Newcastle Poker Forum Team Event

I had a cracking few days this past weekend representing the RaiseTheRiver Forum in the NPF Team event in Newcastle, here's my account of what really happened...

Coggy got to my gaff about midday on the Friday and we set off on our journey to Geordie land shortly after. The drive was a bit of a mission tbh (5hrs) especially as i only managed to get about 3-4 hours shut eye the night before but it was well worth it. We got to our destination around 6ish and all i can say is fuck my fucking life, it was a fooking shit hole. I reckon most prison cells must be in better condition than this gaff it was bloody disgusting! The place absolutely stank of curry, it was really damp and mouldy plus there were actual human hairs in my bed! We kinda knew before hand that it wasn't exactly going to resemble anything like the Hilton given the reviews it had but nothing prepared me for that dump. It was called the Roselodge in Benwell Rd for those of you familiar with the place. It was only 40 nugs though and did add to the comedy of the trip :-)

Whilst checking into our new home for the weekend the smelly manageress bird asked us if we wouldn't mind sharing a room. Obviously i had already pre-booked two single rooms what we Cogs being a Brighton boy you can't be too careful but apparently they were booked up, wtf? I was a bit reluctant tbf but obviously that Cogfish jumped at the chance to spend two nights in the same room with his blogging/poker hero. After some persuasion from the Brighton boy i agreed making sure i got the bed next to the wall for obv reasons. As you imagine Cogs was over the moon leaping up n down with delight giving it fist pumps like he'd just shipped the WSOP Main Event ;-)

Once we got into the room and started to unpack i was quickly dealt my second bad beat of the trip when i realised that i hadn't packed any clean socks or pants ffs! I didn't really fancy going commando for the whole weekend, what with staying in the same room as Cogland you can't blame me so i decided to keep the same boxers on which i had driven in earlier for the next three days lol. They weren't exactly nice boxers either but some faded things from Next that my old dear got me for chrimbo about 6 yrs ago, sigh.

We had a little mince in our lush new room before a quick shit, shave and shower (no wanking in this horrible gaff) and then headed off to the Gate with "Knightmare" Nick who was also staying with us at the "Plaza" I think i got the first ones in but Nick also brought three Sambookays and i think we had one with every drink after that. There goes my plan to take it easy ish the night before the poker tournay i thought. After a few more ales we had a small break for munch at FnB's before power walking our way down too Quayside in the freezing cold North East weather. Good job i didn't go commando otherwise my knob would have probably shrivelled down to a mere six inches in that bitterness. In our slightly ball bagged state we ended up taking the scenic route marching across the tyne bridge and back again before we entered the next watering hole which was called Chase i think. The three of us sank another load of drinks in there and also briefly met up my Nicks bird before ending up in another bar. This place was an absolute sausage party though and despite Cogs being comfortable with these kind of surroundings we left quite sharpish and queued up to get into Sea night club. I don't really remember too much about this place at all.

Apparently i later found out from Nick that one of his birds mates wanted a piece of the Amatation, sigh. She weren't too shabby either tbh, i run so fkin bad. I think that was about the third or fourth bad beat of the trip and i hadn't even started to play poker yet, fml. After having a few more sherbets and a bit of a boogie woogie we got a taxi back to the Plaza. Supposedly i had been using my grafting skills on Cogs bird on his mob during the drive although again my recollection of our chat is somewhat hazy. Sorry about that btw Coggy but you do know i fancy her anyways, mbn to get your dicked sucked by her you lucky bastard.

Next morning i felt rough as normal but was nowhere near as bad as Knightmare "two pints" Nick. Cogs is pretty good at dealing with hangovers so i sent him to the shops to get some juice and munch to help sort my head out. Cogs later said it was one of the scariest walks he's ever been on and given the area we were staying in i didn't doubt it. After a bit of mince in my flea pit we were joined by Snake-Eyes and Yorky Pud who arrived at the Plaza about 11ish so we got showered and changed and the five of us drove down to the casino where we met up with Burnley Mik and Bullmeister. We all went for a monster fry up at a nearby place called Switch and although the munch looked delish i think i only managed to eat half a sausage given the state i was in, i am such a larry after a night on the lash. Once the lads had demolished the grub we went into the casino to met the remaining three team members Ant, dD and Hammerheid. Right, time for quick bit of waffle on my first impressions of you fishays...

I've met Cogs as few times and he's a sound bloke. I thought Nick was gonna be some geeky little twerp but he was a nice fella and up for a laugh although he didn't give it the big i am like he does on the forum. Snake-eyes was a top bloke and turned out pretty much how i thought, friendly, good banter and can put his beer away. Burnley Mik was how i'd imagined aswell after having read his gay blog for a few yrs and chatted shit with him on the net. He prob looks a bit scary to a stranger but he is like a big cuddly teddy bear, a nice bloke who loves his banter. Bully didnt seem that chatty at first but apparently he was stoned off his tits when we first met lol. He was a nice geezer who seemed pretty relaxed and friendly. Again Ant was really friendly and nice to chat to, it was a pleasure to meet you sir. dD was really nice and quite quiet at times much like myself but occasionally pipes up with some funnies and also likes to call me a cunt every other five minutes lol. Hammerhied seemed friendly with everyone much like he does on the forum, always very chatty although i couldn't understand the Scottish fish half the time! Last but not least Yorky Pud who i've probably "known" the longest without never meeting the fella. He's a top man, funny and seemed to have time for everyone. That fish writes some really good articles for Betfair btw, go check them out. Ok, thats enough of sucking off my team mates for now time for some poker action....

The event consisted of 20 teams with 10 players in each and was very well organised with a nice slow structure and RA's. I was drawn on the feature table along with the event organiser TeamDobbs who i had the pleasure of meeting at last years CPC. We started off with 7500 chips and from what i could make out the standard seemed to be generally quite weak with people open raising and re-raising with legit hands most of the time. I can't remember too many hands tbh which is unusual for me but i'll bore you with a couple of the bigger ones from the tourn. The biggest pot i won on Day 1 was with AA (its the only hand i play). Some geordie fish limps UTG and it folds round to me in the bb and i repop and he peels as expected. Flop comes A10x rainbow which wasn't too bad and i felt the best way to extract chips was to check. Against better opponents i always fire here but like i said most players where playing pretty straight up so i check to my new geordie friend who bets my hand for me. I gave it abit of hollywood before flatting and checked to him again on a blank turn to which he bet more of his stack. Another oscar winning perforamce from myself before relucantly calling and checking another blank river hoping for one more bet. The poor fish bet most of his stack and then folds to my allin bless lol. Despite not showing down a hand during the entire day i somehow ended up with 26k which was about 13 bb's when we returned for day 2. We had been playing from 3pm-3am and there where 42 fish left. The top 50 scored points for their team and Yorky Pud busted in 50th for 1 point. It was left to me dD and Snake to get some big points on Day 2.

After the tourn finished i found most of the lads sitting down on one of the most comedy cash tables i have ever seen in my life with two of the worst players ever who have been tagged by Mik as Mr Miyagi and Penfold. Words cannt describe how bizarre Mr Miyagi was, he was a bit of an odd ball to say the least. I managed to play a few hands before the table broke, sigh. They must have heard about my fircesome reputation as a cash game shark.

I woke up for day 2 feeling pretty confident despite being short stacked and immediately found myself allin on the very first hand. I was in the bb with AJ and the sb makes a small mincy raise. Obv his range here is very wide so i slam it all in and he calls with 88. No help on the flop, the turns gives me a gutshot straight draw and weeeeeeeeeee the jack pops on the river, one fukin time. I steal loads of blinds after this and gave myself a good shot at taking down the whole tourn. However i got knocked back abit in a hand versus TeamDobbs. I opened in the hijack with JJ and Dobbs peels in the BB with 67. Flop came kxx with 2 demons and it went check check. I check here to keep the pot small plus i like to play it in a kinda trappy way in position on quite a dry board. The turn was a 6d and Dobbs leads. I flat because i have the diamond draw plus i am pretty sure i am still ahead here also it looks like im drawing to a diamond with a bare ace the way the hand had played out imo so i am looking to induce a river bluff from Doobs. The river comes a black 7 and doobs bets small. Fuck my life i thought the fish has a shitty king. I called and he had hit perfect perfect 6's and 7's, a 3 outer on the river, sigh.

Shortly after this hand me dD and Snake unfortunatly found ourselves all sat on the same table and i ended up busting dD in unavoidable spot when he pushed his bowl of rice into my pock biatches. I then went onto get my revenge on Dobb to give me my peak chip stack when i opened with 65cc in mp and dobbs on the button and the bb both flat. Flop comes k34 and i checked it to dobbs who bet. The bb folded and i shoved it allin. Given my stack size etc i felt that this was the right play. Had i c bet my draw i was almost committed to calling a re raise so i check raised to give myself maximum fold equity. Dobbs tanked for a while before making a good call with KQ and i binked the 7 on the turn, weeeeeeee. I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar a few times after this and then blinded myself into obliv before open shoving about 7 bb's with a shit ace into QQ 5 handed to bust 11th. It would have been nice to make the final tarb but i werent to bovved as we still had Snake in and going strong. Snake eventually busted in 4th, wp mate, and RTR secured 3rd place in the team event for £1.6k. Snake also got £200 so we chopped the £1.8k up 10 ways which paid for a wicked wkend.

Me and Cogs left the casino at about 10.30 and almost had the worst bad beat of our life's. I was fucking shattered and reminded Cogs that we needed petrol and he was yeah yeah yeah we'll get some in a bit. So we set off and i am basically driving like a zombie and can barely keep my eyes open. All of a sudden Cogs screams out SERVICES!!! It was too late as i had already whizzed past the gas stattion. I glanced at my petrol gauge and my heart sank, it was red and we only had a few drips of petroleum left in the tank. Luckily we pulled in at a nearby Little Chef and ran over the M1 to a Texco garage weaving in and out of the oncoming traffic to save our lifes. I eventually got home about 3am, phew.

It was a wicked weekend from start to finish. It was great to meet some of you fish and we'll have to sort another RTR meet up soon. Thanks to event organisers TeamDobbs and S2c and also to the Card Guard Kid who was calling out the action all weekend, pure comedy. Laters!

Scrambled Head (Edit - i'm ok now actually)

I am not too bad atm, in fact i am in a pretty good mood but my head has been a bit mixed up of late what with things going shit on the poker front, bills galore and reunions with ex birds etc etc...

Pokerwise, things have been very shit and i am struggling tbh. This month might be my first ever losing month in the four or so years i have been playing this stupid game. I think i have lost about 15-20% of my life roll this year as well, not good. Most of that isn't from poker but due to the redic amount of bills i have had to fork out for plus the fact that i haven't been earning any dosh to compensate. I am however actually still in profit for the year although next week could be a different story.

I've been playing a bunch of mtt's on Cardoza and Party recently with little success. I keep busting 10th-30th or just outside the money which is fucking annoying. I know that it is prob just standard variance etc but i still find it hard to stomach sometimes. But for a flip here or there with 20 fish left in a few mtt's it could be a hellava lot different, sigh. Things are not dire at all, far from it but i do panic sometimes like a knob. In a strange way i also feel kind of excited by the fact that i am very slowly losing my life earnings! I think its because it means i will have to grind like never before and get some sort of structure in my life which is good for me.

This post was going to be soooo differently written the other day, much more negative with possible titles including, struggling, can't fucking win, the end (lol at that title, get a grip Jones you cunt), better start job hunting and poiuytfrtgyuopiuytfty. I feel much better today though, fuck knows why, especially as i just got royally fucked over deep in a game on Celeb Poker when some mother fucker limp called my shove UTG for about 70% of his stack with QJ and got there on the river versus my AQ, fml! As i said in a previous post i am going to start the year all over again on March 1st, giving myself a clean slate will defiantly provide me with a lot more motivation and focus i reckon.

Met up with the ex missus on Saturday and had a good crack which i knew i would, she's lovely. Obviously i ended up rumping her as well which is good and bad i guess. Sex with the ex is always nice, well i enjoyed myself anyways :-) Not really sure how i feel about her though or about how she feels about me tbh. Its all good though and i am gonna to see her again next week and see what develops (prob more rumps).

Doubt I'll play anymore poker until next week now as i am going up to sunny Newcastle early doors on Friday to get ball bagged and play the rtr team event until Sunday night. It should be a funny few days and i am really looking forward to it. It will be nice to put a few names to faces and meet up with some of the rtr lads. Me and about four or five other fish are crashing at this gaff called RoseLodge which has received some shocking reviews so it should make for some errr interesting entertainment. When i get back i am going to continue to play mtt's until the end of the month and then come up with a masterplan for March, laters.

Starting Again

I am going to start this year all over again beginning from March 1st. Got lots to get off my mind but my head is a bit scrambled atm. I will post more details in the next few days...

3 Years Old!!

Amazingly i have been maintaining this "top qualitay" blog for three years today! I am so sad. Amatay's Blog basically started off as a kinda joke between me and a few friends and i was never intent on keeping it going for this length of time. However, i quickly found that i actually enjoyed writing down my thoughts and keeping track of my daily exploits both on and off the poker table that i continued to update on a regular basis. During the last three years this blog has enabled me to keep a rough record of my progress as a poker fish charting both my successes and failures aswell as sharing my thoughts and feelings to regards to both poker and life.

I think the main reason i have continued to post is because i find it interesting to read over previous blog entries reflecting upon what i have achieved and what i haven't as well as my state of mind at the time of writing which i find really intriguing. I like to look back on some of things i have been up to whether it be a wicked holiday, a drunken night out, a shit day at work, lazy days, some random rumpage or even a nasty dump lol. I guess it sort of serves the same purpose that photos do, i like to have the memories. In a strange way i also enjoy kinda like the fact that quite a few people in poker circles read this shit. I am not an attention whore, far from it, but there is something nice about people reading and leaving a comment, others bloggers will probably understand. In fact for the first year of this blogs life only myself and a couple of friends read this crap. I had no links and didn't bother to check other peoples blogs. If no one read this blog i would still continue to update although it probably wouldn't amuse as much as it does now. Anyways, enough of this gayness, thanks for reading fishays.

Feeling Alright :-)

Not done too much this week, just plodding along really but i have been in decent spirits. I think the main reason i felt like shit the other day was because i had a two day hangover. I can't handle it anymore although i was drinking Kronenberg and Stella all day which probably didn't help! I feel alot better now because i have been hammering the gym and that always sorts my head out. Tuesday i went to the Woodside gym and then had a sauna to sweat all the shit out of my body. On Wednesday i went to Westfields and today i went to Central, it only costs me an extra £20 a month to be a member of three gyms.

On the poker front i am running and admittedly playing like a complete twat atm. One thing i have noticed about my game recently is that i have resorted to an almost fold or blast strategy which is shit imo. I used to be one for playing small pots and grafting away mainly because i learnt the game on the cash tarbs. Since i started to get more involved in mtt's i realised that sometimes fold or blast is the correct play. However, i think i have forgotten how to actually play the game to a certain extent. Its hard to explain but i need to get back to a technique somewhere in between i think. I need to be blasting in certain spots and kinda probing and stabing away in other situations without risking my stack. I've also noticed that i have gone back to the old nitty Amatay in mtt's where i sit tight wait for 10's+ AK, AQ type hand and then blast away which is sooo shit. I have also forgotten how to 3-bet with complete air balls in certain situations. I think playing alot of the 45 manners has partly contributed to this. Maybe is all just variance, i dunno? Thats the bastard thing with variance, when you are running bad you perhaps tend to tweak certain things that don't need tweaking. Having said that perhaps i was running redic hot before and now i am just running normal? I'm not sure, but hopefully i'll be ok, i'm sure i will be.

Results wise this week has been poorish. I havent put in much volume at all as i haven't really felt the urge. Came quite close to winning a $7r on Cardoza but fell just short losing a race and i also muffed up a chip lead five handed in a PLO tourn bluffing off about 70% of my stack in a spot where it was sooo obv i was bluffing which really pissed me off. Not made a dime this month, im about break even. I also think my mood is partly associated with whether i am winning or losing actually. It sucks cock when you aint winning and you rely on your income from poker to pay the bills. I am looking at the possibility of getting a part time job back in teaching tbh. Things are not that bad financially, nowhere near, its just i think working 2-3 days a week might help keep me fresh and relive some of the boredom plus i might start to enjoy playing the game again. Also looking at maybe fucking off for two or three months on one of those round the world trips in June but i need to make some good profits before i can go ahead and book that but its defiantly something i am serious about. Got a weird one this weekend as i am meeting up with my ex bird Kels on Saturday night, should be interesting! LOL. Laters.

Feeling Horrible

I feel disgusting today, really rough, kinda mouldly and just blahhh lol. I can't win at poker atm and i dont know why i bothered playing this afternoon because my head and heart just werent in it, i don't think it has been for a while tbh. Got some more redic beats and it feels like i have been running really bad of late, im just expecting the inevitable suckout and that ain't good plus its making me play shit aswell. Arrrgh i feel like fucking crap today, unwell, stale, bloated and very bored. Also i'm really itchy today, i dunno wtf it is lol. I was srcathing my balls so much earlier that i tore off some of my ball bag skin and now they are raw and even more irritable lol. Dunno where my life is going atm, i feel like i have had enough of it all today but tomorrow is another day and no doubt i'll be fine again in a few days.

My birthday was alright and quite alot of people came and went throughout the day and i bascially ended up drinking myself into obliv from about 2pm untill 1am. Ended up chewing the face off Kally and one of my ex birds Tiffy for abit which aint good. Kally kinda ruined my night tbh. I mean i dont even fancy her that much but i just lose all self control after a few sherbets and especially after i see her massive tits just hanging out. I need to sort my head out, blahhhh.

I am a Professional Poker Player! lol

Admiral insurance ftw babay!! Just rang around a few insurance companies and Admiral Insurance put down Professional Poker Playa as my occupation and i got my motor insurance 350 nugs cheaper than my current policy, wiiiiiiiiiiiii. Thanks to Knightmarenick from RTR who i chatted with both online and over the phone regarding this matter and also Moskvich from Blonde, you were a big help, cheers. I highly recommend all poker fish clarify their current insurance policies because if you are unlucky enough to have a serious accident your current agreement may not be valid.

Pokerwise this week my results and volume have been mixed. I played alllllllll day on Monday from about 1pm-1am with little success. I played a bunch of 45 manners and had some redic beats breaking even and didn't fair much better in mtt's with my best result being 3rd in some faggot $44 BI on PP with only 70 runners. Tuesday i played quite long hrs for me aswell and again broke even, sigh. On Wed i only played about ten 45's and two mickey mouse mtt's but managed to ship the $25 deepstack on ipoker although with a mere 114 runners 1st was only good for $770. I was still happy to bag my first win since returning to the mtt scene a few days ago and have enjoyed playing the tournays again. I actually came back from just 2 or 3 bb's when my kk was no ggod against AJ just outside the money bubble. I ran golden 5 handed open shoving k2 sootayed and trebling up, i am the best. Thursday i couldn't be bovved to play and instead minced in town and went to the gym and then grabbed an earlyish night.

Its my birthday btw tomorrow fish. Probably gonna get bolloxed in town in an all day session. Please send all b'day gifts to either Amatay on ftp or simonjjj on Stars, cheers.

What's My F'kin Job Title?

A year ago i used to teach Sport & Exercise Sciences in further education lol. For the last 12 months i have been a poker bum . This month i have to insure my motor and i received a redic quote of £980 from my current policy. This is partly because i have pranged the bastard thing twice in the last two years and had to claim, sigh. However, i thought i could get it cheaper so i checked out gocompare.com. When it came to employment details i didn't know what to put so i put unemployed and was quoted at £2k+ fml!! So, i changed it to teacher, education and got a quote for £558. Question is whats my fkin job title because i cant bullshiz can i or it will my affect my policy? It had self-employment as an option but then asks for self employed as what and sadly 'professional' poker fish, blogger or full time Redtuber were not on the list. What do other full time fishays put on forms like these? Help!