Sun, in England?

Man the weather in this place is sweet at the moment. We've had almost a week of temperatures in the high 20s (80s) and it topped 30 (~90) on a few occasions. For those of you less failiar with the climate on this side of the pond, it is mostly shit. I'm sure this unpresidented lack of rain and clouds is to blaim for my having done my bollocks again this week. I mean, how am I supposed to concentrate on wheather I should be calling for my whole stack when I could be sunning myself or swigging beer down by the river.

There is however, a remidy. Sun, beer and poker are compatible. Today we're gearing up for a marathon session out on the patio, with pleanty of cold beer and red meat. Sweet.

I'm still yet to have sorted out my computer problems so I've been playing on the college computers. Unfortunately they block the download of certain sites so I reluctantly cashed out from Will Hill and stuck it back in Party. I really think Will Hill is the place to be at the moment for weak players, but my first few days back on Party was equally good to me. This week, however has been less than bodacious. I think my play is reasonable, but I'm working on a slightly light bankroll after having to pay myself for these few weeks before my summer job starts so the swings are that much more painful.

Putting the idea of playing full time out of my head and realising that it wouldn't actually be something that I could enjoy has been the best thing to happen to me for a while. I feel liberated. I've stopped stressing about not playing at the high stakes anymore, although it's still an eventual goal, and I'm enjoying time spent away from the tables much more. Dont get me wrong, I'm still eager to be playing most of the time, but it's now only ever going to be a hobby. Hopefully a significantly profitable one, but a hobby nonetheless.

I managed a trip down to The Gutshot on Monday night. They've introduced new 'Happy Hour' turbo tournaments at 5:30pm to fill the slot between people's finishing work and their 8pm daily tourneys. They're £5 rebuy events with a maximum of 3 buy-ins of 500 chips each. You can start with the full 1500 or you can take 500 at a time. Each level is 10 minutes and there's a 50 played cap to ensure that it finishes before 8pm.

I made it down in pleanty of time for this event but I stupidly manged to leave my swanky new top-of-the range video phone on the bus so I spent a good half an hour stressing while I tried to sort out getting it barred and located. 45 runners started and they paid 7 spots. £150 for first down to £11 for 7th. I bought in for the full 1500 and we kicked off. The 10 minute levels turned it into a bit of a craps shoot and it was basibally a case all-in or fold after the first half an hour. I was fortunate enough to find AA at two crutial moments when I was shortstacked and managed to keep myslef in the running. Once we were down to the last two tables I was able to pick up enough blinds to keep alive and just waited for everyone else to knock each other out. Things continued in this vain down to the final table and into the money. With five people left and an average of 5 big blinds each, someone finally called one of my all-ins. I had 22, I was expecting to be sunk, but he turned over KT. A king came on the flop but I rivered a flush. Woohoo! There was no time for hanging around, however. The blinds continued to rise. Although this usually negates any advantage that a better player has, I think that I was helped by our very large stack sizes. They hadn't coloured up the chips at any point so we still had the 25s in play despite the blinds being at 3000/6000. This meant that an all-in looked a lot scarrier than it was and I even had someone fold to an under-raise that I made, just because I announced that I was all-in.

4th and 3rd place knocked themselves out and we were heads up with similar stack sizes. They increased the blinds further and we reached 5000/10000 despite the fact that there were less than 60,000 chips in play! On the final hand he pushed with 33 and I called with T8. I was getting almost 3-1 and he really could have had anything. I didn't get any help and finished second for £90.

It was a fun tourney and a good way to start the evening but there wasn't a lot of room for thought. The only descision that one needed to make was, "Do I want to comit all my chips to this hand or not? and it could often be made without looking at one's cards.

I played in their £10 rebuy satalite almost immediately after. It's a weekly satalite for their monthly WSOP qualifier. Our table was crazy and must have averaged 5 or 6 rebuys per person. I was feeling a little subdued and didn't really get involved in any pots and exited shortly after the rebuys when I stuck in my short stack on a 50-50. I went and played in the £25 self delt PL cash game - I dont have the bankroll for the £1-2 game at the moment and it was looking seriously shark infested that night. The £25 game was pretty slow and I left after lossing half of my buy-in.

I'll be back shortly with the final instalment of the AC trip, a run down of the Oxford Cup weekend, anything else of interest, and probably some really uninteresteing things too, but right now the sun's out and there's meat to be cooked, beer to be sipped and chips to be flung.

Atlantic City (Part 2)

I've finally got my act together to write up the remaining antics of my Spring trip to The States.

If you need a brief recap here are the previous entries:

From Oxford to Foxwoods
Foxwoods
Onwards to New York City
The New York Players Club
From New York City to Altantic City

We'd left out hero just after his second night it Antlantic City. As of yet there had been no straddling and no Hammer Dropping. Things needed to be remidied...

Friday 1st April (Uh Oh)

I awoke sometime in the afternoon crawled out of the hovell that was the Super 8 motel and made my way back over to the Borgata. I hadn't slept so well; having spent most of the last 48 hours in a high oxygen environment, my body hadn't adjusted to the real world. Once back in the marbelled foyer, I felt much better. One cheese steak later and I was raring to go.

My biggest mistake of the few days I spent in AC, was the same mistake I make time and time again. I wanted to play at stakes slightly above my bankroll. In this situation this equated to playing the $2-5 NL game as appossed to the $1-2 NL game. Now when it comes to live play, I think it can be acceptable to play slightly above your bankroll for a number of reasons. Usually live play in the USA is softer than online. You dont play as many hands live as you do online so you swings over a session will tend to be smaller, although this argument applies more to limit than NL. Playing at a higher level live can also be justified by thinking of it as a night out gambling, taking a set amount, and setting a stop-loss level. All of these seasons might have justified my playing at $2-5 but three equally important factors should have ensured that I didn't stay there for long. First and foremost I was, to a dgree, playing with scarred money and I made one horrible horrible play as a result. I'm almost too embarrassed to write about it. I called a preflop raise with 77 against an early position raiser and flopped a set on a queen high board. He checked, I bet, was called behind me, and he raised big. Having worked my stack up from $500 to about $800 I was too scarred to put it all on the line, I convinced myself that he had top set and I mucked my hand. On reflection there's no way someone would raise that much with top set in that position he almost certainly had an overpair and I cost myself at least $400. Second, the play was notably better at $2-5 than it was at $1-2. It was still beatable, but not all of your profit was going to come from other people's mistakes. Inteligent play was also going to be required. Finally, the buy-in structure meant that the difference in potential earn rates between the $1-2 and the $2-5 was not great. The maximum buy in is $300 and $500 respectively so a big, tourist packed, beer swilling $1-2 table can be much juicier than a local-infested $2-5 rock garden. I failed to pickup on any of these deterants, continued playing $2-5 and only managed to brake even for the rest of my stay. It's all very well reasoning over it now, but I make this mistake time and time again.

Anyway, back to the antics...

I'd made plans that evening to meet up with Wade, a poster on ITH. I found him sat at a juicy looking $6/12 limit table, although, it being 6pm on a Friday, there were few tables in the room that didn't look juicy. I got myself on the list for $6/12 and soon found myself at the table next to his. I'd normally want to sit down with about $500 at a $6/12 table to ensure that I had pleanty to cover and nasty swings. I'd come sriaght from a $2-5 NL table where I'd got about $600 in front of me so I figure I'd just take the whole lot. Well it turned out that I hadn't sat down at a $6/12 table at all. It was a $3/6 table and my stack was probably equivalent to everyone elses combined. I felt like a bit of a jerk, and I'm sure that they were thinking exactly the same thing so I was pretty releived when my transfer came up and I joined Wade's table. I went on a huge rush for the few hours that we played there. I'd never played any live limit before so it was a fun experience, but overall I definately prefer playing NL/PL live. I'd read Miller's "Small Stakes Holdem" prior to coming and was aware from posts on ITH how bad the suckout could be, but fortuantely I maged to aviod them for the whole eveing. Many of my big starting hands got bigger on the flop and I hit a good number of straights and flushed too. Wade had been been drinking some and had taken an entire tables share of bad beats so he decided to hit the sack shortly after midnight and I went back to NL.

Saturday 2nd April

The following day -EV and I had arrange to meet up with Al and Helix at midday. The other east coast bloggers had been unable to make it, but with the prospect of a highly booze-fuled weekend, -EV and I had agreed that we should attempt some kind of an early night. I finally managed to prise myself away from the table at around 7am and -EV was still there when I left.

Back at the Super 8 I set a mirriad of alarms and managed to get a well needed 4 hours sleep. Little did I know that this would be the last I got before flying back home on Monday. That's not entirely true; I'm pretty sure I did sleep for a few hours at some point, but I really have no idea when it was.

I was only 20 minutes or so late for our midday meeting at the Boragata's B-Bar. When I arrived, Al, Eva, and Helix were already well stuck in to the booze and video poker. Eva had already hit quads and proceeded to hit another three full houses and one set of quads while Al slowly did his bollocks. At least it ensured free drinks. I was feeling a little sleep deprived, but in honour of The Blogfather, Al order me a Guiness and the situation rapidly improved. -EV arrived in an even worse state that me so he was prescribed a double vodka and red bull to ease his pains. In the meantime Al was working his magic on a couple of girls at the other end of the bar. The guy is awesome. I dont know how he manages it. -EV and I got chatting to some semi-drunk weirdo at the bar about internet poker, poker tracker and such like. He ended up offering to stake -EV, who sensibly gave him a false telephone number.

Several Guinesses later the need for carbs was pressing so we made a pit stop at noodles of the world. That place is great as are comps - having eaten only cheesesteaks since the first night's extravagence at the buffet, I'd accumulated quite a few comp dollars.

It was now without a doubt time for some poker. Beer had been quaffed and noodles slurped. It was time to fling some some chips. The down to the poker room was uneventful (all 200 feet of it) but to travel the final 10 feet from the bottom of the escalator to the desk was something of a mission. The room was buzzing and the wait list for the $2/4 and $3/6 limit games were over an hour long. -EV and I went and sat in a NL game while we waited, but in the meantime someone had a brainwave and phoned the Trop and Taj to check on their waitlists. It looked as though we'd get seated pretty quickly at the Taj so we upped sticks and headed across town.

I'd be meaning to get over to the Taj at some point during my trip so despite hearing that it was pretty grimy, I was excited to be going. The scene from Rounders when Mike and Worm hit the Taj is one of my favorites and the ride down the shiny gold escalator didn't disapoint.

Generally, though, the Taj was a bit of a shit hole. It's a huge poker room, but it's a complete mess. You cant walk between tables without falling over 17 fat greasy couples with their chairs parted from the table by a great ocean of belly. There are pleanty of fat people at the borgata, but they dont seem to have the same problem. They also need a total managment overhall. It's a joke. No waiting list software. Instead they have a couple of grubby white boards linked up to a monitor. The chips are filthy and so are the waitresses, but enough bitching, back to the poker.

The waiting lists looked much more managable and we got our names down for various low limit Holdem and Omaha Hi/Lo games. It didn't take too long for -EV, Helix, Al, and myself all to be sat in the same $2/4 holdem game from which point all hell broke loose...

I thought I might be able to wrap this up in one post, but it would appear otherwise. Final installment will be along soon.

Minor Setback

My computer has died. The IT guy in college told me that I have "The Blue Screen of Death". Sounds serious, huh? I think I may be about to loose my harddrive and it's been a while since I backed up - probably about 100,000 hands and notes on several hundred players. Idiot.

I also did my bollocks on Saturday at Will Hill. I think I've done enough to convince myself that I'm not cut out to do this for a living. I I just dont have the disciplin. Not the disciplin to wait for good hands or to play them well - I actually am reasonably happy with my game at the moment. I'm refering instead to my continuing inability to play within my means. At the hight of my frustration I found myself playing £10/20 shorthanded limit. That needs a bankroll of about £10,000 and I had barely one fifth of that. Thankfully I didn't cripple my roll, which would have been quite easy with only a moderate downswing at that level.

Things are not all doom and gloom. In fact I'm very positive at the moment. My adventure into the higer stakes has afforded me some perspective. I'm not ready to play poker for a living, that's clear enough and I'm not sure that I would want to play full time anyway. I've been trying to make things happen too quickly rather than sitting back, playing good poker, enjoying it, and steadily moving up the limits. I'm also going to call off my attempts at WSOP qualification for this year. I dont really have spare bankroll and I think money that my time will be better spent in the cash games.

As I see it, the death of my computer is my biggest worry at the moment. It's seriously going to compromise the amount of playing I can do, since I'll now only be able to play when in college, but that's probably a blessing in disguise since I've got a wedding to plan. So right now I'm gonna concentrate on being busy, having fun and not stressing about only playing small stakes.

This is a really boring post. I appologise. Something interesting coming soon, I promise.

It's All Over

The dust is yet to settle, but the fact remains that I've finished my degree and I'm now officially unemployed. It felt pretty weird coming out of my last exam yesterday afternoon, knowing that that was the end. It's great finally to have finished but it also feels like some kind of pugatory.

I'm actually gonna be really busy over the next few months, what with wedding preparations, looking for somewhere to live and trying to make some cash. I've got a job lined up for 6 weeks in July and August (acting as 'social director' for the UVA Summer Program in Oxford, which basically involves playing football with them and taking them to the pub - sweet!), but in the meantime the bank balance is looking somewhat unhealthy. I may have to start paying myself out of my bankroll, which is gonna put the pressure on somewhat. Hopefully I can find the time to put the hours in and let rakeback form part of the paycheck.

The blogers are well and truely back from Vegas. Trip-writeups abound, just pick a link from the right and chances are that they were in Vegas. There's pleanty still going on there by way of a small poker competition or something. I've added some links to the right for WSOP coverage. Make sure you hit up Tao of Poker and Las Vegas Vegas - Pauly and the Poker Profs are busting ass to get some quality coverage scribed and some cool pics too.

My attempt to make the main event will continue. I've got about $500 on Stars which will go on buying W$. I'm them gonna play the $25 rebuy events in an attempt to build up a bit more of a WSOP bankroll and eventually play a few of the Sunday $600 qualifiers. That's the plan anyhow. It may turn out that I have to stick to cash games in order to pay the rent.

I'm gonna try for daily posts, or certainly every other day so stay tuned. In the meantime, peace.

The Home Straight

I finish for good in just over 10 hours. Bring it on.

Monday's exam went reasonablly well, but probably not well enough to allow todays exam to provide the opportunity to get that elusive 2:1. As long as can write two essays and fill the allotted 3.5 hours this afternoon, then I'll be happy; hell, I'll be happy whatever when 6pm comes along.

It's red carnation day!

Ticking Over

Aaaarrrggggggg. Too many distractions: the WSOP has started; the bloggers are in Vegas; hell, even the housework is looking more attractive than revision. To make matters worse, I've estimated that in order to get a 2:1 overall I need to get a First in both of these exams, which is fairly out of the question. This guesstimation is based on results from last year and my predictions of the marks I've got for coursework done this year. By the same estimation I dont have to do particularly well in order to garuntee a 2:2. Of course, I've got no idea what my marks from this year actually are, so I'm just gonna have to do as best as I can in these exams and see what happens.

Appologies to those readers from across the pond (assuming I've still got any readers after the quality and frequency of my recent posts) who have no idea what I'm talking about. Basically, as degrees go, a "First" is amazing, a "2:1" is average, a "2:2" is below average, and a "Third" is shit. I'm curently heading for a 2:2, with a slim chance of converting it to a 2:1.

So the World Series, huh? Man, what I'd give to be in Vegas right now. If you're in the same boat as I, then here are some good links for keeping up to date with the goings on:

Poker Pages
Poker Wire
Card Player
Las Vegas Vegas
Tao of Poker

Best of luck to all of the bloggers and ITHers who are playing in Event #2, $1500 NL Holdem, later today - surely a good chance of a final table appearance.

I'll be re-emerging in just under a week with some quality regular posting so dont go away...

Days until first exam - 3
Days until last exam - 6

Suffice it to say that I'm quite looking forward to Thursday.