clarkatroid is not folding: 11/01/2008

escorts bestcorts - come in if your saucy!!

0 comments

The plan is simple one.

I bought a bmw last december for 13k, which i had valued in june, and was told it was worth 7k. Thats 40% of frustrating depreciation in 6 months. Having always had a passion for old cars, which originated when i bought an mgb roadster many years ago, i thought it would be fun to buy a classic and do it up with teh poker moneys, the endgame being replacing my beamer with it.

i had planned on going to enrol on a car mechanics course, and do the work myself. As predicted by some that know me, this never happened, and ive ended up doing bugger all on it, but paying the experts to sort it out. This is a combination of inherent lazyness + and it makes little sense to spend many hours away from the tables when they have been so lucrative for me so far this year

Financially it makes sense. Im not going to make money on this project, but that was never the plan. 0 depreciating motoring is attainable though i believe. It cost me £4700. i estimate it will end up being totally finished by spring and maybe 6k more. So 10-11k total, but they car will never be worth less than 7k. It might even end up being a car i drive for a long time. its such a cool motor.

Ive honestly never had so many admiring looks (all from blokes over 30), folk waving at it, one chap even got out of his car at the traffic lights and had a walk around it. All that was on the journey home after i purchased it. there must be something about an old ford escort that triggers a middle aged mans heart strings. chicks hate it unfortunately. lol

Mechanically, its going to sound the business, with a 1.8 zetec twin webbers and total mechanical overhaul

looks wise, ive gone for ferrari white, wheels 7x14s compomotive mini lites.

the respray should be finished in 2 weeks.

watch this space, teh poker pimp mobile is nearly ready

poker update. 18k/28k hands. had a sick sick day yesterday (+6k) to get my month back on track, and i played like a monster. I knew i played well as a couple of regs berated the hell out of my play. i got told i was the worst post flop player he had ever seen. Time will tell if hes right or wrong i suppose

GUKPT blackpool

1 comments

....was basically a repeat of most gukpts this year, never got over starting stack, bla bla, im even boring myself writing this. maybe im not playing well in these. i might have to rethink my strategy

cash poker- treading water.
this is my biggest downswing of the year, im actually up 12k this month, but im break even for 3 weeks and 60k hands now.

the uk live poker circuit +17k nov

0 comments

Some observations on the live uk poker circuit.

On my last post i touched on the bad behaviour of a couple of players at the last tourney i entered in walsall, and it got me thinking about how common that sort of stuff is. I played my 1st hand of live poker about 4-5 years ago, and the grosvenor casino in blackpool, back when we first discovered the game. I can remember me and goldy chopping the 10 quid rebuy on our second visit. The tourney was a good laugh, we got steaming drunk and left 500 dabs better off. However i can also remember how one old lady took offence at 2 new faces cleaning up and giving us some grief, mainly about how bad we played, and how we should have played the hands. Not in a jokey, but kinda nasty sort of way. we said nowt, but discussed it on the way home. after all, you would have to be pretty low to start giving some back to a grumpy lady pensioner.

5 years on, im not that experienced in live play, i think ive played around 60 tourneys, so my sample is slightly skewed. ive met some good friends, some great people, probably 99% of combatants to be fair, but there is a small classless element that infiltrates the live uk scene, such is the nature of poker attracting degenerates.

Unfortunately, its this 1% that most people remember, and grade the experience by it, myself included. Ive seen a fight nearly break out several times, seen lots and lots of verbal bullying, and all round bad etiquette, dealer abuse, and so on.

Its my opinion that now is the time for the house to tackle to tackle these issues and clean the game up. the intimadating arena that it sometimes is, is surely detracting from the numbers. i know a few female players for example who dont play live much because they dont enjoy the atmosphere. i dont particularly enjoy it myself , although thats mainly for the slow speed and impatience problems after playing th egame at a 100 miles an hour for 4 years, i find it painful to slow down to 1mph. As a result, i usually have a few too many beers. lol .

Basically, its time for the casinos to impose stricter rules regarding appropriate behaviour. It would be a nice staement of intent if they started with an f-bomb rule for big tourneys, like the WSOP does. i think they get sin binned for a few minutes if they use it. This would surely have a positive impact on live playing numbers given time, and thats not a bad thing given the stagnant state of the live poker scene

more importantly, im 17k up this month. In the last 2 days of october i hit my biggest downswong of 2008, dropping 12k in 3 days, its taken me nearly 3 weeks to pull it around, i was frightened a major index negatory pattern was emerging, but time will tell i guess .

gukpt blackpool thursday, its time i ran a bit better in these 1k events...................

walsall trip report - some shiny news £50s pls cashier

4 comments

Live poker.

This year ive participitated in Ept Copenhagen, and GUKPTS in Brighton, Newcastle, Manchester, luton, and Walsall. My only cash was for 2.2k in newcastle, and they set me back over 12k. Not a stellar return to say the least. As previously mentioned im thinking of quitting the live circuit basically because i was fed up of it and my results, and even though my 2008 live mtt sample is laughably small, its still a bugger to sit on a train for 7 hours to go to Brighton only to get a bad beat after being card dead for 10 hours, when i could be earning money at home, or at least going to the pub etc

Anyway enough moaning. Last weekend brought about a very strange tournament in the shape of the Grosvenorgrandprix, "Europes biggest pot limit tourney" fielded a grand total of 57 runners, with a top rpize of £20k, which surely signifies the official death of pot limit . i cant see blue square doing this tourney next year. They added a whopping 25k to the prize pool, and only 57 got to fight for it. yummy. Even i had a shot at this one.

Kim had the weekend off work, and one of my bessie m8s, Sav, lives close by, so we stayed there for the weekend, meaning the outing was going to be a win/win situation, as we would have a good crack when i got knocked out anyways. 7 hours into day 1, and everything is going to the usual plan. I get no cards, try to hit a few flops and miss, try a couple maintenance steals and they backfire, make any sort of move and get slapped back down, while seemingly everyone else get slapped in the face by the deck. im already texting sav and kim to make plans for dinner

Live poker in England really irritates and frustrates me. Even the big tourneys like the ones i have played this year (min 1k events), there has always been 1 or 2 players that i have crossed paths with that have been (sorry dad) complete wankers. There no other word for it. The behaviour is appalling and its left a lasting memory unfortunately. I have seen a "nearly" fight break out maybe 5 times. By nearly, i mean it never happens because the players know they will get barred from all casinos which is simply too big a price to pay for a punch. Instead they push each other to the point that the whole card room seizes to operate and everyone is watching . The there is maybe a 5 or 6 full blown arguements and general nastiness over the course of each tourney. At walsall this weekend, with about 20 players left, one chap made a terrible terrible play. the other , regular on the circuit went totally nuts" you fxxking fish" throwing his cards around etc and going mad abusing him for the rest of the day. It was appalling behaviour, the poor chap on the receiving end said nothing at all and i felt quite sorry for him. i suppose ill have to get used to it as this is now my job, dont get me wrong, im no mary whitehouse, i just find it an uncomfortable experience most times i play live in England, but poker attracts a scummy element, nothing new there i suppose

Back to the action,im down to 4k with blinds at 200/400 and c/o, the chip leader, standard raises my big blind to 1200, i look down and see the mightily mighty KJ off suit, and do the honourable thing of shipping the rest in knowing my hand is ahead of his raising and calling all in range. standard stuff. I knew he would call any 2 cards simply because he was the sort of chap who revels in knocking someone out, enjoying the false sympathy that he would exhibit after he ended your tourney life. The big man. bla bla. he call and flips 87dd, i stand up, put my coat on(thats positivity for you) and watch as the board draws a blank and i win with king high. Im back to my starting stack of 10k. The very next hand the button raises pot(1400), i look down and see an improvement on my last hand AJdd. I do the deed, and re ship the pot, he re ships me all in and we racing again. He turns over ace9 offsuit, i turn a flush. bingo bango, clarkatroid put your coat back on fella, your in the game.At this stage Id like to point out i dont normally refer to my self in the 3rd person.

A few hours and much blagging later i was chip leader with 120k and 12 left. I think i made an error though overplaying my top pair, trying to trap pete"theundertaker" with kq, on kj5 board, giving him a free card with 44, and he turned a set on me. that crippled me, but i finished 4th and pulled £7300. then we went out and got drunk. cant be bothered writing anymore as im off to surf ebay for a baller home office pc system ready for jan.. oh, one more thing, this is where the 1969 escort refurbishment project is at..........