“I raise”

Wow o wow, long time no posty, I sincerely apologise to you my diligent readers, yes all 3 of you.

Okey dokey, update on my life, will try cover everything.

Went to Aspers Casino in Newcastle a couple of weeks ago to play in there Friday night £22 MTT. Man that place rocks, one of the best card rooms I have ever been to, they actually cater for pokerplayers, rather than treating them as an irritant. The tournament didn’t go too well, I actually thought it was a £33 freezeout, with 4k stacks, 45 min starting clock, and 25/50 blinds, but apparently that’s Saturday night, so I was actually in a £22 freeze out, with 3k stacks, and a 20min(!!!) clock. Not quite so good. The card room is huge, 200 players and dealers, fantastic. The table I started at didnt have a dealer unfortunately, so one guy volunteered, and the card room manager apologised and gave him some free drinks and food vouchers, classy, nice touch guys, thumbs up. Take note Grosvernor, Gala et al, the entire casino was packed, and you can tell why.

So anyway, the tourney. With the blinds being so fast and the field pretty big, it was quite obvious that you had to make moves. First hand I play was in BB, A9c. 3 limpers, flop A high, I bet out and get one caller. turn is a brick. I bet, guy calls. River is another brick but completes back door flush. I check/call a half pot bet, he turns A8s for rivered flush.

Next hand I play was AKh, I re-raise an early raiser, and a short-ish stack moves all in behind me, great. I have to call, although given the structure I would probably have called if deeper anyway. He turns 1010 and I miss. Super! 30 mins in and I’m down to 900. Very next hand I pick up JJ, early pos raises, one caller, I push, 1st guy folds, 2nd guy thinks for an aaage, and calls with A…2. Sooted. I win a hand, at last.

I manage to win a few pots uncontested with AQ and AJ etc and build up to about 4k. However the blinds eventually get the better of me. Blinds at 300/600 and going upto 400/800 very next hand I pick up AQh in mid position. Guy utg, who I had pinned as being fairly decent insta-moves all-in for about 3.5k. I kind of suspect he didn’t even look at his cards, anyways it’s an obvious push for me. Heads up, he flips QJ, first card out… J. Adios me. I stick in my less than BB next hand and am out.

Overall the tournament was a bit pants for me. The structure wasn’t great, but for the buy-in you can’t complain, and it’s still much better than any of the Yorkshire casinos. I don’t think I could have done anything different with the cards I had, I never won a coinflip, and lost twice with dominating hands in big pots.

Anyways, the side action was great, plenty of cashgames and a proper system of signing up for a seat etc. They also had those electronic tables with digital touch screens, kind of like playing internet poker when you’re all sat together. So I went to sign up for the £1/2 NL cashgame on the electronic gizmo (I was gonna short stack ninja it, no way was I sitting with a full buy-in, it was the loosest craziest table I’ve ever witnessed, 3 people all in by the river minimum on nearly every hand, juicy!) but as I was walking over I noticed that some of "internet kids" were setting up an £11 SnG on the electronic table, so I jumped on in that instead, more my style. I gotta say I really enjoyed the electronic table, much much faster, however you obviously don’t get any verbal etc which is a shame, I think they will be good for mid/low stakes cash games and tournaments, however anything of serious value will definitely still be hands on with a dealer and chips. The structure of the sng was brutal, you started with 30xBB and the blinds doubled every 12 hands. I cruised upto chip leader by slowplaying AA (yeah I know, I’m a sado masochist) against the table "captain" and knocking him out., but then by the time got to like 4 or 5 handed it was just pure push bot stuff. Got heads up with a funny guy on my left, we’d both been talking a load of bollocks and messing about showing each other cards etc, however the blinds were ridic at this point and we both had like 4bb so agreed to just shove it blind 1st hand. Obv I lost despite having the high card. 2nd place good for some money though, and it was much fun.

All in all the trip was a great experience of Newcastle (friendly folks!) and Aspers casino especially. Heard a rumour that they were considering opening one in Leeds, I have my fingers crossed!

Some pictures, bit crappy because they’re from my camara phone.

My view on the "Pokerpro" table. Gives you an idea of how it works.

The Tyne Bridge. I sang "Fog on the tyne is all mine all mine…" whilst driving over it, because I’m easily amused. This pic was taken over the road from my mates Quay side apartment. Rich bugger!

The tyne, and Gateshead Millenium bridge, photo taken from the top of the Art Gallery (because I’m a cultured mother fucker).

In other news, I’m still working really fkin hard. Flew down to Southampton last week to spend the week meeting and greeting my customers. Was fun getting a flight in my suit, I felt like mr important, right up to to the point the jobsworth cock at the airport threw away most of my toiletries in case I managed to harness a WMD from a can of gillette shaving foam and some hair wax.

Anyways, the week was good, lots of drinking and good meals on company expenses.

Been quite a few good nights out recently, and lots of nice restaurants, although the details escape me right now, I should probably drink less (or blog more often!).

Had a good one last weekend, v.v.messy. Went out on the lash with some friends round town, ended up in Wire club (indie night), then piled back to a mates city centre apartment for an impromptu party, things got somewhat screwed up, we ran out of booze and stuff, so then decided to head over to Glasshouse, hard house after-hours club, this was at approx 7am. Bumped into a mate outside Glasshouse which was funny, neither of us knew the other was into "that sort of stuff", then we both thought, "what the fuck would you been doing going to a club at 7am if you weren’t a mash up?!" So he joined us, we got completely trolleyed, left the club at about 10am and went back to mine for a few lunch time beers (we closed the curtains, degenerates), then eventually I passed out at about 1pm sunday afternoon. Jeez louise! Messy. Very very messy.

Some random pics from the nightout…

The most indescrete urinal ever. This is on a street corner in Leeds city centre. Obviously we took a photo. My mate was a braver man than me by actually touching the frikken thing.

ZOMBIES! Some girls were at the party dressed as Zombies. Why? I don’t fucking know. How did they walk through Leeds without being lynched? I don’t fucking know, but it made me laugh. Surreal.

In other other news, I’m moving house! My housemate wants to shack up with his girlfriend, (no comment on this, I’ve stated that I think it’s a bad idea, lets just leave it at that.) So I’m getting my own pad in the lovely (haha) area of Armley. It’s actually not that bad, and the flat is really nice so I’m looking forward to it.

The internet poker thing… is a redundant statement at the moment. For various financial reasons I’ve currently got like hardly any money online, so I’m currently debating whether to go on a mad small stakes brain cancer-inducing, multi tabling hellish session to re-build. Or to just max my credit card for a month and then withdraw 30 days later. Hmm.

Anyways, I think that about covers most things. I’m DEFINITELY going to be writing more often now because this post is ridiculous (1367 fucking words!) and is the longest piece of writing I have done since Uni.

Adios folks.