Live poker and home games

As usual it's been a while since my last update. As most of you know, earlier this month  Myself, Rhym and BrotherM made the short trip to London for the Fox Club London's Calling Main Event. This was a £500 two day event. Around 120 people turned up in the hope of blinking first place for £20k. The tournament didn't start until 3pm on Saturday which gave us a chance to grab lunch and catch up with fellow PKR poker players MrStarch and JJbird. After lunch the 3 of us and JJbird (Starch had potato based plans) headed off to the Fox for the start of the tourney. 

 

I'm not particularly happy with how I've played in the live events I've entered to date, I kept true to form and mis-played the first 3 hands I was dealt. This great start was followed by being completely card dead on probably the softest and loosest live tourney table I've ever been on. Throughout levels 1-3 I probably won about 3 pots, thankfully I didn't loose any big ones. My stack was still dwindling with about 16bbs I open shoved A7s from late(ish) position and got called by QQ. I got the dream flop Axx two tone giving me a flush draw as well as top pair, needless to say I held. From this point onwards I was able to keep about average chips and make it through to day 2 along with Rhym, Brother and JJ and 32 others. 

 

Day 2 didn't start well, myself and Rhym watch JJbird get knocked up when he 3bet shoved AQ and lost a flip to JJ (ironic? I don't know) watching the hand was pretty sick as he flopped top two only for a Jack to fall on the river. 1 down 3 to go, BotherM was next out in his usual way with a 3 bet squeeze. I lost around 1/3 of my stack when I called a shorties shove with AK, he flipped over TT and proceeded to flop a set. Half an later I busted out with KJs when I shoved for 15-17bbs on the BTN and got nit rolled by the BB who had 99, I flopped a flush draw but managed to miss my 136 outs. Me and Brother stuck around to watch Tottemham school Fulham while Rhym went about acquiring chips for his 3rd place finish. It was a fun weekend, I'm reasonably happy with how I played. Hopefully it won't be too long before I get some kind of decent score in a live tournament, I'm off to Nottingham in December for a £1k event at the Dusk till Dawn poker club. Bring on the run good. 

In far more important poker related news me and BrotherM played host to a prestigious highstakes (5p/10p) home game (inspired by James666). A game of such caliber obviously attracted some big names (and fish), this photo below was take before the game really kicked off but most of the big names were already there including Baltimore's corrupt Senator Clay Davis (hiding behind BrotherM). 

 

2+2 legend 2paul2 (from Milanzo) was the big winner of the night with a cheeky 20 buy ins, as expected BrotherM and Rhym were the big loosers. It's what happens when they play with scared money against such tough opposition.

This is a long update by my standards and I'm getting pretty bored now so I'll leave you with a couple of funny hands. 

kam ($403)
WongaMan ($414)
Reg ($412) Bonus ($456)
kam posts (SB) $2
WongaMan posts (BB) $4


Dealt to WongaMan

Reg raises to $12
Bonus raises to $44
fold,
WongaMan raises to $100 Reg raises to $412 (AI) Bonus raises to $456 (AI)
WongaMan calls $314 (AI)

FLOP:
($1,242)

TURN:
($1,242)

RIVER:
($1,242) Reg shows


Bonus shows


WongaMan shows


WongaMan wins $1,240 

 

japete ($1,773) Station ($747)
WongaMan ($1,035)

japete posts (SB) $5 Station posts (BB) $10


Dealt to WongaMan

WongaMan raises to $25
fold,
Station raises to $40
WongaMan calls $15

FLOP:
($85)
Station checks
WongaMan bets $55 Station calls $55

TURN:
($195) Station checks
WongaMan bets $134 Station raises to $268
WongaMan calls $134

RIVER:
($731) Station bets $100
WongaMan raises to $672 (AI) Station calls $284 (AI)
WongaMan shows


Station shows


WongaMan wins $1,498

 

I probably could have shoved turn in the last hand but and he would have called but w/e. The last 12k hands have been interesting, I've still got some way to go before I go past my current 'career peak'. Gl at the tables all.

Ramblings and obligatory photoshop.

I've just finished a fairly tilting session (when I started to write this), which ends a fairly tilting day. As a whole this week's been pretty frustrating, I hit my month peak early on Monday and it didn't take long before the days winnings had been wiped out, since then things haven't improved. This is a little frustrating because I had a target for the month which if I'd hit I was going to splash out on improving my grinding set up, something along these lines. 

 

Anyway given my form this week, it's going to take something very special to hit my target, so I guess the new setup is going to have to wait. Annoying, but I can't really complain as overall it's been a decent month to date, mainly due to running very well at 5/10+. This has been a welcome change, as over the last 3 months I've not fared too well in the higher stake games. 

Apart from poker I've not been up to much this month, I'm planning on booking tickets to Arizona for a rollerblading holiday in January. This will be the third year I've been out there, if anyone's got half an hour to kill, check out this edit of 2010's trip. You'll be able to see Wongaman repping it hard in Az, I've obviously put on a bit of weight since then. I'm off to see WU LYF tonight, from what I've heard they're ment to be amazing live. Here's one of their tracks. 

I'll leave a token funny hand which happend yesterday. Maybe I should have raised a little more on the flop, but I got the feeling he wasn't going to fold. Enjoy the car crash.

Seat 1: cevzy ($206)

Posts big blind $2

Seat 2: iLcApOdiCorleone ($89)
Seat 3: Sniekiemo22 ($114)
Seat 4: WongaMan ($236)
Seat 5: timjeff ($203)

Seat 6: Casinofan ($65.12)

Dealt to WongaMan

Preflop: (Pot: $3)

RAISE BOSH, to $8
RAISE WongaMan, to $24
FOLD timjeff
RAISE Casinofan, to $65.12
FOLD cevzy
FOLD iLcApOdiCorleone
CALL BOSH, $57.12
RAISE WongaMan, to $106
CALL BOSH, $41.12

Flop: (Pot: $223.24)

BET BOSH, $2
RAISE WongaMan, to $4
CALL BOSH, $2

Turn: (Pot: $229.24)

BET BOSH, $4.50
CALL WongaMan, $4.50

River: (Pot: $238.24)

Showdown:

SHOWS BOSH

SHOWS WongaMan

SHOWS Casinofan

BOSH wins the pot of $294

Wonga signing out. 

Big daddy of the day hand

I mentioned in my last update that I'd been breaking even for a bit, well I managed to win a little more in the last week or so of September making it a reasonable month, I never quite got back to the peak of the month. October started very well with the added bonus of getting some HU action at 10/20 Vs a big fish (I'm still up for getting rid of the HU tables on PKR). I'm pretty happy with how I played Vs the Fish, initially I dropped a bit but the turning point was the hand below. 

Seat 1:WongaMan ($2,376)

Dealer, Posts small blind $10

Seat 2: TheBigDaddyOfTheDay ($3,290)

Dealt to WongaMan

Preflop: (Pot: $30)

RAISE TheBigDaddyOfTheDay, to $60
RAISE WongaMan, to $230
CALL TheBigDaddyOfTheDay, $170

Flop: (Pot: $480)

BET WongaMan, $285
CALL TheBigDaddyOfTheDay, $285

Turn: (Pot: $1,050)

CHECK WongaMan
BET TheBigDaddyOfTheDay, $686
CALL WongaMan, $686

River: (Pot: $2,422)

CHECK WongaMan
BET TheBigDaddyOfTheDay, $2,088
CALL WongaMan, $1,175

Showdown:

SHOWS TheBigDaddyOfTheDay

SHOWS WongaMan

WongaMan wins the pot of $4,752

I won and lost serveral 4k pots but this is the largest one I've been involved in. I'm still not 100% sure if I took the best possible line in the hand, there are certainly other lines I could have taken which didn't involve folding (which I don't think was an option Vs this guy). Anyway it worked out and after that he crumbled. This was the first time I'd actually played a full session of 10/20 so it was a massive bonus to run well against someone playing very badly.


Yesterdays grind got off to a good start with me quickly winning around 1.6k, then the blowup began, a combination of running awful in AIEVs and most likely quite a bit of play bad I was quickly stuck around the 2.5k mark.