london | 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

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!

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!

What’s new in 2013 – Part I

So far 2013 has been a great year for me. I’ve accomplished a lot of goals, including an FTOPS win, my first EPT final table – which was made even sweeter by achieving it in London, and another WSOP final table. One of the most important though, has been working to conquer my 10 million dollar target. Obviously I’m talking about online cashes, and I’m so proud to be the first person in the world to hit 10 million.

So what has most of this year included besides poker scores? Well I’ve been quite active off the live and virtual felt as well. I’ll break down the last couple months.

I kicked off the New Year at PCA enjoying the mostly sunny weather. Between tournaments I found time to get up to some shenanigans including swimming with stingrays with my friends Sam Chartier and Trishelle Cannatella and a night out with the brits.

From there I headed to Las Vegas to participate in the NBC Heads Up Invitational. I was so honored to be asked to compete, and was hoping to show everyone that even though I am known for getting second, I actually am decent at heads up. I played great in round one to beat poker legend Carlos Mortensen, but unfortunately the draw wasn’t too kind to me and I ran into Jungleman (Daniel Cates) in the second round and found myself coolered in a 3 bet pot pretty early into the match. I still had an awesome time being able to be a part of the whole thing. It’s an event that is really great for poker as a whole.

I spent most of February checking out Playa del Carmen, Mexico. First off let me start by saying if you haven’t been, go immediately! This place is great; a perfect beach town, with awesome people and an incredible vibe. I definitely found it hard at times to have a balance between poker and life outside of that, but I made sure to take in as much of the culture and scene as possible. One highlight was checking out one of the seven wonders of the world, Chichen Itza and then ziplining through the jungle.

In March I was back home in London for the EPT, and needless to say that turned out well for me. I built a stack quickly on the first day before a huge mistep that almost brought about my demise. I six bet queen ten suited into pocket queens versus an extremely aggressive opponent but managed to make a flush on the turn. From then on I felt like I was freerolling and really brought my A game for the rest of the tournament. Unfortunately I lost a couple of huge hands on the day leading up to the final table so I ended up making the final table with only 20bbs. I knew I was going to need some luck to double up, but it just didn’t happen for me this time when I ended up going out in 8th place after losing a flip versus Theo Jorgenson. It still was an awesome experience because most of my family and several of my friends were able to be there and see me on the final table in my home city.

In April I was off to Berlin for the following EPT hoping to build on my run in London. I really love this city, mostly from my awesome memories with the lads from the last few years (a second place finish in the High Roller event the previous year also helps!). Although the main event didn’t go to plan with an early day1 exit Berlin still remained good to me as I was able to score another second place finish in the 2k euro side event.

Tag: london