I may have gone to Gala tonight with the intention of bumhunting, but within a few orbits it was quite clear that the hunters were bumming me. Er, or something... At least the one success of the night was actually arriving at Gala; no mean feat given one elderly, decrepit lady's inability to fathom the complex algorithm required to successfully take the first exit on three-lane roundabout without careering into another road user. I hope I never get old; I'm rubbish enough at painfully simple problems as it is. Anyway, that's quite enough talk of saggy women, nobody came here to listen to me complain...
Arriving at Gala in the bitter cold brought back some haunting memories of last December's horrific downswing, and with it the realisation that I've made practically zero progress in my life both personally and professionally in the last 12 months. That's quite an achievement though, I'd say. Can anybody else on this forum honestly put their hand up and claim to have made absolutely no forward steps in the last year of their life? Didn't think so.
I arrived just in time to join the second 50/1 game. I took my seat in position to the laggy chinese fish, pulled up £200 ready to start picking off some bluffs and value betting the tits off my one pair hands when, to my dismay, the dealer announced it was time to draw for seats. A seat draw? On a cash game? You're serious? So like children at a lunch table in primary school, we each picked up our chipstacks and moved them to the appropriate seat in silence before sitting down and having a passive aggressive grumble at the idea. I'm assuming the reason they're doing seat draws is because there aren't enough women in poker to sit boy/girl. I suppose I'm getting upset over nothing really, there are no real distinct advantages to sitting on one player's immediate left over another, and the whole ordeal was over within TWENTY MINUTES anyway. I mentally prepared myself for a long night of folding while my boomswitch is in for repair, when to my amazement, I was dealt a vaguely coordinated starting hand. Even though I've applied a lot of discipline recently with tightening my opening range and cropping my list of "them calling hands," it felt like folding the
at this table was inadmissible. So we opened to £4, picked up three callers, continued on a
board, and got there heads up on a
turn. I felted villain for his entire £40 buyin, villain called me a fish then finished his dirty pint of dirty cider and went outside for half a cigarette.
Turns out that was the high point of the night, nay my month thus far, and not the light at the end of this dark damp tunnel that I hoped it would be. I folded so many times in the next three hours that people were starting to mistake me for an origami figure.
The next thing I remember was some drunk looking guy with a terrible haircut and an odious northern accent sitting down with £60. He got it all in pre with his first hand, the much ballyhooed Q3o, and flopped two pair. Then he got 62o and made a straight versus two players both with two pair. Then he got KK and doubled through QQ on an 8 high board after complaining that "this is a setup" and utterly slowrolling the other guy in the hand. Then I flopped a straight, but for some reason my chips started moving in his direction. Then I flopped three nines and the same thing happened. At least he played a good game and the money won't be spent on drugs (although this might be the answer if it helps you stay in Godmode.)
I ended up clawing a little back, and finished the night losing £130. This means that the losing sessions are getting smaller and less brutal. Hopefully the engineer will be out to fix me up with a heater sometime this week and I'll eventually have a success story for
everyone that reads this diary Herbie.
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