Good Morning Blonde - or what's left of it. I spend too long writing these and it will probably be about 2pm by the time I post it. All feels a bit like the opening credits from Murder She Wrote.
Nice surprise in the post this morning. £500 tax rebate I was owed for 2012. It's like real life rakeback! Maybe HMRC will patch me up for the WSOP this summer. Shame my TV decided to break this morning and I will have to spend it on a new one, even though I mainly use it for watching Netflix and the odd game of FIFA. Only bought the bloody thing in June for the World Cup, but it's given up on me already. 50 inch model from Tesco with a Slovakian instruction booklet, should have seen it coming really but it was £300 at the time and I couldn't pass it up.
In other news some of you might have seen this in the paper
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/poet-made-kids-sexually-abused-5017175 - I used to live around the corner from this chap before his flat burnt down, and he used to read poems and stories to all the kids on the street in the summer Jackanory style. Never really thought anything was off with him, just seemed like a bloke who liked writing stories and wanted to share them with people. Sadly it was a lot more sinister than that. I have a friend that actually went to his flat a few times when we were about 12-13, makes my stomach turn.
I'm 24 now, but when I was 13 I was allowed out all day alone in the summer and just had to be back in for tea. Can't really see many kids being allowed to do the same these days. In the summer the streets and the massive park around my house were empty. Maybe it's because everyone stays in on the internet now making blog posts to fill the time or because parents won't allow it anymore because of constant news stories like the one above. I'd like to say that if I had children I would force them to go out on their bikes and set fire to some cardboard in the woods like I did rather than have them indoors on their laptop all day, but I couldn't be sure I would be comfortable with it now.
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Poker players have a selective memory. We seem to always forget the hands we've butchered but are very keen to remind others of their cock ups. We remember all of our bad beats, but forget the ones we have dished out and we seems to always have a reason for running daft plays and they only failed because the other guy was a clown and "just couldn't fold his pair".
But this hand still haunts me, so let me paint the scene for you.
Luton G Casino - Friday night £45+5 with £20 add on for 8k. 8k starting stack. £5000 GTD.
The first time I'd ever played the Friday night comp. I used to play live once every few weeks after moving to Bedford, and because I'd heard countless tales about Luton being the last stop before Hell itself, I would book a £30 room at the Easyhotel rather than risk the train home and end up riddled with bullet wounds. While Luton might be the last stop before Hell, the Easyhotel is it's waiting room.
This particular week the guarantee was smashed. About £7000 in the prize pool. We had ran pretty hot in the first few levels and were sat on about 40K at 100/300/50. After break I was relentless preflop, and had almost every 25 ante chip across two tables. Picture for reference -
We final table on about 200K, which is about a fifth of the chips in play at the time. Middle of the road stack, perfectly comfortable at about 30BB.
We get down to 5 players and we had locked up about £500, with about £2800 up top after paying off the bubble. We have two middle aged women sitting about 5bb each, shortly to be in the blinds. I get dealt AQo UTG. I shove. Even typing that hurts me. I shove 40BB into two shortstacks and two guys who both have me covered.
I load the gun and commit ICM suicide. I was still new-ish to tourneys after playing cash for most of my life, but "AQ is a pretty good hand 5 ways" went my stupid brain. The two older women are just trying to ladder up and waiting for the other to bust, so they're not calling. The older chap at the table is never calling with worse than AJ or 22-TT. The other guy is an internet kid, who is probably shaking his head at what I had just done. Could have just raised to 20K and gone from there, but I just decided to pile it in.
I risked 400,000 chips on the final table to win the 25k in the middle. The older guy calls with QQ. We lose, and bust in 5th.
I am hoping by typing it out and sharing it with the world than it's a bit cathartic, like writing a letter to your ex and sending it up in flames in your garden (I was 15 when I did this, hormones get the blame). But you learn from your mistakes.
But I just remembered that I folded AA on the flop after a shove about a month ago live, so maybe I still have a way to go. He had KQ on QJ9 for what it's worth. It's better to make a bad fold than to rip it in with AQ for no reason and cost yourself almost 3 bags I suppose.
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