Grinding Hard

Since Sunday i've randomly been playing .5/1 PLO and doin ok making $1.2k with an additional 450 in bonuses with more on its way. I don't think i've grinded this hard in yrs tbh, the only day i had off was Wednesday when i went shopping, saw the missus and watched that new film Inception with Adamski which was really good. Bit disappointed with today sessions actually because i was up about 600 and flying then lost it all then made it back and then fkin lost it all again to finish even for the day. I know 6 buyins can easily be gone in the blink of an eye but a couple of hundo were from really bad play on my part. I should have ended the week with a $2k profit, sigh nevermind. I feel like i have a good grasp of the game though and although i have played PLO plenty of times previous to this week something seems to have clicked for some reason.
I started off with just the one tarble but now im playing upto four. Its also nice to stop n start playing when i want to as well as opposed to mtt's where your there for around 8 hrs per sesh. It reminds me of when i used to grind the nlh 1/2 cash tarbs actually before i turned into a tournay donk. I'm gonna stick with it for now anyways and see if i can continue to make some more dosh from plo and bonuses. Maybe i've just ran good and i know fk all about the game, time will tell. Having the weekend off and going to see that fish Cogs although i think were gonna play a £40f at the Rendavous or summat so not really a day off, should be fun thou. Bye bye fish.

Porn Links Return!!

Don't worry fish, the porn links are now back on my blog and can be found in the normal place (just scroll down, bottom right). Been on a nice five day relaxing hol with my bird to Spain and came back to a few comments and emails asking me where the links had gone. I had wondered why hits were down to an all time low tbh. Anyways, i'm not sure what happened but its all fixed now so no need to bombard my inbox. JJay, Adam and my thousands of other fanboys can now return to www.amatay.blogspot.com in search of their daily fix of pornographic materials. Happy wanking.

Late Night Donkaments

My Twitter account on the right just about sums up my recent stint on the cyber felt in the last few nights, a story of near misses with one mini bink. I played Saturday, Monday and Tuesday regging for 9pm until 12pm, usually finishing up around 3am. As is usually the case with donkaments i could have easily been looking at anything between a $4-7k profit but i think i broke about even which fkin sucks. The two major disappointments were the 9th in a $50f $15k gtd on PP when my kings couldnt hold versus AK for the world and also tonight on Ipoker in a $100f $10k gtd when my bullets were no match versus AQ for the CL which ultimately sent me to the rail in 12th. I've also had a couple of gay 16th places, sigh.
Both PP and especially IP have greatly reduced their gtd's as i mentioned in my previous post and i noticed that the bastards had slashed even more in the last 24hrs. I'm telling you the money is slowly disappearing out of the game at these stakes, its quite worrying tbh. Not sure whether i'll continue to play these particular tourns because of this and also the fact that i really don't enjoy playing this late anymore. Its the first time this year i have started to play late night mtt's again and it really fucks me up, its not healthy.
Other than the pokes i've just been chilling out enjoying the sunshine, i must have been to about 4 or 5 different BBQ's around friends places in the last couple of weeks, loving the weather. Also went to the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park the other week which was a fkin blast. Applied for a couple of part time jobs aswell today so fingers crossed. Goin to Spain tomo with kels so looking forward to that, laters fish.

Looking For Work

After two and an half yrs of Poker providing my only source of income i'm actively searching for employment. Obviously this is not on a full time basis, i'm not that fucking crazy, i'm just looking at anything from a 0.6 contract to basic scraps, an hr here an hr there etc. For those fish who don't know i quit a decent job as a Lecturer in Sport & Exercise Sciences in Dec 2007 and decided to turn to the darkside and play Poker for a living. Its something that at the time i gave a great deal of thought to and is something i don't regret one little bit. I was bored with my job and i was making more money from playing pokes for about 3 years previous to my resignation and have since continued to make more money.

However, i foresee a few problems which may hit alot of full time poker fish in the next couple of yrs. Firstly, peoples salaries are only going to continue to increase in future years whilst that of a poker player will only stay the same or most probably decrease as a result of the ever increasing difficulties of beating the game for a nice monthly wage. Unless you beat the game at decent stakes etc i see a shit load of problems especially for all those fish out there that play 1000000 sngays a month and earn 50c to $1 per game etc. They might aswell be data inputers tbh, its pretty tez to do that day after day, week after week and ultimately every month and year etc, fook that!

Whilst i'm still gonna be playing poker to hopefully make money and supplement income made from employment i don't wanna be reliant on Poker my whole life, no way pedro! I predict that it will be tough to make a living out of Poker in 2-3 years time and i don't wanna big fuck off five year gap on my C.V. I bet you there are gonna be alot of younger fish out there in a few years who maybe have very few qualifications and/or work experience who started playing poker at a relatively young ish age (some straight from school)/college) who are gonna be screwed. Maybe its a bit harsh and not relevant to everyone but you get my point.

I worked 'hard' to get my degrees and teaching qualifications and i dont want that to be wasted plus it will be good to mix up the days n weeks, bit of Pokes, teaching, Redtube etc. The social element is also another obvious reason i guess. Although i think i'm better than most poker fishays at sustaining a life outside of the game i still get fucking bored to tears sometimes, so a weee bit of normalitay will do me good. Oh another thing, fuck me the gtd's on alot of tourns are dropping at an alarmingly rate ain't they? Jeeeboss! I randomly went onto PP and IP last night and sooo many gtd's have been slashed. For example i remember winning a little faggot $5r with a $10k gtd on Party Poker twice in two weeks which attracted about 500 odd runners. Yesterday i checked and its now an $8r with 120 runners! Its the same story with all the slightly bigger buyin mtts that i used to play, the $20r, $30r, $50f and $100f all have smaller fields and consequently smaller gtd's. Oh yeah, one more thing... whats the deal with the Frenchie's and Italians being banned from Poker, is that true? Nightmares if so because them plums are generally fooking terrible at the game.

Poker has been sooo good to me. It gave me some financial stability, even though my million dollar bankroll is slowly dwindling. I payed off a nice chunk of my mortgage and it has paid for all my bills and living costs etc. I have been on a shit load of holidays... Andorra (Snowboarding), Las Vegas (donating), Sweden, (rumping), Dublin, (donating again), Spain (3 times, relaxing), Egypt (missus), Caribbean, (cruising Miami, Puerto Rico, St Thomas, St Maarten) and spent four incred months travelling the East Coast of Oz and New Zealand. I've also met a bunch of new people through poker and become good friends with a number of them. Bit of a brag that last paragraph but i don't care, i'm proud of myself. I can't complain, life as a 'full time' poker bum has been alright :)

This isn't the end just yet, i still need to find work. Today i went into Central London and had a chat with a few peeps and registered with a Teaching Agency which will hopefully find me some teaching roles for September that can fit in with what i want. There is also another job i'm gonna go for as well which is a Further Education Sports Coordinator £12k a yr for only two days a week, i think i can just about handle that.

Pokerwise, the plan is to try and play mtt's again and move up the P5 ranking especially as they now have World Rankings which may provide me with added motivation to see how far i can climb. I'm also gonna start playing on PP and IP again. In hindsight i've probably been a bit of a twat for not really playing the tourns on these sites since i got back from NZ. I've always been a decent winning mtt player on IP and my stats on PP are very pretty. I also wanna do well in more live tournays and jazz up my Hendon Mob Profile as i havent really tested myself enough in a live setting. I'm playing the APAT Main Event and 6 max tourns in Nottingham at the end of August and will again be travelling to Dublin in Oct for the IPO. This post has turned out longer than i had planned for so i will shut up now, laters.