Been Here Before

Appologies for the lack of postage in particular for the absence of the conclusion of the trip report.

You might have thought that no blogging might have meant that I've acheived lot over the last week. Well I haven't. In fact, I'm slowing wading deeper into the shit. I'm reminded a lot of this time last year: too much poker, not enough studying and imminent exams.

With any luck the posts here will continue to be relatively infrequent. When I do post I hope that it will be to inform you of the mountains of studying that I've been doing and how rewarding I'm finding it.

I'm not going to mention the "P" word in this post. I think it's something that I could do well to forget about for the next few weeks, with maybe a breif remission for the Oxford Cup next weekend.

Right. New Leaf. Turing Over. Now.

[dont click below - there's nothing nmore to read]

From New York City to Atlantic City

Trip Report, Part Five

Wednesday 30th March

Fortunately, once I’d found my way back to Columbia, the security guard at the entrance to where we were staying was feeling lenient and wasn’t going to require that I was signed in by a Columbia student, which is just as well since it was 4am and neither did I want to wake the guy we were staying with nor did I fancy sleeping on a bench for the next five hours. I managed to clamber over the pile of prone gargoyles in his suite without disturbing them too much. I curled up in the remaining floor space and before I knew it, it was 10am and time to go busking up the Empire State Building. Great.

Last time I was in New York, with Miss Pink we’d given up on the idea of getting to the top when we were told that we’d be waiting in line for over 2 hours. On that occasion the line didn’t look too long, I guess there was just a maze of corridors to accommodate it, which we couldn’t see. This time, however, it couldn’t be contained and it spilled out almost a whole block. Frankly no matter how cool it would have been to busk at the top (I’d woken up by now) it wasn’t worth a four hour wait especially when there was shopping to be done.

Actually, I’m not quite sure why I’m making out that that’s an exciting prospect. I freaking hate shopping. But needs must: Miss Pink needed some presents and I hadn’t done any clothes shopping since I was last in NYC almost two years ago!Macy’s duly fulfilled my needs and two gruelling hours later a cross and tired Pink emerged carrying armfuls of bags.

We’d arranged to meet around lunch time in Central Park, which left me just enough time to get to the bus station to figure out how and when I was going to get to Atlantic City. I’d figured on partying with the Goyles till they headed off to the airport and then jumping on an early morning bus.Two companies ran regular services but it seemed that the last one to leave was at 1:30am. After that the next one was at 6:30am and I figured that AC would be an easier place to spend the night.

The rest of the day was spent chilling out. Everyone was pretty tired of sight seeing and shopping so we just hung out at central park, had some lunch and watched a crazy posse of break-dancers before four of us headed down to Greenwich Village for some more chilling. I remembered really enjoying the Village from our last visit and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll certainly be very happy if Miss Pink decided to apply to either Columbia or NYU.

The plan for our last night was good food and good jazz both of which we were lead to believe could be found there, so we’d arranged to meet at 8pm. I had to get back to Columbia in the meantime to collects my bags since I’d be heading straight from the jazz club to the bus station while everyone else would be heading to the airport (via Columbia) at around 3am. Bags were duly collected and eventually we had everyone assembled for ensuing merriment. It was a really nice last night and actually quite emotional. We’d had a great 10 days of singing and partying and we’d all got to know each other really well. They’d all clubbed together to get my some things for organising the tour, which was a really nice touch (thanks guys). Sniff!

Jazz was absorbed at ‘Smalls’ and some of the folks from Uptown Vocal came down and joined us. But all too soon it was time to gather up my bags and head to the bus station. I was actually pretty sad and not really looking forward to the next five nights. I was missing Miss Pink and would no longer have a bunch of really good friends to keep me company. In the back of my mind I knew I’d have a blast in AC and I had plans to meet up with several people, but it was still a bit daunting.

Thursday 31st March

The Port Authority Bus Terminal is a bit of a dive at the best of times, but it doesn’t get much worse than at 1am standing in a line for the bus to Atlantic City, tired degenerates and general low-lifers don’t mix too well. Thankfully the NYPD were out in force so I just laid low till they mopped up the pieces and till the bus was ready for loading. The journey afforded a much-needed couple of hours sleep and I awoke to the glare of AC’s lights. Bring it on!

The bus dropped us at Bally’s. Included in the $30 bus ticket was $20 of casino credit. Unfortunately it had to be used on the slots so I was no longer able to be proud of the fact that I’d never touched them, damn it! I managed to get $12 back, which covered me nicely for my cab ride out of that dump.

By now it was about 4am. I hadn’t been able to get a decent rate at any of the hotel-casinos so I’d booked a room at the Super 8 Motel. As check-in was almost 12 hours away there wasn’t much else for it other than to play some poker so off I went to the Borgata.

This is where the rest of the trip begins to merge into one long blur. Days were no longer a useful division of time and tiredness and hunger were not particularly informative landmarks as to how long I’d been there or how much longer I’d got left. But finally I came up with a system to ensure that I got back to NYC in time for my flight home. Every time that I went to bed I put a notch in the bedpost and by the time that there were 4 there I knew I had to check out. OK, so I jest, but the ease by which one day merged into the next was slightly alarming.

The Borgata was an impressive building and a welcome change from the grotty interior of Bally’s. There’s not much reassuring, however, about being confronted by a sea of slot machines and hunched old ladies at past four in the morning, even if you’ve just been hit with an artificial oxygen shot and feel ready to take on the world. The sea parted before me as and I shot superior ‘I’m a poker player, not a gambler’ type looks at the drowning swimmers. (I feel that I should apologise for my shitty metaphors, but I’m quite enjoying this, so I’m not going to!)

The poker room and race book are located together down an escalator at the back of one particular swath of slots and underneath the nightclub, Mixx, which can be something of a headache as I discovered on Friday and Saturday night. Still it was nice to be annexed from the slots and the race book wasn’t open at that time of the morning. It was holiday week and there were still plenty of games going on despite it being 4:30 on a Thursday morning. I signed up for a $1-2 NL game and was seated straight away. I bought in for the $300 maximum at the cage and received three stacks of red.

By 11am after a few ups and downs I found myself about $200 to the good. A couple of notable mistakes prevented me from being significantly up but another couple of good calls on the end ensured that it wasn’t a fruitless night. Generally the standard was beatable. It was not as loose/crazy as I’d seen at Foxwoods but if was better than at the Players Club in NYC. I guess 4am on a Thursday is hardly prime pickings.

One mistake that I remember in particular occurred against a good player. I open raised to $12 with KK, which seemed to be the smallest opening raise that was commonplace. I’d been too rock-like previously which is what left me open to exploitation by this good player. He was in the big blind and announced that he was making a loose call and that he needed a very specific flop. The flop came down 962 with two hearts. He stated, "that’s the one" and bet $50 into the $20 pot. Apart from the fact that as a generalisation if someone makes a statement like that, it’s more often true than not, he was too good a player to over-bet the pot without specific cause. I gave it far too little thought, convinced myself that he was either on a bluff or a draw, and raised all-in for a total of about $150. He called, asked if I had a big pair and turned over 96o. A modicum more thought would have allowed me to fold. My tightness up to that point allowed him to put me on a high pair with a reasonable degree of certainty (AK as a minimum) so there’s no way he would have bluffed into me or played a flush draw in that way. I think the biggest lesson I took from that hand was the importance of creating an image for oneself and repeatedly changing gears over the course of long live sessions.

I clawed my way back up to even over the next few hours and then made a good call in a $400 pot to put me nicely up for the morning. I open raised in MP with 99 and was flat called by a very good player in LP. Everyone else folded. I forget the exact flop but it had two hearts and left me with an over pair. I bet slightly less than the pot and was flat called again. The turn brought the 9h giving me top set but putting a possible flush on the board. As far as I recall there was no made-straight possible at this point. I bet $25, which was about half the pot and she raised me another $50 on top. I decided to call figuring that I was either way ahead or at least had a good draw and although - if she had the flush - I wasn’t getting the direct pot odds that I needed there was a good chance that my implied odds were a lot closer to what I needed to draw to the full house. I figured that it would be quite hard for her to put me on 99 since I had been playing so tight that evening so if she did have a strong flush and I filled up on the river then I should be able to take a decent amount from her. This, combined with the fact that I could still be ahead, made it a fairly easy call. The river was the Jc. I checked and she bet $100. This gave me odds of slightly better than 3-1 and after a while of umming and ahhing I decided that I had to call. She said “Good Call” and threw her cards into the muck before I could ask to see them. Whilst I’m happy with the call I wonder if I’d have be able to make it with only an over-pair, because its close to the same kind of decision once you get to the river. Although, I guess with an over pair (assuming one of them isn’t a high heart) the big decision comes on the turn and then it’s quite tricky.

Although check-in to the motel wasn’t until 3pm I figured that if I rocked up at about 11am they might be able to accommodate me. I just about managed to keep my eyes propped open until then before stumbling back up the elevators and out towards the taxi rank. The Super 8 Motel looked pretty minging from the outside, but it did the job. I dived straight into bed and despite waking up very disorientated at one point, I had a pretty good afternoon’s sleep.

Over the next few days I’d made plans to meete up with various people. Al was gonna be heading over from Phili at some point with Eva and Helix in tow and Pauly and FTrain were also planning on getting down from NCY. In the meantime, AL had given me -EV’s digits. He was apparently in AC already. It was just a case of tracking him down.

Once sleep and washing had been taken care of I headed straight back to the Borgata. I managed to blag a free 10 minutes of Internet access in their business centre before it closed. My next port of call was the buffet. I rang –EV and left him a message before devouring two plates of salad, three large steaks and a mountain of ice cream. When I called him again he was in the process milking some poor fish with his flush so I let him get back to business, but it was all that I needed to know and I headed in the direction of the escalators.

I’d told him that I’d be wearing my black ITH so I wandered round through the tables angling my hat in the vague direction of anyone who looked like a Kevin. Surprisingly enough this wasn’t particularly successful but thankfully -EV has some common sense and it was soon announced that ‘Pinky has a visitor at the desk’.

Kevin was a really nice guy and it wasn’t too long before we were sat together at the same $1/2 NL table. He’d just taken a nasty beat with AA against KK for his whole stack but it didn’t seem to have got to him too badly and we had some good banter across the table. This is where I regret not having taken any notes (I definitely need one of these from Maudie) because I can’t remember any interesting hands. It probably a good thing that Kevin and I didn’t tangle in any big pots. The only one that springs to mind is when I cold called his preflop raise with AQo. I don’t usually like playing AQ against a preflop raise but I had position on him and I figured that he’d probably put me on something better than AQo. Everyone else folded and he checked the flop of KKx. I bet out about ¾ of the pot and he thought for a second then folded The Hammer. He said he was close to check-raising me. Now that would have been some move!

We pretty much played together for most of the night although there was some table switching and Kevin went off to play some $6/12 limit for a while. I seem to remember ending up for the night but to be honest it was a bit of a blur by that point and I crawled back to the motel at around 8am.

I’m gonna have to leave it there for now, besides that’s quite enough for you to have to read in one go! With any luck the final instalment will not be too long in the making

Interlude

I thought a brief update on life back in oxford was due so here we go.

I've been back 10 days now and I've done eff-all regarding work, which is not ideal. I have an extended essay to write and two exams coming up in June, for which I'm yet to do any studying.

I've been playing a wad load of poker, however, since I dont really seem to have shaken off my nocturnalism (if it's not a word, then it should be). I've been getting beaten up playing the $100 NL tables on Party the past few days and I've been getting sunk midway through every tourney I play at night, with a couple of notable exceptions (they're only really notable because I got sunk slightly later on in the tourney, but hey, sucess is all relative):

I played a WSOP qualifier on Paradise last weekend ($25 rebuys and add-on). There were 165 runners and one place into the WSOP main event was garunteed, which meant that Paradise ended up overlaying the prize pool with about $2K. As ever, I spent most of the tourney as a small stack, but managed to come from the brink of death back into real contention and found myself at the final table, with about average chips.

I eneded up busting in 9th place. My KK came up against 99 and 88. There was a 9 on the flop. Winning that pot would have rocketed me into the chip lead and almost ensured my making it down to the last 3 or 4 players. That would have put a seat in The Big One well within my reach, but 'twas not to be.

Last night was also a big one. I played in the $11 rebuys and add-on on Poker Stars which attracted almost 1,000 runners. The prize pool was garunteed at $25K but reached almost $40K by the end of the add-ons. I was in for $33 and managed to get one double through in the first hour which put me just under average at the first break. I trundled along there or there abouts and gradually became one of the smaller stacks - something I'm getting used to recently, but on the plus side, I think I'm playing it well and I ground my way back up and over average. Actually I'm fibbing. There was no grinding to it; the deck hit me sqaure in the face and I could do nothing wrong. It's a shame that noone else came along for the ride, but I gues 7 or 8 preflop takedowns is a good as a double through. The key hand for me came when I picked up AA. I had about $55K in chips. The average was about $35K, blinds were 1,000/2,000/100. I was in EP and UTG made it 6,000 to go. I popped it up to 20K. I got one caller in LMP then the button went all-in for about $30K. I called and so did the guy in LMP. The flop was T94. I pushed and LMP called. The big bling had QQ and LMP had 99. AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGG he had me well covered. It was going to happen again. I was going to take an early morning exit when someone's middle pair sets up and cracks my AA or KK as has happened SO many times this week.

BUT I pulled a mirable ace on the river and duly performed my most exhuberant (spelling?) yet silent fist pump so as not to wake up the whole house. That triple-up put me in 4th place with 120 runners left.

The top 81 places got paid ranging from $75 all the way upto $10,000 for first place. Things continued to go well and I cruised into the money. I managed to avoid tangling with another big stack at my table: he raise before me and I let TT go preflop. It was the correct descision, despite the fact that I would have busted 4 players: Mr.Big Stack had AQs, Mr. Small Blind had KK and Eigt Big Blind had KJs. There was a ten on the flop! It was still the correct descision, though, so cant grumble.

Once the blinds got to the 2K/4K/200 level they really started to hurt, people were busting fast, and I found myslef slipping down the leader board. Just as I was on the verge of becoming one of the smaller stacks I picked up KK. A raise and an all-in in front of my was a bit scarry especially as the all-in came from a massive stack that had just busted someone else's KK with his AA. As much as I might have been dreading putting my money in there was no way I was folding and I was very happy to see myself up against AK and AJ. Tripple up!

That shot me right back up near the top of the leader board, but it wasn't soon till blinds made any sized stack vunerable. I had to let go of AJ on the flop after raising preflop and getting two callers. I also had to bail with 44 preflop after raising first in in the small blind and having the big blind come over the top of me. Another big chunk was lost with JJ. I pumped it up to 32K in early position (big blind was 8K) at that point and a small stck on the button came over the top for about 10K more. I couldn't really fold since I was getting about 9-1 but I knew I wasn't going to like what I saw and he duly flipped over QQ.

Back to smallstack's ville. With blinds now up to 10K/20K/1K I wasn't going to last long with a stack of only 100K without making some kind of a move pretty soon. The moment of truth came when I was in mid position with KQ. I've been debating my push here and I think it's a close call. I could just have survived one more hit of the blinds but it would have left me needing two double-ups to stay in contention. I got called by AQ and the board was insignificant. I busted in 26th place and received $215 for my troubles.

It was just about enough money to warrant staying up all night - it was 8am by this point and Miss Pink was up and about to head to work! - but it was mega frustrating to come so close to a big score. The problem with KQ is that if you're called you're only ever going to be 50-50 or worse. Pleanty of pockets will call you (at best 50-50) a lot of Ax hands will call (60-40) and all hands that dominate KQ will call. This makes KQ only a bit better than a random steal. But I still think that KQ was enough given my situation. I was in mid-position so a blind steal was not out of the question and if I get called I just have to hope that it's a 50-50 or at least hope that I have live outs. I didn't, and that's the way it goes. I was going to have to make a stand within the next 15 hands and KQ might well have been the best I was going to see.

NEWS FLASH: Greg Raymer will be playing at the Oxford Cup on May 8th. The Oxford cup is a student poker event with invited guests and pros held at the Randolf Hotel in Oxford. At the time of it's conception back in 2000 it was the biggest poker event in Europe.



Raymer will be giving a talk the day before. The craziest thing is that this talk will not be about poker. He's gonna be talking in the University Science Museum about FOSSILS!!

Man I sure wish that it didn't coincide with Miss Pink's graduation, but it does and that is an undeniable priority.

Peace out and keep on your toes for the rest of my USA trip report. I'd imagine there are either two or three more installments to come...

The New York Players Club

Part four of my recent trip to the USA

I found The Players Club without much difficulty. It was tucked away on a second floor suite at the corner of 72nd and Broadway. I’d phoned in advance and it didn’t sound as thought there were going to be any problems getting in even though I was coming on my own as a new player. I’d also be given directions, but I wouldn’t have needed them since the two guys ahead of my on the stairs were rabbiting on about how unlucky he’d got that someone had called his raise with QJs or some other crap like that. Hmm, looked like it might be a profitable night!

I poked my head around the door and surveyed the place quickly. A small entrance hall lead thorough to the main suite. Two medium sized rooms with about 7 tables in each were separated by a small lounge with coffee machine, couch and big-screen TV. Cash games were going on in one room and the other was se aside for the 7pm tournament. Registration hadn’t yet opened so I headed back outside to look for some food. I wasn’t actually very hungy, but it passed the time nicely and I did a spot of people watching, which is always fun.

New York really is a great city. I could definitely live there and I’m not sure I could say that about anywhere else in the US, not long term anyhow.

I put my name down for the tourney ($50+10). He miss-heard Andrew and wrote me down as Andre, but that’s ok. I don’t mind being French once in a while. On second thought it would have been more sensible to have given “Pinky” then Wyton from ITH would have been able to locate me more easily. As it happens he didn’t make it in the end. Wife and kid commitments took prority.

My tournie play was fairly uneventful. One guy on my table saw every flop without exception. I picked up a few nice starting hands but he never went further than the flop with me. As ever in low buy-in tourneys, the blinds increased far too quickly and I found myself faced with a short stack soon after the break and my ATs wasn’t able to compete with QJs (ironic?).

I wandered through to the other room and got myself on the list for the 1-2 NL game ($50 min, $250 max). It looked like it might be a long wait but as tourney tables broke they opened another and I was soon seated and ready for action. The table was generally quite weak, but I didn’t seem to be getting any cards - at least the conversation was good. Fish came and went, but after a few hours I was down about $100. Again, I wish I’d taken some notes so I could write some hands up, at least I’ll know for next time. Nothing massive springs to mind, but I had a mini-rush towards the end to set myself up about $100, which nicely covered my tourney losses and other expenses and by this time (3am) I was beginning to get a little sleepy. I figured that forty winks on their couch might sort me out for another hour of play, but I was soon roused by their staff and asked if I could please keep my eyes open. I figured that it was probably time to make a move anyway and especially since there were more touristy things left to be done in NYC later that day.

Overall. I’d heartily recommend The Players Club, although I have no idea what it’s competition is like. For a small ‘underground’ club it was pretty well run and had a decent number of poor players.

Get set for the rest of the trip write-up: the conclusion of our time in NYC and the marathon session that was Atlantic City.

Onwards to New York City

Part three of my trans-pond trip.

Thursday 24th March

Despite heavy snow all night it can't have been too cold since the van required no extrication. I contemplated grabbing some kip before heading back to Providence, but despite having brought a sleeping bag with me for that very purpose, I decided that the van was too cold and cramped and in a mere 45 minutes I could be tucked up on the Jabberwock’s couch. It wasn’t a mere 45 minutes. I managed to get stuck in rush hour traffic getting into Providence and the sheer effort of keeping my eyes open made the journey feel twice as long.

By the time I’d hung around waiting for the cleaner to let me in, the Gargoyles were re-surfacing. I declined their offer of breakfast and slumped into the couch. They returned from breakfast far too soon after having left for my liking and in a manner not conducive to my remaining asleep, so I got up and joined them for a tour round campus. As interesting as it was to learn all about meal plans and security at Brown, it was probably more relevant to the prospective students and their parents than it was to a hungry, sleep-deprived degenerate.

Once I’d got some food inside me, I began to feel a little more human and was able to hold some kind of a conversation with some Brown fiends that I’d arranged to meet for coffee.

I was looking forward to our gig in the evening. We were expecting a decent audience and the Jabberwocks had organised an after-party. I managed to get some more sleep in the afternoon so I was feeling pretty perky come 9pm. It was a joint venture with the Jabberwocks and another visiting group from Stanford. The Jabberwocks obviously had quite a following and the lecture theatre where we performed was bulging at its seams. Clearly, however, the audience had not come to hear sexy jazz arrangements. The Jabberwocks fed them pumped-up pop numbers (tight and entertaining, but nothing spectaular), which they lapped up.

We were rubbish. The acoustics were crappy and the lecture theatre was fully lit so we could see how uninterested the audience were, which hardly inspired us to deliver our best performance. Still at least we weren’t as shite as the Stanford group!

We partied until the booze ran out, and soon got over it.

Friday 25th March

Our next stop was at with Redhot and Blue at Yale. New Haven was a hole and Yale was just the craziest farce of a place that I have ever seen. One Goyle accurately described it as a Disneyland Oxford. It wasn’t just that the whole place was mock Gothic and built in the 1930s. It was some of the ridiculous lengths that’s they’d gone to in order to increase it’s authenticity.

Once of their bell towers had at one point been the tallest stone only structure in the world (bigger than The Pyramids). They decided that in order to make it look aged they would poor a big vat of acid all over it. Apparently it was reasonably successful, however they also succeeded in undermining the foundations such that they had to be reinforced with steel thus promoting The Pyramids back to their rightful places as the tallest stone only structure. Ha!

It doesn’t stop there. Check this beautiful building out:




This is their Gymnasium (the second biggest in the world). It was never a place of worship. Their library, similarly, was also built to look like a converted church complete with alter-rail, which had only ever functioned as the place to return borrowed books, never to administer any sacraments.

Crazy f*ckers.

Thankfully we only spent one night at Yale or I might just have gone out of my head. The time we did spend there, however, was very enjoyable. We had a hardcore rehearsal in order to sort out the problems from our gig the night before at Brown. Everyone was really up for nailing a good performance the rehearsal was really productive and the gig that evening went awesomely (is that a word?).

We partied hard with the Redhot and Blue kids, and then got the hell out of Yale as fast as we could the following morning. Our next stop was with the Princeton Tigertones:

Saturday 26th March

Because of our haste to get out of Yale we arrived mid afternoon at Princeton and the Tigertones were still somewhere in upstate New York doing a gig. We found somewhere to dump our luggage and spent the afternoon checking out Princeton, which mostly involved drinking and eating. By the time the Tigertones returned at around 10pm a number of us had found a party and were ensconced in a Trans-Atlantic Beer Pong Battle.

Two consecutive night of partying was too much for most of the Gargoyles so only the hardiest of us ventured out with the hardiest Tones to hit up various Parties that were going on at the Eating Clubs of Princeton (don’t ask).

Sunday 27th March – Easter Day

In our mission for breakfast we battled through the throngs of preppy Easter families that seemed to have taken over Princeton. We eventually found a pancake house that didn’t look too full of chino but still had a line forming outside it. It was worth the wait, however, and twelve hungry Gargoyles tucked into piles of pancakes, eggs and a variety of other brekfast goodies. Apparently it’s the saturated fats in a greasy breakfast that are so good for curing a hangover. They race around mopping up the free radicals that come from the breakdown of methanol. Something like that, anyway.

Most of the rest of the day was spent recuperating. I taught a number of ill-educated Goyles how to play poker and then left them to it after my top-pair, top-licker was sunk by a backdoor flush. Look I’m not bitter, ok. We wandered round campus a little before rehearsing for the evening concert.

We performed under the Princeton Arch, which has really quite good acoustic and can also fit a decent sized audience underneath. We delivered another top-notch performance, which was just as well because the Tigertones were freaking amazing.

But enough talk of a cappella, you want to hear more poker stories, right?

Monday 28th March

We bid farewell to the Tigertones and headed back North up the New Jersey Turnpike. We also had to say goodbye to our trusty vans at this point. We dropped them off at Newark Airport and put our trust in public transport. We managed to commandeer (well ok, we paid for it) a shuttle to take us all the way to Columbia. There was really only one problem. It was raining like a bitch and if you’ve ever seen a bitch rain then you’ll know just how serious the situation was. This might not have been such a problem in itself if I’d have managed to get in touch with our contact at Columbia’s Uptown Vocal. I only managed to get hold of both of his answer machines. So I left a group of somewhat bedraggled Gargoyles huddled under a bus stand while I went in search of somewhere to leave our luggage.

Luggage was eventually deposited, lunch was eaten and Uptown Vocal were met. The rain continued unabated and the rest of the afternoon was something of a washout. Some braver souls wandered off for coffee, but having not been able to check email for almost a week, I had some plans that needed making:

Poker with asphnxma was a distinct possibility and there were plans already afoot to meet with one or more ITHers.

Our gig with Uptown Vocal was the same night. It was a fairly low-key affair in one of their commons rooms, but there was a decent turn out and we went down really well. We went out for food and drink with them afterwards and there was a party of sorts going on back in their accommodation, but things had finally caught up with me and I figured that I’d need some rest before ‘doing’ NYC and before the relatively imminent poker marathon that awaited me in Atlantic City.

Tuesday 29th March

A heavy schedule of sightseeing had been planned for today. I’d done a lot of "the sights" when I’d spent two days in NYC with Miss Pink 18 months earlier, but I was happy to do them again since I figured there’d be time to hang out and get some shopping done the following day.

We decided that it was a bit cloudy to try the Empire State Building so in the following order we did Busking in Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero, Lunch, Staten Island Ferry (with busking). Incredibly, we bumped into half of the Oxford University Athletic Team in the ferry terminal including one guy who I knew from Univ. Small world, huh?

We headed, next, up to Broadway since some Goyles wanted to try and see a show. I was in the middle of making poker plans for the evening so I split, which was probably just as well since it looked as though it was going to take them for ever to decide what they wanted to see.

I hadn’t managed to get in touch with asphnxma, but I had managed to contact Wynton from ITH. He’d pointed me in the direction of the New York Players Club and he was going to do his best to make it along too, but it was rather going to depend on wife and kid commitments…

With any luck I’ll have the next instalment up later today.

Foxwoods

Part two of my trip across the pond

I’m pretty sure I jumped a red light in my excitement to turn off the highway towards its magnetic glow. I also missed the sign to the self-park garage and ended up at the goods delivery depot. More haste less speed required. Finally I found the parking, dropped the car in the first space, and made a dash through the snow to the elevator. It occurred to me as I was zooming up to the casino that leaving the van parked on the roof level when it was snowing so heavily probably wasn’t the smartest move. I cursed my degenerate poker-playing alter ego for devising such a cunning plan to trap me here until the thaw came.

In terms of square feet of gaming space, Foxwoods is supposed to be the largest casino in the world. I’d checked out a floor plan on their website previously and the poker area seemed pretty insignificant. Their poker area was not insignificant. I didn’t wander around much of the rest of the casino, but remembering back to the floor plan I’d seen, it must have been pretty freaking huge.

It was now about 1:30am and there were about 30 tables or so on the go. I’d never playing live limit poker before and I also felt that my limit game was still a bit rusty so I enquired about their NL games. Their structure wasn’t ideal. They had a $1-2 game with buy-ins between $40 and $100 (too small compared to the sizes of the blinds). The next level up was a $5-5 game with no maximum buy-in. Since the $5-5 game was way above my bankroll I’d plumped for the $1-2 game. I’d read some other guy's Foxwoods trip report on ITH a while back where they were able to sit down with more than the allowed maximum of $100. You initially site down with the minimum $40, immediately tip the dealer $1 and then once you’re below $40 you can rebuy for an addition $100. By this means I was sat with $139 and I liked the look of the table...

I was in the 4 seat. There was a very drunk mother in her 40s in the 2 seat. She was giving it plenty of chat and trying to flirt with everyone. She made me feel quite nauseous, but I overcame my desire to smack her in the face by assuring myself that I would takeher last $ before the night was out. To that effect I praised her every bad beat and sympathised every time her middle pair got crushed. It took me until 6am to win a pot of her. Now that’s what I call a serious investment of one’s time. The rest of the table was pretty good too. There were two or three good players including a young guy in the 6s who must have had about $1500 in front of him and an older guy in the 10s who was moaning slightly more than I would have liked at the drunken woman. The rest of the table was pretty juicy. Mostly younger people who’d watched poker on TV, played with their buddies, but really had little clue about what was going on.

Now, this is the point where I wished I’d taken some notes at the table. This was all about 2 weeks ago now and I’ll be damned if I can remember any interesting hands. It’s possibly because thee weren’t any. I don’t even remember ending up all-in at any point, although I’m sure I did. I don’t think my stack ever dropped below $120 and I just gradually added to it all night till I was up to about $500 without any major upswings or down swings. Can't complain

After a couple of hours the 3 seat freed up and the drunk woman slid over and took it. Freaking marvellous. Luckily she’d sobered up just enough to realise that I wasn’t going to be reciprocating her flirting, but not enough to actually fold her hands. She could be read like a book. If she was betting then she had a hand. If she was calling then you were almost certainly ahead. Unfortunately it took me all night before I took any chips off her; fortunately she hadn’t gone broke in the mean time.

At about 5am I went for a wander to grab some breakfast. When I came back it looked as thought our table was about to break up. Those of us remaining got split between the two other $1-2 tables and I managed to get with the drunk woman again. The rest of the table was horrible, however. Two really old grumpy guys sat to my right and pretty much killed any action there might have been just by being old and grumpy. I took a nice pot from one of them with JJ when I rivered a flush (although I’m pretty sure I was winning throughout the hand), which made me feel a lot better. Then to make matters worse the next dealer, who could barely fit in his chair because he was so fat, started criticising the play of the drunk woman. I nearly threw him a couple of dollars to shut the hell up, but couldn’t find an opportunity to do it when the drunk woman (incidentally, she probably wasn’t drunk any more since she’d stopped drinking about 4 hours earlier) wouldn’t have heard.

Once I’d finally taken some cash from her – I seem to remember that she called a large re-raise that I made preflop with AA and then folded on the flop – I decided that it was probably time to head back to Providence, since the other Goyles would probably want to rehearse at some point during the day and I also had some friends from Brown that I needed to catch up with. So I resolved to head back to the parking lot and dig the van out of the snow.

To be continued…

From Oxford to Foxwoods

Here beginneth the first verse of the first chapter of the Trip According to Mr. Pink...




Sunday 20th March

Miss Pink was actually the first of the Pink clan to quit England. The idea of her having to spend two weeks in Oxford while I swanned around the US was a little too much so she toddled off the Cyprus for a week's vacation with her parents and sister. Vacation might be a little inaccurate since most of would be spend visiting family and dropping off wedding invitations, but still a much more attractive option than staying behind and grafting at work
Rather than head straight back to Oxford after dropping the girl at the airport and generally hanging round getting bored for a 24 hours before my turn came to leave, I decided that it might be good idea to get some last minute live poker practice in by heading to The Gutshot Card Club in London. Check back to this post for the gory details (in essence, I managed to burn about £400 of the £1,200 bankroll that I'd allowed myself for the trip. Not the sort of start I was looking for.

When I eventually dragged my arse back to Oxford, I just about had enough time to pack my luggage, send some last minute emails to contacts in The US and print out a whole load of itineraries, maps etc that we'd be needing before heading out and meeting half of the group for the bus to Heathrow.

In case I've miraculously acquired any new readers over the past couple of weeks, the purpose of the trip was as a tour of the North East Coast of the USA with the a capella group a sing in, The Oxford Gargoyles. When I wasn't playing too much poker or writing my thesis, I'd spend much of the last term organising it all. We were gonna be staying with various other a cappella groups at schools between Boston and NYC, doing gigs with them and generally partying quite a bit.

[I need a new computer. It's now crashed twice while I've been trying to write the next paragraph]

Monday 21st March

The bus journey to Heathrow was fairly uneventful save that I managed to forget the folder with all the directions, itineraries, contacts details, and other useful info that I’d spent two hours of potential sleep time printing out earlier. Grrrrr. At least I’d remembered the tickets.

Our rousing rendition of “My Baby Just Cares For Me” (available on our latest CD priced at a very reasonable £10!) greatly entertained the lady at the check-in desk but failed miserably in getting us an upgrade. I did mange to get an emergency exit seat so there would be a little room for my oversized legs but the down side was that I found myself stuck between two sets of parents with kids. Our plan for combating irritating children on the plane had been to sing a cappella at them until the ceased in their irritation, but we were too spread out to implement such a plan. Fortunately, however, I had been sufficiently deprived of sleep over the preceding 24 hours that I was oblivious to the world for the best part of the flight and before I knew it we’d arrived in Boston.

Our first appointment was with the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones. Despite getting lost in the one-way system of downtown Boston in the Vans we’d hired for the trip we found ourselves to Cambridge in time to grab a beer and a burger before jet-lag began to set in.

This is going to get a tad long and tedious at this rate so I’ll try and move onto some poker action more quickly.

Tuesday 22nd March


Rehearsal on Boston Common

A side from an open-air rehearsal on Boston Common, we spent the following day doing typically touristy things before our gig with the Veritones in the evening. The Veritones were shit hot (in case that’s UK-only slang, I’d like to make it clear that they were AMAZING!). We sang pretty well and people seemed to enjoy it so we were pretty happy given that it was our first gig. There was a third group visiting from Berkley who also sang. They were terrible, but entertaining nonetheless since they had us all in stitches.

We didn’t party particularly hard after the show (other groups we stayed with subsequently weren’t too surprised – apparently Harvard folk don’t have a reputation for living very wildly. I wouldn’t like to make any generalisations especially since I met up later with a couple of friends I have who go there. We went to one of their Reading Societies (That may or may not be the proper term), which was some ridiculously posh hangout of theirs. We drank and smoked fairly copiously and they called a few friends to get a game of cards going. It was only a $10 buy-in, which was probably just as well considering the state we were all-in, but I managed to end the session about $30 up.

Wednesday 23rd March

I awoke the following morning with just enough time to meet up for a tour round Harvard that one of the Veritones was giving us. I wasn’t particularly compus mentis but a healthy breakfast of pancakes, eggs, corned beef hash and coffee sorted me out afterwards.

Our next stop was with the Jabberwocks of Brown University. We’d hired two mini-vans to get ourselves around and although the van I was driving was a lot more tame than the other we had a moment of some excitement when Anouhska realised that she’s hadn’t managed to hook up with anyone in MA (her goal being to hook up with someone in each state that we visited). Just as the “Welcome To Rode Island Sign” came into view she grabbed Claire and they had a good snog. I just managed to avert my eyes in time to swerve past the truck that had come looming up in front of us!

Providence seemed like a pretty nice city and the Jabberwocks seemed as though they were gonna be a lot of fun. Despite the previous day being sunny and really quite warm, by the time we had dropped our bags off and headed out for some ribs with them, it had started snowing. An hour or so of noshing later and there was a decent covering. Enough for a hearty Gargoyles v Jaberwock snowball fight, but not quite enough to stop me from driving to Foxwoods.

It didn’t look as though there were many Gargoyles up for partying that night and the possible home game that might have been going on with one of the Jaberwock fell through. This suited me fine since Foxwoods was only a 45 minute drive away and I probably wouldn’t get another opportunity while we were nearby.

There were only two slight problems it was past midnight and now snowing very heavily. But then, I did say they were only slight ones.

The drive took me a good 90 mins because I got stuck behind a fleet of snow ploughs. Still probably better than being stuck just in front of them. As I turned off the I-95 and drove a few miles, Foxwoods rose up out of the snowy forest like some kind of degenerates’ Meca. It really was quite a sight and any hint of tiredness soon left me.

To be continued....

Trip Write-Up Imminent

I have now been back in the UK for over 24 hours, but they have been divided pretty evenly between sleep and quality time with Miss Pink so you can forgive me for the lack of postage.

You might have thought that the combination of jet-lag and having turned nocturnal would cancel each other out. I can assure you that they dont. My brain feels very much not my own this morning and Atlantic City seems somewhat like a dream. In fact, it felt a lot like a dream while it was going on too; like when you know that you're asleep so it doesn't matter what happens because you're going to wake up soon.

This is going to have to serve as a warm up post while I asemble my thoughts, gather some photos, and sift through the bundles of notes I took (ha, if only).

Basically, I had a freekin amazing time both on the a capella tour and playing poker. I met some great people and had a blast pretty much everywhere I went. It has to be said, though, that it's pretty good to be back with the girl. Being back in Oxford, however, is less brilliant. It's raining and as soon as I've finished writing up my trip, I'll no longer be able to turn my attention away from the mountain of studying I've got to do.

While I'm sorting things out you should head over to the blogs of -EV, Al, and Helixx. They have each beaten my lazy ass to writing up some of the going on in Atlantic City.