A Negative weekend...

So it's been a long week at the office and I was looking forward to playing some live pokers. I'd been dabbling in $50 PLO on iPoker over the weekend and won a few hundy and decided to take it out so I could play live over the weekend, costs £5 for the priviledge of withdrawing via Neteller, but hey-ho, those are the breaks, kinda wish I hadn't bothered now.

The weekend starts well enough, I has a date with a nice lady who works in TV (epic imo), this is the 2nd time I've been out with her and shes awesome company, very funny and best of all, she's really into little old me, so it's a winner, so friday night was played safe, a nice meal in Notting Hill and a few drinks before saying goodnight but not before a bit of groping in the street mind, who said romance was dead?

So, Saturday I headed down to Loose Cannon to play their £30 FO however sadly when i got there the club was closed due to an electrical fault. Almost in devine syncronisation I feel the immediate urge to empty my bowels in violent fashion (must have been the Crispy Dunk from the night before!), just typical when you're immediate escape route has been cruelly denied. So I'm now tight clenching around Cannon Street in true royal guard fashion looking for a bog, I spot an O'Neill's pub in the distance and power clench march my way to it. I frantically search for the men's and almost as soon as my arse hits the seat I'm away.... it was a long one but I felt great after so i thought my day was going to get really good after that.

Well, with Loose Cannon (how ironic after that last paragraph) being closed and me still requiring a fix for the day, I headed off to the only game in town I knew I could get to in time, that was the Empire in Leicester Square. I thought it was a £20 FO, but turned out to be a £20/r, I reluctantly jumped into the game with the mind set of a usual 3 buy-in rule for me. Needless to say it didn't go great, as seems to be the way whenever I play rebuy tournaments I get NO HANDS whatsoever so my 1000 chips (60min rebuys) wasn't improving fast, I did nick a pot when a multi-way limp found it's way to me in the SB with A4 and I shoved to try and scoop 5 x 100 limpy limps and the button didn't believe me, he had A7 and called, luckily the board was running high for a split but I spiked a 4 and took it down. I then topped up for an extra £20 giving you a further 2000 chips so well worth it but went out shortly after the break when I ran an ill-timed steal again in a mutli-limp pot into a monster when a guy had limped in with KK.

I wasn't quite ready to go home at that point, I felt kinda hard done by there so decided to try and get a PLO cash game going. Sadly it seemed everyone in the place is about as receptive to PLO as they are to Swine Flu, they didn't really want anything of it, but I managed to collar 5 others on their way in to get a game running. Amazingly in a card room that generally plays so loose the PLO was tight, I mean REALLY TIGHT. Again I saw little action and few hands, i was a adopting a £60 buy-in strategy (£1/£2 £50min/£400max) Rolf Slotboom style that was paying dividends online for me and thankfully it did here too, eventually. I double up twice in the space of 2 hands, the 1st hand with a KK double suited combo hand, making a small raise early only to get jammed and I fired it in and got lucky when a guy flopped 2 pair and the board paired up on the river to save the day. Next hand I get a wanky AA92 but was prepared to jam with these fools, I make the 2nd limp in early position and a guy to my left makes it £10 to go, 2 more callers and I now have a pot big enough to fire some big chips in, myself and the raise get it all in and my AA holds and I decide to call it a day. So Saturday all in all was OK, good poo and good PLO, bad tourny though.

Sunday - I should have been seeing my lady friend again but I just couldn't be arsed, I felt like playing more Pokers (fuck my life....) so checking out the options on the local scene the only game that stuck out was a £20+£5 bounty at The International, fair enough so i headed over and also took additional funds in case I wanted to play cash. The tournament was a bit of a disaster, there was only 12 runners to begin with and a couple of late arrivals joined later and I was out on level 1 when I called a 3 x BB raise with J7s, flop 2, 9, J, our early position raiser fires and I call, turn is a J and we both get it all in and he has 9,9... I don't fill up and end of game. Also as the tournament started the only cash game running broke, so I was truly pissed off and don't think I'll go back to the International again to be honest, it's not my cup of tea at all, how a venue can only get that many runners on a sunday is beyond me....

So, I had back to Leicester Square again to the Empire, again hoping to play PLO, but no such luck and I dip into the £1/£2 NL game playing 2 x £85 buy-ins. I'll take a moment just to give my props to the Empire, it's an awesome casino with good service, nice food, comped drinks (just a tip will do) and very good dealers and I really like the tables and decor there, it's become my room of choice. So, I soon find out that I've stepped into a dream DREAM game, there are 1 or 2 easily identifiable nits on the game who you can abuse if you get chips but generally you know to stay away from, an older Arabian guy who sat down with £1000 who has his name on every waiting list so he can hop games for the most action and a pakistani chap named Hassan who was quite possibly the biggest live-one I've ever played with. Hassan was drunk and looked knackered, I think he'd been there for a while and was very loud, but very funny, not only was he giving money away he was entertaining me so it's all good.

So, a few hands in and Hassan has already given away £400 and I get KK utg, I just limp fully expecting him to raise, he obliges and raises to £15, a tight player calls from position and I just ship my £80 in and he calls me with.... 2, 2 He gives the usual brain-dead comment about 'what if a 2 comes, mate?' It was irrelevant as I flopped top set, but sadly the player I pushed out would have flopped a set of 3's too.... oh well. After this it goes truly pair shaped as I start to get impatient with the lack of hands I'm being, everytime I try to get in cheap with a small pair or suited connector I'm being pushed out and I'd of hit big each time so I'm boiling a bit at this stage. There is a young Chinese couple at the table who has now moved next to each other and I'm fairly sure are colluding (obviously lol) and each time I raised she'd call to my immediate left and he'd min-reraise, it wasn't terribly well hidden but couldn't be proved either, so they were getting the better of me but instead of leaving the game I allowed myself to snap....

I limp early with 6, 6 and the girl calls and he makes a raise to £15 as was always the case and 2 others call..... now because of all the hands that I was getting semi-involved in my stack has dwindled down to what I started with and I can't afford to make calls to set-mine so i decide to shove in hope that no one is strong enough to call.... sadly our chinese fellow has a hand this time and flips JJ and I feel rather stupid but in terms of Meta-game it makes me look a softer prospect so all is not lost. I re-buy but largely the same thing happens again and I'm only really in the game at this point to try and get a hand against Hassan who is getting hit in the face by the deck at this point, his earlier shite play is now turned seriously tardy, making opening raises preflop to "£20 to play mate, no bullshit" LOL.... i love that line and I'm stealing it, but then he'd bet the flop for just £6.... he was really getting the better of the table and was up massive before long.... eventually though I lose my resolve again when i see all this action and I'm dying to get involved, I limped 9, 6 suited early and some raises to £15 and 2 callers.... I should fold but there are great odds to hit something so i call with just £60 in front of me, the flop comes 9 high and I pick up runner runner flush and straight draws but get 2 all-in's ahead of me.... I'm like WTF? seriously?!?!

Had I had more money it's an easy fold but my desperation to win something encourages me to call hoping they're drawing or have smaller pairs.... turned out they both had 9's with better kickers and I don't improve. So the moral of the story here is don't stand up a date for poker.... it's an expensive (not to mention degenerate) mistake to make! It was a great game though, I just wish I had more money to carry on playing. Normally patience is one of my stronger game attributes but it's totally abandoned me of late, I guess that's me being rusty from live-play and/or a combination of the fact I've been playing PLO more lately and I'm used to having more involvement, either way I'm not impressed with how I played all weekend, some food for thought and I need to improve sharpish if I'm to take a piece of that juicy London pie.

Ciao Ciao

Matt