Change of plan

well somehow the rileys job seemed to fall through. I was offered it and it seemed like a nice place to start in the real world of work. 25k, free food and drink free membership. I play a lot of snooker!!. Their representative rung me up just to make sure i had a bar license!! WTF!!! it turned out that it was in the smallprint..sigh.

So i needed to backtrack to a job that i had put on the back-burner while i tried to sort the rileys one out. Somehow i managed to Bs my way to saying i wrote the wrong email down and i should be staring on tuesday to 29th. It is real hassle with all the refrences i need to get, most of them fake due to the experience (ssshhh) i said i have in the I.T field, well it is fair to say i have spent most of my adult life behind a computer ;-).

The DTD sceme is a funny one. I have almost ammased the number of Mpp points at the 25p/50p level and my profit so far is £800, it was at a high of £1200 after a few golden days. In this scheme there is a very fine line between profit and points accumilation, whereby sometimes you have to put the hours in even if you are running bad and fancy a break. So this has to be takin into account. I should be on 50p and £1 blinds in a few weeks and i reckon £300+ a week is a fair expectation at that level. I am really confident playing at these levels and i reckon my cash game has improved a hell of a lot. I seem to be able to read players hands for fun in cash, like i used to do in mtt's.

I have been playing a few comps here and there on stars and been getting deep in a few but not really a sniff of getting a big score there boring me a little at present. On stars i am very paranoid that every late raise is a steal so have been pushing AJ AQ a lot and been running into big hands.

The plan now is to start work, which will pay be about £1250 a month after tax (bout time i paid some) continue trader hopefully make about the same at 50p/£1 and then hopefully £2k plus per month at £1/2.

The job will be good for a few reasons.

1) extra cash obv and to get credit for eventual mortgages etc

2) the office in which im working as an I.T anaylst *ssshhh is jam packed with fanny

3) it will keep my poker fresh and relieve boredam.

4) meeting new people, ive kept the same freinds for 10 years, class lads but nothing mmuch new to talk about and my brains doing activitys have been the main topic for ages now.


eventually i wanna go back to pro but i reckon cash games throughout the week and only a few occasional tournaments at the weekend or trips to festival events is the way to go. Its almost impossible imo to make a living playing online mtts, those cold runs can only be sustained if you are a regular winner of comps when you final.

On the social side, went out saturday to walkabout for the f.a. cup final at 2:00 a massive leo-sayer then took place until 3 in the morning, cultimating in me playing the 8rb at silly oclock on stars. busted 50th out of 1400 odd when my big stack constantly got tested and i lost 4 flips and an 80/20.

Champions leauge on wednesday night and i really fancy liverpool in 90mins, if they can keep kaka on a lease which being a great defensive side they can, i think they have the belief and ability to win this 1-0. Will definately be out for a few for that, as one of my last nights of freedom.

On a final note i thank everyone who commented on the last post, most i know through blonde poker or tribeca. I think thats FuGu the last one. I have taken everything said on board and am conscious to make +ev decisions from now on and do things more proffessionaly.
until next time,
rick.

Long Post.........

Well i got prompted to update this blog and due to the fact that at least one person reads it i felt obliged to make a very hearltfelt and honest post.

From early in the year i had a gut instinct/feeling that 2007 wasnt going to be as rosy.
Although i withdrew a load of cash throughout 2006 maybe about £60-70k i squandered nearly everything, depositing about £2-4k at a time and sometimes doing the lot in a few days on daft horse racing bets or fancy clothes, meals in top restaurants trips abroad, etc... with an air of invincibility i felt that i could do this and keep winning on a weekly basis as i proved (short-term varience) in my 1st 2 years as a pro.
I got so used to tribeca as a site i knew all the players off by heart, new every tourney like the back of my hand and felt confident i could win any tourney or stt i sat down at with consumate, naiive ease. Recently alas, i have found that this is not as easy on other sites where the competition is greater than the great fishpond that was tribeca(R.I.P lol)

So when Green Joker Poker made the inevitable transition to playtech i decided to test the waters of other sites, having played on playtech and not liking it one bit.

First i tried Crypto and had some good sucess on £2/5nl making my starting roll of £1000 into nealy £5000 in the first couple of weeks. This hot streak seemed only to be momentary as maost of that roll went within the dying weeks of january. I realised that Mtt's were my game and decided to play the Crypto mtt's £50f/o and £25/fo and most of the pokerstars biggies, $100rb etc......

As i hadn't gone over 3 weeks in the past 2 years without winning an onlin mtt for $2k+ the cold-run was a relatively new thing and i didnt know how to respond. Many pro's would say take a few weeks off and acsess the situation, however when you have barely anything in the bank, know your running really bad, and are eager to 'make things right' this is easier said than done.

I continued to play Mtt's throughout the day and night, often not leaving the house for days on end. Around february I won a seat to Cardiff gukpt, the last comp i won on tribeca, and i was keen to put in a good performance. At the same time i was running badly i decided to take a trip to iceland, which was a bad idea as i was still rueing my luck while i was there, pondering my play and possible mistakes etc....

A few weeks after we got back it was time for cheltenham races in which i made a vital error of not listening to my mates uncle 'johnny lights' advice and felt the pain as i had to stay in the gold cup night as my money had finaly run out.

A week later i had just about enough money to make it to cardiff for the gukpt. It was Final Straw time, i had a visa with about £4k limit so i still had enought to get hotel etc.... at this time i had about £500 in Crypto and $1200 in stars, which was my biggest low-bankroll point ever.

I arrived in cardiff a day early and met Gregior, pab and a few other lads i have met through internet poker and like a twat managed do my brains £4k visa on roulette, while pissed. I wasnt even down to play poker until the next day. I borrowed £500 off a good mate of mine which i am still to pay back as my stars roll went south after Dave colclogh spiked a club in a coinflip after the flop in a coup which would have seen me back to an amount of chips i feel i could have played my game with.

When i got back home i continued to persue the online mtt's thinking that the big win is just around the corner, but as most of you know bad form/running bad breeds bad confidence and often this can affect your game, I began playing with fear and eventually lost all my rolls mid-way through april.

This, strange as it seems, was a relief to me as the pressure on my shoulders was nearly at breaking point. I knew i was good enough to win mtt's at the highest level and cured the form id had over the previous months, I also cursed my naivety in thinking i was never going to have a bad spell, also my carefree spending.

WHAT NOW?

Well i applied for the dtd trader scheme and they took me on, in the first two weeks ive made about £1200 on the 25p/50p nl tables, i am looking to get the position of manager at a local rileys snooker hall for a bit as think i need a bit of stability in order for my A game to come to the fore. I feel i have lost a bit of pride, i have never been academicaly gifted, no qualifications to speak of, poker was the only thing i was good at and it the recent events have really knocked me for 6. My plan now is to make some money on the trader scheme, get a regular job and play poker as a hobby for now. My plan still is to becaome a pro one day but with the right bankroll, motivation, and above all discipline. I know i am good enough, i just need to play in a pressure free envioronment for a while and play my A game.

I hope that i can focus for a while and motivate myself to get back on track A.S.A.P
thanks to all those who have given me support, help and advice over these trechourous times, there is one thing or sure, ill still be attending events here and there. Clam has been knocked but hopefully i will come back refreshed and better than ever.

Best regards
rick