Its been a while!

I haven't updated this for months so thought I'd get back to it. Thinking i should really change the blog title too seeing as i never got going in the cash games - i was winning at a reasonable rate but playing at low stakes the rake was killing it and i just found it a grind...

May actually went downhill a bit after my last post... i actually ended the month +$735.23 in profit which isn't too shabby considering my volume. trouble is $72 of it was from a bonus i finally released and another $604.50 was from playing one of my step 4 sngs and winning a seat into a big tourney which i then unregistered from and sold the W$ online. my actual play for May only netted me about $58 profit.

I played what was quite a big live tourney for me in Aspers, Swansea on May 31st. I satellited in online for $11 to the £135 buy in tourney. It was to launch Roberto and Antoni Romanellos new poker site - 'One Way Poker'. It was quite cool to play a relatively low buy in tourney with a decent structure which had attracted a few big name pros off the UK circuit. Ive played loads of pro's in online tournies but its not the same as playing them face to face in a live environment. Played on the same table as Full Tilt Pro Andrew Feldman and Micky Wernick.
I actually played well and was among the chip leaders heading into dinner break but it was all downhill from there. Card dead and then whenever you picked up a mid pocket pair there'd be a raise from utg and a re raise before it got to you so they'd go into the muck. I ran J's into Q's then eventually shoved 78suited from the cut off, 1st into the pot only to walk straight into A's and finished just short of the cash after what was a very long day :( A good experience all the same though!

June was a reasonable month finishing +$638.72 in profit most of which came from 2 deep finishes in Plo8 and Nlo8 mtt's! Must be beginners luck as I've only just learned this game but really enjoy it! Picked up a 2nd place and a 1st place finish. Also got a bit of profit from the Nlo8 cash games on Stars...

July on the other hand wasn't so great. i played a lot more sngs which were a real grind and didn't get any tourney scores really which didn't help. Eventually finished -$101.67 for the month. Think its only my 2nd or 3rd ever losing month!

August started even worse than July... I switched to multi tabling the $12 45 seat sngs on Stars with little success... I'd previously done well in them but was obviously suffering a bit of a downswing! I was actually in quite a deep hole heading towards the end of the month but then managed to get heads up in another Nlo8 mtt where we dealt for $544 profit and then 2 days later got another 2nd place finish in a Full Tilt $8.80 mtt which meant i eventually finished the month +$176.41 - Not great but much better then the loss i was heading for before the 2 mtt scores!

And so we come to September - the start of autumn... Darker earlier in the evenings and the start of Ice Hockey season again :) 7 days into September now and Ive not been well for much of it so not put in much volume (not that i normally do when I'm well mind! lol). Think I'm slightly down for the month so far but nothing to drastic and no real scores to report just yet. Hopefully they'll come. I'm getting the impression from reviewing my last few months i should really revert back to concentrating on mtt's. I'd like to have a crack at the wcoops but cant really afford to so planning on hopefully selling part of myself or swapping % with someone - If anyone fancies a deal get in touch.

I went down to watch the final table of the GUKPT Cardiff tourney yesterday which was cool. Awesome final table line up:

1st Karl Mahrenholz £38,700
2nd Iwan Jones £24,200
3rd Craig Swotton £17,400
4th Andreas Hoivold £10,800
5th Jon Kalmar £7,800
6th Tristan McDonald £6,000
7th Andreas Papantoniou £4,800
8th James Martin £3,600
9th Daniel Nutt £2,500

Congrats to Karl - an excellent display of patience. After going to the Final table Jon calming made a pretty brutal play against him with ATos v Karls K's early on. 1st card to hit the flop was of course the A which cost Karl 2/3rds of his stack! As well as Iwan Jones and Papa - the local lads. And James Martin who seemed like a nice guy and not from too far afield.

Also, to finish, I'd like to extend a big congrats to Henry Griffiths who successfully completed the Blackbelt Poker training scheme and is now a Blackbelt Poker sponsored pro under the watchful eye of Mr Channing.

Marvellous :)