The Last Couple of Week's Poker

I've played a reasonable amount of poker over the last week (outside of the usual $200 NL grind) so I figured it would be rude not to share.

On Saturday I spent the afternoon in the Gutshot while Mrs. Pink was busy at journalism college. I played in the 2pm £5 rebuy and had a mental table which must have averaged 5 rebuys each over the course of the first hour, so there were pleanty of chips to pick up. Unfortunately they moved both of the big stacked fish to another table shortly after the first break. I got down to the last three tables but reached shortstackeddom and was happy to find pockets tens. I pushed and the BB called with AJ. Unfortunately hitting my set on the turn allowed him to river a straight.

Off to the cash games I merrily went...

They only had a £1-1 PL game with a £50 max sitdown, but that suited me fine as I only had an hour or so. I lost about £10 before Mrs. Pink called to inform me that she was sitting in a pub with her class mates and a pint of cold beer with my name on it. Cha-ching.

That would usually have been the end of live poker for the week, but or returning home I got a text from Eric, an American friend from Uni, who was in town for one last night of poker before permanently heading back to The States and taking a job on Wall Street.

So a couple of hours later I found myslef back at the Gutshot ready to settle into a juicy Saturday night £1-2 PL game. Well that didn't materialise. It was a slightly bigger game...

Eric's never one to pass up the opportunity to sit down with a lot of money and when the possibility of a bigger game came over the horizon he jumped at it. The only problem being that I'd downed tools (and Mrs. Pink) at the last momnet to play some cards with him and there was no way I could afford anything higher than £1-2. No problem - Eric offered to stake me with a 60-40 split of profits in his favour. Fine by me!

The game was £5-5 NL holdem with a £250 minimum buy-in and no max. Most people sat with £500 as did Eric and I. In short the competition was good and there were only a couple of fish. I was up to about £800 early on when I flopped a staight flush draw with KQs, turned a flush and rivered the staight flush. I got paid off on the turn by a set who folded on the river when the fourth heart came. Other than that I played pretty tight and gave the profit back plus a bit on a slightly mis-timed bluff against a lag. I thought at the time that I picked my moment quite well as I'd been playing very tight, but in light of this discussion, I think I should have given up a lot earlier. In the end I left down about £75 which was quite a lot better off than Eric!

Sunday evening was, of course the blogger event on Stars. I did slightly better than the last time when I was essentially first out, but I barely lasted longer than the first hour before I decided that 99 was good enough to call an all-in reraise from the table maniac who woke up with KK.

At the same time I decided to play the Stars weekly Million Dollar Garunteed tournament for the first time. I've played a couple of satalites for it in the past but I've always taken the tournament credits instead of actually playing; this time I bought in direct. I also took part in the 10% share on ITH where all those playing The Million pool 10% of themselves. I ended up just squeezing into the money turning my $215 into $500. Matty Milne went even further and cashed for over a grand.

Since then I've played in a couple of home games which is the poker I enjoy most. In the first instance I won the small tournament in the second I played like a fish and donked off a couple of cash game buy-ins. All good, especailly when combined with beer swilling, meat grilling, and football watching.

I really wish I had more time to give to this blog as I know I can write good stuff if I put my mind to it, but to be honest, I'm busy and happy doing other things and the majority of my spare time is spent at the virtual tables, so you'll just have to bear with me.

Things at the virtual tables are going very well this month and I've more than erradicated last months horriffic losses. I'm still playing the $200 tables on Stars, but I've moved up to the £200 tables on Crypto which are just as juicy as the $200.

In other news house hunting has taken a turn for the good. We've had an offer accepted on a really nice two-bed garden flat, we're just crossing every bodily-projection possible that we get the mortgage and that everything else goes to plan. It's still early days. and the house buying process in this country is a fucking jopke.

Enough blathering from me save to tell you something you already know: the WSOP has started. It's going to have to cope without me this year. Next year I have every intention of at least playing event #2. In the mean time go check Pauly and The Poker Profs for the best coverage and photos. I'll be updating my WSOP links on the right as and when I find new sights useful, but for now my loyalites are firmly with these guys.