So, having created a new thread in PD asking my fellow P5ers for their very valued opinions on how best to kick-start a roll using on FTP's, my very good friend Mesaplayerz suggested I try putting a blog together based on my journey back into the poker scene...and so here I am. I guess there are a whole heap of people out there who, like me, need to start things all over again, and it is my hope that this will be as beneficial to many of you as I'm hoping it will be for me.

I have never written a blog before, but guess the best place to start is at the beginning. I started playing poker 'for real' in 2007 when I began attending Edinburgh University where I was studying a Law Degree. Sure, I had gashed around with maes here and there at school and at School Parties when all the birds had crashed, the chance of a ride was slim to none, and all the drink had been drunk, but nothing more than that. I think no matter what degree you study, the first couple of years are pretty piece of piss, so I had plenty of time to play a little online poker here and there. I was captain of my Uni Football (the real kind, where you mostly use your feet!) and so devoted a lot of time to that, but the moe poker I played, the more I wanted to keep playing, and so things took off from there. As per the usual donkey staring out, I deposited small and blew my roll numerous times messing around in cash games and tourneys, never taking less than my entire roll to a single table...no wonder I fucked up so many times.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it took me a couple years to get a respectable roll put together, stemming from a combination of $4.40 180-man victories and a luckbox win in a $10 freeze-out on Stars for like $600. Come 3rd Year Uni and I was putting in some pretty serious volume for a small-time student that played football 4 nights a week and got drunk/tried to catch Syphallis the other 3 (why is it that you always wanna ride the dirty ones...?). I was grinding non-turbo $13 6-max STTs on Stars, playing about 100 games a week. I was playing pretty shit-hot, seemed to be crushing it, and was in Top 10 on Sharkscope Leaderboard for 6-max games under $15 for the 1st 3 months of 2009. Running an ROI of like 21% over approx 1100 games, had taken my roll to like 2.5k, cashing out all while to fuel my partying/trying to catch Syphallis habits. And then, I went ahead and fucked it all up. BRM went out the window, started playing 200NL for a little entertainment, thought I could crush $75 STTs just as I did the $13s...I'm sure you can guess the reslults. Basically battled through since then until summer 2010 when I graduated, watching my roll swing from $3k to $500 and then back to $3k again.

Upon graduating I moved in with my girlfriend of 2 years (tit's cool, I never did get Syphallis for all my efforts, so I was a great catch) and with all my life-changes, poker took the biggest hit of all. Working a steady job, still playing football and spending as much time as possible wih my girlfriend gave me little time to concentrate poker, and when I did I would bash on for like 30 mins and try make a million by playing 100NL Rush, or fancying myself at heads-up cash games, which apparently I am terrible at! Come early-November I couldn't take it any more, I cashed out my entire roll (had about $1k in there) and said enough was enough...but enough only lasted like 5 weeks. I fired Full Tilt back up to see I had $12 from rakeback (is that sill a sick brag...?) and like 23k FTP's and wondered to myself what I could make happen with just what I had in the account; and so, this blog has come full circle.

Advice in my PD thread came thick and fast from so many of my fellow P5ers, and for that I am hugely greatful. Since posting I have purchased 30 Step 1 Tickets and gonna see where I can go with them over next couple of weeks My hope is that I can be 2011 as I did 2009; with passion, enthusiasm and a degree of dedication to ths beautful game. I'm hoping that this blog will in some way help me refind the success I enjoyed back then, and hopefully act as a catalyst in moving through the ranks to become a formidable low-mid stakes casual player that once again enjoys the game, whether that be playing it or studying it. Will be posting more specific goals for 2011 before the New Year arrives. I’m sure this focus will aid hugely in getting back into things and, well, starting all over again.