Yep, it's promotion time at The Vic - and what a great promotion it is too - IF you're a regular that is, which I obviously am not. Ok, so here's the deal: for every hand at every cash game table that gets to over £20, 50p is taken out of the pot and used to go towards the prize-pool of a "freeroll" at the end of the month for the top 100 players who manage to log the most days played at the club for that month.
Great news, of course, for the lucky 100 players who are able to play consistently at The Vic AND who are actually able to make the tourney on the Sunday which it is held; not so good for the poor sods who will no doubt contribute thousands of pounds towards the prize money - but who have absolutely no chance of competing for said money. Oh well, that'll be my last visit to The Vic for sometime. It was a nice little stint while it lasted I suppose but I think I'll stick with The Empire from now on thank you very much. At least there is some cat in hell's chance that I might actually hit the jackpot there.
The redeeming feature, it has to be said, is that those who come 101st - 200th get first refusal to buy a seat should empty seats be available on the day. I don't know how they work out how to implement this and in what order which seats are available to whom but there it is. Oh, but they have to pay a £100 entry fee! Kinda weird if you ask me.
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The session itself was about as different from a usual "Empire-type table" as you can get; it was a veritable swarm of nits, Rock Garden City baby! Unfortunately, for me, this proved frustrating - not because I wasn't getting any hands (I was) but because I just wasn't getting paid off. I was by far the busiest player at the table but that's because I really was getting quite a few premiums and hitting the board with pleasantly surprising regularity. Of my premiums, the three or four times I raised preflop with QQ+ hands, I saw folds and just picked up the £2 in blinds. The one time I DID actually slowplay KK, an ace hit the flop and the villain inevitably had the ace.
Similarly, I really didn't need to bluff tonight because I was hitting quite a few boards very nicely. I remember hitting two pairs, quite a few straights and at least two full-houses. Unfortunately, although I got a little bit of action on earlier streets, I just never got paid off when my raises went in on the river. Furthermore, as it was a £1/£1 table, the money going in was pretty tame compared to The Empire; I'd pick up £7 there, £10 here and maybe £12 over there but chicken-feed really in the wider scheme of things. ( An average single pre-flop raise at The Empire!)
Nevertheless, although I easily won the most pots at the table and, by appearance, was the loosest and wildest player at the table, I won precisely ZERO POUNDS!! Yep, the 10% rake along with the 50p drop on hands above £20 plus all the tips to the dealer didn't help matters but with all those hands I was making (none of which seemed to get to showdown) I still only managed to break-even. To be clear, I sat down with £160 and left with £160.
So with just that one small experience at the £1/£1 table, it does seem that there is some truth in the widely held belief that The Vic has its fair share of nitty regulars. I know I've said it before but, yes, I'll say it again: in my personal experience, The Empire is still THE place to go for low stakes poker in London.
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