A little card room review - The Loose Cannon - London

Last Thursday night was the tri-monthly PokerStars staff event at Loose Cannon in London. This was my 1st time going to either a staff event or the venue itself so it seemed like a great excuse to kill 2 birds with 1 stone despite the late night offering and being up early for work the next day.For those who are unfamilar with Loose Cannon, it's found on Cannon Street in Westminster (hence the name...) but is not a dedicate Poker Venue, it's also a sports bar and accomplishes both traits rather well. It's a trendy building once you get inside, lots of well lit brick arches, very London (if that makes sense), card room magic features as standard and it houses some really comfortable tables with very plush, thick rail padding.

So the event was pretty cool in itself. PokerStars put on a free bar (all those lovely Bulmers Pear haha!) and a little bit of food and even put on prizes for the event. The structure was simple but not typical, it was 1500 starting chips playing 25/50 with a 15min clock, so it played alot like a sit and go, 2 table shoot out. Basically Stars put prizes from the FPP store up for grades, the winner of each table going to a final to play for a 1st prize of a Wii, 2nd prize of an 8gb IPod and 3rd prize a digital camera. The runner up on each table played for a Nintendo DS, a 2gb Ipod and a mini-chip set.

So my table was alot of girls and a couple of guys all of which had no idea what they were doing (amazing how that can be possible for the world's biggest poker site huh? LOL) but it made for a great fun game. I managed to negociate through the mine field to finish runner up on my table losing a flip with 10,10 vs AJ against the one capable player at the table (Swedish, obv), our table finsihing 1st out of the 10 as I took out 3 players in one hand lol. So it took an good hour before the rest of the field had sorted their games and we had cash games on the side, thank god! I got chatting to a nice Estonian girl at the bar who at been at my table and managed to get her to take my number before jumping into a big of 0.25/0.25 PLO action.

This girl said she'd be my good luck charm... and she was. I bought in for just £10 expecting to donk it off whilst killing time before my final table, I managed to play a little 'Rolf Slotboom' style to build myself a pot, I make a small raise with AKJ9 double suited (not premium but good enough for this game) knowing full way that the button was hyper aggro- and would pot it for me, he obliges and one of the blinds call, i shove my full £10 in and get 2 callers, I hit 2 pair and he misses his flush draw and i take down a nearly £40 pot off the bat. I soon after apologise to the table for bailing but get on my final table. Most at final are either drunk or stupid so this should be easy, right? Well yes it should have been but as usual my donkament poor luck continued...

Without being able to recall all my hands I had 4 spots where I had the money in as a massive favourite and lost everytime, admittedly I ran hella lucky when critically short stacked to triple back up on a rivered gutshot (all-in pre, obv) but bitch that is lady luck eluded my yet again and my Estonian charm had since departed. I ended up finishing 4th on the final so bubbling... typical for me at the moment but a great game for a freebie. sadly I made the mistake of going back on the Omaha table and lost my £40 as quick as I'd won it LOL.

But I'll certain check out Loose Cannon again at some point to see what their own events are like. From my initial experience the dealers were decent ( a reasonable 6/7 out of 10), the cash chips were nice and clunky but tournament chips were generally everything a home game player can buy so that kinda sucks.

I give Loose Cannon a 7/10 score, it has a very Grosvenor Stoke feel to it which makes it relaxing to play at, but I'll re-evaluate this the next time I attend.