Back in Notts...

[Derbylad]

 I've toyed with the idea of creating a diary for a while so here it goes...

I became immersed in the world of Poker from my Grandad, a bookmaker. The first card game he ever taught me was 7 card brag, which in turn led to poker. When it came to secondary school, it was common practice to see at least 2 full tables of teenagers gambling their lunch money, to the ignorance of any authority. These games were usually as crooked as they come, and seemed to defy the statistical odds of the game, with around 2 straight flushes every orbit, creating some very well-off and obese children. Unsurprisingly i was a very thin child, the principle however was my introduction and fascination with the game.

Like most people who are <18 i continued to play home games with friends and grew to learn to love the sweats and fun that can be had when a group of mates are playing whats inevitably a leveling war. At this point in my life i took poker as a bit of a laugh on the occasional weekend, and usually involved consuming sufficient amounts of alcohol. So it was only when i came to uni and turned 18 did i realize the unaccountable profits that can be made and lost from the game.

On the 31st September 2010 i played my first ever live poker tournament, a £20 freezeout at Dusk Till Dawn, which at this point in my life, may as well have had the same amount as pressure as the WSOP. I was accompanied by 6 friends from uni and included a last longer bet of £5 a man. Now at this point i might add i am a very competitive individual, and a very sore loser developed from years of playing county basketball, yet finds its way dispersed into a lot of my day to day life. So it was this that inevitably made me run GHolden. The same tournament was played two weeks later with the exact same line up...

Click to see full-size image.

So at this point in my life i was 18, having won ~£1000 in 2 nights worth of poker and wondering, why don't more people do this? It's an easy game right?

[rbc_mike]

Subbed. Gl kid.

[VBlue]

Support for this diary from a fellow debutant.  Gl with it.

[BangBang]

Great to see you've finally decided to diarise your poker life.. Your 48 hour benders are somewhat legendary.. Good luck will be following

[Derbylad]

Great to see you've finally decided to diarise your poker life.. Your 48 hour benders are somewhat legendary.. Good luck will be following

degenerate confirmation [X]

[Sulphur man]

Gold Don. This will be a class diary. Great lad and a fine fellow degenerate.

[kinboshi]

A++

Will read again.

[The Camel]

oooh a long long time since I played 7 card brag.

Great game imo.

GL.

[tight4better]

Yessss gl with this

[paulhouk03]

Degenerate stories plssssssss

[Derbylad]

After spending most of my first year at uni playing the occasional tournament at DTD, i soon realized that tournament poker was not for me. The idea of grinding away at a comp for 6-7 hours to bubble or min cash for little more then the petrol it cost to drive down was about as appealing as playing the lottery. Being a practical kind of guy i decided to jump straight in and try the cash games. My first ever session involved me getting AA the second hand and having no idea how to play it. This was a cash game, this was a new dynamic, what should i do...... "Tea on cash games is free you say??"... and i was hooked.

The following few months saw me playing 3-4 nights a week (this was sometimes a minimum) and making steady profits and losses which just about evened out weekly at a profit. To say the least i was 'tez', a word used to describe someone who is utterly terrible. I knew about as much about the strategy and fundamentals of the game as to go "oooh Good Hand  £££.....and doh Bad Hand £££". It was only when i became a regular face and was surrounded by regular faces that encouraged me to get "better", which would probably be down to the likes of Belton and PJ. This was probably around the point i joined blonde and found myself in some of the occasional diaries much to my amusement...

Also, there's this reasonably new face at Dusk. He seems like a reasonably capable player (which makes him twice the player I am at the moment), very friendly guy. I'm probably putting my foot in it and I'm going to find out he's a reg on my diary now... It seemed like every hand I played versus him for value, we ended up chopping. T9 ~ 98 on J 9 9 K 2, AJ ~ AJ on A J x x x. I'm not as good as Alex yet, so I didn't back into a flush.

When DTD introduced the cash race i made it a personal challenge to get to 100 hours and secure the £500 deepstack seat. After all, i was technically getting paid £5.50 an hour here, on top of any profits / losses i made in the game. I finished the month with just under £1600 worth of profit and 100+ hours of hilarious hands and some familiar new faces. I think i went through a spell of selling all of my seats to Deadman. Unfortunately the steep at the end accounts for the seat sale.



So these cash races saw me maintaining some steady profits. I'd learnt quite a lot, improved my game, made new friends..... "Whats a downswing?"

[flushthemout]

Played with you Saturday night Gary, gl in your venture 77 rivered set

[Derbylad]

Played with you Saturday night Gary, gl in your venture 77 rivered set

Cheers pal, still need to write the TR from the weekend

[Cook]

"So at this point in my life i was 18, having won ~£1000 in 2 nights worth of poker and wondering, why don't more people do this? It's an easy game right?"

Wow this sounds familiar.. I guess your shack was just as big as mine haha!

Looking forwad to more content dude keep it up!

[Derbylad]

So this weekend saw me returning to Nottingham. I'm currently living in London on a placement year between my 2nd and 3rd year at uni.
This weekend was the second time i'd been back to DTD since moving last July and its always entertaining. I planned to play the Super 50 and the Incredible 100 as despite saying tournament poker wasn't for me, London's tournament game is awful (despite the bigger events), with no guarantees on anything.

Friday went off to a good start with the Super 50 field being pretty standard. I had a guy 3bet shove the flop of   while i was holding   and slam down   like it was the stone cold nuts, (which is always a bonus,) and some other spewy players enough to get an early chip lead. The pinnacle hand however came down to a dealer slow roll which saw me exiting in 33rd place,   <   .... on a   board...... the fumbled turn the  ..... "oh whats that you say... that was meant to be the burn card?"..... oh hello  , and off to the cash tables we went.

The 1-1 is somewhat a joy after a super 50, with around 5 full tables and some tilted early exiters hoping to claw back their £58 pound buy in, in the most extravagant of ways. To say the least there wasn't really any particular hands of interest, aside from holding in what i thought was a non sweat hand... oh and running like god in props (Sorry Sean).

Hero calls £5 raise...   ....
flop  

In on the flop.... iya villains over-pair.... oh wait you have   ....
Turn    River  
(Ironically we would of lost to the over-pair)

Saturday i went in feeling relatively confident for the incredible 100 based on Fridays field. I was however not running GHolden and exited within the second level.
Hero...  flats ....
Flop  

All in on the flop again....iya villains overpair....
Turn   River  
.... GG..... WP.....
(Ironically we lost to the over-pair)

So once again we found ourselves at the cash tables. To say the least it was a grind and we ended up even after a mix of 1-1 and 2-2 PLO and having our mind boggled by watching Ed Gascoine call in the river to win a rather large flush draw vs set hand. We then took our name off the 1-2 list (butterfly effecting Alex's cake winning) and exited DTD to play at Gala. When i arrived it may as well have been a DTD dealer home game, aside from one gentleman. Gentleman does not refer to him in his correct form though, said gentleman had the nervous disposition of Shottinghams finest coke addicts and what do these afflictions invoke? 100x blind preflop raises... Oh hi der. I believe he's been aforementioned in Alex's diary

So we continued to not run GHolden when   was beat by   on a 4spade run out.... and   was less then   on QxQxx.......
The spade dug us out when we peeled   to see a board of   vs an over-pair and a flush draw and hold in a large 3 way pot. Peeling   is not advisable might i add, but when said villains continuation bets are in the region of 5x pot... you sometimes take your chances.

So the weekend was a bit of a roller-coaster but we came out with a profit of around £200 after everything was accounted for.