GUKPT Walsall Main Event

Seeing the girlfriend multiple times a week has caused me to shoehorn poker out of my schedule more and more, and that’s healthy, but after yesterday at GUKPT Walsall I want to shoehorn it back in a bit, now I've got a taste for live play again.

I did REALLY enjoy the game yesterday even though I bust out just after 9pm. First 4 hours were on a table with James Akenhead, Dave Maudlin, Dan Carter, and a guy called Jeff who told me later he’d played on the first series of Late Night Poker (he did, I checked, he played one heat, which Malcolm Harwood won), and some other decent players whose names I dont know. One of the unknowns remarked that he wished the table would break because after the departure of some old guy who donked himself out in less than an hour he was finding it a tough table with not a bad player on it – if he wasn’t taking the piss that was quite encouraging to hear, actually I thought he was the bad player but there you go, he obviously had experience and knew everyone, but thought he was better than he is and kept getting himself into tight spots. In fairness, he then lasted longer than me. So, I was bumping along on above average chips despite having had no real hands of note. I had dropped down to about 8200-ish at one point when I got involved in a couple of hands then opted to give up on good draws on the turn, no need to be a hero, then got right back into it with blinds at 100/200 when there were two limpers on my BB, SB folds, and I have 2 7 off. I check, unsurprisingly.

With a pot of 700, the flop comes Q 7 7 – Lovely - I check – UTG bets 600, UTG+1 calls, I call. Pot 2500.

And the turn card is the case 7 - Whoop whoop, quadzilla. Have had them at Walsall before, always nice. UTG bets 600, UTG+1 folds, I just call, dont want to drive him away. Pot now 3700.

River Q. Mmmmh. I don’t put him on QQ, he’d have raised pre, so it has to be a QJ or KQ kind of hand, but want to maximise my return and don’t want him checking behind, so lob in 1500. He calls and shows KQ asking if I have the 7. Er, duh! I was tempted to do a bit of amateur dramatics with a “suppose we’re splitting this one then” but he might have smelled a rat. Think I got the maximum out of that – he had odds of 3.5 to 1 to see if his house was good, I might have scared him off with more, though it's tempting to think I would have got paid off with a 2000 or 2500 bet.

So I carried on quite comfortably and was nicely up on starting stack but despite this my stack was actually slightly below average when we hit the dinner break, and they split our table 3 or 4 hands before the break. I was gutted, as I was enjoying that table. My new table contained Marcus Bebb Jones, Iwan Jones, Tim & Pippa Flanders, Julian Thew, Greek Jack, another face I should know, but no name to go with it, and a couple of short stacks.

Went completely card dead for 3 hours, got jacks once with blinds 150/300, raised UTG to 900, Iwan called in late position and the blinds folded. Flop AKJ, check check, blank on the turn, so I reach for chips and he mucks before I'd even decided how much. Had to fold when some new guy on the table came over the top after I put 1700 in with top-pair-up-and-down-draw, so discretion the better part of valour and all that, as I had no read on him, and assumed an overpair. I was quickly getting eroded by the blinds so started pushing. Best hand I saw was pocket 7’s and picked up the blinds. Anyway, down to 3500 at worst, I claw back to 5.5k which is still crap – average about 16k now – and get AQ on the button. Marcus is the BB and he has been a cardrack, made some hero calls and they have been ahead on unpromising boards, but fair play to him and he has about 35k now.

Instead of pushing this time I just raise to 1600, which was bordering on stupid as my 'M' was less than 10, so I am a cats whisker from push-or-fold being my only serious options, and he was bound to play his stack against mine with pretty much any two. Marcus reraises to 3200 which he would do, so I push and he has AK. He would never have laid it down to a push from me so the result was probably the same. Naturally there was a K on the flop, a Q on the turn to give me a glimmer of hope, but no miracle on the river and I am gone. Julian Thew, who was shorter than me at one point, had better luck after I departed, and had a series of double ups finishing the day with nearly 30k I think. Not bitter, I think you’ll find.