NutzBlog

OK so here’s the results for the prop bet running from the 1st of April until the 20th.

Let’s have a look at these stats, the one the jumps out the most to me is 10/8 finals and 0 wins. We must really suck. I can’t speak for murf but I know that I’ve had a real hard time HU, resulting in 5 2nds, which really does suck. I feel I’ve played well for the best part, and run below expectation but I know that two of them were at the end of heavy sessions, and I definitely just got it in and gambled. The latest one was the most brutal as the prize jump was $7000, and I had the guy in for the win AJ<KQ and A7<Jt. He kept falling into my traps and shoving it in but luckily for him he just kept getting there.

I’m ahead in ROI, but I am potentially a lot further ahead because my stars account is doomswitched at the minute, and is currently rocking a  -29% ROI. One decent result on there and I will scream into the lead.

As expected, I’m getting my head kicked in in terms of volume, but fear not, this was my plan all along. I haven’t played any sit n go’s yet, so my plan is to spam $12 180 man sng’s in the last week during the day to catch up with volume and hopefully increase my Stars ROI a bit.

As far as cashes go, it’s pretty close and could be anyones game I feel, and I’m not sure how much the ITM% stats will change.

I know that Murf is having a rough time of it as well, so we’ve both chosen a pretty sketchy month to do this it would appear, but we’re both going to just keep on going and try to get some solid results in. I’m not going to work out how much I’m ahead by in terms of money, because it’ll just tilt me too much if I end up losing. That being said I’m happy to be ahead at all considering up until this sunday I’ve been slowly but surely knocking it in despite countless deep runs and finals. It appears I just couldn’t win the big EV flips deep in tourneys, but hopefully my recent 2nd in the $75 on sunday for $12k is a start of a delicious upswing.

Keep following (if anybody actually is), I’ll make sure to post the final update on May 1st.

Stay classy internet.

Hey everyone, my name is Jamie Sykes, I appreciate some of you may not remember due to my ridiculous absence from the blogging community, and for that, I apologise. Honestly, I haven’t been keeping up with anything I need to be doing for the past two months but all of that is about to change. After reading this blog from Mike McDonald (http://blogs.cardrunners.com/Timex/where-to-go-from-here), I’ve realised that it is all too easy to get wrapped up in the poker community and lose connection with the things that make you who you are, and that is what I feel has happened to me in the last 4/5 months.  So I’m going to be doing a lot more reading/writing and other non-baller activities over the next few months, even though they are going to consist mainly of  poker, because I feel I have a lot to do in poker before I’m finished with it.

*Brief re-cap of the last few months*

Online grinding, went to the PCA, KO’d a WSOP champ in a live SnG, played coin against the wall with Scotty Nyguyen, travelled A LOT, drank far too much alcohol, stole Phil Ivey’s blinds, learned that I’m terrible at an Italian game called “Boce”, snorted a line of ground pepper for £250, had a sore face because of the latter, missed about a million flights and GRIMMED FRANKY!

Okay, back to the present. A friend of mine James Murphy is a micro stakes mtt grinder who is renowned for the ridiculous volume that the 18 year old full-time student puts in, so I decided he would be a good person to have a volume based prop bet with to motivate me to grind. I also managed to get some decent side action with one of our mutual friends who thinks (with good reason) that I am too lazy to match his volume.

So the bet is for the month of April on Full Tilt and Stars only as tracked by www.officialpokerrankings.com, and is split into categories which are as follows:

Most final table apearances, 181 runners+ ($50 with murf12309, $200 with chrispoker23)

Most tournament victories, 181 runners+ ($50 with murf12309, $200 with chrispoker23)

Most cashes, 45 runners+,  ($50 with murf12309, $200 with chrispoker23)

Highest ROI% ($20 with murf12309, $50 with chrispoker23 per 5% difference capped at 200%)

Most volume played ($20 with murf12309,  $50 with chrispoker23 per 25 games difference*)

Highest In The Money % ($25 per site with murf12309, $50 with chrispoker23)

*with chrispoker23 that bet is capped at 400 for a maximum swing of $800.

So this is basically what I’ll be spending this month doing, and in my limited spare time I’m going to try and see as many of my friends who are back from uni as is humanly possible. Not much sleep for me this month.

I’ll post graphs and results weekly, and kids, prepare for more Sykes blogging.

Peace yo.

OK, so I’m going to post the whole thing when I get home, and I’ll blog about the PCA too, but for now, just thought I’d let you all know that I’m 3/10 on the final table of the £1k Main Event, eagerly awaiting the start.

Also, Jake Cody is 6/24 in EPT Deauville, with E840K for the win….. Our night out is going to be ridiculous.

Wish us both luck!

After my $13k upswing a few weeks ago, a little disgruntled I didn’t come 1st in any of those tournaments, it was back to the grind. Just the usual limits; $11, 26, 75 freeze outs, $3, 5, 8,10 and 22 rebuys with a few shots here and there.

I was quite happy here, grinding away, when I got a comment on my facebook from an old school friend who thought it appropriate to say: “Hey Jamie, just wondering, I see a lot of your statuses coming close to big scores, but no wins? Do you ever actually win any tournaments? Good to speak to you.” WTF!? WHAT A RIDIC RUBDOWN!? I was steaming. I’d made a decent chunk in the last 120 days, and get rubbed down for not winning anything. Well, it sent me on a bit of a tear. The day after this incident (Sunday) I came 1/236 in a $26 HORSE mtt, where I came back from being short 6 handed with no showdowns against some very passive players. Then last night I scooped the $20 rebuys on Full Tilt, whilst at the same time taking down an $8 PLO mtt.

Three tournaments, three different game types, 3 ships.

Take that anonymous Facebook friend! Right, just a quick (brag) post today, better get back to the grind.

P.S. Me and Ash Mason have a $150 prop bet on who can win the first ML 7-game mtt, with a limit of 20 attempts each, then a new bet will be made (to make it a fair test). Wish me luck!

If you read my last post you’ll know that I had no money online because my account was/is banned, and that I was once again playing on lildavefish, off a borrowed $300 that i turned into $2k. Well, I continued the grind, same levels except throwing in a few $75 shots just to see if I could turn this essentially “freeroll” money into something substantial, and I got a little bit of a break. Sunday came around and I qualified for the FTOPS Main Event and some other tournies inc. a $163 150k gtd. My first deep run came in the latter tournament, but got coolered deep and ended up only cashing for around $45o, but I still had 6 tournies or so running, so all was not lost. I then finished 2nd in a $26 PLHA mtt for $800, and min cashed the ME for $800 also. I was left in one tournament, a $75 that I’d built a big stack in and was confident vs the field. Got to the final table 3/9 with $20k up top, but the stacks were really close, everyone had around 35/40 bigs. Got the chip lead and lost it twice, lost two flips vs shorties for the KO twice in one orbit so went into 4 handed struggling. There has been alot of 3betting etc. (mainly on my part) and I got into a messy pot vs a really strange kinda donkeyish player with AsTs. he raises the sb, I 3bet him to 120k he peels. there’s now 250k in the pot and i have 500k behind. flop is 9h 6h 2h, and he donk leads 100k. He’s been doing this a lot over the last few hours and usually folds to raises or shuts down to peels and stuff, so I figured this is his weak attempt at stealing the pot, so stuck my 500k in his eye. However, he quickly tables Ah 9h having me drawing dead, and that’s that. Took home $7.4k for my efforts boosting the “freeroll”  roll to $10k for 9 days work. Then yesterday played again and final tabled another $75, 6max this time and finished second for $3.9k. The rest of the session sucked though so only $3.4k was profit, but still.

So to summarise, had no money online and no account, borrowed $300 and an account, made it into $13.4k in 10 days, over 350 games or so.

Because I figured this was quite the accomplishment, I decided to treat myself today so went tot eh shop, bought some vintage Rioja, some steak and some potatoes and am going to cok a delicious meal before my 5 o clock grinding session today. AND should be getting thegrooouuuch back today/tomorrow, so I can get some results in my own name lol, I’ll update in the next few days probs.

Thanks for stopping by San Diego.

As most of you may or may not know, two of the biggest authorities on online grinding are Shaun (tedsfishfry, shaundeeb) Deeb, and Dan (imabigkidnow, DJK123) Kelly. These guys are insane, millions of $ in online MTT net profit, and both are under 25…. ridiculous really, but my point is that they are both renowned for doing two things respectively; Shaun Deeb is known for playing ridiculously huge volume, literally every tournament registering for a 24 hour period, and DJK is known for playing completely mathematically which means having little to no regard for tournament life in some spots and just shipping 15-20 bigs in slightly +EV spots…. Other pros talk about this int heir vids, referring to either as “DJK’ing it” when you just open ship 15 bigs, and Deeb’ing it when playing ridiculous volume sessions.

Last week I decided to do some proper Deebesque grinding (although a watered down version, because I’m no where near good enough to play 30+ tables at once) so I played every satellite and tournament under $26 (unless I qualified for any bigger obv.) on full tilt, using lildavefish as my account (thegrooouuuch) is locked down atm… stupid ftp. Unfortunately since I wasn’t on my own account I had NO money online, so I borrowed $300 from a friend (chrispoker23) and planned to play until it was all gone, or span up, all profits went back into more grinding until I decided to stop. Thought it’d be interesting to show you my results, which aren’t as good as I wanted really but hey ho:

ITM 46/239 (19%), Av. buyin $27, $7′775.20 prizes, $1′892.20 net profit with an average Return On Investment of 24.34%.

Not so bad, but I wanted to make $3k+, just have to try harder next week. Also, I do feel like I ran horribly in some huge $$ spots, E.G.

5 handed in a $26 mtt with a $9.3k top prize, I’m chip leader with 1.7M chips@ 12k/24k/2k, a shorty shoves utg for 200k, I flat KK with 3 to act, and the BB 2nd in chips flats too. Qh 6c 8s flop the BB check with an effective stack of 1.2M i lead 200K into a 600k pot and he makes it 666K… I think about his range for a few seconds then decide he has KQ/AQ and shove, he calls AQ… shorty flips AJ, brick turn, Ah river. Sigh. The same guy then coolers me 99<TT and it’s all over. He takes an ICM deal next hand for $8.2K lol. Such Sklansky bucks there.

NVM, next time.

Peace out everyone, glatt.

http://www.facebook.com/ash.mason1?ref=ts

The once blogger, once grinder, still friend Ash seems to have gone missing!? Facebook tells tales of extravagant nights out, but he won’t contact anyone…. or respond to any efforts of contact from anyone in Yorkshire. Strange ey?

If you’re reading this; come back Ash!

It’s 2.36am Tuesday the 3rd of November, and I open my hazy eyes to find myself not in Yorkshire, not even in Valencia, but somewhere in between. I’m in what can only be described as some kind of transport-limbo, Stanstead after hours. This is entirely down to my easy-going nature, and lack of attention to important facts, such as my flight time, and everything associated with. “Have you booked your flight Jamie? Booked your trains Jamie?” The parents would badger, and be swiftly met with a lethargic, and highly sarcastic ”Yes, MUM.” So when I finally did book my flights, (the night before I was supposed to board, naturally) I quickly discovered the advantages of early booking, because the only available flights out of season are at 6am sharp, and considering the trains from leeds-London start at 6am, it doesn’t take a dummy to work out that I found myself in quite the pickle. This moment of clarity happens at somewhere near 7pm, the last train to make it to the last Stansted train being at 8.09PM from York. Fun times ey? Some swift packing, train napping, anf fare dodging later, here I am. Before I go into poker, I just want to describe this place for you. Everybody is trying to sleep except me, I’m just wandering around, drinking red bull, looking for a plug for my laptop, but some selfless souls thought it was cool to take up 5 seats each by lying down, so the “streets” are litered with people. Mostly adolescents, coevered in blankets, using bags as pillow trying to get some shut eye before the 6am flights start up again. It does make me wonder however, why are they here? Surely there can’t be an airport full of people who are as unorganised as me? Surely not. Or maybe they CHOSE this, as an alternative to getting a hotel for the night (which are conveniently at the end of the airport), could it be a matter of money? Whatever it is, it baffles me how someone would enter this twlight world of whirring airport machines and Burger King lights out of choice.

I guess I should briefly mention poker since this IS a poker blog predominantly, but I am going to be brief since it hasn’t played much of a part in my life in the last 3 weeks, something that’s felt pretty good tbh. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, but being back in the UK, seeing my friends, playing a little but not worrying about variance, graphs, EV etc. has given me a little bit of perspective. This was never the plan, and I don’t intend for it to stay the plan, I want to put my money and energy into something cool, something solid and respectable that I love just as much as poker…. The only problem is, as is everything that I pine after it seems, it doesn’t exist. For now anyway, more like I haven’t discovered it yet. So for now, I’m just going to try and be the best I can be, get ranked, and get my name around a bit, but to do this I need to play higher volume. After going through my Hold ‘Em Manager in some of my spare time here in limbo, it appears that I am under-rolled for the huuuuuuge schedules I was playing. SO, the only choice is to get some backing from someone who can handle the swings. This just gives me a bit more security, and means I don’t have to dip into savings to fund poker, I want to keep that for some kind of non-poker related venture in teh future. I’m not going to mention names for obvious reasons, but I’ve asked a few people, and there is one source that seems to be pretty positive and has set me some parameters that meet my needs, just a case of “getting approved by the board” whoever the hell they are. I’ll let you know how that goes.

So yeah, on my way back to Valencia after a pretty pleasant 2.5 weeks in blighty, saw some old friends down in Nottingham which was refreshing (Will B being a highlight) and got the flu from Jonni B…. Fun fun fun yeah? Time to go home, home to a 20 degree+ november.

Just want to apologise for the lack of blogging lately, I’ve got loads of out-dated drafts, that there’s no point in publishing, so I’ll jsut have to make up for it with future posts.

Peace. Jamie.

P.S. Me and Ave. Dave are doing a little bit of business together, so I’ll be updating on his behalf on here too, hopefully when he binks every major PLO MTT on the net. Wheee.

After reviewing some info in Hold ‘Em Manager, I found that my best ROI is in the mornings, and that i start to spew off at like 11pm ish. So I had a look online to see what goes on in the early morn’. at 9am (GMT+1) there is a $109 turbo on both stars and ftp…. PERFECT! not only is that the very earliest I will EVER get up now I don’t have to clean windows (don’t ask), but I love turbos and am very good at them. According to teh stats available to me, they are my most consistent form of income.

So my alarm goes off at 8.30am this morning and I wake up to unregister ‘cos I can’t be bothered. But after I’ve turned the light on and had a drink I suddenly feel much more alert and decide to play. I go out first round fo the stars tourney AKss vs 99 AIPF. I then bust in my $55 turbo 90 man sng on FTP and amstarting to feel slightly disbaraged and wishing I was still in bed, so I unregister from everything else and just single table the “Turbo Hundo” which is a $109 turbo with $20k GTD on Full Tilt. going deepish and I’ve got 7xbb with 70 left. Then… go on a huuuuuuuuuge heater and am chip leader with 37 left, 27 paid! make it to the FT, lose a few big flips and im 5/7. but then I realise that my BB is a super baguette and jsut keep shoving into him any2. and all of a sudden I’m chippo again with 4 left. get to heads up with the only good player, hes sat on 260k and ive got 145k ish, 5k/10k/1000 blinds. first hand of HU i have JTo and he min raises, as he does every hand, so I jam it in. he ponders and calls with KJ…. JJ9A4 board seals my fate. 2nd for $3′580. Not a bad mornings work eh?

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately, as some of you know I’ve now moved to Spain, so with that and the FTOPS I’ve been pretty ridic. busy lately. Nevertheless, here I am.

At the begining of August came the FTOPS on fulltiltpoker.net, and as always I hammered the volume. It’s a series of poker tournaments with huge fields and therefore huge top prizes. Before this series I had made 1 final table in these tournaments, but due to some play bads on my part, went home in 8th position when I was 2/9. Pretty silly when there’s $37′000 up top. Yeah I know.  The value in these tournaments is incredible, granted all the sick players are involved, but that only makes up <10% of the entire field, leaving a good 90% baguettes. As you know I finished 6th in event #1 for $37′600, which allowed me to play alot of the FTOPS events that I may not have played before. It didn’t go well. I effectively bubbled 3 events, including the $550 main event after having 70xbb with only 100 people to go till the money…. SIGH. I came to the conclusion that I was playing far too much and ended up not playing my best, infact I’m pretty sure I was playing terribly.

But that’s fine! Because a break gave me time to sort my head out and do some serious partying, after all, I did leave the FTOPS $33′000 in profit which is plenty for alcohol+. So I went to Belgium for a music festival, went to Leeds Festival when I came back, and some baller nights out made me feel much better. Highlights being staying in the Marriot with Tom Macdonald and the woman asking cagily whether £260 a night is OK….. and was met by a roll of £50’s and a jolly grin on my face. Or even drinking in teh Marriot bar and people looking on in pure amazement as we flipped for bottles of their finest champagne and offered to buy their rounds (lol). BTW I lost every flip lol.

So after a few weeks of being a ridiculous spend-bot, It’s off to Spain. I went out with nothing but a hotel that I’d booked the night before the flight, and a sense of undying optimism. The optimism paid off as we managed to wangle a huuuge apartment overlooking the Med. and a nice little grinding balcony for me . Poker hasn’t started well, but haven’t played much, just a few sngs that im breaking evens off and losing at MTT’s.

My new monitor arrives on wednesday so that’s when I’ll really start grinding. Hopefully I won’t hve to deal with trying to explain to my maid in spanish why i was walking about in the nude, and trying my very best not to get arrested for sexual harrasment. Fun times. So basically my plan is, huge volume at $339 man sngs and every mtt up to $163 buy in with teh occasional $216 thrown in there. + some red wine, chorizo and 4.80 Euro crates of Amstel and we’ve ot a recipe for fun fun fun.

I’ll let you know how it goes. P.S Good luck to every1 that’s going to DTD this weekend especially Lil D, he deserves a big score.

P.P.S going to play the $2k poker espana ME at the end of this month with Ash, so I’ll let you know how we do. x