(Written the following day but in the present tense for effect.)
It's Monday night, 11PM, and after a quick pint at a nice pub I enter The Empire - and the place is BUZZING. Around 10 tables are in full swing and as I sit myself down I comment on the hype of activity to the dealer. I ask him if this is normal for a weekday and he says that it's like this EVERY day of the week! He says that ever since the word has got around about the badbeat jackpot a huge wave of fish are coming in to try their luck; he also tells me that many people still hang around till the early hours and go straight to work afterwards - madness. (All because of a badbeat jackpot!?) Anyway, I guess this is good news as I'm really warming to the live game and do feel a few midweek evening visits would be nice. (I don't think I could play too long beyond 11PM though.)
Anyway, I sit at what seems to be quite a quiet table with no one holding a particularly heavy-sized stack. I'm happy to plonk out the cash for £240 in chips. I give a little bit of my "drunk-guy-who-doesn't-know-what-he's-doing" routine but soon get bored of this when I go card-dead and opportunity-dead for a straight 2 hours. It's slightly frustrating because a pre-flop raise of £15 with two or three callers (let alone limpers galore coughing up the dough to see a flop) is fairly routine. This sort of thing just seems normal these days at The Empire. Still, after 2 hours of nothingness, I'm beginning to sense the huge "WEAK/TIGHT" label being branded into my forehead and so I ask the floor manager for a table change.
He takes note and I play a few more hands. Presto! With around £140 chips in front of me and £100 down, I look down at 10 10 and raise it up, mid position, with a £12 raise and get a few callers. The board comes junk, 9 5 2 or something and there is a £32 raise before me. I chuck all my remaining chips (~£130) into the middle and he folds. Nice. The floor manager then tells me there is a space on just the table I had my eye on and I'm there.
With my poor table image shaken off and my stack back up to around £200 I start to feel better and sit down to a new table and get nice cards. With 10 10 dealt to me again I raise it up £10 preflop and get 3 callers! Again the flop comes with low junky undercards and I pump £45 into the pot and take it down. In the final key hand I look down at AA (finally!) and reraise a £7 early bet (with 1 caller) to £35 and get two callers. The flop comes K 2 8 (two spades) and when it comes to me I just chuck 'em all in. It's fold fold and I take another £70.
At about 2AM I call it a night and cash out for £340 which puts me up £100 on the session and up £80 on the night which is not too bad considering I was down £100 at one stage and with a table image shot to pieces. I like to say that my online game is also going in the same direction but it's just not - I've dropped around $150 online since my weekly update. Sigh. Still, swings and roundabouts an' all that.
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