A week in the Lake District

Last week I went on a weeks holiday to the Lake District with Mrs R, the Boy R, and the in-laws.
We stayed in an apartment that we have stayed in during previous visits, which is ok although i think we may try somewhere different next time as it is hasn't had any refurbishments in the last five years and was beginning to look slightly tired.

On the Wednesday of our visit the weather was horrendous and the area was given local flood warnings. I had rained over the previous two days and then torrential over the the night and into the morning. We set out to climb a mountain although this was soon abandoned due to the rain and flooding which was greater than anything i had seen before!! I managed to get a few photos which show how bad it was.

This was taken from the car window, whilst driving down the road, the water level in the fields was higher than the actual road level and was increasing, forcing us to give up on our journey and head back.

Mrs R in the car with Anti-social (the father in-law). the water level here is normally about 6 feet lower and whilst we were on the bridge a full tree was swept under. Easy too see why bridges like this were taken out in the floods a couple of years ago.

A normally dry field turned into a lake

A public footpath no more!

We gave up in the end and went on the ale all afternoon

The Boy R was the only one who enjoyed the flooding.

Me, about to toss Anti-Social off the side of a cliff!!

Whilst we were there we climbed a mountain/hill called Castle Cragg and i filmed two short videos of our journey.

Liverpool FC, League Cup Winners 2012

After a nerve racking penalty shoot-out!!!

ARNIE, awesome motivational speech.

Awesome motivational video, words of wisdom that can be applied whatever your goals.

Pokerstars WBCOOP 2012

It’s the time of the year when Pokerstars runs its WBCOOP (world blogger championship of online poker). Which means loads of freerolls and prizes up for grabs for all the people around the globe that jot their poker exploits down in a blog.

What I would do with the cash if I won the $5000 best blogger prize.

I am a 35 years old and married with a 3 year old boy, a far cry from the single 20 something year old wannabe poker star that I once was back in the days when I first discovered poker.

I have had this blog running since 2005 and in that time I have had a few near misses, a few dabbles in mid stake games, 100’s of good ideas and new challenges, but not much profit to show for it!!!

In all that time Mrs R (the wife), has stuck by me, supported me, sat in silence whilst I ranted about being the unluckiest person in the world, and constantly given me positive comments.

To be honest I sometimes wonder why and currently I am on my last crack of the whip when it comes to poker. I have started multi-tabling 18-man $1.50 SNGs with the aim of using all of my knowledge of poker and its pitfalls to hopefully succeed this one last time. In theory I pretty much know every aspect of mindset/bankroll management/managing yourself etc etc, but this time I really do need to put it into practice.

If I was lucky enough to win the best blogger prize I would not use a single penny/cent of it on the tables, it would be dedicated to treating Mrs R (and the boy R) to a nice holiday and days out, in appreciation to all the support she has shown me over the years.

It’s a win win  situation for me to be honest, If I happen to win, $5k gets used on a nice holiday, if not I may still get some kind of “favours!!” from Mrs R when she reads this blog post and realises its dedicated to her!!

ONE TIME!!!!!!!!!

Poker update

I haven’t played too much since my last post due to being at work over the weekend and I was out on Saturday at a party. When I have played it has gone ok and I have been playing sets of 20 sngs at once which I seem to have settled into, although at times it can get a bit hectic. However I think with SNGs, volume (if you can maintain a winrate) is definitely the way forward as I haven’t felt tilted since I upped the amount of tables played and my accruement of VPPs is noticeably quicker.

The main area I currently need to improve on is managing my time properly, I still reckon I could double my volume if I just stuck to a proper schedule and stopped getting distracted by other things. Playing 20 games at once is fairly draining on your concentration levels and sometimes my breaks at the end of each set are starting to get a little too long!

a good SNG day

I had a pleasing day today at the tables. I didn't really play a great deal, about 3hrs worth so not very much volume wise. All the tornys were the 18-man (2 table) turbo SNG format
However i made 18 buy-ins profit which was good. Some of the points i made in my last post seem to be working so i am just going keep with it.

My thoughts on SNG's

I have been messing around with SNG's (sit and go tornys) this month, mostly the two table 18 manners and have come to the following conclusions.

The bad beats are shocking, the amount of times you get your stack in, which you inevitably have to do once the blinds get large, and end up losing and knocked out when you have like 70% chance to win is unbelievable. I have sat there almost flabbergasted at times.
Compared to cash games, you are seeing 10 times more hands go all in against each other and i presume your mind seems to notice it more when you are knocked out of tornys more times than the odds say you should.

A typical all-in, your KK vs AQ, your KK has a 70% chance of winning or 7 times out of 10. So obviously three times out of 10 the AQ is going to beat you. So suppose you are running slightly unlucky and the AQ beats you 4 times out of 10 as opposed to the 3 times it statistically should.  This in your mind almost feels like half the time.  And say the 4 times out of 10 your opponent has more chips than you when he pushes, you are knocked out 4 times. On some of your 7 wins, you had more chips than your opponent and were never in a position to get knocked out, so when you win it doesn't register in your mind as much as getting knocked out the torny. It wouldn't take much of this for your mind to perceive that your getting really F*cked over more times than you should.


Change the odds slightly again to hands like your AK (which seems a monster) All-In against say 9T, your Ak will win 60% of the time, i.e 6 times out of 10. Repeat the above and again in your mindset it seems like you are getting A** raped.


Now we all know in poker that when you start feeling like the rabbit in the headlights, your game has every chance of going to pot, along with your decision making when it comes to bankroll management, game selection and even life decisions!!


Reading pro blogs like James Atkin, who says he has had 80 buy-in downswings and even a 130 buy-in downswing, just goes to show the variance in the games even when you are playing optimally.


With so many aspects involved in playing these sngs i think you should concentrate on sorting the things you can control rather than worrying about the things you cant, and definitely do everything to stop your mindset quickly deteriorating.


I have come up with the following that i am going to try and stick to.


just play 18-man SNG's  (so i know them inside out)
play with a 200 buy-in roll   (to take the swings)  ($350 for $1.5 games)
start at the bottom of the ladder and play the $1.50 games  (to avoid tilt)
play 16 tables, (so not to get too caught up in the stress of bad beats/increase VPPs)
turn of the table chat  (so not to get distracted)
activate "hide from search feature"  (to make it hard for other players to see how many tables your playing)
hide your VPP status (another clue to other players as to how you might be approaching the game)
Try not to even look at your results each day (avoid tilt)

I am going to make every effort to put in a load of volume to see how i get on during this year, if it doesnt get me anywhere then i think i might well fook poker off for a while, especially me taking it as seriously anyway. I think i would rather spend a quarter of my time at the computer playing Football Manger, something i used to enjoy back in the old days. 

I was playing the other night and bumped into BurnleyMik at the tables who i have known online for prob the last few years. he has started playing SNGs again and by reading his recent posts seems to be encountering exactly the same as me.  Also during the same session a player "Mrmoomoo" who i had never played against before said hello in the chat and said he read my blog and as it turned out he lives where i used to live which i thought was pretty cool (and by doing so is eligable to join our pokerstars home game club!!!!! lol, Much Hoole Old boys poker club (I.D 32599 , code Smithy Inn)

Baz's best magic video yet!!!!

I watched DYNAMO (magician impossible) on TV and saw him do a similar trick for the footballer Rio Ferdinand, i sussed how he had done it after the second viewing.
Baz created this video this afternoon, and after 10 watches i am still stumped. To make matters worse he point blank refuses to tell me how he did it, even if i did manage to guess correctly.

His only words on the subject where, There are only two ways i could of done this.
1. actually opened the door and walked outside.
2. or the way he actually did do it!!!