Back to the grind, GUKPT trip report and that.

Ok, so my first blog of 2012 comes at the end of an interesting January. I started off with a mission to try and grind 50k hands, which i didnt quite achieve (43k), but i've put this down to me completing the rehab from my injury, and being able to train and play for the mighty Reffley Royals again, which i am LOVING btw (semi-final of 2 cups [final tbp at Carrow road, where we lost last year to the soap/tax dodgers from UEA] and 2nd in the league). I trained my arse off pre-season, and felt great at the beginning of the season winning player of the month...

The gaffer thinks he is a funny c**to putting a picture of Hayley Cropper (from Corrie apparently) on the website just because i was too lazy to get my hair cut at the time. Anyway, back to poker... and quickly. (F**k you RB ;-) x


So i managed to put in a bit more volume, due to a conscious effort to do so, and whilst reading a recent magazine article with a feature on myself and 5 other PKR cash game pro's my reasons as to why i need to play more were only reinforced by looking at their hand volume compared to mine. I played a paltry 240k hands last year, which, whilst still producing a good profit, wasnt anywhere near the amount i should be putting in, and was kinda put to shame by the others who had all played a minimum of 350k. I obv have my reasons, and moving/doing up house, training/playing football and golf, as well as keeping my hand in on the climbing front, all meant that i was always gonna be well behind these well known PKR grinders. This year though, things are a' changin'.


So despite putting in more volume, i actually had a losing month on the cash tables (not by that much, but nevertheless, a losing month), mainly due to some misadventures at 2/4 and 5/10. Meh, pretty standard, and from what i gather a lot of PKR regs havent had the best start to the year, but hey ho, we keep on truckin', cos thats what we do. As it turns out though, my month was actually a winning month, due to two 2nd places in both the PKR prime time and the open (totaling in just over $3k), so along with cakeback (over $1k this month, which is always welcome), its not too bad, and i can still afford to buy Lenor, and not the cheap alternative.


GUKPT Manchester


Drove up on Thursday night feeling good about playing live again after destroying the cash table at my local poker club on Tuesday night (i busted the tournament in record time but thats obv irrelevant). I opted to stay at a guest house because i couldnt find anywhere else that would leave my options open re busting/staying in the tournament, so i duly arrived at the wonderfully uninspiring 'Ivy Lodge', where i was greeted by a young Mancunian called Paul, who, complete with stereotypical friendly Northern demeanor, insisted that i try some of his wife's home-made chicken soup at no charge... 


'Come sit down and tell me all about this poker game. It's mostly luck right?'...


I quickly changed the subject to football, and because I didnt want to be rude, even though i was tired from the drive and just wanted to go and starfish my no doubt lumpy bed and watch suffen crap on tv to fall asleep to, i entered the communal kitchen and was given a hearty bowl of soup and some crusty white bread. As it goes, the soup generated a welcome, warming and somewhat nostalgic feeling - it was around 5pm. It was getting dark, freezing outside, and i had resisted the temptation of services junk food for my entire trip. Which, tbf was quite an achievement, because even though i normally cant stand junk food, i believe there is actually some kind of law to eat it when on a road trip. Anyways, i actually really enjoyed the soup, so much so that i had another bowl full (although i had no choice in this matter, Pauls wife was hovering over me, ladle at the ready, keen for me to continue complimenting her culinary wizardry - Yes, i like the fucking soup!! stop asking me if its alright!!!).


So i make my escape after the second serving ('home made you know, not from a tin!'), resisting the urge to crash out for a bit, deciding instead to have a shower, get down to the casino, get registered for the next day and maybe play a bit of cash. So i open the bathroom door, stared for about 5 seconds, and lolled, very loud.

Maybe it was because i was tired, but i literally cried with laughter, especially when i attempted to give the shitter a test run and had to sit on the wonk with one foot in the shower cubicle because the sink was 'in the way'. Anyone else had to sit on the wonk to have a dump cos the sink is in the way?? I sat there thinking FML, but actually changed it to LML - these solitary moments of self induced hilarity are golden to me, and this is one i'll never forget.


Tournament day


I arrived at the casino in good time, and tried to look cool (but massively failing to) as i walked in pretty wet and covered in hail (poxy Manc weather). I ordered a coffee and sat down to watch a bit of the cricket before heading over to the tables to check where i was sitting. Cool, table 16, live stream camera almost literally right down my throat. As play got underway, my friends back home were texting me saying 'i can seeeeee yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!' I resisted the urge to wave and instead opted for the Peter Kay two finger leaning on the face salute. About half hour into level 1, where i'd won a few small pots without showdown, i started to feel comfortable and realised that there wasnt anyone to be particularly worried about, except perhaps for a guy 2 to my left, a guy called Lewis Hunter, who seemed to be making some nicely timed squeezes, and barreling without fear. I figured i'd just stay out of his way, speshly with him having position on me. 


No sooner had i thought about not getting involved in anything big with him, he started talking to me... 'Its James right? Hey James, my mate is watching at home and has bet me £50 that you wont let me try your hat on straight away'. I obv snap let him, and he duly obliged by giving his mate the big thumbs up into the camera, and handing me back my hat asking me what id like to drink. I told him i'd have a quadruple JD and coke a bit later and got a laugh from the rest of the table. The bastard only went on to take it down and win just shy of £50k - all my run good musta transfered onto him via my lucky hat, eff it.


Ok, so i got into a few interesting spots, one of which being when i got moved to another table, and it was against this middle aged dumpy lady who i thought was a bit of a fish initially, but realising fairly quickly that she wasnt there to fuck about and was actually pretty good. She opens to 950 utg +2 with the blinds at 200/400, ante 50 and it folds round to me OTB. I make it 2300 to go with AQo, the blinds fold, and she peels. Flop is 9,10,J all hearts and dumpy lady checks fairly quickly. I knew i had a red card but couldnt remember if it was a heart so i had a quick peep, and had to subsequently sigh inwardly after seeing the bad news. If either was a heart then i'da prob gone ahead and bet there - we both had around 35k behind, but i decided to check and see the turn, which was a complete brick, 2c or suffen. Pot is about 5200 and she leads for 3k. This sucked a bit, but i was kinda expecting it. I couldnt really reraise here because if she jams then i have to fold what could potentially be the best hand if the river comes to my rescue, either by completing a straight or bringing another heart for me to rep if she checks, so i elect to see a river card, which is the 7h. After about 10 seconds she checks, and i dont waste a lot of time in betting 6.8k into an 11k pot. She tanks for what seems like an eternity before saying that she 'has' to call. Im like 'Really?? you have to?? wtf?? Fffffolllddddd you fucking heffer!!! (sorry, bit harsh i know, but its what i was thinking at the time). Totally oblivious to my inner cries, she makes the crying/hero call with a set of 10's and takes a pretty decent chunk of my stack. Surprisingly though, i wasnt affected by this at all because i think i played it fine, and i dont think i'd play it any differently if i was in the same spot again given the circumstances, so i just ordered a cup of tea, and went back to folding garbage. 

Ibiza Angel massage girl didnt distract me at all

After scoffing beef bourguignon at the buffet and catching up with my old mate Simon Deadman (who, despite being only a young lad, is a kinda live circuit veteran already - haha, good to see you Si!), and trying to pick his brain a bit, I managed to find some good spots to squeeze/shove with on the way to the final level of the day, one of which went down well with the table chip leader, who raised in mid position and got a caller from the cut-off. I jam for 16 bb's. Chippie really wants to call but cant because of guy behind and mucks. Guy in the HJ folds and chippie tells me he had his favourite hand J10hh and woulda called if it wasnt for the tricky other biggish stack behind. We'd all been doing a bit of show and tell, so I felt obliged to show him my 910ss.


There was definitely a buzz around the place when Jake Cody arrived, speshly when after being there for about 15 mins, he knocked what musta been a pint all over himself and others at the table, haha, good going Jake, really cool. That may have unsettled him (yeah right), cos he busted shortly after that, just before my final hand, which came just after midnight where i shove UTG with AQdd and 18bbs, folding round to the bb who shows me QQ. /nh. no ace, hat, coat, im gone just before the end of day 1 in 68th/177.


All in all though, it was a really good experience, despite being ridiculously card dead (seriously, ridiculously!). In fact, the only negative was this one guy at the table who just didnt understand the term 'personal space' and he almost got the...

...treatment, but luckily i didnt have to resort to this, which is good because he was quite an unsavory looking fella. Anyway, I took a lot of positives from the weekend and cant wait for leg 2 in Walsall, where i'll hope to catch up with an old friend and run a bit betterer :-)


Now i just want to finish with some, what i think, are the best pics from a photo shoot that my friend Nicola has just had done. She's a very talented, creative, humble, funny and obv gorgeous young lady, and we have a pretty unique bond. I always used to tell her that she should get into modelling but for one reason or another she was reluctant. Anyway, she finally took the plunge, and i think she looks great...

Oh, and check this out if you get 5 minutes... http://foodonmydog.tumblr.com/ In terms of quality blogs, this is right up there with lil'daves imo - Bordering on genius. 


And shout out to my new Scandie protege! :-)












  

Poker saps your soul...

Ok, so maybe thats a bit heavy (oh, and seasons greetings one and all btw), but those of you who grind a lot on-line (and live) know exactly what I mean. Its weird though, for the first year of turning 'pro' and playing poker full-time, I was very much on a steep learning curve, not only in terms of becoming a better player technically, but perhaps more in terms of trying to find out what works best for me in relation to playing patterns, volume, mood, environment etc etc. I think during my first 6 months, I definitely spewed a lot of money when playing whilst either tired or a drunk (or both), or just not in the right frame of mind, which is obv annoying because my first year was pretty good in terms of profit, but it could have been so much better. 


I definitely needed that first year though, to learn about myself and the aforementioned aspects that I think are sometimes overlooked/dismissed within this oft sallow faced community which demands hours and hours of relentless concentration... And this is the thing, when you are winning, you just want to keep playing, and when you are losing, you feel that you need to keep playing - its so hard to know when to stop and take a break, and even when you do, its sometimes quite hard to switch off, and not think about certain spots where you just know you could have played better. Anyone who knows me, knows I think too much. I analytically tear the arse out of pretty much everything, more often than not to my detriment. 


This obv has its pros and cons when it comes to poker, and im still in the process of figuring out exactly what those are, and how to best apply/eliminate them. I think one of the most important things that i've learned/learning to do, is to NOT analyse hands whilst im still playing. This is soooo bad, and has without doubt cost me thousands over the last 2/3 years but recently, after getting to grips with a few mental game concepts, I am definitely improving in this aspect.


So far this month...

I'm obv running good atm (won a bottle of wine in the pub raffle, and then binked the preceding poker tournament/crapshoot - luckbox) - a polar opposite to this time last year, when December was my worst month of the year - I finished about $7k down for Nov and Dec combined and it was quite tough to take, especially at xmas time when I wanted to buy cool presents, drink ridiculous amounts of booze, scoff posh nosh and attend parties and stuff. I'd never been coolered and 2 outered so much in such a short space of time, but this year I seem to be on the other end of it (shit, did i just flick the doom switch?!) so I'll just keep plodding along and try my best to keep the momentum. I'm not really interested in reaching x amount of hands, like many other regs go on about (myself included in the past tbf) - I'm def going for quality over quantity. I've switched back to just playing 4-6 tables and playing in shorter spells with regular breaks, and this seems to be working so i'm gonna just stay with it for a bit.


On a lighter note, I went to watch Shed Seven with a few mates last night in Cambridge. We had a great night actually, but the band were pretty shit tbh. I used to love Shed Seven, and saw them twice when I lived in Bristol during their 'glory' years, but I suppose I realised last night why they never really kicked on like the other Britpoppy bands that were around at the time, like Blur, Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene. They've obv wrote a few classics, like 'Chasing Rainbows' and 'Stand By' but tbh, most of the other tracks are pretty lame imo (especially the newer stuff - good God droan), and i found myself getting a bit bored. Was good to see the leadsinger from the Seahorses there though (cant remember his name), and he did a couple of his own classics including an acoustic version of 'Blinded by the Sun' which was really good, and had the entire crowd singing along. 


We stopped off in a dodgy pub on the way home and drank some quality malt whisky (Glenlivet, lush), which, along with the bottle of JD that me and Lee were getting stuck into on the way there, had quite an effect...

So out of it bless 'im (good camera work Gilly, and shout to Ross for driving and generally being a legend :-)


Oh, and just have to include this. The series is fucking genius, and I strongly urge anyone who hasnt seen it, to see it.

Merry xmas everybody.

Eventful October (For me anyway...)

Just sitting here contemplating my October, and its been a fairly eventful month for me. As you will see by my graph, i havent played many hands, and i know i really need to knuckle down again, but I've had a lot going on. I turned 34 at the beginning of the month, and birthdays have never really meant anything to me - I'm def one of those 'just another day' kinda people. But for some reason, this year i couldnt help but think 'Fuck. I'm actually getting old'. Although it was only two weeks prior to this meaningless half-hearted epiphany, whilst dashing down to the local supermarket to buy a bottle of red to have with dinner, i was asked for proof of age! The checkout lady said i should be flattered whilst handing me back my drivers licence, but i just wanted to punch her - there was gravy needing to be made :-/

Shortly after my 5 second premature mid-life mini crisis, i lost one of my friends, forever. He was only 2 years older than me, and I'd known him since high school. I used to chase his sister around the playground and helped out his dad at the local fair ground in the summer holidays. When i became old enough to drink in pubs, we would get drunk on snakebite and black and get into all sorts of trouble (good and bad...) with holiday makers. I moved away on my 20th birthday and travelled around, working in Bristol, London, Paris, and then to do my degree in York, so obviously lost touch for a while, but whenever i came home and saw Jaime, we would always have a great laugh, just as he did with everybody.

Jamie was a funny looking lad, but he always dressed smart, and he had his own style. He hardly ever had any money, but would rarely buy high street clothes. He'd much rather have a decent pair of jeans and be skint. He'd walk down the road in Timberlands, Replay jeans, Ralph Lauren shirt and a Paul Smith jumper, but never had any money in his pocket. Jamie had time for everyone. He had a smile and a joke for everyone. And thats why everyone liked Jamie - you couldnt not like him. Anyone who knew him and reads this will know what i mean when i say that just speaking to him made you laugh, even if he wasnt trying to be funny. 

I've been to quite a few wakes in my time, but Jamie's was one to remember - in fact it was a great day all things considered. Talking to fellow friends and family wasnt sad because Jamie didnt do sad, he only did funny, and we all shared stories about Jamie and laughed, a lot :-). It was a proper send off (zig-zagged in at 9am the next day...:-) Gonna miss you Jamie. x

Ok, so poker...

My October graph is pretty lame - not many hands played and not much profit to shout about, although with my rakeback and a nice little Monte Carlo tournament bink and some other tourney cashes, I've scraped up to the $4k mark, which is fine. 

Gonna try and get my head down this month and put some hours in - want to get 50k hands in if i can, but might be tough as i have a fair bit of climbing to do, speaking of which, my groundsman Ben filmed me during this dismantling job (if you reading ty Ben, i know Gary gave you stick for it!). This tree was spread out over 3 gardens, with sheds, greenhouses and conservatories all underneath - was a bit of a nightmare tbh, especially with it being windy. Every single branch had to be lowered, and the chunk im taking off in the vid has to land in a tiny little area, which is why im faffing about a bit. Anyway, here's the clip: (some idiot is revving another chainsaw right next to Ben btw - he didnt factor this in...) 

                                                                                                                                                                   

So that was October, oh and i forgot, I moved house! Gonna do a little before/during/after thing with my garden, which is about 100 (long) x 20 (wide) yards of jungle atm, and i cant wait to get a 360 digger in and napalm the lot, barring the odd apple/cherry/plum tree. 

Will actually try to post some hands and write some stuff about poker as well sometime soon...

So far, so swingy.

Ok, so its not THAT swingy (looks more like an ECG graph i spose...), and it def wouldnt be if i wasnt running so bad EV wise, but after a nice start, i just got coolered and 2 outered over and over again - it was honestly quite laughable (thats the only thing i could do to cope with the shittiness of running so bad after a good few days - laugh...loud!). Then after gathering my thoughts and having 5k hands where i was completely card dead, i got things back on track and now feel a bit better with the world :-)


Unfortunately i had to cancel my GUKPT Coventry trip which i was pretty gutted about, although i'm feeling ok about it now because i can get some decent practice in (have hardly played any MTT's over the last few months) and get my tournament game back up to speed, ready for some major live events next year (hardly any left this year... :-( .


Havent posted any hands on here for a while so i'll address that issue right now with a few that i thought were kinda interesting...


First one was a hand with a guy who was pretty laggy, and i posted this in the cash game section of the PKR forum to get some feedback and general thoughts, where i labelled the guy in question a 'semi-maniac' for reasons that arent necessarily shown in this particular hand, but prior to it, led me to make my check on the river.


Apologies for the slightly shoddy hand converter but this blog post is just a quickie and i cba to faff about...

$1.00/2.00 No Limit Hold'em Cash Games, 6 Players

Hand Converter by the Pokerhand.org community

oneplaner (BB): $580.17

BlixtGordon (UTG): $245.85

iLcApOdiCorleone (UTG+1): $232.60

vjkjrjdf1 (CO): $207.25

Greygoosekid (Button): $430.15

Woodstock72 (SB): $78.67

Dealt to: oneplaner

Pre-flop:

(1 folds)
iLcApOdiCorleone raises to $6.00
(1 folds)
Greygoosekid calls $6.00 
(1 folds)
oneplaner calls $4.00

Flop:(Pot - $19.00) (3 Players)

oneplaner checks, 

iLcApOdiCorleone bets $10.00

Greygoosekid calls $10.00

oneplaner raises to $42.66 

iLcApOdiCorleone folds

Greygoosekid calls $32.66

Turn: (Pot - $114.32) (2 Players)

oneplaner bets $71.00

Greygoosekid calls $71.00

River: (Pot - $256.32) (2 Players)

oneplaner checks

Greygoosekid bets $310.49

oneplaner calls $310.49

Results:

oneplaner  Showed

Greygoosekid  Showed

oneplaner wins $874.30

Will post a few more a lover day cos ive just registered for a few MTT's online - thought i could blog and play at the same time, but i cant :-/

Autumnal weather, more poker...

Hey, its been a while. Hardly played any poker in August, and havent played all that much this month either, only bout 12k hands - see swingy graph below. Ive been climbing lots in the sunny (but not too hot - no fun climbing in 25 degrees whilst sporting inch thick kevlar trousers) weather - its been a lot of fun, and helped a bit to get me fit for the footy season, which is now well underway, and we - Reffley Royals f.c - are sitting pretty at the top of the league - played 2, won 2, GD +10 :-). 


Thought id post a few pics of the climbing jobs I've been doing, just for suffen different other than boring graphs and bad beats. They arent particularly exciting mind you, just a little insight...

The first picture is just a corner of a back garden belonging to 2 top London barristers (its their holiday home as well ffs...), felling a long corridor of leylandii, and the 2 smaller pics are that of nice oak tree right on the entrance of their driveway, which i had to take some dead wood out of, and generally faff around taking some weight out of the branches - can just about see my anchor point in the left hand pic. I'll try to get some better ones on here, but my groundsman is fucking useless with an iphone, plus i dont trust him with it anyway :-/

Here's what happens when your chainsaw kicks back at you...

Health and safety FTW! Right, little bit about poker...

Like i said, i hardly played over August, I'd often be tired from climbing or playing golf and my heart just wasnt in it. I still dont know whether its a good idea to try and force yourself to play poker if you dont really want to, but you obviously have to put the volume in, hmm... Anyway, my serious lack of volume may have accounted for me playing so bad at the beginning of September. Well, i say playing bad, i dont think that was really the case, but its surprising how after taking only a month out, you can definitely become rusty, so im not going to say that i was running really bad or just kept getting coolered (although of course, i did ;-),  its how it goes sometimes - im just happy that i managed to turn it around, and can hopefully finish with another 15-20k hands (guaranteeing a decent bit of RB)  and a nice profit, but we'll see...

Im off to the GUKPT Coventry next month to play in the £200 and £300 buy-in events on the Tuesday and Thursday, and gonna try to qualify for the £1k buy-in main event whilst there, but will just see how the week goes i spose.

June and July shizzle...

Hey, its been a while since my last post - I've been busy grinding online and working pretty hard on my golf swing, focusing more on the bio-mechanical side of things (and realizing that i need to do more golf-specific work-out routines at the gym!), but more importantly, learning how to learn. I've almost finished an amazingly insightful book called 'The Talent Code' by Daniel Coyle, which seeks to explain the 'myelin' phenomenon. It is based upon ground-breaking research into how humans learn new skills, and is particularly relevant to the golf swing, because even though its a movement that lasts all of 2 seconds, it is a movement which is mind-blowingly (yes its a word cos i just created it) complex, and requires extreme skill, talent and strength (mental and physical) to repeat consistently to a high standard. I wont go into it too much, because i wouldnt want to send you all asleep (if i havent lost you already ;-), but to cut a very long story short...


Like i said, The 'Talent Code' is built on revolutionary scientific discoveries invlolving a neural insulator called myelin, which some neurologists now consider to be the holy grail of acquiring skill, and here's why: Every human skill, weather its learning to hit bunker shots or learning to play Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibres carrying tiny electrical impulses - basically its a signal travelling through a circuit. Myelin's vital role is to wrap these nerve fibres the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire - making the signal faster and stronger by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the correct way (when we practice swinging the golf club or playing that note), our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the more it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.


So, thats the nutshell, and it applies to EVERYTHING we do, including thought processes when playing poker, putting opponents on ranges etc etc. The book actually explains why Brazil are, and always have been, the best football team, and why Tiger Woods is as good as he is (or was, until he decided that the normal rules of marriage, and life in general didnt apply to him), amongst many other, until now, unexplained phenomenons. Its only a fiver to download via kindle, and its written in a very accessible and readable way, so I'd strongly recommend it :-) Anyway, enough of all that, but i just felt the need to share it with you all, because it totally blew my mind when i read it, and it really has helped me with my golf, and 'learning how to learn', so I'd like to think that it can help some of you too, if you are at all interested... I'm currently in the process of applying the myelin phenomenon to learning new poker skills...speaking of which...


So June was an ok month for me:

Had a bit of a family issue which knocked me a bit, and meant that my volume of hands was pretty low, but with rake on top of this (bout $750) and a nice tournament win in the Wednesday PKR Prime Time on the 15th:

meant that i cleared $7k for a third successive month :-)


This month has been pretty stale so far - I'm doing ok profit wise, but i dont think i've ever played for so many periods where i've been so effing card dead, which has meant that i've often tried to force it at times (generally not a good idea imo), leading to ill-timed bluffs and owning/value towning myself :-( So this month:

I've also been experimenting with 9 tabling, which is definitely a skill in itself, and just finding the best way to play because i found myself nitting up a little bit. MyVPIP went down to like 20% (as opposed to usually around 25-28%), and my PFR also decreased to about 15% (usually bout 18-22%), so i wasnt happy about that. I found myself just sorta grinding it out more, and was missing so many opportunities and spots where i'd usually be trying to outplay my opponent (although rarely needing to cos as everyone knows, i always have it :-), quickly checking stats, and hand reading much more effectively. When 9 tabling this does become more difficult so i've got to address this issue and find the right balance. The last 2k or so hands, i went back to 6 tables and enjoyed it a lot more - i felt like i was 'playing poker' more and getting involved in more marginal spots, trying to make them profitable, instead of just giving up (or spazzing out) too easily because im in 3 other marginal/potentially very lucrative spots on tables elsewhere - work in progress...


On the fine dining front, i took my pops out for lunch for fathers day the other week, opting for a fantastic place called 'The Pigs' in Edgefield. Gorgeous proper pub with an outstanding menu, excellent service and superb food. We had a starter of 'pig pieces' consisting of pigs ear, sausage, pork belly (oh my God, the best belly ive EVER had), black pudding, pig liver pate, crackling, smokey bacon, scoth egg and dreamy apple sauce:

Then after the best rare rib of roast beef I've had in ages, we entered into 'pudding club' which was included in the price for the main meal (£19:95 for main and pudding club - really great value, just ask my dad...).

Dunno why he's pulling that silly face, he looks slightly demented, or perhaps he has a fart stuck sideways, but let me assure you he is happy, with home-made jaffa cake, chocolate filled doughnut, flapjack, trifle, almond slice and chocolate chip bread and butter pudding for desert - The guy can eat! You were allowed to eat as many puddings as you like, the only rule being that you returned with an empty plate if you wanted more! Pops obviously wanted to go back for more but we refused to let him! They were all individually delicious, and i was blown away by the quality of the cooking and baking, leaving the biggest tip i think i've ever left. They even brewed their own beer, a few pints of which went down really well afterwards. Anyone on an east coast holiday MUST check this place out - i rarely get excited about pub food but this was top notch, and cant wait to go back.


Finally, congrats to all the PKR players who have cashed in Vegas - Scott Shelly, Brother M, and all the others, with a special mention to ex PKR pro Andrew Teng, who had a very nice 5th place finish in the 1k NL Holdem event #42 for $105k - MBN! /wp /gg /cheer /dance.

Golf swing analysis with Poults...

Right then, time to bear my soul and stick a little swing sequence on here seeing as the blog title does have the word 'golf' in it. Please bear in mind that its been about 6 months since i swung a golf club, and my body is nowhere near as strong as it was back then. Since the accident i haven't been able to go to the gym or go running or anything, so i cant get into the kind of positions i want to (more to the point need to!) in order to make an efficient, powerful golf swing, but I'll get there with a little hard work, and besides, i enjoy the challenge :-) 


I thought I'd do a sequence comparison with Ian Poulter, who swings it great. What you obviously cant see in these pictures is his amazing rhythm, which is what glues all of his fantastic positions together, again, something which i need to work REALLY hard on, as without good rhythm and tempo, you may as well just give up, because good positions mean tosh without it. Anyway, set-up position:

 

As you can see, Poults stands nice and tall to the ball, with his shoulders back and in good posture, something which i am not doing - my shoulders are rounded and slightly slumped, but this is a posture thing which isnt helped by being a full-time online poker pro... still, with a bit of gym work, this can be easily fixed. Other than that i think my set up is ok. 


9 o'clock: (left arm position if looking face on)

This is a very tell tale comparison of where my injuries play a part in my golf swing. Because of the lack of flexibly in my right wrist (broke in 3 places), i cant hinge it back like Poults is doing here, so my shaft-plane becomes a bit steep at this point (as opposed to being perfectly on plane like Poulter is, in other words, his shaft angle is very much the same as what it was at set-up, and pointing much more at the ball). The clubface is also a bit shut, but i've always done this, and i'm not overly bothered because from this point i rotate my left arm pretty well in order to compensate, and the club works up to the top into a nice 'square' position (in Laymans terms, the angle of clubface is the same as the shaft plane was at address): 

What i dont like about this 'top of the backswing' position, is that i've become a little 'disconnected' In other words, my arms arent quite in sync with my shoulder turn and this is will cause me problems on the way down if my rhythm is out, and my transition into the downswing isnt smooth. I also havent turned my hips enough (another old problem of mine). I try to create lots of coil against my lower body, but forget that i need to let my hips turn more naturally instead of trying to fight it in order to create more torque. Because of this, my left knee kicks more 'out' as opposed to 'in' like Poulters, and im therefore not as balanced and comfortable as i'd like to be. My right knee also straightens too much, which actually weakens the coil that im trying to create - gonna go to the range this avo and work on this specifically - if i can maintain more flex in my right knee as i swing to the top, then this will also stop me from potentially 'over-swinging', and i can be much more compact and connected at the top.


Unfortunately i dont have any downswing pics, as the frames went too fast for my phone to catch so they just came out blurry, but what i did manage to get was this frame from just after impact:

Poulters pic is obv just a few frames later, but i think my release isnt too bad here, and would be pretty close to his a few frames later. What i dont like though, is that i've lost my spine angle a little because i've stood up through impact, and again, this is injury related (i think..i hope!). After having surgery on my left knee last year, i think i've been subconsciously worried about posting my weight onto it through impact, and i kinda 'bottle it' a little on the way through. it's ok though, as a few good gym sessions should build up the strength in my knee, enabling me to be much more confident in putting weight on it at such a high speed.


And to finish...

Pretty happy with my finish position, as it shows that i've swung in balance. I've transferred my weight nicely, and i've turned fully through the shot.


Please feel free to leave any comments about my very much 'work-in-progress' golf swing. Any magic tips are always handy!


Oh, and before i forget, i did tell MrStarch that i'd post a pic of my perfect hangover cure, so here it is Ross, just for you...

On the poker front, my month is going ok, and my graph hasnt changed all that much since last time so i wont bother posting an update. Last night i won the WSOP 'stage 3' qualifier, which automatically entered me into the final stage tonight, where there will be either 1 or 2 $4.3k Las Vegas packages up for grabs, which includes the $1k buy-in event #54, flights, accomodation and a few other treats (maybe the odd party or suffen...), so I'm hoping for a bit of run good please poker gods!