international jetsetter!

may has been a whirlwind. i've been travelling so much for work i haven't had time to catch my breath. i've been to sweden, ireland, france, germany, russia and on sunday i head off to seattle for a week. given the rediculous amount of flying and sleeping in hotel rooms my poker has suffered, in that i haven't played any! am really hoping to rectify that in the next few days to get one sess in before i fly out to the usa, but its touch and go.

on another topic, it looks like 88% concentration aka ed hollis' blog is the community's favourite, narrowly pipping the women adverse amatay. i've put up a new poll as we begin to build up to the wsop so please take a look and vote.

other then that i've just been enjoying the heat streak that seems to be over london at the moment. i don't know how long it will last but its so nice to get out of bed at 6am ready for the trudge to the gym and be greated by the nice warm rays of the sun. cheers me up a little.

anyhoo chaps, great to finally post and hope all is well out there in pokersville

how many employees does it take to hang a picture?

this isn't poker related but i think its a great way to highlight how rediculous big businesses really can be.

i currently work for a huge american company employing over 100,000 people globally, half of which in my opinion are wasted resource and here is some evidence to back that up...

on friday a guy came round to hang two pictures near our photocopier, which he did. later on friday 2 further guys came round to inspect the pictures and decided to rehang them 2 inches lower then they already were. today (monday) 2 women came round to check all the pictures that were hanged on all the floors, it didn't look like they were happy! later one of the women and 2 guys came back round and she showed them where they should be hung. then later still another guy came round to move one of the pictures from being next to the other to under the other.

so far, 2 days 5 visits and 7 different people have been required to hang 2 pictures.

wasted resource, of course not! and this may not be over yet!

a few days off

i've been feeling a little strange about poker the last few days. i feel like our relationship his hit a funny patch for no real apparent reason.

as i'm sure most poker players will agree, we have a love/hate relationship with the game. sometimes we love it (usually involves winning) and sometimes we hate it (mostly involves losing). for some reason i've slipped into the hate category with no significant losses to shout about.

i think these ups and downs are natural, amatay seems to go through 6 or 7 of these daily so i guess i'm allowed one! i'm probably going to take the rest of the week off playing and hopefully get my gggeeerrr-roove back and go from there. i've also got another idea in my head which i'm working on. for those of you who don't know me, i tend to come up with a fair few ideas/hair brained schemes to make some extra dolla and am currently trying to do that as well, hehe. none of them ever work but its normally fun finding out and i always learn a new skill.

cheers fishsters, oh and some nice voting action going down around my poll, keep it up!

your opinion matters

yes it does, and i want to take advantage of what you peeps out on the interwebs think. to do this i'm going to run a monthly poll, eyes right, which will ask a simple question for you guys and gals to vote on.

i've started with a simple blog poll but ultimately i'd like to hear your suggestions on what you feel are valid questions. the next poll will begin at the start of may and i'll share the results each month.

in the meantime please take 30 seconds to answer the current question and we will see where we end up.

slightly dying

no poker news to blog about but i have managed to get some evil sinitus infection from my never ending cold.

i caught a cold about a month ago which i got over about two weeks ago then instantly caught another one! aarrgghh, so annoying, the second one was a little worse but i thought i was getting over it. how wrong i was, i woke up on thursday night/friday morning and literally couldn't breathe. i've never had acute sinitus before but this was fricking awful. I mean, one side of my nose had swollen shut and the other was clogged with snot....nice! i kept thinking i was going to suffocate and it totally freaked me out.

since it was like 2am friday morning and there is nothing i can do i watched some tv, went on the net and then tried to sleep but had no luck so got up and wandered the flat until about 6am when i started to get ready to head to the docs. got to the docs at 7:45, had some antibiotics by 9, went to work, came home from work as i was fecked and have been slowly tried to get better.

i'm still a little fooked, can't breathe properly and had to leave the charlton match at half time because i thought i was gonna pass out but there is a little progress here and there which will hopefully see me right in the next couple of days. I managed to sleep for 5 hours last night for the first time since thursday which has made me feel a bit better but i really need to get some decent shut eye if i am to recover. so frustrating.

i might get some pokes in later if i feel any better but otherwise its another day away from the tables which is putting me behind my monthly goals. coupled with the time i have missed at work recently i've got tons to catch up on there which further fooks me up. mother feck sticks!! oh well, health first, pokes later.

pop quiz

fellow fishies, its pop quiz time. think you know your poker numbers? then post your answers in the comment field;


1. how many possible hands can you be dealt preflop?

2. how many possible hand combinations are there after the flop has been dealt?

3. how many hands beat your pocket jacks pre-flop?

over to you, if you dare!

poker and life

well i managed to escape any major embarrassment on april fools day, although i did believe that they had discovered flying penguins in the falklands for a little while. luckily i didn't mention it to anyone and my gullibility went undetected!

been doing quite a lot recently outside of poker which is good, been catching up with a lot of friends for a few bevs, been screaming at charlton a fair amount (not so much fun) as they throw away their chance at the play-offs, got a bbq on sunday with some buds although i hear its going to rain/snow, have booked a trip to go zorbing with my fiancee which is likely to be a laugh or make me sick and am heading away for a few days soon to stay in a castle up norf and just disconnect a little. so all in all been a good few weeks with even more planned in.

also back at the gym after a three week lay-off because i had the lurg. feels good and healthy again although i'm aching all over as well...but thats a sign of progress!

pokerwise i've just finished a little session and made just over a buy-in. quite happy with myself running at about 15bb / 100 which is above where i wanted to be. have also taken steps to consolidate my rolls so should be taking another better prepared shot at nl50 in the next few weeks.

also just watched a heads up match between green plastic and annette_15 which was pretty cool. green plastic was steam rolling over annette before he kinda out thought himself and made a few mistakes for annette to pull it back. i think green plastic was up by a little overall but could have been much much more if he slowed down a little towards the end.

thats about all at the moment. hope all else is well in blog land and thanks for reading

my first rakeback

so woke up this morning, saw i had a few emails in my inbox, rubbed my weary eyes and noticed they were both entitled full tilt poker fund transfer. panicked, screamed a little that someone was trying to hack my account, ran in circles for a few minutes, before discovering it was a transfer of funds into my account!

(this is leapfrogs 'my first computer' and my killa setup, bo!)

happy that money was going in rather then out i read a little more and saw it was my first rakeback payment of $4.19. i double checked to see if the decimal place should actually be one space to the left, and then when unfortunately sure it wasn't i still felt rather pleased with myself.

the question now really is what should i do with the money, i can't let my first rakeback payment just slide into my account unnoticed. i feel i should take a risk, stick it on a 180 sng or try and satellite into a bigger satellite, into a bigger mtt into the main event maybe?

suggestions welcome as i only ever play cash games so if people know of some small tornies etc that i can buy into on ftp then please let me know.

the end of high stakes poker?

so after losing and watching some card runners videos i decided to try and rail some pros on ftp. i didn't expect any big names on there as the timing wasn't right but as per usual mike matusow was there...he's always online!

he ended up switching to play some stud from the omaha game he was playing and must have run into a friend of his as they started chatting, and then the subject of high stakes poker on gsn came up. the thread was all very cryptic and i've included below in its originality, spelling mistakes and all. my only editing is removing all of the dealer and ftp updates that come up in the chat box as well.

what do you guys think, could high stakes poker really be over?

Dealer: Mike Matusow mucks
Dealer: Mike Matusow wins the pot ($600)
Dealer: Hand #5528221137
Dealer: Mr_BigQueso antes $100
Dealer: Moish5 antes $100
Dealer: Mike Matusow antes $100
---
Moish5: mikey baby
Mike Matusow: sup baby
Mike Matusow: weeeee
Mike Matusow: how u been bud
Moish5: good
Mike Matusow: cool
Mike Matusow: u home
Moish5: mikey you should get ome on high stakes
Mike Matusow: i will
Mike Matusow: loooks like no more hsp
Moish5: what hsp
Mike Matusow: its gonnabe pad high stakes cash games
Mike Matusow: on nbc
Moish5: not no limit
Mike Matusow: yes
Mike Matusow: and hu challenges
Moish5: high stakes limit games
Mike Matusow: but be nl caash
Mike Matusow: nl
Moish5: i want to play with you helmuth
Moish5: victor
Mike Matusow: ok let me callmori
Mike Matusow: illtellhim u alot of fun and see if we can ge tu
in
Moish5: ok
Mike Matusow: i think it be great
Moish5: sammy eli
Mike Matusow: lol
Moish5: i need the fame you need the money
Mike Matusow: dont want to loose or be tough to win need
some nits
Mike Matusow: lol

does it get any better then this?

has been an eventful start to the month so far. i'm hoping march will be a turning point or at least a stepping stone month for me with only positives coming from it. so far three good things have happened

1) it is roughly 6 months before the lovely christina milians birthday, so even though i'm clutching at straws here is another looooovely pic of her


2) i've taken the plunge and joined cardrunners, have started to watch the videos and read the forum. seems to be a wealth of info out there, plus its quite enjoyable just to watch some of their pros crush the higher stakes even if its way out of my reach for now

3) just had another profitable session which gives me a little buffer in my roll and i'm thinking of taking a shot at the next level. i'll probably play a few more hands at 25nlh just to clear the next bonus level on ftp but then i'm thinking i'll take a shot. if i lose then i'll drop back down and start again but am feeling good about my game at the mo and if confidence is high its worth a gambol. watch this space

hhhmmm, cardrunners

so i've decided to take the plunge and get a cardrunners sub. i've only ever heard good things about it but have always been tentative about what i could actually get out of watching the videos, i mean surely reading those light hearted and easy going slansky books is as good as it gets, right?

the tipping point came on thursday when i had some spare time and watched a taylor caby heads up sample video. now i don't even play heads up but just watching and listening to his thought process totally blew me away. i mean you always hear about playing the player and not the cards, and you always see the pros on shows like high stakes poker playing, what looks like, some random two cards, but watching this video actually demonstrated how little cards mattered and what the pros must be thinking when they play.


yes, he wins some big pots with his big hands, but watching him call a 3 bet with 10/8o then floating the guy before taking the pot away from him on the turn with total air was amazing!

so hopefully i'm going to sign up today and get going with the coaching videos as well and becoming as active as possible on the forum. then it won't be long before i'm crushing ivey on the $500/$1000 nlh heads up table of death on ftp!

can you spell?

...well if you can then alpha-bet may be for you, especially if you like to play with words.

grub smith, regular poker columnist for poker player magazine, and of fhm fame has only gone and given up his day job to take the world by storm with a new kind of gamble!

thats right, it seems that grub has taken one of the bizarre ideas he presented in his column and has made it a reality! imagine crossing poker with scrabble and basically you have alpha-bet.

does it have a future, who knows, will it take the world by storm, maybe not but if you are just plain curious check it out - alpha-bet

thanks fish-er-roo's

have been moving some money about between poker accounts and thought that even though i play at the micro stakes there is no reason why i shouldn't enjoy my winnings. i know i won't be splurging any time soon on a house, a fast car, a trip to vegas or even a picture of dogs playing poker, but there is one thing that my winnings will let me enjoy...


...thats right fish-er-roo's, tonight i have $6 of poker winnings burning a hole in my pocket and i'm gonna enjoy one on the donkeys. so here's to mr 7/8o all in on a 9/q/a board, or miss i can't lay my 2nd pair down regardless of the bet to me. you may suck out on me more often then i like, but tonight, one beer at least is on you!

stress

stress is something that everyone experiences throughout their lives. whether the stress comes from work, home or other its never a pleasant experience.


i'm currently hugely stressed at work due to problems caused by colleagues which i'm having to sort out. its the usual backroom staff screwing things up with absolutely no regard to what happens in the front office. the problem with workplace stress is that its constantly changing, one day it can be due to x the next day y. the following week it can be z, q and s, who knows! its therefore very hard to work out a way to deal with that stress because no two situations are the same.

professional poker players as a rule are subject to high levels of stress as well. this can stem from, amongst other things, wagering huge amounts of money on a single hand, being down to their last buy in or having their tournament lives on the line. however the advantage a poker player has is that there is really only a limited scenarios that can cause you stress. yea, sure you can argue that no two hands or tournaments are the same, but essentially the stress causing principles are the same. a bad beat is a bad beat, getting knocked out a tornie is the same regardless, so once a poker player has experienced these situations 10, 20, 100 times their stress reaction to them is diluted or reduced. Over time a great poker player experiences almost zero stress to any situation because they have been their before, and any sign of stress or an adverse reaction could be construde as a tell, obvioulsy not recommended.

you may wonder where i'm going with this, well my point is, that although a professional poker player may experience a higher level of stress then a regular 9 to 5'er in the earlier part of their career, i would say that the longer they play the less stress they experience, whereas poor old 9 to 5'er still has the same ever evolving stress quotient!

so my conclusion is that basically the more stressed i get on the 9 to 5'er side of the fence, the greener it looks on the other side. the only way to tell is experience both, which is out of reach for most but as it stands now, i'd rather be taking a bad beat on the cyber felt which i know how to handle then dealer with the muppets in the backroom!

seymour cards has diversified

not due to any demand, and probably not due to any sane reasoning but because i had some time on saturday i decided to set myself up on facebook!

thats right, seymour cards has gone facebook stylee. i now have a rather fetching profile and a bit of bla about me and my hobbies, don't know why i bothered but i wanted you all to know i have!

so far i have one friend, i don't know who they are, they asked me and because i didn't have any friends i decided to say yes...god thats sad and pathetic.

so if you wanna be my second friend then click here to see my profile. you can even take my wall virginity if you want, i'm easy!

flying high

well had some grand ambitions to play poker on sunday but failed due to the horrific state i was in post knees up on saturday night.

the wedding party was a good crack, 100 royal airforce guys getting sloshed in the officers mess went surprisingly problem free. i did plan to run off during the night and find myslef a plane to sit in but was sternly warned by my buddy that i'd be arrested by the military police and held on base which isn't quite as nice as being arrested by the regular police, so decided to give it a miss.

i ended up drinking black sheep all night and the following morning i was a mess. could barely talk or see. and was in such bad way i dragged myself to a little chef of all places to have a fry up. unfortunately even the magic fry up failed to help and i fell a sleep in the back of my car as i had to check out the hotel at 12.

feeling slightly refreshed a little later in the afternoon i headed home and watched the last few episodes of las vegas season 4 on dvd before ordering a curry and heading to bed.
10 hours kip later and i feel like a new man. hit the gym this morning and am just having myself a healthy soya latte before i have a few meetings!

i do need to get in one more decent session before the end of the month though so will aim to do that on wednesday before posting januarys results.

poker gods are smiling

now although they may have had nothing to do with it, unless they are really good friends with the tennis gods! they have to be looking down from way up there with a big grin on their faces because the world has been blessed with one of the hottest womens tennis finals in probably the history of tennis...unless you are a big fan of the epic navratilova vs graf era!

so for your viewing pleasure i present our finalists. firstly we have the gorgeous maria sharapova who loves to scream or squeak...or squeak scream when she plays the ball. shes russian but has lived in florida most of her life, hence the beautiful sun kissed tan. i don't believe you can buy her as a your russian bride on the internet but i haven't searched that hard.

next up is the lovely ana ivanovic from serbia. she is apparently a tennis miracle as she used to practice in a dried out swimming pool until some rich guy gave her a load of money to practice on a proper court. i do have to wonder what his motives were though when she looks this lovely!

so there you have it, one hot final. i'm pretty sure they will both try to sex it up as well so you, me and the poker gods should have something fairly nice to watch regardless of who wins, woo hoo!!

kaizen poker

i've been considering poker over the last few weeks and ways/opportunities to improve my game and thus make more money. this has led me to start comparing poker (as a business) to the tactics or philosophy's employed by some of the worlds most successful companies.

one of these companies, toyota, employs a japanese philosophy called 'kaizen'. kaizen is the search for continuous improvement. everyday, every employee from the ceo down is looking for ways to improve themselves and the processes they go through to become better and more efficient at their jobs.

now i think the kaizen idea could be applied to poker and help me to make small improvements everyday that will propel my game on a continuous upward trajectory.

let me show you how i think this applies. kaizen is based around 3 principles which i will outline below and then in red i'll demonstrate how i think that can be mapped to poker improvement;

1) consider the process and the results (not results-only) so that actions to achieve effects are surfaced

- review and analyse your play to establish why you won or lost so as to eliminate the negative aspects and increase the positive

2) systemic thinking of the whole process and not just that immediately in view (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view) in order to avoid creating problems elsewhere in the process

- don't look at your or opponents actions individually but build a picture or story around their play so you can spot patterns and anomalies and adapt to exploit these. this can be further defined by using r.e.m strategy and commitment planning

3) a learning, non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful) approach and intent will allow the re-examination of the assumptions that resulted in the current process

- don't focus on the negatives such as bad beats or suck outs but instead look for the ways these problems can be avoided in future whether through changes in your own play or identifying signs in your opponents. and remember bad beats only happen when you are ahead thus you are making the correct decisions and will be profitable in the long run

so there it is, kaizen poker. to me this approach makes total sense. to improve requires learning and study on a continuous basis not periodically. only then can you adapt and improve to stay ahead of the game and maintain your position as a winning player.

to help me make this transition into my kaizen poker philosophy there are certain foundations that i need to put into place which i'm looking to do over the next week or so, and hopefully when i'm done i can start my journey to continuous improvement.

back from the land down under

so after 22 hours on aeroplanes and a 12 hours stop over in seoul i am back in london! woo hoo...well not really as i'd way prefer to still be in sydney.

feeling pretty f*cked at the moment, have had about 3 hours sleep in the last 48. i've watched transformers about 18 times on the plane as well so can pretty much quote the entire movie and feel a slight aversion to my6 nokia phone at the moment!

on the plus side i'm feeling refreshed and ready to hit the tables again. hopefully i can get some time in tomorrow as there are some bonuses i want to clear and some software that i'm after. i might post a few pics of the trip if i can be bovved, usually my holiday snaps sit on my digital camera until i next go on holiday and am forced to save them or delete them!

anyhoo, will let you fishes crack on with work or play and i'm gonna check some email and see if i have any new facebook friends...doubtful!

my stag night

since i devoted myself to my lovely fiancee and spunked sooo much money on her near flawless ring i've been wondering about whats gonna happen on my stag night. is it just gonna be beers with some mates, will there be a strip club (not overly bothered if i'm honest, infact preference is no). trouble is most of my mates who are now married have already done all this, some have even travelled to poland just to fire some guns (not at people in a sick hostel way but at targets in a well supervised environment!).

so basically what does that leave me then? well more of the same i guess until i found full house travel which looks like it could be the answer!

i need to get my best man on the case pronto and see if this could become a reality as not only will i have a wicked awesome time but i could also come home with some cash!