Viva Voce (It's all Bad)

The Viva Voce, ("live voice" in Latin) or simply Viva, is an oral exam which is usually held when someone did badly in their written exams. Well, guess what? I've got one!

This is what the Department of Biochemistry has to say about Vivas: "Vivas in Part I might be held for a number of reasons, e.g. very poor performance, uneven performance, investigation of the effect of medical problems on performance, wish of external examiner to confirm the standards revealed by the written paper."

They basically haul me up in front of a number of scarry Proffessors and grill me about the papers I did crap in. I believe mine is on papers 2 and 6 (Energetics and Metabolic Processes and Data Analysis and Interpretation)

I have to say I'm pretty pissed off.

Bubble Trouble

On Tuesday I finally got the opportunity to head down to The Gutshot, a recently opened cardroom in London, about which I've been hearing rave reviews. There was a £5 Pot-Limit Holdem Tournament aimed at "beginners" on at 8pm and at 5:45, when plans for the evening fell though, I realised I had just about enough time to make it.

So I crammed a my shades and Hendon Mob Cap into a bag and for a card-protector (which can be used to cover your cards once you've memorized them to prevent them from being confused with discarded or mucked ones) I chose Lance, the nodding Kiwi, whom my brother gave me on his return from New Zealand:



I jumped on my bike and zoomed to the bus stop for the coach to London. I arrived just as it was pulling away but some frantic arm-waving and dancing in the middle of the road persuaded it to stop again just up the road, for which I was most grateful. I eventually made it to the Gutshot in the nick of time managing both to fill in a mambership form and register for the tournament in the last 5 minutes before 8pm.

The Gushot is a great venue in itself. The majority of the poker happens downstairs in the basement, but it's not at all seedy and there's no smoking at the tables. The ground floor consists of a decent sized bar/restaurant, with sofas and big-screens which where showing Italy's fall from Euro 2004.

[I started this post yesterday evening - it's now friday morning - before a certain Swiss Robbery in the quarter-finals of Euro 2004. I shall now attempt to complete it, although I can't promise any coherancy (or ability to spell)]

77 people had registered for the tournament and for the first hour if you got knocked out you could buy back in again (and again and again if necessary) for another £5. A couple of the tables had dealers but for the majority of us it was self-dealt. I sat myself down with my 500 in chips at my allocated seat between two middle aged men. One was a stereotypically fat london cabby the other a stereotypically skinny london cabby. Neither could have been more cockney if he'd tried. The fat cabby (to my right) was obviously quite an experienced player so I'm not quite sure what he was doing at a "beginners" tournament, but it was useful to have someone to clear up any confusion and sort out any side pots even if he was a bit full of himself in an aggressive-cabby kind of way. One woman was clearly very new to poker but fortunately for her there was a very kind, more experienced lady sitting next to her who absorbed as much of the impatience as she could that oozed from Fat Cabby's every comment.

As would be expected in a low buy-in tournament with unlimited rebuys the play for the first hour was pretty loose and I found my self calling for more chips of a number of occasions. Fortunately I caught a reasonable hand and doubled up with about 10 minutes left of rebuys. At the end of the hour I topped up with another 500 to give myself about 1800 chips going into the serious stuff. There had been one hell of a lot of rebuys (about an average of 2 per person) so there was a nice sized prize pool, but also a fair few big stacks. The kind experienced woman was chip leader on our table with over 10,000 and Fat Cabby had about 5,000.

For the majority of the rest of the tournament I was pretty happy with my play. I made a few good steals and I was particularly happy with this lay-down: I was in the big blind and Fat Cabby to my right was in the small blind. Everyone folds round to us and he only calls. Sitting with J5, I check and the flop came A J 7 (rainbow). Fat Cabby checks to me and I bet the pot knowing that if he had an Ace he would almost certainly have raised pre-flop. But then he raises all-in and I start doing some serious thinking. So serious in fact that Fat Cabby eventually calls for a time limit. I'm either putting him on a high pocket pair which he decided to slow play pre-flop or a better Jack than me, with the former being less likely. Of course he could be bluffing, but since the rebuy's finished he's been playing a pretty tight game. So I fold and show him my J5 and he has the decency to show me J8, phew!

That pot bet took a nasty chunk out of my stack and I was going to be treading a fine line from here on. Shortly after that our table was broken up but I still ended up with Fat Cabby. I was only at this table long enough to be blinded a couple of times before we were moved again. A few carefully timed steals ensured that my life line was extended a bit, but I wasn't getting anything in the way of decent cards. However, before a knew it we were being moved again and I realised I'd made it to the final two tables (the top 18). The top 9 would get paid. £500 for first place down to £26 for ninth.

It was here that my luck finally came good. I doubled and then trippled through in quick succession. About to get blinded down to a point of no return I reraised all-in before the flop with KT. Only the original raiser called with 88 - I had a chance. At this point it was about a 50-50 with him having a marginal advantage, with the pair already made. The King came on the flop and Lance and I duly thanked the poker gods. Almost immediately after that I was dealt TT. The short stack at the table went all in and the guy to my right called. At this stage I quite possibly should have folded, but I had both of them outchipped so I decided to re-raise and I put the guy to the left all-in. This left me with just about enough to survive if I lost this hand, but it would be another struggle. I was relieved when neither of them had higher pairs than I - the short stack showed A8 and the other guy KJ - but with three overcards that could beat me (two of those being crippling), I was pretty nervous. However, not only was there no A, K or J, a T came on the river! I'd just sent two people packing!

This put me in serious contention for the final table. I had about 18,000 which was probably about the average. There were 11 of us left at this stage - only two people had to go before I was in the money. The worst thing you want to see at this stage of a tournament is a marginal hand - a hand that's strong (but not a monster) and that you would probably play under most other conditions and that you'd probably even raise with if there hadn't been any action before you. Well sure enough I get delt the two black Jacks. I look down and know that if the action gets folded round to me I can probably put in a raise and safely pick up the blinds (all the bigs stacks happened to be at the ohter table). But then the guy to my right does exactly that - he raises the pot. Shit! Decsision time! He had me slightly outchipped and it's a clear case of wither fold or reraise and the only meaningful raise I can put in now is to go all-in. Having replayed this hand over and over again, I should have folded without question. JJ is too vunerable. AA, KK, QQ are all definate possiblities and the only other hands that might bring about a riase at this stage would be AK and AQ and against thosew I've only got a marginal advantage. Still, my inexpierience and the heat of the moment, along with Lance's ever nodding head made me re-rasie him all in. Everyone else folded and he duly called (with the ammount he'd already invested in the pot, the only way he wouldn't call is if he were on a steal) and flipped over QQ.

After last night, it's a mere drop in the ocean, but I seem to remeber feeling pretty gutted at the time! What makes going out on the bubble even worse is that there's hardly any time left to play in any side action to try and make up one's losses. However, I wasn't coming all this way to dissapear with my tail between my legs just like that so I joined in with a £25 PL Holdem ring game that was going on. My cards there were even colder and after an hour and a half of seeing only three flops I picked my drooping eyelids off the felt and headed back to the bus stop.

Next time, huh.

It's all good!

The length of time since my last post is a pretty good indication of the fact that I've been doing very little since my exams finished. I have to say it's a damn fine feeling!

The Last exam (Data Analysis and Interpretation) was a complete nightmare, but virtually everyone found it so, which makes things slightly better. I was running out of time when I came to the last question (we had 3 compulsory questions for this paper), which I soon discovered I couldn't do. I might have made a better job of it if I'd have been under such time pressure, but to hell with it - I've finished!

The rest of that day was fairly messy. I was met out of my exams in true Oxford style with a bottle of champagne emptied over me and another rammed down my throat. Not to mention the obligatory confetti, silly string, balloons hat and fake mostache!

Because I get extra time for dyslexia the rest of the biochemists had finished half an hour earlier and when I caught up with them in the pub it was clear that it only takes this short ammount of time to get truely wasted. I duly followed suit (no poker pun intended!).

After various pubs and another trip to the off licence we headed to the river for a spot of punting (for those for whom punting is what you do in the 4th down then click here!). Pole in one hand and chapagne bottle in the other I skillfully weaved us between fleets of incompitent tourists before drunkenly toppling head first into the river. Luckily I had the initiative to stopper the bottle with my thumb and rose to the surface triuphantly brandishing said champagne.

I have to admit that I remember very little of the day after that. I'm told that I collapsed into bed at around 8pm. Having finished my exams at 1pm, I think that lasting as much as 7 hours is a remarkable achievment!

Since then I have been mostly recovering, lying in the sun, watching Englnad loose to France, playing poker, singing in a concert, recording a CD, and celebrating my finacee's 21st.

My brother's coming to visit today so we might just have to have a BBQ, lie in the sun and drink some more beer. Ah, life is tough!

Data Analysis and Interpretation

My last exam doesn't start for another couple of hours, but I thought it would be a shame not to have a post named after each paper and I'm likely to be far too boozed when I get back to be able to report on the days events!

I decided to wet shave my head last night in honour of this momentus occasion. I seem to remember from last time I did this that it start itching like hell after a while. I just hope it waits till after my exam's finished!

General Paper

Just one left!

Today's general paper was a bit crap, but I managed to churn out 3(ish) answers narrolw avioding falling alseep in the middle. I'm knackered. At least tomorrow's doen't require any revision - "Data Analysis and Interpretation".

Right now, I might just go to bed!

Cell Biology and the Integration of Function

The end is in sight! Only two more left.

Todays exam was OK. There were two questions I could do well enough and then another one which I could kind of do, so hopefully, barring any major cock-ups things should work out alright, but it's really hard to tell so I'm not counting any chickens just yet. In my first-year exams I was convinced I'd failed and walked out with a 1st; I just hope the reverse isn't going to be true for finals!

Tomorrow is a "General Paper", which could really contain anything and is designed to test one's general biochemical knowledge. There's little you can specifically revise for it and it's more of an indication of how much total revision/learning you've done. For that reason, it has the potential to go extreemly badly!

Again, fingers crossed!

Genetics and Molecular Biology

Half way there! Three down; three to go. Bring it on!

Today was much better than yesterday. Not only could I answer 3 questions, I could answer 2 of them well - what's that all about huh?! I could have answered three well if I'd chosen to revise 'ribosome structure' this morning, which I was really close to doing, but chose some other crap that didn't come up. Still, I'm just glad I managed to be writing for the whole 3 and a half hours this time!

Tomorrow's exam is "Cell Biology and the Integration of Function". Although I've had quite a lot of tutorials on this paper and it's definately the most interesting, I've done the least revision for it so it could end up being another nightmare. Crossing my fingers and tying myself to the desk for the rest of the day should help though.

Energetics and Metabolic Processes

Just walked out of my second exam 45 minutes early - whoops! It was a real nightmare paper; I just didn't get the questions I needed. I thought I was pretty well prepared. The amount of revision notes I had caompared to yesterday was vast. Literally - nothing I revised came up.

I managed to answer one question reasonably well. It took me a while to figure out what the hell it was going on about before I realised that I could probably write an answer. After that there was NOTHING else I could do - no kidding. I'd revised plant metabolism pretty well as well as bioenergetics and cell death. There was no cell dealth question at all and the one question that I could answer was an amalgamtion of plants and bioenergetics, so that left me with even less chioce. I attmpted a methodoloyg orientated question and wrote a few pages of crap before fleeing with my tail between my legs!

I gues with hindsight I should have at least attempted a third question; even if I'd written some seriously basic and off the topic stuff for one of the muscle questions I would have got a few marks, right? Well too late now just gonna have to make sure the rest sort themselves out.

I'm really angry about the stuff that I'd spent time working on not coming up. I mean, the stuff is dull enough to start with and I resented having to got to the lectures and write essays on it in the first place, and then to have to spend time revising it too only for it not to come up, just seems like such a waste of my life........aaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggg!

Tomorrow's papaer is "Genetics and Molecular Biology". It more interesting but also quite tough and it's one of the papers I've had fewer tutorials in. Still, we'll just have to see what happens, which after today could be pretty much anything!

The Structure and Function of Macromolecules

One down, five to go!

Well, today's exam wasn't as bad as it might have been. It was definately my least favourite paper and potentially one of the worst. Of the three questions I had to answer (from 9) the one on membrane proteins was a gift and the one on NMR and X-ray crystallography wasn't too bad, but after that I stuggled to find aonther one to do and I'd over-run on time. I eventually waffled on for a couple of sides about Optical Tweezers, Electrospay Mass Spectrometry, Sedimentation Coefficients and the Green Fluorenscent Protein - all a hell of a lot of fun, really!

On a much more interesting note, I took an hour off yesterday evening and headed to the Randolf Hotel to check out the Oxford Cup Poker Tournament that was going on. Man, I wish I could have played; it was so exciting. There were 20 or so pros there of whom I recognised a few names, but one stood out a mile off (probably some to do with the massive gold braclet he was wearing!) - none other than James Vogel, winner of this year's £2000 buyin No-Limit Holdem event at the WSOP. He collected a hefty $400,000 and of course - the coveted Gold Braclet. I watched him play a few hands, but nothing much was going on. A guy who I play with quite regularly was at the same table and had apparently re-bought 7 or 8 times, which would have cost him about £180 and from the size of Vogel's stack I was guessing that most of it had ended up there!

Unfortuantely I couldn't stay for long and I had to aviod the temptation of joining in with some of the ring games that were starting up. I saw another guy who I play with take down a sizable pot with quad 6s and I also managed to catch up with a guy who was in college last year (Deiter) and is now playing pro, but that was about all I had time for and I reluctantly slipped away, back to my desk!

...which is what I'm gonna have to do now. Tomorrow's exam is "Energetics and Metabolic Processes" and it's not gonna be pretty if I sit at the computer all afternoon!

The Begining of The End

My exams start tomorrow! 6 consecutive mornings and I'm done!

I'm feeling fairly upbeat. It's definitely going to be a gamble (!!) as to what questions come up, but hopefully I've just about squeezed in enough revision to see me through.

Talk about bad timing, though: this weekend there is a huge poker marathon organised by the University Poker Society. Today there is an all-day No-Limit Texas Holdem tournament. There are about 150 players and of those about 20 are pros that have been invited. With £20 entry fee, unlimited re-buys and a top-up for the first two hours of play the prize pool should be pretty tasty. The winner is certainly looking at taking away a few grand and I believe there's a garunteed grand for the highest finishing student. It would have been an amazing expierience, but even I managed to show a little self restrain in not entering (well actually that's a lie, I entered and then decided that I was being rediculously stupid and managed to sell my seat to someone else!).
Yesterday there were smaller events going on all day. There was a dealers choice freeroll (who ever is dealing chooses the type of poker played for that round) followed by heads-up (one-on-one) inter-university matches (about five or six other universitys have shown up for the weekend) and then, in the evening, there was a smallish No-Limit Holdem tournament with £10 buy-in with one rebuy/top-up.
You may have noticed that the restraint I showed was only "little" in size: Well, I couldn't have gone all weekend without playing at least once, now could I?!! After a day of battling with revision of G Protein-Linked Receptors, Receptor Tyrosine Kinases and the like, I'd pretty much reached the end of my teather, and really the only thing for it was to play some poker! I'd popped in in the afternoon to see if I could grab a couple of hours at a cash game, but everone was engrossed in the heads-up matches so I decided to register for the tourney in the evening. It was going to be my first live tournament, and even then I haven't had much practice at online tournaments, so it was going to be a steep learning curve. Still, I'd give it my best shot.

There were about 50 entrants and assuming that the majority would either rebuy or top-up, there was a nice sized prize pool. The top six places were going to be paid. First place would receive £300, 2nd about £170 down to £20 for 6th place. I figured that if I got knocked out early then there would be some cash games going on that I could join in with.
At my table, amongst others, there were a couple of completely indeceipherbale Glaswegens (check out my spelling!) and a guy from Cambridge who looked as if he knew what he was doing, verging on slightly arrogant (but maybe I just look for any excuse to think badly of a Tab!). I started off playing pretty tight and just trying to sus everyone else out. The Glawegian to my left seemed to playing a lot of hands, but was doing pretty well for it. The arrogant Tab, had his aces cracked early on when the Glasweigian hit two-pair with J2. All I needed to do was get some good cards and I could take a few of them on. After about 45 minutes of pretty cold cards and the blinds having taken a sizable nibble at my stack, I finally got AA, my first really strong hand, but due to how tight I'd been playing my pre-flop raise picked up only the blinds.
I made it to the first break with about half of my chips left (eveyone started with 2000) and I took the opportunity of the top-up (another 2000 chips for £10) to give my self that little bit extra of a chance.
Soon after the break our table got split and we were redistributed to seats on other tables now vacated by the first few casualties of the evening. I was pretty gald about this since the Glaswegian, who I was now calling Greg (the only name that sounded vagurely like what he said everytime I asked him to repeat it!) had an enormous stack and the guy to his left - a very excentric, more than slightly irritating half-greek guy from St. Andrew's in Scotland - also had pleanty of chips. We were now down to just 3 tables (about 25 people), but the blinds were increasing and rapidly gobbling up my chips. Sooner or later, despite the crap that I was being delt I was going to have to make a few moves. I'd picked up a few small pots along the way, but really nothing to write home about.

Things were looking pretty grim and I was down to only two 500 chips (the average at this point was proably about 10 times that ammount) But somehow I managed the most miraculous of combacks. I doubled up once with 77 against over cards and then again with KTs in the big blind, but this wasn't going to be enought to save my bacon. My real turn of luck came when I went all-in again with A4 (the blinds had just gone up again and they had nearly reached me) I got two-callers which is never a good sign and I resigned myself to an early shower. The flop came A J 2 all hearts, which meant that currently there was a small chance that I had the best hand, but I didn't have a heart so things were really not looking good. The turn brought a 4 which gave me two-pair and proably the best hand, all I had to hope for was that the river wouldn't bring a heart. The other two players both checked, the dealer burnt the top card and then came the river, it was a heart - my hopes had been raised by the turn card only to be crushed by the river, but wait..... what was that...... it was the 4 of hearts, I'd got a full house! What a way to tripple up!

That wasn't the end of it by any means, I doubled up a few hands later with TT and was now sitting with a cool 22,000 - well above average. The final table was well in sight and it duly came: after playing for another 30 mins or so we were down to the final 8. Only two more people to be eliminated before me and I would be in the money!

My stack was slightly bellow average and the blinds were going up fast cos we were running out of time - so I was going to have to watch how I went. Fortuantely most of the big stacks were to my right (including the irritating excentric Greek-Scotsman) so I would have to be betting into them. Greg was to my left again, but his stack was much less intimidating: apparently his AK had run into QQ and failed to improve. By this stage I'd also figured out that even though I couldn't decipher what he said his name was that it sounded a bit like Gregor and he answered to Greg, so that was quite useful, although it didn't prevent me from having to ask him to repeat everything he said!

The 8th place went out not long into the final session so I only had to outlive one more person. My stack was dwindling, however, and it was definately going to be a close call and, again, I was getting dealt rubish. But all I needed was for seomone to go all-in, get called and get beat - that's all it was going to take. Surely that was going to be possible? And sure, enough people were going all-in and getting called, but every time their cards held up and they lived to fight another day. The other short stack doubled up a couple of times and it was really looking very unlikely that there was going to be anyway of my surviving. I had only enought to post one more big blind so it was going to a case of playing one of the next 6 or 7 hands. My mistake was proably decideing not to play KT, because before I knew it the big blind was apon me and I had to go all in with A6. Some guy re-raised me and I knew I was in trouble. No-one called his raise so it was just the two of us - show down time. I flip over my A6 and when I see his KK I know I'm a gonna. Only three cards left in the pack that can save me. Needless to say none of them came.

The bubble (highest finisher not to be paid) really has got to be the most gutting place to finish. So so close to the money and yet you might just as well have been knocked out first, at least that way you could have played in a cash game and made some money that way. But all in all, I was really happy with the way things had gone. 7th out of 50 in my first tournament can't be bad and from a quick inspection of the cash games and the size of the bets flying around, I was pretty relieved that I hadn't gone out of the tournament early enough to sit down with them!

Jeeez, what an epic! I'd really better be getting back to my membrane proteins, for my exam tomorrow: "The Structue and Function of Macromolecules" Yummy!

Guestbook Added

Just in case I was worried that I hadn't wasted enough time blogging over the last few hours, I decided to add a guestbook to the site. So go ahead and sign it! You'll find the link on the sidebar to the right or just click here. I notice that our cat has alredy left her paw prints there!

Someone else who likes Fish!

I've just added some extra photo software (yes, I know I should be revising!) so I thought I'd mark the occasion with a picture of our cat who's a regular browser here.

Nearly there.........

Just a quicky, in between revision topics......

All the rest of my housemates have finished, and still 5 days left til the little critters start, but only 10 till they finish! I went to meet my house-mate, Phil, out of his final exam yesterday and found it very hard to be even a little bit cheery.

Since my last post, the WSOP has been won by another online qualifier, Greg "Fossil-man" Raymer.



Matt Hilger (from Internet Texas Holdem and Author of a great poker book by the same name) also won his entry online, managed to finish an imprssive 33rd and netted himself a cool $80,000 for his efforts. Four of the nine who made the final table were online qualifiers from 'Poker Stars'. Not only does this reinforce the fact that the play at Stars is exceptionally good, but it also shows just how much some 'live-game' only proffessionals need to wake up to the fact that there are some seriously good online players. It's also important to realise the extent to which playing online can improve your play (compared to live-only play). The ammount of poker that can be played in a give time period online is probably 3 or 4 times that which could be played in a bricks-and-mortar card room (and that's excluding the possiblity of playing multiple online tables). Furthermore, online players have to make all their decisions based on betting patterns alone - there is no scope for reading the body language of your opponent. So when an online player finds himself in a live game, he has that much more information available to him on which to base his decsion. Of-course, the internet-only player must consider that he is not used to hiding his own 'tells', but I beleive this can be overcome with only a small ammount of live practice. I'll be able to test this out after finals as I'm planning multiple trips to The Gut-Shot, a new cardroom, which has recently opened up in London.

My finacee pointed out to me that if I did end up playing poker for a living (ignoring the fact that that's pie-in-the-sky) that I better not end up fat and ugly like 'all the other proffesional players' and from the photos of the last two WSOP winners (see previous entry), I'm inclined to agree with her generalization!

Hmm, so much for making this a quicky!