Poker, Dating, and Life

It's been an interesting few weeks. Where to begin?

My job at PokerStars has been going well. I've been there almost two months now, and I've started to get a bit more used to the things I have to do as part of the job. I still don't relish getting up early. For about nine months, I was living on Eastern Time, a natural side effect of playing poker every day. For some reason, the game doesn't lend itself to being played during the day. This might be because the best games are built around recreational players, who typically have a day job and can't play until they've got home from work.

I recently visited London on a whim. PokerStars were holding a media event with the three most recent world champions - Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer, and Chris Moneymaker - and it seemed like a great excuse to get out of the house for a couple of days, do a bit of socialising with the people from work, and make some contacts in the industry (I also wanted a photo with Greg, Joe and Myself - 'WSOP Champions, Past, Present and Future' - which I never got managed to get). I found an excuse so that the company would pay my travel and accommodation expenses in the form of some collusion training, and off I went. I had a great night, chatted with Joe Hachem and some of the staff from the British Poker Open, and won a SNG against my colleagues in spectacular fashion - doubling up with 7-2 offsuit at one point in the tournament. In my defense, I knew my opponent was weak, but he called anyway with his ten high and I hit a deuce to win.

If you haven't realised already, PokerStars is a fantastic company to work for. The money is great, my colleagues are all witty, extremely intelligent people who I have a lot of respect for, and I feel genuinely valued. On top of that, there's potential career development and promotion opportunities once I've been with the company for a while. The only downside is that the office is in London - and I don't like London much. There are good things about the city, like its cultural diversity, and I quite enjoy visiting for short periods of time. Unfortunately, there are bad things too. It's so big and crowded that you feel insignificant, and it takes you ages to get anywhere. The air is dirty, and the city in general isn't very nice to look at. For some reason, I don't feel as safe walking around London at night as I do Edinburgh. And of course, there are far fewer people with that beautiful Scottish accent that I love so much. There may come a time when I may have to live in London, probably for something to do with work, and I hope it is short and painless.

My career in the industry is kicking off in other ways. In the last couple of months, there's been interest in my poker articles from the Gutshot, who are publishing my writing on their website, and from Inside Edge, Britain's leading gambling magazine. I'm proud to say that my first article, called 'Gambling in Tournament Poker - A Necessary Evil?' will be in the next issue.

I've also been approached about contributing to a documentary on Radio 4 about the game, and lets not forget that I was on TV earlier this month. All things considered, I came across quite well. In the interviews, they ask you lots of questions, and sometimes you are forced to give an immodest answer. For example, when asked 'What is your greatest poker achievement?' or 'What is your biggest win?', there is no way to come across as anything but full of yourself. Thankfully, the producers of the programme picked my most modest moment to broadcast, and I probably came across as a nice enough person.

Of course, they broadcast all of the mistakes I discussed in my last blog entry, and a couple more I didn't know I'd made. Anyone who says they can go on television for the first time ever and play their best game is a liar. However, I'm past the point of embarrassment and simply want to learn. If I can go on television again and improve on second place I will be happy. I'll be even happier if I don't look like a fat gimp - I had heard that the camera added ten pounds, but I didn't realise it would all go to my chin (or should I say chins?).

Because of everything that's been going on it my career, I've actually had very little time to play poker. I'm not usually in the mood to play online after a long day at work. When I have played, I've often been tired and my results have suffered. Last night was my first really good session in the entire month (I won over £1200), and I really needed it.

My live results have been okay. I still play at my old university every week, because I have a lot of friends that play there and because I want to defend my Player of the Year title. I'm currently third out of about 60 people, and I'm only a win away from first place. A couple of weeks ago I finished a frustrating second in a Seven Card Stud tournament. I had battled back from a 5-1 chip deficit to a point where I actually had my opponent covered, by playing extremely aggressively and exploiting any remotely scary card that hit my board. Then a hand came up in which I made a broadway straight on sixth street and a lot of money went into the pot. On the river, my opponent's board was completely disjointed and was showing only two to a suit and no pairs. I set him all-in on the fourth bet only to be shown nines full of fours, which put me right back where I started. This time, I quickly ran into a hand and lost.

My life is generally good. Career-wise, I'm exactly where I want to be, and new opportunities are coming along all the time. I have some great friends, and a wonderful family (did I mention I have another half sister on the way?). However, there are some areas with room for improvement.

For example, my choice of industry is not a wise one if you want to meet attractive, intelligent, single women (perhaps I'm asking for too much?). Poker in this country does not attract much of a female presence - in fact, its almost as if women who are born in the UK are trained from birth not to be interested in competitive activities. It probably also doesn't help that the poker venues in the UK are typically of extremely poor quality - almost as if they don't want new players coming into the game (there are some notable exceptions, like the Gutshot, which is extremely well run).

I've been single for about a year and a half now, with only the occasional intermission that never lasted long enough to be notable. I guess I've sacrificed one area of my life in favour of another. That's not to say that I couldn't be in a relationship if I wanted to be, but I'm not the kind of person who is so desperate for company that they will drop their standards. There are people out there who feel incomplete if they are alone, and quickly get involved with anybody, no matter how idiotic they are or how little they have in common. I am not one of these people. Long term girlfriends of mine in the past have been beautiful, intelligent, and good company, and I see no reason why this should change (as arrogant as that may sound).

Another part of my life that I hope changes soon is my health. I currently suffer from a throat condition that causes me to choke a lot. It basically means that I can't eat solid food, and I have to stick to things like soup, yoghurt and smoothies. This is good in some ways. I've lost nearly two stone since I was in London for the British Poker Open. However I really miss some kinds of food, and it also means I can't eat out or get a takeaway. The doctors don't really seem to know what's causing the problem - it could be anything from stress to cancer (unlikely given I'm only 23). They put me on pills which were useless, took blood samples which came back normal, and I'm now on the waiting list at the hospital for a more throrough examination. Hopefully, it will be all over soon and I can get back to normal - perhaps I'll join a gym to keep the weight off.

Anyway, thats about it for now. I hope everyone is well, and I hope I get to see you all soon.

Lessons Learned, Employment Earned, and other Poetic Thoughts (Originally Posted 5th April 2006)

I played in the Full Tilt Poker UK Showdown, Heat 6 of the British Poker Open, on the 25th of March. The whole experience was thoroughly enjoyable. I arrived Riverside Studios in London on time and was escorted to the green room by some very nice (if slightly camp) people. There were three sofas in the room - on one sat Marcel Luske, Noah Boeken and Gus Hansen; on the other; Kristy Gazes, Clonie Gowen and Gary Jones; and the other Pete Singleton (commentator for several poker TV shows). Mike Matusow sat in the corner playing Omaha Eight or Better online, and losing ridiculous money in the process. When some people are starstruck, they get excited and giddy - but not me. Although I found it difficult to build up the courage to start a conversation, once I did I found that everybody was extremely nice. Mike Matusow, although he is dramatic at times, is an extremely nice person who just wears his heart on his sleeve. Clonie Gowen (extremely slim in real life, but with a very sexy air about her nevertheless) seemed disinterested in the conversation until we started talking about her - once that happened we couldn't shut her up (apparently she gets a lot of marriage proposals when she plays the online tables under her own name). Gary Jones was curt and blunt but seemed to be nice enough. In fact everybody I met throughout the day, including the dealers, tournament director, and TV crew, were as lovely as they come.

During the heat itself I made a number of serious mistakes which I'd like to discuss. On the fourth hand, with starting stacks of 100,000 and the blinds at 1000/2000, Clonie Gowen raised to 6000 in first position, and I reraised in the cutoff to 18,000. My hand? Seven Deuce offsuit! Well, actually the mistake here is nothing to do with my reasoning - I just picked a bad time to make the move. I am generally a fairly tight player, mainly because I usually play in games where my opponents are too loose, especially on the early betting rounds, and playing tight gives me some nice opportunities to take advantage of this weakness. However, I was playing in a shorthanded, speedily-structured tournament against some good players - and you don't win tournaments like this just by playing tightly. Clonie had raised two of the previous three pots, and in one of these she folded to a preflop reraise, so I didn't necessarily put her on a strong hand despite her early position.

Although it didn't really matter what I held - I was probably going to reraise nonetheless and try to show that I couldn't be pushed around - I really couldn't resist when I saw the 7-2. As some of you may know, 7-2 offsuit is the hand I use to randomly bluff preflop when I feel that my raises are getting too much respect - either because my opponents have picked up a pattern or because I have a very tight image at the table. I chose 7-2 offsuit because everybody knows that it's the least playable Hold'em starting hand, and it sticks out in their mind when they see it. Plus, it can really put somebody on tilt when you show them you have bluffed them with the worst possible hand!

Anyway, back to the hand. Everyone folded to Clonie and she called. The flop came K-J-7, giving me a pair of sevens with a laughable kicker, and Clonie checked. Now I made my biggest mistake in the hand, and made a very weak bet of less than half the pot. Clonie put in a healthy raise, and I folded, losing about half my starting stack on the hand.

Guess what? It turned out she had A-Q, and I was actually ahead! So not only did I reraise preflop with the worst possible hand, I then folded the best hand on the flop! I played the hand completely backwards. It'll be interesting to see how I am criticised by commentators and fans alike once the show airs, and if they respond to the comments I've made here.

There were at least two other hands which I played badly. In one, i folded A-Q offsuit on the big blind to Mike Matusow's under the gun raise. Not a big deal you say? Well, we were four handed at the time, I was fairly short in chips, and Mike turned out to have J-9s - a pretty terrible decision overall. Why did I fold? Well, Mike had played extremely tightly all day, his raise was from first position, and his raise was an unusual size (the blinds were 3000/6000 and he made it 17,000 - the table standard had been 18,000 or 19,000 until then). He was also studying me intently when the action got to me. Really though, I probably made the wrong decision only because I was under so much pressure, which is quite inexcusable.

In the other hand, I ended up convincing myself that third pair with a crap kicker was good and called decent-sized bets on the turn and river, only to be shown a turned straight from Mike Matusow. In cash games, I'm used to making marginal calls for seemingly large amounts of money and being right often enough to make a profit - however this is probably not a good idea in a tournament when the call is so marginal and represents a large portion of my stack. Again, I'm convinced that I would have made a better decision were I playing my best game.

There are other hands that I played less than perfectly, and some of those will probably be aired so I'll get to see exactly where I went wrong in those hands. Despite my poor play I managed to finish second in my heat (mainly thanks to the inepitude of others), with Mike Matusow the winner. You'll be able to see my heat broadcast on the Poker Channel in late April or early May.

I'm pleased to say that I got the job with PokerStars, and I'm currently in London training for my position on their support team. After this week I'll be working from my home in Edinburgh. So far the job seems interesting, and the salary and benefits the job provides are excellent considering I am basically starting at the bottom. I'm honoured to work for a company like PokerStars who are one of the biggest companies in the poker industry. As a condition of my contract, I've had to remove banners for their competitors from this site, however, reviews of various online cardrooms remain. Its been brought to my attention that these are slightly out of date, so I'll be updating them soon.

On my birthday this year I actually managed to play for 24 hours (technically more, but there was a break of a couple of hours!). We played a mix of poker variations which changed every hour. Surprisingly enough, the biggest pots came not in Bagpuss (five card Draw with five wildcards) or Six Card Omaha (a terrible game when played with a whole table of tight players), but in Five Card Stud! Even more surprisingly two excellent players managed to go broke more than once despite the extremely low stakes. I ended the day up about £30, just over £1 an hour!

Tonight I attended the first Blonde Poker School, an event ran by The Poker Agency to which I was invited and which pleasantly coincided with my visit to London for training. The night started with a talk by Dave Colclough, a player I most respect for his Pot Limit Omaha play (he has made back to back final tables in WSOP events for the last two years), but who is also one of the best No Limit Hold'em players in Europe. He described a few basic poker principles such as position, betting patterns, and tells with particular reference to No Limit Hold'em tournaments. The school is aimed at beginning players, and I imagine that lectures like these would be quite useful for such people.

The lecture was followed by (and frequently interrupted by) questions from the audience. Some of the less experienced players asked typical questions like 'how should I play pocket aces?', whereas I tried to be clever and asked a complicated question about randomisation which I'm not sure anyone in the room understood!

There was a short break, during which delicious samosas were served, and free booze which I obviously didn't take enough of, since I'm writing this only hours after. I wish I'd made more use of this period and introduced myself to a few people, like Tony Kendall (poker expert on dull magazine show Poker 425) and Dave's stunning wife Rhowena (believe me, television doesn't do either her striking looks or divine Scottish accent any justice at all). To be honest though, the whole bunch was a little cliquey so I felt a bit uncomfortable announcing my presence to a cluster of strangers.

The night ended with a speedy tournament which was a lot of fun. It was a good social experience, and I wished it had been done at the start of the night rather than the end. I busted out on the final table bubble with K-J against the Blonde Poker forum's signature hand, 7-4! My opponent flopped trips, and rivered a straight just to rub it in. Anyway, I'm hardly one to dwell on a standard defeat like that, and the tournament was the part of the night I enjoyed most. I found the 'call the pro' feature particularly interesting - a privilege that a player could use to ask for advice on their hand from a pro like Dave or Tony. Listening to the pros explain their reasoning was educational and gave me a rare and valuable insight into how they think.
Anyway, if you find that the Blonde Poker School is coming to an area near you, snap up a seat as soon as you can.

That's enough for now - I have to be up in about six hours time for work. You know what's weird? I'm actually looking forward to it.

Backgammon and the British Poker Open (Originally Posted 27th February 2006)

2005 was a good year for me, poker wise. My hourly rate for cash games shot up to £9.60, I started to win consistently at $3/$6 No Limit Hold'em, and had the bankroll to start taking shots at $5/$10. I won multi-table tournaments in many different forms of poker, including Deuce to Seven Triple Draw, Razz, Stud Eight or Better, Dealer's Choice and of course No Limit Hold'em. My best game, as far as hourly rate goes, somewhat surprisingly turned out to be Razz (over £26 per hour). I put this down to a few things - the opposition in Razz games is much weaker (I once cleaned a player out of $650 in less than half an hour of heads up play), I've played bigger limits (up to $20/$40) compared to Hold'em, and I played fewer hours - so short term fluctuations were much more of a factor.

I learned some tough lessons in 2005. At one point in the year I went through a huge downswing, booking seemingly endless strings of big losses and small wins. It was like I couldn't do anything right - and I compounded my mistakes by spending part of my bankroll and going on tilt in my worst sessions. Somehow I managed to dig myself out of the hole and finish the year in a reasonable amount of profit.

2006 started off well. One of the first things I did was finish second in a VIP freeroll for £1400, which put me nicely ahead for January. Since then I've started to consistently win at $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em, and I've also managed to improve my Omaha results. Most recently, I've been playing on Full Tilt Poker a lot in an attempt to win my way into this year's World Series of Poker. As a result, Full Tilt offered to buy me in to the British Poker Open, which is a televised event held in London in late March. First prize is a nice £50,000, but to win it I have to first win a six-handed heat, and beat down a few pros to do so. It should be interesting - needless to say I've been practicing my six-handed tournaments!

I also started playing Backgammon for money this year. The stakes are pathetically small compared to my poker playing, but I'm obviously not going to introduce a huge leak into my bankroll by jumping straight into high-stakes Backgammon games. Encouragingly, I have been able to withdraw my original deposit of £20 and continue to play with my profit since. I've also been working on my game using GNU Backgammon, a program which can analyse the games you play and point out mistakes. GNU usually rates me at between 1700 and 1800, although that rating is estimated and takes luck into account - my actual rating is more like 1600 (the average rating is 1500).

On the job front, I recently applied for a job with PokerStars.com, one of the top online poker sites and a company for whom I have done some work in the past. The interview process consisted of three stages - first an online test; in which I was required to answer sample customer emails as if I worked for the company, then a telephone interview with their HR man in Costa Rica. The third stage was an interview in London - I spent 9 hours on the train on Valentine's Day just to get there and back - which went pretty well in my opinion. I'm waiting to hear back, but at the moment I'm going to assume that no news is good news.

Lastly, it's coming up to my birthday and I have a few things planned. On the 5th March I'm having a night in with UFC 58 and a lot of booze. On the 7th, I've planned a 24-hour poker marathon! That's right, I'm going to play cards for 24 hours solid - a different game every hour and no breaks at all. It's going to be interesting to say the least!

I hope all of you reading this are well and I will see you soon! Don't forget to watch me on telly - Sky Channel 844!

On The Rise (Originally Posted 5th September 2005)

It finally happened. Yes, I officially earn more playing poker than I do by working my regular job. I'm not about to go and quit yet however - poker is a risky occupation and I need the stability that I get from my other work. Also, I don't have the bankroll to comfortably play the bigger games yet, which I will need if I want to make poker my full time job.

I'm hoping that all the work I'm doing - playing, teaching, tournament directing, and promoting - will get me noticed and I'll bag a fantastic poker-related job in the near future. In fact, my foot landed on the first rung of the ladder last Friday, when I was interviewed for a job as Brand Manager for WPT Online, a new online cardroom run by the World Poker Tour. I found out later in the day that I'd got the job, which is great. The position is temporary, but I'm hoping that it will lead to other work in the industry.

An interesting hand came up the other day in the $2/$4 No Limit Hold'em game I was playing. I was one off the cutoff with a $435 stack and 4-4. I'm not normally a big fan of the very small pairs, since they have almost no chance to win in a multiway pot without flopping a set, and occasionally make an extremely expensive second best hand. The table was unusually passive preflop, mainly because of one very loose player who liked to gamble. My plan (and probably others') was to get in cheap with a lot of hands, and hopefully catch something to bust him.
Three people limped into the pot before I acted. Confident that none of the remaining players would raise, I also limped in. The button and small blind both called, and the big blind checked, making a pot of $28. We saw the flop seven handed - almost unheard of at this limit - which came 9-4-2 of different suits.

An early position player, with $378 remaining, bet $20 into the $28 pot. With the only draws on board deriving from unlikely hands like A-3, 3-5 and 3-6, I felt that this was a good spot to flat call and try to make more money from players behind me. The small blind, with $540, made it $65. This was actually a worryingly small check-raise - it lays the next player to act a whopping 3.1 to 1 and practically screams for a call. At this point however, its difficult to put him on the only bigger hand than mine (9-9).

Then the early position player raised all in for a total of $332.50. Actually, this wasn't as frightening as it seems. There is almost no chance that a player with top set would push all their chips into the pot in this situation. I thought it more likely that he had an overpair and had played it badly (limping in early position preflop with a hand like A-A, hoping to get in a limp-raise). But what about the player behind me? He had made that scary check-raise. After thinking for a relatively long time, and considering the pot odds (an unappealing 1.4 to 1), I decided to push all-in myself. I just didn't think the third guy had 9-9. My Poker Tracker stats helped, as did my observation of his playing style. I believe he would have raised preflop with a hand like 9-9 in the situation I described.

The remaining player thought for a short while and folded, saying he was folding a set of deuces. All credit to him if he was telling the truth - I know plenty of people who wouldn't have folded in that situation. The early position player turned over A-9 of hearts, and the board brought no help. He left the table shortly afterward.

This hand illustrates a key mistake made by a lot of players - playing bad aces out of position, suited or not, is terrible play and will cost you money more often than not. Notice that my 4-4 was played in almost ideal conditions - in reasonable position, with little raising preflop, and plenty of opposition to win money from. The guy with A-9s could not have assumed so much, and only confounded his error by overplaying his marginal one pair hand on the flop.

End of an Era (Originally Posted 11th July 2005)

Well, my fourth year is over and my results are in. I ended up with the second highest score in the year, but unfortunately that only translated to a mediocre 2-1, not a first. Whether that will impress any prospective employers remains to be seen - I'm currently job hunting, which is an incredibly daunting experience.

My ideal job would be part professional poker player, part cardroom owner / tournament director, based in Edinburgh of course. I'd travel the world playing in the most prestigious tournaments and making my friends and relatives proud. Above all, I want to achieve something, which I don't believe I've really done in the last four years at university - after all, I have a mediocre qualification from a mediocre university, am tens of thousands of pounds in debt, and am currently unemployed except for my job at Victoria Wine and the money I can scrape together by playing poker (which has been invaluable lately).

Speaking of poker (and mediocrity), I've been suffering from some terrible tournament results recently. In the recent Full Tilt Poker VIP Freeroll, which was giving away ten seats to the World Series of Poker main event, I got off to a great start, having more than twice the average chips at the first break. Since this was a super satellite, I'd been pushing my small edges as far as they could go, and playing extremely aggressively. After the first couple of hours, I went card dry and my chips were blinded away down to around average. Then I picked up pocket aces, said a silent hallelujah, and managed to get all-in before the flop against a player with fewer chips than me, only to be beaten by a dodgy two pair. The very next hand, I picked up pocket queens, got all the chips in against a short stack, and lost when his pocket deuces made a set on the flop (by the way, apart from A-K, deuces is the hand I see overplayed the most. People will call all manner of raises when really their only chance to win is to flop a set). Shortly therafter I was eliminated when my A-Ks lost a coinflip hand. I finished 92nd, having outlasted nearly five hundred players.

I also played a freeroll tournament on Paradise Poker a few days ago, the top ten places of which won entries into a tournament which paid $1,000,000 to the winner. I cruised to the final two tables without really endangering my chip position or gambling too much. I kept myself alive by stealing blinds and antes, but found myself dwindling as the blinds reached 4000 and 8000 (the average stack was just over 60,000 at this point, and I was sitting on about 40,000). There were some huge stacks on the table, and every time I tried to steal, they raised me all-in. I was essentially powerless, and couldn't outlast the short stacks at the other table. I ended up all-in on my blind with a 10-5 offsuit, was called by four players, and was eliminated in a heartbreaking eleventh place.

Another key hand came up in an online Stud Eight or Better tournament, in which I was dealt [8-3]-A, all of hearts, in late position. It was folded round to a nine on my immediate right who surprisingly raised (surprisingly, because a nine is widely considered to be the worst card in an eight or better game, since it can't make a low and tends to make weak high hands). Most players won't raise with a nine showing unless they have something strong in the hole, so I immediately put him on a high pair. I noticed that two of my hearts were out, but decided that even if I didn't make my flush, I could make a low and escape for half the pot (there was only one low card out, the bring-in), or make trips or two pair to scoop. I reraised, the bring-in folded, and the nine reraised. I now thought he could have aces in the hole, or possibly a hand like 7-8-9 of spades (the quality of play was pretty poor in this tournament). I reraised him all-in, and he called instantly, showing 9-9-9 for rolled up nines. Ouch. Obviously trips was a possibility, but you can't worry about running into them all the time, especially with a pretty strong hand like three low cards to a flush. As it turned out, I missed both the low and the flush and was scooped. Shortly thereafter, my aces with a low kicker were cracked by somebody who played a pair of eights the whole way and made two small pair. Oh well, so be it.
I'm not whining about being beaten - after all, there are no bad beats, just bad losers and bad players. But tournament poker probably represents the game in its most frustrating form, and it can be an emotional rollercoaster, win or lose. I know my time will come - there's always tomorrow.