Audley Harrison & Stalked By BT

It’s amazing how naked one feels when you have some recent technological innovation you didn’t even use two years ago taken away from you. I moved house two weeks ago (Very nice new place, very expensive move) and amongst a catalogue of errors from furniture suppliers I also went two weeks without internet, due to a string of errors from BT.

I had a pre paid dongle which kept me going, but I had the shakes throughout because I missed….YouTube, Twitter and TheOnion. Oh, and it was stopping me working too, but mainly TheOnion.

The funniest thing about the whole affair was that once it was fixed, I log onto twitter to find that BT have found me and tweeted me to see how it went. What a unique rubdown, they don’t seem to have a decent infrastructure for resolving customer problems but they do have budget to stalk their customers on twitter.

The dog is now fine and allowed off the lead since his op, back to his normal self minus two huge swingy sacks.

This month, as soon as I hang up my journo gloves, I got a rare poker & boxing scoop in one which forced me back into the game for one more time. Eddie Hearn contacted me to say he only wanted to tell the story of how the WSOP helped create the potential Audley Harrison vs David Haye title fight and he was giving it to me because we have had some really good chats about boxing in the last year.

I must say, Audleys poker story has really conflicted me. Because I really admire the fact that he has bagged two big live MTT results but purposely stayed under the radar about it, when 99% of celebrities would shout from the rooftops and sign a deal with PokerStars for getting a min cash on the Sky Poker Tour.

However there is the other side of me who has thoroughly enjoyed booing him for the last 10 years. He has been the dullest fighter to watch I have ever seen and I am always routing for the other guy, until now, part of me wants to cheer him on because he plays poker. I also tend to go for the underdog too. The one thing I will say is that pre interview with Eddie, I still wanted to see the fight happen, it’s a decent clash of styles and a potentially big fight from a fight/British public point of view.

Anyway, welcome back the Onion


Fat Kid Successfully Avoids Ridicule By Swimming With Shirt On

The Mutts Nutts

Although I loved my time as a full time poker journalist, one thing I was looking forward to by taking this marketing role would be that I would no longer have to interview 20 year olds who have been playing for a year and managed to turn a microstakes bankroll into millions.

So one of my first assignments is going to be to interview a 20 year old who have been playing for a few years and managed to turn a microstakes bankroll into millions.

I mentioned that poker journalism and marketing are closely intertwined and this is a good example of it. One of the best ways of marketing something is to create something people would want to read anyway, which is why I have opted to do a series of interviews with successful online players that also promote some of our brands. So coming up over the next few weeks will be a series of interviews which include people like Dusty Schmidt, Bodo Sbrznesy and hopefully man of the moment URNOTINDANGER2.

Also coming up next week you can see my first crack at viral marketing, sort of. I produced a short video of me signing up to one of PokerNews’ biggest promotions, which is one where you can get a $50 bonus on PartyPoker without having to deposit. People are naturally suspicious when you are offered free money for nothing, which is why I produced the video to show it was legit. CardRunners quality it aint, and you will see me stutter, errrr, mumble, extended pause and whoops my way through the whole thing. That’s kind of the point though, idiots guide in every aspect.

Elsewhere unfortunately I had to take Charlie in to get the snip yesterday. He is such a gentle dog I didn’t want to do it ever, but the few times he has seen a dog in season he has gone nuts. This week we met a stray dog in season and he chased her out of the park and over a mile away onto a main road, running in front of several cars along the way and narrowly missing being hit. I know because I ran the whole way and was quite impressed with how I kept up with him, though I looked a horrific red faced sweaty site as I did, screaming ‘stop that dog’ all the way.

He rarely even goes more than 40 yards away from me no matter how much fun is having on our walks, so for him to run away like that and put himself in harm’s way was a real eye opener. He seems OK post-op, very whiney but up to his usual silly antics.

This is him btw:


Finally we move house (again, sigh) this weekend to a nice new bigger place, which once again is one road away from the last place. I have lived in 4 places in the last 5 years and all of them have been in the same postcode and all of them one road away from the last. At least if the dog does another runner we have a first place to look for him while he searches for his balls.

This week I am loving the Onion btw:


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

I'm a Marketing Tosser Now

Big changes afoot, well, big for me, to an outsider looking in I would wager it doesn’t look like a single thing has changed. I have had a big career shift away from the murky world of poker journalism and into the murky world of poker….marketing.

Huge difference right?

Not really, well, kind of. Poker media is so heavily reliant on advertising from online poker sites I would say that the journalism and the marketing sides of things are very closely intertwined. If you don't believe me, you try and write something critical of an online poker room/sponsored pro for a publication with an advertising deal with the same room. Anyway that’s a discussion for another day really.

I have been wanting to get into marketing for a while now, I always thought I could do a good job of it and in fairness I have been doing it for a while and just not getting paid for it. The last two years I have helped so many people promote their brands as ‘favours for mates’ and I often get people asking me for advice on things like advertising/sponsorship/getting editorial in magazines etc. When I say ‘mates’ I don’t just mean people down the pub I actually mean sponsored players, online poker rooms, live card rooms, TV companies and publishers (Who are also mates who happen to have those jobs).

My main role will be for the entire PokerNews network and will be primarily coming up with new ways of pushing their exclusive promos. This is not difficult, in that we have bigger and better promos than anyone else (See, I’m doing it already). Ironically the first thing I do after casting off a career as a writer is a shit load of writing. I would never stop writing altogether, I love it, but from now on anything non marketing-y I write will be out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully It will mean I update this blog more often now I won’t feel as knackered from writing 4000 words a day. 

The great thing about this opportunity is I will learn so much from such a big company like PokerNews, which is great for the book I am writing with Jared Tendler (Yep, that’s still happening, nearly done, I promise). Always very nice to have more than one thing going on at a time.

As for my baby, the UK Pokernews site, not sure what the plan is. I love it very much and it certainly won’t disappear, I am still updating it at the moment but that won’t be forever, your guess is as good as mine but it will continue without me.

Some other stuff I will be getting up to will be playing freerolls. No I’m not busto, it’s just that as part of my job will be to push our freerolls I want to understand them from a player perspective. I have already qualified for a 10k and a 5k freeroll on Winner Poker and it will be interesting to see how quickly I get bored. It’s sad, but I cant envisage enjoying playing that low.

Normally by now I would get excited about the footy season started tomorrow but unfortunately Wednesday have been relegated and the World Cup was so bad in every way, not just for England, that I kind of detest football players. No doubt the Owls will have a solid win tomorrow lulling me into a false sense of hope for the season.

De-constructing the Year of the Brits

Taken from UK Pokernews

In 2009 three UK Players won World Series of Poker Bracelets and one made the final table of the main event. At the time we considered it a massive success and coined it the ‘Year of the Brit’, suggesting that this feat was an isolated incident in the history of the WSOP. 12 months on and we are calling 2010 the ‘Year of the Brit’ too, because the success of our boys in Vegas this summer has almost overwritten what we achieved in 2009 as well as proving any doubters wrong that British success was any sort of one off.

This year UK players snagged an amazing five World Series of Poker Bracelets in Vegas. Praz Bansi won his second bracelet by taking down Event Number #5: $1,500 No Limit for $515,501. Popular Blondepoker shareholder James Dempsey took down Event Number # 9: $1500 Pot Limit Hold'em a few days later for $197,470 and high stakes star Richard Ashby won #21: $1,500 Seven Card Stud for $140,467. GUKPT Grand Final Champ Mike Ellis made it four winning Event #30: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em for $581,851 and prolific tournament pro Steve Jelinek finished things off winning Event #41: $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-low Split-8 or Better for $245,871.

Richard Ashby

On top of the bracelets there were a stream of final table appearances and deep finishes. Richard Ashby and James Dempsey both followed up their bracelet wins with 2nd place finishes, Neil Channing, Michael Greco, Paul Kerr, Kevin Howe, the Devilfish, Julian Gardner and Paul Foltyn all made finals, Stuart Rutter managed two final tables and Sam Trickett boasted two final tables and four more cashes making him the biggest cash winner of the year with $693,387. Our best main event finisher was Redmond Lee who finished 21st for $317,161. In total there were five bracelets, three second places, 20 final tables, 275 cashes and $8,679,918 in winnings for UK players this year in Vegas (Including 13 scores worth over $100,000).

Not only was this the best year ever for the UK it was also the most successful bracelet haul ever seen by a non US nation, which unfortunately was matched by Canada almost as soon as it happened, but the honour still unlikely to be repeated any time soon. In fact the year of the Brit is by no means isolated to the WSOP, it’s been a great year thus far worldwide for UK players. Jake Cody took down EPT Deauville, James Mitchell won the Irish Open and Liv Boeree stunned the world winning EPT San Remo.

So what does one put this major achievement down to?

Variance

We may as well get this one out of the way. It would be unrealistic not to acknowledge the role variance may have played in bagging all those bracelets and final tables, because we sure as hell would be blaming it if it were the other way round. Yes the Brits could just have run hot but thankfully the structures are getting so deep these days that variance is arguably playing less of a part than a few years ago and we are seeing more and more ‘names’ taking down gold in the last few years.

Community

The UK circuit is booming, but it is also in a way very small. Everybody knows each other, everybody has played against each other and outside of trying to take each others chips, there is a real culture of support in the UK. Poker is fundamentally a solitary game but there are so many communities in the UK scene that are nurturing and supporting UK talent.

Whether its forums like Blondepoker and the Hendon Mob, community tours like the Sky Poker Tour and APAT, staking sites like BadBeat and BlackBelt Poker or just likeminded bands of brothers like the Hit Squad and theShrewdies – poker players in the UK come together and help each other. It’s much easier to learn the game with likeminded friends and that was evident with the support shown for UK players on the rails and the forums this year in Vegas.

Well Structured UK Tournaments

A few years ago you would have to be a high roller to enjoy a deep structured event, with everything else falling into the £5 rebuy crapshoot category. These days events with well-structured 10,000 stack events are becoming the standard for a very low price. APAT, the Coral British Masters Poker Tour, theGrosvenor UK Poker Tour, the Pokerstars UK & Ireland Poker Tour and the Dusk Till Dawn Monthly £300 Deepstack all host regular championship style structured events for between £75 and £1,000, with a huge host of other one off events doing the same. All of which means that the Brits don’t show up to Vegas any more with no clue on how to handle a deep stack.

A Relaxed Stance on Gambling

People don’t really talk about this that much but you only have to look at other nations to see how valuable it is. In the UK we have a relaxed attitude towards gambling overall, we don’t have to pay tax on winnings, poker is advertised and broadcast on terrestrial television and the stigma associated with it is getting smaller all the time. Contrast this with just about every other country who either tax the game heavily, monopolise online poker or even try and ban the game altogether and you realise how lucky we are as players. It’s very easy and appealing to be a professional poker player in the UK, which has no doubt helped flourishing poker players make their mark on the world stage.

The Best Rails in Poker

It’s quite sad that most Americans think, and report accordingly, that any Britain who has had a drink and is cheering someone is a football hooligan. The American poker press did not know what to make of the rowdy rails in Vegas, completely bemused by the drinking, singing and chanting, but everyone back home loved hearing about them. The most notable rails had to be for James Dempsey who won one bracelet and came 2nd for another. Singing songs such as ‘Hes a Doctor’, ‘Pot Limits Coming Home’ and ‘Saammy Give Us a Wave’ (To Sam Farha) they also had a few railers thrown out.

Of course the question is, does that sort of support actually help a poker player? You can see how it would in an athletic pursuit where might give a sportsman an extra 5 minutes of energy, but in a game where concentration is key surely it would be a distraction? It’s hard to say, but either way, the rails were the icing on the cake for this fantastic year.

James Dempsey

It was a real shame that this year, just like it was last year, hardly any of the mainstream British press caught onto this fantastic achievement by Brits abroad. Obviously the World Cup would get in the way of any other sporting news but after such a dismal performance by England in South Africa you would think that the media would be keen to latch onto any arena where the Brits are excelling. I’m not expecting the Sun or the BBC to all of a sudden show an interest, but maybe someone like Sky Sports who have always had their fingers in the poker pie, it would have been nice for some sort of acknowledgement on Sky Sports News or even just their website.

But the attention from the British poker media is only going to get bigger, with lots of expectation going into the World Series of Poker Europe, EPT London and WPT London in September. Expect the front covers of all the magazines to be adorned with the bracelet winners and no doubt all the big winners will be nominated for British Poker Awards later on this year. Now let’s see if we can bag a couple at the WSOPE and leapfrog Canada at the same time.

GUKPT Summer Series Final Table (Which was also the only table lol)

Generally speaking I am not a massive fan of deals or chops, usually if I am in the position to make a deal I'm pretty happy with what I have achieved already and what I would get for busting out next (Tournament poker really is a novelty for me more than anything). Last weekend I did miss out on a good deal, but what proceeded it reminded me why I don’t like doing them much.

It was the first big event at the G Casino in Sheffield, the £220 GUKPT Summer Series. I say big event, it should have been, but only 9 people turned up. Normally that would be an instant un-reg, but with a GUKPT Champion of Champions seat on offer in added value it actually made the event more enticing. A seat in one of the most prestigious UK tournaments of the year for no extra cost and all you need to do is win a sit and go.

So prior to the event starting 7 out of the 9 of us had agreed that we should take the prize money back, pay the £20 reg fees and play what would have been the best value £20 satellite to the Champions event. When you consider we got a free meal on top of the juice and this would have been an amazing coup.

Unfortunately two young lads didn’t want to deal, they came here to play and they seemed decent players, so as gutted as I was for missing out I had to respect their decision. It seemed that about 3 guys at the table had no respect for that decision and spent half the game berating them for refusing the deal.

I don’t know if its just a Sheffield thing, but this is why I hate local poker. There really seems to be a ridic culture of trying to sort a deal prematurely at Sheffield casinos. I have literally played in a tournament where two people busted and someone tried to arrange a saver, just about every local results listing I see involves a silly amount of savers and I remember once thinking I was going to get chased out of a venue for refusing a saver on the bubble.

I bust out pretty quickly, but for some reason rather than being disappointed I kind of felt good that I had sniffed out a good value game. Oh well, technically I made a GUKPT final table even if it was also the first and only table. 

Hopefully the upcoming Summer Series will be a low turn out (I am horrified to think such a thing because I love the GUKPT and I really should support poker in Sheffield, but I am also a bumhunter and like easy money).

Over at UK Pokernews we have had a makeover and its looking pretty snazzy if I don’t mind saying so. Lots of fancy cool boxes, video stuff and twittery stuff. I am also about to suggest a little prop bet with my CEO that I can get 1000 facebook fan members to our Facebook Page by the end of August, so join it if you haven't already. 

Blatch Scam and British Masters Final

What a crazy couple of weeks it has been poker wise, an upper followed by a real downer. 

British Masters Final Table

I really should chirp more about these things after having such a baron period in live poker last year, but I made my second live final table in a row last weekend. After the UKIPT side event I went to Leeds for the British Masters Poker Tour main event. It was a tale of two weekends, everything that happened to me on the table turned to gold and everything I did away from it turned to shit.

I have never driven to Leeds before but I know how bad it is in the City centre to drive around. This was proven to me when I arrived 1 hour early and Sat Nav telling me I was 3 minutes away. 1 hour later I had had enough of getting sent the wrong way for the final 3 minutes and decided to park my car and get a taxi the rest of the way (Turns out I pretty much drove past the place 6 times anyway). I also had to pay a taxi driver to let me follow him to my hotel at the end of the night, I was that tilted with the combination of the Leeds one way system and a suspect Sat Nav.

I didn’t sleep a wink at the hotel, I’m a bad sleeper at the best of times and the combination of 10 hours play and two hours watching England draw with the Yanks was enough to ensure I wouldn’t relax at all in the hotel. I was rough as a dog the next day and pretty ill (Reckon I ate something dodgy) but then I discovered the joys of Lucozade Alert Plus, a little concentrated burst of caffeine in a bottle. Wow, I have drunk redbull before and once took Pro Plus when I was doing exams, but this was the most effective energy drink I have ever had. Not only was I not tired anymore, I reckon I could have run home from Leeds. 7 hours it lasted, which was long enough for me to play and drive home. I probably wont have one again, I cant imagine they are good for you.

I also had toothache, my phone broke, I forgot to pack half the things I needed and a bunch of other FML moments throughout the weekend.

Onto the actual game and day 1 was a dream for me, I ran like god. I would love to say I played well but I think a trained monkey could have got to day 2 with the cards I had. I actually went card dead a bit towards the end of day 1 which meant I went back with an average stack, and then day 2 wasn’t much better, but I cant complain because I ran so well for the first day it would seem ungrateful. The final table didn’t go particularly well, it wasn’t a fishy final but for the most part it was very straightforward, you could raise and take it most of the time, unfortunately all the times someone seemed to have a reraising hand would be when I was at it.

7th for £1,380 was fine, but I really wanted to win it and for that matter, I just didn’t want to stop playing. The banter at the final and over the 2 days was great, we had all played each other quite a lot by the time the final rolled round and there were a lot of good natured in-jokes abound. The eventual winner, Ross Johnson, was a top bloke and we had played each other from the start of day 1 and got in some funny hands together. I think he probably deserved to win it too, he had a good solid aggressive game which I think was right for that level of competition.

I certainly will play a few more legs of the British Masters Poker Tour because the structure was very good and the atmosphere was just fun. I love the other tours and events we have but sometimes you find yourself stuck at tables full of dousches taking themselves too seriously, it was nice to be playing a tournament that was a lot more relaxed while still having something meaningful to win.

Blatch

Christ, what do you say about this? If you haven't seen it already, check out the car crash that is the Neil Blatchly staking thread on Blondepoker. To summarise it briefly, a very well respected and well liked member of the Blonde forum that many of us know on the circuit has been conning a bunch of us for about a year, taking a total of between £120,000 off us in a sports trading staking scams.

It really reads like a stereotypical soap opera conman storyline, on reflection we all look really naïve for ever trusting him but believe me, he was very convincing on and off the forum. The guy we thought was a 'balla' is actually someone who was broke, close to bankrupt, claiming jobseekers allowance and stealing from us to fund his lifestyle. I wont even bother going any further on the facts than that because it is such a complicated, scary, sociopathic string of twists and lies I would never do it justice, deffo worth reading the thread if you ever have the time to cycle through over 140 pages.

I don’t expect to see my money back, more than anything I do not want to deal with him any more. I was very uneasy about writing the story up on Pokernews because it was quite close to home and also, if he is in fact someone with mental issues, I would hate for the publicity to send him over the top and he harm himself. However the eyes of all the online gambling world in the UK are on this and I couldn’t ignore it as a story, I actually think it would have been irresponsible not to  post the story as a warning to others and finally he does need to be exposed for this, unlike a lot of very angry people on the forums I don’t want to see him get his head kicked in, but he does need to be made an example of either in court and/or at least a shunning from the gambling community.

One thing that has probably come of this is I will probably never stake anyone again. I never really won a great deal staking but it’s a fun sweat while it lasts and you never know one day it might culminate in a big win. But after this I am not sure how I can ever trust a poker player fully again after this. Blatch was such a shock, he would have been in my list of least likely grimmers, so it has really damaged my view on this for a long time.

Edit: Daleroxxu sums up the story quite well in his excellent Blog here. 

Oh well, sod him. On to other things, the GUKPT is coming to Sheffield, twice, next month and I am pretty excited about that, although unlikely to put up a staking thread for it now :). 

Year of the Brits Part 2

Taken from my UK Pokernews Column

Reporting on, playing on and being friends with people on the UK circuit, I must say I am quite indifferent to people winning large sums of money. I’ve got friends who have won pretty big amounts in UK events and for the most part my biggest reaction is “Good, I can bag an easy interview then”. Occasionally I will be particularly pleased for an achievement by a player on the UK circuit and now and then I will be a bit jealous, but 99 times out of 100 its just business as usual for me.

Apart from when it’s the World Series of Poker.

It is probably the fact that I am about to explode with excitement that the World Cup starts this weekend that I am reminded of this fact, but I turn into a massive fan boy during the WSOP and am genuinely delighted for every bracelet, final table and even min cash UK players manage in Vegas. I’m not alone; there is something about the WSOP that makes every player in the UK genuinely excited by the success of other UK player, in a game where for the most part we are only ever really bothered by our own fortunes.

Poker is a very solitary game and no matter how happy you are for the players you like, you’d rather it was you. That changes when it’s the WSOP, it reminds me of supporting your local football team or your National team abroad – there is a really strong “It’s us against the World” feeling amongst UK players right now, or indeed “It’s us against the Yanks”, a victory for one is a victory for all of us. UK poker has been on a high since last year’s WSOP and British players have been taking down WSOPE, EPT, Irish Opens, Sunday Millions and more since.We could not have had two better players start the frenzy off than Praz Bansi and James Dempsey. Both very talented players and very popular figures in the UK. Praz for his previous success and HitSquad connections has been a real flag bearer for UK Poker. Dempsey has an iconic status on the popular Blondepoker forum and on the UK circuit. Every UK forum is going nuts, player’s facebook walls are getting hammered and every card room back home is talking about it. The rail at Dempsey’s final table resembled the banter we will see in every pub up and down the UK this Saturday for the England vs USA match and the excitement is reaching fever pitch in Vegas.

Will it continue? I am inclined to say yes. I think realistically matching 3 bracelets will be a fantastic result but there is no reason why we can’t beat it. The United Kingdom is a fantastic place to play and more importantly develop as a poker player, we have a lot going for us which is probably why we are doing so well out in Vegas.

We have some of the best poker communities around, whether it’s Blonde, theHendon Mob, AWorldofPoker, Sky Poker, BlackBelt Poker or APAT – all of which have a strong spirit of supporting and helping their players develop.

The UK is also somewhere where players can enjoy well structured, deep stack poker without breaking the bank. Dusk Till Dawn, APAT, the British Masters Poker Tour, the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour, the Pokerstars UK & Ireland Poker Tour, PKR Live, Black Belt Poker Live, the Sky Poker Tour Final and not to mention the plethora of affordable deep stack events over in Ireland. Just about every weekend players can locate a deep stack event in the UK for £1000 or less, which is probably why we are doing well in well structured events in Vegas right now.

There are loads of other things to mention of note, the fact the age limit is 18 not 21, the fact we don’t have to pay tax on winnings, the fact we have poker on TV every week (The Matchroom Shootout tournaments no doubt helped Neil Channing and Stuart Rutter go deep in the $5000 Shootout Event) and the fact that we have G Casinos, Gala Casinos and more in every moderately sized City. All of which has really helped encouraged people to play poker in the UK.

The more I think of it, how can we not bag another bracelet at the minimum by the time the main event comes around? We are behind the times in Stud events generally but keep an eye on all the Omaha Events and the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em because I think we will see some serious contenders in those fields, plus the $25,000 Six Max might be one to watch.

If I had to choose between railing a UK player at a big final table and watching England play a world cup match, England would get my vote and it isn’t even close. But other than that it’s a great time to be a railbird and I apologise to my missus in advance for how little she will see me this month as between World Cup matches I will be cheering on our boys and girls in Las Vegas while watching the Pokernews Live Updates.

Now let’s have another one please Lads.