Fatty Fatty Bet Bet

I really want to get this weight loss/poker prop going as soon as possible after weighing myself for the first time in ages the other day. Nearly pushing 16 stone, which I was pretty suprised about but probably does explain why a few of my jeans feel tight and the oversized VC Poker shirt I got sent a few months ago all of a sudden fits very well. I've actually turned a bit of a corner at the gym, so the sooner the better (cos I dont wanna lose weigh before the initial weigh in).

So the WSOP is well under way and I'm closing in on the details on my own journey out there this year. Keeping the weight off in the city of sin will be a challenge, so maybe I'd be better off doing the weigh in right after.

Naturally the prop bets are coming thick and fast now that its gambling season. Besides the above weight loss bet, I've also got some weird ass draft pick bet with Nick Wright (ex of WPT mag, now of PokerPlayer mag) where we select 6 big game players for the WSOP each and pay out on their results. If one or two of our ponies went on a heater this year one of us could end up oweing the other several hundred thousands, but probably more likely being £50 assuming the unknown players have their way this year. I've also got $100 on Amatay (Dunno his actual name, see his blog link on the right) not winning $10,000 or more in one month in $33 SNGs in July (Kinda routing for him though).

Its all good fun, out with friends for a curry tonight so that should be a spanner in the works for the diet.

Lose Pounds and Win Dollars Prop Bet

It might not be in the realms of Erick Lindgren winning $340,000 for shooting under 100 with no caddy 4 times in on day, but I have a little prop bet in the pipeline. My friend and poker mentor Stuart Menzies (Better known as Baloo on the Hendon Mob forums) are putting together a poker and weight loss prop. I think he is looking to shift about 3 stone, I'd like to drop about 2. Stuart has been my mentor for a while now pokerwise and if it wasnt for him, I might have gone exceptionally broke during last months downswing, so I actually want him to do well in the prop - but that aside, he is still going down.

So its going to be a long haul thing, June to Xmas, and the loser and their Mrs are going to take the winner and their Mrs on a short break, somewhere like Barcelona. We are still ironing out the details, with some sort of handicapping process. Like % of body fat rather than number of pounds and a handicapped poker target too (As he is a better player than me)

So it might go like. Task 1) Person who loses the biggest % of bodyfat
Task 2) Person that has the biggest poker roi over the next 6 months. Suggestions welcome, stipluations need to be made. For example, I reckon Stu will win more in cash games than me this year but I play more tournaments, I could get lucky with a big score and leapfrog him just for winning a few coinflips.

So expect plenty of updates and hopefully not many pics of me, shirtless, holding a copy of todays newspaper. If anyone has any suggestions to make it interesting, drop me a line.

In other news, had my first proper grown up tax return sent back today. Typically done by a poker player, Paul 'M3Boy' Garnham. I made a right saving and would recommend him to all, here is his none accountancy website : http://www.m3boypoker.com/

Happy Days are here again

I wonder if poker would be such a fun game if the luck we encounter occurred exactly as the statistics say it should, so you literally win 3 times and lose once when you are a 75% in particular hand. After my god awful 6 weeks where aces, kings and sets were no good most of the time, I finally have turned the corner. It seems the two weeks off have done me the world of good and those big hands are holding and I've even been sucking out left right and centre. It sounds silly but I finally sucked out on aces today, last month I must have got QQ or KK in against KK or AA respectivley about twenty times and didnt catch a set once, which is actually pretty unlucky, so rivering a Queen tonight I felt was justified (though he didn't see it that way)

I started grinding at $1/$2 to get my confidence up a little and think I'll stick to that for a week or so, I'm already up about $2300 over the last three days after some relativley short sessions. I wanna build a bit of a buffer before I go back to $2/$4, $3/$6 and beyond. So the golden rule is to keep on playing right now, when things are going well don't change them all that much and keep doing them. My missus is away over the weekend so I'm gonna get plenty of hours in against the weekend warriors.

Amsterdam

I'm back from Amsterdam and feeling very refreshed, it was my first proper holiday with my girlfriend and it went really well (I am basing this on the fact that most of the couples I know have at least one big row on every holiday they go on and, we didnt). Amsterdam is a funny but very nice place, not sure its the best place for a couple (For whom the prostitutes and in our case the drugs are wasted) but we both agreed it would be a great place to live.

The good - the weather was great, the hotel was nice, the city is beautiful, the people are friendly, there is plenty to see.

The bad - the Dutch offer nothing to international cuisine, the customer comes second, although reasonably priced there are random instances of extortion (I actually think it would be cheaper to have a prostitute and drugs holiday than a sight seeing holiday in amsterdam) and the cyclists are nutters.

Complete stupidity on both of our parts meant that we didnt take the battery charger to our camera, which means a distinct lack of piccies. Shame as it was an all round good holiday and I feel much better for it. I now might single out the Masters Classic in November for a rare big buy-in event as a result.

Still not sure whether I'm returning to playing just yet (Its been 11 days so far) I'm getting back into the gym in a big way at the moment (Just dusted off a big tub of protein shake) and I like the idea of focusing on something else, namely not being fat, so maybe I will ease into the poker gradually (Or maybe I'll get the shakes by about 2pm tommorow and go broke with the first flush draw I pick up).

Thank God......I don't look that big of a tit

Just got an advanced copy of my heat in the PartyPoker European Open from February, which is televised I think at the start of June. I've spent he last 3 months mentaly replaying my preconception of how I think the show will look and I am pleasantly suprised that it don't come across too bad and my imagination wasnt far off (Except I win it in my head).

My interviews before and after the heat were awful but they managed to paste together the only useable 30 seconds of the whole reel to make it seem like, well, a normal person, all the other guys came across really well and animated, I'll settle with normal.

They didnt show all the hands, so they didnt show me raise the first 5 hands (Instead starting with me folding ace-jack) and they didnt show what I thought was one of the more interesting hands - me firing three barrels of bluff into Lacelle Barrow with ace high and him calling me on all three with bottom pair of a J7QJX board with three clubs. I was really pleased with the bluff, even though I lost, because I knew he didnt have a flush a jack or a queen, how he called me was either amazing skill or the other thing.

Although I didnt agree with everything they said, Roland De Wolfe said something in the commentary box which really made me chuckle, and it was spot on. He said 'Carter has a look which suggests he is going to try and outplay someone at the table' - he was right, as soon as he said it I went on to make more moves than my mate MrMoves. They went on to compare me to adrenaline junkies like Tony G and De Wolfe, who enjoy making big moves as much as winning. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I'm very glad if people think it and I'll have to be mindful of it for future events.

I grimaced in pain when I saw my chip leader vs chip leader QQ vs AK hand, which I was on the wrong side of, especially after seeing how many chips I would have had if the QQ had held. However, the pain was eased when Roland De Wolfe and Jesse May both made comments including "He has made a great show of himself" "He looks promising" and "He obviously has a bit of talent". After tournament after tournament with no result I'll be very glad to send a copy of this tape to VC Poker and say "See, Im not that crap".

It certainly makes me feel a lot better after my recent run of horrendous results.

I Quit.....

.....for a bit.

Words can not express how bad I'm running at the moment (Actually they can, the word is very) - after not being able to make aces or kings stand up last month, I now cant actually make top set stand up either - having lost with it 6 times already in the last 3 days. The single worst hand was a 200 big blind deep spot with a set of sixes against a set of sevens.

Its not particularly idiots being rewarded for stupidity either (Which I would prefer) but people who played their hands fine - big draws, overpairs etc. So even though I dont believe that one person is naturally lucky or unlucky and everything evens out in the long run (This has been 30,000 hands, which is pretty long term I guess) I think the best thing I can do right now is have a big old break. Thankfully I am a bankroll nit, always play very comfortably within my limits, so I still have a nice big bankroll to play with when I return.

Im off on holiday next week, so that has come at a perfect time for me to take my mind off it, plus the weather is great at the moment. I've just joined a new gym which is also good as it gives me something to work hard at instead. I also am lucky that I have so much writing work available on offer that I can commit to even more of it (So I'm still never going to have a day where I dont say poker).

Hopefully a break will make the poker gods pull the 'begginers luck' switch when I get back.

Norwegian Poker Championships

Its never a good thing when you are back home before level 6 has started, but that was my experience of the Norwegian Poker Championships. The good thing about busting when I did was that the buffet had just started and I discovered a coffee cake with orange which was almost worth the trip. I also beat my personal Nottingham-Sheffield tilt time, which I plan to get down to 33 minutes by the end of the year.

Twas a very fun time, while it lasted. Seeing 400 Norwegians at your local card room is a bit weird to say the least, a bit like if you have ever revisted a house you once lived in and seen what someone else has done with it. Its the same, but different.

I started right at the TV table which was webcase to about 300 Norwegians at the time. They're making a DVD of the whole event and I reckon I have a good chance of making it onto it, being as I flopped a set on the very first hand and folded aces on the flop of the second. The banter at the table was loads of fun, I made a nice little icebreaker by presenting my Norwegian phrasebook to the cameras and everyone was having bets on the colour of the next card.

Besides making a very good fold (IMO) of aces and a reasonably good bluff with eights, I played pretty shit to be fair. I started when I made a very good bluff on the flop,an excellent bluff on the turn and fucking horrific bluff on the river in a hand with Paul Gourley. I then simply didnt know how to play out of position against Andreas Hagen and let him walk all over me.

If I made one all encompassing mistake, it was to put too much emphasise on the 'crazy scandie' image. I joked earlier that this was the only tournament where you could flop top set and consider folding on the off chance they were holding 5-2, but this little gag stuck with me. I didnt value bet some of my hands enough and I didnt capitalise on some opportunities to push people around.

I got a few big hands but no action, tangled in a few pots I shouldn't and generally didnt play awful, but didnt play that well either. Short stacked I ran ace-queen into ace-king on an ace high flop and thats all she wrote. No complaints and I certainly will be back up to Nottingam over the bank holiday weekend to be part of the event. The atmosphere was awesome and the Scandies were great fun.

If it wasnt for the very nice folks at VC Poker sending me to these events I'm not sure how many I would play in. Online cash games are my bread and butter and they are my passion at the moment and I am happy to continue in that manner for a long time. Tournaments are all about socialising, getting my VC Poker shirt in as many pictures as possible and hopefully at some point very soon, landing a big payday.