Blog | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online - Professional Poker Player

Busy Busy Busy

Yesterday I realized that my last blog was nearly three months ago! So I made a conscious effort today to sit down and write about everything I’ve been up to lately. The last 3 months have actually been non-stop with the release of my book and traveling across three continents to play live and online tournaments.

September was WCOOP on Pokerstars and I decided to go to one of my favourite places in the world, Playa Del Carmen in Mexico. In my opinion the time zone for playing here is the best out there because you get to live as normal a life as possible which really helps for such a long series. On the rare occasion that I was able to take a day off in the series it’s also really nice to have great weather and a beach within 50 metres of our place. Unfortunately for me the WCOOP grind didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I started off strongly by winning the Winamax €300 6 max PLO event for just under €20k but although I had 8 WCOOP cashes none of them were that significant. Particularly disappointing was bubbling both the $10k high roller event and the $5k main as they are two of the biggest online tourneys of the year. All in all though I was happy with how I played which is the main thing.

From Mexico I headed off to London for a month which I was really excited about. I hadn’t been home for a long time so it was great to catch up with family and friends and competing in EPT London is always very compelling. EPT London is my dream tourney to win because my parents and all my friends would be able to watch the final table live and EPT’s are also very prestigious themselves. I ended up making a real run at the main event but ultimately came up short and finished in 38th place. My tables throughout the tournament were incredibly tough and it increased my hunger to win an EPT because it really is the best of the best who play them. During this tournament I ran a competition with the winner getting a free % of myself. It was great that I went deep and the woman who won, Truly Ko, got a sweat at winning a nice sum of money. Unfortunately she had to settle for $200 but hopefully she can spin it up in the poker challenge she set for herself over the coming months. I’m determined to win big for one of my poker fans in the near future and have a huge promotion involving my book which I will mention in my blog next week.

Another reason why I was in London was for my official book launch at the Vic Casino. It was really cool that they supported me and were able to provide us with such a wonderful venue for it. The whole event was a blast and went really smoothly, even my speech! It was awesome to finally get my hands on a real live copy of the book and I felt a great sense of accomplishment with what I had achieved. All those hours putting it together were definitely worth it in the end. It’s crazy to think that I’m a published author now, something I would never have imagined even a year ago. The reviews I have read for the book so far have been great and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people. I really do think it can help your game considerably and I can think of much worse Christmas gifts!

From London I headed off to South Africa for the WPT there and more importantly a holiday in Africa (a continent I had never been to before.) This trip more than lived up to my expectations. Katie and I spent 2 weeks there but the time flew by and even though we packed so much into our trip (safari, shark cage diving, elephant sanctuary and lion parks) there were so many other things that we wanted to do that we didn’t have time for. My two favourite parts of the trip were the short trip to Cape Town we took and a visit to the monkey sanctuary that we hadn’t actually planned for. The monkey sanctuary happened to be right next to the more well known elephant sanctuary and in our rush to make sure we got to the Elephants on time we actually had a spare hour to spend with the monkeys beforehand. The monkeys were incredibly friendly and unlike in most zoos I’ve been to before they had a huge area to live and play in. All of the monkeys seemed incredibly happy and most were bold enough to approach us and hangout. One guy in particular, named Mr T, had no fear at all and for the course of the next hour we became best mates. When it was time for me to leave he even refused to let go and clung to me so much the guide had to practically pull him off my shoulders.

Cape Town was perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever been. I hate to sound cliché but it really did look like a postcard there. While we were in Cape Town we took a tour out to Gansbaii where they have a large population of Great White sharks and cage diving tours. Funnily enough it was almost one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever done because it was out of season for sharks. The first two hours on the boat were spent anxiously searching for sharks to no avail. My mind was starting to drift and become frustrated that I was missing the Kickoff online for nothing. Then out of nowhere we saw a huge great white shark and there wasn’t even time to get nervous as we were jumping right into the shark cage and less than a foot away from the sharks mouth! The diving was a huge buzz and something that I’d highly recommend others to do.

As for the poker in South Africa I ended up playing two live events. The first of which was a $6k high roller event with a small field of 55 entrants after rebuys. I was happy to only be in for 1 bullet and despite nearly bubbling was a huge chipleaer with 4 players left having nearly half of the chips in play. From there things didn’t really go to plan though. I ended up making a bad river call getting 4 to 1 on a call with trips but in reality my opponent always had a flush or straight in this spot. After that things didn’t go my way and I ended up getting third for $37k. All in all it guaranteed me a profitable trip but I really wanted to have the problem of trying to transport their cool trophy home!

The last part of my trip was the WPTUK in Nottingham at the Dusk Till Dawn casino. Simon Trumper and Rob Yong run things at DTD and if you’ve never played there before I urge you to in the near future. They really look after the players and are always setting ambitious guarantees. Without them who knows where UK poker would be right now. As for the main event it was a £3k re-entry and after quickly dusting off my first bullet I managed to double even quicker with my second. Day 1 went really well for me as I finished with a top 10 stack and even managed to sell 10 books to my opponents at the table!

Day 2 was much more of a grind and at one point I even had to fold AA with the Ah on a 234 all heart board. It was a weird situation where I knew I was behind because of the heavy 3 way action in a 4 way pot but there was so much money in the pot that I was almost getting the right price. In the end I decided to fold because I felt it was likely that the two all in opponents both had a flush and being only 10 places till the money it would be ICM suicide to draw at the remaining 4 hearts. Luckily my decision was vindicated when my opponents had KJ and Q8 of hearts. Obviously we should never be results orientated in poker but it definitely helped that the board ended up bricking off!

Day 3 started with 51 players left, 45 of which would cash. There were going to be 6 very disappointed people and obviously I wasn’t trying to be one of them but I figured that I would go into hyper aggressive mode because with a big min cash of £6k and people playing for 3 days and not being in the money yet there would definitely be some scared money about. Things in poker don’t always go to plan though and after I lost a big flip early into the day I found myself being the one sitting out until we made the money! Shortly after the bubble burst I reshoved KQ into AJ and couldn’t get lucky. Another cash and deep run though is good for confidence and I feel like I’m in a great position to make another big live final table at either GUKPT Grand Final or EPT Prague which will be my last two live events of the year.

Lastly, I have an exciting huge promotion coming up which will be open to anyone with a copy of Moorman’s Book of Poker. Check back for my next blog next week where I will share all of the details and don’t forget to buy your copy to be eligible..this will be a prize you don’t want to miss.

Link to buy the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/Moormans-Book-Poker-successful-tournament/dp/1909457396/ref=sr_1_1w

The Power of Thinking Positively in Poker

The power of the mind and positive thinking is something I’ve been trying to focus on more in recent times and I’ve come to the conclusion that positivity in life is strongly linked with success and happiness.

One of the biggest benefits of being positive/optimistic is happiness. Optimistic people believe that negative events are temporary and manageable in that they can change their actions in the future to alter events and stop the same negative events from occurring again, i.e. learning from their mistakes. On the contrary a negative person believes that nothing is their fault and wishes failure on others to aid their jealousy issues.

Now you may ask what does this have to do with poker? In my opinion positivity is essential to being a successful poker player in the long term. No matter how good you are at this game there are going to be times when things aren’t going smoothly and you are in the middle of one of those dreaded downswings. You really learn the most about a poker player and their character not when they are winning and everything is favorable, but when times are tough and they are unsure where next months rent is coming from.

Personally I had to come through my toughest time in poker within the last year. Prior to the WSOP in 2013 I was forced to get out of backing because I had over extended myself, and made a lot of bad decisions along the way. My poker bankroll had taken a big hit and I had to drop down in stakes and concentrate predominantly on online poker until I was in a better situation. I decided once I did get in a better place I would allow myself the luxury of traveling the live circuit once again.

At first I really struggled with this because I was more focused on how much was up top in any given MTT versus just playing every hand as optimally as I could. Previously I had played poker to have fun and travel the world (enjoying the freedom and meeting new people along the way) and now at this point I was playing to make money and I found that I quickly became overly negative. I noticed myself being jealous of players whom I believed I was better than and wrote them off as just getting lucky when they won certain events. I didn’t like the person that I was becoming and decided that it was serious enough that I would talk to someone about it.

Dr Stephen Simpson works with Chris Moorman on positive thinking & attitude playing poker — Stephen Simpson’s website: http://www.drstephensimpson.com

A friend of mine suggested a guy called Stephen Simpson* who is an elite performance coach from the UK and he agreed to have a couple of sessions with me in which we discussed a ton of stuff that I had never told anyone about before. In these sessions we did some basic meditation and breathing exercises and I talked about what I wanted to achieve in life both in and outside of poker. He mentioned that I needed to find ‘the zone’ while playing and if I could do that then good things would happen for me. The key to finding ‘the zone’ was to be solely focused on poker whilst playing but equally important was also to be working on myself as a person outside of poker and to set myself targets consistently. It is worth noting that I went on to win my first ever live major at the WPT just weeks after my final meeting with Stephen.

Creating your own happiness outside of poker will ultimately have a huge effect on your mentality whilst playing. If I’m not happy with myself at a certain point in time (say I’ve not worked out and eaten unhealthily for a period of time) then I will find that one or two losing sessions of poker in a row can start to alter my mindset completely. Whereas if everything in my life is going well outside of poker then I tend to look at poker in a much more objective way in terms of how I played in a particular session rather than my short term results. I’ve come to find that life goals outside of poker really help your game and achievements in poker.

I’ve always been an extremely competitive person, which is key to being a professional poker player, but sometimes it can be a hindrance in this game. At times you can want to win too much which will force you into making mistakes. This happened to me this year at the WSOP. Unfortunately I had some issues with my passport and ended up missing the first 30 events or so. Obviously it was impossible to ignore the WSOP going on because it was all over my twitter and facebook feed.

I ended up watching most of the live streams at home in the UK through the night and when I finally made it to Vegas I felt like I had never been more ready to take home one of those shiny bracelets. Unfortunately this completely backfired because I spent most of the next 3 weeks trying too hard to win the tournament on day 1. I managed just one minimum cash throughout the remainder of the WSOP in the $3k nlh, which lead me to reevaluate what I was doing and helped me learn a very important lesson along the way.

Chris Moorman Playing at the Final Table of World Poker Tour LAPC

Sometimes you can actually be your own worst enemy at the tables, it is important to not get in your own head while playing poker. I have a great personal example of this recently. I was a big chip leader in the LAPC main event with four people left and felt so close to winning the title that I was already thinking about what to say in the winners interview in between hands! That quickly changed though because I became super complacent, which led to me making a few mistakes in huge hands. On top of this I didn’t allow my mind to let those mistakes go and I even ended up misreading my hand in a key spot.

Fortunately for me I went on break at the right time and remembered the important things Stephen had taught me, and just did a little mental reset. After the break ended and with nothing to lose I was able to make a comeback and show that no matter how bad of a situation you are in at the poker table, never give up.

Lastly, an essential part of being a positive person whilst playing poker is to surround yourself with positive people. Lets face it, no one likes listening to bad beats or hard luck stories and if you constantly find yourself having to deal with these whilst grinding it can only impact you negatively. In a live tournament I would much rather hang out with the person on break who I can’t tell how many chips they have by their mood and demeanor than the person who wants to talk about everything that was unlucky and went badly for them in the past two hours. Try to be the former person not the latter when playing and I promise you that you’ll enjoy the game more and likely see better things happening to you as a result.

* Stephen Simpson’s website: http://www.drstephensimpson.com

His book Push at Open Doors available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Push-Open-Doors-mindfulness-ebook/dp/B007KIUS1G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1336055767&sr=1-1

My Own March Madness – Part 2

If you haven’t read the first part of this blog leading up to the WPT final table check that out here.

Coming into the final table I felt great. This was my chance to finally get the big live title that I had narrowly missed out on in the past. I liked my seat draw (on the direct left of the chip leader Michael Rocco) I felt good about the way I was playing and I felt like I had a great read on my opponents. The final table started out really well with me making a few big hands at crucial times and winning a lot of pots without much resistance. With 4 players left I had half the chips in play and could already see the finish line. Of course it’s very rarely smooth sailing all of the way in a poker tournament and I was about to hit one hell of a bump in the road.

Rocco was giving me some trouble with his unconventional style and huge overbets in situations where I had capped my range or shown some weakness. I also misplayed a couple of hands versus him and as a result drifted back into the pack a little bit. I then misread my hand in a big spot versus Glenn Lafaye when I thought I’d made a straight on the river with J3 of hearts on a Q75 hh 46 board where he had check raised the flop and check called the turn. On the river I sized my bet relatively small compared to the pot because I felt like he had a KQ type hand and wouldn’t call a huge bet. He tanked call after around 2 minutes and I proudly went to turn over my J3 hearts for the rivered straight only to look down at J2 hearts and have to muck and pretend I was bluffing. Shortly after that I lost a flip to Patrick Bruel with AK suited v 44 and now I was 4/4 in chips and bang in trouble. In the space of a 60-minute level I had practically destroyed my chances of winning the tournament. I was on tilt and my confidence in my game was at an all time low. Fortunately a break came just at the right time for me and after a chat with my girlfriend and rail to get my frustrations out in the open I was able to find a new lease of life again.

Now that I was 4/4 I felt like I had nothing to lose and the pressure of winning my first major title was completely off. I eliminated Patrick Bruel with AJ v K8 on a J8x flop and was right back in contention. From there we battled in 3-handed play for a while until I had perhaps the biggest sweat of my poker life.

At this point Glenn Lafaye had built a significant chip lead and me and Michael Rocco were very even in chips with me having him slightly covered by a couple of big blinds. Glenn opened the button and Michael shoved all in from the small blind for 20bb. I looked down at tens in the big blind and had a very easy all in shove. In this spot I am well ahead of Rocco’s range and if I could win this pot I would be headsup for the title although Glenn would have close to a 2-1-chip lead over me. To my surprise Glenn snap called all in as well and at this point I thought I was in a world of hurt especially when I saw one of his cards the queen of diamonds. I felt like the speed with which he called I was going to be looking at pocket queens for Glenn and need a miraculous ten to win the pot but to my surprise the other card was only the jack of diamonds! Rocco turned over A9 off and to the flop we went for a huge three way all in three handed on the LAPC final table; this was as big as it gets!

We had to wait for what felt like an eternity for the flop to be dealt. Finally it came down K-Q-J, which kept everyone in the hunt. Glenn would win the tournament if the turn and river bricked out, Michael needed a ten and a brick to cripple me and all but make it to headsup play and I needed an ace or 9 and a brick or a ten and a board pair that wasn’t a queen or jack to make it to heads up play even stacked with Glenn Lafaye. The turn also took an age to deal and all I can remember was a huge brick. About 5 seconds before the dealer dealt the river I felt this strong wave of positivity inside me and I uttered the words to myself “Barry Greenstein” repeatedly and then to my astonishment it came, ace on the river!!! Get in!

I’ve never been one to show emotion at the poker table, really. When you’ve played as much poker as me you try and become as immune as possible to the sick beats and swings you can have in poker. Sure it still hurts when you are 1 card away from winning a big pot only to lose it etc. but I try to keep my emotions in check for the main part. This time however, I lost it a bit. I ran to my friends railing, gave everyone the biggest hug ever and almost jumped into the crowd. I can’t wait to watch it all back on TV when the WPT airs in August because quite frankly it was all a bit of a blur! I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences and moments in poker over the years but this topped every single one of them.

After a short break in proceedings for interviews etc. we began heads up play. With only a slight chip deficit now, momentum well and truly on my side and the deep stacks I’m not going to lie, I really fancied my chances. I just had to be careful that I didn’t see that winning line too soon once again.

Heads up play started out great for me I won the first few small pots and then a medium one to take a significant chip lead. I then played a crucial pot where I limped for the first time heads up with A9 off suit. This turned out to be a very interesting pot and although I would normally raise A9 especially heads up I decided to limp for a couple of reasons.

The first of these reasons is because of the history Glenn and I had from 3 handed play. Twice I had limped blind on blind and he had raised both times. Only once had it got to showdown and Glenn had won a medium sized pot with 54 off suit. I was limping 3 handed at this point blind on blind because Glenn and I both had big stacks and Rocco was short, therefore I didn’t want to get into a huge pot where I ended up busting. I was trying to keep the pots small preflop versus Glenn because I was out of position and I didn’t want to put myself in marginal spots with Rocco being short and likely to be all in very soon. I assumed that Glenn would see this limp as weakness and raise it preflop and represent an ace very strongly if I was fortunate to flop one. Another reason why I didn’t want to raise was because he was three betting a decent percentage of the time but my hand wasn’t good enough to play for stacks preflop and I didn’t really want to call a 3 bet in position with it and commit to calling down with ace high on a bunch of boards. Also, 4 bet folding seemed like a bad option for me because I didn’t want to give Glenn the momentum of winning a big pot if he was to go all in.

As expected Glenn raised my 150,000 limp to 600k and I made the call. The flop came down K85 rainbow and he continued for 450k. I called figuring I had the best hand the majority of the time and I would get to see a turn card in position. The turn was the 6h which put two hearts out there and gave me a gutshot to the top end of the straight. Glenn fired again and at this point when he fires on such a good card for my overall range which he rarely expects me to fold on I wasn’t anywhere near as confident that my hand was good. However I had a bunch of outs and I also planned on bluffing some river cards especially if the backdoor flush came in with my nut blocker. The river was a 4 and now any 7 made a straight. Glenn checked and at this point I was sure he had something and was looking to show his hand down cheaply. I put out a large bet of 2.7 million and he went into the tank for 3-4 minutes. Eventually he ended up folding and I won a crucial pot.

After this hand the blinds went up and Glenn was reduced to 20bb and would have to overcome the 3-1 chip lead that I had built up. He managed to double once but I grinded him back down a bit before I found pocket aces. He limped in for 200k and I made it 600k. He called and then Jammed over my flop continuation bet on K78 with 2 clubs. I obviously snap called and was shown 65 for an open ender. I was two cards away from my first big live title and incredibly nervous. I remember saying to myself at least give me a river sweat just don’t put the straight on the turn! The turn was a brick and the river was a 5. For a split second I thought he had binked the river but then I realized it was over and I had finally done it. I felt overcome with emotion and could barely get out of my chair to begin with. Glenn congratulated me and I gave my honest assessment to him that he’d been a really tough opponent throughout the final two days where I had played a lot against him. I then went over to celebrate with my rail that had been phenomenal throughout. Even though none of the Brits could make it out there for the final the American and Euro stand ins (particularly Athanasios and Marvin) had carried me through the day and even done their best to make up hilarious British chants.

Winning a live tournament felt even better than I had ever imagined it would and quite honestly I’ve now got the taste for more. I was very fortunate that I got a second chance this time after I almost self destructed in four handed play. It’s crazy to think that no matter how much experience you have in poker that pressure and tilt still have the potential to affect you so much and bring down your normal level of play to unrecognizable levels. I had so many regrets on hands that I played on the final table compared to the previous 6 days but somehow I found a way to win and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. I’m sure this experience will help me handle a similar situation much better in the future and hopefully my first big live title is only just the beginning.

My Own March Madness – Part 1

February was an amazing month for me poker-wise which I touched on in my last blog. Little did I know though that March was going to be even better in every aspect.

After playing a lot online in Vancouver in February I decided to take a break from online in March and focus on playing a couple of big live tournaments and writing my book. With the long hours that I play online it’s virtually impossible for me to grind online and write my book at the same time, therefore I figured a break from online was the only way that I was going to get started on the huge task I had ahead of myself. An added bonus was that I got to play a couple of big live tournaments as well. I flew back to Los Angeles end of February and stayed at my girlfriends place in West Hollywood for LAPC. This was perfect as I didn’t have to live out of a hotel for the tournaments duration and I was still only a 30 minute drive from the Commerce Casino where the tournament was being held.

The tournament started off pretty slowly for me in that I remained close to the starting stack for the majority of day 1, it wasn’t until the penultimate level of the day that anything significant happened for me. I played a big pot where I missed both my straight and flush draws on the river but the board happened to get very scary for my opponent. On the river he checked to me and with 9 high and less than pot behind I went for it and shoved all in. The LAPC event is not a reentry so if I was called it would be all over for me. Fortunately after a little sweat my opponent ultimately ended up folding which lead to me increasing my stack to close to 50,000 chips after the hand (30,000 starting stacks) and with the blinds only being 150-300 this put me in a very comfortable spot at this early stage. The very next hand I looked down at pocket kings in the small blind after the cutoff had open raised. I made a very standard three bet, which he quickly four bet. He then proceeded to six bet all in with pocket jacks and my hand held up for a huge pot that catapulted me into a top 10 stack to end the day.

Obviously my day 1 had worked out really well for me and I would have close to 200bb to start day 2, however, the structure in the LAPC main was incredibly slow (as is the case with a lot of live tournaments) and it would take 6 days of playing every day for me to make the final table. I had no doubt in my mind that there was a very long way to go and that I had to remain level headed throughout the swings in my stack which would inevitably follow.

Days 2 and 3 were far from smooth but I made it through them, which was the main thing. At this point I had managed to keep my stack healthy throughout and had not been all in for my tournament life.

The bubble occurred at the end of day 3 and ended up lasting for nearly 2 hours! After playing live poker for 3 days no one wants to bubble let alone an amateur player therefore my strategy was to step it up on the bubble and to try and build a huge stack. Unfortunately I played a couple of poor hands which cost me some chips and although I had a good stack once we made the money I felt like I could have performed a lot better had I trusted my gut more in a couple of spots.

Day 4 started with me sitting on 359,000 chips which equated to over 70 big blinds blinds with 63 players remaining. I knew that the tournament would move faster for a while now because of there being so many short stacks. My plan was to sit back for a few levels and make sure that I made the final 36, where the tournament would transform into 6 max until there was a winner. 6 max is my best format of poker and I knew I had to make it to this point. Even if I was a short stack I felt confident I would be able to turn it around.

When it got down to 36 players remaining I was actually in the top 10 in chips. At this point I felt really confident and I altered my game so that I didn’t take high variance spots preflop as I felt I had a decent edge post flop versus the majority of my opponents. Things went really well for me and I ended the day in 3rd place of the remaining 18 players.

On Day 5 the plan was to play down from 18 to 6. As expected the bustouts came fast to begin with and then the pace of play slowed down as we approached the final table of 6. I found it tough as I was incredibly card dead for most of the day. With 8 players left I was 5th or 6th in chips and going in the wrong direction, however back to back hands were about to change all of that! On the first of those I won a very big pot when I coolered Josh Neufeld with J9 v AJ on a JJ9xx board. Unfortunately the flush came in on the river otherwise I probably would have gotten a full double.

The very next hand I made a huge bluff versus Adam Friedman. He opened the cutoff 4 handed and I 3 bet the big blind with A2 offsuit. He called and I fired flop turn and river bets on a K-Q-2-3-10 board which also put a backdoor flush out there on the river. Adam tanked for around 10 minutes on the river constantly trying to converse with me but fortunately he was unable to pick up a read on me and he ultimately ended up folding.

My a2 off play in this hand is far from standard but I decided to take this aggressive line versus Adam for a number of reasons. Firstly I had not 3 bet him once in the 2 days we had played together therefore I felt like a 3 bet from the big blind would get a lot of credit here when I could easily just call a min raise. Secondly I had not shown the propensity to barrel with air versus him in the hands we had played together. Finally I had seen him correctly call a couple of times with ace high in big pots previously versus other opponents. Normally this would be a red flag to trying this bluff, however, I felt that being a good player himself he would realise that I had seen all of this and had labeled him unbluffable and that’s why I hadn’t been applying excessive pressure in the pots we had played previously and that I was in fact waiting until I had a hand versus him. I decided that he would take all of this information into account and be more inclined to make a hero fold rather than a hero call. I’d be lying if I said I felt 100% comfortable throughout the 10 minute tank though!

Whilst this hand was going on someone else had busted out on the other table and after Adam had folded we merged for the unofficial final table of 7. Before I even had a chance to catch my breath though Michael Rocco and Dan O’Brien played a huge pot with the latter busting. I had made it to the final 6; second in chips and with a great shot to get my first big live title and a million dollar pay day! Stay tuned for the next blog and to hear about the rest of an amazing month.

Off to a ‘Flying Start’ in 2014!

My first stop in 2014 was another trip to the Bahamas but this time a poker related one for PCA (one of the biggest annual events in poker). Although there are over 50 events throughout the 10 day festival I only managed to play two of them, the $10k main event and the $25k high roller. The main event started off strong for me despite an incredibly solid starting table where 7 of the 9 players were top pros. I ended day 1 with an above average stack and started day 2 strong, quickly doubling once more. Unfortunately the next few levels didn’t go so well and my stack dwindled as a result before I ended up busting around 100 spots before the money.

In the high roller I had the eventual winner Jacob Schindler on my left on day 1 and got into a couple of tough spots versus him and on my final hand my KK couldn’t beat his AK all in pre flop and just like that I was out early on day 1 for a very disappointing tournament. The trip as a whole was awesome, though, with one of the highlights as always being a group lazy river ride. I also managed to get out of the hole for the trip with a big Sunday which included a win in the Super Size Sunday on FTP and a 5th place finish in the Whale on 888 for $50k combined.

After PCA I headed back to La for a week. Rather than rest up before embarking on the online grind I convinced Katie to go skydiving with me. I’m scared of heights so this was actually a pretty big deal for me and up until the last minute I wasn’t sure that I was going to go through with it. I’m so glad that I did though, as it turned out to be an amazing experience. I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier in life than when I was gliding through the air at high speed. That happiness ended abruptly though when my parachute opened and the harness began to crush my groin.

After braving skydiving I hopped on a short flight upto Vancouver to grind TCOOP with some good friends of mine, Maddison Bergeron, Noah Vaillancourt and Maria Ho. The TCOOP festival was actually a disaster for me as I only cashed 1 tournament out of close to 40 events. Luckily I ran super hot in other stuff and have been on a permanent heater since I arrived. In the past 25 sessions I’ve only had 1 or 2 losing sessions. Throughout everything else I’ve had 10 tourney wins on 4 different sites including the Party Major. Also I final tabled both the Stars 1k and Ftp 1k buyin tourneys last week which shows the work I’ve put in on my game is really paying off right now. Obviously the past few weeks have been a pretty absurd run for mtt’s and completely unsustainable but I feel like I’m playing the best poker of my life at the moment which is really encouraging for the rest of the year and particularly the WSOP which has already given me goosebumps thinking about this year after the recent schedule announcement.

Whilst here in Vancouver I managed to drag myself away from the computer for a few days and headed upto Whistler. I didn’t realise how incredibly beautiful the place was actually going to be as I’d never been to a ski town before let alone ski! We were really lucky to get snow the week we went as well because apparently there hadn’t been fresh snow for at least a month before that. I did a 3 hour private skiing lesson with Maria and amazingly I managed to stay on my feet for the whole time.

My time in Vancouver is nearly up and I’m hoping to take some of that online run good into the live arena as I’m going to be playing LAPC and Bay101 as a shooting star in early March. In addition to a trip to the Napa Valley for wine tasting and Maria’s birthday.

Lastly I’m super excited to announce that I will have a poker strategy book being released by the end of the year. I’m putting a ton of work into this and I really hope it will help aspiring poker players to reach the next level. This is the first time I’ve done anything strategy related so I’m thrilled to have my first venture be a poker book.

PokerNews Announcement:

The Exclusive Pre-release of my “Moorman’s Book of Poker” Poker Strategy Book

Eureka it’s Cold!

The past three months have been pretty hectic including plenty of time in the air. I’m fortunate that I don’t mind flying one bit as I’ve been in Montreal, Prague, London, Florida, Bahamas, Los Angeles and Vancouver. Now that’s a lot of traveling around even for me.

I went to Montreal and rented a condo for the whole of November and it was actually the first time I’ve been there. I found it to be a great city although this place makes London feel warm. Due to the freezing cold snowy weather I spent most of my time playing online and managed to have a decent month, reclaiming the top spot on pocketfives in the process.

The last week of my stay in Montreal was particularly cool as a lot of good friends arrived in town for the WPT. Unfortunately I busted early on day 1 and didn’t play my best but other than that it was a really fun week with one of the many highlights being Marc Andre’s epic Thanksgiving party.

No sooner was the WPT over and I was on the road again with the next destination Prague for the EPT. I was excited to take my girlfriend Katie there (she’d never been before) as it has a real festive feel to it with the Christmas Market and the cold weather. This year it wasn’t actually that cold, although the Christmas market and architecture in the old square are still a sight to behold.

I arrived to Prague a week early so I could play the Eureka Poker Tour Main Event and the event was far bigger than I thought it would be with over 1300 runners. I found myself much more in the groove in this live tourney compared to Montreal and also had luck on my side a couple of times. In one hand I put a real dirty beat on this guy after he hero called my all in bvb with A8 v my 78 on KT63 when I pinged in the miracle gutter ball 9 on the river close to the money.

At the same time Katie had also made it in to the money and although there were still 150 players left a double final table for us would of been unreal. Unfortunately for her she lost a few pots then got her aces cracked to bust. I guess girls really do always have the aces. For me however it was pretty smooth sailing until I eventually busted in 12th place to Stevie 444 when I couldn’t hit my nut flush draw v his flopped two pair. The tournament was huge value though and really well ran by an old friend of mine Jonathan Raab. The Eureka Tour is growing fast and really is like a mini EPT.

Unfortunately my near miss in the Eureka tourney didn’t lead to a deep run in the EPT main event a few days later when I overplayed my 94 suited like it was pocket aces and got duly punished! From Prague it was back home to the UK for Christmas. It was great to be back for the first time since September even if it was a short and sweet visit. After I had carried out all of the Christmas traditions in the Moorman household it was off to the Bahamas… not for PCA but for a new years cruise the week before PCA! I stopped off in Freeport as well as Nassau and had a nice relaxing holiday away from poker for a few days before the start of what I hope will be a big year for me.

Stay tuned for part 2…PCA, LA and falling from the sky.

Reentry Tournaments

After reading an article from well known tournament director Matt Savage (pictured left) last week I decided to make my latest blog post a discussion about reentry tournaments. Like them or loath them reentry tournaments are a huge part of the modern day tournament scene. In the past few years the number of reentry tournaments have grown exponentially and it now seems like the majority of tournaments are of a reentry format.

In my opinion they are in general bad for the game and are unsustainable long term. I’d like to make it clear that I’m not talking about the huge 100k’s that have become the norm over the past 5 years as I think that actually helps to provide some value in these tourneys (from the rich businessman who can readily afford to reload) but events such as the World Poker Tour, which I played in Montreal last week.

WPT Montreal is a $3850 reentry event with three separate starting days. In theory you could be in for $11,400 when the minimum cash is only $5204. In fact if you played all three bullets in this tournament you would need to make the top 5 percentile of the tournament (45th place out of 862 entries.) This means that in a reentry tournament there are very few winners. However, in a freezeout tournament with no reentrys, normally around 15% of the field make the money and are all guaranteed to be ‘winners.’ Not big winners of course but especially for recreational players coming back with more money than you started with is seen as a big thing.

Another important issue with reentry tournaments is that they cater for the pro players and allow them to have an unfair advantage over the recreational players as the pros generally have bigger bankrolls or backers which allow them the luxury of playing the event multiple times if necessary, whereas the recreational player might only have played the event because they won a satellite.

WPT Montreal only managed 862 entrants this year compared to 1173 last year. The buy in for the event did increase by $550 overall but I find it highly unlikely this had that big of an impact on the field size. Also I found it to be one of the most well run events and the players were incredibly well looked after by the Playground Casino so I don’t think the loss of 311 entrants was down to negative experiences of last year’s event. I believe that the loss in players was to less satellite winners, as they didn’t want to play one bullet where their opponents would be able to take advantage of up to three bullets.

The reentry format means pros can effectively gamble with their first couple of bullets in order to try and build a huge stack which they will be able to use to their advantage later in the tournament. It also takes out a lot of the ‘pureness’ of the game. For example, it would be silly to put Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey all in for their tournament life as a bluff on day 1a when you know they can easily rebuy and the money means very little to them, whereas in a freezeout tournament it would be much more of a feasible option as you know they are unlikely to want to bust such a big event early.

Reentry tournaments also threaten the longevity of the live poker scene because the best players are more likely than ever to rise to the top in these formats (see Seminole hard rock example later in the post.) What chance does your random live satellite winner stand with 1 bullet against pokers elite with three or sometimes even more opportunities in the same tournament? Even if they are fortunate enough to make it into the money they are likely to be surrounded by pokers biggest sharks when the serious money becomes involved rather than in a non-rebuy format where the mixture of players would be of a much greater spectrum. Although we are yet to fully see the effects of this in the live poker scene we can look to the Full Tilt Poker model before Black Friday of their reentry tournaments to see the likely results of reentry tournaments long term. Even though they were only widely ran for a 6 month period many players went bust or went on a significant downswing during this period with the only real winners being the people who were fortunate to hit a huge score in one of them or the elite regs who are the only players this tournament format really benefits.

Reentry tournaments are not all bad, though. Without them the guaranteed prize pools would be nowhere near as large in these events, which in turn would mean that a lot fewer players would make the effort to travel which then decreases the field size and prize pool further. For example, if WPT Montreal was a $3850 freezeout it really wouldn’t be worth it for a lot of people to travel to play when you consider the expenses with flight and accommodation costs.

What I am proposing in these cases is perhaps increasing the buy in amounts in certain events and making them freeeouts instead, which will make it more of a level playing field once again. At the WSOP they used to have $1k rebuy events but they got abolished because they didn’t want people to be able to ‘buy’ bracelets. In a way rebuy tournaments are similar to reentry tournaments so I really hope that the WSOP doesn’t start to introduce them to the most prestigious series of all because that could be very damaging indeed.

Besides WPT Montreal, one of the more recent live tournaments that I played in was the Seminole Hard Rock $5k reentry in Florida in August. Without the reentry format there is no way that it could have got anywhere near the $10 million guarantee they offered. I for one wouldn’t have made the long journey without that guarantee and the chance of multiple bullets if I busted out early.

Overall the tournament proved to be a major success and looks like it will be having a permanent place for poker players on the tour in the future. The long-term problems of reentry tournaments are highlighted in the final results of this tournament, though, with two of the best players in the field, Blair Hinkle and Justin Bonomo, ending up heads-up. It was a case of fifth time is the lucky charm for Justin as he had already managed to bust the tournament four times over the previous two days of reentry. A number of other pros with deep pockets also made it deep in this tournament, which highlights the fact of how much of an advantage it is to have a big bankroll for the reentry format of tournaments.

I am not arguing for reentry tournaments to be abolished in the live poker tournament scene but I think it is essential that they are monitored and don’t keep increasing at the rate they have over the past few years. In the end, if the poker rooms and casinos keep seeing doubled prize pools and rake, what is going to stop them from making every tournament a reentry?

London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Cool New Promos

Hashtags for Hand Histories

I wanted to kick off this blog by announcing that I will be having some fun promotions over the next few months. I’ve decided to do this to try and connect with other players more closely. I have been receiving a lot of messages from people asking me for strategy advice/videos and unfortunately at this time I have decided against making poker strategy videos. However, I have three interactive promotions over the next 3 months in place.

The first of the 3 is as follows: I will review players hand histories and give my opinion on the hands, what you did good and what I would have done differently. I want you guys to tweet at me @Moorman1 with the reason why I should pick your hand history and use the hastag #moorman1 in the tweet between now and Nov 10th. I will select 5 different people and review up to 3 of their hand histories. I will post the picture of winners names on my Instagram @moorman1 account on November 11th. From there I will contact all 5 winners directly to get their hand histories and go over the hands in a blog post within the next week after the competition ends.

London, Los Angeles

Since WCOOP finished I’ve remained pretty busy. Firstly I rushed off to London to make it intime for the UKIPT High Roller event and the EPT London main. Unfortunately neither of these worked out for me. I did however have a great trip to London where I got to meet up with my family and many friends including a mini uni reunion with some of my closest mates from that time. It’s cool that even though we hadn’t seen each other in so long we all got on great still and it almost felt like yesterday that we were kicking it at the Essex University student union.

Later in the week I made it to Wembley with a few of the British poker lads for the England v Montenegro European Championship Qualifier where (surprisingly for England) we managed to play really well and win 3-1. It was my first time at the new Wembley and I must say they really did a great job on redeveloping it (even if it did take forever!)

The next day was truly epic. Toby Lewis, Chris Brammer and Tom Middleton (Middy) organised an all expenses paid trip to the races at Newmarket for the lads in order to celebrate Middy’s EPT Barcelona victory. At 11am 35 of us boarded a party bus that the boys had hired out. There were so many legends on the bus that it’s impossible to give everyone a shout out but some of the bigger personalities included Sam Grafton, Kev Allen, Richard Trigg and Paul Brammer (Chris Brammers Dad!) The atmosphere on the bus and throughout the day was electric and some of the boys even managed to land a 50-1 winner in the last race. The day served as a great celebration for Middy’s achievement and shows how close the UK poker community is. Poker is essentially an individuals game so it is really nice to have such a close knit UK group to fall back on when the going gets tough / if you need advice or on the flip-side to come and rail you to victory on that WSOP or EPT final table!

That next Sunday I woke up feeling a bit the worse for wear after the previous all day shenanigans, but It being a Sunday I was more than ready for the online grind. After a few days off I was feeling particularly hungry and ready to go and I actually managed to have 1 of my best Sundays of my career, winning 3 tournaments! These were the Brawl and Trex on FTP for around $75k combined plus the Party 60k guaranteed for another $14,000. Those results with another 4 final tables meant that by the end of the day I had cashed for $100,000 and was two thirds of the way towards a record setting 18th triple crown. That triple crown would have to wait though as I had a flight booked to LA the very next day to stay with my girlfriend for the week.

While in L.A I’ve been taking some time off poker after a hectic few months. I did a photoshoot for the Bluff Europe cover and an upcoming All In Magazine feature which I think turned out real well and should be out very soon. Apart from that I have been up to a few non poker activities which were all really fun. My favourite activity of these was Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. This was much better than your typical halloween haunted house etc. Universal Studios is turned into a giant halloween horror park for the night with six walkthrough zombie mazes/scarezones.

Here is a small preview of whats in store for someone who braves it:

[youtube width=”620″ height=”360″ video_id=”zdWpP0m1xCM”]

Also I was privileged to attend the Magic Castle which is a showplace for some of the greatest magicians from around the world. You get to see the tricks from close up and it isn’t overcrowded because its a members only club.

Off to Vancouver

For now though its time to get on that online grind again. I’m flying to Vancouver tonight to stay with two friends of mine Rhys Jones (Floppinhel- the face in my stars avatar) and Jonas Mackoff (Donut604) and hopefully I can put in some more big Sunday scores. From there I will be back in L.A for my first American Halloween (pics to follow) and then I’m off to Montreal for the month of November where I’m hoping to put in some serious online volume to hopefully reach my target of regaining the Pocketfives number 1 ranked online player in the world.

Wish me luck and I look forward to hearing from everyone about their hand histories! Remember to use #Moorman1 on all your tweets!

Poker Beginnings & The story of how I met Dave Gent

My last blog about Dave Gent’s wedding had me thinking about how we first met. He has had perhaps the greatest influence out of anyone on my poker career and the story of how I met Dave (geeforce1 on Tilt and sexygee on Stars) is pretty random.

It was 2005 and at the time I was just a $1-$2 full ring cash game grinder on the Tribecca network, who occasionally played the odd tournament. My game was very basic and was based on just being incredibly solid and relying on my opponents to make mistakes to win money. Fortunately everyone was pretty awful at poker back then so my opponents didn’t stop to think that I might have a set every time I check raised them and I still got paid off.

One week I decided to play their Sunday tournament and ran really well to get deep. Unfortunately I went card dead once I was deep and everyone kept stealing the guy on my lefts big blind as he had been disconnected for the last 30 minutes. Eventually I found a hand I had been waiting for (AK) and reraised all in over the top of a Geeforce1 steal. He called me with Ace Queen and hit and I was out in 23rd place for peanuts.

Obviously at the time I was upset and thought it was a terrible call etc but as I started to think about it more It began to dawn on me that I should of been reraising him with weaker hands because there was no way he could of had a hand every time! Obviously very basic stuff now but it was an epiphany moment for me at that time.

Rather than go and sulk over the bad beat, I carried on watching the whole tournament as I was impressed with how he had played. Geeforce dominated the whole way and ended up winning it for $35,000. I congratulated him in chat and I half jokingly asked him for his email address for some advice never thinking he would actually help me.

Much to my surprise he added me on MSN messenger and became a poker mentor for. He let me watch his hole cards at the higher stakes games and answered all of my dumb noob questions. Over the next few months I gradually jumped into these games myself when there were softer lineups and this is where I really started to become a pro player.

That summer I qualified for my first WSOP and finally got to meet Geeforce and another guy he had introduced me to, Paul Foltyn or Badpab2, in person. Looking back now it is hilarious as I remember being more nervous about meeting them than going on a first date with a girl you really like, but we all got on great and they were no longer Geeforce andBbadpab to me but Dave and Pab.

Over the years we became even closer which resulted in a big group of us renting out a Vegas house every summer and going on various trips around the world together.

It’s crazy to think how a bad beat could actually help you in the long run. If I’d won that tournament sure I could have been $35,000 richer at the time, but I might never of became the player that I am today.

London, WCOOP and $10 Million in Cashes

After Los Angeles I returned back home to the UK for my good friend Dave (geeforce1) Gent’s wedding to his fiancée Giselle (Zel.) Although I don’t get to see them very often they are two of my best friends and along with Paul Foltyn are the first people I met through poker.

The wedding was a really good time. They had hired out a wonderful venue Stupton Hall and it was good to catch up with a lot of old friends which I had met whilst travelling with Dave and Zel.

After this I decided to spend a month in London and stayed with Liv Boeree. She has an unbelievable penthouse and was an awesome host. I grinded FTOPS there and almost got my 2nd FTOPS jersey but finished short in 2nd (yes a 2nd, hold the comments) place in the $129 KO FTOPS which was good for $62k.

Liv even convinced me to help her put together a new couch for her patio. Although very daunting at first with the millions of different pieces and limited instructions I managed to get it done just in time before the BBQ she was hosting that night.

Florida for a week to play the Seminole Hard Rock $10 million guarantee. The format of the tournament was a $5k rebuy with unlimited reentries. I know people who fired off about 8 bullets, but fortunately I managed to run up my first entry into a very workable stack after day 1. Matt Savage did a great job organizing the tourney and it was surprisingly well ran for its inaugural year. Also it totally crushed the guarantee by $2 million.

My table on day 1 was pretty absurd with 2 people dusting off their 300bbs in level 1 and crazy hands throughout the day. I even got to play against rapper Nelly for a bit! Day2 didn’t go as smooth and I found myself short approaching the bubble. Fortunately I managed to hold with A-K v K-10 to double up 10 spots before the money. From there things went much better for me until I got jacks all in versus tens for a top 20 stack. The AQT board gave both of us a sweat but I couldn’t resuck on the turn and river and busted out in 261st place for a small profit.

The rest of the week I spent resting up and enjoying myself before the WCOOP grind that was about to commence. I did find time to hit up a theme park and a water park, though. Bush Gardens was a place I had been to as a 12 year old boy and found amazing. Although some of the rides seemed nowhere near as big or scary as when I had been on them previously they had introduced some new rides including Sheikra, which proved to be a thrilling ride. The animal part of the park was something I didn’t remember too much from my childhood but was particularly well done with the feeding of giraffes being a highlight.

The water park I went to was Blizzard Beach, which is part of the Disney Resort. This was the park I had wanted to go to the most as a kid when we were on holiday in Florida, but unfortunately we had left it till the end of the trip and there had been a hurricane so the park was shut. That meant I had never got to go on Summit Plummit which is a 120 foot drop slide which you can reach speeds of up to 60 mph. I had been waiting to go on this slide for 16 years and it was well worth the wait. The rest of the park was a bit of a letdown with it being more for kids than adults but the layout of the park was in true Disney style; picturesque and very well done.

Since I was already in Florida I decided to return to one of my favorite places for the month of September, Playa del Carmen, Mexico for the WCCOP held on PokerStars. Evidently it is hurricane season down here so I haven’t felt too bad staying in grinding all day, as the weather here is starting to resemble London.

Grinding went pretty well here right from day 1 and all in all I managed to win 11 tourneys this month with the biggest being the FTP 1k for $56k. Despite cashing 10 times in WCOOP events I was unable to go deeper than a 13th place finish in the $320r 6 max PLO tourney. The big news of the month though, was that I hit the $10 million in lifetime online cashes mark.

At the beginning of the month I had noticed that I was about $250,000 short of this mark and I always knew I had a shot at getting there during the WCOOP due to the insane prizepools at this time of year and that I would be playing 23 days straight! My dream was to win a WCOOP to get over the line and I had a few semi sweats at it but in the end I had to settle for the next best thing, which was winning a regular tourney to make it. This was still amazing though as I got the normal jubilation of shipping a tournament plus the once in a lifetime feeling of hitting the $10 million line. PokerNews and PocketFives were reporting a lot on my progress and I was overwhelmed by the responses I got from my friends and fans when I finally made it.

As I write this I’m flying off to London today for the EPT there. I’m hoping I can final table two EPT London events in the same year, but this time finish 7 places better. To get so close last time at my home event only increases my desire to get myself in that position again. It’s going to be great to meet up with all my friends again who I haven’t seen for a few months and I’m particularly looking forward to Tom Middleton’s belated EPT celebration party. The plan is to hire out a party bus for the day, hitting up the races and then partying through the night. Hopefully my next blog will be good news about that EPT!