Windows 7, my new Pokernews Column & Rush Poker...

Having asked for Windows 7 as a Christmas present, as no-one ever knows what to get me, I finally got around to installing it this weekend. I did a clean install, as is apparently the best thing to do. It has been a bit of a pain in the arse reinstalling all my software and stuff, although my recent purchase of a Western Digital Network Hard Drive has made this process a bit easier. I'm currently waiting for Hold 'em Manager to reimport all my hands, about a quarter million in total, so that I can start a session back at the tables.

I can't say I've noticed much different as of yet with Windows 7 vs Windows Vista. However, this blog post by Supernova Elite Brad Stalcup did turn me onto a couple of interesting web-pages to improve my computer's performance for playing poker.

There are a couple of things I wasn't aware you could do, such as turning off the Windows logo upon turning your computer on so that it boots up faster. This could come in handy in those moments where you are playing 20 SNGs and your damn computer crashes and you need to get it back up and running ASAP so you don't blind out...which is very panicky situation when it happens (I remember reading that getting your finger trapped in a bottle is the biggest momentary panic that you can have, which I think is kinda oddly true, but I think the times when you think your internet has died and you're playing Heads Up SNGs is worse!).

Also if you create a new folder anywhere on your computer and label it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}, you get this kind of "uber Control Panel" which is quite cool, and potentially quite useful. If only you could enter a code to get God Mode on PokerStars!

I said I would link to my latest UK Pokernews column when it went live, which was today...so accordingly you can read that article if you click here. It is effectively a report of my trip to Galway for the inaugural UKIPT event, and I suggest it's well worth a quick read!

Anyway, only a few more thousand hands to import on Hold 'em Manager and I can play my first online poker for several weeks. Well, that's except for a little session I had trying out Rush Poker for the first time. Well it was supposed to be a little session, but I had a losing start so it turned into quite a long session. I pulled it back to make a little profit, but it's a shame the format can't work for tournaments as I am a little rusty at cash games! I was four tabling quite comfortably, and I have to say I really like the idea, perhaps the biggest innovation we've seen since the innovation of online poker itself. I don't want to spend any more time on it though, as I've found a game I'm beating really well, and it's hard to see myself topping my hourly rate from MTT SNGs with low or mid-stakes cash games that I haven't played for long time.

Big update...last 7 weeks!!

A very belated Happy New Year to you all. Some people expressed their concerns that I might have been a victim of the recent cold snap, but good news, I am alive and well...chasing the dog off of a frozen over lake only to fall through the ice and die isn't my style (the dog is always fine when you read about these things, don't you find?).

The reason I haven't updated my blog is that I have just been incredibly busy the last few weeks. First it was Christmas, and then it was moving house...and that has just taken forever. We thought we'd made a clever decision overlapping the tenancies between the two houses by 3 weeks, but I think all that succeeded in doing was prolonging the stress that moving house entails. Things are just about sorted now though, and getting settled in to our nice new home which features 2 more gardens, one more driveway and one more garage than our previous home (no I'm not 'baller', it's just our old place had zero of these three things!).

Moving house and such has led to me not playing a single hand of poker since the Monte Carlo event at Dusk 'til Dawn just before Christmas (of which I bust out a little too early for my liking), and I haven't played a single hand online since the 5th December which without question constitutes the longest break I have taken since I started playing poker, even in the early days when it was just recreational. Despite all the hard grinding I do, I am really keen to get back to it so I guess that's a good sign that the break has had a positive effect (tbh I'm probably just keen to earn some sodding money, it feels like I've been bleeding money the last few weeks buying Christmas presents and then all the stuff we've needed for the house).

Somehow in this pause of blogging I have managed to not yet report my first Live Tournament victory of my career, which is kinda important compared to the usual stuff I drone on about! I took down the €500+50 UKIPT side event in Galway for €12,500. A nice boost for my Hendon Mob database page, which was due a 1st place really (I even get a new flag to boot, wiiiiiii). I have to extend my thanks to Mick McCool who bought me into that event and the Main Event as well, and am glad I was able to offer some ROI rather than putting him €2550 in the hole!

I met some cool people was out there, online pros Daleroxxu and Mike McFadgen were good for a laugh. I also got talking to Seamus Cahill who I was sat next to for a decent portion of the tourney I won. I even gave live pro Jason Herbert, who I bust in 3rd, a lift home from Manchester airport, as he lived pretty much on the way. So that's a Scotsman, a Canadian, an Irishman and an Englishman, surely enough for a racist joke of some description!

I won't say any more, as I have used my victory in Galway as the topic for my new UK PokerNews column, which will go live on Monday upon which I'll post up the link...

One recent development is that I have gotten involved with Collin Moshman, whose books you may have read or at least heard of (I found his Heads Up NLH was very good when I used to play HUSNGs). He has set up a coaching and staking site at CollinMoshman.com. I initially joined up to get some SNG coaching. Although I was doing rather well on my own, I was keen on plugging any leaks I might have, and am very aware these days that learning and reviewing your game are very important things to do. I have recently started coaching people as well, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a real sucker for being able to talk about poker to the nth degree, and this gives me a great outlet for discussing poker pro-actively. I think coaching other people is going to have a positive affect on my own game, because of the deep analysis into individual hands that I can apply to my own play.

So as well as looking forward to getting back to the tables myself (which I will be doing by this Monday), I am excited about taking on a few more students. If anyone is interested, take a look at the site. This blog will be being reproduced on there as well (or here, depending on where you are reading it from!).

I'm sure some other stuff must have happened over the last 7 weeks, but that seems like a long enough post already, so if I think of anything important I'll include it next time.

Hopefully that will be sometime soon!

Ship the prop bet...

Once again, apologies for the length of time between updates. Was busy grinding for the rest of November with the prop bet, and have been doing a bit of house hunting recently as me and my girlfriend look to find a place a bit more suitable for a young child (not me, our baby). We actually found what looks like the perfect place today, so lets hope our application goes through successfully. It's such a pain in the arse being a Professional Poker Player in situations like this. I swear the estate agents would prefer you were on the dole, or perhaps a drug dealer of some sort, than being a Poker Pro. With no boss or accountant to speak of, I'm having to ship them 6 months worth of bank statements in an attempt to prove I actually make some money at this game. I don't really see why they should get to see what I've been spending my money on (fortunately I don't think I bought anything on sadomasochism.com recently), but as long as we get the house I suppose it doesn't matter.

After playing 3700 SNGs over the course of the month, I was able to take down the prop bet I had going with Longy and Moon&Back on Blonde. The thread went down quite well, and is here if you are interested. I used this topic as the content for my most recent column on UK PokerNews so won't say any more about it, but will direct you to that column here.

Still no news regarding the fraud on my Mastercard. The bank is "investigating". A mate has told me I should make a complaint if it takes too long so that they get their arses in gear. I might take this action soon as I really don't see why I haven't got my money back 4 weeks later (although in fairness they did say it would take 6-8 weeks to sort out. Slow goits!).

I ended up playing the Dusk 'til Dawn monthly £300 Deepstack event on Saturday. I played really well I thought, made a couple of nice moves, but after about 2/3 of entrants had fallen I picked up red Aces UTG, and after raising preflop had little choice but to move all in (against one opponent who had called my raise on the button) on the all spade flop. He also had little choice but to call with the stone-cold nuts, holding A9s. Fantastic.

I shall be travelling to Ireland for the first time on Friday to play the inaugural event of the PokerStars UKIPT in Galway, so I'm looking forward to that. It's kind of a reward for working so hard in November. It looks a good structure and I've been reliably informed it's a soft tournament even without considering the inevitable plethora of online qualifiers PokerStars shall provide, so here's hoping I run good one time!

£1500 of fraudulent transactions on my poker account

Last Sunday morning (8th November) I found myself subject to a call from the HSBC Fraud Department. This was not particularly unusual as I have had to field many calls from them over the past couple of years as they seem to view any gambling transaction as suspicious, and being a professional poker player it's inevitable there's going to be a fair few of those! This time though I was aware that I hadn't made any deposits recently, but just figured they were wondering if it was really me that kept ordering Dominoes pizza (our oven & microwave decided to pack-up simultaneously recently). I was 20-tabling on Pokerstars at the time, and not paying much attention, until they listed several transactions that I had no idea what they were.

Struggling to concentrate whilst playing, I told him these deposits were definitely> not made by me, and that I would ring back in an hour when I'd had a chance to play out all my tables. It turns out 18 separate transactions were made on my Mastercard totalling £1465 on the Victor Chandler website.

Therein follows frantic phone-calls to Victor Chandler and the bank making sure everything was blocked. I was initially given the idea that the bank were going to sort everything out and that the money wouldn't even leave my account.

Wrong.

The £1465 came off of my credit card and 10 days later I'm still in a bit of no-man's land. I'm waiting for dispute claim forms from the bank so I can claim this money back. Even then it's going to take 6-8 weeks to go through the process. I'm pretty sure any fraudulent transaction should be covered by Mastercard, but I'm not gonna rest easy about it until the transactions are struck from my account, or whatever has to happen.

VC's response has been a little unsettling. The first lady I spoke to, when I was still rather confused about what happened, confirmed unusual activity on my account (which had been dormant since April or May or something), and passed it on to the security team. I was then unable to get anybody to tell me anything, and was told that I would have to go through the Police to get any information.

I duly reported it to my local Police Department, but they said the bank and/or website would deal with it, and they would notify the Police Department where the fraud took place.

This is when I sent Nik Spooner, who runs Tetleyboy Affiliates, an e-mail as he was the guy who signed me up to VC on a nice rakeback deal. This guy is the nuts, and has helped me solve problems that were nothing to do with him in the past, and came through for me again as he got the Security team in touch with me straight away.

They seem to acknowledge that a fraud has been committed, but their language is a little too vague for my liking. They have informed me that the IP address where these transactions took place is in the UK. How this person has got into my account I really don't know, because I couldn't even remember my own details to log-in. I hope something is done to try and track this activity down, but right now I'm not even sure they don't think it's me.

So it looks like I'll be sweating getting this money back over the next few weeks. I just wish someone would guarantee me that I'll be getting refunded so that I can rest easy on this issue.

So here's a warning right now to make sure you keep your poker accounts as secure as possible. I'd recommend not letting any poker site save your card details as that's what has got me in the shitter here. I'm still unsure how they would have known my 3-digit security code on the back of my card, but perhaps they didn't have to enter that, I'm not sure.

All my money (well, all my poker bankroll at least, I still have money for food!) is currently on PokerStars, where I'm happier about it being, as they don't save your card details. I used to complain about having to keep re-entering them every damn time, but I take that all back now. The RSA-token I ordered with FPPs to increase the security on my account arrived today, and this seems like a really good way of ensuring you are the only one who has access to your account.

Wiiiiiii, my first Sharkscope star :)

I've been running like God the last few days (or at least, way above expectation) and it has helped push me onto the Sharkscope leader boards. Admittedly it's a little bit of a niché category (Total Profit Any Games 4-6 Table $5.01-$15), and admittedly I'm only in spot #20, so it's kind of like saying you were considered for an Oscar award in the "movies of duration between 92 and 94 minutes" and were 20th in line to receive it. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy about it as it is the first one I've received.
Had Sharkscope tracked the Tribeca network in 2005/06, I'd have been a shoe in for one when for my Heads Up SNG results were v.good on there...and I was always close to being on the Boss Media network Total Profit list in 2007/08, but didn't play quite enough to ever get there. At least volume is something I've improved on this year! I've been using Sharkscope for several years, as a tool to check out other players on my table, but perhaps even more so to track my own results. It feels really good to have a nice and steady graph, it almost gives me more confidence in my game, and definitely makes me feel better about being a professional poker player.
With only 6 weeks left in the year I'm not sure how high up the leader board I'll be able to climb, but looking at my own stats I've only put 290 hours into getting there. This might seem like a lot, but I've already put in 90+ hours in the month of November alone, so had I been playing these 45-man tourneys all year, my star might even be that bit prettier.


Cue huge downswing following this brag post, almost certainly have bokked myself!

SNG contest is hotting up...

Apologies for another big gap in updates, but I've been keeping up the hardcore grind, and it's difficult to want to write about poker after playing a 9 hour session! I've played 1800 SNGs already this month, with this mini-prop bet proving good motivation to play as much as is reasonable.

Even playing that many, I am not currently in the lead of the 3-man contest to see who can make the most profit in PokerStars SNGs of below a $30 stake. Moon&back has been racking up the $$$ consistently and is edging it. Longy had a disadvantage in that he was unable to access his PokerStars account for a good few days, but despite that has caught up impressively already.

Current standings

1. Moon&Back (Pd: 1144, Avg. ROI: 26%, Profit: $3365)
2. Myself (Played: 1797, Avg. ROI: 14%, Profit: $3115)

3. Longy11 (Played: 878, Avg. ROI: 22%, Profit: $1892)

I'm really pleased with how it's going, and even if I don't win I'm happy that I'm seemingly making nice and steady money right now.

I could have been put in a bit of difficulty if an injury I sustained on Monday night had happened to my right hand instead of my left. I play a friendly game of 5-a-side football every week. We all have a stint in goal which nobody particularly enjoys. I made what can only be described as an awesome save against a very fierce shot from close range which was heading for the top corner. However it bent my hand all the way back and I was bloody worried because I couldn't move it for several minutes. It seemed to get better though and I called off my trip to A&E. However it turns out I only postponed it as I woke up unable to move my left hand, and after 4 or 5 hours in A&E, I had my hand x-rayed and it turns out I have fractured my triquetral bone in my hand.

So that's a spot of bad luck, but it seems to be healing up okay. I have to wear a splint intermittently but no cast or anything It goes to show one of the pitfalls of being a professional poker player, because if I did sustain a debilitating injury to my right hand (ie. mouse controlling hand), I'd be pretty screwed for trying to make money on the internet. Especially considering the format in which I play, playing 20 tables at a time.

I seem to have run pretty bad non-poker wise at the moment, but I did scoop a WSOP Final table sweepstake in which I randomly drew Joe Cada, so it's not all bad! Here he is pictured with my winnings from the sweepstake: