EI-EI-EI-0..........Up the Poker League we go......

An eventful evening…2nd place, 22 points, £430, a big suckout and an unbelievable cash hand to report.

Tournament first - 24 runners for the 3rd installment of the LC poker league. A veritable table of death to begin with - Shazbo, Tom, Volcano, The French Professor, Chewitt and Maniac Tony. This was a table to treat with caution, so I poked around for 2 levels and was down to 3,000 chips when this hand occurred.

Chewitt flat calls, as does Shazbo. I call in the small blind with K2s and Volcano checks his option. Flop 10, 2, 2 - ding! I check, as does Volcano and Chewitt. Shazbo bets out 600, I flat call and the Volcano pushes. Folded back to me, and I am a bit apprehensive as there are 2 hearts on the board and Volcano went out last week reraising on the nut draw, and this wouldn’t be a bad spot for it. I have no choice but the call, and Volcano is drawing thin as he turns over 92. The hand played itself really, and was a cold deck for the Volcano but I’m up and running.

Volcano and the Professor soon depart and our table is collapsed. I’m probably the big stack at my new table, so am regularly stealing the blinds. One such foray involves a raise to 1000 with A8s, but the big blind pushes for 2,000. I pretty much have to call, but he has Aces. I crack them with two 8’s on the board and sheepishly take my chips. The victim, South African Jerry takes it well to his credit, and my stack balloons further.

We are soon on the final table and swiftly down to 8 - myself, South African Eric (brother of Jerry), an older guy who I haven’t played with before (henceforth OG), Chewitt, FLuke, Maltese Mike and Hugh (a solid, tight player). As soon as the antes kick in, Mike becomes very active, raising about 60% of the pots. Hugh and Chewitt are playing very tight, but because Mike acts before me I rarely get to steal my “share” of blinds. Eventually I get fed up and go over the top of him with 97 which earned me some useful chips, but didn’t slow him down.

Somewhere along the way I was crippled by Hugh (my AK v KQ), regenerated a little by eliminating FLuke (my AK v JJ) and built up again to average by pushing marginals. South African Eric had been quiet and was short stacked by the time Chewitt took him out. Chewitt semi bluffed on an all diamond board with Ace diamonds in his mitt and was called by Eric with the Queen of diamond and no pair, so Eric was drawing very thin. I was happy I didn’t put a vicious bad beat on the second South African brother, or you may have seen my head on a spike next time you are on the outskirts of Jo’burg.

Probably my key hand was a race - Mike raised it as usual to 3k in early position and I pushed with AQ for 10k (I wouldn’t have done this against Hugh or Chewitt). Mike calls after a while with 88 (I am pleased to see this as I am dreading AK). I hit a couple of Queens and am up to a healthy 24k and Mike is severely depleted. The game rumbles on and Mike departs after getting short stacked. I then put out OG as he pushes into my big blind and I find pocket 10s. The very next hand I suck out big time on Chewitt - he flops 2 pair against my top pair during a blind v blind battle, which ends up all in the middle. I spike my other pair on the river and win with a bigger 2 pair.

I’m heads up with Hugh, with a 6-1 chips lead and manage to lose! The game went on for another 90 minutes and Hugh played well. I tried to cut the game short twice early on, putting him all in with marginal cards but unfortunately he had a decent hand both times. This was a mistake - perhaps I should have played tighter and kept him well down in the chip count. I was to have another good chance to seal the win. AK v QJ all in preflop - I hit my Ace, but a 10 on the river gave Hugh the straight and ensured another 45mins of play.

With 84k in chips in play, and reasonably well split between us, it was always likely to come down to a big race and so it was. 75k pot all in pre flop - I raised with A7 to 12,000 resulting in Hugh pushing for another 30k with 44 which I called. I lost my race and was crippled, exiting soon after. Congratulations to Hugh for his win. The league table must be getting congested at the top now - I would post the league table but the chances of Honest Dave being out of bed to have compiled it (11:53am) are zero.

So to the amazing cash hand… raised by Mad Viv to £5 under the gun, called by Tom and FLuke.

Flop 8, 5, 8.
Viv bets £15, Tom flat calls, FLuke passes.
Turn Ace.
Viv checks, Tom checks behind.
River 8
Viv bets £25, Tom re-raises to £75 claiming “not to believe Viv”.
Viv pushes for £25 more which Tom calls (£250ish pot)
Viv turns over pockets Aces for turned full house. Tom shows A8 for a turned under house and rivered quads.
Viv wears the stunned expression of a man who has just be tasered in the nuts. Sick stuff!

My cash game was poor as usual costing me £50. I’m going to have to change things up a bit next week I think, not necessarily with more agression but I really have turned into a calling station recently on the cash. I don’t really want to talk about cash games on here - tournaments are ok to discuss in that every situation is determined by circumstance and unique, in a sense. I think you can give away more about cash games on a blog due to their more static nature. I’ll be interested to see next weeks performance in the cash.

I have taken Monday off work, so I can finally play the Sunday big online tournaments without having to worry about the time. I’m going to invest USD 1,000 of my online winnings this year, so my next post will report on how that goes.