Fish and Chips

A poker themed blog, charting the demise of my degree and the rise of my poker career.


Play Online Poker

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Spring Clean

-----------------------------

Ok, it's very much not spring - in fact this country is Arctic at the moment - but it's definitely a clean. This blog has needed a good dust for a while now: the blogroll was very out of date and many new reads needed linking up. I'm half way through the process, but with any luck if I'm reading you, you now appear somewhere to the right.

Specific pimpages:
Ten Mile - I've been reading Ten Mile on and off for a while, but I've only been a regular since his recent site relocation. I really enjoy his unique style, and hey, he gave me a big pimp last week!

David Pomroy - High Stakes NL online player from the UK. He came third in the recent EPT event in Dublin.

Threebet33 - High limit player living in Vegas

----------------------------

My body is revolting.

Ha! Checkout the double entendre. Whilst I may not be brad pit, that was not my intednded meaning. I hurt.

I'm sure, however, that all this physical over-excersion is doing me good. It's definitely helped in cheering my general mood. There's nothing like getting off one's fat arse and stirring up the blood.

---------------------------

Some good news. I just had a phone call letting me know that I passed last week's assesment day. Rock on! There are a couple more hurdles to jump, but - without wishing to temp fate - they should be more of a formality.

A light at the end of the tunnel?

--------------------------

A new direction for this blog? I think that this might be in store. I've decided that I dont really have anything interesting to say about online poker:

  • I'm no DoubleAs, so I've steared clear of strategy posts.
  • Hand histories kill small childeren, so I try to stay away from those.
  • Reading re-caps of blogger tournies (as fun as they are to take part in) makes me want to return to my data-entry, althoug having said that I'd probably force you all to read about how I'd fared had I taken part in any recently!


  • So what am I going to write about then?

  • Live poker reports make me moist, so I'll be doing as many of those as possible.
  • Other trip reports: Iggy suggested this, so expect some acticles about the six months I spent in Kenya, for example.
  • Musings on life in general are good for me and damn it, they're good for you too!
  • Of course, I will include brief updates on my online performance, and maybe even the odd hand history if you're really well behaved!

    ----------------------------

    That's all for now folks. Take care.
  • Wednesday, November 16, 2005

    Glory, Glory England (Apart from the Cricket)

    -----------------------
    For those of you still wondering/nagging/guilt-tripping I should let you know that I'll be notable by my absense in Vegas. It was far too much of a pipe dream, depite the cheap flights. Next time maybe.
    ----------------------

    So I got up to a few things this weekend.

    Friday and Saturday were mostly spent drinking and watching sport. England rule. It's just a crying shame that we let the first test against Pakistan slip out of our hands at the last moment this morning.

    I've also been a busy Pink preparing for interviews and various assements. That all happened yesterday. Difficult to know how it's gone, but I wasn't all that happy with my performance. It'll be a few weeks before I hear anything.

    After about three months of sitting on my arse and not getting any exercise, I finally got my act together and joined a gym. I'd literally not exerted myself once since before our wedding, so I've become somethgin of a fat unhealty Pink. Well that's all about to change. I've singed my life (well the next year) away to a rather posh gym/swim/fitness centre. I checked out their pool this evening and manged about 30 minutes before colapsing in the sauna.

    ----------------
    On the poker front I'm continuing to plug away at the £100 NL tables on Will Hill, although it's seems that my good run of the last couple of weeks has well and truely come to an end. I'm considereing splitting my roll and taking half back to Party. It's a while since I've been there.
    ----------------

    That's all folks.

    Thursday, November 10, 2005

    Crazy Pony

    Some guy at the Gutshot last night showed me a text he'd just received from a mate:

    I just got a phone call out of the blue from an ex-girlfriend. Now this girl was damn hot and well frisky. We used to have the most amazing sex - she'd do anything. So you can imagine how please I was to be hearing from her again. It turned out that she was in town for a conference and wanted to hook up and maybe "re-live some of the old times". Now as much as I wanted to jump at this opportunity, I felt obliged to let her know that I'd put on a few pounds since we were together. She put my mind at ease by assurring me that it didn't matter to her. She then went on to say that she'd put on a bit of weight herself anyway, so I told her to fuck off.


    That pretty much set the tone for the evening. CrazyNess.

    I'd gone to the Gutshot to meet, Ironfist from ITH. He was down in London for a training day so I gladly took the opportunity for some live play, since Mrs. Pink was gonna be working late. The Wednesday nighy tourney at the Guthost is a £30 rebuy, which is a tad expensive for my roll and tends to be populated by the better club regulars. Equally, though, it doesn't attract that many runners so I suspected that there might be a smaller cash game going on.

    I bolted out of the office on the dot of 5 O'clock dashed to the car and dodged the impending rush-hour traffic before arriving home. A quick change of clothes and a bowl of cat food later (it's delicious, but the cat never leaves any for me) and I was back out of the door and on my way to the tube.

    Ironfist arrived shortly after I did and we chatted over a beer or two before they opened a cash game up. For a while it looked as though we'd be out of luck, but eventually there was enough interest. It was only their Pony (for transpond readers, A Pony = £25) game which is a self delt PL game. It has a £25 minimum and maximum buy-in with 25p-50p blinds, but that suited us just fine.

    I usually dont enjoy the Pony game. It's slow because of being self delt and it's full of idiots who think they know what they're doing and like to lecture everyone else about their play. This game was much better than usual. There were a couple of opinions flying about, but they didn't stick around long. Otherwise the table was full of great banter and terrible play, boardering on ridiculous at times. It also helped that the deck was hitting me in the face.

    (It's now Sunday evening, am I'm finally getting round to finishing off this post)

    There were three hands that were particularly ridiculous, but I can only remember two of them right now.

    The first involved a final board of 49998. There were two players left at the end after a reasonable amount fo betting and they both checked on the river. The first guy rolled over 97 for quads and the second guy mucked KK face up. WHAT THE FUCK? How the hell did that hand get checked down? Madness.

    I got involved in a multiway pot which was raised the minimum to £1 by a guy in middle position and called in a few spots. I called too with 44 on the small blind. The flop came K,9,4 with two diamonds. Sweet. Someone's bound to have caught some of this so I plan a check-raise knowinf full well that it'll get bet somewhere. It checks all the way around to the button who fires out £3. Not wanting to mess around I make it £15 fairly confident of getting a call - the button's been playing crazily loose. Everyone folds round to the button, who calls my raise. The turn is a black ten and I put the button all-in for £30 - he's almost certainly calling after calling that raise on the flop.

    He mucked K9 face-up. WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

    I said, What, What WHAT the Fuck? How does he fold top-two here. I'm at a seriously loss to know why he folded that. It seemed that he just went on a whim - as with his every other play - without considering how few hands were actually beating him. I cant believe I didn't get paid.

    I think that even some good players would struggle to lay that down. It wasn't even as though I'd been playing particularly tight. He just went with his gut. Wrenching.

    I soon got over it when I made the nuts a few times and got paid off handsomely. I even caught Ironfist raising me with top pair medium kicker against my bottom two. Can't complain.

    I was unable to drop the Hammer at any point. I had it once under-the-gun. Riased only to have Ironfist re-raise to isolate me. I would have been happy to call and make some kind of play to take the pot later in the hand had four other people not called his re-raise. Oh well. Someone else ended up bluffing him off his 99 on a Jack high board. Grrrr.

    I had to get back relatively early to arrive home in time for Mrs. Pink to finish work so I bidded farewell to the table and gathered the mountain of chips I'd acumulated. I ended with a profit of £100 for three hours of donking aounrd and drinking. Much fun. It's just a shame I cant make 4 buy-ins in three hours on a regular basis at the £100 tables on Will Hill, which are my regtular fare right now.

    ---------------
    As ever I've had to rush the end of this just to get it finished and out there, but hey, it's better than nothing.

    I've been pretty busy these last few days, and it'll stay that way till mid-week. I've got a big day of interviews and assesments on Tuesday for a potential career move that's been in the pipelines for a while, so here's hoping that works out.

    See y'all in a few days.
    ----------------

    Wednesday, November 02, 2005

    Torture

    Crap, crap, crap. I knew the moment I'd clicked on "check prices" that it was a big mistake my even having typed "expedia" into the search engine. I mean, it wasn't as if I could go even if I found some cheap flights.

    Why why, oh why did I have to find a return flight from London to Vegas for a mere was £340 £260. Aaaaaargggg. Why do I do this to myself?

    I seriously doubt that I'll be able to go.

    It would be even more masochistic to enquire as to whether there were still any bloggers looking for a room-mate with whom to share the price of accommodation.

    Sigh. I guess the WPBT Winter Classic will have to survive without my presence.

    Why do I torture myself thus.

    Office Hell

    I'm seriously considering quitting this job. It's doing my nut in. I'm actually surprised that I've been able to stick at it for almost 6 weeks.

    I finally ordered a new computer yesterday so I can start playing at home again rather than spending the early evening in scrotty internet cafes, squeezed into tiny bays next to the great unwashed or loud wanna-be-rude-boys from the estate over the road, who spend more time in there than I do, all playing shitty fantasy games with god-awful graphics.

    In case my tone hadn't alerted you, I haven't been in the best of mood over the last couple of days. My apologies for dragging you down with me, but this rant may make me feel better.

    The prospect of having a computer at home has gone some way to catalyse my desire to leave this job. Not being restricted by the opening hours of the internet cafe makes playing for a living more feasible, but it's still too much of a risk for me to be taking at the moment so I'm gonna have to try and stick this out for at least a few more weeks while I try and grow my bankroll to a safer level.

    I'm back playing on Will Hill and it's going reasonably well so far. The play is notably worse than on Stars and I'm reasonably on top of my game at the moment. I'm playing on the £100 or $200 buy-in tables, but I've only got 10 full buy-ins at that level which is about half as many as I'd like to have to feel comfortable.

    ----------------------------------

    There's been a lot of talk recently about the future of the Gutshot and other UK cardrooms indirectly. This article on the Times Online outlines what's been going on. I don't think that they'll have any problem showing that poker is a game of skill, but they may be on thinner ice with regards too operatingg as a non-profit making member's club:

    Mr Kelly argues that as a non-profit-making members' club, Gutshot is simply providing a service to its members and that any money made is returned to the committee, which, in turn, gives it to the members at its discretion.

    I'm not sure that, as a member of the Gutshot, I've ever seen any of this money and I'd be surprised if the only profit made comes from the Gutshot's online cardroom, but I'd also be surprised if the oweners were stupid enough to have contraviened any laws so blatently. It should be obvious that I don't really know what I'm talking about, but in summary, it's my guess that they'll get off; I was playing at the same table as Barry (co-owner) recently and he didn't seem too concerned about the upcoming court proceedings.

    ---------------------------

    I've been very dissatisfied of late with the quality of posating on this blog, having read back to earlier posts. I hope to be coming back with some better stuff soon and in the meantime here's hoping I dont loose my head and quit my job!