My Poker CV
By 2007 the pub poker leagues were starting up and I had some early success in my first venture into live poker. Bigger contests were soon required and in 2010 I had a 1st and a 2nd place at events staged at Poker in the Park, Europe's largest outdoor poker festival then staged at London's Leicester Square. These events had a double-shootout format and consisted of 80 runners each.
In June 2014 I won the Redtooth Poker Regional Final for London East out of 212 competitions who had qualified from their pub leagues. This competition had the prize of an all-expenses trip to Las Vegas and the chance to win further prizes while in the USA.
To prepare for the games in Las Vegas I started playing regularly at casinos in London, notably the Empire Leicester Square and Aspers Stratford. It was at the Empire that I'd watched the final day of the World Series of Poker Europe 2009 and it was an obvious place to develop my poker career. There was a notable step-up in standard from the usual opposition however by the spring of 2015 I was winning tournaments at both venues.
The trip to Las Vegas took place in May/June 2015. The Redtooth events consisted of a welcome tournament and a main event. I came joint 1st out of 164 in the welcome tournament which played for 8 1/2 hours. The event stopped with 9 players remaining as the prize sturcture allowed the top 9 a choice between a cash prize and entry for a World Series of Poker event. As I was already planning to play in the WSOP I elected to take the cash prize and upgrade my WSOP event (see later). In the Redtooth Vegas 100 main event I came 9th in a 10 1/2 hour marathon. Cash prizes were paid to the top 20 players. Videos of the Redtooth Vegas 100 are available on Redtooth Poker's youtube channel.
The Redtooth trip coincided with the start of the 2015 World Series of Poker. My original plan was to play the $565 Colossus event, the largest ever live poker tournament with 23,000 entrants. Due to my success in the Redtooth Welcome Tournament and the timings and duration of events, I upgraded to a $1,000 event with fewer runners and a faster format that I felt would be more favourable to me given the time difference between Nevada and London. In this event I finished 500th out of 1436 beating such poker luminaries as Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Tilly, Andy Bloch, Eli Elezra and former WSOP Europe champion Annette Obrestad who exited a few minutes before me. This was still not enough to put me in the money however as only the top 144 players won prizes. Details of my World Series of Poker event are here.
Back in England, I played the opening event in the Party Poker Grand Prix series that is taking place in football stadiums around the UK. My event was at Stamford Bridge and had a buy in of $109 (�70). After 2 days I finished 112th out of 3001 winning almost �500 including a buy-in to another stadium event which will be at Brighton or Cardiff.
Big wins in 2016 included a 560� win in the Casino Malta for finishing joint 1st of 70 entrants in a 50� freezeout. 2016 also saw a near miss in an attempt to qualify for another Las Vegas trip as I finished 2nd out of 150+ players in an online tournament.
On returning tto Las Vegas in 2017, I won the $692 first prize in the Saturday tournament at the Orleans and also final-tabled in a tournament at the Luxor.
As of 2018, I am looking to qualify for Las Vegas again while also playing in poker events around the country and maybe also in Europe.
