Secrets of the Amateurs

Nicked $5K last month and another $3500 yesterday with a 3rd in the Tilt $69 6-max. That is a great tournament by the way, people spew horrendously just because it's 6-max, or for whatever reason, anyway they do. I have decided that I need to change my outlook a little bit ; for three years I've always looked forward to playing, but now not quite so much. Nonetheless, if playing online keeps me on the golf course the rest of the time instead of in an office then that's what I need to do, and I need to approach it more professionally. It's still fun going deep in a tournament, but the rest of the time I need to play well and not be too gung-ho about "double or bust" even if it's slightly dull at times. It's still 100x less dull than a real job so I need to just suck it up.

Apart from that, finally saw my WPO heat today, or Part 1 anyway. I liked the way it came out generally, the changes Matchroom have made have really improved the show. Slightly disappointed that my flop 3-bet against Schaffer with the nut low (alright a straight draw) missed the cut, whereas all my donk calls were front and centre, but Phil Laak wasn't too hard on me so I can live with it. Woteva. Speaking of woteva, I thought Luke Schwartz made a couple of odd plays that made him look not quite so good when you can see the cards, but woteva.

Off to Amsterdam next week with Withnails Poker School. Check out the site if you haven't seen it, there's a 3-minute interview with me looking like a pumpkin head thanks to Tristan's cheapo camera work. It has occurred to me that in the last three live tournaments I played I have re-shipped the standard 20BBs only to get called by KQ, KJ and KQ again (I was actually in front of the KJ because I had KQ aka the nuts). If that's the way it's going, I need to be a bit more patient live in those spots. I can always wait to the jam stage, especially with high live antes.

Part 1 (of 2) of my heat is on Five tonight at 00:10. This has taken me by surprise ; I would have missed it if Kevmath hadn't posted it on 2+2. Normally they send out DVDs to players before airing but I haven't received one for woteva reason, so I haven't seen it. To remind you, the heat features Timoshenko, Akenhead and Schwartz and should be more worth watching than previous programmes of this type.

Update : Funnily enough, Matchroom alerted me to this just now, and I should get a DVD in the week - but you'll see it before I do if you watch tonight !

I had to give myself a talking to and a slap yesterday. Hey, I could pay someone to do that. Anyway, I was a bit down after the WPO heat but on reflection the fact that there were 3 better players in the heat wasn't the problem so much as a lack of mental effort all round, particularly when in hands against the other players. Make a note and move on.

Without bragging (I've done far too much of that already), even three years ago I wouldn't have thought I could come as far as I have, never mind 5, when I was working 9-5 and not really winning much playing live, or 15 years ago when I had a shit job and no money. But what of the future ? Where, or who, do I want to be 15 years from now ? Someone on 2+2 today suggested that 25 years from now most MTTc-ers would probably look like Devilfish. Now that's a chilling thought. As much as I rag on Devilfish at times he does command a lot of respect in the poker world, and can play extremely well when he wants to. Nonetheless, I do not want to be Devilfish 15 years from now. I'd much rather be Freddie Carle.

Now, the first thing most of you are going to say is WTF is Freddie Carle. Well, that's kind of the point. This guy gets the absolute lot in the Vic. The cake. I'm not saying I want to take up residence in the Vic 24/7 but the point is he gets the lot in his chosen field, and no one's ever heard of him. According to legend he has never even been to Vegas. Now that's getting it quietly. And that seems to be a much more dignified way of life when one reaches the sunset years. Or even now. So from now on, keep doing what I do, take the odd shot live but don't take it too seriously, and cut down on the bragging, definitely. That's probably going to be hardest of all ...

I'm playing in the first heat of the WPO V tomorrow (Sunday) at the Palm Beach. Anyone's welcome to come along and rail, if you really haven't got anything better to do :-). Having said that, it's a relatively strong line-up. More to the point, my heat sounds tougher than any TV table I've played before. I'm up against James Akenhead, Luke Schwartz and Yevgeny Timoshenko ; these guys are not just excellent all-round players, they also know the fundamentals as well as I do. James and Yevgeny are running hotter than the sun right now, mbn [1]. Ian Frazer's in the mix too, and I expect online qualifiers to be stronger than usual as they came through $700 satellites. Mind you, on Party. But I know Rob Sherwood, who's a very good player, has qualified online (he's not in my heat) and I'd expect a few more. Luckily I know how to do what so many people have failed to do against me in these ; suck it up and gamble against better players in the right spots.

This is still good value for me to play but without the Boyle sponsorship (and the lucky patch of course) it would be marginal. On top of that, I think this might be the "last hurrah" for TV 6-maxes, at least at the level below Poker Million and so on. Paradoxically, as fields become tougher, it makes for worse TV. When three guys in every heat, and five in every semi, realise that there are three basic stages :

1) Fold
2) Reshove
3) Shove

then it's not going to make for exciting TV. I think Matchroom realise this, and I fully understand why they're trying to branch out into Heads Up and stuff like that. This one is "triple stack" but all that means is two more levels of stage 1 on the front. We'll see how it goes. I'm glad I'm playing this as my contribution to the poker world coming to London - it's way the best value in terms of exposure and sponsorship for me. But after this I'm probably going into lockdown during the winter, and just cracking on online, brief trips (freebies in fact yay) to Dublin and Amsterdam excepted.

While I'm here, great interview with Neil here on the 2+2 Pokercast. He's very candid about his ups and downs and, of course, amusing as ever in his anecdotes. It starts about half an hour in I think, somewhere like that.

[1] Which of course gives them no inherent advantage but they'll both be super confident and free of doubt when it comes to their game.

Results : Well I'm here flicking my plums and trying to get out of it in the Sunday donkaments while the heat's still going on, which is result enough. Playing deep stacked against people who are better than me certainly wasn't as much fun as torturing donks with re-shoves starting at level 2. I could have saved a hero call or two but even with 50K more I'd still have 4-bet jammed AQs on Timoshenko's open and a qualifier's 3-bet with the same result (qualifier calls with 99 and I unaccountably miss). And now I've just passed AQ to a re-shove and a call in the Warm-Up to find they both have 88. Sometimes it's just not your day.

Apart from that I won't spoil too much, although there was one amusing hand where Timoshenko and Akenhead got it in on a coinflip. Even when the universe didn't explode as a result of this immovable object vs irresistible force of rungood, it somehow didn't come out as a split pot. They both hit the flop though obv.

John Fox said something about how the best time to play was 3am on the last Friday of the month, and that playing just that hour every month wouldn't necessarily be what you wanted to do .. but it would still be profitable ! Well, if I only played the last Sunday of every month I'd have a hell of an ROI that's for sure. This time I saved my bacon (mmm bacon) in the Stars $100 rebuy, finishing 4th for $30K+change. Yes, 4th for $30K, it's a massive rebuy donkfest ! On top of a win in the Paradise E50 rebuy last Wednesday (that has to be my favourite tournament right now), that put me nicely ahead for the month, with a total buyin of $25K in 54 hours play which was a slightly better effort.

I've changed tack on what I'm listening to while playing, it's quite interesting. After trying a couple of brainwave entrainment samples that promised the world and didn't really deliver, I tried Mind Stereo which I really like (and Neuroprogrammer from the same people but that doesn't really apply to poker). Mind Stereo allows you to play music (whether from your own playlist or an internet radio station) and apply pulse modulations that are supposed to help you relax or (more appropriately for poker) concentrate/study better. To start with I was playing this sort of techno (I don't know what it is exactly, trance maybe) for the first half of the session, and then ambient for the second. On Sunday I switched to ambient all the way through, which seemed to work, being result oriented :-). Seriously it's hard to tell whether it's listening to background music with which I'm not familiar or the actual pulse modulation but I do seem to focus better and for longer. It could even be a placebo (not the band Placebo they suck), but what the hell, if a placebo helps me make $30K then bring it on. It turns out both the stations I was listening to are part of Soma FM FWIW. The Drone Zone is my favourite. I should throw them a bone really, 1% or something.

Anyway that's it for me this month. You'll notice no liveaments, screw them. Well I might play the £500 8-Game next week, but seeing as I couldn't be bothered to show up for the £2K, don't count on it. And gg ul to the Camel who busted 11th in the WSOP-E. Could have been worse, how tilting would it have been if Sheringham had won it ?

I'm quite enjoying this series of The Poker Show, but if Jesse makes one more comment about how it's a "disgrace" that there are no UK players in the Caesars Cup team then I'll have to phone up and give him some GBH to the earhole.

Let me clarify to start with that I don't give a monkeys about the Caesars Cup, it's yet another gimmick dreamt up so that Daniel Negreanu & Co can grab some more TV time without having to do anything inconvenient like be better at poker than other people to do it. But Jesse is putting me on super life tilt with this. The European team, with Annette as captain, is as follows : Elky, Dario, Peter Eastgate, Patrik Antonious and Zigmund. If anyone thinks it's a "disgrace" that there are no UK players in it, then it couldn't be simpler. Tell me who should be out and which UK player should be in instead. There are a few you could make a case for being close, but if you're totally objective then you can still make a better case for those already in and a few more (mostly Scandis) besides. There's definitely no one who's such a glaring omission that it's a "disgrace".

At times Jesse appears to imply that there should be a UK player because it's being held here - but then he talks about the selection being "political", and what would be more political than sticking someone in who's not good enough just because they're from a particular country ? A lot of our "great players" have made their reputation on the live UK circuit, or on TV tournaments, which means fuck all because the standard in both of those is dog poop. Tell me which UK player inspires fear when he sits down at the table. That's right, no one.

Update : The more I think about this, the more I can take another angle, which is that it's super disrespectful to Annette and the players on the team. Team poker is super ghey but, having said that, I can't remember a stronger team ever being assembled. It's also the least "political". We all know that people have "played for England" on the grounds of bunging the captain a few quid and giving him a lift to the game. If you pick any UK tournament player, Elky is better. Any cash player, Zigmund is better. Any heads up player, Dario is better. Any champion of this or that, Eastgate is the current World Champ. And any all round player, Antonious is better. And when I say better I mean by a street. This is a super strong team and so, given the super retarded format of what they're playing, they're at least 20-21 favourites.

Further Update : I like saying "super", deal with it ; and maybe there is one better heads up player than Dario.

Poker Show : I've just been on The Poker Show talking about this and straight afterwards Eddie Hearn pointed out that if I thought it was a gimmick event, then why be so outspoken about having the best players in it, which is 100% fair, and it's why I was a bit reticent about even making the post. But there you go. It was just a rant, and after making it, it seemed only fair to let them interview me about it when they asked.

I had Betfair open this evening as I was keeping an eye on their WSOP-E satellite. With $500 buy-in and a $200K guarantee, 5 minutes before kick-off it looked like there was a decent overlay in prospect, with about 200 players registered. Then, next time I looked at it, which must have been about 10 seconds later, there were 300. Still only 200 players in the list, but 300 in the count. The discrepancy remained until the tournament actually kicked off, when the player list jumped up to match the count at 314.

I don't know whether this was down to bad software or shenanigans on Betfair's part but just watch out for this. I asked on 2+2 whether it was just me and one person confirmed, FWIW. There was still an overlay but anyone who registered 7 minutes before because of the apparent double overlay would have cause to be annoyed. I didn't play myself as I was still umm-ing and ah-ing when this started to happen.

Update : (Completely unsubstantiated) story about this here.

My online effort over the last two months can best be described as "half-hearted". Still, if you put the two months together it pretty much amounts to one decent month. In terms of volume anyway, nothing much happened in the way of results and I ended up making about $3K. It's funny how that's pretty much an after-tax wage for a lot of people, but in our world it's just a bit of random noise.

The only prediction I'm going to make for now is that I'm not going to make any predictions. Didn't Gazza say something like that once ? Anyway. Play when I feel like playing and hopefully make enough to keep me on the golf course the rest of the time. Of course there's a bunch of stuff going on in the next 6 weeks as the poker world comes to London, but I can take or leave it. Might play a couple of EPT side events. I will be playing the World Poker Open V in October which should be interesting. I think the "triple chips" aspect is a bit of a mirage ; it just adds a couple of levels on at the start, which you can fold through anyway if you like, especially with it being 8-handed. It'll become the 20BB-fest we know and love soon enough, which suits me obv.

The only other thing is that I've been experimenting a little with different "soundtracks" to my poker playing, but I'm going to hold back on discussing that until I work out whether the effects are placebo or actually lasting, it's quite interesting though I think.

Update : And with all this live action coming up, here's what we can look forward to : being slowrolled by Davros, Creator of the Daleks.

My game has felt out of synch since coming back from Vegas - it's hard to explain but it's just a sense that I'm doing things that worked (enough of the time) a year ago, but now they don't. Too often I make a play, then when it's on my opponent I immediately think "this isn't going to work", and it doesn't. There is a definite element of rock-paper-scissors to online tournaments (especially on Stars and Tilt where the standard is a little higher) in that certain plays (the steal reraise is an obvious example) become more and more prevalent until the point where you're more thinking about exploiting the play (and other players' belief that you are using the standard play) than making it.

So I'm taking 10 days or so off for a break and to work out some new options. I can't play this weekend anyway so it seems like a good time to do it. I can't really put it all down to post-Vegas blues ; it's been at the back of my mind for a few months, and I think individual big results like the Warm-Up win have papered over the cracks. Nil desperandum though, it's always good to be aware of these things. While I'm here I'll be on Channel 5 tomorrow (Wednesday) night in the final of the ... which one was it ... EPO V I think. Not that I final all the time, I just get whichever really prestigious event it is mixed up with the other really prestigious events :-). Anyway, enjoy. A friend of mine described me as "unflappable" recently, I think he might change his mind if he sees this one where I look definitely flapped at one point.

Ooh, almost forgot. The EPT London schedule is out, and it rocks. Shootouts ! 6 max ! 8 game ! Stuff with numbers in it ! I could happily not play another live 10-handed NL MTT in my entire life, but these sound good. Stars are promising to facilitate online buyin (with FPPs for rake !) as well. I like the sound of "European 8-Game Champion" :-). I haven't got a clue how to play triple draw, and not much more in Omaha 8, but that should put me at least 3 games ahead of most of the field. In conclusion, WSOP-E can DIAGF, EPT London is where it's at next month.

I enjoyed this documentary which someone linked to in a thread on 2+2. It's one of those "pick 4 people and follow them through the WSOP" jobs, in this case Isabelle Mercier, Fabrice Soulier, Luca Pagano and (somewhat incongruously) Joe Hachem. This takes place in 2006 when Hachem was the "defending champ".

http://pokertube.com/Movies.aspx?movie=3028&title=The_Passionate_Eye_-_Poker_Face-_Documentary_1_8&player=1&page=7&FreeText=documentary&list=9

If you're interested, watch it before reading the rest of this post where I spoil it. Anyway, what I find interesting is the emotional reaction of the players to their results, as follows.

- Pagano whiffs everything. He's obviously quite down about it but drives off into the sunset saying he's going to get back to work online and on the Euro circuit.

- Soulier doesn't even make a Day 2 until the very last event, which was one of the bracelet events they tacked on in 2006 after the ME had started. He finishes 4th for $50K to get out of it (it's the one that Praz won). That's pretty much what I did in 2007, so I know how relieved you feel to get out of it like that. Soulier looks relieved as well and comes across fairly positive on his way out.

- Mercier makes a final table quite early and finishes 5th for $175K. But she's gutted that she didn't win. She whiffs everything else and ends up storming out of the ME saying stuff like "six months preparation for the worst day of my life" and "I was sure I was going to win". This is where pumping yourself up too much for the WSOP can get you, and it's not a good place. Cashing for (presumably) $100K+ profit is something a good player will manage only one year in 3 or 4. If you're still not happy when you do it, you're setting yourself up to be depressed every year. To what extent Isabelle believes what she says about always being so sure she's going to do well is unclear. It might just be a form of positive thinking to get into a confident mindset. That's all very well until you start believing it, which is a major problem going into something like the WSOP where the variance is so high and so few people walk away with a bracelet, if that's your only goal.

- Hachem ... well we know what Joe's like by now. Despite making two finals and a good profit, we get shots of moody Joe staring into the sunset and playing online alone in a darkened room. Tough life. The thing is, in a way I feel sorry for him. I don't think this guy is ever going to be happy until he gets some professional mental help. Whatever he wins will never be enough to "prove himself" to his (perceived) critics and enemies.

Getting your head right going into the WSOP is a very difficult balancing act. You have to accept that you're probably not going to make what you could have made in your regular game at home in the same time ; probably not even going to make a profit ; and, on a day-by-day basis, probably not going to cash the next tournament. It's the one year in 4 or 5 where you do really well that makes it worth while. At the same time, you have to be positive and confident enough to play your best. Pumping yourself up with "I'm the best, I'm going to win one this year" is just setting yourself up for a fall, mentally, when it doesn't happen.

What works for me is to remember that they're just another bunch of donkaments no different from any other. Which, when you strip away all the hype, is exactly what they are. But in Vegas, the city of hype, and in the Rio, with pictures of winners flaunting the bling everywhere you look, that can be very hard to do. In the end, if you're a professional player, you have to ask yourself whether it's worth taking 6 weeks off your regular game (and maybe another month afterwards due to the comedown) to put yourself through this, in tournaments that are less and less value with each passing year. I'm glad I didn't this year, although I would be, seeing as I had my best month ever online. Whichever way you do it, you can't escape the variance :-)