Ladies and Gentleman, I am back after a complete cluster-fuck of the last month. I have not posted a blog since just after I found out an acquaintance of nearly everyone in poker; Justin Shronk had passed away unexpectedly. This was kind of a huge kick up the ass for me and I’m sure a lot of other people in poker. Since then I have been working on getting my life in check and getting some perspective while trying to do what I love instead of just wasting away doing something I hate for a living. I have also been travelling a lot over the past month or so. Actually, right now I am in Ireland on a bus home because my Grandpa had wanted to go and see his family heritage, I endured an hour flight and a 4 hour bus journey for it because it may be the last chance I get to do something like this with him.

Last week, I just turned 18 which in the UK and Europe is legal to play poker and enter casinos so on Saturday I took my first venture into the “deep dark world of poker” as everyone here seems to think it is bad and evil and I shouldn’t be doing it, that is only an opinion though. Players here are not experts at the game. They are not even remotely good in my opinion but coming from a worryingly regular 2+2 poster and self confessed internet poker geek, it’s not that insulting or hurtful I guess. It looks like all easy pickings 1/2 NL games a few of which may or may not be dodgy, I have yet to decide and a whole host of badly structured tournaments and sit and go’s again the players are so bad that they kind of make up for the lack of a good structure.  

I sat down at one of the cash games with 50bb at which point it was just starting up and was 4 handed. I was forced to play out of my comfort zone and play loads of pots oop (out of position) because of the nature of the game but was able to take advantage of the lack of interest post flop if no one had hit a big hand and take down some blinds. This got me up around 20-30bb and had actually called time when I started to hit several big hands pre-flop and proceeded to get pounded on every flop/turn.  This happened for around 30-40 minutes when I finally called it a night when it was still 4 handed at 2:30am this told me it wasn’t going anywhere so I cut my losses at about 25-30bbs and left to wait for a better spot after the guy to the left decided to play every hand and crush the table with really big pot poker and really spewy play. I spent the rest of the night watching a loose 1/2 NL game and watching people literally have no clue how to do a thing. There was one hand where a guy in CO+1 picked up AQ and raised 3x and got 5 callers but had position. The flop came down Q 3 5 and he then proceeded to bet out 3x again after it was checked to him and got 2 callers turn came another 3 and MP bets out and he folds. WTF. Guy turns out to have 3 7 and manages to get most of a guys chips at the table who has A 4. Sick Game, waiting list was around 5-6 people though. Many of which had no idea how juicy this game was. I told the guy with AQ that he should have bet out more pre and on the flop and he denied that he did anything wrong. Really Weird.

I am Glad I actually get to talk some poker in this blog, has really been a while since I have actually preached to the masses about something on topic rather than something that is just on my mind and I can’t get rid of. I really want to get out and play more live this summer and get some experience in before the WSOPE where I am hoping to play my best game I can and take down the 1k hold’em bracelet. I can dream right?

I have so much more to say but that can wait till next week.
Daniel
danielreilly0@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/DanielReilly

I have enjoyed being able to blog here for the past several years. However it is going to be awhile before I do anymore writing or videos.

Thank you all for the kind words I have received.

Take care…Be Safe….

After traveling for 17 hours to get here, I crashed. I barely slept the night before my trip either. With the 4 hour time difference, I am waking up at 5 am. Other than that, so far, I absolutely love this place. It’s been less than 2 days, but I’ve got some big blisters on my feet today, from all of the walking I did yesterday. I planned on playing poker yesterday evening, but when I got to the strip, I just started walking, doing the tourist thing.
I did play some poker. Yesterday morning, I made my way to the MGM Grand for my first Vegas tourney. It was a $65 buyin that allowed for rebuys in the first 4 20 minute levels. I think there was a total of 80 buyins. I just made the one buyin. Early on I doubled up with AA vs KK, when the guy tried to slow play me. I was amazed at how bad some of the players were. I didn’t get to many hands after that, and was down to $2200, when the blinds were at $400, when two stacks similar to mine went in, I called with my AJ off and nearly tripled up. After that I just pushed chips around and built myself up to above average, just by taking blinds, or raising late and continuation betting.
The final table was supposed to be 10 players,but only 9 made it, with the final 7 getting paid. We discussed a chop, with I think 9 players each receiving around $440. We all agreed except for 1 guy, so we had to play it out. The blinds were now 1200, and I had a little under 11000, when I looked down at 33. I don’t play to squeak into the money, so I shoved. I got called by AQ, and flopped a set. That put me into second in chips, and a few hands later the guy that wouldn’t chop, got cold decked when his A7 was outkicked by the A 10 on a board of AA8. It was fitting. We all had a good laugh at the guy, and because of some shortstacks, top 4 got $580, and bottom 4 got $400. I’d say my first day in Vegas was great, except for the blisters.

This is going to be short and sweet, not had time at all to post a new blog here. Schedule has been hectic.

This week I haven’t been playing much poker but I’m still learning a ton of new stuff. People on Two plus Two have actually started to listen to me now and I have been talking to a lot of players on IM discussing different theories and styles of play. This has been helping my game a lot, have not really had time to think about much else. Maybe I will play some in the next few weeks and see if I am still a steaming donk at the table or if I can actually win monies while I play. Probably not…

On a side not off poker, I have been working on a lot of content for radio and been trying to find ways to explain things that listeners previously haven’t known about I plan to educate a lot of people this way even though I have a cheek to educate anyone on anything. Woke up this morning itching like hell and realised I had a huge, very attractive large full body rash. The women have been falling at my feet all day…Sarcasm is always good! Been to the doctors about it and apparently it is an allergy.

Anyway, I have just finished work and am going to go home for a nice sleep and go to college tomorrow. Fun Times.

D

Chip Reese’s only son, Casey, died Monday from what is reported to be an accidental prescription-medication overdose. This is just over 16 months after Chip’s passing.

I can’t imagine the grief the Reese family is feeling. I had to deal with the death of my father in November after his 16-month battle with brain cancer came to an end. His death was something my family and I knew was very likely to happen. Despite knowing it was coming, it still was very and at times still is very hard to deal with the lose of my father when he was only 60-years old. The fact that this family has had two sudden and unexpected deaths has to be extremely difficult.

This is just a reminder that things can change instantly in life and you have to take advantage of the time you have. I hope all of you are able to do that. – Schmelzer

Today’s blog wont be anything spectacular, nor will it be up until the end of next month when I have time to get back into the live poker circuit here in Glasgow. A few interesting things have happened to me in the past few weeks, I feel I have benefited from it and my game is now coming on leaps and bounds.

Earlier on in the week, I by chance came across a live pro (of online origins) on Skype. I had only found him because I was looking to track him down to question him on a bio for Wise Hand Poker. We had a chat for a while after coming across each other on various forums but never actually speaking. After that, something I never really expected (though awesome) happened. We started to talk about poker and he seemed to enjoy educating me on the game and padding my little knowledge of what I was doing. This was amazing! I had learned more in the past 10 minutes than what I have learned my whole 4 years of playing poker. Since then we have chatted regularly, going over hands that he had played and me asking many questions along the way. I started to post more on two plus to thanks to him and have started to think of the game in much greater depth (Compared to what I used to) whatever I say though, he always makes me look like I know nothing but that will soon change! Maybe soon I can start discussing hands in blogs and making this more of a strategy blog than what I first intended. Don’t worry, if I make It big everyone here will be the first to know!

I’m always up for discussing strategy so if you are interested in such a thing than talking poker when you are not playing (who would do such a thing) I will leave my email at the bottom of this blog and we shall discuss until the wee hours. Maybe I will let you hear my Scottish accent if you are lucky!

Nothing else has really happened to me apart from that and it has been a pretty boring week. I’m still broke, still a student, I have been working most nights, been to two football (soccer) games this week which is an unusual occurrence considering I haven’t even watched the game in months, Still looking for a backer to take a huge chance on me so I can actually become a winning player oh and did I mention I was broke? J

Anyway, not going to advertise myself over a blog like that, I am not that shameless!

Maybe next week I can come back to you with some actual examples of play. Probably not though, let’s hope something else interesting happens to me in the next week. If you are really interested in following what I do every second of every day then follow me on Twitter. My username over there is “DanielReilly” Make sure you make yourself known to me…I love to know who is actually reading these and enjoying them. Makes them worth writing!

Anyway, I better head off and try do some work on another project. Not sure what one it is yet, have loads to choose from!

Daniel
danielreilly0@googlemail.com

I consider myself to be a good poker player. We all do, though, don’t we? While the stakes I play are modest, I am usually able to pay my rent and buy some groceries with poker winnings. For someone who only plays on a recreational level (home games), and often for only $10 - $30 at a time, that’s not bad.

But lately, I’ve been wondering how to effectively translate modest earnings into higher ones. The most obvious answer would be to make more final tables. Over the last few months, I spent a good chunk of time trying to build up a serious roll up while playing MTTs online. I turned my $100 into just over $1,000 after a month of playing 3-4 tournaments a day. With an ROI of about 27% over that time, I was making a decent return. However, I was still without a final table other than at a few 90 person sit-n-go’s that I could win with some frequency. It was in the large field tournaments on Poker Stars that I was having trouble running deep, often finishing just a few levels into the money. Someone starting out in tournaments might be happy with steady cashing, but anyone with any experience knows that tournaments are hardly worth cashing in unless you can make some final tables.

The second option would be to stop spending what I win live and online and invest it in my bankroll. In live tournaments, I have been able to win quite often. At various home games and charity tournaments in my town, I’ve been able to chalk up a number of wins and even more cashes. Again, though, I don’t reinvest my money in building a live bankroll or deposit it online.

So it’s decision-making time. If I want to take a serious shot at MTTs and have a chance of moving up past the $5-10 games, I’m going to have to start committing winnings building a larger bankroll. A 27% ROI is fine and dandy, but when you’ve only invested $1200 or so, it isn’t anything to write home about. Maybe I won’t be able turn the same ROI with higher buy-ins, the competition isn’t going to get any easier. I guess it’s time to find out.
Is anyone else thinking about making a more serious commitment to the game? Have you recently taken the plunge? I’d love to hear about it. Email me at clickraise@gmail.com

-Ben

This is a something I wrote because I get irritated by the online poker isn’t illegal argument. It’s mostly a rant, but when 60 Minutes ran the UltimateBet Scandal story people all over the forums were going crazy because online poker was called illegal. With Greg Raymer recently appearing on Fox Business News the argument has surfaced again. It seems that it’s the majority in the poker community that think online poker is legal, and feel the need to correct you if you don’t.

60 Minutes Ultimate Bet Scandal story

Greg Raymer on Fox Business News

Online poker is illegal. As far as anyone actually getting in trouble for playing, it hasn’t happened, yet. A minute fraction of a percentage of people involved will ever be prosecuted for anything, but online poker is illegal. I wish it wasn’t and am all for it becoming legal ( I’m also not as affected in Canada), but until it happens, even though it is in a grey area, it is not legal. Listen to any UIGEA discussion and someone has to bring up the point that online poker isn’t illegal. You can make a strong argument for the legality, but if you are speaking to a regular person, who cares. The online poker isn’t illegal argument is one of the most ridiculous arguments you can use if you consider that as a whole, the entire UIGEA fight is all about making online poker not illegal.

If you really want to know how legal online poker is, go ask Howard Lederer or Chris Ferguson how much of full tilt poker they own or where the full tilt office’s are located. Anurag Dikshit paid $300 million to the US Justice Department, as a plea for illegal internet gaming. This upset some people in the PPA, believing admission of guilt is most likely hurting their cause. If rumors are true then Calvin Ayre, former BODOG owner, is not allowed to enter the States, and there’s some discussion he may not be allowed in Canada either. Its true the average player really has nothing to worry about. The government wants the big boys, they want who is taking the rake. They can’t get the people who have companies that work around the laws, but I guarantee one plan the companies don’t have is moving the offices to downtown vegas, legally. Why do they advertise the .net sites and not .com?

This is in the PPA’s letter to congress they are asking people to copy and send. “Explicit legalization with sensible regulation will allow the Congress to mandate rigorous safeguards” Explicit legalization? It doesn’t matter what adjective you put in front of legal, it’s still asking for legalization. Greg Raymer, who I felt did a great job on Fox Business news, corrected the interviewers when they brought up poker being illegal. When someone brings up this point, the automatic response is “online poker isn’t illegal.” Next is the technical explanation of why it isn’t illegal, which boils down to nothing more than no one has been prosecuted yet, so it can’t be illegal. Taking the stand that something you are fighting for legalization of, isn’t technically illegal is a very confusing stand to take.

John

This quote just jumped right out at me while reading Doyle Brunson’s blog earlier on. It then dawned on me. This is what separates a good percentage of the really good players from great players. They know the stakes in which they belong and they stay there until they feel ready to move up to the higher limits and take a shot at becoming a regular grinder at those levels. These players know their own skill level and can pick the games they play in accordingly. Something I think that I and many other poker players fail in doing before sitting down at a game, yet it is pivotal to any poker players success at the table that he can beat any game that he sits down at.

This is one of the things that I, myself need to work on fixing if I am going to improve my game. I am going to need to use a couple of valuable, yet mostly overlooked tools to help me increase my profit margins every time I sit down. First one is something that I have been threatening to do for around 2 or three years now; Take a notebook to the table and simply write down everything that you see of importance for evaluation after the game or on Dinner breaks. This information you can then use against your opponents when you have it time stamped in your brain after leaving the table to study it. As I said before it’s simple, yet effective. Another thing that I have just recently found in the past few weeks is exclusively for online cash game play though it is an incredibly powerful tool to help you find out more about you opponents or perspective opponents at the table at any given time. It is called pokertableratings.com and it is like the sharkscope of cash game play. I know this does sound like a big huge plug for the site but it is really an awesome website and it is not very widely used yet so it is good to have it on your side and become accustomed to it before anyone else starts to use it.

This week I haven’t been doing much at all; just chilling, posting on forums writing and I recorded a podcast last Monday for Suited-Aces. Feels like I spend my life on my laptop and I think It’s taking its toll on the machine. The hard drive is screaming at me to stop working it so hard, might need to replace that in the next month or so before it breaks down into pieces in front of me. When you start backing stuff up on to memory sticks, which is when you know it could frazzle any minute.

Hopefully I’m going to get back into poker in the next few weeks so I don’t need to oil my brain before playing next time. Feels like an age since I have played but I am feeling confident that this time I will actually stick to a game that I can beat and start showing some results that actually reflect on my knowledge and don’t show how much of a donk I am once again.

We’ll see what happens anyway. Hopefully its good news next time you hear from me.

D

Since I’m new to 95% of people who read this blog, I thought I would write this and slip it in before I do anything else with the site. A short Introduction post if you will.

Firstly, My name is Daniel Reilly and I am far from an online pro, great, player or someone even remotely notable, Since you are reading this then you must have some sort of interest in what I have to say so here I go.

Guess I should start with my humble beginnings and go from there. Like many others my poker journey started off with the Moneymaker Main Event win, though not directly. I was sitting in a pub discussing with some of my dad’s friends a walk we were going to do the following week and planning out our routes. I was 13 at the time (I know, what the hell was I doing in a pub at 14? I had a “sheltered” upbringing) putting the walking chat aside a new subject arose, Poker. They suggested playing once a week on a Monday night for fun and making it a lad’s night. Everyone agreed to the idea and a rule book emerged for Texas Hold’em, Everyone listened intently while we all (5 or 6 of us) learned the rules of the game. At first everyone was against me coming down and playing with them. That lasted around 2 months, those two months I spent looking up starting hands, odds charts, everything I could to make me “good” at the game. They let me come down and watch for a month or two but I had to leave early. In that time, I started to pick up playing habits, reads, Aggression factor and I really started to get a feel for the game. It was at that point where I found Pacific Poker and Poker.com (now the Merge Network) where I started to frantically play freerolls after school and on weekends to get better at the game. I started cashing in these and posting in forums and slowly became more respected and for the first time in my life I felt as if my opinion mattered in something. Then came my first game on a Monday night, by the time I came down, I was absolutely crushing everyone at the table and was easily the best player there. I’ll never forget that first tournament I won when I turned quad aces to win a total of $0. Still the rush was immense and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Another 5 years of doing that exact same thing and here I am. I have learned many lessons in my time, posted on many forums, flopped many flushes and logged around 1,000,000 hands. I have also made so, so many interesting and great friends. The latest of which is Gary Wise, the person who gave me this opportunity in the first place. All that work has really paid off and things can only get better. Poker really has been good to me. Now here I am, trying to share my learning experience with an audience. Who would have thought? I am hoping that this blog will be as beneficial for many a player, not just myself. Maybe once in a while I might say something entertaining, or educational. Not likely though!

I plan on writing about everything from online play to live amateur events to the WSOPE if I actually make it there this year, so stay tuned. You never know what could be in store when I post a blog. Most of the time neither do I, I just open a word document and write whatever is on my mind

D