Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[relaedgc]

A lot of poker players are in Vegas

[AndrewT]

Great posts......how nice to walk away with Cons money in your pocket.........as regards the 500 do you not think that there are just too many tournaments now. Over egging the pudding maybe.

but the £500@Gutshot last week sold out and had quite a few alternates who didn't make the cut. in fact I believe the whole week of tournaments sold out, all with pretty much no advertising.

why such a huge difference between 2 festivals a week apart?

Good question. Well one is in London as opposed to Walsall. I think the Gutshot do advertise amongst their people. Right now I am not sure that is the case with some of the casinos. Also maybe because they were so close together.....honest anser is I have no idea

The Gutshot festival is a big deal to the people who play there (and the Gutshot has a lot of people who don't play anywhere else). For many of the players, this is the only £500 tourney they'll play in months.

The £500 at Walsall will rely on attracting many of the players who play £500 comps every week - a lot of these guys are in Vegas right now.

[Karabiner]

Going back to the Nottingham vernacular for a moment if you'll indulge me.

I used to come to Nottingham from London virtually every school holidays for a week or so to visit my grandparents, and I can always remember them telling me to "mekkased, mekkased !" whenever we were in a hurry to get anywhere.

Is "make haste" Nottingham or general Northern-speak ?

[Robert HM]

My yorkshire in-laws used it a lot

[ifm]

13 runners Tom?

really, blimey

aside from the usual (no marketing, Vegas etc etc) what reasons did they put forward for this?

might well be the last time they run this do you not think?

I had a chat to Zak and Liz about it, and they are at as much of a loss as I am.

I admit that the reasons you give are no doubt contributing to the poor turnouts, but surely there must also be something else. 

It's the bloody petrol prices!

[RED-DOG]

13 runners Tom?

really, blimey

aside from the usual (no marketing, Vegas etc etc) what reasons did they put forward for this?

might well be the last time they run this do you not think?

I had a chat to Zak and Liz about it, and they are at as much of a loss as I am.

I admit that the reasons you give are no doubt contributing to the poor turnouts, but surely there must also be something else. 

It's the bloody petrol prices!

Daft as it may seem, the price of fuel IS a consideration these days. (Well it is for me at least)

I went to Bolton yesterday to look at a used car. (260 mile round trip) Before I went I told the seller that if it was as he described it, I would buy it there and then, but if not, I would just walk away. I told him I had been in the used car business for 10 years  so please please just tell me the truth, are there any dents, has it been touched up? He told me "No, it's mint"

When I got there after driving for hours on the M6 in Friday traffic, I could see it had had more hits than the Beatles. The front wings were slightly different colours, and one door was mis-aligned. Apart from that it had two dents in the tailgate and a big lump if filler in one of the sills.

Sigh. £40 worth of diesel and a day wasted. What a Y%$*^%E^%E.


Not all bad news though, I got Mrs Red to drop me off at Walsall on the way home so that I could play the super sat for the Midlands Meltdown £750 main event. There were 10 seats gteed, and the 76 runners bumped it up to 12 seats. Luckily. I managed to get one. I was please about that because I have never missed this event since I started but without the satellite, I would have done this year.

More on Walsall in  while, right now I have to help the Environment group to plant some flowers....

[b4matt]

I'm torn between Walsall and DTD. How many runners do you think Walsall will get Tom?

[boldie]

Well done on the seat Mr Red.

[RED-DOG]

I'm torn between Walsall and DTD. How many runners do you think Walsall will get Tom?

MHO- 40 ish.

[RED-DOG]

The environment group, who dragged me out of bed at silly am to help plant up the hanging baskets and hang them on the lamp posts.

[RED-DOG]

Over the fast few days, the buttercups and forget-me-nots have blossomed on Croft hill and made my favourite walk a riot of colour. 

[EvilPie]

Going back to the Nottingham vernacular for a moment if you'll indulge me.

I used to come to Nottingham from London virtually every school holidays for a week or so to visit my grandparents, and I can always remember them telling me to "mekkased, mekkased !" whenever we were in a hurry to get anywhere.

Is "make haste" Nottingham or general Northern-speak ?

That made me smile. Being a Nottingham lad I've heard this so many times from all my grandparents. All Nottingham born and bred.

Thanks for the memory of the one now long gone 

[RED-DOG]

So I'm at Walsall playing the super satellite for the £750 when I realise I have had almost nothing to eat for the best part of an hour and I start go get a little peckish. I make it a rule never to eat on an empty stomach, so I immediately order bacon and egg on toast with a side order of coleslaw.

Half an hour later, the guy opposite me also orders a sandwich, (No coleslaw)

Half an hour after that, his sandwich arrives, with coleslaw. He tells them he doesn't want coleslaw, and pushes it to one side of the plate. I ask why my sandwitch, ordered half an hour earlier than his, has not arrived, they promise to chase it up immediately.

Half an hour later, my sandwich arrives, sans coleslaw. "Where's my coleslaw? I ask. "Sorry" they say, "we put the last of it on the other guy's sandwich (The guy who didn't want it)

I check inside my sandwich and find egg but no bacon. I point this omission out to a waitress, and she offers to take my sandwich back to the chef.

I agree, but before she takes it I ask Liz (Who is dealing) to witness that I'm going to mash this egg and cut the corner off the toast so that he can't send the same one back when he's added the bacon.

40 minutes later, my new sandwich arrives, the only problem is, it's my 40 minute old sandwich, complete with mashed up egg and corner cut toast. I ask to see the manager.

I explain to the manager and he is appalled that an egg that has been sitting God knows where for 40 minutes should be returned to me, and he promises to order me a new sandwich. I refuse his offer saying that I'm afraid that the chef might spit in it this time. The manager insists that I have a new sandwich and says that he will personally oversee it's preparation. By this time the poker competition is over, but again I agree.

Half an hour later, my sandwich arrives. This time he has forgotten to toast the bread. I send it back again and go home hungry.

[MANTIS01]

Yeah, well I too was at Walsall last night. I was also feeling kinda hungry at the table. And I similarly ordered said bacon and egg sandwich (on bread as standard). I must say mine arrived very promptly WITH coleslaw. Very satisfying it was too. Really hit the spot. I left Walsall really not very hungry at all.....but with NO bloody seat. So I suggest you feck off with the minor snack-related problems that seem to blight your life Red-Dog and focus on winning today you lucky get!!

[RED-DOG]

27 players, (9 direct buy-ins and 18 satellite winners) sat down to contest the £750 Midland Meltdown main event. Instead of 10,00 chips we got 7,000 X 2 in a double chance format.

The first few levels were  quite difficult and a bit scary because several of the players, (satellite winners one would presume) seemed to struggle with the concept of big stack, long clock poker and were prone to pushing in 10k+ to win pots of 600.

As you can imagine, this resulted in some rather nasty accidents, with blinds around 100/200 we saw pocket 88 backraise KK all in and win, QA backraise AK all in and win, AQ backraise KK all in and lose despite a flop of AA9.

There were of course many more huge overbet all ins that didn't get called. I passed QQ twice to monster all in re-raises. I don't know what they had, but even if it was a rag A I don't need that kind of action so early.

Predictably, it wasn't too long before the loose cannons, were eliminated. Mostly by moving all in against pocked kings and aces. By the time the dust cleared, we were down to two tables and the remaining players had settled down to more conventional deep stack tactics.

At this point, I had played very few hands, and of those that I had played I had laid down to massive overbets twice, ran a house onto quads once, and been outdrawn once by a player who called a bet on every street with A high and caught back door flush on the river. I was way below average, but I still had around 15 big blinds so no need to press the panic button just yet.

I chugged along for the rest of the night, picking up the odd orphaned pot here and there, not really seeing anything of note until I called a small raise with 33 and caught a set on a K high, no flush board. I check-called a hefty bet on the turn and was rewarded by an all in push when I checked the river. Suddenly my stack was almost back to average.(20bb)

For the last two levels of the night, we had 5 players on one table, and 6 on the other. Short handed, we were forced to get involved, but there were no casualties until, with 15 minutes to go, we lost a player. Two minutes later, we lost another. Final!!

So 9 players return to contest 6 prizes. Unfortunately there are no easy targets (Except me) 4 are Walsall regulars, including Essy and the excellent but totally contrasting brothers Ash and Taff (Both bought in at the last minute) some sponsored geezer called Alister who made the final of the £300 and has an unfathomable game, and a couple of circuit faces who's names escape me for the moment.


Whatever happens today, It's been, as always, a pleasure and a privilege to play at Walsall Grosvenor this week. I would like to thank them very much.


Now, (Unless you're the chef at Walsall), Smoke me a kipper!!