My problem has been the sheer number of tables I have been playing, up to 12 at once. For some reason I have become obsessed with logging a ton of volume and my game is suffering for it and suffering badly. I am playing so robotic that even a semi-trained chimp would be able to sit down and not lose any money to me!

I used to pride myself on being able to take pots away on the turn or river as I had been watching a villain's betting patterns, or making hero calls knowing I was ahead but over the past week I have been continuation betting far too much, getting married to overpairs and simply not paying any attention to my opponents. Everyone knows volume is the key to success as it helps overcome variance quicker but if you concentrate purely on quantity and not quality then you are going to be a loser at poker.

It was the late David 'Chip' Reese (more...) who once stated that his "A-game" was not much better than anybody else's but his B and C games were far superior. In other words, when he was playing his best poker he was no better than his opponents (or did not have a massive edge) but when he was playing poorly he lost less money that those around him in the same situation.

I have never had a massive losing session as I always somehow salvage things but something seems missing right now. I am losing too much money when I should be saving bets and not extracting enough value when I have hands, as I am not paying attention. Over the past week, I have played around 10,000 and broke even practically to the cent when if I had played this much usually, I would be in front by at least $100-$200 at NL10. I would not be retiring on $100 but at these stakes, that is a massive amount of money.

So what am I going to do to change? Well, I promised myself I will never set another challenge apart from not challenging myself so that is out of the question! I am going to play no more than four short-handed tables of NL10 so that I can concentrate on playing positional poker. I am also going to make sure I have decent notes on the tricky or fishy opponents I face. In addition, I am going to post on this blog at least three hands per week that gave me trouble or tested me so that I can see if my thought process was wrong and get you, the reader's point of view.

My databases have been reset and my notes wiped out so today is a fresh start to August. No goals based on number of hands or money won, just to bring my A-game to the table and lose less when I do not.

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Being on limited time, I am going to have to go back to playing multiple tables (more...) so I can still log a decent amount of volume within the time I will have. With this in mind, I got some practice in yesterday and really grinded out some volume!

I played a total of 3,646 hands of full ring NL10! Yes, over 3.5k hands in a session! It is probably the most I have played for a long time and I was surprised how easy it was to 10-15 table.

My only gripe was that I only made $3.13, or $0.48/hr, which made the session a total waste of time! At one point, I was almost three buy-ins up, then crashed back down to almost a buy-in down and then back up to log a tiny profit!

During my session, I managed to get stacked no fewer than five times! Everything I did went wrong! My tables were full of short-stackers, which put me off my normal game but each time I lost a pot it was to one of the full stacks and when I had big hands I was against people sat with $2.50! I had Kings into Aces twice, Kings lose to A6 on a 665 board, AK lose to AA on a King-high board, trip Aces to a full house and three sets lose to rivered straights!

Overall, I am happy with how I played. I ran at 19/11/3 over my sample size and my positional stats look pretty good too, although I seem to have played too many hands from the SB.

Only 66% of my sets have won at showdown and I am over four buy-ins down when I have shown down two pairs. Maybe I am going too far with these hands? I will have to go through my hand histories with a fine toothed comb.

One thing that stands out is the sheer number of people sat there just waiting for AA-QQ or AK. I downloaded a free trial of Poker Tracker 3 so I have a load of stats on my opponents. One guy/gal has played 1,808 hands with me and has only played 6% of those! WTF! Thing is, this rock is two buy-ins up! It is just not right!

Anyway, balls to the other players, I am sticking to my game. I would love to log at least 25k hands this month and then I can look for any leaks in my game and plug them. I have a little free time this afternoon before I have to write an article for the official WSOPE (more...) site so I might try and fire off a quick 1,500 hands!

I am sure I will have a moan here in the next couple of days!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

On the poker front things have been progressing very nicely indeed. A couple of months ago I started playing Heads-up SnG (more....) but in true Pud-style, I binned the idea prematurely! The style I was playing was very exploitable to say the least as I was far too tight and I was finding it difficult to be paid off with my hands.

I watched a video of someone playing HU Cash that had been posted on the 2+2 poker forums and it really opened my eyes. Now, HU cash and HUSnG are different beasts but the basics of each are actually quite similar. Before watching the video, I played around 30-35% of my hands but since my mini education, I play between 50-60% and I think I am much harder to read and as a result I am being paid off big time when I have a hand.

Very unlike me, I have managed to play 50, yes 50 HUSnG in four days! At last, I am logging some kind of volume! Monday was not too great, as I won six from the ten games played but Tuesday just went mental! I managed to win 16 from my 21 games, including a streak of eight wins on the spin, followed by another seven wins in a row!

Wednesday was poor as I only won four from nine played but once again, I turned it around yesterday and won seven from ten including another streak of five straight wins! I am no heads-up specialist but I am really enjoying the game now I have loosened up and the recent results seem to be reflecting my change in playing style.

The above results have made me close to 13 buy-ins, which I am obviously delighted about. Fifty games is a small sample size and I have ridden my luck on more than one occasion but I have started to wonder if I could indeed be a heads-up player. If my current form continues, I will be moving up stakes within a week and then by the end of the month I should have the same bankroll as before I had to withdraw due to computer problems. If I get to this point then I will really have to give some thought into restarting my MTT challenge (more...) that is currently paused as it honestly is bothering me that I have not been able to complete it.

Saying that though, if I can show a good profit in the next month by playing a decent amount of the HUSnG it might be more profitable to just buy out of the prop bets and continue to play these, especially as any profits are going to be very handy in the coming months!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

My belly has grown too and compliments my little man-boobs (more...) quite nicely. I am not painting a great image am I? Do not get me wrong, I am not some obese, chain-smoking drunk but currently I am out of shape physically and that obviously takes its toll mentally too.

I have never been one to spend hours at the gym but I have always been fit even if I have not had the six-pack to prove it. A couple of years ago I even passed the fitness test to join West Yorkshire Police and used to make sure I did at least a couple of half hour jogs per week but now the only exercise I get is walking to and from the shops and entertaining the Mrs! LOL!

This is my plan of action. Firstly, I am going to quit the evil tobacco. Mrs P is also stopping smoking too so it should be easier than going alone. We have planned to start the cold turkey towards the end of this week, probably on August 1, as it is as good a time as any.

There will be no more drinking during the week unless it is a special occasion. If I feel like a beer, I can only have one at the weekend and I am not going to have a drink just because I can, if you get what I mean. This will start from today.

Fast food is also going to be cut out, as too many passing visits to KFC or McDonalds are adding inches and pounds to my belly etc. Not to mention they are a bloody rip off for what they are! I think cutting down on the drinking will help this too as after a few shandy's it is almost customary to have some sort of curry or kebab!

Finally, once my lungs have recovered a few pounds have been shed, I either am going to start jogging again or at least go swimming a couple of times a week. When I was younger, I was a keen swimmer and used to do at least a mile a day, every day and felt great for it.

I think by making some lifestyle changes my mental sharpness will return. Over the past few months, my game seems to have hit a wall and my concentration levels are miniscule where as before I could easily log 3-5 hour sessions if I had the time. Now I am lucky if I can stay focussed for just an hour. After all, they do say a healthy body leads to a healthy mind do they not?

Poker-wise there has been nothing really of note to report. I have taken the $210 donated bankroll and turned it into $260 by playing my bread and butter 6-max cash games. I am a bit angry with myself as I took it up to almost $300 but started playing Pot Limit Omaha (more...) 25 and played terribly and lost 1.5 buy-ins quickly. Again, this is down to me having a lack of focus, stemming from me being unfit.

Sorry this was not much of a poker related post but I wanted to let you know my plans for the next few months away from the tables because at the end of the day we all have normal lives when we are not playing! Something pokery will be up during the week, I promise!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

So my withdrawal from another site came through and I deposited on Betfair with no problems and promptly sat at two NL10 6max games. The first thing that struck me is how quick the games are now. I think we were playing around 70-80 hands and hour which is a big improvement from the last time I played anything on here.

I also like how I can change the colours of the felt for different games so I know at a glance if I am in an MTT, SnG or ring game. Very handy for me as I like to play cash games and have an MTT running too.

Being able to centre the table view is convenient too, especially to someone like me who plays multiple tables at once, as you always know where you are placed on the screen. All the little things add up.

Oh and the standard of play is horrific! I do not think I saw anybody put in a raise other than all-in or a min-raise and they fold as soon as any draws come in. The players seemed very transparent, passive and calling stations that should make it very profitable if I adjust correctly.

One major gripe I have, and one I have forwarded to the support team is the fact you cannot reload during or at the end of a hand, you have to wait until the start of a new hand to do so then it reloads at the end of that one. This may seem trivial to some but I always like to be at least 100BB deep and I reload as soon as my stack is under that. It is not a problem if you have just paid the blinds as I will be sat with $9.85 but if I give up my hand after some action I could be sat with $6 and the next hand get AA and I cannot get the full value from my hand. Annoying.

Another thing is I think support should have flipped my boomswitch with me writing here! Within five hands, I flopped a set of twos and got my stack in against a shorty and he rivered a flush! I also played a $5.50 $800 guaranteed turbo with 198 runners. Third hand in I get Queens and raise it up from the SB. Flop comes T98r I c-bet and the villain calls. Turn is a three and I should check but fire again and once more villain flat calls. River is a seven, I give up and check, and villain checks behind with Th6h for a rivered straight! LMFAO! That put me on 735 chips and I never recovered, jamming Ac4c into AK and KK to bust in 135th. Great start!

Overall, I ended around a BI down from 200 hands but not to worry. I will not be keeping overly accurate records until the start of August as I want to get used to the software and players properly and I need to learn to multi-table without any software helping me. I forgot to mention, the in-game sounds are terrible. I wonder if I can replace the files with sounds from another site, does anyone know if that is possible?

So far so good. The positives far outweigh the negatives and I am looking forward to my Betfair career, LOL! If you see YorkyPuds at the table say hi, just do not take my chips or suck out on me or I will slag you off on here!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Mrs P's birthday went off with a slight hitch when we could not go to the casino, as planned, due to her not having any valid identification! Even if she did have proper ID we would not have gone anyway because Step Pud has been poorly and we spent most of Saturday afternoon at the hospital after he developed a rash all over his body and refused to eat or sleep! It seems he has recovered now and is back to being the naughty little sod we all know and love!

The Pud Jr debacle seems to have gone back to square one, with his mother refusing to go to her part of the mediation sessions. I am not going to discuss much about it here as it now looks like I will have to go to court in order to see my son and anything I write could be misinterpreted and used against me.

I suppose I had better jot something down about poker, seeing that this is a poker blog! I have been reading dozens of blogs where the owners have been to Las Vegas for the WSOP and I am insanely jealous of the fun they have all had and the excitement of taking part in a major tournament.

With that in mind, I have decided to dedicate some time in trying to qualify for the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event on September 27, 2008.

Betfair have some WSOPE satellites that start at just $7.70 that guarantee two seats to the $55 level two tournaments, which in turn feed into a $550 final that guarantees two WSOPE packages valued at $24,000.

All I have to do is finish in the top two of a $7.70 game, then the top three of the $55 tournament and finally, in the top two of the $550 satellite. Easy if you say it fast! It should be fun and frustrating trying anyway!

I will finish with two pieces of good news that are entirely different from each other.

Firstly, a massive congratulations to Mary Martin, who won the APAT Team Championship in Blackpool whilst representing Raise The River. For her efforts, she wins £1,250, a gold medal, and a GUPKT package. The icing on the cake was her betting $5 each-way on herself to win at odds of 100/1! The team as a whole gained enough points to win £1,500 for the forum! Brilliant going people, I will be there next year!

Finally, another congratulations, this time to my little sister. She is currently on holiday in Egypt and her boyfriend has asked her to marry him and she has accepted! Looks like Mrs P will have to buy a hat and I will gain a Pud-in-law!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Did you notice how I said it "could" and not it was? Well disaster struck right on the bubble. With 21 left and 18 places paying, I call a min raise with a pair of sixes and three of us see a beautiful flop of Ad8s6d. Two of us end up getting all our money in and I'm delighted to see villains Ah8s until of course another Ace peels off on the turn giving him a higher boat. That was for the chip lead and stung a little.

My luck continued in my final game of the evening when I made a squeeze play with AhQh only to find someone was slow playing Rockets and I could not suck out so busted in 27th, again with 18 places paying out.

With my bankroll depleted I decided that I needed a form of poker with a lower variance so I have made the switch back to HUSnG's. I have always done ok in these and enjoy them more than any other form of poker for some reason, maybe I am weird?

Anyway, I have played 20 of them in the past couple of days and lost five buy-ins through a mixture of ill-timed bluffs against fishes who cannot fold Ace-high and hands like my Kings all-in preflop against the mighty Qs3s amongst others. Twenty games is a meaningless sample size and I am sure I will be back in the black by the end of today, mainly because the players I am playing against are so poor it is laughable!

Although there are no crazy bets involved, unlike Sorel Mizzi, I am officially on a mini diet. Over the past month or so I have slowly gained a few pounds due to drinking too much beer during the week, snacking late in the evening and rediscovering my love for sandwiches of Spam, beans and brown sauce! I am probably the least vain person in the world but I do need to shed about half a stone I reckon so will be cutting my intake of various foods and no doubt will be a right miserable sod for it!

I might be playing some live poker at the weekend as it is Mrs P's birthday on Friday and she's wanted to go to the casino for a while so we have pencilled in meeting up with my mate Cadmunkey and his wife for a few beers and some poker.

Finally, a big shout out to Andrew Teng, aka Tufat23, who had a brilliant run in the WSOP Main Event, finishing 126/6844 for a $41,816 payout. It would have been nice to see him go even deeper and he would have done had it not being for some serious bad luck. He ended up all in with AK vs KK, spiked an Ace on the flop but the case King fell on the turn to send him to the rail! Ouch!

Well, that is all for now. As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

So I had to say goodbye to my bankroll so that I could continue with my "normal" life which was a bit of a downer, especially as I had won this bankroll on the back of being staked so it was my hard-earned money. To my surprise though, the guys at Raise The River all had a whip round and I have somehow ended up with a $210 bankroll again! LOL! It is an absolutely brilliant community on there with everyone willing to help each other out in times of need.

During my enforced break I have mainly just chilled out and messed about on the Playstation. I am a total sucker for war games and managed to complete Call of Duty 2 which I have had for ages but never really played. I've now moved on to Call of Duty 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3, I am a 27 year old child! I have also had time to reflect on poker and my playing in particular.

Once again I have become focussed on the money aspect of the game, chasing bonuses and loyalty deals instead of sitting down and enjoying myself, which is ultimately what it is all about. It is entertainment after all. I cannot remember the last time I sat down at a table and really felt comfortable in my own play and observing my opponents due to becoming so wrapped up in the short-term results rather than just making plays that, over time, will be profitable mathematically.

As my bankroll has been severely depleted I have had to pause my $5k in 200 days challenge, mainly because I just do not have one required to play the tournaments that I was playing before disaster struck. The plan for the next month is to basically rebuild my bankroll, pay the people who bailed me out back (although none have said they want it back) and first and foremost, start to enjoy the game again.

I will only be playing when I want to and not just because I have an hour or two spare and playing poker is what I usually do in my spare time. I'm also going to make myself take detailed notes on players and their betting patterns because when my laptop died it took with it my tracking software and my HUD so I will literally be playing blind again like I was before I discovered this software. Long term this is actually better for me as it will develop skills but I really need to make enough cash to buy another tracking program just so I can analyse my game. Once this has been purchased I should be able to start making some real money as my new system, once my 2GB RAM turns up tomorrow, can support nine tables without overlap where the laptop could only handle four. Kerching!

Well that is all for now, as always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

I have since had time to cool down and more importantly, review hand histories, read some articles online and in magazines and I am ready to hit the tables once again. It has been agreed with the people involved in the betting that I can start my challenge afresh from the $5,000 mark but now I only have 180 days in which to do it. The reason for cutting my time limit is that the average profit per day is almost identical to what it was before I took a break.

I know that I can win this challenge and win it comfortably if I put in the volume that I am now capable of. My mindset is very different from what it was just a couple of days ago and I am ready to show the world of the micro-stakes tournament players what I am actually capable of! It will be some mean feat if I manage it, especially as my bankroll is only around £200 so big games are out of the question until I have cashed in a few games and hopefully taken a couple of them down.

On the issue of tournaments, I have been proposition with an attractive offer from a friend of mine. The basics are that once a week he will stake me for the Daily $5k on Betfair, which kicks off daily at 19:45 UK time and commands a $55 entry fee. Details of percentages etc. are private but I see this as a great opportunity to flex my muscles with some better players with zero risk on my part, well the risk of losing a mate from being a donkey maybe! The tournament is amazing value with 15-minute blinds and a 5k starting stack and usually has 80-100 runners paying around $1,500 for 1st. Hopefully it'll become a profitable deal for us both!

There is not much else to report at present. I managed to see Pud Jr for a couple of hours on Saturday, which was brilliant! We had a pillow fight, playing his Nintendo DS and I managed to get him past a level he was stuck on so I was the hero of the hour! I have just arrived home from a mediation session regarding better access to him so hopefully things will be sorted out sooner rather than later. Finally, I am still having some articles published on the Betfair WSOPE site although two seem to have been credited to others but I am assured this will be changed in a day or two!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Well, I started appallingly and did not cash in a further 19 games, taking the run to 32 tournaments without being paid. Obviously, this started to affect my confidence but a 4th place from 90 runners restored my faith a little before variance kicked me square in the nuts once more.

Despite cashing a further six times, including an outright win, I am $101.60 down. Since the start of the challenge, I have played 62 tournaments and have exited 49 of them being at least a 70% favourite.

In this time, I have had Aces 14 times and they have been beaten on 11 occasions, usually at key stages of the tournament. I had one hand last night when I hit a final table where a short stack shoved UTG and I re-raised to isolate knowing I was ahead with AdQd. By the time the river was dealt, he had a straight with A8o! Stuff like that is really getting to me. Even Mrs P keeps telling me how unlucky I have been as she watched me a few times thinking I was a load of rubbish and just making the beats up!

I suppose that is the nature of tournament poker, just finishing a couple of places higher makes a huge difference to your ROI. I have bubbled six times too which has not helped but I am very aggressive on the money bubble because the times you go extra deep with the chips you earn make up for the time you bust out before being paid, apparently!

In case you are interested, my figures are as follows:

Tournaments played = 62

Total buy-ins = $245.90

Total winnings = $144.20

Final tables = 5

Wins = 1

ITM = 11.3%

ROI = -41.3%

Nothing to write home about in those stats but I do have another 190 days to go.

Finally, I have been selected to play in a freeroll on Betfair on Saturday night where the winner gets a seat into the $550 WSOPE qualifier and finishing 2-30th means I get a share of $500. According to the woman on the phone, 150 were entered last week but only 60 showed, currently there are 160 entered so hopefully I can take this baby down and have a chance at the WSOPE for free!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

Despite being in the middle of my second worse run ever (I have gone 15 without cash before), I am still confident I will win each time I play. I searched one of the online tracking databases and found that 13 games is nothing when it comes to cash-less runs. A friend of mine who plays MTT's semi-professionally has gone a massive 52 games without cashing and even the great Annette Obrestad has gone 50 games without hitting the money. I hope I do not have to wait another 27 games before I get that winning feeling again!

One thing this bad streak has taught me is how important it is to have a big enough bankroll to sustain a string of defeats. In the past I have played with a small bankroll and when a bad spell hit me I played scared or had to drop down in stakes until the bad run was over. At least now I can stay at the same limits as I am used to, knowing that a deep final table finish will dig me out of the hole I am currently in.

I will leave you with this hand, which sums up how poker is going right now. Despite only being a 55/45 favourite against his hand when the money went in, he has to hit the perfect card on the river to rub it in!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

My initial reaction was panic but his grandma assured me he was fine and things had been caught quickly so there should be no lasting damage per se. I don't know if it was the shock or what it was but I ended up falling down the stairs and only came to a halt when I cracked my head into the wall at the bottom and almost knocked myself clean out! LOL!

Anyway, they said I could go and see him in hospital, which obviously I did. I was nervous to be honest as I had not seen him for four months and with all the bad-mouthing in the solicitors' letters and texts between all the parties involved, I thought it might be awkward. Thankfully, there was not much of an atmosphere as everyone obviously had Pud Jr's health and interests at heart

I was delighted when the doctor asked who I was and Pud Jr stated "That's my daddy" then asked if I knew how to play Kerplunk and sat me down to play with him. I was worried he would be shy with me but he was nothing of the sort! His mum, mum's boyfriend and uncle left me with Pud Jr to play and it was brilliant to sit putting stickers in his magazine, play his game, have tickle fights and watch cartoons with him. He even gave me a big cuddle and kiss before I had to leave. I loved it!

I must say his mum is doing a great job and one I do not envy her for. As he now has Type 1 diabetes so is insulin dependant she has to draw blood from him then inject the poor little sod, which he obviously hates. I was hard listening to him crying his eyes out because he was scared but she has stuck to her guns and makes him have it. She even let Pud Jr take some blood from her and inject her with an empty needle to show it was all ok. No matter what my feelings towards her, she has gone the extra mile for him for sure and I am thankful for that.

With all the emotions of the Pud Jr situation I have not been in the right mind for anything else if I am honest. I hope that I will be able to see him again soon as I think we both enjoyed it. Until then I will be making up for lost time on the MTT front and I will be sure to report any progress I make.

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

I want to specialise in tournament poker. I want to travel. I want to use poker to provide me with a healthy income. I want to become the best player I possibly can. Rather than grind out the cash games which I play purely for money and not necessarily for enjoyment I am going to play what I want and chase the dreams I have. I want to succeed.

With that in mind I shuffled my bankroll around and entered a total of five tournaments last night, with the thinking that I will either win big or go home. Tournaments are unique in that you can make a big payout for a small investment and if you keep making +EV plays and log plenty of volume they can be extremely profitable. Although my total buy-ins only totalled $12.65, as I am playing with a 100 buy-on rule, I had the potential to make over $1k if I managed to go deep in them. All I needed was a bit of luck!

I went deep in one game finishing 13/144 for a small payout of $3.60 but made an awful play in $1 game where I pushed my 9c2c on a board showing three clubs only to run into QcJc and it was an early bath for me, finishing 416/538. Despite me being angry with myself for this poor play I fired up some more MTT's and had another good run and if it wasn't for the biggest cooler I have ever been part of I would have gone deeper than 79/232. I raised in MP with AdQd and was called by the other big stack on the button. Flop comes KAQ and I lead for 2/3 pot and he thinks and raises enough to put me all-in. I tank and make the call and low and behold he has AK and I can't suckout. The AK guy went 2nd in chips so it would have been very nice to win that pot as I'd have sailed to the money as 27 were paid.

I made a good run in a $2.75 game with a huge 2105 entrants but again made a big mistake which resulted in a 718th place finish. I limp with Js9s and three of us see a flop of 9c6s2c. I lead out for almost pot and one limper shoves all-in. Everyone folds to me. I don't think he limps with any nine that I don't beat other than A9 and I don't think he does this with a set so I make the call and he has Ah9h. FFS! Two mistakes for huge pots and they cost me. I did make amends though with my last game of the night where I went 4/180 for a nice little $57.60 payout. I had some good railage from the Raise The River crew who saw me play pretty well but also ride my luck on more than one occasion so I can't complain about not winning.

So there you have it. The Pudding MTT express has started and it should be a very exciting ride! Hopefully I can do an update on Monday where I have made a couple of big scores to brag about! LOL!

Until then take care, let your loved ones know you love them and of course, good of luck at the tables.

I am going to grind out the cash games until the end of the year by which point I hope to have a bankroll of around $4k which would mean averaging a profit of $575 each month until the end of December. At this point I will be nicely bankrolled for most of the MTT's that I want to play but can't due to the risk of going bust and I should be able to start earning some proper wedge! Once I hit this magic $4k mark the MTT's available will be worth my time as the fields are reduced in size and the reward for six hours play is much more lucrative than it would be sifting through 1500 runners for six hours in a $5 game.

Once I have a few $22-$33 games under my belt I want to try and qualify for some of the UK festivals as I read about them all the time in poker magazines and the fields are meant to be horrifically soft, the prizes very good indeed and not one of the events is more than a four hour train ride from where I live. Once I have some experience of playing in some of the £150-£500 MTT's in a live environment than I can start to dream of the WSOP side events. The time scale for any of this happening is within the next three years as I want to get myself a nice present for my 30th birthday, which is a way off and I need to focus getting to the magical $4k mark first.

I am a sod for setting challenges and stopping them but I have been thinking about why I play poker over the last few days (post coming up soon) and I have some ability at this game which I am wasting by not pushing myself to learn and progress. I've played for five years now and I'm still at the micro-stakes despite having a ton of information in my head! I am at a point in my life now where I can dedicate a lot of time to chasing my dreams and chase them I will do!

Mark my words, June 2011 Pud will be in Vegas fulfilling one of his dreams!

That's how I've been running for the past week or so and I'll admit it's got me down a little. I've not let it bother me half as much as I used to do and I'm sure that if I log enough volume the bad spell will pass. Talking of volume I've been following the progress of WCGrinder who has over $40k worth of bets riding on him winning $10k in a single month playing only NL25! The guy must be mental as he's playing 24 tables for 12 hours at a time and has played 137k hands and made $1880 profit in a single week! Another guy logging some volume is my buddy Amatay who reckons he can make $10k profit in a month playing only $33 6max SnG! He was uber confident but I have pointed out to him that one guy who plays these games like they are going out of fashion has made $14k this YEAR so he's going to have his work cut out for sure but I know he's a tight git and won't want to be losing the prop bets he's taken so far! A major shout out is needed for my mate from Raise The River, Kenn121. Kenn is a cool guy who has a crazy style when he plays MTT's and he's been making some serious money this month and is now ranked 7th in the UK at online tournaments! He's going professional for three months starting in June or July and I can't wait to see his results once he doesn't have to do his day job and con concentrate on playing poker!

Sorel Mizzi is also involved in a prop bet but his is about dieting!

I've set some goals for June which will hopefully keep me on track and keep me focussed. This month I managed to build my bankroll from $250 to a high point of $850 and it currently sits at $750. I owe $250 to a mate who got me restarted in the game so I've basically got myself a $500 bankroll to play with which is $25 buy-ins for NL20. I am going to work at my game and drop some tables but I still want to log at least 20k hands and turn $500 profit. Would be nice if I could do that and I'm sure I'll keep you posted on my progress and rant at my inevitable bad beats!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!