In the Black

Incredibly, I now find myself in profit (just) for the month and the bankroll is up to £3000. There are still a few days left to screw it up, but I've also got £150-200 of rake back to come at the end of the month and given that I was down £1500 down at one point, I'd say things have gone pretty well this last week.

Famous last words, eh?!

Right I need some sleep.

Bankroll Update

Made back about £700 today. All is not lost. The bankroll stands at £2200, which is a whole lot better than £1500 (ofc).

I started off playing at reltaively sensible stakes ($100 and short stacking at $200) then gambled a little a a jiucy £200 table. I hit some form there and spun my £80 buyin up to £750.

I'm not sure how much I'll play over the next week. I'll have to see how tired I get from work.

Another Bankroll Slide

Lots of posts of late, you may have noticed.

Thought I'd post a brief summary of this week’s poker:

I've done my bollocks.

There. That's all there is to know. It's pretty fucking depressing, especially as I thought things were back on track after a good July.

It started off as bad luck then as tilt, which can be expensive when playing heads up.

I then decided to try and spin up what money I had on PKR which was about $900. The standard on there is incredibly bad and I sat at a juicy $1000 table with a couple of big fish. I played tight and pretty well, but took a few beats and found myself down to $200. I span it back up to $700 and called it a day. The following day, however, I came for another spin up, took a few beats to go down to $400 and then tilted the rest off.

I then went back to Dusk Till Dawn where I had about £1500 and managed to spin that down to £500 taking some beats at a couple of $500 tables.

The worst was my AA failing to hold up against A4 of diamonds (all-in preflop): I winced when I saw a flop of 4c Kc Qc. That was about as bad a flop as could have been expected without him flopping a boat. The third diamond duly came on the river.

I haven't played since then. My bankroll is down to about £1500 from about £3500 at the beginning of the week.

It's a sicker situation than I'm prepared to acknowledge. Since the big bankroll blowout of last summer (from a high of £23k down to as low as £1k) it's been a real grind to make any progress - I think I reached a high of a bout £4k back in March. Now having to restart from £1500 is going to be really hard work. I'm not sure how many times I can keep crawling back.

There are two likely outcomes, depending on my patience and dedication. Without enough of either of those, I'll probably gamble it at higher stakes and end up going busto. With enough of both attributes, I'll start studying the game - something I seem to have ignored the need for - and grind it back up once more.

I hope it'll be the latter, but we'll see.

The plan from here on in is to play very little for a few weeks. That shouldn't be difficult as I've got a crazily busy week at work followed by our trip to Kenya. When we get back from that I'm heading up to DTD for the Oxford Cup. I've got a lot of DTD points to use up so maybe I'll sort myself out by spinning those into something. Otherwise it'll be back to the grind, maybe in the shape of some small MTTs to prevent the boredom creeping in.

Enough of me chatting crap. I just wanted to get it off my chest, as I'd been rather forcing it out of my mind till this morning.

Kenya Memories

Before our upcoming trip to Kenya, I'm collecting together here some of my favourite memories from my last trip out there.

Here's the first few that I posted: Kenya: A Prologue

Now for a few more:

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Birthday Boozing

The evening was rather a wild one. It started with several gin and tonics (very colonial!) and then moved on to the beer. We had a BBQ outside. They had half filled brown paper bags with earth and stuck candles in them and scattered them over the front lawn. They looked amazing. As it was Pete’s birthday the previous day, Njorogi had made him a cake and we had made him a card.


After the meal, for some reason, I was really tired and had to be nudged on more than one occasion. However, once I got my second wind the evening livened up a bit. PK announced that he’d give £10 (~1000/-) to anyone who could drink one camera-film canister full of beer every minute for an hour. Gillian and I took up the challenge. It only amounts to about 4 pints but it’s like drinking through a straw - it gets you really pissed - and besides, we’d already been drinking all evening.

Gillian managed about 40 minutes before being sick, pissing herself, and passing out. I romped home victorious despite Johnny and PK spiking my beer with vodka for about 15 minutes before I noticed. After that I was incredibly pissed and was moshing to Outkast on the radio.

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The first of many bouts of diaorieah during a capming weekend at Lake Nakuru:

It had rained hard during the afternoon so those of us who were planning on sleeping under the stars had to re-think. The choice ended up being in the bar (still full of drunk squaddies and twats) or in the pickup of this very drunk white Kenyan girl

In the end we slept out under the stars on top of waterproofs, plastic bags, and towels, around a campfire. A campfire always seems to inspire the silliest in people and, indeed, Monty Python was being quoted into the early hours.

The next morning I woke up feeling really sick and it was not long before I was sick. Then I farted. Only it wasn't a fart...

It was running down my legs and even started coming out of the bottom of my trousers before I reached the long drop. A shower was soon sought and since nobody hads any pills, regular trips to the long-drop ensued for the rest of the day.


Johnny undercooking the sausages: that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Whether it was uncooked sausages or just a bug, I don’t know, but it sure was a pain in the arse and pretty fucking embarassing too; I'm sure people saw evidence of it as I turned tail and fled towards the long-drop.

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The first staff meeting of the year (only 3 weeks into term!)
I had a shocker of a night. I took my temperature at about midnight. It was 39.

In the morning I was feeling a bit better and after umming and ahhing for a while I decided I was well enough to go to school. Needless to say, we were the first teachers in. The next arrived at 8:20 and most were there by 9. We were told that there would be no teaching but that at 2pm there would be a staff meeting. We are currently in the staff meeting as I write: two people have already left; over the last hour several people have been asleep; and Doug is playing rugby with one of the other teachers in the middle of the staff room.

I’m not quite sure if the meeting is over now or not, but I guess it is as the headmaster has just walked out! Madness!

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Here's the entry I wrote immediately after our first weekend in Nakuru:

My dear God - WHAT A WEEKEND.

Fuck me, so much amazing shit and some seriously weird shit has been happening:

Haggelling, people not turning up, prostitutes, chessboards, more prostitues, cool and cheap guest houses, no matatus, hitchiking the whole way, amazing food and a bunch of tossers at the Gilgil Club, panckakes, football with Kahuho Africans, our running off with the Kahuho keys, fucking stunning views, the first letter in Box 219, weird jockey/pimp dude, and fuck loads more.

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Here's the full version, I penned later:

So this last weekend was just totally mad.

We met Johnny in Gilgil on Friday afternoon (Doug scived off teaching agriculture so we could leave school early). We hitched with him to Kahuho and none of the others turned up - all the blokes were supposed to. We played football with some of the locals - great laugh, very knackering. We just spent the rest of the evening chilling.

We left for Nakuru at about 11:30 on Saturday without the others. We hitched all the way, via Gilgil, and from Gilgil to Nakuru I was sat on a bed/matress in the back of a pick-up. The views on the way were totally out of this world.


My view from the back of the pick-up


Here's hoping our luck's slightly better

I was surprised at how big the suburbs of Nakuru are. We were dropped outside the post office so we spent the next three hours or so haggelling with the street sellers. It was such a laugh beating their prices down and they were really funny, a lot of them. I got a really cool soap-stone chess set for 500/-. I did really well - quite convincingly the best haggeller of the three of us. The negotiations for the chess board probably last over an hour. He started at 2,700/- and I knocked the final 50/- off by giving the guy a music lesson and a cigarette. I also bought a pipe for 65/- and he threw in a little elephant cos he claimed to have no change for 70/-. I also swapped Doug's lighter for a wodden necklace, hehehe.

From the street sellers we moved on to find somewhere to stay for the night.


Amigo's Guest House


Amigo's from the inside.

We got a twin room for 250/- between the three of us and Doug slept on the floor. The guy there set us up with a trip to Menegai Crater which we got down from 500/- to 300/- each. He then got some womane woman, who may have been his wife, to take us to get a haircut and get some films processed. The hiarcut was a fun experience, although it was fucking bad to see the street kids sniffing glue in the alley outside.

General wanderage followed the haircut and preceeded a return to the hotel and then super at "Tipsy Restaurant" (not lisenced). Spent about 300/-, but it was damn good.

The Lonley Planet said that "The Wayside Bar" played live Kikuyu music. The music was not live and the place was not very exciting so we moved on. We went to "Club Coco Savana", whcih cost us 100/- to get in. Then the night got very sureal...

To start with we were acosted by two pretty drunk gay guys. We couldn't decide if they were trying to nick out wallets or feel our legs.

We were approched by relatively few women. We reckoned that all of them were probably prostitutes, since most of them smoked, as is apparently the way.

A while later this small white guy walked over with three black guys. We spoke to him quite a lot over the course of the evening. He said he was a horse jockey spending half his time over here and half in Sweden.

Initially, I liked him a lot. It was nont until much later in the evening that I came to the conclusion he was a pimp. Initially he just chatted with us and only talked about the ladies when we asked.

As the evening progressed, however, they became more and more draped over us and also Stu, the jockey, started talking more and more about the girls and saying how acceptable it would be to go with them or even just spend some time with them and he was saying how it would be no more risky than going with one in London or Edinburgh and all you would have to do is wear a condom. He also said that it's only 1000/-; nothing compared to London prices, he said.

He was basically a pimp hard at work (so I reckon). He disguised it very well, though. For instance he tried to introduce Johnny to this Indian bloke who is their pimp, but they "couldn't find him".

The rest of the weekend was less fucked up, but just as fucking brilliant. Johnny got many tens of mozzie bites, which can't have been so much fun.

The guy who was supposed to be taking us to Menengai Crater was 20 minutes late and we were more than a little convinced, that he'd done a bunk with our money.

It was amazing, totally huge, breathtaking, and awesome, even though Doug was puking up large chunks of chocolate doughnut.


The view from Menengai, without Doug blowing chunks in the foreground

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Well done for making it this far. There'll be more to come!

Oxford Cup 2008

This year's Oxford cup is nearly upon us. It's being held at Dusk Till Dawn and there are qualifying satalites online on the 17th of every month - the next one's this Sunday. Here are the full details:

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MAIN EVENT DETAILS:
Saturday 20th September @ Dusk Till Dawn
£20 + 5 (No-limit Texas Hold'em Rebuy Tournament)

For more info on how to register please check the Oxford Cup Facebook group.

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THIS SUNDAY @ 9pm, on Dusk Till Dawn Poker...
The password is "RANDOLPH"

20+ players:
A £1 rebuy with 2 ADDED Oxford Cup seats & a BONUS £15 bounty on "Aces" if you take him out!

40+ players*:
A £1 rebuy with 4 ADDED Oxford Cup seats & a BONUS £30 bounty on "Aces" if you take him out!

*That's £130 added to a £1 rebuy!!!
Good luck & see you all there!

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The Oxford Cup is a strictly not-for-profit enterprise, so please please SPREAD THE WORD to as many student poker players out there as possible.

Kenya 2001: A Prologue

As a long awaited return to Kenya is nearly apon us, I thought I'd revisit the journal I kept while I was out there and post some extracts here.

I did serialise it - virtually unedited - on another blog, but I've since taken it down as it was somewhat incriminating!

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It was 2001. I was just 19 and having elected to take a 'gap year' between secondary school and university I'd decided to spend 6 months of it teaching in Kenya.

I'd looked at a couple of established companies who sent a large number of 'gappies' each year to various developing countires to teach and travel. In the end, through a friend of a family friend, I ended up finding a one man operation that did much the same thing but on a considerably smaller scale, operating out of some of the Rift Valley's poorest primary schools.

There were 10 of us thet went out. We were paired up and split amongst 5 schools. From the money that we paid for the 6 months, we were given a monthly sallary of about £50, which was little more than the Kenyan teachers were paid. We lived within the community and during the week, lived as authentic a rural Kenyan life as would realistically have been possible: we did without, electircity, hot water and proper toilets and lived in houses/huts comparable to most Kenyans' homes.

Whilst our Monday to Friday routine was very basic, at the weekend we would get together and enjoy a few more luxuries and visit local attractions. We also had a month off during the schools' Easter break to get some more further afield travelling under our belts.

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The first day:

Wow. This place is amazing.

We got into Nairobi just after 9pm last night. Harris met us with some of his people and we drove to The Green House in two Landrovers (smokers and non-smokers). The roads gradually got worse and worse - the ones from Gilgil to The Green House take the piss.



Last night was spent getting suitably bladdered on Kenyan lager.

Today began with football and the realisation of how high up we are! We had lunch followed by Swahili lessons. Lucus, the teacher, was a good laugh, but I couldn't help wondering whether he'd nick our stuff after.

First trip into Gilgil, the small nearby town:

It felt so weird going into Gilgil. Everyone just stopped and stared - I felt really vunerable. We soon picked up a gaggle of street kids. These guys are awesome, but I'm really glad we were with one of Harris' guys.



The market was incredible, just shit loads of shoes and clothes, people playing cards, and then a whole area crammed with fruit, veg and dried beans.

I'm gaining a bit more confidence with greeting people in Swahili and it's really great fun. They're so appreciative that you're making an effort in their language.

The first night in our new home, having been let loose on our own:

We've now been split into pairs and are in our new homes now. I'm with Doug, which is cool and we get on well. We're at the school with the hot-springs, which is good news. Right now I can't remember the name of the place we are at but Doug is asking Ester, our house-girl, and it is called "Kikopey".

PK and Harris brought us up here. I used my first "long-drop" shortly after they left. It's a bit of an arse having to squat to take a shit and I managed to let the cows out into the crop-field. By the time I'd finished shitting, thought, Ester had shooed them back!

We went for a bit of a walk, just now, to try and find the hot-springs. Needless to say we didn't find the springs but we did find lots of children screaming "'Ow are you"!! And we also met the drunk school-watchman.

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I'll dig out a few more of my favoute entries over the next couple of weeks, so check back soon!

Sickness

Hitsquadder James Akenhead's 2nd place finish in this year's epic 4000+ runner $1500 WSOP event: