BANKSOIR'S BLOG

March 10th - 'Ipoker troubles, but the game must go on...'

For the last few weeks I have really been struggling with i-pokers ‘cannot find server' message, leading me to have a few days away from there and in honesty a little less poker in general. I did go to the Carling Cup Final as a v.i.p. guest of Ladbrokes (thanks Nigel) and enjoyed a great day out and of course the correct result football wise! I met Darren (TOOT at Ladbrokes) at his Aunties house on the outskirts of London, she took us to the tube then picked us up afterwards leaving me a nice easy drive home with little traffic - Once again a reminder of what a great community the poker world really has!

I have played a little on Ladbrokes including 2 wsop daily finals for a friend, giving me 2 bubbles but a nice $850 to ease the pain. I have deleted aol from both laptops, done system restores but alas, still no cure to the i-poker nightmare - if anyone has any tips to cure it then please let me know, otherwise it's Ladbrokes for now.

I spent one night watching high stakes cash play on full tilt for maybe 4 or 5 hours, and watched Gus lose maybe 300k, now I'm not one to question his play but it begs the question can tournament players play cash and vice versa? The games are so different but I fully intend to have some cash mentoring as I know that to cover costs of high mtt by ins I need to be a better cash player for sure, and although I have had sessions on the cash tables it's fair to say that I have never given it a real good go, with aproper structure in place.

SPS is now open for business and I am having a few sessions with new members this week - hopefully they will post their feelings about how they found it so keep an eye out for those - I know there are some cracking promotions coming up through the forum so again keep your eyes peeled!

Good luck at the tables this week, more soon!

Neil ‘banksoir' Banks

February 25th - 'almost no internet poker for a week - what a refreshing change....'

I was in Newcastle for the NPF team challenge at Newcastle Grosvenor casino, we arrived Friday evening just in time to play a little warm up tournament for £25 buy in and 4000 chips, this lasted me 1 hour lol as i was quite gung ho, leading me to the cash tables.

The only cash table going was 25p/50p (LOL Yes that's right) with £50 maximum sit down - hey ho lets go for it, all was going swimmingly until fellow pro and sps mentor Jon 'hamsterboy' Huckle decided to sit down along with his bottle of Red wine hic!

His first bet - all in pre flop - shame his 85 didn't hold up LoooooooooooL, but after a marathon 5 hours I was £500 up - I then made a comment to my friend also sat at the table that I was knackered and I needed some sleep - I was right 1/2 hr later and my profit was halved, time to go to bed via the local kebab shop (or Alsation I'm sure).

Up nice and early (8.30am) after 4hrs sleep and a brisk walk through the toon then over to the casino for the team challenge.  10 teams, 200 players and a decent 7k start stack with a 45 minute clock.  Ran KT into KJ on a 4 way limped pot on a KKA flop - quite sick, this halved my stack so I went on the rampage with mega aggressive play and managed to get on FT with a monster stack and for sure the chip leader.

Wasn't to be as I ran AQ into AA and AQ int o JJ for 8th place finish - but the 2 teams we had in, finished 1st and 2nd, and we also got 4 members on ft including the winner and the runner up so overall  an excellent weekend of fun, drink and live poker!

I'm playing the 50k guaranteed tonight on Mansion - I'll kepp you posted as to whether the break has done me good or not!

Really enjoyed the weekend and reminded me that Poker really can me a fun game and not the constant mind pressure and stress.  I recommend a little break to everyone now and again!

gl at the tables all

Banksy.

February 17th - ‘Woe is me'

The last 3 or 4 days have simply been unbelieveable - culminating in my 99 losing all in pre flop to 99 in last nights dreamteam weekly deepstack event on Grandslam Poker. It's really strange how much of this game is played in the mind - Last night a 3 way limped pot to me with KK and I raise it up (way to much probably) and obviously run into AA of the 3rd limper who said he knew I wouldn't be able to resist a raise with that many limpers ‘LOL'....... A worthy well played to ‘LickMyPineapples' aka ‘Marky147' on yet another FT in that event, we are sat 4th in the leaderboard so should have a nice stack for the live event on march 21st!

Watching your laptop screen and waiting for the 2 outer to hit against you is simply bad karma but the last few days have seen me doing just that - Bizarre really if you consider that I had another good result on the new Ladbrokes site with 4th in the 10k added $50 freezeout for $2120, I had them all in 2 times when ahead but both times was outdrawn, however another good cash!

Unfortunately what has followed after that has been the biggest swing in sickness that i can remember in a long long time - A fall out with _Theah_ (Andreas Hoiveld_ resident Laddies pro and ept winner) during the 150k guaranteed on ladbrokes, I caught him floating a dead flop to him in pos, knew he was at it and shoved him all in with 3rd pair, some may say bad play but I genuinley thought I was ahead but obviously no good v q 10 on a j 7 5 flop LOL! Turn K, river 9 sik scandi muffer!

I really felt tilted by his chat after the hand, and even managed to get myself a chat ban, then I upset someone on another forum, well played Banksy! - It just reminded me how fickle a game Poker is, a good cash, Vegas banked, a winning start to the year and still me moaning. Not played poker tonight instead played Tiger Woods golf on the kids Wii (I won obviously), I'm going to watch the Secret again tonight and try to get back some of my positive thinking!

See you all at the tables soon and good luck

Neil ‘banksoir' Banks

February 1st - Vegas!

Last year I qualified for Vegas and a few WSOP events through OnGame and had a great time but there were no welcome parties, nobody looking after you etc and it all felt a bit cheap if I'm totally honest, so this year I decided to try to qualify with Ladbrokes (anyone who has been on a Ladbrokes trip will vouch for just how good their hospitality is) - and I did a deal with my good friend John Hughes (mickjagger1) that we would both play the satts and whoever qualified first would take the other one as their guest, giving us a double chance to get to Vegas on the cheap!

I played a $6 satt to the daily final, won it and then won the daily final the day after, so that was me into the $500 + $50 weekly final, Jagger played the daily final the next day and also qualified (Result!), so both in the weekly final and it represented a great opportunity.

To cut a long story short, there were about 45 entries, 6th paid $740, 5th $1050 and 4th $1500, with the top 3 all qualifying. We both made it to the last 6 so just needed one of us in - wasn't a problem though because we both qualified - with 4 left a maniac had 65k and was big chip leader with the other 3 of us on 20k each -the Chip leader bubbled in 4th after getting too eager to finish us off, it was a deepstack and lots of play was left on the final table and I think he got too anxious in the end.

So already qualified for Vegas and a winning month banked, I'm really looking forward to the opportunity of working closely with players in mentor sessions and really hope that I can add some real value to someone's game. Let's hope that February continues to bring some nice wins!

GL at the tables all and see you very soon!

‘Banksy'

January - going well...

Hi all, Let's start by wishing everyone at SPS all the best for the future, it's great to see many familiar names already registered to the site, and many well known and hugely successful players involved on the Mentoring side. It really is a great opportunity to use the experience of these guys to help put more money in your pockets!

I guess I need to start by covering a little of last year before going into Januarys results! - Last year I had a ROI of 73% on OnGame poker, the switch over from mansion to the i-poker skin in September was a real transitional period for me, and to be truthful one that I still haven't got to grips with yet.

I hear so many players saying that i-poker is a ‘crapshoot site', ‘all the players are fish', ‘they never fold' and numerous other stories of woe. What they don't say is what amazing value they offer and the choice of mtt's is fantastic. Any time during day or night there are always some great guaranteed tournaments and the 35k guaranteed for $10 plus rebuys is great fun, it can often pay $8k plus for first place.

Surely for the reasons mentioned above I need to persist with i-poker and towards the close of 2008 I managed to pick up a few wins on there. Live in 2009 was a great success, although I never played that many tournaments, I won a fair bit. Final Table in the Caesars Palace deep stack (chopped for $19k), and the $200 at dtd were probably the highlights. I must make sure that I play GUKPT this year (note to self).

This year started in a very much - win some/lose some mode on Mansion and I managed to finish the Month off at ($41) lol - However much better news is that on Ladbrokes I have had an excellent run. I managed to win The 3k gteed, the 7k gteed ,the lunchtime killer mtt (which I loved btw, everyone should play these!) and also the $250 freezeout and several other final tables for a very nice pay day.

Ladbrokes has always been my own favourite site to play, but over the last 18 months or so I have found myself wandering elsewhere to find better value, higher buy in mtt's and much more choice - the change over in networks for them is going to be interesting to see what developments they make to the site. They have promised to have their own ‘Ladbrokes' specials so let's see what develops.