Hot Feet

TWO DAYS TO GO... This may very well be my last post as a batchelor!

Things have continued at a manic pace since getting back from Dublin. The American students left on Saturday. Sunday and Monday were spent packing all our worldly possessions and on Tuesday, my father came down to Oxford, we hired a van and drove it all down the M40 to London. We spent the rest of the day unloading and making a number of abortive trips to IKEA to try and get a bed and other essential furniture items. 3 days later and two more trips up and down the M40 the flat is pretty much occupiable, but we still only have half a bed. We may have to make do with a futon on our first night down there, but at least it's beginning to look homely.

Lat night there was a big family party at Miss Pink's parents' place. It loosely followed the form of the traditional Turkish 'hen night', where the bride to be is dressed all in red, is painted with henna and there's music and dancing. The guys were all banished to the garden where we made pigs of ourselves with food that could have fed the whole of Cyprus.

We're finally back in Oxford now and Miss Pink is attending her leaving function at work. She's lined up with a journalism job when we get back from our honeymoon; it looks like bar work and poker will be my contribution to the rent in the short term. I have one serious job application in the pipeline, but it may be a few months before I hear anything.

In the meantime we've got just over a day to finish all the remaining wedding preparations. It should all fall into place; I've just got some odds and ends to tie up and the rest of my speech to finish. I got the hard part of it done this morning when I got Miss Pink's father to help me out with write the Turkish bit!

We got back to the house in Oxford this afternoon to find our all our honeymoon details and tickets had arrived. Now we've just got to duck the storms!

Needless to say I haven't' had the opportunity to play anypoker recently, but I've been making up for it by having the craziest poker dreams.

Next time you hear from me I'll be a married man. Bring it on.

Quick Stats

Number of pints of guinness consumed in dublin: 23
Days untill the American students leave: 2
Days untill we move house to London: 5
Days untill wedding: 10
Days untill honeymoon in Barbados: 20
Number of tropical storms/hurricanes predicted over the next two months: 9
Number of jobs applyed for: 1
Number of offers of employment: 0
Percentage chance that I can sustain myself by only playing poker: 12.6%

Back from Dublin

I've just got back to Oxford after a three day stag bender in Dublin. I must have consumed over 40 pints - good times! I need to detox right now but I'll be back with a full write-up - including a couple of sessions at the Fitzwilliam Card Club - as soon as I find time in between work and wedding plans.

Tiffany Williams, an Arse-hole and a Final Table

As promised, here's the write-up of Friday night's trip down to the Gutshot. I came very close to remembering to take a notebook, but you'll just have to make do with my memory instead.

After bumping into a good friend and his wife in college shortly after breakfast on Friday, I spent most of the morning drinking coffee with them, followed by a leisurely dim sum lunch for which we were joined by Miss Pink. I'd had half a mind all week to head down to The Gutshot that evening and I'd tested the waters with Miss Pink the previous day. I managed to negotiate clearance over lunch and drove down pretty much straight away so I could get a couple of wedding odds an ends cleared up while I was down there. I managed just to catch the beginning of Friday afternoon rush hour when the whole of London and his wife was trying to get the hell out, so I only just made it to the jewellers in time to pick up our rings.

I had a good feeling about the evening's prospects, which is not something that usually happens. Not that I always get bad feelings, just that I don't usually get feelings either way and if I did, I probably wouldn't pay them any attention anyway. Hmm, that was an interesting paragraph.

So you remember this year's Cinderella story from the WSOP? Tiffany Williams who won three consecutive satellites and ended up finishing 15th in the main event and pocketing over $400K. She started her journey at the Gutshot at one of their Monday night £10 rebuy qualifiers. I'd never seen her before, but she was thereon Fridayy night and sitting a couple of seats to my right. Quite exciting.

109 people had signed up for the tournament, which was a £10 rebuy. Starting with 500 in chips with unlimited rebuys in the first hour for 500 each with an option top-up at the end of the rebuy period, also for 500 chips. Blinds started at 25-25which usuallylencouragementty of rebuys, but our table was remarkably quiet. I've been on tables which have averaged five rebuys per person but we probably had less than 10 rebuys between us. I rebought once when I pushed on the flop with a flush draw and failed to improve against top pair. I made it most of it back when Tiffany Williams thought for ages and then called my second pair with her turned third pair. Nothing lse of much note happened during the rebuys and after my top-up I had about 1400. Ihad obviouslyly been a quiet first hour at the other table too since the average chips count was only 1800 at that point. Still, there was a decent sized prize pool with £1175 for first, down to £70 for ninth.

This is where a note book would have come in handy, because I really cremembermebr much about my journey through the rest of the tournament. Essentially, I was a short stthroathout and managed to survive by stealing enough blinds and then doubling up at crutial moments. I've been happy with my short-stacked tournament play for some time now; when ever I've done well in tournament it's been through playing my shortstack wisely. However, I'm never the big stack and if I end up with one, I know I don't play anything like aggressively enough. It's why I've got a decent number of final table appearances but very few top three finishes. I definitely need to work on that. It is as if I only achieve the necessary degree of fearlessness when I'm shortstacdesperaterate.

Once we were down to two tables a skinny beret-toting antipodean guy was moved to my immediate left. He kept pretty quite and seemed to be playing a solid game. Most hands were being won with a preflop raise by this point, but eventually we had we took a flop when the guy on my immediate right raised first in on his button.I folded and the beret called. The flop came KQx. Beret pushed and the button insta-called. "Oh shit", said the beret. Most of the tables at the Gutshot are sdealtdelt and being the button, naturally, Mr. Insta-Call was dealing. After dealing the flopinadvertentlyntly moved his top hole card onto the flop's burn card. Myself and one other player saw this clearly, pointed it out and had the guy move his hole cards back together. Everyone seemed happy with it untill Mr. Insta-Call flipped over his top two pair against The Beret's crappy top pair. At that point The Beret (hereafter refered to as "The Arsehole") started kicking up an almighty fuss declaring that Mr. Insta-Call's hand was dead because it touched the muck. Technically, he was right, but he knew full well that the correct card had been retrieved and he didn't make his point till the cards were shown. The discussion went on for a good ten minutes with tournamentanet director listening to both sides of the story. Despite most of the table's protests The Arsehole continued to press his point such that tournamentmnet director had little option but to push all the chips to the Arsehole. That was until I decided to ask the guy if in fact he was actually an arsehole. He said that he was. I tried another, more subtle tack and eventually managed to persuade him at least to let the guy take back his call on the flop. He eventually and reluctantly agreed. Ashappenedpend it made little difference since The Arsehole busted Mr. Insta-Call shortly after, but had things have gone the way of the cards rather than via the anal-sphincter he wouldn't have been in a position to bust Mr. Insta-Call since he barely covered him in the previous hand.

I got moved shotly after that to the other table in order to balance out the numbers, which was a welcome relief. The other table was much more aggressive and I was worried that I wasn't gonna get a change to steal some blinds with my moderately shirt stack because everytime the action got to me it had already been raised. However I picked up some nice starting hands and acumulated a few chips. Eventually we were down to the last ten. The final table was nine and only the final table was paid. In situations like this in the past it has taken ages to get down to the final nine by which stage the binds were to high to allow for any kind of play on the final table. So I suggested we took £70 from first place and give it to tenth. Everyone agreed and then on the very next hand I busted the tenth place guy when I called his all-in with Ace Ten. He flipped over QQ and when he hit a flush draw on the turn I was down to only two outs and bang there came an safe ace on the river. OH YEAH! That moved me into the top three going into the final table.

The final table shrunk pretty fast, but I did too much sitting around and waiting for others to bust such that when we were down to five I was lowest in chips. The Arsehole was on my left again and had been bossing the table. I busted in fifth when I pushed first in on the button with 98s. He called with KJ and although I hit the flop, he turned a jack. I probably had several opportunities previously to accumulate chips that I should have taken, but I'd have pushed in that position almost everytime.

I was happy to have made a final table, but as ever you always wished you had gone further. First place was over £1100, but the £285 I got for 5th was good enough.

Appologies for the quick wrap up but I'm on the verge of dissapearing back home before heading to Dublin on my Stag weekend tomorrow. Bring on the Guinness!