Blog #6 - Winner, Winner!

Well would you really have been as interested if teh title was "Loser!", but you've come this far so read on, despite teh title being a total bluff...that you just fell for! :-)

Well, the big day came...and I have to say that despite not winning a penny, it was a great day, a great experience and a great learning curve...but where did it go wrong?

To start with, as planned I turned up at teh venue, Fox Poker Club for teh 2pm £25 bounty with a field of around 30 runners. The club itself is easy access in hear of West End and very easy to get to and find. The £10 registration fee for a two minute task of chipping a membership was expected and with the money going into buy-ins, rakes etc is money for old rope, but the norm with everything these days. The venue itself is spacious, thankfully air conditioned and well layed out, with helpful staff, from teh manager, to teh dealers and bar staff...who by the end of teh evening were calling me by my tag, "Mr G", which was a nice touch and showed teh T-shirt making an impression.  

So for teh £25 2pm tournament, sat down and was some nice table talk, with no aggro and a good atmosphere with people wanting to enjoy their poker, so felt quickly at ease. Well, whilst i know that in theory you can play any two cards with position, table image, bet size etc, I would say that i have never seen so many 62, 72, 83, 94 off suited for so long...ever! I had at least two rounds where at least one card was a 2 in each hand , only saw one Ace the whole tournament, well in my hand anyway. So being new to live poker I wasn't prepared (perhaps wrongly) to attempt a move to steal as tables were reasonably loose and players looking for the bountys. Anyway, 4 hours later, and testing my patience down to final two tables with around 13/14 players left and me very short stacked. So 77, made move and shoved all in, with fold round to SB who quickly called and then  raised by BG all in, which teh SB shoved too. So me 77, SB AK, BG AK...nothing hitting on flop but A on turn and no joy on river. OUT and other two players splitting my bounty.  However, an enjoyable game, good banter and 4 hours well spent.

Decided food and fresh air would help before teh main £100 live event, so a quick trip outside ...bite to eat and rushed back to lap up the air conditioning.
Met three other #LPGR2012 players, although i think Ladbrokes were expecting more so not sure what happened there. So after the introductions of real and online names and a good lucks we all headed off to our tables. Pleased to say that the presence of Laddies players didn't go unnoticed and was happy to promote my table on teh wonderful opportunity that Ladbrokes had given a few lucky players...they seem suitably impressed with teh Grassroots concept!

So, teh £100 main event...how did it go?
Hmmm...see above...card dead again and patience being tested, remembering that tournament not won in first few levels, but can be lost in it! Made it to first break and from starting chips of 10k + dealer bonus of couple of k was down to just over 10k, with the couple of hands i played (mid-pairs in Mid to Late Position) being called and met on flop with picture board flops/A...standard continuation bets to show strength both times met with raises...so after turn and same results...deciding that my hands not strong enough and folding...

...despite this giving me a very tight image, and supposedly being a freezeout, nothing seemed to help apart from a couple of calls or raises by me, followed by raises by MP or LP and then re-raise by me all in on marginal hands where opponent folded, thankfully in all honesty. So chip stack maintained just below average for next three and a half to four hours. caught up with other three grassrooters on the breaks and all still in it to win it, so strong showing. However, getting frustrated at lack of opportunities to play hands rather than having to bluff most of them, but then sometimes that's the way the cards go.

As the blinds crept up to 800/1600 plus 200 ante was getting short stacked, so a couple of shoves came to steal blinds but was no sooner by my side, than back into teh middle for blinds/antes. Anyway, final hand around midnight, 5th seat out of 7 and against SB, only remaining female player who was very solid and a seemingly tight BB, who had too often raised, got re-raised and then folded. So picked up K9 suited and shoved in remaining chips, 11k, against 4k in pot...fold SB...BB shows cards as he turns them over...4, then Ace...quick think and calls, with around 4k more than me...needless to say no match on board for either of us and A high wins.
OUT in 13th...unlucky for, erm, well me on this occassion!

So, where did it go wrong? Have to say, not sure. The cards i had, of which a very low % i would call playable, i think I played well and gained maximum chips. Where i folded, I am 99% sure i was beat or odds were not good enough to call or raise, and the cards i ditched pre-flop...well apart from one occassion where on a EP raise I folded MP my seemingly ever present 84 off suit I would have had a straight...they would have lost or needed a massive bluff. Highest pair all night in teh £100 f/out was 10s and I picked up AK twice and AQ and AJ less than a handful of times.
So did i learn anything? Yes!

• Freezeout does not actually mean freezeout - it means buy-in and then if you get knocked out you can re-enter again...which is effectively a re-buy but with table re-assignment isn't it????
• Layers are good...because air conditioning is still rubbish...only a small % is teh temperature ever comfortable!
• Red bull is teh savior of staying awake,
• Taking time for decisions is good advice live (I would have played around 25% more hands if online and from teh flops I saw would have been out in 75% sooner!),
• Patience is a virtue, which i am please to say i have plenty of,
• My blackberry is naff and needs upgrading for social interaction,
• I enjoyed teh experience and wasn't fazed by playing live nor of playing at 10 times my normal online tournament stake,
• Poker players (from my experience) are all a good bunch,
• The normal online comments from bad beats surprisingly disappear when your opponent is sitting three feet away from you!
• My Ladbrokes poker gear looks good...and my home designed t-shirt not bad either...although baseball cap and sports sunglasses would have set it off a treat...hint hint Laddies ;)
• I WOULD LOVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO THIS AGAIN!

Blog #5 - The big day

Well it has finally arrived...the day of my proper live poker tournament...eek!

So, how much of my planning actually went ahead?

• I did finish my poker book reading
• I've received and taken on board advice from poker players and fellow grassroot players
• I did have an early night in anticipation of a late night getting to teh final table

Advice, which is all common sense included:

• Staying away from teh live omaha games...for now
• Dress in layers as harder to regulate in live games than online
• Don't let live put you off...play tight against good players but stay aggresive
• You won't win the tournament in teh first hour...but you could be knocked out so go easy!
• Tournies aren't won in teh first few rounds...but they are in the last few hours!
• And perhaps most importantly - take your time making decisions, people are less crazy live

However:

• Getting burnt in teh garden yesterday probably didn't help!
• Getting woken up by teh kids for school run rather than a lay-in may hit me later

But thanks to teh lovely Mrs G; after playing around with some t-shirt designs she got me the finished product below, which I've had some great comments on and of course, am open to orders...for a price! ;-) Not sure how much it will help me with my poker, but as a walking advertisement for @ladbrokes_poker and #LPGR2012 it may help me get me a wildcard entry for round 2 and 3 maybe...

The other elements for teh wildcard entry if my poker doesn't work out in tonight's game are social media promotion of this opportunity and all teh Ladbrokes is about. Well, not entirely sure who is looking but  latest stast today are shown below...294 views in the last month...and some comments too! And on teh tweeting front hit the 100+ tweet mark over the weekend...not bad considering i only started blogging and tweeting because of grassroots...but it has cetainly been an interesting experience!

Anyway, no bootcamp this week...which believe it or not is a shame as it did set me up for teh day, but commences again next week...if i haven't melted by then with all teh blazing sun!!

Right, time to log off and sort myself out for tonight; going to teh 2pm £25 bounty this afternoon to 'loosen up' in advance of teh main £100 freezeout event tonight! I'll try and tweet updates...but as Mrs G tells me, I'm a man and can't multi task, so may have to focus on teh poker and do an update tomorrow...time will tell!

Looking forward to tonight, even if some nervous anticipation and hopefully catching up with other #LPGR2012 players.  

Blog #4 - From small online tournaments to big live ones - the preparation!

Well as if by magic, a knock on the door teh day after posting my last blog and a friendly courier delivering a big box to my door...and yes,  Laddies did me proud...hoodie-check, t-shirt-check, chipset and cards-check, coffee mug-check, football-bonus check...alas no baseball cap or beach towel but so chuffed with what they sent I'll let them off! ;-P

So of course the obligatory picture of me in my finest gear!! Thanks Ladbrokes, at least I'll look teh part now even if my poker skills are found to be lacking.

Looking at the grassroots promotion 'leaderboard' around 17 out of the original 40 players have played so far with 3 of them making it into the money in their respective £100 tournaments. So with 7 players making it to the next round via their poker skills, where ladbrokes will sponsor their £300 buy-ins in teh next round, there are 4 spaces left and up for grabs. There are also 7 wildcard spaces for the next round which Ladbrokes will award to those players who may not make teh money in their £100 event but who blog, tweet and facebook in teh spirit of Ladbrokes.

Hmmm...well on the basis that to get a 100% hit rate of 1 out of 1 for my first proper live tounament is unlikely, I've a feeling i may need to rely on teh wildcard route!

So in order to prepare for my first proper live event, this is what i'm doing:

• Wearing my ladbrokes gear out and about to get used to teh admiring looks from passers-by on teh high quality merchandise (c'mon Laddies...that must be worth a bonus wildcard point?!)
• Trawling through my original poker books (Dan Harrington's "Harrington on Hold 'em" and "Tournament Hold 'em" and "Championship Hold 'em" by Cloutier and McEvoy), which got me this far anyway!
• Pre-registering my membership at the Fox Poker Club to minimise fuss on teh day - Monday 28th May 
• Planning to attend their 2pm bounty tournament to 'acclimatise' to the surroundings and hopefully get rid of nerves
• Watching Jody (my trainer at fitness bootcamp) #GoHard and #KickAss and win her kickboxing title fight - nothing like a bit of inspiration!
• Tweeting all and sundry for tips on the transition from small ($10 entry) online multi table tournaments (MTTs) to big live £100+ MTTS.  
• Reading other grassroots' blogs and updates to see if i can gain an insight into their winning ways/methods. Must admit some of them have been really helpful and are worth a read...
• Planning an early Sunday night and a late start on Tuesday morning after I roll home in teh early hours with my winning wad...think positive - be positive - always enjoy!!

Would welcome any tips in teh comments section from budding poker players too!! No need to register as you can add comments as anonymous.

Until teh next time...

...oh and yes, I know i can't spell 'the' properly 90% of teh time...blame it on no auto-correct blog spell checker!!

Blog #3 - Grassroots becomes reality

Well the first few players involved in the @ladbrokes_poker grassroots promotion have been video'd and are now up in all their glory on YouTube here. It was great to be able to put faces to names and to hear their take on the whole experience. Also great to see the background of my fellow competitors, ranging from semi-pros who appear to regularly play high stakes (£100+ buy-ins) live and online to others like me who only really play $5/$10 online tournaments. You can see everyone's progress online here ... but no reading other blogs hey ;-)

And of course they all looked great in their Ladbrokes clothing. Waiting with anticipation to see teh goody bag of sponsored merchandise that I get sent...c'mon Laddies, make it a good one, hoodie, baseball caps, T-shirts and shirts, beach towel (summer can't be far away can it) and a chipset maybe...oh and a coffee cup of course for those late night online games!

Talking of which a recent online sucess playing Omaha, which was a timely confidence boost.

Though the 00:45 finish was NOT great with a 05:30 wake up for fitness bootcamp with Jody Blunt!

Anyway, back to teh poker and thoughts of playing my first high stakes live poker tournament. As a small stakes online player teh biggest concern for me is what to expect in teh standard of play moving to £100+ buy-in tournaments. I guess I'm imagining that to play at that level you surely must be a better standard of player, possibly more aggressive...or be lucky enough to have won a grassroots promotion package.

Also, with a normal online tournament you usually only start with 1500 to 3000 chips (unless playing deepstack) so having 10,000 chips to start with will be a new concept to come to terms with and will be interesting to see if that changes peoples playing style or strategies. 

Finally I guess the face to face banter and chat will hopefully be fun as well as perhaps a challenge, depending on whether there are any exuberant characters at my table or not.

To help gain some advice I've been tweeting various poker players from all over and at various standards and will put their advice in a future blog. But for now, focusing on a re-read of some of my early poker books...and i do wonder if my omaha win and this simply a coincidence or did it kick in some subconscious skills/awareness.

Anyway, bootcamp tomorrow and a 05:30 alarm call, so as Zebedee once said..."time for bed!"

Blog #2...full of highs and lows!

Well this was an interesting day full of highs and lows so:

DRING-DRING-DRING as alarm goes off at 5:30am for bootcamp , a definite low but followed swiftly by a high as weight loss at weigh in, so all that sweating and aching limbs is paying off.

Back home and the normal routine of logging into work, then school run, then work again. Yes, I know I'm very lucky that I do generally work from home, so work life balance is fantastic and couldn't really ask for more!

Worked through till afternoon and then a scary low for my giving blood session, when just after the needle went in, there was a fierce ache in my arm followed by the blood donor nurse calling out "can i have some help over here!". Not what you expect for a routine procedure but it would seem a straight forward process was hijacked by uphill vein/needle...not entirely sure what happened as was told to look away...however, 1 pint lighter and all is good! ...apart from going back home to work!

After going out with family to sample the delights of Smith and Western it was back to have a look at Ladbrokes poker and their latest updates for their fantastic Grassroots promo!

I have to say that having tried a few online poker sites, Ladbrokes Poker are the only ones who as well as running the normal tournaments, also run regular tournaments or promotions to win prizes that the normal 'jo public' can look to win and enjoy. Entry to WSOP, Caribbean Cruises, etc are all great, but when you have a young family, full time job, limited holiday leave and a wife and kids who just aren't keen on letting you 'go galavanting' for a week or two without them they are not just practical to enter. So the fact that Ladbrokes Poker continue to come up with seriously exciting promotions for 'normal' players to experience without the need to 'drop their real life and commitments' is great and a key reason why I've been a loyal Ladbrokes player for so long!   

Anyway, back to their Grassroots promotion and oh dear, on a low again as I whizz through teh profiles of the other 39 contenders. It would seem that 80% have all had big wins from £5k up to mid range 5 figure payouts and are regular players/winners on medium stake games, which puts my win and experience way down the bottom of the achievement list!

Having said that, there were a couple of Grassroots contenders whose best achievements were getting this opportunity to experience 'the big time' and in my mind is what grassroots is really about; people who play small-time but have the desire/passion and some skill to up their game, not those who are already making a living out of the game. The analogy to me is footall, where grassroots means those Sunday League players who pay for teh privilege of playing for fun but the desire to win with like minded people, not the lower league semi-pros who make a living from teh game. But poker has a habit of levelling out the playing field for all but the top professional players, so, for the 20% minority of underdogs...C'mon!!!

Now just need to see what odds Ladbrokes put on me getting through to the £500 buy-in freezeout and might just have a wager on myself! 

@_MR_G_  @ 33/1 ?

Day 1, erm, where to start?

At the beginning of course and why I am here doing this! (also @_Mr_G_ for tweeters amongst you).

Well it started with my desire to not work and earn my fortune living of my poker winnings...20+ years later the desire is still there but reality has kicked in hard! So in between a fairly standard job in IT I still try my luck regulary with Ladbrokes Poker.

So...after winning a place on their poker bootcamp a few years back, and then winning a hoof share of an injury plagued 'racehorse' LaddiesPoker II (no, it did ok considering!) my luck turned and I won a place in their grassroots promotion #LPGR2012 which is where they will pay your entry fees to tournaments and slowly knock the field down from 40 to 1 lucky winner who will win a massive and potentially life changing £10k in sponsorship!

Well, I say my luck turned, as I've said, I'm still in my 9-5 job so you'll have guessed my poker isn't brilliant so when i say won...well i wrote a nice 'begging letter' for 'why i should be a wildcard entry' and ta-dah, winner!

Thankfully they're cutting teh field down in stages and for unlucky poker players...or for those who really just shouldn't be gambling anything more than matchsticks they can progress through social media activity...such as tweets & blogs...and here i am! Desperately hoping my writing skills are better than my poker skills...actually not true...hope its the other way round, but as i haven't won teh lottery jackpot yet i am a realist!!

Seriously though, so excited! My normal poker experience is a small time $10 online tournament and now, even at stage one they are paying my £100 entry fee to a live tournament where winners can take home £1000s!!  Soooo out of my comfort zone, especially as Ladbrokes are sending players branded merchandise to wear for teh tournaments...no pressure there then when turning up looking like a pro when inside as nervous as, well Nelly McNervous from Nervousville!!

And alongside this fitness bootcamp started a week before i got the good news, so Jody Blunt and her BootCamp has been dragging me out of bed at 5:30am...YES AM...to start sweating my whatsits off from 06:15 for 45mins three times a week. However...so far so good...alive, limbs that know they've done some exercise for teh first time in 15+ years but are still attached and a few pounds and inches shed!! Actually, quite enjoying it if that is the right words. Having paid my money i do feel teh need to go and give it my all, although after a boxercise session where at the end i could barely hold my hand up with teh glove on, let alone punch anything, I can only imagine what a girl she thought i was...'couldn't punch way out of paperbag' springs to mind! Still...it can only get better can't it!

Meanwhile family adjusting to me turning down chocolate, trying to bring me down to reality and stopping me resigning to try my fortune on teh poker circuit and reminding me that playing poker till early hours is NOT good when i have to be up at the early hours for my bootcamp!!

But...this is only the start...