Roundhouse Poker League Update

Another bad month for me and PowerPace but a blinder for Knowles; the stats don't lie!

Name

Played

Won

Drawn

Lost

Balance

Points

DanN

2

2

0

0

+36

6

Fish

2

2

0

0

+18.50

6

Mike

3

1

0

2

+3.50

3

TomK

3

1

0

2

0

3

Ryan

3

1

0

2

-20

3

Phil

2

0

0

2

-8

0

Pace

3

0

0

3

-30

0

The next league match, April Aphrodisia, will (hopefully) be held in 3 weeks time on Thursday 3rd.

Knowlesbody does it better

All's fair in love, war and poker. They all fucking hurt though ...

Yes, for the second month on the bounce I've lost out at RH Poker night. I'm not too disappointed (that's a lie) because I think it was equal measures of bad luck and bad play. Essentially two hands took me from about £14 up to -£10 down and packing my bags. Both were Full Houses, both against Tom.

#1 - I had the full house (6s full of Jacks i think) and raised him all-in. He called quicky and flipped over the 4th 6. Rats. Unlucky.

#2 - I had 8,6 and the board showed 3,3,6,3 after the turn. I raised £5. Tom quickly re-raised a further £7 putting me all-in. (*Here comes the mistake*) I called. Unblinkingly. Didn't give a thought to what he might have. Thought my 6 was good. But sadly he turned over pocket Aces and my days were numbered.

What I should have done, obviously, is paused to think. Had I done so, I would have realised that Tom knows that I wouldn't raise a fiver with cock all. So I should have known he either had the missing 3 or that he had a decent pocket pair. But I didn't stop myself in time and it cost me dear.

Ah well - lessons learned. I caught myself nearly doing the same thing online the other night too but managed to pulled back from the brink and lay the hand down. Lets hope I can commit it to muscle memory before I fund anyone else's next night out.

So to the rest of the crew: Jimmy played the usual solid game but came out up instead of down for a change. Dan N had an early lead and held onto a good portion of it for most of the night. Ryan had a nice streak near the end of the night but not enough to cover his early losses ... and I honestly didn't see DP play a hand all night. Might have to give him some pointers - for a small price obviously :D

So, to the standings:

TomK
Fish
DanN
Phil
Mike
Pace
Ryan

+£25
+£8
+£5
-£3
-£10
-£10
-£15

While Claire's away Mike will play

So far in 3 days of being wifey-less I've managed to play in 7 tournaments and won a sum total of $0.25 - not my best few days to be honest. It hasn't even been bad luck either; sadly I seem to have slipped back into my old habit of not being able to lay down AK and AQ in the face of a blatantly better hand.

Ho hum. Fingers crossed tonight will prove more lucrative. I do need to work on my concentration though. The donks I play against should be easy real pickings ...

Nisbetter the devil you know ...

DanN makes his triumphant return to the RoundHouse Poker arena and puts in a storming performance to finish top by a country mile. A disciplined performance in Phil's absence sees JimmyFish finish a tenner to the good. Back luck for Pace and a few over enthusiastic calls for Ryan account for their losses. And Tom plays an usually tight game finishing just £5 in the red.

Which just leaves me. I had a bit of a rollercoaster; from £10 up inside 30 minutes to £19.40 down by about 8pm my play could only be described as sketchy. I dont quite know whats happening this year. 2008 seems to be playing some mean trick on me with the help of my one time friend Lady Luck.

Anyway 60p left in front of me I found A8 in the pocket and went all in. I won and tripled through. Next hand K10. Another all-in. Another triple through. Next pocket 9s. Another triple through. All of a sudden I've got £15 in front of me and within 15 minutes of being down to that last 60p I was back in the black. The run didnt last too long and despite finishing down in the end, I was happy with what I'd acheived.

At the close of play the totals were as follows:

DanN
Fish
TomK
Mike
Pace
Ryan

+£31
+£10.50
-£5
-£6.50
-£10
-£20

Casino poker

I've been wanting to play a bit more live poker seeing as how the majority I play these days is online and its way too easy to get into the habit of not hiding your delight / despair when no one can see or hear you. So I had a look round at the various live games offered by Newastle's 3 casinos.

I've played at the Grovesnor once before in their £3+30p rebuy tourney on a Wednesday, which was OK (although as I've said before I'm not a big fan of rebuys) so that was the first place I checked. To my horror its now a £3+£2 buyin. Why on earth would anyone pay a £2 entry fee to a self-deal tournament where the price pool isn't likely to top £300? Mental. Other than that they have a few £10+£2 tourneys but they're all rebuys too. Their cheapest freezeout was £50 I think.

So the next option was Aspers. I've played blackjack and roulette there but never poker. Mind you, I can't think of a nicer playing environment - it actually feels like a casino should do, to me. Anyway, once again here there were plenty of £10 rebuy touneys but the cheapest freezeout is their Friday night £20 buyin. Now I have been tempted to have a crack at this before, and its something I think a few of the others guys might be interested in too, however its not something I want to do regularly - not at this stage anyway.

So the final option was the Circus casino next to The Telegraph. I'd never been in there before and didn't really know anything about it but having looked at the website and seen they had a £5, no fee rebuy tourney on Wednesday I thought I'd put my anti-rebuy prejudice to one side for a night and go along.

And what a night it was! Well, OK, I didn't win anything but the craic was brillant. Pretty much everyone seemed to know each other so consequently there was a good deal of banter. The lady to my right, whose two sons were also playing, spent pretty much the whole night telling one liners and calling anyone out who was taking things too seriously. She was an absolute legend - and not a bad player either.

Anyways, I got through the 90 minute rebuy period on my original £5, which I was pretty happy with - and seeing as I had about 5k in chips I refused the optional 1500 chip add-on after the break. So to the bread and butter - the knockout stages. I think there were 34 players still around at this point. The prize pool was £690, with £230 for 1st place down to £30 for 7th.

With 12 people left in and blinds of 600/1200, I had about £4k in front of me. The blinds were only one spot away from me and I got dealt KJ clubs. I knew it was time to make a move and I knew if I bet the minimum I would probably get more than one caller. So I plucked up my courage and pushed all in. With one caller, who spent a good couple of minutes umming and arring before he made the bet, I fancied my chances. Sadly, he had AJ diamonds. On one level it was good because it showed the level of respect he was giving me taking so long over calling, but of course I was pretty slim to win the hand; I needed a king.

The flop came K 9 2 rainbow. A prolonged ooooh echoed round the table. But I must say my heart didn't leap. This isn't just me being a smartass in hindsight - I just knew the ace was coming. The turn was a 3 of hearts. Only 3 bullets to dodge. Then the river came: ace of spades. So I was done. Out in 11th place; 4 spots short of the bunts. It would have been nice to get to the final table on my first attempt too but it wasn't to be.

I had a great night anyways and I'll definitely be back. Probably not next week though as February Frivolity has been rescheduled to Thu 31st and even I don't fancy late night poker sessions two days running. Or do I? Depends how busy work is I suppose. Who knows.