Middleweight Champion

As a "Middleweight" in the Bluesquare VIP levels I was able to play the Middleweight $500 freeroll, which started with only 33 runners. Not too many familiar names in the game though Steve Holden (avillan) and toondavey40 (a GUKPT league regular) both made it to the final table as did I.

Steve kept pushing his short stack until he ran KT off into KK, and departed in 10th. Prior to the final table I got a nice double up through batsh1t, with KK up against his JJ - limped for 160 then pushed all in for 5700 odd to my raise to 480. I didn't take long to call and he failed to outdraw me, so I got a boost and he struggled for a little while thereafter but still made 7th place.

I built steadily with a steal here and there, gave a few away, sometimes my fault and sometimes bad outdraws, but ended up heads up with 77grant77 who played aggressively so I tried to do likewise. With a 3 to 1 chip advantage I pushed from the SB with JQ, he made the call with AT off, and I spiked a Q on the turn, after a 3-4-5 rainbow flop gave him a straight draw as well as being ahead. So he had to settle for $125, while I pocketed $200 for first. Not bad for nothing.

Dusk Till Dawn Visit at Last

Have never yet been to Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham, so in view of my failure to qualify for their £250k Guaranteed last week, I decided to have a pop at the online qualifier last night for the £80K Guaranteed this weekend. A €20 tournament with 90 minutes of rebuys, and 50 - yes - 50 seats worth €375 (£336) guaranteed, and I figured if I qualified I could square it away with the girlfriend later. Dont know when I last got a chance to play on a Saturday (the GUKPT Newcastle weekend doesnt count cos I got knocked out on the Friday and just spent Saturday nursing a seriously bad hangover). Anyway, 227 starters, and I spent a long time grinding away with nothing. Had to take a rebuy at one stage when something I tried didn't quite come off and I ran into a non-believer when representing a flush (I got him later), but then settled into a decent routine and was around or slightly above average by the second break, at which point I took the add-on, because everyone else was bound to, and duly did. I was quite happy to be sitting in the top half of the field, because there weren't too many dropouts before the end of the rebuy stage, so a lot of play still left in the competition.

Eventually started to get opportunities to build my stack and got up to about 13k when the average was about 9k, then I got another chance to knock someone out when I had AK UTG+1, and the UTG player with about a third of my stack pushes. Mmmmh, I decide I need to win these races to improve in the competition and so push to isolate. If he has AA or KK he wouldn’t push unless he is very stupid or thinks the rest of the table are; if he has a lower pair and I miss, I’m below average, but no worse damage than that. Luckily I get it heads up with him and he showed AJ which didnt improve. Kicked on from there, I think the highest position I reached in the competition was 7th, with about 100 left, and I began to think I could probably fold my way to a seat. Although I didnt intend to try that, I must have jinxed myself with such thoughts because I went card dead for SUCH a long time it eventually became squeaky bum time as I kept falling down the leaderboard, and the blinds started to get huge to the point where it was a push or fold game for virtually everyone - 20th with 80 left - 36th with 64 left - 45th with 58 left - and every player was letting the clock run down, taking the maximum time before folding, in the hope that action on the other tables would see some more casualties.

It wasn't long before I was out of the magic 50 and desperate for something to push with. With a monster stack sitting two places to my right, who was raising just for fun, I had hoped for something with a little meat on the bones before I put my tourney down the pan, especially having bubbled for this tourney back in January. With just over 10K left in my stack, and blinds at 2000/4000 with a running ante of 400, I should have pushed long before this situation but really had been dealt nothing that I could put any faith in preflop, particularly in the face of a big raise from mid position (the “Hijack” apparently having moved to about seat 5!), and I finally find myself in the BB with K4os. So, naturally, all fold to the big stack on the button who raises to 18k, as expected, and the SB hides under the duvet with his eyes closed, also as expected. If I fold I have 6k left and will lose 2400 of that in the SB, and within a hand or two I'll have less than 1BB, so I'm pushing anyway, but a non-participating player types "odds" in chat box, to try and entice me to play it, for his benefit naturally, and I dont like that - I have found quite a bit of that sort of speechplay on DTD chat - but in fact he’s not wrong, I’m getting 3/1 and since they say you’re never that much of a dog with “any two” (the liars) I'm pushing anyway - so I let rip with both barrels of my spud gun and find the original raiser has JQos. Bugger me, I'm ahead. Then I hit my 4 on the low rainbow flop, even better. Sadly the turn and river complete a straight on the board so its a split pot. Survival is good enough at this stage, and that small profit from splitting the SB and the antes is enough to catapult me back up to 46th!

On the next hand i get pocket 9s in the SB, and all fold to the button who decides to fire it all in and he has me covered by 39 chips. Having just achieved a modicum of safety, he probably expected me to fold, but I was having none of that as there is nearly 12k in the middle before his bet, so just under 24k in total, so with just under 7k behind, once again I’m getting over 3/1 to call, so a medium pair is a godsend, and I have to ship it. I certainly wasn’t intending to faff around for another orbit only to find myself in the same position as before, so in goes my stack and I'm relieved to see he has pocket 7s rather than overcards, and my 9's hold, much to his despair. There followed a 2 minute rant about how that’s typical, the site hates him, he can’t win anything, always gets set up, been the same for months. Poor puppy. Grow a pair. So now I'm back up to over 33k, in about 14th position, and my seat should be safe. With 51 left, bubble time, I'm rooting for Stokie player Kev Bloor who is all in on his Big Blind on another table with about 2900 chips. The whole world is watching ..... well, everyone left in the tourney …… there is talk of collusion when another friend from AWOP, who is on the SB on that table, says he "can always fold". But someone else on the table doesn't like that kind of friendly talk and raises. Martin folds his 10 2 in the SB, and it is revealed that the raiser has AKs, with Kev holding 93 offsuit. Delighted to see Kev hit a straight to survive, unbelievably, and within a minute or two there is a car crash on another table and the bubble is burst. Instead of finishing, the game continued, so we had to keep going all-in till it finished, which is always a pain (and why do people fold their hands in that situation?), but after the all-in fest I ended up in the same position - 14th.

So, roll on Saturday, as I am looking forward to my first visit to Dusk Till Dawn having heard nothing but good things about the place. Shit, better tell the girlfriend. I'm just a little worried that they may have overstretched themselves recently, with big guarantees for their tournaments, resulting in big overlays, and big guarantees in the satellites into those tournaments too. There were 50 seats up for grabs last night, 227 runners, and another overlay. It cant go on - people may say the owner has loads of money, but it's not a bottomless pit and unless he's running the place as a tax loss operation he won't - indeed he can't - keep subsidising it forever. The place has earned itself a huge reputation, so I dont know why they go and shoot themselves in the foot with this apparent financial folly. For the £250k GTD "Main Event" last week, they clearly expected a better turnout, rather than having to underwrite a £70k overlay, and people have said perhaps the timing was wrong, but more importantly I think they relied on two big Super Satellites - one in April and one in May - each with 50 seats guaranteed - to pull in the crowds, and assumed the guaranteed prize pool would ensure direct buy-ins from all the usual suspects - surely enough top professionals (who weren't potless, or in Vegas already) would fancy their chances against a big field of amateurs? Well, apparently not. When the numbers failed to materialise they put on another "last chance" super satellite on the Bank Holiday Monday only two days before the event was due to start, but that smacked of desperation. So in three Super Satellites I think I'm right in saying they guaranteed 115 seats. But if they had spread those seats over two or three months at the rate of say 10 or 15 a week, they may have had a better chance of covering their costs, especially if they had opened up the satellites to the whole Boss network, rather than just their own skin. (If we can play for events in Estonia, or wherever, surely the whole of Europe could have a crack at coming here?)

They announced the three events in their Grand Slam series early enough, so why in God's name did they not follow the well-trodden route that Grosvenor and Gala use, of having two or three Super Satellites per week, pitched at say £50, £100, and £200, with loads of £5, £10, and £20 feeders into those for players with a limited bankroll? At least the registration fees from the feeders and satellites would generate some cash and may help to make up some of any defecit, and people would no doubt get into the way of playing them every week, the way they have with the established tours. Nothing to stop them throwing a "50 Seats Guaranteed" mega-satellite into the schedule somewhere if they feel like it, but plenty of people play for GUKPT seats with only one or two seats guaranteed, so why wouldn't they do that for DTD, regardless of where they live? It's no harder to get to Nottingham than, say, Thanet, Bristol, or Newcastle ....

Since everyone seem to be agreed (apart from a few Londoners who would get a nose-bleed if they came north of Luton) that this has the potential to be the best poker venue in Europe, it would be a real shame to see it fail as a result of less than perfect marketing. Let's hope they get it right for the next one in September, and start some satellites and feeders before the end of this month.

Playing for Vegas

Got up early - YES, REALLY - and happened to notice a $9 rebuy Stage 2 satellite at 10.10am on Bluesquare for the WSOP. Oh well, I'm only going to be drinking coffee for the next hour so why not? Duly won a seat in the $88 Stage 1 freezeout satellite at 1.15pm, which would hopefully lead to the $540 satellite to the WSOP Main Event in the evening. A decent start to the day, had a rebuy but didnt need an add on, as I was so far ahead by that stage.

So I sat down at 1.15pm full of optimism, albeit trying to cook lunch at the same time, and within 5 hands I was out having had my Aces cracked. Pot sized bets dont seem to have any effect on some players on the iPoker network - if they have an Ace it clearly ain't in their repertoire to consider folding preflop or at any other time. Flop was 4 4 5 - I bet the pot, and he called. He'd called my preflop raise from the blinds but with blinds still at 10/20 he could have done that with anything. I didnt fancy him for playing a 4 though, maybe 6 7, but had not seen enough of him to know. Turn was a 7, so I bet the pot, and he called again. In fairness I now realise he had both flush and straight draws by this stage, albeit on a paired board, and he was getting 2/1 after the turn, but he couldnt realise that even with 17 outs his straight or flush may not be good. The river was Q clubs and I banged it in, banking on the fact that he couldnt possibly have fished all the way to the river for a backdoor flush, but of course he had Ac 6c and rivered his flush. Despite my preflop raise he clearly didnt put me on pocket 4's, 5's, 7's or Q's, which was what I needed this time - not AA. Hey ho. Played another three WSOP Jackpot sit and goes, and managed to run up a sequence of, er, 2 wins, before crashing out in 4th to another hideous outdraw.

State of Play

No pokering today of any consequence, apart from one of my infrequent attempts to build a bankroll out of nothing on Paddy Power in their mid-day freeroll, which resulted in me getting AK UTG in the first hand. These are usually mental affairs which are all in or fold virtually from the word go or at least until the lunatics get their come-uppance, so I raised, saying to my girlfriend "watch this, someone in late position will go all in, I'll call, and be out first hand". Predictably, the button did push, I DID call, but on this occasion the button had AA. Ah well, still stuck on $6.21, which is of course an ROI of infinity so my parents would be very proud.

In the evening went went down to Star City - not the casino, but to the Vue cinema - to see the film State of Play, starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, and Helen Mirren, and very entertaining it was too. Though quite how long the UK cinema industry manages to survive in the current economic climate remains a mystery. In a HUGE auditorium, there were 10 people watching this film. So the cinema took £70. Presumably they have to pay the distributors hundred of pounds every time they show a movie, so if that level of attendance was reflected in all other screens at the Vue, they must be taking a huge financial hit. Have been to see three or four films over the last few months, all on Saturday evenings, at different cinema chains, and I think the biggest crowd we have actually sat in was a massive audience of sixteen. Cant think of a reason for this, other than the fact that there are usually very few films that take my fancy so I havent been in the habit of going very often. Maybe other people, like me, have just got out of the habit of going to the movies. Or is the current decline in attendances due to the ease of access to downloads of pirate copies of movies? Whatever it is, it must be killing the live cinema.

Managed one short session of cash when we got back - just logged on to kill a little time - and only played 6 or 7 hands. Played and won a couple of small pots from the blinds then a few hands later got dealt KK. I just had time to wonder how I was going to get some chips in the middle when UTG+1 pushed all in - he was the guy who had lost the two earlier pots to me, and I had him covered, just, so banged my stack in the middle, thinking he would have played AA rather more cagily, and hoping he didnt hit what I assumed would be his raggy Ace. I needn't have worried, the rest folded, and his cards were revealed to be 3 7 off suit, I hit another K, he didn't river a straight or anything outlandish, and I doubled up. He didnt reload, so I just took the profit and retired to bed. All good. :-)

$5 Spam

Pokertime, a Microgaming skin, sent an email which I happened to spot in my spam folder, saying they had deposited $5 in my account to "welcome me back" to the site. I cant remember ever playing on the site, to be honest, but perhaps I did, so I the software and sure enough £3.34 was sitting there so played a handful of $2.50 10-seat Double Up Sit and Goes and cashed in them all, so the balance went up to £11 odd. They are not great value - $2.75 to win $5 - but if you fancy yourself as a 5-4 ON chance to come in the top 5 of a 10 handed game, it seems easy enough to build up a little cash. Just not sure if I can be arsed trying ut a Jesus challenge on another site!

Fog on the Tyne is all Wine

GUKPT Newcastle Day 1b and high hopes of having another good run like last year. Only 42 runners on Day 1a though, which was very disappointing and almost certainly spells the end of Newcastle as a venue on the Main GUKPT Tour.

Anyway, Friday didn’t go well, I was happy enough with the table, though quite a tough bunch. A few pro’s, some regular faces, Dara O’Kearney, two Irish Open final tableists in Nicky Power and Tom Dunwoodie, Greek Jack who was on my table at Walsall, George Geary and Dan Rudd, among others. Took a bit of a hit with QQ v AJ – Paul "Fatmarra" Moss hit the Jack on the flop and wasn’t folding, the turn brought the Ace. Check, check. It wasnt a big pot, Paul bet 300 on the end and I reraised it to 800, knowing he'd hit but hoping to represent trips, because he had been savaged several times in earlier hands and had always been beaten when he'd hit the flop big, so I was relying on his current insecurity. But he made the call with two pair, fair enough, no real damage done.

Then later in the 3rd level, with blinds at 75/150, I raised from the cutoff with AK – the big blind (Greek Jack) called, which to be fair he would have done with a wide range of holdings. Flop was AAJ with two hearts – hello, trips, very nice - I checked, he checks. The turn is the 4 of clubs, so now two clubs are on there as well, but I'm not too worried he's flushing. I check, he bets 300 into a 975 pot, which seemed a bit small but looked like he was trying to take it away with nothing, so I make it 1200, then he makes it 3k. Mmmm, I'm only behind to JJ, 44, AJ, or A4 - out of all the possible permutations of hands he can have, what are the odds he has those? Assuming him now to have a strong underpair, I push, only to find he has AJ. Dunno what the odds are of that but they are obviously not bleeding long enough. Should I have sussed he had the ace with a paired kicker? Discuss. It was a real cooler and hard - well impossible for me - to get away from, though I had a spooky feeling that it didnt feel right as I pushed my chips in. I guess you should trust your instincts - I had been hearing tales of AJ outdrawing people all week in the side events and it really was the nuts at Newcastle – the deciding hand on Sunday on the final table was AJ too. Que sera sera.

Played the £100 on Friday night but was just playing for fun (and drinking) so did no good there either – my eventual push with Ad 10d from the button running into QQ in the blinds. But a decent weekend and met up with some tour regulars, enjoyed a good chat with Dara O’Kearney and Mike Hill among others.

My mate Mike went into day 2 third in chips, but donked out in 21st spot for no money – largely due to a very bad (IMO) call from the blinds for half his stack with KJ when the cutoff had AQ. In fairness the cutoff had raised him 4 times out of the last 5 orbits. But he never recovered from that. As compensation, he subsequently headed home and won a package to the WSOP Main Event on Stars – a $215 shootout with 81 players - so it wasn’t a bad weekend for him overall. Jammy git.

Running Bad

Played a “50 seats Guaranteed” satellite for the £1000 event at Dusk Till Dawn last night (€65 buy in); thought it would be a breeze to coast to the top 50 since only about 270 played, however it was like a bingo rebuy so when I got my reasonable stack decimated, then zero’d, when outdrawn by two different muppets, with 20 mins to the first break, I didn’t throw any more money at it. There are two more big events there later in the year so I’ll have a go at them. Timing isn't right to be having three days off work anyway as the event clashes with a big IT implementation at work, which is almost bound to go tits up and require my presence.