I took a few impromptu days off to avoid the riots around Nottingham this week. My local closed early a couple of nights in anticipation of the worst, and I stayed at home for the same reasons. As a pacifist, I seem to attract passing fists; so I'm not sure how a wayward petrol bomb would have reacted to my presence. What a difference four days off can make: I was fresh and ready to give my money away once more. I wasted no time in butchering my third hand at the table. Ordinarily in this spot, villain would be playing the role of "bad reg," but I felt he'd done enough for the poker community and deserved a rest for one hand, as well as a generous reward for his aforementioned contributions. There were a couple of limpers to my button where I found the
and made it £7. Villain in the big blind makes it £17, and I peel a flop.
. He led out for £40, and thus began my hideous misread of the situation. Figuring he was quite likely to have a flush draw/two overs type combo, I took a card.
. He took a while and checked before tank calling my £75 bet. The river came the
pairing the board and bricking the flush. He checked to me immediately and, after my brain squeezed out a nervous one, I decided I wasn't going to get value from anything I could beat and checked behind. His words as he clumsily flipped over
were, "thank God you checked that river, I was auto-folding." Ugh...
A little while later after I'd lost a flip to another reg with AK < TT, I found myself losing £200 and I think yet to put one in the W column. Here's where the lolaments really began. I raised
behind a few limpers and picked up three callers. It was checked to me on a
board, I cbet £25 into £38 or so, and villain moves in for another £7. I roll my eyes and throw in the extra money, thoroughly prepared to see that I was drawing dead.
was the nut turn card, and the
completed a juicy flushball. A clearly disgruntled lady showed me the
and started explaining to the whole table that she's never seen worse poker in her life. I was inclined to agree, but if I was going to be setting the standard for bad poker then I at least wanted it to be memorable. Roll tape "hand #2 vs angry lady." Same sort of stage setup: limpers; raising in position with suited connectors,
this time; a handful of callers; and an awful cbet, on
. It was enough to set the lady all-in, and she immediately whipped over the
killing my flush draw and taking away three of my pair outs. A wise man with a houseload of knowledge once quoth, "send me a seven!" And it was to be. Turn
, river
. She spared me the honours of "worst poker ever," and simply exit stage left with the classic huff-and-walk-away.
Later on, after the roars of laughter had died down, I played a two-legged tie with QQ versus the spot. In the first leg, the silent shortstack opened to £4, the spot called, and I found a fairly easy 3bet spot on the button making it £15. Both players called.
. Shortstack checks, the spot bets £15, and - with a quick assessment of the effective stack sizes revealing that both players had £30 back - I just moved my 'stack' of four ponies in to show that I was moving them all-in. The shortstack quickly folds, and the spot immediately started levelling himself, "why would you make such a big bet? Are you trying to bully me? That's like 3x the size of the pot. You have AK, I call." I daren't question the logic of a man this incapable at situation-handling. Turn was a safe enough
, and the river an equally uncoordinated
. But oh no. The spot had called me with
. Not only was this a terrific call of two bets pre, but he also put together a genuinely sound and convincing "overbet" argument. Um, I reckon... So in round 2 an orbit or so later (yeah, I get queens once an orbit, what of it?) the spot opened to £3 and I 3bet to £11. We went heads up to the flop of
. He checked, I hastily threw in £15 and he took no time at all to make the call. The turn was the
and he checked again. Remembering back to his overbet policy, I snap moved all-in for my remaining £81 (I hadn't bothered to top up after I reloaded once, in fact was pretty much ready to call it a night on several occasions). He took a minute and called with
. I did a little sick, before the river bricked the
to settle my stomach.
Started the night on a bad note, and that clearly rattled me for a bit, but after settling down I feel I played well enough. Can't genuinely claim to be happy with my overall performance, but one thing I took away was taking the night in the eye and not tilting. Finished the night losing £190, but at least my car hadn't been torched when I got back to it. Saturday night shenanigans to follow, chronicled for your amusement. Peace.
August crush thus far: + £479 (£13.22/hr)
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