The Winter Break

Last month I mentioned how much I was looking forward to Christmas and being a little bit more sociable, spending time with friends and family, because playing so much poker throughout the year can sometimes mean that you neglect the people you care about and like to hang out with. There are a lot of people that I really only get to see once a year so it was great to catch up with them and in particular it was nice that my cousins on my mother's side were around for a few days, some having come from America and New Zealand, and my sister home from Kenya. Even though I live with my girlfriend we still don't get to spend as much relaxed time together as I'd like so the break did us good and we also spent New Year's Eve in Dublin with a lot of my closest friends and the whole festive period was a much needed boost.

As far as poker goes, the three weeks leading up to Christmas were probably the best that I've had online all year, playing mostly Heads Up Pot Limit Omaha (HUPLO). I had a blip in a couple of days between Christmas and New Year's as I was playing while half asleep and mildly hungover, which is a shame as it had been such a strong month until then, and I have been so disciplined for the most part about avoiding playing while tired or not fully focussed. Ah well, lesson learned once again. January has been break even so far but I have plenty of cause for optimism for 2011, with tackling PLO in a real way top of the list. My PLO experience is limited at best, and I have really been getting by with my experience of Heads Up poker alone so far. It always feel good to be pushing yourself, learning new variants of poker and expanding your repertoire, and the general standard of play in PLO is so far behind No Limit Holdem that you can be profitable while you learn. I hope to have a review of Phil Galfond and whitelime's Deucescracked HUPLO video series done for Black Belt by the end of the month, so watch this space.

I haven't been playing live over the last month so I am itching to get back playing at both the European Deepstacks Championships in Dublin, followed by UKIPT Nottingham in February. That is not to say that there hasn't been lots going on in the poker world with the PCA in the Bahamas, Aussie Millions in Melbourne, and the upcoming EPT Deauville all in January. Best of luck to everyone I know playing at the EPT and in Oz, particularly Sam Razavi, Adam Stoneham, Chufty and Neil.

Max Silver's lucky run continued at the PCA as he had a piece of eventual winner Galen Hall, turning a couple of hundred dollars into $50k for the umpteenth time this year. I'd like Max to know that he owes me €1 as I have decided to sign away 2.5% of my soul to him for a nominal fee in the hope of a better life and eternal salvation.

As we are recently in to the new year and self improvement and resolutions are common themes, I'm happy to report that I have been able to do a weekly skype conference call with Kevin and Jamie so far which as been informative as well as entertaining. We've been talking about making more of an effort to work together to improve our game for a little while now so I'm pleased that we've actually followed through on it for once. We're just doing some hand history review and keeping up to date with how we're each faring, but it's definitely a worthwhile exercise. Three is a good number to do these, I think, it would be too easy to get lazy about it if there were only two of you, and if you have too many then it can be difficult to avoid talking over one another. I'd like to keep that going, and to be fair to the two boys, they're not as thick as they look.