So who is this guy?
I'm Allan Pike, a 32 year old part time poker player. I've been married since 2010 and live in Brighton, UK with my wife Kerry and our Yorkshire Terrier Nym (short for Nymeria).
This is a poker blog, tell us about that!!
I first started playing poker in 2002 (pre Moneymaker!). Like many people, I started playing while I was at university after one of my flatmates came home from the casino with a stack of £50 notes, I figured that if he could do it so could I, and I started playing in the home games and going to the casino with him. To start with we played Pot Limit Hold'em in a £10 rebuy tournament on a Thursday night at the Rendezvous Casino, on my second visit, I won, I was hooked!
Most of us know the story of the explosion of Online Poker during 2003 - commonly known as the 'Moneymaker Effect' - thats when I started online, hence my Pokerstars screen name Pikey2003. I started off playing $5 Sit and Goes, 9, 18, 27, and 45 player tournaments that started once you had enough players. It's fair to say I did pretty well in the early days playing the classic 'Super Tight is Right' strategy. I sometimes wonder how much more I could have made if I knew then what I know now! I also played low limit cash while writing my final year dissertation at uni, just playing premium hands and winning heaps, and the occasional tournament.
Then I dabbled in the game, didn't play too seriously between 2004 and 2012, it's fair to say work and life got in the way and poker was an occasional hobby. if I had some spare cash maybe I'd play at my local casino or put some money on Stars, but nothing too serious. Then in August 2013, I finished in the top 100 of an $11 Super KO Micromillions tournament for around $200. To most players this will seem like small change, but it was the most I had won in a while. I told my former flat mate Ian, who I knew was still playing because a year or so before he came 3rd in the Sunday Storm (an $11 tourney with a $300,000 guarantee) and the month before had won the Bigger $11. He said if I sent him the hand history he would review it for me and we could discuss how I did. my initial thought was, well i came in the top 100 of 21000 runners, I'm obviously great, I'm going to win the World Series next year! How wrong I was! It started off as a foreign language to me, floats and squeezes, light 3bets and push/fold. I suddenly realised that I was miles behind, Super System wasn't 'The Book' any more and I needed to catch up.
Ian recommended I check out Harrington on Hold'em, which was being hailed as one of the best tournament strategy books around, I dived right in and the content blew my mind, 'you mean I should be re raising with more than AA and KK?!?'. He also suggested I check out a coaching web site called Tournament Poker Edge. I didn't sign up right away but I listened to their podcasts.
I started playing more regularly online and was doing ok, the occasional good run but nothing special. I'll cover 2014 onwards in future blogs, today is just a background to me!
Why should I read your blog instead of someone like Daniel Negreanu's?
You shouldn't! You shouldn't limit yourself to a few peoples opinions. Poker is a constantly evolving game and while the pros thoughts and opinions are amazing, they may not always be relevant to your game. As a low/mid stakes Tournament Player, perhaps there is a place for my thoughts on these stakes.
So what can I expect from this blog?
I'll be talking about poker mainly! Recap some of 2014 and talk about my 2015 progress and where I want to be in the future. I'll also try to talk poker literature in each post, not alway strategy books but novels, journals and everything else.
I'm hoping I can look at some interesting tourney spots and review some hands. Maybe some of you readers have hands you'd like me to look at, I'd be more than happy to give you my view.
Hopefully I'll be back very soon with the next instalment, but if you'd like to see or know more, you can follow me on twitter @alllanpike and I regularly stream my weekend MTT sessions on Twitch, you can find me at www.twitch.tv/AlPike, if you follow me you'll know when I go live.
See you at the Final Table
Pikey2003
