Fish and Chips

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


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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Vegas and the WSOP (Part One)

So I'm finally getting round to writing about 'the big trip'. Here's hoping I haven't left it so long that I've forgotten all the juicy bits.

For those who need a little refresher. I won two seats on PokerStars playing the Step SNG tournaments. I spent about $4,500 in the process and could have stayed at home walking away with $20,000 profit. I decided to screw that idea. Take $8,000 profit and an almighty gambool at the chance of a big score. There were other considerations, like the kickback offered by PokerStars (about $3500 in the end) for wearing their merchandise, and selling bits of my action.

So on to the trip,

I'd been working like a bitch in the weeks running up to leaving. So much so that I'd barely had the chance to play any poker and I'd especially wanted to play a couple of live tournaments to warm up. I'd been cramming extra work on my days off as I was in the middle of applying for a new position. I then went into the beginning of a series of night shifts immediately before flying for 10 hours and landing in a time zone 8 hours apart from that in which I started. So I was feeling pretty goofy. For some reason best known to myself, despite having the prospect of two weeks away from London craziness to switch off from all things work related, I decided to watch Pride and Glory on the plane. It's an incredible film, but probably not the best ‘switch off from work holiday viewing’.

The record London temperatures that we left behind us (I think it reached 93 the day before we flew) served as a fairly useful warm up for Vegas as it must have been well over 100 when we stepped off the plane. We got through immigration, bag collection and customs in super fast time and must have been in the taxi on the way to our hotel within 30 minutes of touching down.

Thanks to sneaking up to SuperNova level on PokerStars just before the trip, we managed to get an upgrade to a suite over at the Palms Place, as apposed to a bog standard double room at the Palms. The Palms Place fitted the bill perfectly. The receptionist either didn't see the $100 dangling under her nose or simply wasn't lying when she said there wasn't any further availability for upgrades, but it worked out just fine as we ended up with an awesome 38th floor view of the Strip in any case.

The plan for the first weekend was for me to play a warm up tournament at the Venetian before playing day 1c of the main event. That would also leave us at least a day and a half of chilling out and acclimatising.

I'm not going to bang on about the mayhem that Citibank caused because it already ruined half of the trip and going over it just puts me in a fowl mood. The short version of the story is that the cheques I'd cashed out from Stars had cleared into my bank account, then Citibank decided that they'd lost the cheques so they debited the money back out for the account last think on a Friday afternoon, thus leaving me with no funds for the whole of the holiday weekend until I could finally speak to someone the following Monday that wasn't based in a Rajapooristani call centre. This meant too that the cashier's cheque that I'd had made out for my buy-in wasn't valid. So I spent another day rushing around trying to raise $10,000. The irony of frantically trying to load my PokerStars account back up with $10,000 to do player transfers after I'd spent the best part of the previous month trying to get the money out of PokerStars didn't escape me.

Maybe there was a message in all of this somewhere: "Save yourself the $10,000, you fish!"

It's only in Vegas that it would be possible to raise $10,000 in 12 hours from people you've never met before and who don't even know your real name! Massive thanks to those who helped out.

Let’s leave funding and registration issues aside and get back to the poker....

Friday 3rd of July had me playing the $560 Deepstack event at the Venetian. It got somewhere in the region of 500 runners and my starting table was juicy to say the least. Unfortunately I never got above my 15k starting stack. I seem to remember loosing a chunk with AQ* and dropping down to about 10k fairly early. This didn't worry me too much as the table was that good, but much to my dismay we broke soon after and my next table was nothing like as good. I was also beginning to get short stacked, which limited my options somewhat. I think the blinds were 400/800 when I got my stack in with 99 against a cut-off opener who had AK and the big blind who woke up with QQ. I managed to spike a 9 on the flop, but the cut-off ended up making a straight when the Queen on his suit fell on the river.

Saturday was mostly spent running around chasing Citibank and trying to raise $10,000. I wasn't sure if I was going to have it all in time to play day 1c and thought I might end up having to play day 1d. In the end I managed to scrape the last $2k together at 1145 on the Sunday morning, leaving me just enough time to join the registration queue and find my table in time to hear the words, "shuffle up and deal".

To be continued...


* You may begin to notice a theme emerge when ever I get dealt AQ.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Not 115 Degrees F

So we're finally back at home having detoured from Vegas via South West France for some excellent company, food and wine.

I've just been paying credit card bills and assessing the damage to the bankroll. Both could have been much worse.

I hope to have a full trip report up before too long, but don't hold your breath; I'm back at work tomorrow and hoping to find an email telling me that I've got an interview some time in the next few days. So, with any luck, I'll be pretty busy over the next week.

My immediate poker plans are to grind the cash games and work off a couple of SuperNova bonuses on Stars. I'll be ordering a whole new computer and monitor set up this week so I hope to see a knock on improvement from that.

Massive massive congratulations to James Akenhead for making the November Nine. He's a quality player and a quality bloke too, and after his nasty beat heads up for a bracelet last year this result is thoroughly deserved.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Day 3

Busted one hour in. I had a dream start stealing up to 26k before doubling and reaching a high point of 55k. My table was very good value, but it broke almost immediately. I got moved to the secondary TV table and within 20 minutes had lost two races and was out. If I win the first race I'm up to 80k, but that's the shit that happens.

Full write up to follow. Have mostly been eating drinking and breaking even in the cash games, grrr.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Day 2b

I squeeked into day 3 with 19k.

Day 2b was a complete grind. I chipped up from 29k to about 36k then didn't win a pot that I entered and found myself down to 7k within three hours. I managed to double to 15k before dinner and then hovered between 12k-17k for the rest of the day.

That was until the final hour when I managed to get it in with 99 against AT and KQ and fade all four overcards for a nice trebble up that took me to 43k in chips.

That was on my fourth table of the day. The first three had all been pretty tough, but the final one was super soft. So I took my 43k and got busily involved in a few pots during the last 45 minutes of the day. Obviously I didn't win any of them - AQc got me deep into a couple of hands when I flopped combo draws against opponents' obviously stong hands. Needless to say I either didn't hit or had to put them down before the river.

Having made day 3 means that PokerStars extended our suite until the 15th for free, which is nice, but 19k is nothing to work with when the blinds tomorrow start at 600/1200//100. Average must be 90-100k. I need a miracle!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Day 1c

I survived day 1 with 29k, just 1,000 below my starting stack. I had a dream first level and got up to $48k. I then didn't win a pot over 1k for the rest of the day. After dinner I was moved to a pretty bad table and couldn't get anything going. I ended up playing like a complete rock for the final level and hoping for a bettter table draw on day 2.

I'm playing day 2b tomorrow and we start with blinds at 250/500//50, so I've still got 60 big blinds which is plenty. The average stack must be somewhere around 44k. I'm not sure what to make of my table draw. There are no really big names but there are a couple of good young UK pros and a smattering of randoms each with a few cashes recorded on the Hendon Mob website. I'll just have to take it as it come and try and chip up. My starting table tomorrow should break fairly early on in the day.

We're only playing four levels tomorrow, so fingers crossed for a spot in day 3, which means we'll be staying here till the 15th July regardless of if I bust.

In other news, may our luck may have changed as Citibank have finally been made to get their act together and have given us some money and yesterday we found a $1,000 casino chip in the back of a taxi!

Sunday, July 05, 2009

How badly can I run?

I've just got time for a quick Vegas update.

Unformtunately I could have been having a better time. Citibank have royally fucked up and decided to freeze my account leaving me without a buyin for the main event and without and easy recourse to toerh funds.

I've been running around like some twat beggin borrowing and stealing the buyin. I'm still $1k short, but I can probably get that much out of the ATM and not be over my daily withdrawal limit. Fuck knows what we're going to do for cash after that! You can't pay for taxis and tips and Pai Gow on a credit card.

That being said, it does look as though I'm going to be able to play, and it was not at all certain for most of the last two days.

In other news:

I played the $560 deepstack event at the Venitian on Friday. I had a super soft starting table but never got above my starting stack. I dropped down to $11k early on from a $15k starting stack. That table broke and my second table wasn't as good. I amanged to get back up to $14,500 but the blinds were 400/800/75 by that point. With $13k left I picked up 99 in the cutoff and shoved over the hijack's opening raise. The bigblind woke up with QQ and the hijack also called with AK. I spiked a 9 on the flop but the AK won with a flush when a Queen of his suit hit the river! Standard.

In cash games. I played a soft $1/2 game at the Venitian while killing an hour and lost $50. After busting from the deepstack event I played a tough $2/5 table and dropped $500.

This whole cashflow issue has left me rather stuck for effective bankroll. I scraped together $400 to take a stab and a super soft Saturday night, 4th July $1/3 game at the Palms. It was mega soft and I managed to get a guy to stick his $400 in with 35o on a A34Q board only for the 5 to hit the river (I had an ace, obv). Now, if I had my bankroll accessible I would have reloaded and proceeded to take it all back. Instead I left the table with my tila between my legs and went to watch the July 4th fireworks from our balcony.

One might think that I'd have got the message and realised that this main event lark wasn't meant to be. On the other hand, if I manage to get through this shit the actualy poker should be piss easy!