I would’ve had Part 2 up and finished by now, but I got distracted:
Never playing this again, by the way. Need sleep.
Bit of a shame I lost KK < 88 for all of the chips in existence but oh well. Not a bad start to a new backing deal!
Apologies for taking so long getting this together – it’s been a mammoth task and the idea of completing mammoth tasks makes me procrastinate! I hope you enjoy this Trip Report as much as I enjoyed the trip!
The day finally rolled around. My flights were booked, my backers had shipped their money, my seat was waiting for me and I was ready to head out to Ireland for the first UKIPT of the new season.
I met up with a fellow GNF forumite, Rob Hallworth, for breakfast. Rob is remarkable on GNF for easily being one of the highest rolling players on there – his average buy-in breaches $70 and he takes (unwise) shots at the $1050 Super Tuesday for fun. He’s also a really decent bloke and would end up being my travelling buddy for the trip. Me, Rob and my fiancée Harriet met up at the Deco Lounge on Whiteladies Road wherein I proceeded to stuff my face with some wondrous concoction of meat and cheese whilst the other two went for slightly healthier options (well, when you have a wonderful “full” figure like mine it needs maintaining!)
"How much for roaming? Fuck, I need another drink..."
After breakfast we walked with Harriet to Bristol Uni, said our goodbyes and made our way to the Triangle to catch the Bristol Flyer to the airport… except we couldn’t find the bus stop. We knew where the bus stop should’ve been and were standing there happily but couldn’t find any information on the signs whatsoever. We decided in the end to play it safe and schlepped down the hill to the main bus station where we managed to get on a bus about to leave for the airport. Getting through the checkin process was uneventful apart from both of us forgetting liquids in our bags and the security guard having a long, stern look at Rob’s reading material on the plane (remember authors, please think twice before naming your book “Kill Everyone”. TIA: me). I managed to fail spectacularly in the Duty Free shop by not realising I could buy at the Bristol end and then collect it when I landed on the return flight meaning I ended up missing out on 1 litre of yummy, yummy Grey Goose Citron for some stupidly low price like £32 (if you haven’t had Grey Goose of any kind, do. I know vodka “doesn’t have a taste” but you’re wrong, it does, and this is basically the nut best).
Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most confident flyer; though largely down to inexperience I get rather nervy about the prospect. On the up side it was a lovely, clear day in Bristol. On the down side the plane looked like shit – it was a small plane with these huge propellers which was a far cry from the big sturdy ones I took previously to Portugal/America. The takeoff was much, much better than I expected though – my ears hardly popped at all and it wasn’t as scary as I remembered. The South West looked gorgeous in the sun as we ascended into the clouds and I had a great few minutes ogling my home from the air before we ended up hitting the cloud layer and I settled in with my Android Kindle version of Kill Everyone (slightly more sensible carrying it on there though I really don’t like reading on the screen and have since bought a paper copy).
The descent was not as pleasant – Ireland decided to greet us with a cover of lovely thick black cloud and, though not raining, the poor little prop plane did not like the moisture-laden air and shook around a fair amount. I think I’m solid on takeoffs now but landings and descents are something I’ll probably always find shit. Anyway, we made it.
Touchdown in Shannon, Ireland
Shannon is a very sleepy little airport – it just about serves New York as well as a few European destinations but overall it was very quiet… perfect! We got off the plane quickly, got through passport control in no time at all and managed to run out the front door of the airport just in time to get an early bus to Galway (which was a bit of a bink given the next one was in an hour).
The bus was nice enough though not particularly direct – though there’s a wonderful new shiny motorway connection between Shannon and Galway we spent most of the trip driving alongside it visiting nearly every bumfuck village and town on the way. This was both a blessing and a curse; obviously it took a lot longer to get to Galway that way but it meant we got to see more of Ireland that way (when I wasn’t glued to my phone playing $7 hypers on Pokerstars Mobile – it’s not meant to work in Ireland apparently but the IP of the roaming 3G must show as UK-based). And Ireland’s reputation holds firm – even in the drizzle it’s very, very pretty – sort of a mix of the Cotswolds and Pennsylvania in that the landscapes are lush and green but the villages and towns seem a little backwards. Very into their rugby though and I definitely appreciate the amount of support each village/town lends to its local team – flags everywhere.
We made it into Galway around 3:30-4pm as expected and set about finding our respective B&Bs. No balla lifestyle here – we’d both much rather spend €30/night on a B&B than €150-200/night on the 4-5* hotel that the UKIPT is running in. The main thing to remark about Galway is its size; it’s tiny for a local hub! Pretty much everything is walkable and I think I took a taxi exactly once because I was just that little bit too drunk to fancy stumbling back. After a little bit of a faff because of College Road’s stupid numbering system (yay let’s start the numbers at 48 or so and then just before we get to the one we want start over from 1 and count up!) we found Rob’s B&B. We arranged to meet up later and I then walked the rest of the length of the road until I found mine.
Abbey Lodge Guest House - my home in Ireland
Not a bad room for €30!
I paid up for my stay, chucked my stuff in the room, had a quick change of clothes and set off to meet Rob ready to explore.
Tune in tomorrow for Part 2! Curries! Drinking! Internet geeks! Drinking! Drinking! And maybe even some poker!
Online score: It’d be nice to convert another deep run into a big score. Obviously it’s unlikely to come in a 10,500 person field again (though I wouldn’t complain) but I’ve got the taste of blood, so to speak.
- Me, 11th January
Check.
Owing to feeling crappy I ended up backing out of a Meetup game I was due to play which offered me an opportunity to get my Sunday grind on for the first time in a good while. This turned out to be a massive mistake as I rather swiftly got hit by the arse end of the variance stick leading to a mass rage-unregister. I felt a bit better after spending some time with the missus so registered for the 2 Sunday Storms (it was another “Double Vision” Sunday this week) and was ceremoniously dumped out of both in short order. At this point I considered killing off my session but was a) a bit bored and b) still sweating a friend in the Warm-Up (he’d busto AA < QQ AIPF in the top 100 in the end 
) so I registered 2 turbo KOs and a $5 turbo. In standard Sunday form I busted the KOs quickly but the turbo went a little better:
Life is good.
That was good enough to obliterate my makeup and leave me with a decision on what to do with my $477. If I’d finished, say, top 3 I think I could’ve made a case for striking out on my own but a $477 bankroll would require a serious reduction in stakes for me to give me a tolerable risk of ruin so I’m going to stick with the backing deal and use the money to have more fun in Galway.
Still, nice life.
I’d buy you a green dress (but not a real green dress, that’s cruel)
- Barenaked Ladies – If I had $1,000,000
I’d completely forgotten about this little series, but it seems that the PokerStars WBCOOP has come around again. For those of you that aren’t aware the WBCOOP is a series of tournaments on Stars that runs yearly to reward the poker bloggers amongst us. Until recently I couldn’t possibly have claimed this title; 3 posts a millenium a blog does not make, but I seem to have really tapped into my love of writing properly this year so to heck with it – let’s share my opinions and experiences with a wider audience and hopefully win some cash while I’m at it.
$5,000 is an odd amount of money. For most people (and certainly those in the poker community) it’s simultaneously a lot of money and not a lot at all. It would take me between 6 and 12 months to save $5,000 which I honestly consider quite a long time. It’s by no means an easy amount of money to come by; for example, my biggest online score ever was the $5,097 I won chopping the Bigger $5.50 HU back in October 2011 and before that my largest was $807 back in 2007. As a micro MTT grinder $5k is incredibly hard to come by, believe me. At the same time $5,000 can be practically nothing in poker. It’s only 25 buy-ins for the Sunday Million (23 if you consider the juice!), 12.5BB for the highest NL cash game on Stars ($200/$400) and won’t even cover your entry for a good portion of the more prestigious events (EPTs/WSOP ME come to mind).
So what would I do with the money? I have two answers: poker, or not poker.
Poker
I’d drop my backer. Barry has been wonderful to work with and given me the opportunity to really progress my game in the last 4 months but it would be exceptionally nice to have all of my action and my own bankroll. It would also present an opportunity to move up in stakes ($5,000 under traditionally held bankroll management strategies should be good enough to play up to $55 MTTs, although I’m more conservative and would probably cap off at $22 or $33; this would still present a nice increase in stakes from my current $1-11 arrangement).
This plan does obviously have downsides – up until now any time I’ve had 100% of my action I’ve been incredibly neurotic about keeping an eye on my cashier balance. Admittedly this is a problem I suffer with when backed as well but the mental impact of a downswing is greatly lessened when you don’t have to worry where the money’s coming from should the balance hit $0, and as discussed in my last post mental state is a huge factor in deciding how well you perform. There’s also the fact that there are other things I could be spending $5,000 on…
Non-Poker (**SOPPINESS ALERT**)
Late 2011 was filled with run-good but the biggest “bink” of my life happened away from the table baize. I was lucky enough to have my wonderful partner Harriet agree to marry me.
All behold: the face of a madwoman
$5,000 would go an awful long way to making our wedding (hopefully next year!) extra special. It’s the difference in bringing another 30-odd people along to the party. Or hiring the whole of Bristol Zoo out for the day (yes, that’s an actual thing you can do). Or putting another 100 boxes of cider behind the bar… though I’m not too sure Hatty would let me get away with that one!
A stable poker bankroll or supercharging the single greatest day of your life – what would you do with the $5,000?
Recently I read an article which talked about the “two types of thinking” (I’ve lost the link but there’s plenty of links if you Google that phrase). It’s a pretty simple concept: most of the time we use “System 1″ thinking. This is the mostly-autonomous reactive type of thinking that gets us by for day-to-day thought tasks. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s good enough for most of the stuff we do. “System 2″ thinking is where you deliberately engage in higher-level thinking to come out with a more rational decision. It’s difficult, intellectual and will generally produce the best outcome for a given situation based on your knowledge.
The chances are that you can already identify System 2 thinking because it actually kind of hurts. That twinge you get when you begin really thinking deeply about a problem is the sign that you’ve moved over to the other system. This reaction leads to the mind wanting to stay in System 1 which, as I mentioned, is fine for the majority of tasks but often doesn’t fare well with those tasks that require deeper-level thinking or in fluid situations where the mind needs to adapt to changing circumstances.
Poker sounds like a top fit for System 2 thinking, but how can we overcome this natural malaise?
This is how I roll
For complex problems that require higher-level thinking but don’t require adaptive reasoning the simple answer is practice. Once the problem has been seen enough times System 2 thinking is no longer necessary, a habit can be formed and System 1 thinking can take over. This makes solving the problem in the future easier and a more attractive prospect to your mind (which really doesn’t want to work that hard if it can help it). This can have some applications in poker; you don’t need to see people open-shoving at the 10/20 level of a micro MTT too many times to know that they’re always holding a monster. The reaction to this (insta-muck) is the kind of reaction you can practice and bring out over and over as the situation rarely changes.
The problem with poker lies in that such situations are rare. The nature of the game means you’re almost always dealing with different opponents day-to-day and by that factor alone causes most situations to be fluid. The solution? Practice, of a different kind. Rather than trying to find a standardised answer to this type of situation, I feel it’s better to use System 2 thinking more and more to get used to overcoming the “speed bump” associated with entering this mental state.
How you personally decide to engage in this practice is largely dependent on your hobbies. Up until now I’ve been engaging in thought-provoking articles and debates (like the one that inspired this post!) but that’s generally barely only managed to make the crest of the speed bump before rolling back down. I used to be a keen chess player but I’ve tended to have the same problem with chess as I do with poker – too much System 1 thinking leading to failed strategies. What I’m likely going to do is start reading challenging books/articles, poker related or otherwise, before big tournaments. Hopefully this will kick my brain into gear and I’ll stop making dumb plays on auto-pilot.
I think the main point to take from all this is that it’s difficult (especially for the lazier of us) to get over that speed bump and really think decisions through to the fullest extent but the ability to do so is, in my opinion, the one major difference between average/good players and the best players in the world. You can read up on strategy from as many books and blogs as you like but without the mental game backing you the lessons you’ve learned will not always be applied properly and your decisions will keep coming out sub-optimally.
Now, time to practice what I preach.
Well, that was the busiest weekend of poker I’ve had for quite a while. Which means this might end up being quite the monster post!
Bristol & South West Meetup £20, BCSC
Friday 27th
As you may remember, one of my resolutions this year was to get back involved in the poker community. One of the major components of this was to get back involved with playing the various home games that are offered up by members of the Bristol & South West Poker Meetup Group. The main event to get to each month happens at the Bristol County Sports Club on Colston Avenue – a £20 4-table tournament with a single rebuy (half or full, option is left to the fish who busted!) It’s certainly not the best value tournament on a Friday with the Gala putting on a £30 freezeout that attracts a larger crowd but it has a much better feel to it. In fact, I’d forgotten just how fun it could be.
Unfortunately my memory has decided to be pretty craptastic so I don’t remember an awful lot in the way of hands (I made sure to take notes for the One Way game). I started to chip up by busting the tournament director Drago all-in pre KK > AJ. I busted a couple of other people en route to the final table and went in quite comfortably 3/8. With 6 paying, my luck started to turn after opening UTG with ATs. The shorty BB shoved KK and held. I then lost another flip and stone bubbled in 7th. Shitty result but good fun – everybody was friendly as always and if I wasn’t so knackered (I busted around 1-1:30am) I’d have stayed and enjoyed what looked like a hilarious booze-fuelled 10p/10p cash game.
Alas, I had to get to sleep in preparation for…
One Way Poker £110 Deepstack, Gala Harbourside
Apologies if this gets a bit more blow-by-blow than I normally write but my main record of the day was on Twitter as my note-taking app was eating battery like I eat pies.
Saturday 28th
I had a fairly early start Saturday morning. The tournament wasn’t pegged to start until 6pm but my fiancée Harriet had a friend over from London so around 11am we schlepped over to Bristol Temple Meads to meet him (I’m carless at the moment thanks to an unlucky busted inlet manifold) and then headed to the Bristol Museum to go have a look at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. This is the second year in a row it’s been round (I think!) and it was wonderful both years. If you get the chance pop up to it – it’s there until 11th March.
Mine!
We grabbed a bite to eat at Vincenzo’s just off Park Street which was an alright Italian – not exactly dripping with any kind of quality but £10 for 2 courses + a glass of wine is decent value at least. Not necessarily somewhere I’ll give a repeat visit to though – that price point also contains the Hatchet which, although not authentic cuisine of any kind, offers a much higher quality despite being general pub fare (at least in my opinion).
We then took a detour I’ve been meaning to take all month and ended up in Weapon of Choice to have a look at the exhibit by local graffiti artist Cheo. I love Cheo’s work – it’s all over Bristol and the lot of it has a really fun and happy vibe about it which is a sure-fire way to make me like it! Unfortunately Weapon of Choice is quite a small gallery and although Cheo had chucked out a bit of work for it (I was quite surprised to see some Totoro tributes!) it wasn’t on the whole that inspiring. That said, I may pop down again before it finishes (20th February) and buy a print or something. There are also some cheapo canvasses in the £100-250 range if they’re your thing .
Cheo & The Apple. What a good mix.
Anyway, poker.
After a detour via the aforementioned Hatchet for a swift monthly pint with the Unders I walked over to the Gala which was absolutely rammed. On approaching the front desk I was faced with an alternates list 45+ people long and growing. Thank fuck I’d bought in earlier in the month. That, however, did not stop a nervy moment where they’d put me under Alan Crocker which I soon after checked was actually me (I’d later have a moan to get them to change it).
Apart from having an old schoolfriend from Swindon 2 to my right my starting table was pretty unremarkable. Dann Williams, fellow GNFer (Gambling Network Forums), sent me a text telling me that the rather friendly chap to my right (Chris Hyland, ended up finishing 12th) was an ABC TAG he knew from games around Cheltenham. This turned out to be accurate and Chris would very rarely get out of line and would generally be fairly face-up when he did (like betting a missed flush draw). Nice guy and chatty throughout the weekend but would do well to perhaps add some complexity to his game.
Thankfully, my first hand was utterly unplayable and I managed to beat my performance in Nottingham by shipping it off to the muck. AK soon found its dirty grubby self in my hands though, and I ended up getting involved in a large pot against… AK. Chop chop. It’d come my way again soon after, and I was up to around 19000 from 15k starting before I found my first difficult spot of the day.
Blinds 50/100, 19k to start the hand. UTG+1, a fairly loose, semi-aggro bloke in ~ his 60s makes a strong looking raise to 400 (he’d made another strong-looking raise and shown AA recently). Folds to me in MP with AJo and I flat, which induces a flat from one other player after me. Flop comes AA2 giving me flopped trips. He c-bets 1100 for most of pot, I call, other guy folds. Turn 4. He bets 1050 which is small, I call. River 5, pot is about 4700 by this point and he bets 5000. He obviously doesn’t have the 3, but there are a lot of AK/AQ in his range. At the very best I’m up against a currently-crying KK/QQ, but I consider it EV- to call and fold, leaving me with ~16000.
When back from the first break I manage to turn trips again and don’t lay them down against the particular opponent, putting me up to 20,500. I’d soon be back down again though thanks to the same villain.
150/300, 60yo dude is in SB. From UTG+1 Chris “ABC TAG” on my right makes it 800. With QQ I pop it to 2000. Villain calls, Chris calls. Flop comes K high and old dude open shoves. Chris folds and I cry-fold. Terrible shove by him but just the hand before he’d shoved over a 3x with AA so he almost certainly had it. It’s not like he was short either, he had about 35,000 – he was just bad.
Thankfully I wouldn’t have to put up with his open shoves much longer as I was soon moved onto a table with fellow GNFer Matt Dale (and soon after by Dann after his incredibly easy table was broken). I moved over there with 20,000 but wouldn’t be on that for long. Second hand the blinds are at 300/600/50 and I have AA – beautiful. I make it 1700 and a pensioner to my immediate left calls. The flop comes low and paired and I c-bet 2500, which he calls. The turn is a J, I bet 5500 (leaving about 10k behind, completely committed by this point) and the pensioner shoves. I snap-call, he shows KJ (what the fuck!?) and I dodge the 2-outer to laugh and bump my stack up to 41,000.
I get gifted in an almost identical fashion minutes later. I have QQ in early position and raise, get one caller. Flop comes down Jxx I go to c-bet and the villain has practically shoved before I’ve even put my c-bet in! I snap call saying “if you have JJ well done”. He shows 99 (again, what the fuck!?) and I’m probably 2nd in chips with 75,000 by the time that table gets broken, which despite the ample donations from seniors I’m quite pleased for as both Matt and Dann are getting uppity, especially with each other!
I move to the top table and very first hand look down at AJo. UTG, a bit of a shorty, limps and I raise. It’s folded to the UTG limper who then tank-shoves. Unless he’s Hollywooding up a monster it screams a race with a mid pocket pair, so I call and he flips 99. A Jack drops on the river and I start what turns out to be a rather tough table with some extra chips.
I end the day chipping up a bit further, going into my first ever Day 2 with 110,600 going into 1500/3000/300, which is good for 5th/48 remaining (198 started, 24 pay. £5,700 up top). Matt Dale got ludicrously drunk and ended up being 2nd in chips with ~140k and Dann Williams also managed to make it into Day 2 with an average chipstack of 60k, which was doubly nice because both me and Matt were holding 10% of him.
The day finally finished at the ridiculous hour of 5am (more on that and other criticisms later). I offered to put Dann up for the night to let him dodge having to drive back to Gloucester which he snap-accepted. This had the added advantage of not having to walk the 30 minutes in the freezing night back home.
It was a long Day 1, and I was hoping for a long Day 2.
Sunday 29th
After a rather shorter sleep than I’d have liked, a firm decision to give my TCOOP main event (the final $109 NLHE) a miss and a fry-up down the local pub on Dann’s dollar we headed back to try and grind out the win. Sadly, grind was the operative word and I found myself rather card dead at the start of the day. The table had toughened up significantly after the busting of a few short stacks and I found myself raising a lot of middling aces (A8-AJ) and had a lot of 3-bet shoves come back at me. I dropped as quickly as the field did, and rapidly found myself down to 85,000, around the average of the time. Matt Dale ended up missing the money going out with 3 tables remaining (though don’t feel too bad, he sat out most of the £50 Round of Each side event and still finished 7th!)
The turning point of the whole tournament happened with around 5 people left from the bubble. The guy to my right who I’ve been 3-betting a lot (with the goods mind you) raises in early position and I 3-bet him with AK. A strong, active young kid in late position cold 4-bets me and I tank-call. The flop comes down A75, and I shove for ~45k into 100k. He calls, and shows AJ (he later told me that he was itching to play me post-flop – apparently I seemed like an easy target (wrong) and he also had a suspicion I was cold 3-betting with AT (wrong). The cards go on their backs and the board runs out… 55 for the chop. Puke. Win that and I’m up to 170,000 and in a really good position to make a run at the big money.
Not long afterwards I return the karma to the short stack on my left. I raise from EP with 66 (the table is 7-handed) and the shorty to my immediate left who’s shown the bollocks every time he’s shoved moves all in for 31,000. I’m stuck making the call (about 3:1) and he flips AA. Turn is a 6 and I apologise and stack up to 122,000.
Over the bubble I went card dead again until we were about to break to the final 2 tables. I picked up AQ and got it all in with AJ pre-flop. I held and bumped up to 175,000 giving me a pretty nice stack.
Elvis Duck presides over his kingdom
On the other table, Dann trebled up and found himself temporarily in the chip lead. Most of the chips were now on the other table, and I was feeling the effects of a horrific run of rag-rag hands. It was folded to me in the SB and I shoved 98s for 110k at 4/8 and the BB snap-called with QQ. The board ran out AAA for no sweat and I busted in 13th for £300 and my first Hendon Mob flag. I stayed to sweat my 10% in Dann and he made the final table but busted out fairly early in a nice re-steal spot to finish 9th for £430.
Now, I really, really enjoyed this tournament and am elated with where I finished. I’m also impressed with Gala/OWP for donating the juice to the very worthy cause of St Peter’s Hospice but as I mentioned there were a number of annoyances and problems with the way the tournament was run:
I don’t want to dissuade Gala or OWP from putting on more events; far from it, I’d love to see more of this kind of tournament, but these criticisms need to be aired. This was by no means only me noticing it and there’s a decent chance that a number of players from Cardiff/Swindon may have been put off the Gala as a venue which would be a real shame.
Since the terrible, terrible performance at DTD (I’m now pretty convinced both hero and villain played the hand awfully) I’ve been getting back on the online grind. As I previously mentioned I’m backed for all my MTT action on Stars $1-11. I get asked semi-regularly why I bother with backing for such low-stakes action – the answer is that I’m pretty shit at saving and have never really been able to build up the money for a bankroll and have had a lot of incidental expenses since being full-time employed. I also manage to disconnect myself a lot better from someone else’s money which is a useful bonus as far as the mental side of my game goes. If I happen across another large score I’ll take stock of where I am (like I did last time) and perhaps branch out on my own. We’ll see.
Anyway, after Nottingham and my massive failure I had rather stern words with myself and have since started playing a decent game again (which was probably for the best). Sadly my doomswitch has been fairly firmly wedged on and I’ve not managed to make much happen barring a couple of deep runs. Probably most disappointing was The Bigger $8.80 where I dropped 119th losing a 65/35 on the turn for all the chips in the universe (villain played it terribly, sigh). Could’ve been my first 5-fig score, but oh well. I’m not too worried about the ~50 buyin downswing; it sucks that it all goes to makeup but it’s all been standard-as-hell bad beats and I’ve had very few difficult spots to get wrong. That said, I really, really need to start doing session reviews and may do one tonight of my bustout hands. Not obviously the most intense review imaginable but a good way of starting the habit of actually doing any study.
If you play on Stars you’ll know the Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) is on at the moment. This is going pretty horribly for me so far with 0/6 cashes. Most annoying for me was the $109 Heads-up tournament which I was playing without makeup. I crushed my first round opponent but then got someone hard as nails in round two which culminated in A6 < AT (standard). Possibly worse was that he’d make it as far as round five (ITM) where he’d go out to none other than Liv Boeree. Must be nice. I guess it’s mainly disappointing because I feel heads-up tournaments are somewhere where I have a huge edge – most people who play them haven’t got a clue and are both incredibly passive and easy-to-read (those tend to go hand-in-hand). The upshot of it is I’ve recognised that I’m really not good at playing against opponents more aggressive than I am (a hard feat to achieve, to be fair). If I played heads-up more regularly I think I’d get the hang of it or get coaching to force the skills in but it’s such a tiny portion of the big-field MTT game that it’s not worth my time. If I get heads-up a) I’m already going to win a ton of money and b) I’m pretty sure I can run over whoever I’m heads-up against – MTT players are terrible heads-up.
Oh Olivia, what could've been...
The other format I seem to be flourishing in is large-field hyper-turbos. That’s not really much of a shock given I’m pretty good at pushbotting (self-taught though, I should probably look at a spreadsheet at some point) but results have been pleasing. To be fair, if I ran a bit better with 50-100 people left I’d have a score or 3 to tell you about. Alas, no.
To finish, a small (relevant) bit about my personal life. I’ve kind of been overdoing it with the grinding, both live and online, recently so I’ve decided to cut down the hours I’m ploughing into poker. This is for the incredibly good reason that spending time with my fiancée (thinly veiled brag) is far more important and enjoyable!! That said, I’ll still try and get to one or two events a month and I’ll be going back to grinding around once a week.
If I find the time I’ll be back late tomorrow night with a trip report of my first Bristol Meetup of the year, the £20 BCSC game. Fulfilling resolutions for fun and hopefully profit!
Right, I’ve had a bit of a fiddle about and I’m happy with the move over to my own hosting now. I’ve tied it in WordPress.com so you should be able to comment using user accounts on there and do all the fun stuff like subscribing.
Three hour trip and busted first hand!
Raised AK from the button limper calls. Flop KQx he check calls. Turn 4. He bets, I raise, he calls. River Q he open shoves. I tank call.
All that made sense was weaker kings, Q4, 44 and a busted flush draw. He shows Q4 for the runner runner boat.
Fuck.
You know when I said I'd play Nottingham next? I LIED.
So it turns out Tom is a very bad influence and posted that he was heading over for the £10 triple chance. Now, I hate the triple chance historically. Crapshoot structure, beginner players (good from an EV perspective, bad from a hands/hour perspective) and a rebuy to boot which I don’t really get on with. However, it turns out that the structure is a lot better than I remember it (2500 chips, 20 min) and with the fiancée (thinly veiled brag) out with her parents for the evening I had little else to do so I made the trip.
The rebuy period passed without much happening of note. Like usual Gala didn’t put on enough dealers to cover the room so I volunteered my services as per usual for the (single) free beer you get. Not quite sure what everyone’s £3 juice is getting spent on but whatever. I got it in bad on a Kxx4dd board with 54dd mid-way through the period against a loose villain holding AK. Don’t really mind the play; AK is up the very tippy top of his range here and I had loads of outs. Hit the 5 on the river. It’s nice to be the dealer. I ended the rebuy period with 5500, taking my other 2 lives as add-ons to leave me with 10.5k going into 100/200.
On the run down to the final two tables I became a bit of a card rack and span up to around 30-35k quite quickly. I then got moved to the other table and ended up locked in a bit of a battle with the other big stack there. Very first hand I picked up AJ and busted a shorty, and continued to go on a tear until I was sat comfortably with 65k. And then I shit it off.
600/1200, tilted villain limps in LP, shorty calls in SB and I check BB with Q7o. Flop 762. Shorty shoves, I call, villain calls. This is the major mistake in the hand – at the time I came to the conclusion I was ahead of the shorty and was happy to smooth and let the tilted villain fold but on reflection the shorty never, ever has worse than a better 7 (turns out he had A7), especially given how rock tight he’d been and how tight I know him to be as a regular. Turn 3 I check/call. River K I check/call, villain turns over 54o for the turned straight and I’ve lost 30k, which is around 50% of my stack. Now, the villain’s preflop play is obviously horribad but the rest is pretty standard and he valuetowned me effectively. Despite what another player on the table said I don’t think I can ever put him on 54o (said player was a bit of a blowhard so was probably stroking his ego. A funny as hell blowhard, but a blowhard nonetheless). That said, I should definitely have folded the flop and I’m really disappointed how I couldn’t get away from top pair shitty kicker. That’s some scrub-level shit right there.
I went into the final table with an average-sized stack of 32000. Very first hand I drop 10k of it losing TT < JJ < KQ which I’m fine with; I lost the absolute minimum in my opinion. I then called off most of the rest 99 < QQ AIPF which is fine as well. That left me with 4500 at 1k/2k with 7 remaining (6 pay), where the table then offered a £30 saver for 7th. Yes, yes I will take that. The blowhard managed to get the aforementioned tilted villain on super monkey tilt after calling clock on him after a relatively (but by no means unreasonably) short time and I promptly busted after that in 7th shoving QJ.
Bought in for £33, cashed £30, didn’t get to sleep until 2pm. Not happy with my performance particularly (anyone could’ve final tabled with my cards and I made a couple of big mistakes) but at least I now know that the Thursday tournament is actually worth playing again; it’s surprising how much difference the extra 500 chips and 5 mins/level make.
Out to dinner tonight so the next post will be Nottingham. Honest!
