Too Busy for Words

Phewf, things are mental at the moment. I've been far to busy at work to even think about Vegas, let alone get any poker played. I've just about kept up with the headlines from the WSOP, but that's it.

And it's not over yet. I've got 72 more hours rushing around like a blue arsed fly and then I'll fall onto the plane and find myself in Vegas.

I haven't even sorted out how I'm getting cash out for the WSOP, although I'm pleased to announce that the cheques from Stars have finally cleared with the bank.

I might not have got much poker played this last week. But I'm both playing and running pretty well this month. It's all from cash games, but at least I'm on form and have a reasonable confidence level heading out there.

I might squeeze one more post in before leaving then you'll have to rely on Twitter updates (@fishandchips).

Oh, and there are still stake available in my action if you want to partake. $100 gets you 1%.

WSOP links:-
PokerNews.com
PokerStars Blog
Wicked Chops Poker
Pokerati
Poker Road
Black Belt Poker
Poker From The Rail
Poker Listings
WSOP.com
Ultimate Bet Blog
Bluff Magazine

V minus 18 days....

...and painfully counting.

Only 10 more working days to go. The suspense is killing me.

***Edit - forgot to mention that there are still shares in my WSOP action available if you're interested. $100 gets you 1%***

I don't really have anything to write about. All your WSOP news is out there; just check the links out at the bottom.

My poker has been sporadic over the last few weeks. I'm trying to get some live play under my belt but I'm struggling to find the time and I certainly haven't been able find any live tournaments with decent structures or buy-ins.

That has left me playing a couple of sessions of cash at the Empire Casino in Leicester Square where the play is fantastically bad, but I only managed a small profit.

I've also managed a few sessions playing the $200 tables on Stars. I'm reasonably happy with my play at the moment but have been breaking even there too. I'm comforted by the fact that Holdem Manager shows my all-in EV to be $3000 higher than my profit for the year, so I can consol myself with the fact that I've been running very badly.

I hosted a home game on Friday night for the first time in months and had a hoot. We always play with micro-blinds of 10p-20p but by the end of the night there was about £1500 on the table. I was doing nicely - up about £150 - before I did £180 in one pot with 72o. Whoops! Damn that seven deuce game.

I've got the day off tomorrow, so I might put some hours in this evening online, and I'll definitely head to the Empire to get some live cash practice tomorrow. I've heard that the cash game in Vegas at this time of year are sooooooooooft ;-)

In other news, I was at the end of my tether trying to get my Vegas bankroll out of Stars. I've always been used to such good service from PokerStars that I was even more pissed off that every request I made took days to action without even getting the desired result. I guess they've had other things on their mind what with $30m of online winnings having been seized by US government. I'll stop winging as soon as the cheques (that have finaly arrived) clear, but I've had to resign myself to having insufficient time to pre-register for the main event.

Here's your WSOP reading:-
PokerNews.com
PokerStars Blog
Wicked Chops Poker
Pokerati
Poker Road
Black Belt Poker
Poker From The Rail
Poker Listings
WSOP.com
Ultimate Bet Blog
Bluff Magazine

Just a Cold / WSOP Link-Fest

My cold has got worse and I feel like a luke warm turd, but my poker outlook has improved massively.

I've ventured back into the world of online cash games which have been keeping my accumulation of VPPs on PokerStars ticking along nicely. Thanks to their VPP give-a-way for UK players in May, I'll reach SuperNova by July 3rd which will get us an upgrade to a suite at The Palms in Vegas.

Now the WSOP has officially kicked off, I can't keep my mind on anything else. I really don't know how I'm going to be able to cope over the next month. That's far too long to be reading about all the shenanigans and not being involved.

Still, I can use the time to get into shape for the Main Event. I'm going to search out a few good live tournaments to play. I'll also be studying away and watching heaps of CardRunners videos, reading books and forums and playing some of the Sunday tourneys online. A nice cash in some shape or another would be good to boost the confidence.

I'll leave you with a heap of my favourite WSOP links and a reminder that there are still shares available in my action ($100 for 1%) and I'm selling a bunch of W$ on Stars in case you're playing any satellites yourself.

Personal Blogs of those at the WSOP:-
Tao of Poker - The daddy of WSOP coverage.
AlCantHang - The daddy of SOCO drinking.
Animal - Just came 4th in event #3 for $74k.
Amatay - Everyone's favourite Watford fish.


Poker Reporting/Updates:-
PokerNews.com
PokerStars Blog
WSOP.com - Official WSOP Site
Wicked Chops Poker - Poker and girls.
Pokerati
Poker Road
Poker From The Rail - The Full Tilt Blog
Poker Listings
Ultimate Bet Blog
Bluff Magazine

Let me know if I should be adding more to the above.

Cold feet or just a Cold?

The dust has settled on my recent successes in the PokerStars Steps and I'm feeling odd about the experience and the prospect of a Vegas trip. I almost feel as though I don't deserve it, that I'm a total luckbox, and that I'm flushing $10k down the giant Vegas toilet.

I'm sure this will pass as the excitement grows and as I sell more of myself, thus reducing my outlay and the feelings of guilt at spending so much on one tournament.

I've sold about 10% so far with a few more vague offers. If I can sell 50% then I'll be more relaxed. In addition to that the SuperNova suite upgrade and the 100k VPP from PokerStars will also help. Those combined are worth probably somewhere in the $2k region.

I'm also feeling like crap at the moment despite having had five days off this week. Two of them were spent running around getting stuff done at home and expending nervous energy on winning a WSOP seat. The other days were spent entertaining the parents. It's now Monday afternoon, I'm full of cold and have to go to work tonight and start an eight day stretch of night shifts - glorious!

If you want to get involved in the action, I'm selling 1% for $100. So if I cash for $20k you get back $200, if I win $6 million you get $60k! I can take dollar transfers on PokerStars or cash, but in either case it needs to be before the event starts.

I've also got a chunk of PokerStars W$ for sale. They're currently going for 96.5% of their face value. So let me know if you need a cheaper shot at your own WSOP qualification.

Vegas Here We Come

So, I was getting ready to write a whining post about how my chances of making it to the WSOP having only won one package were so slim and how I was desperate to go and how I needed people to stake me to be able to afford it, until this happened:



I'll write more about it all soon, but I just wanted to get this up here and also to advertise my action:-

I'll still be selling some of myself in the main event to help lower the variance and to reduce the rather large percentage of my bankroll that I'm effectively spending on one tournament. $100 will get you 1% of my action in the main event. I'm looking to sell anything up to about 60%, so clearly you can have more than 1% if you want! Let's face it you'd be crazy not to as I'm almost certainly going to win the $6 Million first prize.

Let me know if you're interested in getting behind me and potentially winning some $$$. I'll keep a running total of the amount sold and I'll be updating here, Twitter (@fishandchips), and Facebook regularly. I can take $ transfers on PokerStars or you can hand me the cash in person. I'll check the exchange rate but $100 is somewhere in the region of £65-70, I think.

Time to book the flights...

Urm.... Ship it?

Biggest win to date, but do I play in the World Series or take the $12,000?:



I really want to head over to Vegas and play but given that I'm in the red so far this year I can't really justify not taking the $12,000 in cash. It looks as though I'll have to win more seats!

I'm knackered now. It was a rollercoaster of a tournament. Those Step 6 SNGs are crammed full of sharks. Despite starting with twice the usual nuber of chips, by the time we were down to 9 players from the starting 12, even the biggest of stacks had only two moves: all-in or fold. In all honesty, that was probably a good thing as it removed a lot of the edge that the better players had over me and turned everything into a preflop gamble.

It's all a bit of a blur at the moment, but I seem to remember playing pretty tight early on. I got involved in a couple of 'real hands' (i.e. it wasn't just 'push and hope' preflop): I floated one guy and took a nice medium pot off him only then a couple of hands later I decided to make a hero call with Ace high to be shown the nut straight!

From then on in it was all pre-flop poker. I doubled up with QQ against TT and then got ionvolved in numerous preflop encounters where I yo-yo'd up and down. It seemd that anyone who went in with the best hand was destined to loose. I can't rememebr the number of times I lost with the best hand only to come back from a short stack and win with the worst hand.

When we got four handed I lost a cruital pot with AQ against QQ, but when we were down to the final three (two seats awarded), I got my stack in with QT against AT and the board to ran out TxxxQ.

That cripled the third place player leaving him with only a couple of big blinds , but somehow he managed to double up twice and he and I ended up with similar stack sizes.

I just about managed to keep afloat and in the end the big stack pushed in with TT and shorty called with AT. AT was drawing dead by the turn and I was already dancing round the room!

Enough of this post. I'm going to look for flights to vegas!

Things looking up?

April was my first winning month of the year thanks to a couple of late tournament scores. I managed to bank a modest £650 despite sinking a fair bit into PokerStars' Step SNGs.

I came 3rd in a $10 rebuy tournament on ipoker the other day for a handy $500 and then after a marathon session last night, beginning at 1am and finishing a little before 9am, I came 7th in a $3 rebuy on PokerStars for a tasty $1,000.

The latter was a tournament of epic proportions. The rebuy period last 90 minutes so they could guarantee the $50,000 prize pool kindly donated by the 4000+ fish who take part. I don't think it's a healthy tournament to play regularly: one could play for 7 hours and barely make $30. That being said there are oodles of value in it and the money at the final table is pretty enticing - first place took home $6,500. Naturally I was gutted only to finish 7th for $1,000, but given that I was only in for $9 that's a pretty healthy return on investment.

As far as the PokerStars Steps tournaments go and my quest for a seat at the WSOP, things weren't looking all that rosy. I ploughed in another $1,000 into the venture this month and until a couple of hours ago I had nothing to show for it. Thankfully, I've just triumphed in a Step 5 so I now have another Step 6 ticket to add to my collection. I've got three of them, each being a 1 in 6 shot at WSOP qualification.

Money invested: $2674
Tickets accumulated: $7594

I'll probably put another $1500 in before calling it a day and making a sprint for the finish with however many Step 6 tickets I've managed to accumulate.

If I win a $12,000 seat, I doubt that'll I'll play in the event choosing, instead, to take the cash. If I wasn't down for the year I might take the gamble. What I would do, however, is reinvest a few thousand of in an attempt to win a second seat.

Here’s hoping for a huge month of May.

P.S. I twittered a couple of days ago about how I’ve turned into a total arsehole. I'll blog about it in due course, but suffice it to say, that I need to do some self-examining.