Action From The Vic

You might be interested in Lee "Final Table" [1] Nelson's trip report on his win in the £1000 NL at the Vic this week. Here's the first part, and here's the final table. A couple of interesting extracts :

"With a few notable exceptions ... the Brits play mainly old school poker. Although this strategy keeps them out of trouble for the most part early-on, it becomes a liability later when the blinds and antes become more significant. It also leaves them vulnerable in the early stages to being trapped by speculative hands, such as small pairs and suited connectors."

and "A player who had a lot of chips and is reputedly one of the leaders in points for the European player of the year opens from the 3-seat for 6000 with blinds of 1000/2000/200. It’s passed around to me in the BB and I call with two red 8s. The flop is a delightful Ks Kh 8s; ck/ck on the flop; turn is Qs. I bet 10,000 and he calls; river is Js. I’m concerned about the possibility of his having pocket queens or jacks, so I decide to check with the intention of calling a reasonable bet, so as not to go broke on the hand. He does exactly that—makes a “reasonable” bet of 30,000. I call and he shows me pocket threes!!! Then he proceeds to tell me how lucky I was!"

If anyone knows who had the pair of threes, do share !

[1] He and Stuart Nash will presumably have to fight for the nickname.

Cold Turkey

Well, it's all happening now. Last day at work yesterday, no fuss and out the door. Didn't manage to play the boss's head like a bongo but never mind. Picked up the keys to my new flat today, went in, everything seems to be in order. Made a call to arrange for broadband - da da daaaa ! They can't do it until after I fly out (next Friday). Seeing as I'm moving my stuff on Monday that could mean three days without the Internet !

I'll have to go and look up Trainspotting to see what provisions he made for going cold turkey. Cold chicken soup was definitely in there somewhere. Yuck. It's going to be hard. There isn't even any football on Wednesday or Thursday ! Maybe a little calm before the storm won't do any harm. I could even find my way into town and feel some cards and chips in my hand, just for a little warm-up. I'll have to do something !

Art For Art's Sake (Update)

The guys who make the mad scientist art I was talking about here are in the Independent today if anyone's interested, centre spread in the Arts section.

I Will Think Of An Amusing Cat-Related Headline Soon

Before I start on this, it's nothing personal, Catman's not a bad guy, and he was horribly treated in that infamous documentary, but, well, read this if you can.

I just can't add anything to it. The whole thing is beyond parody. What a world.

Vindication ! Half A Time !

The new series of High Stakes Poker is off to a slow start. It's probably unfair to judge by the standards of the first series, because watching Hellmuth being pwned was the best TV poker ever. This one is suffering a little bit because almost everyone has bought in for the minimum $100K (wusses) and so there's not so much deep stack poker. Also the banter isn't as high quality for the simple reason that Matusow's on, he won't shut up and he isn't funny.

They're also running it twice too often for my liking. Sure, it's the players' money, and they're perfectly entitled to do it, but I have more respect for the ones who don't. Either play the big game, or don't. Don't play it half-arsed (or twice-arsed). So anyway all these themes come together when Farha is all in with Aces against Matusow's Tens. They run it twice, Matusow flops a draw on the first one and misses, then flops nothing on the second one and rivers a Ten. Once's he's stopped dancing around with the sheer joy of breaking even on the pot, he starts going on and on and on about how he was sure when he didn't win the first one that he wouldn't win the second, and at one point he even says "it was fair enough, I should have won the first one and he should have won the second one". This is just nonsense. For someone who thinks he's one of the best in the world, he's talking like a £20 player in Luton. The fact that he insta-called pre-flop as a 4-1 dog is forgotten ; he "should" have won the first one because he flopped a draw, even though he was still an underdog at that point. It's always a sign, in my opinion, of someone who isn't quite (or nearly) at the top level, when they talk about what happens with the cards after the money's all in. At the point when it goes in, you're 60-40 or 80-20 or whatever, and what happens after that is just rolling a dice, however many times it bounces or looks like it's going to land your way.

Anyway Matusow's still banging on when Fred "The Value" Chamanara puts his last chips in with A7 against a real player's Kings. Up pipes the Unabomber "you wanna run it seven times ?". That did make me laugh. Like a lot of these jokey comments, I suspect that some of the other players aren't happy about the time it takes to negotiate these deals. Can you imagine if insurance and running it twice came into fashion in Luton and the Vic ? You'd be down to about 10 hands an hour ! Viva El Internet.

At One And A Half With Nature

More open-air cavorting with a group of women today as the yoga class was moved into the park. It was great, believe it or not. And no catcalls or ribaldry at all, it being too hot for most people to bother I think. While I could never honestly claim to be at one with nature I felt a bit less than at two with nature as Woody Allen once said.

In other news, all plans are coming together. Two more weeks at work, most of which will hopefully be spent in the canteen watching football. Just enough time to move into my new flat and then off to Vegas which I'm really looking forward to. Woo hoo all round !

Last Call For T-shirts

The Get It Quietly Range



Well, last chance before Vegas. Come on, how could you possibly sit opposite Phil Ivey without wearing a "Different Gravy" T-shirt ? Or TJ Cloutier without offering him your "Don't Worry, I'll Get Out Of It On The Dice" for $100 ? Do it now. The shirts are sent out from Germany and they take a few days to arrive at the best of times ; right now I believe they have some kind of association football tournament starting soon, so best to book early. If you'd like a particular design or text in a different colour, style or shirt then just Email me and I can sort it in an instant.

Finally a quick word about my motivation here ; I think these are funny, and I'd get a kick out of seeing other people wearing my ideas on their shirt. That's it. I'm not out to be a billionaire T-shirt mogul. I read an article the other day where the guy said "I feel that I’m slowly but surely shifting from being a pure professional poker player to more of a poker business man.", as if that was a step upwards. Each to their own, but that's not what I'm trying to do, here or anywhere else.

To See Ourselves As Others See Us

I knew I ought to get some exercise yesterday, but I didn't really feel like doing the full "hamster in a wheel" thing in the gym. On the other hand I needed a bit more than a stroll round the park. Then I spotted a class called "Power Walking" at 6 o'clock, location "Outside". They say you should try everything once except incest and Morris Dancing, so I thought let's give it a spin.

You can probably tell where this is going. I turned up at 6 o'clock and it was a girls' class ! Oh no ! I couldn't really back out at that point so off we set, a dozen women in their hot pants and me at the back (eyes strictly on the road of course). As someone who, like Arthur Dent, is capable of feeling self-conscious in the presence of a pot plant, this was a challenge as they say at work. In fact we went straight past our office (don't think anyone spotted me though) and up the road towards Barnet, attracting various beeps and ribald comments from the rush hour traffic. Well not that many, although the guy outside a pub who shouted out "Oy mate, you must feel really out of place with those women" certainly fancied himself as a comedian. "But you're totally at home surrounded by fat drunken idiots" I shot back. By shot back, I mean thought. 20 minutes later. I'll never make a comedian myself.

Once we were off the main road though I started enjoying it. It was generally a lot more civilised than pounding it out in the gym with Capital Radio bending your ears. And as I was chatting to one of the girls on the way back she said "You must be very confident to go on this walk with all of us". I had to smile (but managed not to laugh which was a plus). Image is everything after all.