Today at about 6:30PM I left for central London with £600 and with the intention of playing some decent cash game poker. First stop was The Empire but after looking around at just four or five very serious looking tables with lots of concentrated looks on the players' faces I decided the vibe was just wrong so I grabbed one of their poker magazines and left. Next stop was The Fox and this place was heaving, mainly due to the £38 donkament just starting which was jam-packed to the brim and with an alternate list as long as my arm. Lots of people were waiting around and the three or so cash tables were full but looked like the same old story- fairly short-stacked but serious minded players.
I passed on laying down my £160 for the Monday 3PM freezeout and decided a visit to The Golden Nugget was in order. This place is on Shaftesbury Avenue but is on the other side of the road to The Fox and is about a 7 or 8 minute walk from there. It's kind of the sister casino to The Empire and accepts the rewards card that you get when you join The Empire. It's a lot smaller and only has about half a dozen poker tables. Its freezeout attracts small fields and the cash game tables are only £1/£1. Tonight just the one table was running and after spotting a free seat I plonked myself down and quickly surveyed the stacks at the table.
As often is the case, the stacks were fairly small and after I found out that the maximum buy-in was just £150, I peeled off £140 (making me the big-stack) and settled in. Lucky for me, I started off well by getting some decent cards and immediately conveyed the image of being a loose aggressive player. This worked well as I got paid off nicely while holding pocket kings and then got paid off a sweet £40 for luckily hitting a gutshot on the river. After about just an hour's play I started trickling away some chips and left with a £200 stack and £60 up on the session.
Now I know manufacturing small wins is not the thing to do but I decided to knock poker on the head for the evening right there and then just so I could get the feeling of winning consistently back again. This does now mean 3 profitable live sessions in a row; I know they're small wins but it's just nice to get a small winning run under your belt. It also means that I'm really starting to warm to these £1/£1 tables outside of The Fox. Yes, they take 10% rake, yes the rewards aren't as large and of course it's a ridiculously small sample but at the moment they just seem very comfortable to play in.
If you have faith in your ability as a player, then sitting down with the maximum at these tables is the thing to do. You can immediately tell, through body language and facial gestures, just who seems wary of you, who will therefore probably tighten up against you and who doesn't seem to mind tackling with you. Of course, it also allows you to use a wider repertoire of moves against your opponents. Finally, I stand 100% by the view that online players tend to be MUCH stronger and feel 100% vindicated by my decision to ditch the online game in favour of playing live. Why, indeed, sit down at a table where about 75% players know what they're doing when you can sit at a real table where only about 40% of the players know what they're doing? AND get a lot more information into the bargain.
Anyway, my next post will be the April update where the whole nightmare of my online debacle will be revealed, plus where a decision has to be made about how I am to proceed with the showing of profits and losses. With the time at nearly midnight it's probably a bit too late to do that tonight and it's probably best if I sleep on it anyway so that everything is clearer in my head come tomorrow morning.
Goodnight one and all!
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