Coming out of the shadows

[AdamM]

100 press up challenge.
Week 2, day 1
12, 12, 10, 7, 10
60 sec gap between sets

[AdamM]

Got myself a seat in the Sky Poker Tour on Saturday, thanks to some nice helpful people at Sky.
I wanted to buy in direct but my new Sky account had a £100 deposit limit I didn't know about.
I upped it, but that takes 24 hours to take effect and there's a distinct possibility it'd sell out before I could get any funds in.
Fortunately I was in Leeds for a meeting with the Sky Vegas guys today and they introduced me to a poker manager who put me in and will take the funds tomorrow.

It's not what you know, it's who you know

Not played a live six max tourney before.
I'm not the rock I used to be, so hopefully I'll be able to adapt.
Looking forward to it.

[AdamM]

Sky Poker Tour at DTD
Not a good start. Due to an administrative error, I'm not on the player list, despite having bought in direct. Top of the alternates list, but with 15k stacks and 45 minute clock, I can see me sitting around a bit. 

[AdamM]

Between tighty and Adam Harmen at Sky, problem solved.
Am in the starting lone up after all

[AdamM]

Seat 1 tightest player at the table
Seat 2 One Way Poker player. Looks comfortable at the table but not decided how good he is yet.
Seat 3 Matt 'Evilpie' Russell
Seat 4 very inexperienced player, playing lots of hands.
Seat 5 also pretty inexperienced, playing too loose passive.
Seat 6 me

My timing has been pretty poor. I know being 6 max I have to play more hands than usual, but everytime I've tried to isolate seats 4 or 5 I've been 3 bet by seat 1.

Had a go at Matt's BB with K10 but made a pigs ear of it.
Flopped a gutshot broadway draw but checked it.
Raised when he bet turn.
When a second jack came on river I bet it but Matt saw right through me and looked me up with A7.

Last hand before break seat 1 raised UTG Matt in mid-poss and me in BB call.
I have   and check raise 7,10,7 flop.
He passed A10.
I was sure he had paint pair and looked like he was pushing.

Back to 12k

[AdamM]

Playing so bad.
Staying active, not letting myself slip into full table grind mode.
Seat 1 raises UTG
Seat 4 accidentally calls, tries to pass once corrected but action stands.
I make up from BB with Qsp Jsp
Flop is J, 9, x
Confused check from me and seat 1
Seat 4 pushes not much with Q,10
I call and so does seat 1
Checks down to river and I lose to seat 1's AJ
I Suppose I lost the minimum, but my timing is shocking today.

5k after the break 150/300/25.
Looking for a quick double up really.

[AdamM]

See if a change of table helps.
Into seat 6 of a new table.
Seat 4 has all the chips and is a loose old school player.
Chips to be won if I can catch him.

[AdamM]

Wow
Full double up I don't really understand
Seat 2 raised to 1100
I take a flop with 6,7
Flop is 4,5,6
I bet he calls
10 on turn, I shove, he calls with 9,3
6 holds.

[AdamM]

No more big pots.
Grinding away.
30k, just below average.
79 runners left.

[AdamM]

Back for day 2 with 36k, half average and about 15BB

[AdamM]

Out 25th. Ducked and dived as long as I could.
Pushed 4,4 with 10BB and lost a race to A8.

On to the super50 side event

[AdamM]

Very frustrating weekend.
Over all , played OK, but not great and finished top 30 in both tournaments.
Makes a change not to min-cash I suppose, but that's going in the wrong direction.

I'm putting the blame firmly on DTD.
I found one of the new Valets particularly distracting. 

Only live poker for the next fortnight is a rare home game with my original playing partners.
Not back at DTD until the Black Belt Poker event.
Expecting a relatively strong field for the buy in with plenty of UKIPT / EPT veterans.
Looking forward to it.

[AdamM]

I have a meeting with a guy tonight to discuss a little poker related business idea I have.
We're doing it over a couple of pints in a pub near his house where, coincidentally, my parents run a little £2 weekly pub poker league.
So we're going to have our meeting and then crash the game.

I'm sure the way my mother talks about me, some of them think I'm something of a high roller.
I guess compared to £2 a week, £50-£300 tournaments are high stakes.
Still don't hold out any hope of winning the thing though
out by the 9pm break more like.

[AdamM]

Well, that was fun.
I had my meeting with a new business partner at 7:30 then we both joined in the weekly poker game at The Royal Queen. 3500 starting stack, 4x15 min levels, then a break, and onto 10 minute levels.
16 runners buying in for £3 divided into a prize pool of £32 (£20/£10/£2) and a bounty pot of £16. Each player had a bounty chip in front of them worth 50p and the person with the most bounties chips at the end gets the remaining £8. Complicated.

All pots were multi-way, either with several limpers or several callers of the standard raise, which at 25/50 was 250. I wasn’t going to be nicking lots of small pots here. It was apparent fairly quickly that in order to win a pot you have to win a showdown.

Having joined in the limping with some vaguely connected cards, I got my first raising opportunity with A,4. I bucked the trend and made it 125 and got three callers.
Flop 4,9,4 BINGO!
1st position bets the pot, I call and the other two players go away.
Turn was a Q and opponent tosses his bounty chip in. I call and he has 8,9.
Full double up early.

There’s a lively hand at the other table. Four players’ Bounty chips have gone in on a K,Q,x flop. The business partner has a nut flush draw but has found himself up against two K,Q and my mother with K,10. The 10 on the turn makes the flush, but my luckbox mother hits her two-outer 10 on the river, scooping the pot, three bonus chips and the additional £3 bounty I’d put on the partner. Must be nice.

I missed with an A,K and had to fold to a bet and a raise on the flop, and also missed a straight draw with J,10 when the break arrived. Due largely to the carnage on the other table we resumed after the break with a 7 player final. Within a couple of hands, I got it all in preflop against Tom the taxi driver. My AA crushed by his QQ when he flopped a set. I cashed in my 50p bonus chip in and talked a bit more business.

I quite enjoyed myself. Also strangely glad not to cash. A few of these players travel out to DTD for the £15 game on a Friday, but for most of them that’s a bit steep. To them I’m playing nosebleed stakes, whereas in reality I’m a fairly low-roller. Taxi Tom won it scooping around £33 and was smiling like he’d won the World Series. Going to meet my business partner again in a week or two and I think I’ll plan it for a Thursday night again so I can take another run at this game

[AdamM]

After a couple of weeks off (excepting the pub game and a friendly home game) it's back to battle today.
Day 1a of Black Belt at DTD.
not sure my A game is best served by a 6am start, 1 hour drive and 4 hours in the office before kick off, but I guess by about 9 o'clock, we'll see.

Stuck £50 eachway on at 125/1 and sold half of it to my partents, wife and son's football coach ( )
Not sure why SaraM bought some of the bet, because if I take this down, she'll tax me a lot more than the £700 ish she'd get from Boylesports.

Looking forward to getting stuck in.
Just got to get my weekly Project Highlight Reports done first