MetalWolf

So, bankroll management. Number one rule in poker? Quite possibly. But something I’ve never been any good at. €120 to my name and a €110 tournament I can’t resist staring me in the face. I felt I needed to do something sensible incase the most likely scenario happened and I didn’t cash – so I sold 10% to my roommate. With an extra €11 in my wallet to help me get home from Dublin I was confident enough to walk up to the registration desk. Luckily I did this earlier as the tournament was going to be capped at 45 and there was a lot of interest. Just like in the main I didn’t know anyone on my table so did the usual scouting online beforehand which I later realized was pointless because results online were 95%+ holdem and it would give me no indication to how good someone was at Omaha. So I was relying on my instinct which, thankfully, I think is pretty good. 15k starting stack and I became one of the big stacks early on which helped me settle in. I managed to extract maximum value from a turned straight flush against a rivered full house. My opponent deciding to do what I usually do in low stakes PLO on Unibet and say ‘Ah F*** it, allin’. It was smooth sailing from then on with the only dent in the armor coming when I called a decent sized bet with second nuts and lost to nuts, a hand on later reflection which should have been an easy fold. I stayed above average stack for the entire duration up until all of a sudden we were down to a final table of 8. Only 5 would get paid. I was comfortable throughout and was busy googling other places to play Omaha because obviously I was pretty good at this. Then the bubble came. 6 left and I raised AAxx to see one call. The flop came 10 7 2 with two hearts and I was first to act. I raised pot and my opponent instantly moved allin. This was terrible. An awful position to be in. 10 10? I tanked. I ran lots of possible combinations through my head and some I was ahead of but…. I only had AA. No real way to improve. I looked at my stack. If I folded I was crippled but still in… The balance between what money I had left to my name and my instinct to call was fighting to the death. I finally decided to be a hero. I called. He had QQ89 with two hearts. ‘OMGGGGGGGGGGG BRICK!’ I was shouting in my head as the turn and river fell. And they both duly obliged. A black 2 on the turn was safe and I don’t even remember the river as my roommate ran up to put his hands on my shoulders and give me a little shake of congrats. Whatever happened I had money to get home, had proved my ability which I often doubt myself about, and got myself my first and only Irish flag for the results database. Second one to come this weekend of course. 😏 In the end it was to be a four-way deal that ended the tournament. It was getting late and as slight chip leader I was offered €1245 which was larger than the 2nd place payout of €1125. One person would not agree to the deal though unless he was declared the winner. It seems his friend had won the event the previous year and he wanted his name on the database in first place to equal his achievement. We all agreed to his unusual request though in hindsight I am a bit gutted my name was not in first. My winnings were recorded wrong on the database anyway after I spent quite a lot of time chasing them up to submit the results but at least I got my Irish flag! The Guinness flowed for the rest of the night and I was ecstatic at what I had achieved. I stayed in Dublin for the whole next day catching a late night flight home. I wanted to do this more often and travel for poker. Making the most of what’s out there playing the game I love. Sadly, life dictated that I would not be able to do that until joining Unibet last year and fingers crossed I have the opportunity to do it more often after attending 4 of their live events since then and very much looking forward to the 5th one. Anyone recognizes me in Dublin please feel free to come up and say Hi as I don’t bite! @Charl_xoxox might, though…

@GR1ZZL3R haha you’re welcome mate. You’ll love it. And I’ll finish this story today too 🤣

My Dublin story Part 1 The year is 2012 and poker life was great. During the year I took down multiple online tournaments for between 1k and 5k and took down my first live festival event, an 888 Superstack series in Birmingham. I was optimistic my poker career was back on track after not playing pro since 2006. Roll the clock forward a year and everything changed. My backer offloaded us all early 2013 for reasons beyond their control and I was left with my dead end job and no way of playing the mid stakes I had become so accustomed to again. This was the year I first became so appreciative of satellites. 2 months in a row I qualified for a local £100 tournament for £1. I came 8th both times which felt pretty disgusting but was a good financial boost at the time. I was heavily involved with another forum at the time and everyone was telling me how good the IPO in Dublin was. Promises of 1000 players. Hundreds of cash games playing 24 hours and certainly more Guinness than an average built Englishman like me could handle. I had never played poker in another country and would be travelling alone but this was no deterrence to me whatsoever. I felt like I would embrace it. A couple weeks before the tournament I entered the final seat only sat and won it. I was so happy and managed to split the hotel costs with another forum member I had never met and from a completely different part of the country. The hotel was called the Regency but it was also where we would be play poker so I was praising my luck. That hotel would later be renamed the Bonnington. The very same we will be gracing for this year’s UO Dublin. I arrived in Dublin early on the day I would start play. I waited in the airport for my forum friend who landed shortly after and we both got a taxi to the hotel. No one was kidding about what I would expect to see. This was going to be the biggest live event I had ever played in and the massive room was wall to wall with poker tables. We would eventually end up with 1,373 entrants playing for a huge prizepool for just a €200 buyin. The main event for me was largely uneventful. I made day two but bagged up pretty much the same chip stack as I started with. I ended up busting early day two moving allin over the top of an UTG raise with AK. The AJ called and spiked his J to send me to the rail. Not that I was disappointed. There was poker action and friendly faces everywhere I looked. And the Saturday football was about to start so that was more than reason enough to venture into the pub for a couple of beers! An amazing day was filled with lots of alcohol with lots of forum members and lots of Domino’s pizza. Any small anxieties I had of travelling alone and playing poker with a load of unknowns was completely washed away. The weekend was not yet over. Plenty of side events were planned for the Sunday and one of them piqued my interest. I remember only having €120 left to enjoy the rest of the weekend (and pretty much to last me til payday at work a few days later!) but there was a €110 Omaha event planned for Sunday. I had never played Omaha live and I loved the game. I was about to confirm the reason why I would never make a good poker pro again. Bankroll management? What’s all that about…

@GR1ZZL3RYou also have a 100% record of never failing to cash whichever way you look at it 😉 My 8 cashes might look fairly impressive from 14 online 500's but none of them were even double my money I don't think. All min to slightly above min cashes haha #ScaredMoney

UO is getting close. My record of big buyin events reads £/$/€1000 - Played 4 online. Cashed 0. £/$/€500 - Played 1 Live. Cashed 0. £/$/€500 - Played 14 Online. Cashed 8. So, only a week away from Dublin and the biggest live event I will have ever played. I feel a story coming on...

Yep, certainly agree with that. As mentioned yesterday heres a quick stats update. Total games played: 2358 ITM: 689 / 29.22% Total buyin: €19,558.10 Total Cashes: €26,015.11 Profit: €6,457.01 ROI: 33.01% Tournament wins: 24 I really need to come up with some proper goals for next year. I've achieved some decent things this year and defo want to make some more great poker memories next year too.

Not much response but thanks for those that did. @mafioso77777I think it is fine to try and isolate the original raiser by raising here but at lot of the time our hand is so far ahead letting people hang themselves a bit is probably more profitable. Also, if early position has tried limping with something massive they might fancy a raise themselves meaning we can get allin then. @WuDuYep, pretty much what I do. I don't think there is actually anything wrong with how the hand is played. I wanted her to come back to me and tell me that while thinking about the sort of questions she should be asking herself. The biggest thing I wanted to stress to her is that we shouldn't base our future decisions on the result of one particular hand. Win or lose. I think many times our hand is good here the way we play it, bearing in mind the lack of strength shown by villain, and as such we will make money in the long run using this strategy. The fact we lost the hand is irrelevant. There is more than enough hands that are behind in villains range that make that river bet sound. I'll post an update of my own stats tomorrow. Haven't played a great deal but it's been a while since I did an update!

@GR1ZZL3R @jonny2192 I made a suggestion in the other thread like this in the live tour forum. I'm sure the decision is concrete but I thought throwing some ideas out there might make a difference to scoping sats in the future as always felt the Unibet guys around here value feedback regardless of what the powers that be decide.

Hi @Leo-Unibet Im sure Unibet has explored the options and certainly know better than me. You guys do a great job and I trust that in the long run it will be the best balance for players and business. That being said I had an idea that I thought I'd mention anyway. What if you had lower tier exchangers at the end of every day but made it impossible to break larger value tickets. For example. UK tour Be able to break all €4's at the end of a day. Maybe even add in a 0.25c level so you can break 1's aswell. But as soon as a €25 is achieved then it must be played. A shortish expiry time can be applied to them to ensure their use. A €100 could have a slightly longer expiry as there is only one final a week. UO tour Same thing. Let anything under €50 be broken down and even let a €50 be broken into two €25's only for those that prefer that route. Again shorter expiry times for €50 tickets and slightly longer for €250. I think by having low level stakes exchangers every day it replenishes players to play any sat they like during the week over and over again hopefully increasing liquidity and ensuring more tickets that can't be exchanged. By forcing people to play higher levels when they get their by not allowing an exchange and putting a shorter expiry ensures that higher level buyins get filled more often. Perhaps move all higher levels to later in the week but have more of them. Shorter expiry times shouldn't be an issue because if you are playing the sats then surely you want to play the tour so you must be willing to make time for a final. In my head a grind would look something like Mon - weds: UK tour €0-4buyins, UO €0-10 (break down end of each day what isnt used or not needed for the next day) Thurs/Friday: Same as early week but also UK Tour 25's, UO 50's thats I cant break Sat/Sun: Same as early week but also, UK and UO Finals that I cant break Rinse and repeat. I'm sure I'm missing something completely logical or painfully obvious as to what the problems would be with this but it was an idea I had so had to share :happy:

I think it is a bad move for recreational players which is what the site prides itself on. I can take shots all day every day at €1 sats but I’m sure a lot of recs rely on ticket hordes they have built up to avoid depositing. Having to change my thinking again on the challenge I am doing with Charl again because of these changes. Obviously no new deposits is no good for Unibet as they will need fresh money in the game and this is understandable. I like to think they have something up their sleeve which will again help recs achieve live events that they could otherwise only dream of. my biggest issue with the live tours is how late they are announced. Coupled with ticket expiry I simply won’t try and qualify for the unknown and just break the ticket. Dublin was an exception because they had problems with the original venue but if I remember right the UK tour this year wasn’t announced until well into 2018 either. For comparison we already know a competitor on the uk tour has 2019 tour stops Blackpool end of Jan and Edinburgh start of March. Giving people time to plan and go for the events best for them is as important as offering the chance in my opinion. Edit: - I should also add that not being able to defer the ticket to a later event would also put me off trying to qualify. If I can't defer it then I simply wont bother trying to qualify for one I know I can't attend and will wait until reg is open for one I can. This has been the case a few times for me over the past year.

Well inbetween work and general life we have got off to a slow start but have still managed to play a few things, in particularly nano tournaments. I was surprised myself actually the difference in skill between these nano events and those in the UOS. The UOS fields are a lot more solid and quite often I was talking through a hand and possible ranges only to see something completely unexpected at the end which didn't make any sense, and is no good for teaching the game to someone! We may change tact but I have tasked Charl with finding a hand that she thinks was particularly interesting and posting it here, with what she did, to see what sort of response she gets. I want her to understand that there are many ways to play hands based on villains persona, position, chip stack etc and I want her to get use to asking questions to a community about how else the hand could of been played... and maybe I'll learn something too 🤣

@RayL Haha yep she’s now on here and I’m sure she’ll work up the courage to introduce herself soon! @Charl_xoxox

@GR1ZZL3R Haha cheers mate. we will do at least two nights a week hopefully three for a few hours at a time after the little ones gone to bed. Will include watching ambassador streams and playing low level sats. I will teach the basics of position and starting hands etc first, watch videos together and when she gets in full flow I will look over the shoulder and only talk about interesting hands after I have seen what she chooses to do with them. Letting her make mistakes in hope she realises for herself and Replaying them as necessary with real cards. When I feel confident she can fly solo I will let her do just that so I can get on with my own grinds and we will review hand history together after the games, including my own, and work on the more advanced stuff to plug the leaks. Then by Manchester we can see how far she has come both online and how she handles her first casino live event!

I'm Back!! And with a brand new challenge running alongside my usual stuff that's success is going to be determined by someone else. A social experiment. A test of my own sanity and belief that my poker skill can easily be surpassed by someone younger and more willing to learn. Let me explain. This is my better half. Some of you may have met her in Manchester. When it comes to poker... She knows about as much as this guy knows about anything (Apologies for the weak reference 'Non Game of Throne fans') What she is holding is top of her range. She has never played live, even in a home game, and has only ever played freeroll stuff on Unibet. Despite this she enjoys watching the ambassadors poker streams. She watches with interest when I play and often says she wants to win loads of money at poker. She has no idea about starting hands and positions and looks at me blankly when I try to explain that playing 10 6 suited under the gun is not going to equate to long term profit, despite her telling me otherwise when she donks someone elses 10 10. The challenge is to turn her into a #QueenRules champion. Under my tutelage she will embark of a journey of trying to qualify for a Unibet live event, where she will not only play her first live event but also try to take down a ladies event. I have had the pleasure of playing with some very good women players and seen strong fields in the QueenRules events in my time at Unibet and know she will have to study, learn from mistakes and have an abundance of patience (as will I) to come close to winning one. The challenge for me is to turn her into that champion and make her a better player than me. I like my style and feel its consistently profitable, though I will never reach the level I always wished I could play at. Im old school and now I play more for travel, fun and community its difficult to listen to the latest strategies and agree. It is also well documented throughout this blog that I take a rather flambouyant approach to poker :Tongue: A younger, better looking and more willing player than me could go on and surpass me rather quickly. No timescales, but that is the aim. We will start with the £1 UK tour sats, building a roll (hopefully) and Manchester will be our first target for her. Outside of those events we will hopefully be more involved in the various twitch streams and will try to stream any UK finals ourselves. I will document the stories of success or failure here alongside my usual grind stats. Speaking of which, my focus is getting my motivation to grind back. 'Winter is coming'. And nights in playing poker are far more appealing than beer gardens now.

New challenge imminent...

The chance to do what I love would be a fine thing... I have hardly played any UOS at all which I am gutted about but such is life. Hopefully can come back stronger and back entertaining the community... if thats what you can call it! I have a new challenge in mind and twitch in mind for bits of it still but it's unlikely I will be starting it this side of Dublin. I think it will be a lot of fun when I start though! I am going to Dublin and Manchester so I hope to see as many of you there as I can and in the mean time I will probably spend most of the time on this blog writing poker stories rather than poker results. Good luck going into the final day of UOS guys!

Final stat update before UOS. I have been playing in drips and drabs as like I said some other things are going on at the moment taking my attention away from poker. So I've been asking myself questions. Is it a good idea to play UOS? NO Am I going to play UOS? YES It's likely I won't be able to play the whole thing. It's likely I will be distracted a lot. It's likely I will crash and burn on these leaderboards. Lifes too short to stop doing what you love ay? Total games played: 2274 ITM: 673 / 29.60% Total buyin: €18,707.10 Total Cashes: €25,126.12 Profit: €6,419.02 ROI: 34.31% Tournament wins: 24 1x NLH Deep Space 2x NLH Deep Crazy Moon 4x NLH Fireball 4x PLO Fireball 1x PLO Singularity 3x NLH Wormhole 3x NLH Shooting Star 2x PLO Shooting Star 3x Unibet Online Series Nano Event 1x Betting Freeroll Titles: 1 Q1 2018 Nano Leaderboard Champion

Oh don’t worry it is! Hotel’s booked and we’ll both be causing mischief as it stands because I haven’t even got a seat yet! Lol

Cheers mate. I read an article recently from Unibet Esporter 'Hotted89' and in that he talked about his friendship with Vicktor Blom and a piece of advice he had got from him. Blom said always trust your gut. I think it's something obvious but something that many players have given up on and tend to just focus on the maths and mental side of 'he could have this, this and this and I only beat this' and not 'I KNOW he has this, and my A high beats it'. He talked in the article about a million dollar hand he watched Blom call which he says he doesn't think any other player could of made it. He went with his gut. I started poker and grew up in the game watching players like Victor Blom, Tom Dwan and Gus Hansen a lot. A style people were terrified of at the time and they were never afraid to make themselves look daft with a questionable call. I guess that rubbed off on me and I have only tweaked my game since to keep up with the times. Cheers mate I'll still be on here chatting rubbish and updating from the odd games I'm playing. Hopefully won't take too long for things to be ok again and I will defo 100% still be in Manchester!

Hi mate. That's the plan! Or it was... Somethings happened well beyond my control that means I may have to just dip in and out of UOS when I am able to. It's unlikely I will be able to play the whole thing now which makes me sad, but like I say it's out of my hands unfortunately. It will also mean I will most likely have to miss the Brighton stop too. Hopefully things get better soon... I do still plan to do a few streams soon and open myself up to the criticism that brings. I expect there to be a lot. I am not a very orthodox player and as mentioned in this blog quite a few times I play a lot more with gut instinct than maths. Im quirky, often play after a beer or two and I do LOVE a hero call :Tongue: I've no doubt I could be a lot better if I played more orthodox but then I think I'd sacrifice a lot of the fun of my style. I play poker mainly for fun, a top up each month on my full time job wages, and to visit new places. My results are decent enough and I'm happy with the style and level I play at so bring on the twitch trolls I say. Thanks for your interest too, I will be sure to post whenever I plan to go live :Smile:

Yes, I know. I'm slacking. But I have come to the decision that I will be twitching the next UOS, or at least some of it.... if I can work out how to use Twitch... which is unlikely.... But in anticipation my twitch channel is https://www.twitch.tv/metalwolfpoker I hope I can work it all out and share some of the highlights that will surely come during the next UOS (HA! he hopes....) Focus of today is to win the UK package while all the sharks are in Bucharest :Tongue:

Quick stat update then! I didn't win anything in yesterday's raffle unfortunately but I have an itch to play poker again after a couple weeks off. So, back to the grind! I really want to do some sort of give away but don't know what the easiest or best ways to do this outside of begging Unibet to let me give something away is? What do e-sporters do? I have bought a good cam for the purposes of delving into the Twitch realm. It's something Ive wanted to do but I admit I am absolutely clueless about how to do it. I now have the means to do it though at least and I'll give it a good look! Total games played: 2154 ITM: 636 / 29.53% Total buyin: €17,690.85 Total Cashes: €24,078.51 Profit: €6,387.66 ROI: 36.11% Tournament wins: 24 1x NLH Deep Space 2x NLH Deep Crazy Moon 4x NLH Fireball 4x PLO Fireball 1x PLO Singularity 3x NLH Wormhole 3x NLH Shooting Star 2x PLO Shooting Star 3x Unibet Online Series Nano Event 1x Betting Freeroll Titles: 1 Q1 2018 Nano Leaderboard Champion

Cheers @MarkMac18 glad you had fun. I agree the structure is amazing (although might need tweaking at final table). Hope to see you at the tables online then and perhaps even another UK stop. All the best mate gd luck!

Haha @pirahn I suffered much the same (check my double chin!) thank you also for the kind words. I’m not sure about being the best player but I was just happy to get all the big decisions over the weekend right. Was a pleasure playing with you and everyone else on the final, and as you say the Scots banter is second to none! Really enjoyed the weekend.

Glasgow Day 2 After a couple hours enjoying the Glasgow sun by the river I made my way to the casino for about 12. I sat in the 'Hollywood Bowl' opposite it for a while enjoying a beer and a few goes on the fruit machine. £20 in, £100 out all in coins and a barman that had to help me carry it all to be changed up. Was it my lucky day? I got to the casino about 1 to see who had made it through and what sort of stacks were out there. I had a good chat with UK Tour monster @FeelsBadMan who was still in along with many other forum and twitch members. When the seat draw was put up I changed my mind about it being my lucky day. I had a really tough table which included @pirahn, @MoreTBC and the formidable online crusher @KostenBerg. 43 left, 21 paid, though things would go surprisingly well. Kostenburg took an early exit in a massive allin with Vinny (Pirahn) AK to AA while no coolers seemed to be coming my way. Just good positions to accumulate more chips. An early pivotal hand being when I called a raise from big with 99 and flopped quads. I only called the continuation bet but sadly my opponent shut down after that and, despite tanking for a long time over my polarizing allin, reluctantly folded leaving me wondering wether I had got anywhere near maximum value for the rare hand. It didn't take long for me to move to Adrian's (NMP's) table where I would remain for most of the day later also joined again by Vinny. At the time there was about 35 left and I started to open up and play more poker. It didn't take long for me to get burnt whilst doing so. I raised AA from the button and was called by the big blind. Long story short he flopped an open ended straight flush draw with 9 10 and completed on the river but I think I managed to lose the minimum I could so I was happy as anyone can be in such a situation. Another player on the table was showing bluffs. 3 bet allin bluffs. Proudly smashing hands down with glee as he built a great wall of chip stack. A few before the bubble @FeelsBadMan was not to be fazed and called massive bets down on just A high to take a very large chunk of stack off him. Adrian's stack was massive, whilst the other guy was tilting. I looked down at the next hand from under the gun and saw the perfect opportunity. QQ. The guy was furious with Adrian and was asking his neighbors how such a call could be made. I knew I could grab a huge psycological advantage here with my hand and the situation. I commented that it was a pretty easy call given his image and his bet on the end wasn't too threatening given the pot. I felt like his head would explode with rage and steam was coming from his ears as he shunned my comments as ridiculous and, as expected, called my raise to try and get me back. The flop was Q 9 7. Pretty perfect and I contemplated how to get it all. In the end it wasn't difficult and took just one check to hear the words 'all in' from my opponent. Tilting indeed. I quickly called to see Q10 and wondered if the poker Gods had something sick in store for me. Thankfully they did not and I doubled up to a pretty good stack right before the money. 500k and an average of 430k. But it wasn't to end there... I cruised into the money from then. Adrian dominated the bubble and we joked he would need an extra table for all his chips. I admired his game as bubble play is certainly one of my weakest points. As we lost player after player though I started to leak chips and was down to 530k to a 710k average. And then me and Adrian clashed. I was in the big blind with K2 and from small he called and allowed me to check. The flop was a generous K 4 K. He checked and I felt like betting would be the best option given what I know about NMPfan's game. He called. The turn was a 7 and he checked again. Again I bet but this time he moved allin over the top. I must admit I didn't LOVE the spot but felt that if I was behind here I would just be unlucky in a cooler and didn't think too long before making the call. Adrian had an open ended straight flush draw and I used my 'ONE TIME' to avoid half the deck and instead hit a 2 to give me the full house and take me up to 1.2m in chips. Things were getting serious. It didn't take long to hit the final table from then on. Unfortunately Adrian wouldn't make it but Vinny did. Go Unibet community!! I started the final table with 1.4m in chips and the average being about a million. Last year I final tabled Unibet Nottingham and didn't make the impact I had hoped eventually leaving in 8th. Another player accused me of laddering. I don't think I was trying to but I can certainly still remember a few hands which I would of definitiley played differently. I promised myself that would not happen here and if I went out it's because I gave it my all and I could be proud of myself. There was still 9 left at the dinner break but it wasn't long after before we were down to 6. I took out one of the original 9 with KK after an allin shove pre and me sitting very nicely in the big blind. We played with 6 for quite a while and at the time I think I was chip leader but Vinny was close behind after a massive double up on the river in an overcards vs pair flip. With 5 left a deal was starting to be talked about. The blinds were massive and the average stack was only around 15 bigs. I was still chip leader and was happy to discuss but others not so much. A player who originally rejected the deal then doubled up off me moving allin QJ and me calling off A3. He turned a Q and then all of a sudden was happy to deal. It took some persuading to some but we finally settled on an acceptable deal and played out the game for the trophy and Bucharest package. I felt like it was going to be my day and I had 3 bet allin on Vinny a number of times before we got down to the final 3. Sadly I tried this one too many times and ran my AQ into his AK but I was proud of myself as my chips were pushed his way. I did what I came to do and played as I promised myself. Vinny went on to beat the day 1 chip leader heads up and I couldn't be happier for him. Officially I came 3rd but walked away with the 2nd biggest prize on the night of 6.3k total. I would like to say thanks to all the Unibet staff, casino staff and ambassadors who were magnificent throughout and a massive well done to @pirahn on his win. Lovely guy and deserved winner. Well done to all other cashers and it was great to meet everyone else from the community too. I don't actually have any UK tour packages left but I already have a hotel booked in Brighton so I hope I will see some of you there! I will be updating this blog a lot more often soon (it's been so sunny) and I have a new challenge in mind hopefully with some giveaways so stay tuned for that! Thanks for reading all.