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Essexphil-Live Poker Feb 2018
Essexphil
Member Posts: 8,875
Decided to play a lot more live this year. Thought I would share a few stories for this month. All comments welcome.
Weekend 1 (2nd Feb). GUKPT at the Vic. Great to meet up with some old friends, such as Andy Hills, and some people I had not met before such as Andrew Garland (Andrew1947).
Tough first table, including a certain Will Kassouf. Now he has his detractors, but the man has ability. Hand 2-stacks 20k, blinds 50/100. I pick up KK. There is a min raise, I 3-bet to 425, WK reraises to 1425. I flick a 5k chip on top of my 425. He insists this is a call, not a raise-calls the floor for a ruling, and it is ruled a call. Flop 5 3 2 rainbow, and all the chips go in. His cards? AA. His antics made me sure he had QQ-clever play on his part. I am left with 160 chips.
Weekend 1 (2nd Feb). GUKPT at the Vic. Great to meet up with some old friends, such as Andy Hills, and some people I had not met before such as Andrew Garland (Andrew1947).
Tough first table, including a certain Will Kassouf. Now he has his detractors, but the man has ability. Hand 2-stacks 20k, blinds 50/100. I pick up KK. There is a min raise, I 3-bet to 425, WK reraises to 1425. I flick a 5k chip on top of my 425. He insists this is a call, not a raise-calls the floor for a ruling, and it is ruled a call. Flop 5 3 2 rainbow, and all the chips go in. His cards? AA. His antics made me sure he had QQ-clever play on his part. I am left with 160 chips.
Comments
Mote stories pleas, Phil.
Me-33 on button. Min-raise UTG, 4 callers, I call. Flop 6 4 3 rainbow. 2 checks, Joe Grech makes a pot bet of about 2.5k, i shove he calls....and shows 5 3 suited. River 7, GG me.
Nice to see running as well as usual live
Cards-not perfect. Spend first half of the day getting quite possibly the worst cards I have ever had. The first 5 hours saw my best hand of 88 getting through 4 players on a c-bet to 3 overcards. Yup. An image that tight. 30k starting stack has dribbled down to about 23k-you know those times when you are quite willing to raise up on the top 60% of hands, and you get a diet of 83off/72off, rinse and repeat. Day has to get better, surely?
30 minutes later, Mr Hesp gets moved to my table, directly to my right. He arrives just in time for me to get AK on my Big Blind, and a treble up v 8 4(!) and AQ. Happy days.
Absolute carnage on the last 2 levels of the day. Managed to get up to about 100k, then my 88 ran into a 99 on the last level. Oh well-worse things happen
A clearly drunk middle-aged woman clearly has a need to talk to someone, as she is a bit teary. So I do the decent thing, and ask her what is wrong. Turns out that she is a first year Cambridge undergraduate as a mature student, living her dream. What was not so dreamy was that she had been told that day that she had cancer, and she was (understandably) terrified.
Puts losing in a poker tournament into perspective. That said, I am really looking forward to SPT at Manchester. Sky poker players are (in the main) a lot nicer than other poker players. Here's hoping that I "moan it in" next weekend...
I have just told him i am an online qualifier. He will be trying to bully me off that pot a lot. I have folded KK pre precisely once in my life. When the 3rd all-in was the tightest player I know. Of course there are arguments for folding. But not for me, not there. I'm equally sure that many better players than me would find a fold, just like many would do the same as me. That's the beauty of this game
It was only last week that you told me you'd been playing live poker for 48 years
Will only play the Unibet Open the weekend after next if I run deep at the SPT this weekend.
Good luck to any readers playing at the SPT-looking forward to this one
1a. First table draw is really good. Recognise Pompeynic, but apart from that seems full of really bad locals. So, joy of joys, get moved after 20 minutes.
Get moved to a brand new table (ie everyone there was new to it. Seat 1 Irishrose, seat 2 MattPrawn, before long StayorGo, Railtard. Good fun table, but easier places to take free chips. I had quite a tight table image, which was rather ruined when Mr Tard sat down and exclaimed "Phil-you have it even less than me!"
Get moved late on. Have Andy Hills on my right. It is important to establish that players like him are no longer the table bully. That is why I shove on his open with AQ. Known Andy long enough that he knows this, hence his sigh call with 10 10-which holds.
Oh well-on to Day 1b. Prepared assiduously for this by drinking with various reproBates, forum "trolls" etc til gone 6 am. always good to have breakfast before bed...
Unusually for any poker tournament, at the same table all day. Had Jon (Hhy) on my left and Ebberdon 2 more seats round all day, and Matt Bates 2 to my right for most of it. I remember Mr Melt being briefly at my table, but he seemed to be moving tables every half-hour-I hope he hates that less than I do. Very nice table-both Sky players and locals all seemed thoroughly pleasant-also pretty good, with the exception of the poor guy who showed his hand v Ebberdon before any showdown!
Grinding a short-ish stack for most of the day. I recall I was down to about 8k at 1 stage. Only real highlight was busting Mr Bates with JJ v 1010 followed by 99 v 88. Briefly got up to about 70k, but back down to 32k by the end-way less than half average stack going into day 2, but still in it.
Day 2 highlights to follow later today....
Start well, get up to 60k-ish. Then lose a flip, back to 20k. Then jam A 10 v an UTG opener-hold v his 7 5 (!). Then start building a stack-work it up to about 90k (just under chip average) with about 60 left. Rose has been struggling, and jams her last 60k-ish on the button with KQ-I snap re-jam with AQ. Turn King-them's the breaks. No complaints-Rose has to jam in that spot.
Try to rebuild-however, my 10 3 (sooooooted) button jam is called by someone who doesn't even look at his cards to call my 3x jam-and his 7 2 off hits 2 pair. Think I was 46th-6 from the money. Oh well.
Delighted for IrishRose. It is refreshing to see someone who is twice as good as she thinks she is, as opposed to the many players who are only half as good as they think.
Already looking forward to Nottingham for the next SPT-hope to see many of you there
Phil
PS-can someone else do some of the commentary at the next SPT. I always feel the Teekster could do with someone to do half the day. I know he always deliberately busts out on Day 1, but it still makes for a very long day....
Monentarily, I fell into your cunning trap & thought you were being nice, but then I saw the punchline.
Marv.
PS - Was great to see you there Phil, it's just the nuts to see so many of the nice Sky Poker players hooking up & enjoying themselves. And you, obv.