2009 wasn’t a great year, but there’s no one on this planet who ran as bad as me. No one can understand how bad I run, it’s a joke. I should be 20 million down over the last year. I don’t have many regrets, just that I didn’t run better, but hopefully that’ll change. Poker’s like 70 percent luck, and I know that as long as I don’t get fucked over I can beat anyone.
Everyone’s just so bad it’s ridiculous. I’m not surprised Gus Hansen lost more than anyone else, he’s one of the worst players in poker. Perhaps the only guy who’s worse is geoff7878. He plays PLO on Tilt and is fucking terrible. It’s actually pretty hard to think of many decent players at the moment. Ivey and Antonius are good, but I reckon my top three would include Isildur, me, and maybe one of the CardRunners guys. I’m running bad at the moment, but I’d still put myself in the top three. I’m as good as Isildur.
Speaking of Isildur, I don’t think he can complain too much about what happened with Hastings and Townsend. He can’t go in thinking these guys won’t be talking about hands and things in order to take him out. He’ll be back though. It’s just standard for him what happened, not that major. He’ll just shrug it off and work his way back up again. It might take him some time, but he’s too good a player. A lot of people seem to be asking if he’s broke and stuff, but he’s not. He can’t just pull up a million and play the nosebleeds, but so few players can do that, maybe just Ivey and Antonius, but there’s hardly anyone at those stakes playing within their bankroll. Isildur also bought some properties, so he’s got that to fall back on if it goes really bad. I just hope that when he does get back up there that he’ll avoid Antonius and playing Omaha, those were his only mistakes. The problem is that he barely cares about strategy in that sense, he just plays. If he stuck to No Limit he’d send everyone broke, I promise you.
I can tell you that there’s no way that durrrr will get his money back off Isildur. I don’t know durrrr’s exact roll, but I reckon he pretty much did most of it after playing Isildur. He's so lucky that he got that Full Tilt deal when he did. He's meant to be broke, but now he's guaranteed like two mil a year or something. If it weren’t for that he'd just be left rolling his eyes for the rest of his life, but Full Tilt have made him. So fucking lucky it's unbelievable.
If you wanna know where I’ve been recently, I’ve been mainly playing on iPoker and Betfair. I don’t really play at Full Tilt anymore, my account there’s rigged. I did play a small live comp at DTD in Nottingham a few weeks ago. Monte Carlo I think it’s called. I only played because I was up there staying with my mate Sam Trickett. It didn’t go well anyhow and I ended up doing my stack within the first few levels. I can play 1k events seriously if I want to, but this one just didn’t work out for me.
I’ll probably be playing more TV events in 2010. I should have won both the PartyPoker one and the Poker Million, so I’ve somehow been unable to capture a title so far. In February there’s the Premier League which has like one million for first or something, so maybe I’ll win that. I’ll also go to Vegas in the summer for WSOP as I wouldn’t mind winning a bracelet.
I haven’t given up on Full Tilt completely, my time will come again on there. My game’s improved massively since I was last bashing them up, I’m a million times better than I was before. Dunno if I'll be as high profile though this year, I just wanna play and take the money now. I don't really enjoy all the other shit that much to be honest.
Ed note: For more on Isildur and to hear the views of pro's such as Ben Grundy, Richard Ashby and Nik Persaud, also see:
Isildur: A Pro's Perspective - Part One: A Hero Arrives
Isildur: A Pro's Perspective - Part Two: Snakes & Ladders
Isildur: A Pro's Perspective - Part Three: Battle of Hastings