Disconnected

Daflection

Hardly played any poker over the festive period apart from some home games. Won 4 home tourneys in a row and 2 seconds in one day, in the last game I gave them a chance by busting out first.

Rounding off the year with another profitable week. Only my 36th out of 52 weeks but 10/12 profitable months. The only negative months were when I played the WHUPC in May and VC Poker Cup in August - I'd won my seats into those events in previous months and I take off the buyin after I play the event.

If next year is twice as good (poker profits) I will be very happy with developments. If everything went according to plan I would imagine that I could be 10 times better, but the poker markets are becoming more and more efficient and I'll probably go through a long plateau as this year I've had 4/5 short ones.

Ideally I'd like to reach a peak in time for the WSOP but if I won't be playing it doesn't really matter does it? If I don't play in at least one WSOP/EPT/WPT event or the VC Poker Cup again, I'll be very disappointed - I make myself about evens at the moment.

Merry Xmas

December Poker Babe

December Poker Babe

A double dose of Colombia's purest export, not the white stuff but Sofia Vergana, is the final babe of the month. Visit the Complex Mag Skin section for more pics.

Sofia Vergana

DaMatrix Trilogy

Only a few posts left to go on this blog. Yesterday I played quite bad - actually, I've been playing quite bad for over a week now. My patience levels have dropped to rock bottom. Maybe it's because I'm waiting for the year to end so that I can make a fresh start but I also haven't been feeling too well.

I'm very happy with what I've achieved this year from no bankroll. Hopefully, the next stage, DaMatrix Reloaded, will be even better but it will be at least another year before DaMatrix Revolutions (Revelations might be better)!

That's right, my poker progression is a trilogy. In Part I, I have become a decent all round player albeit at low stakes. I've read a lot of books, watched a lot of poker, developed my nickname, played a lot online but in comparison, I have played almost zero live poker.

I think I've played 2/3 comps at the broadway casino, 1 at Star City, WHUPC main event and 500 euro freezeout, Maxim King of Poker, VC Poker Cup 2005 and the Doyle Brunson sixpac. Not bad from no bankroll though.

With everybody playing poker nowadays, I think having a poker image is almost as vital as skill when it comes to the 'bigger' picture. I've been very lucky in that I adopted the Matrix nickname after being called that several times in my first encounter with the Devilfish at the VC Poker Cup 2004. It helped that I busted him by giving the whole idea of building on the name some credibility and history. Similar to how the 'fish got his name.

The Da prefix was added to make it easier to secure an online alias at sites. I had the prefix on a previous alias so some continuity there. Since I'm Italian, it also gives some of that style to it too: DaMatrix was born.

Over the past year, DaMatrix has played all the common forms of poker: hold'em, omaha, stud and draw. If I was to give myself a score out of ten, I'd give myself 3/10 to all of them. Multi-tabling different websites and different games has got to stop as I am probably playing at 30% of best - hence the 3/10.

That's in Part II. Concentrate on playing as little sites as possible, focus on my main poker skills and develop a few more ideas. I will also try to find a mentor, get hold of a white rabbit card protector, win a major tourney to facilitate sponsorship (I can dream), defend my Maxim King of Poker title and meet/play against Phil Hellmuth who probably has the closest playing style to me.

Afterall, I have played at the same table as Devilfish and Doyle Brunson - and Phil Hellmuth can't be considered great until he plays me, lol. In bit torrent episode 23 of the WSOP 2005, Hellmuth did play against probably a long lost relative of mine. Hellmuth made that decent laydown with AK on a 44AQ board against Passantino who held AA. When the turn was a Q, Passantino should have checked again if he would have correctly assumed that Hellmuth would be scared that he had AA/QQ/AQ with a big bet here and because of the preflop action. Because of Hellmuth's cards, Hellmuth put him on QQ rather than AA or KK and this "read" is revealed on the video too.

Anyway, long way to go before Part III: releasing my own poker perfume! ;)

Saturday Schedule

Schedule of some of the MTT tournaments that I will be/might be playing today. I like to play freerolls to try different styles and release any tilt from cash games that I may be playing in.

6pm Pokerroom.com Player Points Major $6k Freeroll

6:45pm Ladbrokes Poker Cruise Xmas Cracker
8pm Bet365 Poker $5K Freeroll

8pm BugsysClub $10k Warm Up Final
8pm OPT Poker.com WSOP Event Final
8pm Paradise Poker Gift Tree Freeroll
8:30pm Prima Poker EPT Scandinavian Open Final Probably give this one a miss since I didn't qualify via a satellite and I might be playing too many tables at that time to focus on this $515 buy-in.

9pm Titan Poker Depositors $1k Freeroll
9pm Pokerroom.com Royal Tourney

9pm Hollywood Poker Babes & Bounties II

2:30am Royal Vegas WSOP Freeroll

Blonde League Finalists

Blonde/Virgin Poker League finalists after game 3:

TOTAL POINTS/QUALIFIERS

64 Stabla
50 Neeko07
49 12barblues
48 Boco
48 Creme_Egg

40 rivsec
39 RussQPR
38 wormster
36 The_Ant
35 DaMatrix

33 fwitted
33 Henrik7777
32 Howlovely
32 Nakor99
32 NorthAngel

30 _Nemesis_
30 jezza777
30 Wardonkey
29 bigarmo
29 byronkinc

29 W4LLY
28 Ginger.
27 The_Brief
26 JAG50
25 claypoleuk

25 sendthecake
25 Strumm
24 dazla996
24 feedthegoa
24 rye5098

The final is next Tuesday. Good luck all.

Instruction

I'm happy to say that I don't make a bad poker coach. You may remember that in his first live tournament at the Broadway casino, my friend won $1,500. Last week, I coached my brother into second place at the Sun Poker Championship live final. His reward:

Sony BRAVIA KDLV40A12U 40" LCD TV HD Ready (HDMI) with built in Digital Freeview [£2k+ at amazon.co.uk]

SONY DAV-LF1 DVD Home Theatre [£1k+ at qed-uk.com]

Vogel's Furniture Q5120 stand approx £500+.

+Poker DVDs

Total = $6,000

In order to reach true poker mastery, one of the keys is "Instruction". That is one thing I lack. A mentor is quite important to guide you through the poker path. Having just read the book "Ace on the River", Barry Greenstein (Tuan Le's mentor) seems to be on a similar level to me. Marcel Luske and Noah Boeken clearly show how powerful the teacher-student thing can be - not only results wise. So, who do I think would be top of my list? You might be surprised by my choice, but it is in fact the Devilfish!

So, if you're reading this Mr Ulliott, get in touch... I need a white (gold) rabbit card protector!

Maui $60K+ Progressive Jackpot Sit 'n' Go

Damn, decided to play for the Maui Jackpot on Titan a couple of hours ago. For those of you who don't know about this promotion the details are:

Maui - Jackpot Sit 'n' Go – Terms and Conditions
Titan Poker will pay a $15,000 Jackpot Prize to the winner of five consecutive $5+$0.75 “Maui – Jackpot Sit ‘N’ Go” tournaments. Titan Poker will also award a $200 prize to a player who finished in either 1st or 2nd place in five consecutive – Jackpot Sit ‘N’ Go” tournaments. If no player wins the $15,000 Jackpot Prize, Titan Poker will add additional funds to increase the prize.

Well the Jackpot has grown to over $60,000 (about £35,000) so since I hadn't played s&gs for weeks I thought I'd fired up 5 of these sit and goes and was playing them all at the same time. I won the first 3 (one was easy cos the player was disconnected - but I was playing 3 tables at that point short handed/heads-up and getting timed out aswell and the blinds were high so I couldn't really wait for him - especially under these circumstances) and was heads-up on the other two. On one I went all in on the button with a medium Ace but Stan33 on the Big Blind called with K high for half his stack hitting his friggin kicker twice!! Grrrrr!!! The other heads-up I won easily by consequently being super aggressive and getting lucky...

So 4 wins and 1 second for, not $60k, but $200! Surely 4 wins and a second deserves more!

Gutted!!! :((((((((((((((((((((((

9191601 2005-12-11 18:56 Maui "Jackpot Sit N Go" 1 1 1 1 $5.75 $0.75 $15.00 $5.75 $0.75 $15.00 $-10.00 260.9% - 2nd

9191401 2005-12-11 18:51 Maui "Jackpot Sit N Go" 1 1 1 1 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $-20.00 434.8% - 1st

9191141 2005-12-11 18:47 Maui "Jackpot Sit N Go" 1 1 1 1 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $-20.00 434.8% - 1st

9190971 2005-12-11 18:42 Maui "Jackpot Sit N Go" 1 1 1 1 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $-20.00 434.8% - 1st

9190701 2005-12-11 18:39 Maui "Jackpot Sit N Go" 1 1 1 1 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $5.75 $0.75 $25.00 $-20.00 434.8% - 1st

FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 Draw

Download the World Cup 2006 Wallchart PDF here!

German supermodel Heidi Klum and some random bird holding the World Cup

Visit the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 website.

Blonde Virgin

Nothing to do with what I got up to after the Sun Poker Championship in London last Saturday.

The second Blonde Forum League tournament was played at Virgin Poker today and I managed to add an extra 5 points to my score.

01. Stabla 26 + 24 = 50
02. Creme_Egg 20 + 28 = 48
03. RussQPR 19 + 20 = 39
04. rivsec 12 + 26 = 38
05. wormster 27 + 11 = 38
06. Nakor99 18 + 14 = 32

07. NorthAngel 16 + 15 = 31
08. 12barblues 30
09. jezza777 30
10. byronkinc 29
11. W4LLY 29
12. DaMatrix 23 + 05 = 28
13. The_Ant 28
14. Neeko07 27
15. The_Brief3 21 + 06 = 27
16. claypoleuk 25
17. sendthecake 25
18. rye5098 24
19. AdamM665 23
20. Nidavellir 22
21. Boco 22
22. fwirred 21
23. suzanne661 05 + 16 = 21
24. Legz11 19
25. lalalarina 18
26. JAG50 17
27. p3rcy 17
28. Henrik7777 15
29. twignbud 14
30. feedthegoa 13
31. Newportlad 13
32. Teacake 12
33. Howlovely 11
34. Chili Pep 10
35. rookie20 10
36. dannypoker 09
37. redsimon 09
38. Khota 08
39. Tomoli 08
40. Heidster 07
41. StackBashr 07
42. b.strider 06
43. Foggy1 04
44. yorksgirly 04
45. _RFC_ 03
46. Wardonkey 03
47. mastersoul 02
48. matt674 02
49. patman24 01
50. totalise 01

The last league game is next week. Top 30 after that game go through to the League Final.

The Sun Poker Championship

Arrived at the Palm Beach Casino at 7pm Saturday for the Sun Poker Championship final. Nine players, including my brother Gattopardo, were going to fight for $30k in prizes.

Sun Final: Players

One player, rippy, arrived fashionably late for the tournament so missed the group photo in front of the main first place prize: a mini!

The play was very tight for the first few levels. Gattopardo winning a couple of early pots though.

It was a surprise when the guy that arrived late was the first person out. He was left short stacked when his AJ was no match for pokerfenner's AK. Couple of hands later his late position raise was called by pokerfenner in one of the blinds. Pokerfenner checked the flop and rippy went all in on the Q high flop. Pokerfenner eventually called with pocket 7s and was up against AQ. Turn was a 7 though!

brael (left): Not his night

It was a while before more players were knocked out. A lot of them were playing a survival strategy trying to get into the top 3 paid places. Before it even got to 5 handed, pokerfenner had been dealt pockets aces three times as well as cowboys!

Down to 5

The play was very cagey as the prizes were now within sight. Gattopardo, short stacked, managed to double up when he went all in UTG with JJ. ChipDawg's A3 on the BB was no match. Gattopardo won another decent pot reraising all-in against the chip leader's UTG open raise preflop with QQ to take it down. Pokerfenner was happy to fold, declaring, "Nice hand".

Gattopardo now had some chips and he managed to knock out one of the next two players, Dammuzz was the bubble boy, to catch up with pokerfenner's chip stack 3 handed. When he knocked out ChipDawg into 3rd place, Gattopardo began Heads-Up as the chip leader.

Gattopardo: Chip Leader

Gattopardo had made a great comeback from nearly out of the money to chip leader heads-up. He didn't change gears though and paid for that as he was up against probably the best and luckiest player on the night: pokerfenner.

Heads Up: pokerfenner v Gattopardo

Unfortunately, Gattopardo played too passively in the end, against DaMatrix's advise during a break in heads-up when I suggested he make a deal or play more aggressively. I don't think he quite realised how big the difference was between 1st and second place. Play restarted and I realised he hadn't listened to a word I said! Grrrrr! lol

Pokerfenner, who wanted it more and had come there to win the final, grinded Gattopardo down until knocking him out on his 3rd attempt: Gattopardo (guaranteed at least a $7K prize for second) went all-in on the SBB with, King crap, K3o and pokerfenner called with KT that flopped a straight and gutshot royal flush draw.

Winner: pokerfenner

No royal flush and no ten on the river for a split pot resulted in a well deserved win for pokerfenner who qualified by winning the tournament Leaderboard. Congrats to the first Sun Poker Champion!

Read The Sun Online's article.

Beginning of the End

One year of Connected to DaMatrix is nearly over. I've enjoyed documenting my poker exploits over the past 11 months but at the end of the year I will not be updating this blog anymore. Time to pull the plug so to speak. Any new news will be at www.DaMatrix.co.uk.

Congrats to Reevio on winning the Hendon Mob League, his qualification helped by a royal flush, but commiserations to stooger who didn't do so well without the help of his DJ_buddy and finally poor Mr&MrsSplash who's Aces got cracked by Reevio's 88 heads-up in the final.

That's ONLINE poker baby!