MoreTBC

ROTPSOV (huh! yeah!).. what is it good for? LUCK (noun) - success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions. If you've watched any of the Unibet ambassadors stream on Twitch you'll be aware that the chat box is almost always positive and constructive. People like to use it to vent frustration at bad beats from time to time but I don't know anyone that doesn't like to have a good moan when their aces get cracked. If your life is filled with primarily non-poker playing humans then it also makes the process of deflating your tilt with other people that understand what you're going through a little easier. The other thing you see a lot is people discussing tournaments they may be deep in or away to start playing. I am well versed in the excitement of, for example, a table popping up with an MTT you have satellited into that is both way above your normal buy-in price and with a big prize pool to play for. It's a thrill and one you want to share from time to time. Almost without fail when a situation like this is brought up in chat it is met with the following response.. "gl" Good luck. It's the general response to anything in life that is seen to have an element of luck to it. Gambling, job interviews, exams.. the list of situations where "Good Luck" is deemed an acceptable response is endless. Unfortunately wishing someone good luck in any situation is completely pointless, both for you and more importantly the person you're wishing the magical luck on. Poker is a perfect example of why luck does not exist. Using the Google definition provided at the start of the post helps to really hit home why wishing someone good luck is a hollow gesture. Essentially what you are saying to someone is that you hope they win all the situations where they are behind and hold whenever they are ahead, whether they are making good decisions (actions) or not. This completely contradicts the concept that in order to be a good poker player you need to make good decisions. Good luck is a short term solution for a long term problem for poker players and we shouldn't be promoting it. You're also lying most of the time when you say it anyway. I lie when I say it. If we're heads up or on a final table I don't want you to have good luck, I don't want you to run on the positive side of variance, I want my 72 to crack your aces. I want to win. I will still say "good luck" though :Rofl:. It's a bizarre ritual that exist both online and live where it is polite to say and almost expected even though nobody really means it. It would be frowned upon to sit down at a table of strangers and wish them terrible luck and that they all lose all their flips, even though that's really what you want. The solution? Well when I originally had the idea for this post in the shower I thought it was using ROTPSOV (Run on the positive side of variance) instead of "gl". Yeah it's longer to type but it's also more accurate. Luck is not measurable where as variance is. Having now typed out a few paragraphs I've realised that luck and variance are almost the same thing. Luck is just the beginners guide to variance. Luck is simple, it's good or bad. Lucky or unlucky. Variance is maths, calculations and percentages. Luck is the result, variance is the reason why the result happened. They both relate to the same uncontrollable elements that happen after we make decisions, luck is just less detailed in it's account of the situation :). So "gl" is out and "ROTPSOV" is out, what's next? Well if you truly want to send positive thoughts or well wishes to someone else then I think the only thing that makes sense now is "Make the correct decisions". It's not catchy, it doesn't roll off the tongue and for me personally it opens up another opportunity to type 'the' incorrectly but it's the only thing the person you're talking to can control and really needs to focus on, especially in poker. If you genuinely want someone to do well then you need to promote the idea of them making the correct decision in any situation, it'll help them in the long run. The reason behind this bizarre rant? A heater :) Sometimes it takes a good run above variance to make you realise luck is nonsense and so long as you're making good decisions things will come your way eventually. Last week was one of those runs. Highlights Won 6x €25 UK tour tickets and 1x €100 UK Tour ticket€4 Deepstack turbo win on Monday for €505x MTT wins in the space of 24 hours over Saturday night to Sunday night (€25 Turbo Bounty, €10 Turbo Bounty, €4 Four for Noon, €4 Quick Lunch, €4 Daily Deepstack)8 other FTs inc. 5th in Bullet 10 for €170 and 3rd in a €25 bounty for €86.I'll add some stuff to the end of month review in a seperate post but needless to say the bankroll has been given a massive boost which is perfect timing for the Bounty Badlands promo in August.

July - Week 2 - 10th to 16th It's my birthday! I always take the week around my birthday off work so I'd planned to get lots of poker in :) Got back from Nottingham just in time for Iany's follower MTT thingy. It was a disaster and I fired 6 bullets and won nothing 🤣. Playing after 8 hours on the road was probably not a good idea so the only other thing I played was the Community league and a little cash to clear a mission. Tuesday was a much better day. Picked up a gold trophy in a €10 turbo along with final tabling both €10 Ten-X bounties for a healthy €80 profit. That trend continued on Wednesday where I won one of the Ten-X and finished 2nd in the other for a total of €170. :cash: I then spent the next 4 days losing :wonder:. Sunday was the only day that had any positive results with an 8th in the €1k Bullet 4 and a 5th in the UK only €500 bounty freeroll but they did not cover a full day of play. Overall the week ended with €72 of profit so no complaints :) July - Week 3 - 17th to 23rd Another healthy start to the week with a big PLO win for me. Don't think I was feeling in the mood for a big MTT session so sat in at PLO4 and left up 4 buy ins. Played three €1 SNGs as I had tickets for them and won 2 and came 2nd in the third one before stone bubbling a €4 UK tour sat. Tuesday I cleared my bonus for winning the Tennis comp Andrei ran so it looked like a positive day although I didn't actually cash anything on the tables. I didn't play on Wednesday for a reason I cannot remember and Thursday brought a win in the €4 UK tour sat to gain a €25 ticket, a final table bubble in the 1k €4 Bullet and another FT in the Ten-X Turbo Bounty. It also brought the return of the bad beat tracker. Previously I would write in my notes when I got knocked out of a tourney in a bad way, it always good to have some context as to why you finished 75 out of 78 for the blog. Then I realised these things are not really important as far as variance goes and so long as I'm making the correct decisions these things are going to happen from time to time. Then I play the the €10 Evening deepstack and all that positive mindset is undone. It's my new Daily 4, my nemesis and my kryptonite. I have never cashed it and just do not understand how some people play in it. Wednesday's trip into the madness ended in my close to 30bb reshove with QQ being called by 64s. Yep, 6 4 sooooted. They of course went runner runner for a straight (not even the flush) and I was out in 29th. Now I know in the long run these things are great and I'll be making money like Scrooge McDuck but it doesn't make it any less annoying in the moment. The weekend was a mixed back. Picked up a silver medel in a €10 turbo bounty for €53 after getting it all in HU A9 vs A7 and not managing to hold for the game. Sunday was a big losing day with the only joy coming from the added money Bounty Deepstack where I finished 4th for €60. Other than that it wasa losing day. Overall on the week I lost €7 so it was swingy but not too painful. I still have a Saturday Stack ticket from the Haiki competition Lappin ran in June so I plan on using that this weekend as I finally have a Saturday off. I also plan to screen capture the entire thing and then hopefully ship it off to Mr Lappin or Mr Simpson for a hand review if I get any sort of run. I'll maybe do what I did last time and create a 'highlight' version and a full one so people can choose what they want to watch (if any). I'm also still on the UK tour sat grind and in the same loop of getting 2x €25 tickets converted, playing the €4's and getting 2x €25 back. Things are looking positive this week so hopefully I can buck the trend before August and the MTT league promo :) ICM spot of the day to round off the post. The following (I think) is from a €4 UK tour sat with 3 paid. Do you call the shove from button? I'm pretty confident I folded because I'm more like to go back and find out if something is a call when I fold over a fold when I call :) Lets take it to the ICM voodoo machine. Based on what I think the villain's range here is going to be it's a clear fold. I went for about 22% or Any pair, any Ax and some broadway combos because I think they'll still be on the tighter side at this point. If you calculate Nash equilibrium and then run it then it's a clear call. I think 47% is a little wide of a range but it is Unibet so who knows. Where do you stand on the range? Call or fold? Answers on a postcard please.

NmPee iz a Ch33t0rzz!!

At least you were ahead in these last three PF :)

I'm feeling a good one today Andrei! Fired my winnings from the Wimbledon A or B comp on these picks in 3-way accas, just need one more to start the :cash: rolling in. #InBNWeTrust

I always like PLO sims. We won't go into you moaning about losing being behind with the AK vs 88.

July - Week 1 - 3rd to 9th (and the 1st and 2nd) Started off the month with a positive result on Saturday. I had a PLO4 ticket from somewhere that I completed for a delightful €24 and also cashed a SNG. Only blip was a small cash loss completing a mission but other than that a great start to the month. Monster Sunday session as Davitsche had his monthly league promo on. Ended up being a pretty brutal session. I cashed two of the league games to cover the cost of playing them and then bricked every standard MTT I played. Only glimmer of hope on the day was going 3/3 on UK tour sats including a comeback from 22 chips. Definitely took the edge off the other losses :) The first week of July was pretty quiet in terms of results. Nothing over/under €20 for the 6 days I played. What confuses me the most is that I actually played 6 days because I spent most of Saturday driving. I must have got up early to complete a mission or something 🤣. Only interesting results were a min cash in the €4 bullet and completing a €1 ticket as part of a 2+2 NLOB promo for €15. As mentioned in the last post I was off to Nottingham on Saturday to play in day two of the DTD200. For a close to 8 hour drive time flew as we made it to the hotel in the early evening. The hotel itself didn't actually look like a hotel at all and to be honest probably isn't one most of the time. It was situated in the grounds of Nottingham Uni and was a conference centre by trade with multiple rooms for conference guests to stay in. It was tucked away so was nice and quiet and there was barely anyone about whenever we walked through the lobby. Room was pretty nice and comfortable and it was within walking distance of DTD and the city centre. First port of call was food so we headed over to the closest chain restaurant to DTD for some food. Hunger satisfied we made our way across the car park to the Dusk Till Dawn building. If you didn't know already who which poker site was the main sponsor for the card room you'd be hard pushed not to know after seeing the front of the building. This theme continued after registration when you are given a members card that does not say the venue name on the front, just the name of the affiliated poker room. Inside the main room was a wash of black and orange to further remind you who's paying the bills. There were three levels to the room with rows of tables on each tier. It was a busy room but didn't feel cramped. They have a 'TV' table too which I believe they do live streams of and 'Trickett's room'... a homage to Bobby's Room in the Bellagio named after (funnily enough) a sponsored pro of the affiliated poker site. Sam has won $10m+ so we'll let them off :) I only had one issue with the venue and that was the hostesses. I don't mean the people themselves, just how they were dressed. Now I'm not a prude and I have no issue looking at scantily clad women but I thought we had progressed as a society enough that we didn't need girls in tiny shorts, or in some cases pants, serving drinks in a modern poker room. It instantly cheapened the experience for me and reinforced the seedy underground club vibe you'd see in the movies. I'm sure they get paid well and make plenty of tips so it's probably fine for them and I'd expect the majority of the clientele don't mind the views so I'm probably in the minority about it being a bad thing image wise. Only other note from my first visit was that they were showing the cricket on the TVs and the sponsor that appeared at the beginning and end of each ad break was Unibet. I had a giggle every time I saw it. We had a few drinks and then headed home for an early night. Play started at 12 noon on Sunday so I was up nice and early to get some breakfast in. When I arrived at DTD the doors were still closed and there were a number of people outside waiting to get in. To the left of the entrance were some tables with various promotional items, t-shirts, hoodies, hats, etc. The first inquisitive souls ventured over, had a look and picked up a few things. No money changed hands with the person filling the tables with goodies. Slowly it dawned on more and more people that these items were all free to a good home and business picked up. I got in there early and picked up a hat, t-shirt and pink hoodie for the girlfriend along with a branded bag to put it all in. My guess is it was all old merch that they couldn't shift in the online store as it was difficult to find a M or L but if you wanted XXL you were in for a treat. There was also a number of items that had the old Party logo on them and in the case of the hoodie I picked up had the old logo and was a .fr branded item. Nevertheless it was a nice thing for them to just give this stuff away to whoever wanted it. When I left after playing the table was still full and had additional items that were not there on opening so there was plenty to go around. The doors opened and there was a mild rush to get in. Most players looked like they knew the place and knew that the table draw wouldn't be released until a few minutes before the start of play so were pretty calm and just got themselves a drink and a seat. Once the table draw appeared on the TV screens I made my way to table 42, seat 3. I have no idea why the forum is turning the pickture sideways 🤣. Anyway, that's what greeted me, chips in a bag. I've never had to open a chip bag before so it was pretty exciting. Again apologies for the sideways photo. That's what 140k looks like. It didn't last very long :Scared:. They have introduced a 'Button pays the ante' feature in an attempt to speed up play and I can say that in the two hours I played it definitely worked. The difference in the speed of play between this and the UK tour was massive. It may have been that I was just on a quiet table or with quick players but we flew through hands. I was doing twitter updates at the end of each level so I won't bore you with the details but I lasted until the last level before the first break. We had had 3 eliminations by the time I busted, two players that had bought in on Day 2 and a short stack that played from the beginning. The player that filled the seat of the departing short stack was another Day 2 buy-in and a gentleman that liked to get chips in the pot. After about 30 minutes at the table he had called an all-in on the turn (Board was 5434 or something similar) with A6o for 40bb or so and his opponent flipped over QQ. "What?! How do you call there?" "I thought I had a Straight" River is a A, busted player slams fist on table and departs. The loose goose was two to my right and opened for his usual 3x. I'm in the button with pocket 7's and exactly 20bb. We were a few minutes away from the break and a blind increase so it seemed like a great time to shove and get it in ahead against the maniac. Small blind snap shoves :(. Maniac turns over KTc and mucks so I was right in my assumption that I was ahead. I was not ahead of the Jacks of the SB. Board tried to give me a sweat with a straight draw on the turn but it was not meant to be. Our loose friend ended up finishing 6th so he must have been doing something right. I didn't play well to be honest. I was playing a little scared and was making rookie mistakes. I raised to 3.5x blind vs blind at one point because I picked up the wrong chip and the big blind knew it straight away. I had it in my head that I didn't want to make all this effort to come down and then get it in light so was being overly tight and generally rubbish. I need to get more live play under my belt for sure and it's on the to-do list if I bink another live package to anywhere. All in all a good trip though and another new venue and experience in the bag. Nottingham was lovely and the weather was great so I can recommend checking it out, especially if you're going to play the UK Tour stop in August :)

June - Week 5 - 26th to 30th I decided to properly start firing the UK tour sats this week and played a total of 6 during the week (Not really firing is it 🤣). Out of those 6 I managed to finish 5th in 4 of them resulting in absolutely nothing. In the remaining two I finished 3rd with 2 places playing in one and finally picked up a €25 ticket in the other. I'm actually quite happy with the results because normally I punt these things way earlier so getting down to the last few players seems to be progress and I felt focused whenever I played and was trying to make the best ICM decisions possible. If I watched them back I was probably being a little too tight but it's all part of the learning process. Nothing exciting happened on the MTT side of things, One min cash in a €4 turbo and a win in a €2 Step-it-up were the only other positives on an otherwise quiet week. I completed the last week of Moving On Up and torched the resulting €25 PLO ticket in about 10 hands :waterfall:. ** END OF MONTH REVIEW (JUNE 2017) ** +/- for the month: €203.43 (BR Total: €207.93)Days played: 25Losing days: 17Winning/Break Even days: 8Sessions/Games played - Cash: 38, SNGs: 10, MTTs: 102ROIs - Cash: -1.29% , SNGs: 20.42% , MTTs: -7.40% ** FULL RESULTS ** I've managed to break the bankroll graph so I'll have to redo it :( Goals for July Get out the hole and start playing with profit again.Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.Grind the UK Tour SatsNot much has changed with regards to goals, just trying to keep them simple and grind out some profit every month. Considering how negative most of the numbers are it's been a pretty decent month. I've played half the MTTs I normally would and still come out with €200 profit. I didn't get too crushed playing cash and the SNG ROI continues to be positive. Maybe this less tables, more focus thing is working :) Off site I managed to final table the Big $0.55 on PS but could only manage 8th I think for $45. It doesn't sound like a lot but that's roughly 90x the buy in which is pretty good. Unfortunately it took about 8 hours with their being 4000ish players. Every time I run deep in these things I wonder why I bother but at the same time I know that it means I'm doing something right and I'm getting closer to doing in consistently. Slight spoiler alert for July now. I've been getting lots of tickets on Party through their click-and-collect promo which is basically a promo where you log in, click on a card and randomly get a ticket for whatever satellite system they're trying to promote. One of these systems is for a £200 MTT running every Sunday at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. Last Sunday I went through the $2.20, $11 and $55 steps and won myself a seat in an online day one for the DTD200. I played the day one on Monday night and survived the 12 levels of play and am now in the live day 2 :Cool:. You can choose which Sunday you play but a number of things have aligned perfectly and I'm going down tomorrow to play so I can play this Sunday. It's a local holiday on Monday and also my birthday so I had time off work already and I managed to get out of a DJ gig on Saturday night so I'll be up bright and early tomorrow morning for the 7 hour drive down south to Englandshire. They roll back the blinds for the day 2 so my 35bb finishing stack has become a 70bb stack when I start play but I'll be way below average. You can see on the DTD website the stacks people have that have qualified online and there are some huge stacks. I have 140k but I saw one guy with 1 million chips... that's 500bb! Luckily they don't appear to have picked a day so I don't think I'll have to worry about that stack. There are two live sats running today and tomorrow so I think there will be plenty of players on Sunday. People can also just buy in direct on day 2 and get 50b so hopefully I get a few of them on my table and catch some of the gamblers out :) Full trip report when I get back as always and since I'm off work all next week I'll be back on the grind and back on the hand history collecting so I have stuff to type about here :)

Challenge accepted. GL on the journey!

High odds day, woohoo!

Turns out I don't feel like playing and I do feel like typing :) Here's some more hands from the last weeks play that confused and bemused me. Hand 1 So I played a €4 Step-it-up this week. These are basically sats but you're playing for money instead of tickets. The prizes are fixed and there is sometimes a booby cash prize as in this case. We're on the final table and 4 people are going to walk away with €20 while one poor sod will get €2.80 back. As you can see from the screenshot the big stack has limped and it folded round to me with 4's and 11bb. You would expect the big stack limper to be opening pretty wide so I thought shoving may lead to some easy chips. On the other hand we're in an early position so there could be plenty of better hands behind. I never know what to do with these small pair hands and whether they are good to shove in a situation like this so I asked the ICM bot. The ICMbot is very clear that you should not be shoving 4's, infact you should not be shoving a lot in this specific scenario. There could be some debate as to what the big stack is opening with as I didn't have a read on them so I set it to 40% of hands and I also set the BB's range high because with only 4bb left they would probably just chuck it in if there was a lot in the pot. I know I would be shoving 9's to 7's in this spot before running this so it's something I will be thinking about more in future. What did I do? I timed out trying to take the screenshot and folded :Rofl:. Hand 2 Same MTT, different situation. We're down to 8 now and still hovering around the 10bb mark. The shortest stack has shoved and it's folded round to me in the big blind. This is another thing I am pretty clueless about when it comes to ICM, calling ranges. I'm pretty confident with shoving things into unopened pots but when I'm on the calling side I'm pretty clueless as to what's good and bad. Would you call something like this for 3 of your 10bb? I've probably given the CO's hand a little more credit than it deserves.. *checks Snapshove* actually I was only 3% off but I doubt it'll make that much of a difference to the results. T4s is a fold but it's not far away and the amount of hands you could call with is surprising to me. I guess it'll be something that becomes less surprising over time as I run more of these in more spot. If this was for a bounty I'd be snapcalling (whether it is a correct decision or not) so it's become a training process to not look at these situations through bounty hunting glasses :) What did I do? I can't remember but I imagine I folded because I have a 3rd hand from the same MTT :) Hand 3 Now you're going to have to pretend I'm not old and slow and didn't get the screenshot after the decision was made. The action went limp, limp, min raise before it got to me with the 8's. I'm guessing I'm gonna know the answer but is this a clear fold? Having seen the hand play out it was in this case but is there ever a case for going all in. Would you need specific reads on all the players to know they're limping a lot or min raising with garbage? Looking back at this screenshot it was a terrible all in. The initial limp is screaming strength and then the min raise is doing the same thing. Chalk this one up in the bad play column :(

So I've managed to get an afternoon off work by accidentally turning up this morning when I was supposed to be in at lunchtime so it's freed up some time to type lots of words. June - Week 4 - 19th to 25th I have something I would like to share with your all... Sat Strategyhttp://www.gripsed.com/satellites/http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/satellites/satellite_strategy/multi-table-tournament-satellite-strategy.htmlhttps://www.flopturnriver.com/poker-strategy/andy-holts-guide-to-satellite-poker-tournaments-19108https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/thinking-poker-satellite-tournaments-20047.htmhttps://www.upswingpoker.com/satellite-poker-tournament-strategy/http://www.bluffeurope.com/poker-news/en/poker_strategy/Beam-me-up-How-to-play-satellites-_10832.aspxhttps://www.pokerschoolonline.com/blogs/ouchbadbeat/my-mtt-satellite-tips-top-secret-don-t-readhttps://www.pocketfives.com/articles/satellite-tournament-strategy-277101/ICMizerhttp://www.icmpoker.com/en/video/https://www.pokervip.com/article/view?slug=icmizer-guide-to-improve-your-tournament-playhttp://www.gripsed.com/grinder/how-to-use-icmizer-effectivelyICMhttp://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/tournament/icm/how/https://www.pokerstrategy.com/poker-software-tools/icm-trainer/ http://www.pokerlistings.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-the-independent-chip-model-icm-for-tournament-poker-players **http://www.gripsed.com/grinder/icm-strategy-in-actionhttps://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/adjusting-to-icm-at-tournament-final-tables/http://www.thinkingpoker.net/articles/improving-your-mtt-skills/https://www.twitch.tv/videos/153577003 - Buehlero FT ICM reviewGeneralhttps://www.upswingpoker.com/category/poker-quizzes/https://www.upswingpoker.com/category/poker-strategy/That's the list of articles and videos I've been working through in preparation for the UK Tour satellite grind. Most of them kinda say the same thing in regards to strategy but they're all worth a read. The ICMizer stuff goes into the basics of using the program and there is some good general ICM based stuff too. Hopefully you find something useful in there, I know I did :) People also demanded more pictures to break up all the text. Your wish is my command! Here is a picture of my newly tidied desk including pink camping chair for the gf when she can't deal with being more than 3 feet away from me. Strangely something as simple as having a clean work space has actually made me more productive. I have been taking notes when playing and reading articles and writing down hand information for putting in the blog. I know, it sounds like lies right? Well let me present the fruits of my labour. Hand 1 It's moving on up month on Unibet so naturally I chose the PLO route. It's a swingy game and this hand is a perfect example of it Hero: 9:Spades: 7:Spades: J:Diamonds: 5:Hearts: Villain: K:Diamonds: 4:Hearts: T:Diamonds: 7:Hearts: We're playing PLO10 because I had a ticket for it. I am in the small blind and the villain in the big. Preflop action goes I pot to 0.30, villain re-pots to 0.90 and I call. Now I know my hand is not very good but Joey Ingram told me to never fold to 3-bets in PLO and he's won a lot more money than I have so I'm going to listen to his words of wisdom! We're 45%/55% pre-flop so not in too bad shape. Flop comes 8:Hearts: 3:Diamonds: T:Hearts:. Pot is 1.75 Not the best of flops there. We've got a decent number of outs to a straight but they can't be hearts and no flush draws. Villain has top pair and a flush draw. We're 35%/65% at this point but luckily it goes check/check and we get a free card. Turn is a 9:Diamonds: We have made the straight, excellent stuff. It's not the nut straight but it's pretty close and will be scary for the villain if they don't have a J or Q in their hand. The villain has now added a straight draw to his flush draw so probably quite happy about his hand still. This was reflected in the better that went pot/pot/all-in/call :Rofl:. Pot is now 20.85 and we're a 57%/43% favourite. River is the 9:Hearts: :Waterfall: I had already made a few buyins on the ticket so it was not the end of the PLO10 adventure. It did end eventually but I can't remember how. F for the PLO10 ticket. Does anyone get away from the hand on the turn? Should I have kept the pot small or did I just get spanked by RNGesus. I'm a PLO goof, help me out. Hand 2 There is nothing particularly exciting about how this hand played out, I just wanted to see equities and highlight Aces suck in PLO :) I'm pretty sure it all went in pre-flop or on the flop. Those double suited connected hands really do well don't they. Hand 3 Don't tell the mods but this one wasn't actually on Unibet :Wow:. We are at most 3 people away from a ticket for a $7.50 MTT and we in the following tricky position. I had no idea if this was a call or not. I was amazed nobody had raised this close to the bubble as the BB is forced all in as they didn't have enough chips. It folded round to me in the SB and I was left with a decision I've never had before. With 23k in the pot do I put 2k in and try and hit something? Assuming I've set up ICMizer right it turns out I should not put my 2k in. I figured it would be close but it's not until you run these you realise what kind of hands you can and cannot play. I, of course, did this analysis after the fact and called.. and lost. Through some sort of blind luck other players in the tournament felt like a gamble and I won a ticket two hands later with 4 antes :Thumbsup: I did not cash in the main MTT :( I have three more hands to go but I'll save them for the next post :) They are all ICM based decision with hopefully correct ICMizer analysis so if you liked the stuff above you're in for a treat. As far as results go it's basically been identical to last week. Small loses all week and then bink something on Sunday. This week it was the Ten-X Turbo Bounty for €110 :) I've only played 2 UK tour sats but they were both €1 tickets and did not go well :( I had one other final table on the Sunday but other than that it was a quiet week playing the bare minimum to complete Moving on Up and use up some expiring €10 MTT tickets. Profit for the week was about €65 which works for me and gets the bankroll back into the €2xx zone. That means we now have a decent cushion for playing €4 MTTs and playing the odd €10. In the ticket bag I now have a PLO4 from the missions flip tourney and a PLO25 cash ticket from Moving on Up, the two June mission tickets, a Saturday Stack ticket for creating a Haiku about Ian Simpson killing cats and 12x €4 UK Tour tickets :). Plenty of 'free' play to get through in the next few weeks and maybe a big ol' bink in the Stack one weekend :) Next time out, the end of month review and those ICM hands I keep going on about :)

Some good news and some bad news on that fdront @KrustyTheClown. Good news, I've been recording hands over the last week to put in here in the next blog post so I've got 3 or 4 to write about. Bad news, I don't play cash NLHE so they're mostly MTT/ICM things and there is also a PLO cash hand :) I'll get it all typed up at some point in the next week.

Fixed now :) 'Sort by Jackpot' still puts the giant prize pool lotteries first. Prize pool tag is there though 👍

Remember the days when I used to update this thing every few days? Those were good times :annoyed: June - Week 1 - 1st to 4th The more I read back over old entries the more I realise they are a bit self indulgent. Originally when I decided to start a blog it was to hold myself accountable for everything I was doing regarding poker and also to show people what it's actually like as a small stakes player. There are plenty of blogs and vlogs out there to give you a peek into the exciting world of the high rollers and the mid stakes crushers but nothing that really shows what it's like for the guy with a >1k roll that was trying to follow BRM and play low stakes, specifically on Unibet. You can watch bankroll challenges on Twitch and Youtube but they're not here so it can be hard to relate and the guys doing them are normally pros doing it for fun or guys that are taking a shot and can play 24/7. If you're an average Joe you work 9-5 and you have commitments so you can't just sit and grind all day. You can't spend 2 hours every day 'studying' or watching training videos. The blog was designed for those guys because I'm one of those guys and it would be something I'd want to read if I was on the other side of the keyboard. Now when I read blogs like Dara's, @ChapInAChair's, Karl Parrish's etc. I feel like the majority of these posts are just 'Look what I won today' kinda posts and don't really serve much purpose. Everyone likes to complain about bad beats and brag about big wins, that's the same for all players, but to read it's not that exciting. All the mentioned blogs have a narrative and storylines that make them interesting with even needing results in them. I'd like this blog to be more like that. I was added to a Facebook group a few months ago called Ace-High which has a wide variety of people in it posting about a wide variety of poker related things. For all the good content and discussions that I've scrolled though since joining the group one thing has stood out time and time again... You probably see these types of posts once a day as a minimum on the group. It's not specific to any one poster or site and this was just the first one I found as an example. Now I know how good it feels to dance around the mindfield of a big MTT and run deep but nobody really cares if your 50th out of 74 left. If we're all really honest we probably wouldn't care if this poster (or any other) finished 9th, it's all about the trophies and the big scores. The majority of this blog is a post like the one above, just with many, many, more words. How to solve this self created problem? I don't actually know :) It's the nature of the beast that results are the benchmark of success in poker so not reporting on them seems to defeat the purpose of using the blog to be accountable and to show that you can make a little money (or lose it) playing the low stakes. On the flip side, I'd like it to be more entertaining and less robotic so that it's a better read for people who don't personally care how good or bad I'm doing :) It's a work in progress I guess and we'll just have to see how it develops. With all that being said, here are some results from week one in June.. *Checks results sheet* Turns out I played one day and made 88 cents 🤣. A single MTT cash in the €1 Deepstack Bounty, finishing 9th with 0 bounties, was the only positive results. Luckily all the other MTTs I played were via tickets so did not cost me anything in BR terms. June - Week 2 - 5th to 11th Possibly the biggest week ever on Unibet as a MTT player ran from the 5th to the 11th. The 50k GTD €100 R/A on Sunday 11th sounded on paper like it was going to be a expensive loss for Unibet considering that the existing 'Sunday Major' had a €4k GTD which it barely break and normally has less than 100 players. I think everyone ended up being delighted that it smashed the GTD and had the addons been working would have gone well beyond the 65k? it reached. I played in the event but we'll get into that after a quick summery of the rest of the week. Monday started off the week well. With the Moving on up promo running and missions to complete I was diversifying my game types to try and get maximum value. It's a little tricky to do when you have €5 in your account to work with but we got there. Won a €1 SNG and a buy in at NL4 to get things going before hitting the MTT streets. I still had a number of €4 tickets left from when I converted all my bonus points so I got into the two bounties, the comm league, a deepstack turbo and the 1k r/a. Out of those five I finished 9th in the early bounty and final tabled the 1k. Ended up finishing 4th in that one for €71 to complete my first €100 profit day since the end of April. Dear God did the bankroll need a boost like that! I thought I was going to be hitting the freeroll streets before that bink. Cue 5 days of losing :( When completing missions and moving on up I was breaking even or winning but I continued the trend that started in May and got crushed in MTTs over and over. By the time Sunday rolled round I had burned through the €70 profit I had won on Monday and was back to the €35 mark. I decided on the Sunday that I was just going to make a deposit to play the 50k. I wanted to be part of the tournament and I thought it was going to be good value to play. I know it's completely against BRM and all that but I saw it as a one off shot take. I had also bricked every sat I played to try and qualify for it 🤣. I deposited enough to cover a buy in and an addon just in case I was running well. It turned out I did not need the addon because a) the addons didn't work and b) I didn't survive to use to a potential addon. I didn't have any major hands or suckouts to discuss I just got gobbled up by the structure. To compound the pain of not having a deep run in the 50k I bricked every single other MTT and sat I played during Sunday, 16 in total inc teh 50k sats. My results still show the day as being profitable because the deposit acts a boost but it was a big losing day to round off a losing week. June - Week 2 - 12th to 18th It was time to take some time off. I thought I'd wrote about this already but I can't find it so maybe I wrote it out in my head and never actually typed it out. After Glasgow I received a €25 UK tour ticket. I do not know why I got this ticket so I asked the superpowers if they knew and they couldn't work it out either and just said to keep it. Then I received a second ticket. This one was accompanied by a PM from Pirahn saying he had got Robin to send me one of his tickets. An incredible gesture from a gentleman I had met for the first time in Glasgow. This gave me €50 to try and get myself to another UK stop on the cheap. I felt (and still feel) that these tickets deserve my full attention and that I want to do everything I can to make sure I can, at the very minimum, can give Pirahn back his ticket and have some left over. I'd also quite like to get to Nottingham because I had so much fun in Glasgow. In order to do this I decided I was going to take some time off actually playing and focus on learning about becoming a better player, specifically in the satellite game. I spent a day trying to find as many articles and videos about how to play sats, use ICMizer and any other resources that would help me maximize my chances of getting a return on the tickets and my time. I cleaned my computer desk completely over the weekend so I had a fresh and clean space to work in, complete with a new notepad and pen to take notes. Previously my desk was a wash with midi/music devices I barely used and 100 cables of different shapes and sizes so it was a long overdue clear out. I ended up binning 4 black bags worth of crap I'd been collecting over the years and felt good for it. A good blogger would now show you a picture of the clean desk but I'm at work writing this so I can't 😏. Now I didn't stop playing completely. There were still missions to complete and moving on up to get through. Much like the previous week I had a winning Monday and then lost for the next few days. Turned things around on Saturday with several small winning sessions in PLO4 and a 6th in a €1 turbo to get some much need green colour on the results spreadsheet. Sunday was a turning point. A picture says 1000 words I believe they say... I started the day with €30 in my account and went on a several hour long sun run. It was my first big MTT session of the week and it went really well as you can see. Even the non profit MTTs were deep runs (The bounty deepstack was KK < A4 when the flop came 235) so it was about as pure a run I've had for as long as I can remember. 6 FTs and 2 gold trophies is a fantastic Sunday and hopefully a turning point with regards to the recent run/play bad. I'm about half way through the satellite resources I collected so I plan to finish those and then start focusing on the UK tour sats this week. Fewer tables and more focus while playing them is the goal for the next week along with taking notes and possibly recording a sat session. As soon as I start playing the sats there will be hands to discuss, I promise!

Resident moaner strikes again ;)

I'm saying nothing!

Watching numbers on a screen has never been this exciting. She starts losing when I watch the live stream so I'm not loading it.

It was part of a multiple that reached 1.4 :)

She was 1.05 when I put her in an acca to clear my bonus. Why does she hate me?

Christina McHale is going to botch the 3rd set isn't she @AndreiBN? :(

There was a 10 minute blip for some players a few hours ago, Lappin had it on his afternoon stream. Didn't appear to last very long.

They should say 'prize pool' or 'jackpot' on the home page for each lottery. Seems a bit misleading to suggest you could win 2.1 billion when it's actually closer to 3.3 million. When you sort by Jackpot it shows the biggest prize pools first.

** END OF MONTH REVIEW (MAY 2017) ** +/- for the month: -€244.58 (BR Total: €4.50)Days played: 26Losing days: 19Winning/Break Even days: 7Sessions/Games played - Cash: 12, SNGs: 15, MTTs: 221ROIs - Cash: -28.16% , SNGs: 26.92% , MTTs: -23.67% ** FULL RESULTS ** Well May was brutal :( Not much more to say after the last results post really, continued to have losing days and ended up with a bankroll good enough for a pint. All is not lost though, I had enough points for 10x €4 MTT tickets so that will be a good starting point in June to try and build the roll again. Also SNG ROI continues to be good even with the small sample so I may play a few more of them. Goals for June Get out the hole and start playing with profit again.Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community. Back to basics for June it seems. There is no point getting involved in the sat systems with such a small roll so it's just going to be €4 and under MTTs for the foreseeable future. Probably going to end up missing the Half Billion too although I may just make a deposit and fire that as a one off because it's going to be such good value. Hand discussion has been completely neglected recently and that's 100% down to my laziness and general not paying attention when I play. With all the will in the world I plan to post a hand a week to see what people think about them. I actually had my first live hand review in Glasgow about a hand played out in the community event, it went something like this... We're down to 6 players on the table I think (two tables total) and Pirahn is first to act. He's also the dealer so StartlingGropes wife is sitting in his official seat, peaks at the cards, and then shows Pirahn. Pirahn says "that's the worst starting hand, we don't want to play that" and mucks. I am next to act and look at 77. I have somewhere in the 11-13bb range and am now very confused. The assumption is that a 7 is now dead because it's in the 72 'worst hand' Pirahn had so I showed him what I had and then folded. There was some debate as to whether it's still a shove or not. After the game was finished I checked with Ian and Lappin and the general consensus was that it's probably still a shove but you lose some equity. Here is how the numbers work out I think.. With not knowing what anyone else had in the hand I can only go by percentages but my understanding of this is that if I was called by someone holding a top 30% hand then I'm losing money. This is the point where I don't know where to go to find a more definitive answer. Do we take ICM into consideration? There was probably 12-15 players left with 3 getting paid but does that really matter? I think Robin would have called me light, does that matter? I tried running things through ICMizer with rough numbers but basically I don't understand it and I don't know if you can kill a 7 in it to alter the outcome. Does anyone know how we go about solving this a little more accurately? Either way it was a fun one because it's a situation that can never happen online. Chances are it won't happen to most people live either because exposed cards are pretty rare and you have a pocket pair to match them are even more rare. I feel like there is an Irish man in Vegas that will be able to give me a whole load of GTO voodoo to explain the situation so I'll maybe send him an email with the details and see what he comes up with after the WSOP. I was going to write about the start of June but there are enough words here already so I'll leave it for another day :) Spoiler alert, it's a winning month so far :Cool:

Day 3 (Sunday) and wrap up I had a decent nights sleep! By decent I mean 6 hours or so but I felt like a new man when I woke up. Had a nice breakfast and a chat with @Mynona who I bumped into and then it was off into town. I'm not the smallest of creatures so I've been trying to be a bit more active on a regular basis and one of the things I have been doing is walking. Normally I have someone with me to talk to but on this occasion I was riding solo. I had forgotten to take any earphones with me so decided a quick trip into the centre of Glasgow for a cheap pair would be an excellent time waster before the community event. It was another freakishly warm and sunny (although a little windy) day in Glasgow so I headed to the hotel car park to get my sun glasses from the car. To my horror, the car was nowhere to be seen :wow:. "Has it been towed?" "I thought this car park was free?" Panic set is as I pictured a day of visiting some impound and paying an astronomical fee to get my car back. Figuring there would be some sort of car park attendant or office on the ground floor I made my through the floors. By 'through the floors' I really mean from level 2 to level 1 where I found my car sitting exactly where I'd parked it 🤣. I could have sworn I'd parked it on level 2 on Friday, honest! With sunglasses in hand I started my adventure into town. I didn't know where I was going but Google maps did so I did what the lady told me and ended up at a street that had shops on it. HMV had a lovely sale on headphones so for £5.99 I was now able to block out the world and wander aimlessly around Glasgow listening to podcasts. If you've never listened to a poker podcast before I strongly urge you to. Obviously you should be listening to the Unibet sponsored Chip Race hosted by the lovely David Lappin and the difficult to spell Dara O... *googles* 'Kearney but there are some other gems available. I like to put them on now when I'm driving for any length of time or when I'm walking as I find I pay a lot more attention to the content. I wanted to highlight two in particular that I listened to, one on the way down the Glasgow and one while I was walking on the Sunday and then on the drive home because it's so long. I've been a fan of Joey Ingram's podcast for a while now as he always seems to get interesting people on and they're always very entertaining to listen to or watch. What struck me about these two podcasts in particular is the way these high stakes guys think about the all the things outside the actual on the felt actions and the lengths they go to to try and find edges on other players in the same pool. It's fascinating to hear about how they see their lives and the world in general from a slightly different light from the norm. I can't really do it justice in explaing it so I can only reiterate my suggestion to listen/watch them and see if you can take anything away from either persons views and opinions. I spent well over an hour just walking up and down the Clyde river absorbing the podcast and some sun and then headed back to the hotel to get some food. On the walk back I ended up behind Espen, Estonian Jesus aka Ben and Robin from Unibet. They were making their way to the Casino so Espen and Ben could play day 2 so I left them to it and just sent Espen a stalker-like photo on twitter so he knew I was watching him 🤣. He asked me later why I didn't come up and say 'Hi' and I told him that I was big timing him :Cool: When I first saw Espen aka @Hymn2Ninkasi it was during Day 1a and he was waving at me from another table while we were playing. I didn't know he was waving at me as I thought he was looking Ian Simpson, who was sitting a few tables over so I ignored it. After I folded my next hand I looked up and he's waving again. I look over at Ian who has his head down and assume he's just not seen Espen and ignore him again. By about the 4th time of this happening I ended up being shouted at and had to quickly apologise for misreading his attempts at communication. This then started a theme for the weekend whereby I would just tell Espen I was 'big timing' him in any situation possible until he wears the poo emoji hat he won from me in London on stream. We're not friends until he does it 🤣 I went to the Casino at 3pm expecting it to be full of day 2 railers and general buzz but was met with a quiet and subdued room of mostly men and no community members in sight. Luckily @MathrimC appeared a few minutes after I got my first drink and explained I just missed everyone and they'd gone for a late lunch. I did get to have my first proper conversation with Daiva aka @balticblonde which was a little awkward as she knew my girlfriend better than me 🤣. They had met at the players party in London and spend a good chunk of the night tearing up the dancefloor together while I sat in the corner drinking and moaning about the music. We discussed bad beats from the weekend and shared a common bond of being eliminated in the last levels of day 1b :Teardrop:. @jonny2192 and Mynona were next to appear and made ourselves comfy at one of the bar tables while Daiva darted off to try and catch the other ambassadors and the end of the lunchtime prices at the Chinese buffet next door. We finally sat down for the community event just after 5pm. 3 tables of players hungry for bounties, tickets and glory. My table was an international affair that included the 2016 Glasgow champ to my left, @Robin-Unibet and at least one other player who I know is on the community but don't want to risk mistagging. If you read this and you were on my table let me know so I can put a face to the username please :) I was not aware at the time that Robin did not know who I was/knew my username so in hindsight giving him grief about never receiving any poker related emails from Unibet may have seemd a little assholy, sorry about that :). Understandable he attacked my blinds whenever he could and quickly became the table boss. The tables were self dealt so we had a lot of fun getting confused about chopping up 3 way all ins and at one point we all just lost the ability to read the board and had a 5 minute debate about whether there was black card in the middle of the table during a previous hand. With the blinds going up every 10 minutes or so we were lucky if we got an orbit in per level but nobody really cared. As the field decreased and the tables broke we ended up being table 1 and eventually the final table. Now I'd had a few pints at this point so I apologise if any of the reporting is incorrect but I -think- this was the final table :- Seat 1 - Pirahn Seat 2 - Me Seat 3 - Billy aka UK Tour 2016 champ aka sG (I think) Seat 4 - Unibet Robin Seat 5 - Mynona Seat 6 - @ChapInAChair Seat 7 - Someone with far too many chips. Part of me wants to say Jason, part of me wants to say it was a Simon. Part of me wants to say he's from Unibet, part of me things he was with the production guys covering the event. He was one of the few people I never spoke to directly so I apologise if none of the above is correct :) Seat 8 - Daiva Seat 9 - ?? When they balanced the tables we might have been at 8 anyway or I've forgotten someone. The reason I didn't pay attention was because I lasted one hand. Blind vs blind I had KQs and went all in for less than 10bb and was called by Aces. I got up, waited for my free drink that Robin bought and then left for a sulk 🤣. The rest of the night was spent spent railing, eating and drinking. The final table for the main event was right next to the community event so it was very easy to bounce back and forth between the two tables and have a nosey. There was also some fierce pool rivalries going on and everyone was having a great time. I managed to smooth things over with Robin at the bar and explained I was that guy that complains all the time so we're all good I think. Everyone from the community stayed all night, along with all the ambassadors, and drank the night away. It's a testament to the community, via here on the forum and on Twitch, that people from all nations and walks of life that have just met for the first time in real life can spend several hours together partying like they're best friends. I would have happily played community SnGs for 3 days instead of the main event and really didn't want the night to end. The closest thing to a 2nd community event ended up being a PLO flip tournament that took a very long time to organise and caused more action than the final table in the main event! It took a while to get going because we ended up discussing staking with Mr Lappin, Marc Convey and @DaVitsche for about half an hour and then there wasa big debate to decide on a buy in after Lappin pulled out an envelope of £20 notes like the high roller he is. (It was rent from his flatmate Christin Maschmann (@DavinaDarr) that she had won by final tabling the main event) Competitors for the 2 PLO flip tournies ended up being Myself, David Lappin, Marc Convey, David Vanderheyden, a team consisting of Jonny and Mathrim (Team fivers) and Hensiepensie. It was first to win 3 flips in the first game and 2 in the second because the first one took so long. Half way through we got told to keep it down because the main event was heads up and we were being rather rowdy 🤣. I think Hensie or Davitsche won the first and Team fivers took the second. Moments after the end of the second tourney the main event champion was crowned :Cash:. I spent nearly the entire day of 1b sitting with the champ, Andrew, on my right or left. He was a lovely guy from Edinburgh, played very solidly as far as I could tell and would happily discuss a hand you'd played with him and show you cards. I was rooting for him when they got down to the last few players so a big congratulations to him on a well deserved win. After the excitement of the end of the main event everyone said their slow goodbyes and made their way to their respective hotels. It was a day I'd happily repeat over and over. That's now a UO and a UK tour event in the bag and I'm proud to say I've attended both and would do the same again in a heartbeat. It was great to finally meet my internet boss @IanSimpson and steal his shoes, meet lots of new community members and catch up with ones I'd met in London already. I learned so much this weekend about both poker and no poker things and had some amazing conversations with people I barely knew about subjects I never expected to be talking about. I might not have won any money (well I won a pound by staking Lappin in a game of pool) but I did get to convert some internet friends into real ones, got some more valuable live poker experience and possibly blagged a trip to Bucharest as a blogger for the UO (I won't hold you to that Simon ;)) More blog status will resume now. Month wrap up next and then we'll see what June brings :).