Royal flush, £2k won and lost and 2 free beers

After taking a bit of a whipping the previous night I was looking forward to a change in fortunes.
I had a maniac table. You got a 5k starting stack with another 5k for your double chance. With blinds at 25/50 the had already been 3 all ins in the opening 10 minutes or so.
i managed to build up my stack to about 30k before the 1st break courtesy of 2 hands. one was pocker Aces, and the other was a 5,3 of hearts when I did an outrageous suckout on a guy who had 10,5 on a A,5,5 board. Treble up for me.
Last hand before the break and I,m not involved in a hand but 3 guys are all in. Last guy to turn his cards says "I,ve got nothing" and flips over his qj of hearts, the board is A, 10, hearts and a blank. The turn comes King of hearts and he just hit the Royal flush.
Thats a £1100 payout plus a nice treble up on the last hand for him. He offers to buy the table a round of drinks for the table after the break "Just don,t take the piss" are his parting words.

Painful Session.

Birmingham,s broadway casino has always been my run good casino, so I suppose its inevitable that it couldn,t last forever. I met up with my buddy Mr C for a couple of nights of pokering. On the Friday night game, they pulled it 160 entries for a £6500 grand pot.
The field was gradually thinning down to about 45 guys, I,m a bit below average chip stack at about 150k at 12000/6000/500.
Chip leader raises utg +2 to 25k. I know the guys range is pretty big as been raising way too many pots, it folds round to me in the BB and I look at pocket 8's so I ship it. He calls and turns over pocket 2,s. Flop comes Jack Ace 5, so far so good, turn comes a 3 just one to dodge, river comes a four, phew made it for the double up. "Straight" he says. Bollocks never even saw that, and I,m out..onto the cash tables.
2nd hand in and I pick up pocket aces, I put in a decent raise and get 6 callers (!).
Flop runs out 567. I c bet the flop and get 3 callers, turn comes a 9. First to act bets, 2nd guy flats, 3rd guy jams all in, I fold and two guys show there straights for a split pot.
An hour or so later and I,ve ground my stack back up to about 130 and I get AQ in late position, 2 callers to my raise, the Villain who is chip leader and my very drunk buddy Mr C.
Flop comes down q 10, 5. I c bet the flop and both call. Turn comes an Ace. mr C bets out, I call him and the villain shoves all in, Mr C calls and I call.

The river is a blank and the Villain announces "straight" and shows kj, Mr C shows his set of 5's and I muck. Both of us cleaned out.
I reload for another 100. I,ve got it back up to about 150 I,m utg +2 and the there is one limper before me utg. I raise it big when I pick up pocket queens and get I caller, the original limper.
Flop comes down Jack high with 2 hearts, I c bet utg jams all in I snap call and he flip over A4 of hearts. The river completes his flush and I,m 2 buy ins down.
I,ve got £25 left in my pocket and the min buy in is 50 so I stick my last25 on red on roulette and it comes in...black. I decide to call it a night. Maybe day 2 will be a bit better!

Winning Start To The Year

I,ve only played 3 tournaments so far this year and managed to cash in 2 of them. Sadly l,m well aware that I won,t manage to sustain my 66% success rate!
1st game I managed a respectable 25th place from 75 players.
The 2nd game was on Monday night and Although I officially got 3rd place from about 90 players though it it was really a 4 way chop. Myself and the other shortstack took £500 each and the two chip leaders took £700 each. I was pretty pleased with my game, especially as I had lost about 80% of my initial chips before I started to get a bit serious.
Unspectacular solid play would sum up the most of it, although when we down to 2 tables, my table did get a bit excitable after I called a massive river bet for about 3/4 of my chips with Ace high..and won - most of the regulars know I,m pretty solid and not usually known for flamboyant moves!!
I also sucked out once enroute when I called the shortstacks shove with A 10, he flips over AK - world of pain, but a timely 10 on the flop and that was that.

Then On Friday night it was very similar. The same sort of turn out - 73 players - same finish fourth place, but just cashed £310 as there wasn,t a deal done.
Again I pissed away about 3/4 of my chips before deciding to get involved properly. I started to pick up a bit of momentum, and got a few decent hands at the right time.
Sucked out once enroute when my pocket jacks took out pocket aces.
Went a bit card dead at the final table and when it was folded round to me on the SB I found suited 10 J and thought it would be a good spot for jamming and picking up the substantial antes and blinds, so I say "I,m all in" "I CALL!" announced after about 3 milliseconds. My man flips over pocket jacks. Bollocks.
Still, 2 games played this week, £810 won, can,t complain. Next week I,m off to play at the broadway casino in Birmingham, which has always been my rungood casino, so hopefully that will continue...

I,m going to start putting my football tips on daily as well and keep a running total see if any good.

Todays Bets.

Chelsea v Arsenal Chelsea 3pts to win @ 1.95 , 1pt draw @ 3.75
Tottenham v Man U Manu 6pts to win @ 2.4, 2pts to draw @ 3.5

results
Chelsea win return + 2.85
Man U Draw -1 (last minute equaliser for tottenham!)
Net + 1.85

Last Games Of The Year

I played two tournaments at The Montesino card room in Vienna to finish off the year.
The Xmas special was a 30 euro entry fee with a guaranteed 50k prize pool. 4 casinos took part in it and I entered day 1d with 320 runners. I lost 2/3rds of my stack in the first two levels and then ground it back up until we got down to the last 50 but got busted out when I shoved my 10bb stack with A6 off to grab the blinds and the chip leader looked me up with KJ. Jack on the flop...

Last night there were a couple of hundred runners and I got busted pretty early when i got all the money in with a straight v 2 pairs on the turn. The 2 pairs improved on the river and It was the high road for me.

Its Not been a brilliant year all in, online poker and tournaments have been profitable, though a lot less so than last year. Cash poker and sport betting showing a loss. All in all, a modest profit for the year.
Anyway a Happy new year to you all and good fortune for 2013.3

Losing a million pounds in a day is pretty disgusting

BBC documentary with Luke Schwartz + Andrew Feldman where you get a fine bit of understatement with the comment "Losing a million pounds in a day is pretty disgusting"

When poker is beautiful - Flopping a boat

Results have been ok last few weeks, a few cashes here and there and I've been pretty happy with my game.
I played a  tournament last week where I got involved in a big pot with four other players.
To summarise the essentials:

Preflop raise to 4X from UTG

Me -  Seat 5 Pocket 3,s  I call

Seat 6 calls

Seat 8 calls.

Flop comes a sweet 6, 6, 3 with 2 hearts.

UTG checks,
 I check
 Seat 6 bets 800,
 Seat 8 calls,
 utg calls
 and I flat it.

Theres now about 7k in the pot.

Turn comes a jack of hearts. This is getting better and better. The flush just got there, but sadly its check, check, check, check.

Cooler

River comes Ace of spades.

This is about as good as it gets.
 The full house isn,t exactly the nuts, but with potential flushes and ace somethings getting there, its probably the perfect river for me and...

UTG bets 1200
I raise  to 2600, seat 6 folds, and seat 8 reraises to 7500.

After much deliberation, the initial raiser (UTG) folds.

 I reraise all in for about 15k.
Seat 8 snaps me off and tables pocket jacks.

Bollocks.

A Winner - Finally!

Results haven't exactly been red hot of late so it was good to get a decent result again.
There were 98 players for the £50 game - an entry of £10 + £20 + £20 add on. I never took the add on as I got enough chips early on to not see the point.

I played unspectacular ABC solid poker, nothing particularly aggressive or too bluffy but things just ran well from start to finish.

The key factors were.

A - Not getting any nut-flush-open-ender-top-pair type of hands where you dust alot of chips when you miss. In fact I never really had any massively hard decisions to make all night.

B - Big hands holding up in All-in situations

C - Not getting sucked-out on.

D - Folding big hands if I thought I was beat - like Queens on an ace high board.

E - Getting a lot of playable cards and hitting flops

I never got my money in bad from start to finish - (apart from one hand at the final table where the short stack had 2bb and I called the All-in bet blind and my 2, 3 off suit beat his 9, 2 off suit!!).
However - I had quite a few sweet spots where I picked up some massive pots.

Kings on the button - UTG opens with over bet, I reraise and she Jams with A - 9 (!)

I called UTG raise with pocket 10,s, flop 10 - 9  - 9 guy with AK jams and I snap him off.

I again called UTG raiser on button with pocket 3,s Flop comes 10s - Js  - 3h. I call the C bet and turn comes Ah, I bet and he goes all in. I eventually call and he tables 2 pair with AJ, rivers a blank. 
Guy accuses me of a slow roll! -a set of 3,s on 10, J, Ace board is hardly the nuts...

I call raise with K - 10 and flop comes J - Q - A. I slow play and get three streets of value.....



On the final table I did my fair share of robbing as my chipstack size mean,t I was pretty comfortable for most of the time and the short stacks got wiped out fairly quickly. In the end, it was five in the morning and I was getting up for work at 7, so although I was substantial chip leader, I agreed to a 3 way chop to get it ended and cashed up for just under a grand. Best result of year so far and drags the pokerings back into a healthy profit. 

I only dropped below 10bb once all night and got doubled up shortly after with set v 2 pair.


It would be nice to summarise by saying that I played out of my skin and out played the rest of the field with some incredible poker, but I didn't really. I just got a decent run of cards and played pretty solid.
Easy game when fortune smiles :-)