Pets and Pentlands

It's always nice spending time with my sis, and this morning we went on a mini mission to visit my cat. The day started with a visit to Pets at Home. I was greeted by this friendly Degu, while Oooft fell in love with a giant rabbit. It was hard to leave without a new addition to the family!!

The bus ride to Penicuik reminds me how small Edinburgh actually is, with the City passing quickly by and not long before we have views of the Pentland Hills. It really is a wonderful place to live - a capital with the countryside on your doorstep. Arriving in the small town was a little strange, but I was made very welcome, as always. The reception was not so warm from my beautiful girl, being hissed at within minutes of entering the house.

Despite that, it was good to see her happily playing, mesmerized by the leaves blowing around the conservatory roof. I like to think she was deriving a plan of attack! Oh, to be a cat!!

The day was complete with mussels & wine, and my sister booking flights to join me travelling around Japan in March. Too excited!!

Bridesmaid Duties

Walking down Edinburgh's Princes Street in the Saturday morning rush is not my usual idea of a good time. However, duties called and Bridesmaid dress shopping awaited. Shopping in Edinburgh is always made easier by the beautiful architecture and views of the iconic castle hovering above the main street, and it wasn't long before we paused for lunch and wine - a much more agreeable activity! Along George Street, we passed The Dome, and I was astonished to see their Christmas decorations had already been erected. It's not even Halloween, they may as well leave them up all year round...

Returning to our original task, the lunchtime wine had affected us more than I'd thought, and Miss D, the beautiful bride to be, had her fun dressing me as a pink flamingo.

The seriousness of this dress choice was questionable, and I'm pleased to say the final two narrowed down options were much more stylish! Roll on the 2014 wedding of the year!

Changing outlooks

Blogging is something I've struggled to do over the past several years. I initially opened this blog with the intention of keeping a record of my poker - using it to post hands and to generate poker related chat to assist in strategy and bankroll management. I must say, I have been fairly unsuccessful in this respect!!

I now feel that while I may continue to play cards, it's not really something I'm motivated to blog about. I've made a decent amount of money over the past few years, I've had some big ups and some big downs, but most importantly, I've found a new passion in life and that is now what I aim to use this blog for.

In January 2010 I went skiing for the first time and haven't really looked back. (Except for a blip with a dislocated hip!)

It was 2013, however, that was the year of big changes. I went with my long term partner to Red Mountain Resort, BC, on a sabbatical from work to spend the season on the Nonstop Ski Instructor programme. It was the time of my life. I skied terrain I never thought I could, I met friends for life and I left as a CSIA Level 2 Qualified instructor. Good times indeed! There were downsides too though. My partner and I went our separate ways. I left my home, my beautiful cat, my job (not so sad!), Aberdeen (even less sad!) and did the dreaded...moved back in with the parents in July. Wow. There are seriously no words other than NOT RECOMMENDED!!!

A little more on Red Mountain though. The resort is absolutely breathtaking. I have never seen snow covered trees quite like it, and the Kootenay sea, which can be seen in this picture, is unbelievable. The photograph doesn't do it justice. On one day, the most astonishing sun dog appeared - I didn't even know what one was until it happened. The light glistened off snow particles which created an appearance of a sun near the piste. As magnificent as it was, the beauty of the resort was not it's only asset. The terrain is unlike anything I have skied before, and the standard of skiing required is high. Despite the intensive training, by the end of the 3 months there were several runs I had not even dared to attempt, with their steep terrain, cliff drops and tight trees. Even with a lifetime of skiing, this is not a resort that can be easily mastered or you could ever tire of.



As for the Nonstop course, it was very well conducted, the staff were friendly, professional and hard working, and the skiing progression speaks for itself. I would recommend it to anyone.

So after returning home to the UK and leaving Aberdeen, life has been a little nomadic, and things are set to continue! In September I was successful in my application for an instructor job with Niseko Village Ski School in Japan for the winter, and the adventure starts on November 25th when I fly to Sapporo. For the next few months I intend to keep an account of my days as an instructor, as well as my life before flying out. I will add one picture each day to try and encapsulate my time. Unfortunately, the first picture is a rather boring one, having spent the day in bed, sick, with my faithful friend below as my only company.



On the plus side, I have found the motivation to restart this blog, so even bad days have their highlights!

Buenas noches amigos!

Back in the game

Early in 2010 I was playing a lot of tournaments, mostly 45 player sngs on FTP, and I found that I was winning a lot of money - around $10k over 6 months or so. I had a big rush in March and then following that, started losing a little and couldn't get up the motivation to play. Even when I did play I didn't play well, and combined with running badly, I dropped around $2000+.

Since then, I've gotten the motivation back, I feel my play has improved tremendously, however I'm still losing, having dropped another $1500. Can this just be variance? I find myself losing self confidence as I ask this question. While I think I'm playing well, am I really? I am therefore going to use this blog has an important hand histories review space for the next while to try and find if I have any big leaks, or if I am indeed on the worst run of cards in my life. I seriously hope it's the latter!!

Any helpful comments and general hand reviews would be more than welcomed and I hope this will help me get better at the game.

A Big Blip...

Oh well, after my last post I have managed to drop 11 buyins at NL100. Not really what I was wanting but not a disaster I suppose. Bankroll currently stands at $3800 (a couple of small cashes in interpoker freerolls boosted me a little). Anyway, I haven't been playing great, in fact I'd go as far as to say I've played like a total donkey at times, but my EV graph shows it's not only down to that. Here are the pretty pictures...


I'm not going to moan and say I'm so unlucky, as I really have played like a complete tool for a lot of this downswing and feel I probably deserve to be losing. Hopefully I can start playing better over the next couple of weeks but don't really feel like playing at all at the moment. Think it's unlikely I'll get any decent hours in before the weekend so will post again when I'm feeling more like it.

Up a wee bit

So played a few tournies and then a couple of hours of cash tonight. The tournies didn't go so well and I soon decided to stop and move on to NL100. I had a pretty successful night putting myself $50 in profit from NL100 now. Woop!

Everyone likes a graph.... so here it is:


I think the initial downswing was a combination of not running so well and failing to adjust to moving up but I've since started running pretty well and I also feel like I'm playing much better. (I know, easy to say when you're running hot...)

Anyway, bankroll is standing at $4400 so not too bad for now. We'll see how the rest of the weekend goes!

Sleep time!

It's been a while...

So, it's been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened again. My roll fluctuated between 2k and 3k for a while playing PLO and MTTs and eventually I decided to cash out everything and spend it on a fancy laptop as I was getting nowhere.

After going a couple of weeks with no roll and depositing a little here and there, I eventually decided to deposit $80 on ladbrokes, just as I thought the games were softer and I was planning on trying to teach myself Hold'em cash properly and really dedicate some time to learning. I started out at NL25 and made the decision to deposit more if I needed to, so that I could have a proper roll for it. NL25 went pretty well and within a few weeks I had $500 and had moved to NL50. Nl50 went ok too but I had a few 8-10 buyin downswings at times. I still turned my Ladbrokes bankroll into $1000 pretty quickly before hitting a wall and fluctuating around that mark for a while. I decided to go for a change of scene to stop the rot and deposited some money on interpoker where I get 32% rakeback. I deposited a $190 and started out playing omaha. I spun this up to $1000 within a month or so and continued playing NL50 and PLO50 on Interpoker. PLO ended up going not so well after I hit a (small) downswing so I've put that on the back burner for the time being.

During this time, I also started a deal with a good friend of mine, where he stakes me to play tournaments on FTP and Stars. This has been going reasonably well and is ongoing. Hopefully I can keep turning us both a nice profit. :)

Between the 19th and 29th of May, I managed to rack up 500MPPs on Interpoker and that allowed me to enter a freeroll with 2 Caribbean Poker Classic packages given away. (For those of you that don't know me, I played in the CPC 2006 and would love to go back. It was awesome!) Anyway, I managed to come 3rd (lol) and got a consolation prize of $2000 which was nice and a very nice boost to my bankroll. I was gutted but I have since gotten over it...maybe...

So where am I now...

I've just started playing NL100 and as soon as I moved up I dropped 8 buyins. Nice work! I was very suprised at the difference in standard between NL50 and NL100, and while I adjusted my aggression early on (3-betting and 4-betting light) there were some factors I was obviously not prepared for leading me to lose $800 in around 3 days. I have now played 6k hands of NL100 and have clawed back to only 3.5 buyins down. Tournies have taken a back seat while I grind 3 tables of NL100 in a quest to crack the game and hopefully push up to NL200 asap. I'm looking for a bankroll of $8k before I go for it though, and that's certainly a long way off. Current roll stands at $4050 with around 1k on ladbrokes and 3k on interpoker.

With regards to the non-poker side of my life, it's all pretty dull. I'm still settled in Aberdeen, working away in a crappy job for crappy money. I'm hoping poker is a route out of that though...

Obviously working full time is interfering with my poker playing allowing me to only play around 15k hands a month so it's hard to get anywhere fast but I'll keep you updated more regularly from now.