether, maybe I will write about that later this week but for sure before the end of the New Year.

I've actually got the urge to play poker right now but I have a few pieces of work I simply have to get finished that are on my to-do list, something else I will write about in my next post. Hopefully I will get to play a few tournies tonight because I have just checked my OPR for Betfair Poker and I have only played 13 MTTs! That is ridiculous and something I am determined to change and change sooner rather than later. I am not making any volume based goals at all, I just want to sit down and get back into the swing of playing poker, reading more books and improving my writing and I think all three of those are heavily linked.

So watch this space because I am going to get everything back on track and it should be a very interesting and colourful time ahead!

To many people Phil Ivey is the epitome of poker player. He is well-respected, completely feared at the poker table, hugely successful and widely regarded as the best poker player to have ever lived, but none of that counts for anything in the courtroom so it seems.

Almost two year to the date Ivey and his wife of seven years, Luciaetta, were sadly divorced which lead to the poker community speculating on how Ivey's estate would be divided up. Those details have now come to light thanks to a report in the Las Vegas Review Journal who have been following a court case between the estranged couple.

According to the report the former Mrs Ivey received a purse collection valued at $1,200,000 that would have made Imelda Marcos jealous, more than $1,000,000 worth of jewellery, her car, her life insurance policy, 40 percent of a stock account. A down payment on a new home, half the proceeds from the sale of their former marital homes, 40 percent of all business interests "with the exception of Tiltware, LLC" the parent company of Full Tilt Poker and $180,000 per month in alimony!

Along with all of the above Ivey also agreed to take on the $170,000 worth of credit card debt and more than $15,100,000 in what was only described as "gambling and other debt." So Luciaetta walks away with literally millions of dollars whilst Ivey gets millions of dollars of debt and his interest in the stricken online poker giant Full Tilt Poker. It seems to this humble writer that Mr Ivey has been completely owned, no wonder he was back grinding at the recent APPT Macau Main Event!

In his live tournament career Ivey has won more than $13,800,000 and is currently third in the all-time money listings. A major part of his tournament success has come at the World Series of Poker, which he boycotted this year, where he has won almost $5,300,000 and eight WSOP bracelets. If the various sites that track high stakes cash games online are accurate then Ivey has also profited by more than $16,000,000 from online poker and countless more millions in the biggest live cash games around the world but it looks like he will have to get back to bankroll building when 2012 is upon us.

The €3,300 World Poker Tour Venice Main Event came to a thrilling conclusion late on Sunday night after a rank amateur by the name of Edoardo Alescio defeated seasoned pro player, Steve O'Dwyer, to claim the title and the €175,000 first place prize.

At the start of the five day event Alescio was a complete unknown in the poker world, the youngster did not even have a Hendon Mob page bearing his name but now his name will be remembered forever, engraved into the coveted Champions Cup alongside every single former WPT Main Event champion since the long-running tour first started.

Throughout the tournament, the first major event he had ever registered for, Alescio was seen sporting a wide smile, constantly beaming like the Cheshire Cat, thoroughly enjoying his experience. Along with having his pearly whites on display at all times he also had his iPod on permanently and was often caught drumming on the edge of the table and bopping away like a picked onion in a jar. But on the six-handed final table he was not allowed any electronic devises and that seemed to rattle him.

Although he started the final table second in chips he lost a few early pots and was on the slide down the chip counts when he decided to take an unscheduled break to spend a few minutes on the sidelines with his family, friends and possibly his favourite music and whatever they said to him certainly worked because he came back completely rejuvenated, his body language completely changed and he started to look like a much more experienced poker player than he actually was.

When the tournament director issued the order to his dealer to shuffle up and deal Alescio was guaranteed to take home no less than €27,035 for his efforts but that increased by more than €7,000 when Ukrainian veteran Alexander Dovzhenko was sent to the rail by Alescio's eventual heads up opponent O'Dwyer. Dovzhenko was followed to the rail by Andrea Bellini and Andrea Dato, which meant Alescio would now walk away with a score of at least €66,090.

This sum increased three hours later as Michele Caroli, who made some typically Italian plays both at the final table and the days leading up to it, was sent packing in third place but it looked like his tournament would finish with him being a runner-up because he went into the finale trailing O'Dwyer not only in tournament experience but also 4,989,000 to 1,385,000 chips.

He managed to win a few pots and seemed to be getting his fair share of luck and cooler hands before one hand in particular turned the tie around on its head. On a board reading Qc-9d4d-7c Alescio checked to O'Dwyer and the latter lead into his opponent whilst holding QsTs for top pair. Alescio then check-raised all in with 7d6d and the Italian needed to his a six, seven or diamond or he would be eliminated. The dealer burned a card and put the 8d on the river, completing Alescio's flush and gifting him a similar lead to what O'Dwyer had started the day with.

The match was over shortly afterwards. O'Dwyer, down to around 10 big blinds, moved all in for 1,025,000 with Ac7s and Alescio made the call with 5c5s. The flop came down Ah-5h-9h giving Alescio a set and leaving O'Dwyer drawing to running cards but the 6s turn locked up the hand for Alescio and when the meaningless 4s landed on the rier the players shook hands before Alescio was mobbed by an army of fans who were all chanting his name, the name of the new WPT Venice Main Event winner.

WPT Venice Final Table Results

1st: Edoardo Alescio: €175,000
2nd: Steve O'Dwyer: €95,550
3rd: Michele Caroli: €66,090
4th: Andrea Dato: €43,120
5th: Andrea Benelli: €34,245
6th: Alexander Dozhenko: €27,035

Everyone talks about poker as being a game of pure aggression where betting and raising are the best plays to make in the vast majority of situations but unless you are a rare breed of player who does not care about what holecards you are dealt you will actually be folding, or should folding, more than you are showing aggression.

The actual act of folding goes against our very psyche because we view it as a negative act. I mean who logs onto Betfair Poker and thinks “let's see how many hands I can fold today,” or “I can't wait to play in the $200,000 Champion Chip and fold every single hand.” The Western mindset tells us “you have to be in it to win it,” and other such sayings so folding actually feels unnatural when you are at the poker table because you are playing to win.

But this is the wrong way of thinking because folding is not a negative action, it is one that is necessary if you are to be successful in poker. In some ways poker is much like martial arts in that a player has to learn to allow patience to take over from frantic activity. The best players, and fighters, are observant and bide their time until the moment they see an opening and they then explode into action.

The most common problem associated with folding is that is seems to irritate and even anger some players if they have to fold for long periods of time but that is simply because they have not accepted that folding is a legitimate part of the game. You need to accept folding is necessary and that you will, quite often, have extended periods in a cash game and tournament where all you can really do is fold.

Often when a player is inactive, that is folding, for any length of time they start to think to themselves that they should play any hand just because they have not played one for a while. All of a sudden king-jack looks like a monster hand under the gun after folding for four orbits in a row but do not be dragged into this way of thinking. Instead stick to your starting hand requirements and remember that bad hands are still bad hands even if they are better than the complete rags you have been used for the past hour.

So instead of becoming frustrated when you are inactive for a couple of hours use it as an opportunity to develop your patience because patience is the absolute base you should be building your game on. Once you have become more patient you will be able to endure periods of folding for longer and longer. Finally, just expect nothing from the game. Just continue to play the hands you can and do not start to think it is your right to be dealt premium hands. Eventually everyone receives playable hands so bide your time and things will turn around eventually.

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The World Poker Tour Venice Main Event has seen the 213 entrants whittled down to the final table of six and it is Michele Caroli who everyone has to catch if they want to become a WPT champion.

Caroli starts the day armed with 2,097,000 chips, having won most of his chips in a massive pot between himself and Marvin Rettenmaier. In that particular hand Caroli raised to 50,000 from cutoff with blinds at 8,000/16,000/2,000a, itself an unconventional play and then he decided to call Rettenmaier's 156,000 three-bet from the big blind. Caroli then instantly called a 126,000 continuation bet on a Kd-Qh-9c flop and a 176,000 bet when the 6c landed on the turn. He then had an easy decision to make when Rettenmaier shoved for 220,000 on the arrival of the 7c on the river as he had made these calls holding Th8h and had backed into a straight!

Second in chips is Edoardo Alescio (1,714,000 chips) who does not have a single cash on his Hendon Mob Database. The youngster has, like Caroli, made some questionable plays throughout the day and has shown that he certainly has some gamble in him and should be entertaining to watch when play kicks off on Sunday afternoon.

Third place at the start of play is Andrea Benelli, a player the media have been most impressed with over the past week for his cool and calm approach the game and the fact he has rarely stepped out of line at all. He has some impressive results to his name including two final table appearances in European Poker Tour events and some wins in €1,000- €3,000 events in Italy and neighbouring Slovenia.

Fourth place currently belongs to Steve O'Dwyer, the American on a real heater at the moment, In 2011 alone O'Dwyer has won close to $1,300,000, the bulk of which was awarded for his runner-up spot at the EPT London Main Event, a result that netted him $726,790. He has also won the Bellagio Cup, made the final table of a $3,000 World Series of Poker events and gone deep in several side events. If he doubles up he will definitely be the favourite to walk away with the lion's share of the spoils.

Alexander Dovzhenko is the current fifth placed player with 480,000 chips. The Ukrainian has been a regular on the live tournament scene since 2001 but his best results have come recently and include a second place finish at EPT Kiev in 2009 and more recently a seventh place finish at the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event.

And last but certainly not least is Andrea Dato another player who has the skills to walk away with the title. Dato's largest cash to date was for $138,044 and he won that when he finished third in the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Triple Chance at this year's WSOP. He is the shortest stack at the table with 461,000 chips but that will not really bother him as he has been short all of Day 4.

Play gets underway shortly after 1300CET and will continue until the WPT Venice Champion is crowned. Who will it be? Check in tomorrow to find out!

Back in October Daniel “Jungleman” Cates stated that he had become fed up with all the negative press the game of poker had been receiving since Black Friday and that in an attempt to to turn the world's attention onto what actually matters in poker, actually playing the game, he was issuing an open challenge to anyone in the world who was prepared to play him in a live high stakes heads-up cash game.

The match would see Cates and his opponent sit down with at least €100,000 and play heads up with blinds of €200/€400. At the time of issuing the challenge Cates said, “As someone who loves the game, I thin the poker world deserves to know who the best poker player on the planet is. I'm confident that it's me. If anyone has the nerve to take me on, let them come to Prague in December and sit down across from me at the table.” The reason Prague was chosen as the potential venue is because the World Poker Tour, European Poker Tour and GSOP Live are all hosting major tournaments concurrently so some of the world's best players would probably be in the popular Czech Republic city.

However, after setting the date for the match as December 6, just four days away, nobody has stepped up to the plate forcing Jungleman to cancel his challenge though it has been announced there will be a replacement event taking its place. Instead of a heads-up match, Jungleman and his friends at The Poker Farm have got permission from the King's Casino in the Corinthia Towers hotel to host a special high stakes ring game. This cash game will be played with blinds of €50/€100 and players must sit with a minimum of €10,000 and the rake will be reduced for the duration the game runs.

Both Jungleman and Luke Schwartz have confirmed their attendance with Schwartz saying, “I'll play heads-up or I'll play a ring game. It's just so cringe if these guys call themselves sharks and then run and hide.” The cash game will take place on December 6, which means WPT Prague will be complete but EPT Prague will be starting Day 1b, the most popular day for professional poker players to participate in so it will be interesting to see who sits down with Jungleman and Schwartz on that particular date.

More and more poker tournaments live and online are being played in a deep-stacked structure, especially live events. In these tournaments players usual start with around 200 to 300 big blinds in their stacks, like in the World Series of Poker Main Event, and have slow blind structures that increase every hour to 120 minutes. These events are favoured by skilful players as they allow more play per level but also because many players struggle to adapt to playing with so many big blinds in their arsenal.

Weaker players fail to recognise that the deeper the effective stacks are the more significant implied and reverse implied odds become. What may be a standard play whilst the effective stack is 100 big blinds deep suddenly becomes a glaring mistake if you double or triple the stack sizes. Imagine you are involved in a hand at a six-handed table where one of your opponents raises preflop and you make the call with a pair of eights. The two of you see the flop come down Ac-8d-5s, gifting us middle set.

Obviously this is a fantastic flop for you and with stacks 100 big blinds deep it is basically  never a mistake to get our entire stack in, in fact we are going to be almost always stacking off whilst 200 big blinds deep but what about if we were 400 big blinds deep or even deeper (unlikely in a tournament I'll admit but certainly possible playing cash games, especially heads-up.)

Hands that we may refer to as coolers such as kings into aces or king-high flushes running into ace-high flushes cannot really be called coolers on deep-stacked play because they are actually avoidable. In deep-stacked No Limit Hold'em hands suddenly start to play much like Pot Limit Omaha hands in that hands that can make the nuts increase in value, as do connected cards but small pairs and non-nut hands start to decrease in strength.

Big pairs become more valuable not only because these hands tend to win at showdown but also because the chances of us flopping a set and one of our opponents flopping a higher set are even less likely. Being in a deep-stacked set-over-set situation can be extremely painful and should be avoided at all costs! Another type of hand that increases in strength the deeper stacks get are suited aces. Have you ever noticed on televised cash games such as High Stakes Poker, the more aggressive players seem to raise and call in all positions with suited aces? This is because they are playing deep and being able to hit the nut flush against the second nut flush is much more valuable.

Hands such as JT, T9, T8, 65 all become stronger too due to the fact they can not only make the nuts but they can do so in a much more disguised manner than say a flush. Players naturally notice flushes easier and avoid committing chips when the board is flushed but straights often go undetected until it is too late and are therefore ideal for deep-stacked games.

With more and more games being played deep-stacked it is important you grab these basic concepts quickly otherwise it will not matter how many chips you begin with, they will always be migrating to the stacks of more skilled and knowledgeable opponents.

Hello boys and girls and anything else in between, Yorkshire Pudding here updating his little piece of the interwebs! What have I been up to over the past week or so since I last updated? Well I have actually being playing some poker, not a lot but I have been making some steps in the right direction in terms of multi table tournaments.

Playing poker has taken a back seat in recent weeks mainly due to my current workload and projects I have been working on. Last month I was invited to play in the season opening tournament of the 2011/12 Sky Poker Tour and although I did not cash I really enjoyed myself but since then I have been working away in Amneville for the World Poker Tour and also in London for the Premier League Mixed Game Championship.

I have also been working hard on the PokerNews job I have been doing, working on the launch of a sports betting news project and when some of the articles I have written this month include the Hans Vogl interview that took a total of three hours from speaking to him to writing everything up then I just simply have not had time to sit and play poker as much as I would have liked.

That said I did sit down and play six tournaments recently and went pretty deep in most of them, so year yet so far though. I finished 19/120 (20 paid), 38/266 (30 paid), 40/313 and 54/449 (50 paid) which was a little tilting but going deep in these was a good confidence booster, especially as I was suffering from what is technically known as the **** and was in a right state so getting so deep and not soiling my pants was a pretty good achievement in my eyes.

The day after these deep runs I received a phone call from Betfair who told me they were sticking $50 in my poker account for me to do as I pleased with, which is always nice, so I decided to punt it on some more tournaments with me running and playing quite well. One tournament was the $22 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Low that carried a $600 guarantee. Winning it would hardly make me rich but with only 33 runners you would think I stood a good chance of making it through to the final table wouldn't you? Well you would but in fact I came in stone cold last place after playing like a complete moron. Well played Pud!

The other tournament I entered was an $11 No Limit Hold'em with a $3,000 guarantee on it that attracted 313 runners, making around $800 FTW if I remember correctly. The first two hands so me add 895 chips to my stack then a dozen or so hands later I turned trip eights in a multiway pot with the monster that is 8s6s and managed to get paid off to find myself sitting with just shy of 4,000 chips. Very little happened for what seemed like and age then when the action folded to me in late position I made it 190 to play (blinds 40/80) with Jc8s a bet the cutoff and big blind called. The flop came down 8d-3c-2h, the big blind checked, I continued with a bet of 465 into the 610, forcing the cutoff to fold but the big blind moved all in for 1,715 in total. I don't know what it was but something just didn't add up at all and I quickly called and was shown 9s3s! I held and suddenly I am in the top 20 in chips.

I added to my stack and suddenly I am up past 10,000 chips and really rocketing but a touch of over-confidence kicks me square in the batteries and I lost nearly 5,000 in two hands. The first was a button versus blind where I was trying to represent the exact hand my opponent held and that never ends well and that was closely followed by getting a little too jiggy with top pair against an overpair, again something that never ends well at all.

The next 40 minutes or so were basically spent by me trying not to cough or fart and clicking the fold button, sometimes switching to pressing the F1 key as to spice things up! I then had queens hold against Big Slick, which in itself is a minor miracle before losing 1/2 my stack again then having a pair of sixes hold up all in against fours and ace-nine to get me back into contention. The money bubble burst and not long after I made a big mistakes.

With blinds now 250/500/50a I found myself UTG+1 with 9,675 chips and I think I should have just open-shoved but instead I min-raised to 1,000 and picked up two callers, the dude to my immediate left and the big blind. The three of use saw the 5d-9c-Kd materialise on the flop and the big blind checked. For reasons unknown to me I decided to end the hand right there and moved in for 8,675 into the 3,650 pot, which folded out my friend to the left but was a heaven sent bet for the big blind who held Ks5s and had flopped two pair. I couldn't runner-runner and was sent home 40/313. Ah well.

Tonight, despite being busy with things I need to get sorted before I fly to Prague tomorrow, I am taking part in a $30 tournament that the new Bubble Protection site is hosting. They have paid for my entry and if I or any of the other fishes bubble, which is not 10% of the field I believe, then we receive the $30 buy-in back, despite the fact it cost me nothing to enter. Checking the lobby just now shows 51 players registered with the top six being paid between $96.39 and $509.49, which would be a nice going away gift!

As mentioned I fly to Prague tomorrow to cover WPT Prague. I love Prague, it is such a beautiful city so I am really looking forward to being there. It is a shame I cannot stay longer because there is the WPT, EPT and GSOP taking place concurrently and it would have been good to being around until the end, but such is life. Hopefully we will get at least one early finish so we can have a toby around and of course sink a few cold ones! I am not particularly looking forward to taking off from Leeds & Bradford airport in these horrendous winds we have been having esepcially as I am flying with Jet2.com who I am sure will charge me extra money because of rainy conditions or some other hidden charge rubbish but I am looking forward to the free welcome party I have to go to, yes have to go to.

Oops, this blog has drawn on far too long so I will end it there for one day. As always, thanks for reading and the very best of luck at the tables.