Live Session #61: Bacchus Came Back

As I wrote in my last post, playing poker while feeling really lousy about work is probably not a very wise thing to do. Nevertheless, yesterday I decided to take myself off to town to play some live poker to see how I could handle it. Unfortuntely, due to all the recent pressure, Bacchus came a-calling and, being weak-willed and stupid, I heeded the call and replied in no uncertain terms. Sadly, the result was that I became so befuddled that it's all a bit of a blur.

To cut a long story short, I first played a £1/£1 cash game at The Fox Club for about an hour and finished a little bit ahead. I then wandered over to The Empire for some £1/£2 and played there for about an hour. While there I won over £100 in a hand where I re-raised a £10 bet up to £50 (with AA) and got TWO callers! Yes, I went all-in on the innocuous flop and, yes, they both folded. Fine.

With a good profit after this short session I soon left but my biggest mistake followed. I wandered back over to The Fox to play in their £38 MTT. Why? I dunno, maybe I wanted to lock up the profit and finish the evening ahead no matter what the result of the tourney, but that was my next port of call. Unfortunately, after the inevitable bust-out (and with large quantities of alcohol consumed) I compounded the mistake by plonking myself down at a £1/£1 table. I have pretty much no recollection of any hands in question, let alone the strength of the players, but after about an hour or two of play, I distinctly remember looking down at my dwindling stack and, with just a couple of £25 chips and a pile of £1 chips in front of me, wondered where the hell my starting stack of £200 went! I really don't remember how the hell it happened!

The interesting bit was that after this, I returned to The Empire with a view to playing more poker but was saved from losing anymore money after I told the guy at the cage that I was totally drunk and really shouldn't play. His reply was that I "should go home then." Fortunately, this advice resonated with the part of my brain that was working well enough and I said he was right. I put my cash back in my pocket and I reckon he had just saved me over £300!

Did I pass the test? No, I drank well over my 3-pint limit while playing poker; something which I told myself I would never do again - and ended up down as a direct result. Not good. I hate to use pressure of work as an excuse but this was clearly a contributory factor. Still, if it wasn't for the voice of reason from the cashier, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

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The rain that has been falling has meant that I now need to wade through a thick bog. I don't know if I'll be able to keep the posts coming in my usual way as I don't think poker playing will be featuring highly on my schedule over the next few weeks but let's hope the clouds pass soon enough to let the sun through eh?