Players Championship, Ashes and MRI's

Last night was the first event in the Players Championship Festival at my local poker club. The event was a £200 NLH freezeout, and with a 50,000 starting stack and a slow structure. With the Ashes finally starting at the Gabba it promised to be a rather splendid night.

This year has been patchy; I’ve had some great results both online and live. I'm in profit across all the sites I play MTT's on online and also live I’m comfortably in profit for the year. May through to September I hit the biggest, longest down-swing I’ve encountered so far playing poker, and so the fact I’m still in profit is pretty comforting. What I'm lacking is a festival win at the International, and a big score at my favourite club. I'm hoping that gets rectified this week.

I'm not massively superstitious person, poker wise, but there's the odd this I like to do. I always wait until it's my turn to act before looking at my cards. I never act straight away when it's my turn. I'm quite impulsive person in life, and giving myself a few seconds to act generally tempers too many impulsive plays. One thing I have noticed is that I’ve never done well in a tournament when my daughter has stayed at mine the night before. I refuse to believe there's any correlation between the two. How can there be?

So last night I arrived early, happy with how I’ve been playing recently and confident i could do well. I arrived an hour before the tournament started, and the place was already busy with a fantastic atmosphere. I registered and drew seat T3. What would turn out to be pretty shite seat on a number of levels. With so many people in the club the place was jammed with tables. I sat at the end of one back to back with a player from the table behind. That would normally be fine, but in this instance it was the only route for people to get through to the corner of the club where the sofas and online area of the club. This meant I had to stand up to let people through probably once every 5 minutes or so. Bloody great.

As I took my seat I realised that I’d also drawn a comically tough table. I had JJ, Kevin Mcgee, Sam Grafton, Fez, a Scandie and two other young ballers at my table. Great. I knew the table would aggressive and it didn’t disappoint with big pots nearly every hand from the start. I was getting dealt complete rubbish, and when finally I was dealt QQ I had to fold on the river. The lady told me she had AA after the hand, but losing a decent sized pot early on still hurt.

After that I was dealt two more pairs in the next four hours. 99 and 44. The most amazing thing was that I didn’t see an ace the whole night!! Not even a ragey ace. That’s the first time ever that i’ve not seen one in a comp that I was in for over 5 hours!! What the odds of that even happening!? I’d been as low as 20k in chips, but had managed to grind my stack back to 45k when I got knocked out. The table folded to me in the SB, I had 14bb’s and rather impulsively just shoved. I knew the guy next to me wouldn’t call unless he had a hand like 77+ AQ+. Unfortunately he had 77, called, and despite me getting a few draws on the flop I missed, lost the flip and was out. Why didn’t I just raise 2.5x and fold when he re-raised?! I hate leaking chips in that was with such a small stack anyway, but it would seem the more sensible this to do. Role on the main event. The atmosphere at the club was amazing, and I can’t wait for the weekend.

So with the rubbish seat draw, a rather cute waitress chucking drinks in my direction :), probably the most aggressive table I’ve played at all year, and being totally and utterly card dead It really could have gone better. I went home to watch the remainder of the Ashes on TV, and that didn't improve my night.

After five hours sleep i'm now sitting waiting for an MRI at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital. I'm drinking a semi-radioactive drink that tastes puke, and i've got an old guy sitting next to me who stinks of BO. Starts in M and ends in arv. The day can only improve from here. I've changed the next night Georgina, my daughter stays over to tonight. I'm not taking any chances with the rest of the week. Takeaway and a film is all that will occupy me this evening.