Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Big in BG

As I mentioned in my comeback blog, I came back from the London trip feeling reinvigorated even if I bricked everything there. I hit the ground running when I returned to the online felt, clinching the fifth PocktFives Triple Crown of my career. More on that here in my latest PocketFives interview.



As also mentioned in the comeback blog, I've been struggling with my live form this year, with lack of focus and discipline creeping into my game, along with occasional but costly major performance mistakes. I've been working hard to turn that around and felt I started to turn the corner at least in London. Next up was a trip to Sofia for the MPN tour stop there.

Getting there proved a bigger ordeal than anticipated. My Dublin Paris flight was late making it impossible for me to make my connection given a last minute terminal change for the Paris to Sofia leg. I won't bore you with the gory details: if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you'll already know the story, and if you don't, then read these tweets from bottom to top.


I'd never been to Sofia (or Bulgaria) before so wasn't really sure what to expect. The very few Bulgarians I know did their best to lower expectations. So I was extremely happy to find myself staying in a luxurious Radisson in a very nice part of town directly across from the parliament, with the casino, the hotel, the club where the players party and an excellent Asian restaurant all located in the same building. One of the occupational hazards of being a travelling poker player is that the casino is often in the worst part of town, so if you stay nearby you find yourself wandering around an industrial estate outside Nottingham or looking at a gasworks in Vienna.


On the poker front, things could have gone better in terms of results, but not much better in terms of how I played. I think my day 1 performance was by far my best since UKIPT Edinburgh late last year (which I personally rate as one of my best ever). I was helped to a degree by not having too many tricky spots and being card dead for long periods of the day. I also ran well with the few decent hands I did pick up, not just making the best hand but finding myself up against second best hands strong enough to make opponents decide to pay me off. But I think I held my focus and discipline well through the periods of card death (something that certainly hasn't always been the case this year), maintained my concentration allowing me to build up solid reads on all my opponents even when I wasn't involved in hands, and I maximised value with the hands I did make. The result was over five starting stacks went into my bag, almost double the average.

I ended up going to the Irish bar to celebrate with a good crew assembled by tour boss lady Clodagh Hansen, that included room mates Asif and Oliver Fabian, 32 Red poker good guy Nick Diaz (who put us pros to shame by shipping one side event and cashing the other), tournament director from Barcelona Gerard, gentle South African giant Mark (from MPN) and players Tony Rafter, Julie from Manchester, Rich and Twitcher James (thanks for the t shirt).


Although a text to Clodagh from the Irish pub confirmed we collectively drank the place dry, I managed to restrict myself to enough drinks for there to be no hangover the following day, so went back to day 2 highly hopeful of another good day at the tables. If day 1 was a steady cruise through relatively calm waters, day 2 was a much stormier affair. In the first hand of note, I found myself in a three way all in, with kings versus ace king and queens. While it was a relief to hold against the queens in the 175k side pot, it would have been a nice bonus to scoop the 150k main pot as well. Four times the average stack at that time would have been a real platform for an assault on the final table.

Not to be though, and onwards and upwards to over 200k. If day one was free of tough close spots, day 2 was chock full of them. I got beaten back down to 100k, then rallied back to 200k when I made my only real mistake of the tournament. It wasn't a big mistake, but after going through my usual post mortem with the Firm brains trust there was unanimity that I could and should have lost 30k less in one pot where I got rivered and knew deep down I had been.

That did some damage, and further damage was inflicted as I ran really bad as the bubble loomed. After my neighbour to the east had been crippled by a wildly optimistic river call and an even more optimistic preflop allin call, he started shoving any two. The first few times he did this he dogged his way to the win with less than stellar holdings such as j3o, so when he again shoved I reshoved jacks like it was the nuts and could only laugh when he tabled queens. That left me in the danger zone, where I remained for the rest of the tournament, surviving. I ended up busting six from the money in a hand that played like a comedy of errors.


I played two side events to add two non cashes to my record. While it would have been nice to collect at least one Bulgarian flag I was more interested in how I played, and apart from that one river mistake in the main, was happy I played four days of mistake free poker, read my opponents well, and avoided auto piloting. There were a few hands where I found non standard lines that were better in the specific circumstances, something I always pride myself on when I believe I'm playing my best. Had these been Stars events where 15% rather than 10% were paid, I'd have cashed the main and I think both sides, and in any case it's always more important to focus on performance rather than results. Getting my live A game back before I land in Vegas on the 16th of June is far more important then eking out a min cash or two in a smaller buyin event.

It was clear from the standard of local players that poker is pretty new in Bulgaria. Given that, the standard of the local dealers was surprisingly high. The tournament staff in general were pretty competent. The novelty of poker there did lead to some interesting practises though. For example, no seat cards. Rather than the traditional complementary "player gone, here's the seat card" / "you're moving table, here's your new seat card" system, eliminated players were simply scrubbed from the list, and when you were told to move, a "revised seat chart" with your new assignment appeared on the screens. The main casino manager doing registrations was very friendly and competent (with a remarkable ability to remember everybody's name and it's exact spelling), his assistants considerably less so, and the security staff were as bad as you'd find anywhere. Security seemed to change the rules of entry on a whim, and were very hands on if you were somewhere they didn't think you should be. So depending on your luck a typical experience was gain entry with a gruff grunt or a shout from security, be warmly greeted by first name by the manager, then get jostled or pushed from the tournament area by one of his assistants if you dared to go speak to a friend still in it. They were far more concerned about keeping people away from the tables than they were about keeping the tables balanced. For long periods in the main tables were a mix of six to ten handed, and the side events were even shoddier on that front.

My other major quibble was the flexibility of the smoking laws. Technically it's against the law, but the law really wasn't enforced. In fact, it was one of the smokiest environments I've ever played in, my clothes all stink after the trip, and my usual impulse to flee the scene of the crime after busting was heightened by a desire to breathe fresh air into my second hand smoke filled lungs and ease my burning eyes. Those quibbles aside, great venue, and the MPN and 32Red staff conspire with the regular players to create a friendly atmosphere that has long since disappeared from slicker tours like EPT and UKIPT. A big thank you to all already mentioned, and others like Phil Huxley and his partner, Sean and Florent from Cork and everyone else I spoke to.

The locals I interacted with were quite similar to the casino staff: polarised (either super friendly, or exuding extreme unhappiness). The overtly macho atmosphere is a bit of a culture shock. I don't think I saw a single female in a managerial or supervisory position while I was there, but obviously I only saw a small sample size and that may not be representative. Clodagh had some hair raising tales of what it's like to be a visiting female boss lady to tell. On the other hand, Sofia is a very pleasant place to spend time in with a unique feel and character of its own and lots of beautiful buildings and people to look at.


The next MPN stop is Tallinn in early August which will probably be my first trip abroad after Vegas. Before Vegas, the priorities are get some good online grinding in, keep working hard in preparation for Vegas, and a week's holidays in Rome for my wife's birthday will be followed by a Firm reunion in Malta for the Unibet Open.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Move on

Since my last blog, I have struggling on a number of fronts. I'm the kind of guy who typically gets one minor illness a year and that bout of man flu aside enjoy rude good health. This year I've bucked that trend succumbing to winter vomiting bug and three other week plus colds. I'm also the kind of poker player who just gets on with it irrespective of results and how I'm running, giving my best every event and keeping major mistakes to the minimum. This year I've been running pretty bad live and have also allowed some personal life baggage to bleed over into my poker, and I've ended up making some less than minor mistakes at crucial points in big tournaments.  Also, after the last blog I was unsure whether I even wanted to continue blogging. It seemed like a good point to end the blog, on a high point in terms of readership (it's my most read blog by a factor of ten) and reaction.

A number of people have noticed this and said they hoped it wasn't my last blog. I think I've also missed blogging. So here we are at the point where I think it's time to move on. The original purpose of this blog was to have something to look back on when the curtain comes down on my poker career, and since we aren't yet at that point I'm returning to blogging and the original focus of it being a living record of a poker career in progress.

Online has been going pretty well so far this year. I've made a better start in pure profit terms to 2016 than I did to 2015 or 2014. Live has not been so good. As mentioned earlier, I'm running pretty bad, but a far bigger concern is I'm not playing much better. I wasn't at all happy with my play for most of the UKIPT/EPT festival. Apart from one or two days where I hit my normal standard, I just sort of chugged along playing my B game, with a few mistakes at crucial points dragging me down to C game territory.

I was much happier with my play for most of the Norwegian/Irish Open festival, but towards the end there were a couple of days and displays where I let how bad I was running to affect my performance. After a very disciplined and somewhat profitable day 1 at the Irish Open main event, my exit early on day 2 was not a proud moment. I took a pretty lazy "standard" line without pausing to think it through. At my best I think I would probably have got away from the hand.

So I came to London for the UKIPT hoping to turn things around. I continued to run bad losing pretty much every flip and more than my fair share of 60/40s and 70/30s, meaning that one stone cold bubble in a turbo side event was the closest I came to breaking a cashless streak stretching back to UKIPT Dublin. But at least I managed to cut the mistakes down to one or two. Unfortunately both came in the main event and resulted in an early exit there.

There are a lot of worse places to be stuck after an early exit, and my friend Daiva and her husband John who kindly let me stay at their place near Primrose Hill proved themselves to be hosts with the most. The absence of deep runs and slew of early exits from my London campaign on the poker front meant I got to spend a lot of time with Daiva, who is always an absolute delight to spend time with. I also found time to catch up with Andy (dawhiteninja), Sameer and Asif, and several morning runs up to and around Primrose Hill.

On Sunday I went with Daiva to the casino, intending to jump into the last side event due to start two hours later than her Ladies event. She lost a good chunk of her stack in the early levels so I postponed registering the side and instead arranged to meet Asif for breakfast. As you'd expect from a guy wearing a batman jacket, Asif is a special kind of erratic fun to be around. He told me to come to Piccadilly Circus because he knew a good place for breakfast there. Asif's idea of a good breakfast place turned out to be a Cineplex cafeteria. After staring at the choice between a mouldy looking pastry and a slightly less mouldy but equally indeterminate pastry, I decided we were working from different definitions of "good breakfast place" and suggested we take our business elsewhere.

Asif's next stroke of genius was to announce that the gay area was the best place for breakfast. After a bit of a wander we settled instead on some Dim Sum in a Malaysian place where Asif decided to tell every member of staff at every possible opportunity how they should go halal. As we wandered back to the casino, Asif decided he wasn't in a mood for more poker and bailed on his decision to play. Suggestible as ever, I immediately realised I felt the same, and the fact that Daiva was still short in the ladies provided added incentive to take the day off. A good decision rendered better when Sameer and his lovely wife Fran turned up for belated bust out gelatotherapy. So a motley United Colours of Poker crew comprising a German, an Indian, a Pakistani and an Irishman wandered around Soho a bit looking for halal gelatos and espresso.

Back at the casino, Daiva was rallying and she ended up on the final table a bit above average. This cemented my decision to take the day off and tentative plans for an online session were pushed aside in favour of railing Daiva's final table. She put on a master display of composure, focus, discipline and small ball poker to ease to a victory that never looked in doubt from a long way out. Class tends to rise to the top towards the end of a tournament with some players crumbling while others keep their cool, and Daiva was the coolest of customers. Even when she had 99 beaten by 77 all in pre headsup to postpone the victory, there wasn't so much as a sigh or trace of self pity as she got on with the job. Daiva is one of the most naturally talented players I've encountered in terms of her ability to intuitively read people and situations, and her mental game and emotional detachment from outcomes.

Her biggest concern came after she had won and was told she had to do a winners photo, and she requested a makeup timeout (makeup has a very different definition from the normal one in poker when it comes to live ladies events).  Daiva was understandably pleased with herself after the win, and it was good for me to watch a friend remind me how to win.

Dave Curtis asked me if I could accept Daragh Davey's Player of the Year trophy on his behalf. I was willing but unfortunatelty it didn't happen. I even had an acceptance speech prepared for the occasion:

"Daragh would love to be here to accept this trophy but he's far too important so he sent me. He would like it acknowledged though that winning Player of the Year two years running is without the greatest achievement in the history of poker"

He would like to thank everyone who helped but in reality the only two people who helped were David Lappin and Dara O'Kearney. When I met them, I was a slight sullen young cash grinder in some of the seedier casinos in Dublin. Meeting them kickstarted the transformation to what I am today, a slightly less sullen slightly less young superstar crusher in tax exile in Malta.

I'd also like to that David Lappin for helping me write this speech as I don't write much these day. I used to have my own blog, but.....graphs...."

On Monday, Daiva battled through post poker Petrie dish sniffles to show me some of the sights. A nice walk along the South Bank was punctuated by a stop under a bridge for some tea. My mother always said I'd end up under a bridge some day but at least the company and drinks were a lot better than expected...




A visit to the Tate Modern....


And sightings of a large wheel and a big clock.


Time flew to the point I lost track of it and ended up scrambling to pack and get to the airport with a little less time than I'd normally leave. Getting on the wrong train in Victoria and missing a Gatwick Express platform change announcement heightened the sweat but in the end I made my flight.

Taking time off and holidays is something I've always been really bad at doing, and while I'd like to have run better at the tables I really couldn't have run better in terms of uplifting company, and a relaxed week in London may be exactly what I needed at this point.

Next up is a trip to Sofia next week for the Microgaming tour stop there, and then a month of online and continued preparations for this year's WSOP. While it would be nice to break my cashless streak in Sofia or in Malta before Vegas, the main thing I will be focusing on is working hard and preparing properly for Vegas. The WSOP is always the high point of the year and I want to be back to my absolute best in the desert. I can't control how I run (and after last year some regression to the mean was to be expected and I can hardly claim I'm due or look for sympathy if I run bad this year) but I can do my utmost to prepare to play my best, and roll with whatever comes.

I've already booked flights and hotel for Vegas,with a similar campaign to last year. I get there just in time to play the Seniors, and will then play some more Holdem bracelet events. After 12 days I will head to New York for four days relaxation with my wife, then back to Vegas for more side events and the main. I've been putting in a lot of study and work away from the tables and while it hasn't exactly paid off live yet, Vegas would be a perfect place for it to start again.

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