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.