Blog by Mark_Grey

Poker Hispano Tour 3 - Part 2

Sept. 7, 2011

So with a 2nd place and $5000 under my belt I had the confidence and the bankroll to play the $1500 main event. Being the nit that I am though, I sill played the $200 satellite the day before. I also decided to do some backing with my new found wealth and go halves with Elliott in backing Dan, Gallo and Craig in the satellite. Dan and Gallo flopped but Craig grinded hard into the early hours, emerging at 6am with a seat to the main event. I also swapped 10% of myself with Elliott so I had a sweat ...

Poker Hispano Tour 3 - Part One

Sept. 2, 2011

On Sunday August 21st The Poker Hispano Tour came to Costa Rica for the second time in this, its third season. It offered 5 events: Two $50nl turbos, a $300nl turbo, the $1500 main event and a $500 second chance. After a good month on the online felt in July I decided to play as many events as possible. The last time the PHT was in town, Elliott made 3 final tables including that of the main event and achieved superstar status at the No Limit Club as well as winning the player of the series trophy. I felt like ...

Busy Week

Aug. 25, 2011

For about the 5th time in the last 18 months, we were plunged into a housing crisis this week. Ok thats somewhat overdramatic but we were once again forced to reasses our living arrangements when we realised that the lease on our house is up in two weeks time.

A friendly email from Stef to the landlord explaining that we were not sure if we could afford to keep paying the $2250 plus bills that we are currently paying, was met by a less friendly response explaining that he was looking for new tenants. Oh. We'll just find somewhere else ...

2011/12 Premierleague + Fantasy Premierleague + gamboooolaments

Aug. 14, 2011

I'm super-excited about the upcoming premier league. It's been a long summer with no football to watch and no fantasy football or football bets to sweat at weekends. I think the prem is gonna be really close this year. Liverpool and City have both strengthened signficantly over the summer, whilst spurs have kept all their key players. I still think it will be between Chelsea and United come May. Everyone seeems to be making united massive favourites to retain their title. I think Chelsea have a great shout. Last year we had the best team man-for-man in the league. We ...

L-A-S VEGAS 2 times

July 21, 2011

In May I found out that a bunch of the guys here in Costa Rica were heading out to Vegas for the WSOP. I was desperate to join them but decided that with having to buy a flight home for July and recently having purchased a car, I didn't have the expendable income to blow a bunch of money over in Vegas. I decided that with Adam and Elliott out of the country and busy playing WSOP events, I might actually find myself at the top of the Doylesroom food chain (apart from BldSwtTrs obv) and have a chance to ...

Onwards and Upwards

April 8, 2011

Once again I want to thank everyone for the congratulatory messages on Facebook, MSN, Skype, Twitter and The Pokerfarm Forum.

I’ve also receievd a fair bit of interest in what i’ll do with the cash, as if giving it away might be an option. Well sadly, seeing as how the majority of it has gone on clearing debts, overdrafts, credit card and rent, I’m not actually left with that much to splash around with.

The first thing i did was make a donation to the Red Cross Japanese Tsunami Relief Fund. The things that happened out there kind of put ...

Ship it !

April 2, 2011

GG

Hands : 202913

p+l : +$5412

rake : $11337

Hours played : 220

$/hour : $24.60

bb/100 : 2.8

monies shipped by Zee, Peterman, Reynolds, Brauer, Quesada and Oreomuno – $2300

Big thanks to everyone for all the support. Was amazing to have people constantly on skype, msn, facebook, twitter etc. wishing me good luck.

below is graph of the month, missing 5k hands from other computer :

Days 24-27 – Nearly There

March 28, 2011

Just 4 days left in March and i’m almost there. I’ve played 175,000 hands and i’m winning $5900. I havent blogged because i’ve been playing until late and then heading straight to bed, too tired to entertain the masses with my lyrical prose.

Things have gone pretty well. It seems like God-mode has been deactivated but i’m still crushing, winning $1500 in 25000 hands and running $800 BELOW EV.

Last night was Dani’s birthday and we all headed to Gaira. There Zee and Adam thought that their only chance of winning this bet came in the form of spiking all ...

Days 22 and 23 – Record breaking days

March 24, 2011

I wanted Tuesday to be a record breaking day, aiming to play more than my previous best 10,438 hands in one day.

The day started badly as i opened up some tables and immediately got set over setted and got QQ in vs AA blind-on-blind. Zee decided this would be a good time to be as irritating as possible on MSN pestering me to come grind in the office to get the “vibe” back. I’d played 200 hands and was already tilting balls and decided that getting out of the house wasn’t such a terrible idea and headed to the ...

Day 21 – Still upswinging

March 22, 2011

I woke up a little later than usual today which meant i didn’t get to the gym until a little later, didn’t leave the gym until a little later, and subsequently didn’t start playing until a little later. In fact i didn’t actually start playing until 1.30pm. This made it kind of hard to play the 10k hands I had intended to. Nevertheless i put in a solid grind of 6500 hands and won a nice $800. Tomorrow the car is going into the garage so I wont be hitting the gym in the morning, instead i’ll be up at ...

Days 18,19,20 – What a Terrible Weekend …

March 21, 2011

… In terms of Volume. Friday 7200 hands, Saturday 5300 hands, Sunday 3200 hands.

What an awesome weekend in terms of run-good and P&L.

It looks like a Craig Cole graph (the difference between the green and red lines I mean, not the sharp upswing LDO)

It is nice to finally run good after running bad for so long but I don’t think thats the only reason for my upswing. I watched this DC video by Sthief09 which inspired me to analyse my own game a ...

Day 17

March 19, 2011

Still too sore to gym.

Woke up and noticed that England were playing the West Indies in the cricket world cup in a must-win game. By the time i managed to find a stream the game looked all but over. Windies were 210-6 chasing 244 with over 10 overs left and Sarwan and Russel well set at the crease. England, however, know how to entertain. Every single one of our games has been a thriller and this was no different. Tredwell removed Russel, Swann removed Sarwan and the last two Windies batsmen managed to remove themselves to give England ...

Day 16 – Sore

March 17, 2011

I didn’t go to the gym today because i couldn’t walk. It took me 5 minutes to get out of bed i was so sore. Instead i got up, went to the office and sat down to play. And things went pretty well …

I didn’t play many hands because i went out for sushi this evevning but i’m really happy with one thing; how i quit. Tommy Angelo says that quitting is a skill and that picking the right time to finish your session is important and affects your ...

Day 15 – Same Sh*t, Different Day

March 16, 2011

Well that upswing was shortlived. Went to the gym, came back, did my balls. Pretty happy with my play though.

I lost 5 of 6 preflop allins -

Won KK vs JJ

Lost KK vs QQ

Lost AK vs JJ

Lost AK vs QQ

Lost QQ vs AA

Lost AK vs AA

Postflop i did a stack on this hand : http://www.pokerhand.org/?6026786

The turn is a fold. I was going to fold but saw that over 1000 hands his WWSF was 58, Aggression 7, Turn check/raise 43%. Those stats are crazier than Chaper’s which was enough to ...

Day 14 – New Day , New mindset, New winrate?

March 15, 2011

woke up this morning to the sound of the alarm. For several minutes i struggled to remember why it was buzzing so tiltily at such a ridculous hour. Slowly, memories of frustrating, sloppy, increasingly frustrating poker sessions scattered over a miserable weekend of mouse-banging and swearing returned to me, along with the resolution that resulted from them. Today it was back to the gym. Tempting as it was to delay my return to that place, I got up, put on Some of Nicky Skone’s ludicrously small shorts and some trainers and was in the gym by 9. I’m not going ...

Days 12 and 13 – Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

March 14, 2011

After Friday’s disaster i was keen to have a couple of beers to numb the pain. Luckily Adam and Cruicks finished their weightloss bet that day, Adam buying out for $450, and were keen to celebrate their new-found freedom from consumptive constraints with beer and fried stuff at Applebees. So Stef, Cruicks and I headed to Applebees where we met Adam and Ricardo. I had buffalo wings, mozarella sticks, cheeseburger sliders,  half a dozen beers and a good laugh. It was good times, it was not however great ‘pre-match’ prepration for Saturday’s grind. I woke up a little hangover, at ...

Day 11 – Computer Says “No”

March 12, 2011

Anyone who has played a lot of online poker can tell you that on occassion, there will be days where no matter how well you play, how many great calls or heroic folds you make, you just cannot win. Your opponents flop sets, straights, flushes, hit runner-runner miracles, whilst you miserably toil away with little more than Ace high. Sadly, today was one of those days for me. Carbon decided to doom-switch me and i was powerless to stop it. Below i have posted links to every pot where i lost a buy-in :

http://www.pokerhand.org/?6018789 : Biggest pot ...

Day 10 – A-game, A-game, A-game

March 11, 2011

As promised i focused on playing my A-game at all times today. When i didn’t feel 100% focused i stopped playing. As a result my volume was poor. Just 6870 hands. However it also meant that i absolutely crushed the games.

note the redline

That puts me $1282 up for the month with 69525 hands played.

Now i got my A-game back i have no excuse not to play a a lot of hands tomorrow. Might even get up ...

Days 8 and 9 – Pancakes, Football, Not a Whole Lot of Poker

March 11, 2011

Well, I say ‘not a lot’, but I guess I am setting fairly high standards in terms of volume. Over 2 days I have played 12534 hands and I’m $92 down over that period and I have mixed feelings about it. The good news is I’m running good ! I’m actually running $500 above ev in the sample. The bad news is that I’m playing badly. I’ve found it very difficult to play my A-game for such long periods and have found myself just auto-piloting. This has lead to sloppy decisions in big pots. This is probably partly responsible for ...

Day 7 – And on the 7th Day He Did Not Rest

March 9, 2011

As much as i wanted to take my lead from the big man upstairs and have a day off on day 7, i knew it would be a bad idea. After just 4500 hands in two days over the weekend a big day was in order. So i resisted the urge to hit snooze on the alarm and was up at 9.30 ready to grind. Before i started i decided to do a little analysis of my play before and after the challenge started. Here is what i found :

My ...

Day 6 Tourney time...

March 8, 2011

I woke up on Sunday filled with a sense of anticipation, expectation and indecision. Having played just 1500 hands on Saturday i knew i needed to play a lot of hands to stay on course for 200k hands, but at the same time i really wanted to take a shot at winning the $1.6million and Lamborghini Gallardo that would be awarded to first place. My head was telling me to grind Carbon, my heart was telling me to go for glory on Stars. My heart won and at 3.30 pm i sat down with 52000 other players for what must ...

Day 5 – Welcome to Ballsville

March 8, 2011

As promised i woke up early Saturday morning, 10am, and sat down for a monster grind. I sat down, opened Holdemmanager, opened Carbon poker, got some tunes playing on Grooveshark, and promptly lost $1000 in 1500 hands. Not the best day so far, in fact, far and away the worst. As part of the rules of the bet i cannot lose more than $1000 in a day so i was forced to call it a day and have a moreorless poker-free Saturday.

My plans for the day scuppered, i ...

Day 1 - Swings and Roundabouts

March 5, 2011

So i decided to waste no time at all and get cracking at exactly midnight. I played a 2000 hand session where not a lot happened and ended up $80 down and went to bed. I had a very strange dream about being on a roundabout and then stumbling around, very dizzy, trying to avoid a giant lawnmower. Not sure what that means.

At 10am i started grinding and had played 2.5k hands and won $740 before the Chelsea Man United game began. What a game it was too. I have to say looking at the line-ups its unbelievable that ...

Preparation...

March 5, 2011

I had no idea if this sort of volume was possible so decided to do a little dress rehearsal on Friday. Up at 10am and started playing.

Come 2am Saturday i had played 8.5k hands and won $100. Not the sickest bb/100 in the world but showed that at an average of 6.5k hands/day 200,000 would be a breeze! It also showed that I could grind it back from a bad start, having been -$500 within 1000 hands.

All that left to do was sort myself out with a nice setup ...

Luck of the Irish?

March 5, 2011

Day 2 started early (10am) and badly. I performed my usual routine of checking emails, checking Cricket World Cup scores (‘oh we’re smashing Ireland that’s good’) checking Facebook, browsing twoplustwo, then fired up some tables and started playing some hands. Things got off to a pretty bad start when i called a raise on the button with 8c 9c and the flop came 7c 9d Jc and i end up getting it in vs KK and bricking my million outs. Then things got worse. Cruicksie or ‘the chubby bok’, as i like to call him, came crashing into the office ...

Days 3&4, losing with boats :(

March 5, 2011

The first thing I want to do is make a confession. I plagiarized the title of this blog. However it is, i believe, a more forgivable form of plagairism than that of Baron cut-and-paste or Gadaffi’s son, as i have stolen the title from myself. I found my old blog

http://bones8.blogspot.com/

Perhaps my favourite sentence in the whole thing – “i have 6 buyins which should be enough to see me through the variance if i’m lucky” how little i knew. And variance is exactly what i’ve been experiencing the last two days. I’m 800 below ...

My 200k hand challenge

March 4, 2011

Frustrated by my own lack of volume and inspired by Ashton Griffin’s marathon propbet, i decided to see if i could get action on me playing 200k hands in March. Seeing as my biggest month to date has been 55k hands, my pitch to Degen, Elliott and Craig was met with a mixture of ridicule and a chorus of “snap”. The basic rules were agreed as follows :

I must play 200k hands between midnight March 1st and midnight March 31st

Only hands played at 100nl or higher will count towards the 200k

All hands must be played on Carbon poker under username ...

The share double-doomswitch

Jan. 25, 2011

After a couple of months of really sub-par poker i've felt back to my best lately. I've found the fold button in the right spots without just folding everything and i've felt tuned in to my opponents tendencies and exploited them. All this has lead to me beating 100nl at a decent clip this month. So with my game back and my confidence (and perhaps more importantly p+l) up, i jumped back into the 200nl games this week. here is it how it went :

http://img46.imageshack.us/i/lastweek.png/

See what most people don't know is that Share does ...