Congratulations!

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I had some great news over the weekend: My brother and his girlfriend have just got engaged. Congratulations guys!

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I've rediscovered Redpill's Blog. I suggest you check it out. Mighty amusing. It's difficult to tell if he's for real or not, but either way if makes for a good read. He's becoming a bit of a cult sesation, so get over there while he still allows anonymous commenting!

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I had a good turn out for the home game on friday night. In fact there were almost more than could be accomodated at one point. We only play 10p/20p NL, but theres no cap on the buy-in so it can get quite deep stacked later in the night, which makes for some interesting poker.

There were some big hands matching up against each other preflop. We had AA against QQ. KK against QQ twice. I was happy to be able to escape from QQ preflop when I was up against AA and AK: there was a small raise to 60p and a reraise to £2 before it got to me, which didn't necessarily mean all that much. I was in the small blind and contemplated just cold-calling. In the end I felt I needed to define my hand and re-reraised to £5. The original raiser just called the £5 (alarm bells!) and the reraiser pushed. Fairly easy fold for me. The original raiser had the AA and the push came from AK. I was surprised about the push from AK since it came from a reasonably solid player.

I wasn't involved in too many monster pots. I ended up all-in on a King high flop with AK. My opponent in that hand reluctantly called with AK - he said he put me on Aces. I had another big split pot: I floped a broadway straight with AK. KT came along for the ride and the river was an Ace. Figures!

I made a monster lay down at one point early on against I guy I'd never played against before. Previously he'd massively overbet the pot (about £20 into a £3 pot) and showed a complete bluff. In the hand in question he limped along with a couple of others and I checked in the big bling with 86o. The flop came 966 and I bet just under the pot. He riased to £6 (the pot was less than £2 at that point), which was about half of his stack. Everyone folded to me and I eventually folded showing my hand. My line of thought was that he wouldn't overbet the pot again without a real hand. It turned out he did have a real hand; it just wasn't as real as mine - he tabled KK and scooped his £1.60 pot! Given the way he played during the rest of the evening (terribly!) there's no way I'd ever make that lay down against him again, but given the information I had at the time, I dont think it was a terrible fold. I was essentially only getting even money if I'd have decided to put him all-in, since the initial pot was so small.

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On the job front I jumped through a few more hoops (sucessfully) at the final assement day on Monday. They've now got to take references etc, but I'm not expecting to hear anything for a couple of months so I'll have to slog it out with the data entry for a while yet. Mmmphfhp.