Rupert Elder Blog

August was my first losing month of the year. I managed to see off just shy of $10k of my hard Italian dollars, predominantly on live tournies of which I managed 4. September would be heading the same way too despite a win in the ipoker $100r last week – one of my horses has been on a really nice heater which has gotten me out of it nicely.

Londons ok, I’m fairly settled down here but often find myself with little to do beyond poker. I find myself spending an uncomfortable amount of time on online banking probably in the hope that the numbers will just go up if I stare. Other than that time seems to have passed by ridiculously fast this month, suppose youtube isn’t going to watch itself.

I’ve done a spot of cooking – made a bread and butter pudding that looked atrocious but tasted good and helped my housemate George out with a massive spaghetti and meatballs that came out a bit thin because I put too much oil in the pan. Have to start somewhere!

Yes, I and others ate this

I’ve been watching a lot of the videos on Khan Academy too, really awesome idea and implementation. If they had videos for my whole degree I would have learned so much more and got a way better grade.

Other than the downswing and boredom getting me down, I think I was affected by the unexpected death of Paresh Jain. I’d never met him or talked to him really but I’ve played with him online and read a lot of his posts on 2+2 and seen him about at live events. He seemed like a nice chap and a very good player. Certainly his death made me take a good look at myself and my future with not much of a conclusion. Best wishes to all his friends and family.

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I had the pleasure of playing a Sunday session with Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen and a few others today and I chatted to him about staking. Among other things it got me thinking a lot about some of the pieces I’ve bought in the past and how while staking is very rarely a game of asymmetric information perhaps I’ve been too liberal in my lack of due diligence. In fact when reflecting upon it, there is nothing really that I’ve sort of just picked up and had a natural inclination. I fell down all the straightforward and obvious poker pitfalls when I was starting out but it still took me 3 or 4 years to overcome most of them – for example being terrible at poker and bankroll management and having a vice or two on the side.

When I was at school I’d often moan to my mum about how history/geography/English were useless to me and how I would never use them and how boring they were. She would always patiently explain to me that it isn’t necessarily what I learn that matters so much as the learning process. It wasn’t advice I clicked onto until maybe a year or so after I’d left university where having successfully coasted my way through 16 years of education I was left with a $2k roll trying to make a living at NL50. While I appear quite lazy to many it’s more that a lot of things just don’t hold my interest and so I stubbornly don’t want to put the effort into it. A year and a half on from playing full time I was only up to NL200 – it would have been shrewd to have taken my mums advice of sticking at school just to get that learning process down. Fortunately for me poker is something I absolutely love so I am quite happy to commit a lot of time to getting better at it which is probably half the process itself.

Currently I’m investigating a couple of property options, nothing overly exciting just something to squirrel away some money into in case everything goes tits up. It’s a somewhat daunting prospect dropping a lump on something especially as I’m unlikely to go down the traditional route of residential housing. Hopefully I won’t make too many mistakes and clock onto things earlier rather than later but thankfully I have a fairly laissez faire attitude anyway (probably something to do with those slacking school days) so if it all goes wrong I guess I’ll just live and learn.

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Myself, Tommo and George decided to have a typical lads weekend in Monte Carlo – usual stuff, chopper to the hotel, drinking in front of the yachts then top it all off with some wonderful food from Buddha Bar and lashing at the ever wonderful Jimmy*z.

I’ve been taking tips from Andys blog and thought I’d throw in a few photos to get you in the mood.

Heliport as we landed

Not our limo unfortunately

What a lovely day!

The weather fantastic, company good as ever, and food and drink brilliant! Unfortunately all good things come to an end and after a rather hungover return my gout has returned in fantastic fashion after a perhaps overenthusiastic workout at the gym with my new personal trainer. I was a bit apprehensive but he seems like a good chap and seemed to know what was going on. I had to cancel my session with tomorrow since I can’t walk due to the aforementioned gout which I’m hoping will subside soon.

For now I’m concentrating on cash games for a while then off to Barcelona to tear up the EPT on Friday.

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I’ve arrived back in my lovely London abode greeted by a pile of boxes to unload and parcel receipts to collect from the local post office after a rather wonderful trip to Tallinn where I re-tested the waters in the local tournament there. The trip was going wonderfully I should say until I had a string of busting the main event, the €2k side event, before finally coming down with a bout of some evil food poisoning/Norovirus type concoction that left me in an awful state for a couple of days and results in this current pounding headache.

The main event was tedious for me. I was down to 10k from 30k starting within the first hour after 3b/peeling J7s and calling thrice on JxxxT and losing to tens. Certainly unconventional but he had that look about him and to be honest I didn’t expect him to 4b QQ- but he showed me! Anyway, I eventually bust jamming 6bbs with K9s after a day and a half of mostly blinding down with the occasional thrilling resteal.

The €2k went a bit differently, I chipped up very nicely from the 12k starting to around 30k then I tried to bluff some smashed up Estonian guy (didn’t see he was smashed until we moved table and got put next to each other and he reeked of brandy) then jammed with T8o and lost to AA.

I opted out of the €1k side in favor of recovering from the hangover from the as ever wonderful stars party (most hilarity available here ) before coming down with a dose of OMGIMDYING. My roommate David Vamplew managed to seal the deal though and took down all 60 odd runners for a cheeky €19k score and the ever sought after Estonian flag (got mine couple of years in with €400 cash in €100 turbo…)

Anyway I’m glad to be back home and will be doing no travelling until EPT Barcelona so hopefully will have time to recover, maybe watch a few videos, play some hands etc.

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Vegas has come to an end. I pulled out a cheeky 132nd in the Main Event which included spending a day next to the yappy Daniel Negreanu on the ESPN feature table. I think I played solidly all tourney, made a few mistakes throughout and am pleased with the result. I very much doubt people have as high ROIs as they think they do in it, I found I had to play very good players the whole way through and a few massive fish. Timex made a big post saying people should play online instead and he’s probably right but making money isn’t especially my biggest priority and it’s really fun to hang out in Vegas for 7 weeks with some great friends

Anyway, plans now are a few weddings to attend and probably pop along to EPT Tallinn and a few other tournies before the years up. I’m moving to London with my mates Jack and George so should be easier to leave the country if need be. More soon!

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My best run to date in this country came in the $2.5k 6 max a week or two ago. Things went very well with several people gifting me stacks and owning fools a little bit (coolering the shit out of everyone). In the end I fumbled my way into 18th getting in K9s vs 77 on 976 bvb. I got $25k for the effort which was nice and puts me as a small winner so far on the series excluding staking.

I have taken a lot of action this series, more than I’ve ever taken before. I’m up so far thanks mostly to a $6k cash from Paul Nash as well as Ben Dobson getting the lot at the Venetian. Still a long way to go and the series could still end up very painfully! Somewhat accidentally a couple of my online horses have been doing well so June could turn out to be a very healthy month!

Speaking of my health (yeah, great suegway) we fielded about a 20 minute basketball game the other day. Nearly all of us had heart attacks and as an unlikely favourite, Thayer pulled through to win the survival of the fittest. Plans of indoor football/more basketball have been significantly hampered by buying Fifa about a week into the series and purchasing Sim City 4 has been hugely detrimental to my personal productivity levels. So much so that I sacked off the $1k today to recover from my hangover and climb out of the mountains of debt I amounted for my city in the Berlin scenario that I named New York for some reason.

It’s still all rather enjoyable out here, Andy is winning the most cashes award currently being 3/8 (he’s likely to make that 4/9 tomorrow being 6 away from the money) but I hold the more coveted achievement of being up the most money – or alternatively down the least. Mongy and Jack are the only non-cashers in the house so far, but that’s because they are terrible at poker

Had a few very solid lashups so far. Anna and Aaron of Warwick poker fame were out for a few days and although being I’ve been busy with tournaments I did manage to drag Anna out last night for a good old pissup. It was us and the Americans, notably Ricky and Jerry and Jerry’s college friends. I don’t remember some of the night but have distinct recall of stumbling to McDonalds and being thoroughly disappointed to find out that they had switched to the breakfast menu. How I got home is beyond me!

Next event is the $1.5k on Tuesday then probably some other stuff I haven’t really looked at the schedule. Obviously the main event is one of the more exciting events. Last year I was very excited about it then bust in 4 levels. Hoping not to repeat that and get something going this year, a deep run would be super cool. I’ve played badly in about 3-4 events this series but the rest I was very happy with how I played so hopefully the main will be one of the better ones.

My mum informs me that it is very hot in England at the moment. Hopefully it will cool down before I return, I’m sick of desert heat, constant nosebleeds and dry throats.

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I’ve been hanging around Vegas for a touch over a week now and despite the usual wire problems/awful Rio dealers/hugely fattening food etc I’m having a very enjoyable time. Had 2 very solid smash ups, one with all the English lads when we had a day off the following day and another for Scott “M0NGY” O’Reilly’s birthday where we had a good laugh at the new Paris club Chateau which was pretty cool. We got a solid round of golf in too and between the 3 of us playing best ball we managed to not be ecliptically over par. Few more rounds and you could probably start to call me Tiger.

The donkaments haven’t been going so well – I’m yet to have a single cash which is pretty disappointing. I got my feet wet in a Venetian $1.6k as opposed to the WSOP $5k that day which was predictably an awful decision as the Venetian was just late regging regs from the $5k bustouts and regs who made the same error as me of thinking that the Venetian would be softer. Nevertheless I lasted 5 levels because busting in what I’m sure was a drastically exciting hand but inevitably as with all my bustouts has escapes my memory. In my previous 2 tournaments (the shootout and the $1.5k donkfest) I was very satisfied with how I played and don’t have that awful puntsville feeling after busting. So hopefully things will perk up and maybe I can get a WSOP tag on my hendon mob after 3 years of trying…

Appallingly the cash games have been going badly too. As I previously mentioned I was having wire issues but was more than content to slum it at $2/5 and even a spattering of $1/3. I’m stuck 3 buyins and not sure if I should even bother moving up to try and get out of it.

The house is gorgeous with a lovely spa that i’ve been making good use of. The pool leaves a bit desired, but we recently discovered it was heatable so might start having a few more dabbles in that. We’ve been keeping it remarkably clean – a lot of that is because of the huge amounts of space we have so it just doesn’t really feel messy but we have been pretty disciplined and the lovely Mexican maid and her 8 year old daughter did a stellar job of taking away our many many beer bottles. We did have one mishap with the toilet but I off’d my socks and waded in while Thayer broomed into a bin. It was all just a good team building exercise really and a perfect morale booster before we obliterate #teamstarlightcanyon in the inaugural football and basketball -off.

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In other news, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying both Geordie Shore and the Apprentice. I had never watched the Jersey version of the former but I thought I would give it a spin and it is utterly hilarious watching these morons behave like absolute animals. The lads have all been watching Game of Thrones but it isn’t so much to my tastes. I watched the first couple of episodes but not really gotten into it too much and now everyone is way ahead of me so I might just skip that for now.

My next event is the $2.5k 6 max unless I give a Venetian tourney a spin. I will try and keep the old updates a bit more regular but you know how it is. My tweets are at least somewhat more frequent and you can check them out at http://twitter.com/#!/ruperte. Other than that best off luck across the baize hope you all play like champs!

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I’ve been bored out of my mind since Sunday. Literally just loitering around the house and occasionally popping into the bank to have a good old moan. Sunday was pretty sweet, I came 6th in two of the smaller majors and FT bubbled another so collected about $15k profit on the day. I’ve played about 1k hands since then which have been fairly mundane.

I did manage to muster up the courage to watch a couple of videos, in particular on Leggo where i’ve been grinding aejones series against the elusive IReadYrSoul. I’m not sure about the educational content since I don’t play on that level of thinking/aggression but it’s certainly decent entertainment! I’ll probably try and grind out a few more videos before the never-ending WSOP that i’ve got coming up on Tuesday.

Snoopy found time to interview me for blackbelt so check it out at I’ve been bored out of my mind since Sunday. Literally just loitering around the house and occasionally popping into the bank to have a good old moan. Sunday was pretty sweet, I came 6th in two of the smaller majors and FT bubbled another so collected about $15k profit on the day. I’ve played about 1k hands since then which have been fairly mundane. I did manage to muster up the courage to watch a couple of videos, in particular on Leggo where i’ve been grinding aejones series against the elusive IReadYrSoul. I’m not sure about the educational content since I don’t play on that level of thinking/aggression but it’s certainly decent entertainment! I’ll probably try and grind out a few more videos before the never-ending WSOP that i’ve got coming up on Tuesday.

Snoopy found time to interview me so check it out at Blackbelt Poker

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As a bit of a slave to the grind I had a pleasant week of answering what my parents thought of me playing poker for various media outlets (ITV, BBC etc) before on Sunday finally getting my game face back on and attempting to make money.

Things got off to a cracking start when I day 2′d the SCOOP-19-M (AKA Sunday Warmup) on Stars and ended up coming 6th for 28 beans despite playing a bit miserably at the FT. I blame recovering from tiredness/illness! Anyway, played my first cash games in over a month today and booked a cheeky $1k win. Hopefully i’ll find enough time to pursue cash games further to ensure I stay nice and sharp for all these live donkaments!

Current plans are SCOOP on Sunday, chill for a week maybe play some cash games, then VEGAS for 6 weeks of 40 degree heat and bad food. Oh and multiple attempts to win jewelery i’ll never wear! This life…

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So in all likelihood you haven’t heard of me, or if you have I’m probably better known as that guy who won San Remo rather than Rupert Elder the SUPER CRUSHER.

Since you’ve stumbled upon this for whatever reason, I ought to more formally introduce myself I suppose. I’m 24 years old and after getting a pretty pathetic excuse for a degree in Economics I decided I wanted to play poker full time which i’ve been doing for 2 years now. I started of playing 25c/50c NLHE cash games and worked my way up to $2/4. At this point I managed to bink off a 2nd place in the Full Tilt million for about $155k. I sold a fair clip of action in it but still got around $60k and I decided to play more live events.

I wasn’t home for the whole of April going to APT Manila, EPT Berlin, GSOP Seville, Irish Open, before finally EPT San Remo. I got a couple of cashes before managing to win the whole thing in San Remo. You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! Ahem. Anyway yes it’s all been very exciting since then. I got to go to Madrid to attempt to go back2back but failed miserably after Jason Mercier ruined my life.

I did have a jolly good time there though, especially the always good Pokerstars party. Right now I’m having some relaxing time at home playing online and more time consumingly, playing portal 2. Then on May 31st i’m off to Vegas for a whopping 6 weeks to attempt to win a bracelet as well as having a really awesome time as always!

I’ll be sure to keep you guys informed with my progress and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I will definitely answer.

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