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MetalWolf

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@MetalWolf

You could also check behind on the river if you suspect your opponent to have a 3 as well paired with one of the 5 cards that kill you. But that depends a lot on you picking up a read before. But the fact that the opponent check-called instead of going all-in on the river shows you that he wasn't sure as well...

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We're gonna win on so many levels! We're gonna win, win, win. You're gonna get so tired of winning, you're gonna say: "Mr. President please, we don't wanna win anymore, it's too much!" And I'm gonna say: "I'm sorry, we're gonna keep winning because we're gonna make America great again!"
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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. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

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...

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£$1,0000  Live.      Played  0

£$1,000    Online.  Played  0

£$500      Live.       Played  0

£$500      Online.   Played  0

0% record and counting. 

I won't mind you taking it down at all. 🤣

 

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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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…

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I was sat here Monday morning, and I've been getting more and more nervous as the day approaches, but reading this has only confirmed all I've read so far about how enjoyable these events are, so I've totally changed my mindset and will be there fired up and raring to go. Stuff the poker, if I make a mess of it so what, it's a game, embrace the event. Thanks @MetalWolf, that could have been written for me. 🤣

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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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…

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dublin Part 1

I’m going to do this blog in two parts. I wish I could have spent longer on it but all week I’ve been recovering from Dublin whilst preparing for UOS! In summary though I had such a fantastic time both on the tables and off it. Everyone there was amazing and it was also nice to just get away with @Charl_xoxox whom had never been on a plane before! I'll post part 2 in the morning where I will speak in general about the UO and all the brilliant people I met and then it's straight into UOS.

The tournament

Firstly, I wanted to talk about the poker because I am still buzzing about what I managed to achieve. I started the tournament at the beginning of Day 1B and my table draw was favourable. It had a few people in the 100k’s of winnings and an Irish Open winner /EPT final tablist but otherwise I was happy in comparison to some of the other tables in the room (Just ask @GR1ZZL3R what his table was like). As it turned out the Irish Open winner, Patrick Clarke, and the guy on my immediate right would give me problems all day. In fact, Patrick would go on to give me problems all weekend. The only time he left my table was to be eliminated only to progress through day 1C and end up back on my immediate left for Day 2.

I remained around starting stack for pretty much all of day one and there wasn’t much to speak about for a long time. Patrick dominated the table until he was eliminated. The guy on the right of me took over from him and it wasn’t until late in the day when he was eliminated that I started to assert some authority.  The only blip was around dinner time where I had a disaster blind level dropping to around 10 bigs with 12k. In that one hour I managed to drop from 45k attacking short stacks losing allin AK to AQ followed by AJ to A9 and was left wondering if it just wasn’t going to be my day. A miracle of being dealt AA two hands in a row and managing to get the big double up against QQ pulled me right back in the game, though. After a full 10 hours of analysing how everyone was playing I was able to control a lot more in the closing stages. In particular, the last 3 hands of the day, which I won all three of, all off the same person who I believe is a pretty high volume cash player on Unibet so he won’t thank me for saying it if he reads this. Nearly all of his big stack of around 150k (blinds 2k) managed to end up in front of me for day 2 which included me getting lucky rivering a straight with 55 against his 99, although he was happy to let me see it for cheap and get some value from it. It was nice to have players shaking my hand on a job well done at the end of the day. I didn’t feel like I needed the confidence boost at the time as I felt amazing, but it was welcome all the same!

So day 2 I started with around 150k myself and I had a much tougher table draw all day which included Dara, Irish Open winner Patrick and Irish legends Andy Black and Mick McCloskey. Add to this that I was put on the TV table for a couple hours, which included the bubble, and things would start getting harder. Or would they? I found that I could hold my own with all these names. Capably managing to increase my stack until well after the bubble had burst. Mercifully, the bubble was over in one hand as two people were eliminated at the same time. I thought that was pretty nice for my first €1000 buyin. No sweat! My biggest, and in my opinion, only obvious mistake of the day was dumping 100k in chips to Patrick in a battle of the blinds where I tried to assert some authority. I ended up triple barrel bluffing J high and quickly got called by top pair before sheepishly having to show my cards as the dealer turned them over. Now I was going to have to use the image of being a total fool to my advantage instead. I’ve since watched back my play on the tv table and feel I was a bit hard done by. The cards were pretty harsh at times and one cruel river cost me a lot of stack but I was getting compliments from the commentators including “if anyone deserves to double up on this table it’s Andrew” as I kept taking knock backs from the deck. One of the commentators came up to me at the end of the day and congratulated me on playing so well and not letting the tilt get to me. I was really grateful and pleased to hear his feedback. It’s not the first time I’ve been on a TV table and it is fun but personally it does me no favours to have everyone be able to watch stuff back in breaks etc to see how you are playing. As we got down to 3 tables and the pay jumps started to get bigger I think my inexperience told. That coupled with having a pretty cold deck. I wasn’t able to control the table anymore and had to rely on more obvious plays and spots to keep my stack up with the blinds. Shame actually that my best play of the day was against the eventual tournament winner but wasn’t shown on the TV table. Not to give too much away about the scenario but I ended up putting the player in the tank as I shoved allin and put myself at risk with 88 on a board of 6 10 Q A. I would love to explain all my thinking but you know…. I have a nano leaderboard to win back over the next two weeks and I don't want you all getting some info on me 😛 The exit was standard, though. With 18 left and 20 hours of poker played I found AQ in the BB and shoved around 15 BB's over the top of a button raiser who snapped with JJ and the J on the flop was enough to confirm it was goodnight MetalWolf.

Considering I play very few live events it has been an excellent 18 months at Unibet for me managing to final table two UK events and cash in my first ever UO, or indeed, first ever €1000 event. Since my final table in Glasgow the personal life has become very tough and the thing I am proudest of is the mental dedication I was able to give to the event, even when I made mistakes. I mean, here’s me bragging about being a Nano leaderboard winner and lots of these guys have trophies and cashes of over 100k! Thank you to the support from everyone on this blog, in person and on Twitter throughout the tournament it was much appreciated. 

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Dublin Part 2

Time for a brief light hearted look at the big UO event. We arrived in Dublin on the Thursday after Charl managed to get through her first ever flight with less worry than I thought. I wasn’t due to play until the Friday so we decided to meet and greet and I wanted to get prepared and find out all the reg rules etc for the next day. We also wanted to stock the hotel room!

Now, I’m not saying Dublin is expensive – But I had to have a credit check just to get in a taxi (which by the way was extortionate!) Rather than pay food prices in and around the hotel we went for a leisurely walk down the Swords road to a Tesco which was much more my price range.

 Mugshot.thumb.jpg.6b1a079c51cd0193c0961ba4ae818138.jpg 

We had a great night meeting people and everyone was very friendly. The hospitality from Unibet was first class and the welcome party was a great success. It was great to catch up with @sgriff and Julia and I showed little regard for avoiding a hangover and having to play the next morning. It was on the Friday I first met the legend that is @GR1ZZL3R who had a very unfortunate poker scenario right at the end of Day 1A. He was an absolute pleasure to talk to all weekend. 

In between poker Unibet staff and ambassadors alike were always on hand to say hello and have a quick chat. Everyone was friendly and a credit to the company they represent. Day 2 saw Charl get her first taste of live poker in the community game which she thoroughly enjoyed. Tough draw with @FeelsBadMan on the left too! She was very happy when she managed to knock out Esporter Scott Mcmillian and claim a bounty and little xmas prize!

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I wouldn’t subject her to the Ladies event this time round as she needs more experience first but big shout out to @triceraatopp on her win. Was a great achievement and I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to congratulate you in person due to me being so drained and just wanted to chill after my elimination in the main.

We didn’t attend the players party on the Saturday as I was still in the main event at the time but it looks like a fabulous time was had by all. We instead decided to take a trip into Dublin City on the Sunday and chill round a few places like the castle before going back for an early night. Quite the rock & Roll lifestyle.

 Castle.thumb.jpg.2c30580f927367b2fd09f19166d6a2d7.jpg

Overall an amazing weekend and it would have been even if it wasn’t so profitable. Once again thank you for all the support and it was great seeing everyone from the forum and twitch. Couldn't possibly name you all in this blog but I look forward to seeing you all again and I can’t wait for the next poker adventure!

1797538121_47380621_1263032137172431_3566314776994775040_n(2).png.b434b3927ad418ebf4fa37bf0501e67c.pngDublin.jpg.902aef27e408a3ca68103fb3975c9c07.jpg

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As I'm already out all of tonight's UOS I thought I'd post a stat update so I can see what it looks like by the time UOS finishes.

Total games played: 2360

ITM: 690 / 29.24%

Total buyin: €19,578.10

Total Cashes: €29,765.11

Profit: €10,187.01

ROI: 52.03%

Tournament wins: 24

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@MetalWolf wrote:

61st on both nano and low boards and won’t be playing the rebuy low tonight. 

Not good enough so far...

 


It's just one score and you'll probably be top5 in those. I am still roughly at the same spots at those low and nano, and lead high despite the fact that I've been running pretty much the same in each (super badly) that difference is due to the one won high event.

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@MetalWolf wrote:

@Farseer Yep you’re right mate. Well done on the high so far and good luck. Some run good in tonight’s offerings would be nice!


TY. Too bad it works other way around too. Bad runs yesterday and null points from high events in one day also means one loses his 1st place and falls even out from top3.

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Just take it as a good lesson and remind yourself to not do it again;) Things happen, we learn and move forward a little bit wiser. Nice scores in the nanos. Have dropped from 3x down to 7x after. Had 4 coolers in the last 4 events:) In general I’m happy with how I played but the variance got me:)

GL GL:)

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