I rarely recommend a blog for readers to check out but I’ll make an exception for the Trett mob.

Mark and Daniel Trett are both prominent Poker players in the North East of England.

Their blog is Full Trett Poker (good name) and you should check them out.

They might even appear on radio one day or at least listen to the shows.

Enjoy their blog, which is the type of Poker blog I enjoy, meaning it’s updated regularly.

The majority of online poker sites have realised that many of their customers do not want to travel half way across the world in order to play in a large poker festival such as a European Tour event or the World Series of Poker so instead they have launched their own online poker events to rival those of their land-based competitors.

Whilst events such as the World Series of Poker only occur annually, some of the online poker events take place every three to six months meaning players can get the feel of taking part in a major event all year round, each with a chance of winning a life-changing amount of money for very little outlay.

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Life has thrown the odd few things at the moment which is conspiring to hurt my feelings. The upshot being that I chilled out and watched Die Hard on TV without ever realising that tonight was radio night. The show will now take place on Thursday and I will make sure I set more reminders in the future. That’s always been my problem. I believe in my own memory when perhaps it is not so reliable. That is hard for me to admit.

Apologies to both Gary and Gareth who kindly give their time up to do the shows and anyone else who was looking forward to an update. I know I was! I even made a Twitter post saying that I was looking forward to radio tomorrow. Oops. But don’t worry, I’ll get a great show sorted and we will be back to full form straight away.

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1691 fellow poker bloggers turned out for the first of the World Bloggers Championships of Online Poker at Pokerstars. I represented our site as mal255.

I started badly but managed to ride the short stack below average right through the tournament before getting a stack towards the bubble. After a pleasing performance I cashed for a $16.50 SCOOP seat in 48th position. Very nice.

Also I kept Gary entertained with some bad plays early on, before he vanished in twelve table cash game action.

More to follow on our radio show Tuesday 2.30pm EST and 8.30pm GMT. See you there hopefully.

How about this for a stinking play with Queens.

Painful. I made my stupid mistake of assuming he was hyper aggressive with something awful but realistically I had to be beat here.

Discuss the hand in the forum thread dedicated to this hand. Enjoy flaming me, I deserve it!

Things are slow on the poker front for me at the moment although expect that to change very soon with me finalising a plan that will see me make the breakthrough into online poker grinder. I am going down the route of being over prepared, so look out for updates on that soon. Graphs etc will hopefully be available in due course.

Last week our radio show was a Mal and Gareth hosted show and he posted a vidcast on the site also shortly after introducing himself. I really appreciate the effort he has gone to for the site and we need many more people like him to make the site great. In the short time I’ve known him he is an amazingly friendly guy and a pleasure to talk to and we are lucky to have him. That goes for Gary too of course.

Gareth is now an author on itsawinner and we look forward to receiving his further vidcasts, (vlog, video blog, whatever you want to call them) very soon. I also plan to vlog some time in the future and only my vanity wanting to lose some weight first is preventing me from doing it. Plus I’d prefer to have some decent poker stuff to discuss too which is not available right now.

Our forum is a bit of a fail right now, we urgently need members. When Gary returns from his holiday I hope he joins and if nothing else it is a fun place for Gareth, Gary and myself to talk although we hope you join in. We have had tons of downloads for the radio show from last week and I hope many of you will listen in live too for future shows. You don’t have to join the talkshoe site to listen live but if you want to call in you will need to join. Either way it’s free. Hope to see you Tuesday!

My plan is to multi-table the micro stakes games on Full Tilt Poker and see if I can make enough to play in some bigger tournaments. My intention is to play more aggressively and stop ending up being in a shove or fold spot too early on. You need to catch cards to win and play aggressively will see me bust out in various tournaments early but hopefully be a better strategy overall.

Much of the behind the scenes work on our poker site this week has been trying to get the forum working. All of the files are uploaded and the forum is installed but now I have come across an irksome problem relating to file permissions and my hosts streamline.

Tilting blog post follows. Sometimes you just need to vent the fury. Enjoy!

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I know there was 149,196 starters in the biggest ever online poker tournament which smashed the 65,000 current record. I outlasted the most players ever by beating about 148,000 of them to finish in 21,030th place. Sounds better than it is, but I did cash for $2.50!

The best part of the tournament for me was the five minute lag in starting the tournament and then going on a five minute break after one hand! When we went hand for hand on the bubble there was 3003 tables and when the next hand started we were 500 players past the bubble!!

Great to play in it and congratulations to all the big winners. Local lad willis59 came in 4th place for $10k from Billingham! Play finished at 1.30am after started at 7.45pm.

Last night I played a $2 + $0.20 180 man sit and go poker tournament which I have not done in some time. Overall I enjoyed the experience although Gary rightly pointed out that the correct long term poker strategy for these thing is to play them on a volume basis. I managed to finish 21st out of 180 with 18 paying. Just missed out on the money. It was only because of an amazing heater run of cards midway through the tournament that I even made it that far.

Here is a hand where I got unlucky with KQ, although looking at the stacks etc now it was probably a bad call. I did think correctly, however, that I was ahead when the money went in.

Things went well just after that with AJ, AA, JJ in three hands which held when people shoved getting me pretty much straight back to 8,500 chips. I did not do much (which is a mistake) until there was 21 left and I needed to make a move. I found Ace Ten then shoved on a limper and another opponent found KK. Busto!

I think I played both hands badly. I shoved with too many players behind me in the last hand focusing more on the limpers stack size than considering that my hand was not that strong but I did not want to go through the blinds. My bad. I was unlucky when the guy showed KT in the first hand but he found the flush. I actually used all of my time bank before calling. I had seen the dude raise with rubbish and that all-in seemed a steal to me. I am reading Collin Moshmans SNG book which I bought as a christmas present for myself so my play will get better!

I need to work on my game when I have chips and not sit back on them. I did not do enough stealing and waited for big hands. I will do better next time and hopefully take it down!

Played a session of six SNG’s and finished $0.30 up. I played them all at once so I’m slowly building up what I can do in one sitting. I did not feel like I was going crazy with the speed even when it got a bit frantic so hopefully playing 10 in one go or even 12 is not out of the question.

Much of this week has been playing with the podcasts and getting it up and running properly. We are now on iTunes so you can do a search for poker and we do appear! The logo is wrong currently for the thumbnail. It seems to have retained the old image but I’m sure they will sort that out soon. Unfortunately I cannot do anything and itunes are slow at updating but most likely it will just go right all of a sudden. The show is PG now after I decided most people will not be offended by our shows. We use moderate language no worse than a lively office.

If you get a chance to call in please do not be nervous we are not idiots we have a laugh and would be genuinely over the moon to get a caller or two during the show. I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday!

If you have not tried out 5 Card Draw then you should. It has only two betting rounds and there is not much strategy in it. People still manage to play it terribly though. I’ve swelled my $2 bankroll into around $10 on Pokerstars playing this game. The only problem is, especially in the PL and Fixed Limit versions, it is impossible to know the strength of your opponents hands. When they have anything higher than a Ace high flush you pretty much have to call.

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