(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.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Monday, 21 February 2011
Live Session #7 (Part 1)
It's 3AM and I have just returned from a live session in town. I have one week off work so I felt fine about treating myself to a late Monday night session. I've just been reading about BrotherMuzone's bad run for the day and it really does put my crying to shame.
Anyway, first off I played a little £1/£1 cash at The Fox and left the table with £8 profit before taking my place at the £28 Semi-Freezeout. (Actually it was a £25 buy-in + £5 fee + £3 Dealer Bonus MTT with one 1 rebuy.) Usually I rebuy straight away but the floor manager initially said we had to be below 4K to get it. Then after 10 minutes he told everyone we could get the rebuy whenever we wanted to after all. For some reason I held back and even at just 6K chips at the break chose not to take the rebuy then either. My thinking was that instead of paying the extra £25 I'd just try to donk a double-up instead!
Luckily, soon after the break I donked a triple-up by going all-in with Q8s in late position after seeing a min-raise and a caller before me. I just figured that I had masses of value and my cards would probably be live as well. As it happened the BB went all-in and there was another all-in as well. The two villains turned over AK and 77 and I saw the beautiful 8 hit the flop and my hand held up! Still, I was out in 15th place (40 runners) when I went all-in with 10 10 and about 7BBs left and got a caller who flipped over QQ - Thank you and good night!
Before moving onto Part 2 just a quick mention to some peeps I met tonight at The Fox: first of all I met PKR's Tigerwing and Rattus but I also noticed a fella who seemed very familiar on one of the other tables and after asking at my table was told that he was in the film "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" and also appeared in the TV series, "Misfits." Anyway, after making some enquiries on the internet I found out that it was a guy called Dexter Fletcher, this fella:
His hair was a little greyer and wilder by the way.
Anyway, at £20 down and with it still being very early in terms of live poker, I swigged down my bottle of Peroni and headed for The Empire which I'll twaddle about in my next post. With the time now at four o'clock in the morning, I really need to hit the sack!
Anyway, first off I played a little £1/£1 cash at The Fox and left the table with £8 profit before taking my place at the £28 Semi-Freezeout. (Actually it was a £25 buy-in + £5 fee + £3 Dealer Bonus MTT with one 1 rebuy.) Usually I rebuy straight away but the floor manager initially said we had to be below 4K to get it. Then after 10 minutes he told everyone we could get the rebuy whenever we wanted to after all. For some reason I held back and even at just 6K chips at the break chose not to take the rebuy then either. My thinking was that instead of paying the extra £25 I'd just try to donk a double-up instead!
Luckily, soon after the break I donked a triple-up by going all-in with Q8s in late position after seeing a min-raise and a caller before me. I just figured that I had masses of value and my cards would probably be live as well. As it happened the BB went all-in and there was another all-in as well. The two villains turned over AK and 77 and I saw the beautiful 8 hit the flop and my hand held up! Still, I was out in 15th place (40 runners) when I went all-in with 10 10 and about 7BBs left and got a caller who flipped over QQ - Thank you and good night!
Before moving onto Part 2 just a quick mention to some peeps I met tonight at The Fox: first of all I met PKR's Tigerwing and Rattus but I also noticed a fella who seemed very familiar on one of the other tables and after asking at my table was told that he was in the film "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" and also appeared in the TV series, "Misfits." Anyway, after making some enquiries on the internet I found out that it was a guy called Dexter Fletcher, this fella:
Anyway, at £20 down and with it still being very early in terms of live poker, I swigged down my bottle of Peroni and headed for The Empire which I'll twaddle about in my next post. With the time now at four o'clock in the morning, I really need to hit the sack!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Last Weekly Update
Ok, to get my mind away from short-term thinking and to keep myself focused on the bigger picture, I'm going to make this my last weekly update and just post monthly updates instead from now on. I'll admit it, I've had a very good winning week so it makes the decision to actually post this weekly update very easy:
__________________________________________________________________________
ONLINE:WEEK 7: +$300 (~£180) / FEBRUARY +$400 (~£240) / YEAR: -$460 (~£280)
LIVE:WEEK 7: +£610 (~$960) / FEBRUARY +£610 (~$960) / YEAR: +£1570 (~$2480)
TOTAL:WEEK 7: +£790 (~$1260) / FEBRUARY +£850 (~$1350) / YEAR +£1290 (~$2020)
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As you can see, clearing my online poker deficit is a slow and gradual process - more like a two steps forward and one step back routine, but this dwarfs in comparison to my live exploits which puts me at nearly $2.5K (~£1.5K) up over just six live sessions. My overall profit for the year has just reached $2K and I suppose that really can't be bad.
Next week (or rather a week Monday) I'll be posting the monthly update for February.
---------------NOW COME ON!!
Live Session #6: 2nd Place Baby! (Part 2)
At 2:45AM came the last hand and, possibly the most annoying thing about The Fox, prizes had to be worked out based on the percentages of the chips held by the remaining players! Overall, I pinched 2nd place and although I'm not sure of the exact numbers, the chip count and prizes were approximately as follows:
1st place - 570 000 chips (approx) = ~£850
2nd place - 275 000 chips (approx) = £630
3rd place - 225 000 chips (approx) = ~£550
Unfortunately, as they seemed to be in a rush to get away and with it being so late and with them taking an age to work out the numbers, they didnt take names or PKR usernames so no credit on leaderboards or what have you but that's no problem really. Buzzing from this good result (plus the effect of about 7 bottles of Peroni), I wandered into The Empire at about 3AM with the intention of sitting down to play a few hands but after circling for a bit, thought better of it and left for the bus journey back home.
Still, this result gives me a great boost and, with my previous small cash game profit, put me up £610 on the night. I won't mention how I'm doing online just in case I jinx today's sessions but will be posting my usual weekly update in a later post today. I know, "sing when you're winning" and all that - but one thing I will pledge is that I'll never threaten to stop doing the blog again.
With a full week off work ahead of me and my results picking up a little bit, I guess you could say I'm feeling a little smug and a little bit pleased with myself. Be assured though that I won't be reaping the full benefit of this success myself - it's my younger daughter's 18th birthday next weekend! Anyway, let's see how this day's sessions play out and I'll come back with that weekly update. In the meantime here's a song to express how I feel:
Beautiful Sunday
1st place - 570 000 chips (approx) = ~£850
2nd place - 275 000 chips (approx) = £630
3rd place - 225 000 chips (approx) = ~£550
Unfortunately, as they seemed to be in a rush to get away and with it being so late and with them taking an age to work out the numbers, they didnt take names or PKR usernames so no credit on leaderboards or what have you but that's no problem really. Buzzing from this good result (plus the effect of about 7 bottles of Peroni), I wandered into The Empire at about 3AM with the intention of sitting down to play a few hands but after circling for a bit, thought better of it and left for the bus journey back home.
Still, this result gives me a great boost and, with my previous small cash game profit, put me up £610 on the night. I won't mention how I'm doing online just in case I jinx today's sessions but will be posting my usual weekly update in a later post today. I know, "sing when you're winning" and all that - but one thing I will pledge is that I'll never threaten to stop doing the blog again.
With a full week off work ahead of me and my results picking up a little bit, I guess you could say I'm feeling a little smug and a little bit pleased with myself. Be assured though that I won't be reaping the full benefit of this success myself - it's my younger daughter's 18th birthday next weekend! Anyway, let's see how this day's sessions play out and I'll come back with that weekly update. In the meantime here's a song to express how I feel:
Beautiful Sunday
Live Session #6: 2nd Place Baby! (Part 1)
Last night, at about 4:15AM, I rolled home after a long poker session at The Fox. I took £400 into town with me and arrived at The Fox at about 6:15PM. I paid the £38 entrance for the 7PM freezeout and, while waiting for that to start, paid £300 at the cage for chips to play the £1/£2 cash game that had just opened. The dealer actually informed me that the maximum was £500 which is definitely something to bear in mind for the future. Interestingly, I was surprised to see so many players buy in for a very short £50 stack. Anyway, after about 40 minutes I got up from the table with a small £20 profit. Not a bad start I thought, at least that was half the entry fee for the MTT paid for.
The tournament itself was a great success and I battled away nicely to earn a place on the final table. The most notable key hand, I would say, occurred in the mid to late stages when I went all-in with 10 10 and got called by JJ. The turn served me up the magical 10 and I practically doubled-up at a good moment and was well on my way. At the final table, after a few players got knocked out but with my stack dwindling, I found AA at just the right time and got paid off by the BB. I also got paid off by the BB again when I went all-in with K7 in the cut-off and he called with 10 6!!
My last "get-out-jail-free" card came when there were 5 players left. A fairly small-stacked SB went all-in against me when I was on the BB. Without looking at my cards, I saw that my stack could withstand a small set-back and I said I would call him if I held an ace or a king. I regretted saying this when I peeked at K5! True to my word, but reluctantly, I called and he flipped over A6. Bosh - we both missed right up until I spiked a 5 on the river - bosh. After the 4th place player got knocked out (JJ v. KK) we were down to three but with fairly equal stacks and about 10 minutes to go to closing time things were a bit cagey and no one really wanted to commit.
The tournament itself was a great success and I battled away nicely to earn a place on the final table. The most notable key hand, I would say, occurred in the mid to late stages when I went all-in with 10 10 and got called by JJ. The turn served me up the magical 10 and I practically doubled-up at a good moment and was well on my way. At the final table, after a few players got knocked out but with my stack dwindling, I found AA at just the right time and got paid off by the BB. I also got paid off by the BB again when I went all-in with K7 in the cut-off and he called with 10 6!!
My last "get-out-jail-free" card came when there were 5 players left. A fairly small-stacked SB went all-in against me when I was on the BB. Without looking at my cards, I saw that my stack could withstand a small set-back and I said I would call him if I held an ace or a king. I regretted saying this when I peeked at K5! True to my word, but reluctantly, I called and he flipped over A6. Bosh - we both missed right up until I spiked a 5 on the river - bosh. After the 4th place player got knocked out (JJ v. KK) we were down to three but with fairly equal stacks and about 10 minutes to go to closing time things were a bit cagey and no one really wanted to commit.
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---Part 2 To Follow---
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