Luton Calling.

[celtic]

Excellent report as always,though i think it could be improved with pictures.Perhaps one of your sister to start with.   

Couldn't agree more.

[nirvana]

Excellent updates as ever mate :-)

[atdc21]

Great stuff

[4KSuited]

Excellent report as always,though i think it could be improved with pictures.Perhaps one of your sister to start with.   

Couldn't agree more.

+1 for pic of ur sister Ransom.
+1 for investigating writing opportunities (If travel is feasible, tourney updating for GukPT, APAT etc may be an entry point; if not, a link to this blog should suffice for all the poker publications - both on&off line)

[Ransom]

Happy New Year!

I didn't go out on New Year's Eve. I never do, instead I was in bed by 9pm. Obviously rudely awoken at 12:01 by enough fireworks to trigger an alert at the army base in Chicksands. If I were 90 years old I'd be having flashbacks to the Blitz. 

Up a 6am, straight onto Pokerstars. Cash games were dead (or at least the ones I wanted to play), so I chucked in a $2.20 6 max to click through over breakfast, and won it. 243 runners for a $133 win. Not a large bink, but the confidence boost was immense and a great little way to start the year.

Click to see full-size image.

Went into heads up even with about 400k each. The guy I was playing would lead every flop for pot out of position almost every time, and then pot a large majority of the turns as well. I just let him punt off when I had a hand, and that was that.

Final hand I min raise  and he flats.

FLOP :    - He pots as expected for 22k. I call.
TURN :  - He jams 206k. I call. He'd never overjammed before, but would often size less than pot with value hands. Just felt it was FOS. He has  .
RIVER:  - Big fade, little win, happy days.

So we are one for one in tournaments in 2016. It's not going to last past this afternoon I imagine, but for the last 6 I have played online, I have final tabled 5 and won 2 with an average field of about 250. So that's nice. Maybe something I should press on with and ride this little heater a bit more instead of playing the 5 Card Omaha Hilo cash games which have turned into the nittiest games on Stars this past month.

I know there's a sit-out on to protest Amaya and their murdering of the VIP program, but nowhere else has the traffic for the cash games I like and hardly any other sites spread the mixed games so I am kind of stuck. It feels a bit like that scene in Billy Elliot where all the miners are on strike and they start kicking off at the people who have turned up to work. I'm breaking through the picket line to try and make a few quid.

Denying all requests for pictures of my sister, you degenerates. You'll know who she is when you see a female under the age of 40 playing £30 tourneys in Luton, checkraising fools and turning down deals because "no gamble, no future".

Might stop now and have a profitable year. Just lock it up.

 

[Ransom]

Evening all.

I know I made a promise to post more, but apart from the extremely mini win as detailed in the post above, January was pretty dry on the poker front. Didn't have the energy to play much at all. On the degeneracy front things have been dry as well, minus one slip up when I went to MK and ran into Chippy and we had a couple of spins. That went tits up as expected, but another lesson learned and it was far, far less costly than the previous ones. Given that MK is such a pain in the arse to get to from Bedford without a car, I can't see myself doing that very often if at all. I spent some time a while ago registering for all the bookies online, and then self excluding from them for the maximum amount of time.

February has been pretty good. Cashing off approx £2k profit from PartyPoker this past week which I am very happy about. A combo of 50NL/100NL and a couple of completely underrolled shots at 200NL that worked out. Little bit of PLO chucked in for variety. Combine a bit of a heater with a fairly soft playerpool on Party and you get a nice winning week. I'm not one to go and 'tap the glass', but there are some players on Party that make some truly baffling decisions.

I can't say I was ever a huge fan of PartyPoker. The software was always really buggy for me, but when there are people playing 65/6/0 at 100NL/200NL I can live with it. Won a few $109 tickets from the $22 feeders as well for various things at DTD but was unable to convert them sadly. I wouldn't go to DTD for anything less than a £530 seeing as I would need to get a hotel for a couple of days, so I would have liked to get in to the UKPC but so it goes. Got close to winning a WPT package as well for one of the side events, but managed to Bonnie Tyler it 3 handed with a nice chip lead (because every now and then it falls apart). Would have liked a nice excursion to Vienna in March.

In other news, Grovesnor Casinos have deemed it unsuitable to allow me back on to the premises for "my own best interests". I sent an email regarding reinstatement as I have a chip on my shoulder about winning a GUKPT. I think mentally I want to follow the progression of a lot of UK pros. Win a GUKPT, then something on the EPT, then the WSOP. But then "my own best interests" dictate that I probably shouldn't be hanging about in casinos and getting carried away when people I know want to throw a bit of money down the roulette chute. I'd liken it to that girl who can't keep her knickers on after a few drinks. Not saying I'm being preyed on by degens because they know I'll 'put out' and come over for a 0, 28 by £5 neighbors after  a couple of pints, but it's what it can feel like. 

But then I am going to Vegas this year. Is it strange that my first thought was about looking forward to writing another Vegas diary rather than how much LOLpunting I can do in comps? That's probably a good sign for both myself and everyone who reads this.

My plan for March is to play a solid schedule, put some runs together by summer and have some fun. Rebuild my reputation and be as much of a consummate professional type as I can be and do away with being tagged as a volatile punter waiting to explode. Also get back to a point where I can leave my job because right now I am wondering how much rotational force it would take for me to spin around in my chair and have this headset cable pop my head off like a champagne cork.

GL GL.


 

[tikay]

Ha, beautifully written.

Post more please.

[4KSuited]

Thanks for the update Ransom. Probably like most of the other readers here, I regularly check to see whether Luton Calling has shot up to the top of the Blog page... Wait, most of the others prob have some kind of sexy tekky alert.

Anyways, I specially like the Bonnie Tyler teaser. I spent at least a whole 30 seconds wondering if the reference was "It's a Heartache".

[Ransom]

Do you ever just do things on autopilot without thinking?

I do it pretty frequently. I arrive at places with a big blank gap between leaving my house and showing up often. Like the static you used to get on your old TV when you accidentally put it on Channel 6. A sharp gray and black blizzard of pure white noise. I seem to have autopilot-ed my way into booking Vegas for June. Last year I booked it in January, and faced 6 months of torturous wait before I could descend on the desert, knock about among the neon and punt in the Palms (I didn't go to the Palms, but rule of three for comedy/alliteration and that).

Direct flight from Manchester, and 10 nights for £1006. I would have saved £50 by going back to Circus Circus, but I think I was supposed to pay them a resort fee which 'accidentally' slipped my mind. Would hate to show up and have them pull a couple of heavies out to have a word with me in the back room over $200. Stratosphere this time, mainly because it was cheap and they have a 50s diner apparently and I've always liked them.

Could have stayed at The D downtown for about £920, but I'd spend that £80 difference and more on taxis to the Rio anyway so I couldn't see much point in it. Plus I binked on that machine there last year, and I'd hate to spend half my trip trying to do it again on the same terminal like that old lady from the Louis Theroux documentary.

Flight wise, it's with Thomas Cook. I'm not one for luxury, so as long as they bring me a lemonade every hour and give me a sandwich halfway through I'm away. Never flown Thomas Cook, and right now I am picturing a flight half full of retirees and half full of lairy stag parties.

Flying from Heathrow for the same price was an option, but I would have had to stop in Salt Lake City. Home of the Mormons. Really stretching to fit in a Chris Moorman joke here but I have nothing. I did a stop last year, and while it was interesting to share a bench and chat to a army veteran who looked like Hulk Hogan - I'd much rather daydream about big scores for 10 hours than cart a suitcase around searching for my gate before they close it.

Now while writing this I have looked at the WSOP events for the time I am there (you think I'd have done this before). And I am there for the $1k tag team event. Anyone looking for a partner? We will have to dress in matching gear, the more we look like wrestlers the better. Sorry but that is 100% a dealbreaker.

It's funny how much things brighten up with you have something to look forward to. Plus I brought about $15 in chips home last year as souvenirs, with the way the exchange rate has gone I am taking them back because I've made about £1.87 on them. FOREX punter as well now. Baby steps.

L F G

[Ransom]

I should really research things before I do them.

It's a particularly big leak, and I think if you go back about 6 pages before I went to Vegas last summer I probably say the exact same thing word for word.

I get carried away with looking at reviews, pictures and trawling Google street view as soon as I've booked something. Then when I see all the one and two star reviews I get a sinking feeling. Like I've just paid a bag to develop an aggressive infection from whatever part of the room might come into contact with my bare skin. Still, Stratosphere has a poker room and I can't imagine the competition would be too stiff in there so it should be nice for a primer before I head out to the better card rooms.

From doing a customer service related job for the past two and a half years, I get that people are much more likely to take the time to write a complaint than a complement so I can't give much weight to the bad reviews really. Especially when you should really know what you're getting into when you pay $30 a night for a room so far at the top of the Las Vegas strip you're basically halfway to Reno. Shouldn't be so bad though, remember I was pretty impressed by Circus Circus so you could probably stick me in a tent on a bit of wasteground and I'd probably describe it as "adequate with interesting scenery".

The area behind Stratosphere is a 'no-go' apparently, and it says online that taxis won't even stop there. The 'Naked City as it's apparently called by locals.  I don't foresee myself wandering about there but it's interesting to think about being in a casino and being 2 minutes walk away from crack dealers, enough weaponry to take on ISIS and disease riddled prostitutes. But then, you could probably find that around the Luton G if you looked hard enough.

Thomas Cook kindly charged me £20 to choose my seat as well. It's a small price to pay overall to avoid drawing the short straw and getting the middle seat in the middle aisle, but this is a £700 flight and not a Ryanair job. I think I read somewhere that they charge another £5 to use the in flight entertainment thing too. Still, I have to have a window seat to rattle my head off and for that 2 minutes of excitement after take off where you look out of the window and think "If these engines give out now, we're all going to die".

I'm going to be there for the tail end of the Colossus, which if it is anything like last year will mean that cash game lists have a waiting list as big as the population of a small island nation. So there is likely to be some very fun 2/5 games filled with people scrambling to get their $565 buy in back before they fly home.

On the online poker front, it's been pretty breakeven to slightly losing after cashing in some Starscoins this month. Mainly playing 8game $2/$4 and losing the most at Omaha Hi Lo. Usually do well in that round, but it's been pretty savage this month. Losing something like 80 big bets in one session of 8Game was unfortunate but I find that the vast majority of the 8game pool at $2/$4 really struggle with Stud Hi Lo, so it tends to be my most profitable game in the rotation. Shame the straight up Stud Hi Lo games have such a big collusion problem or I'd play that more than anything else.

I think they run live Stud Hi Lo in the Orleans or one of those off strip casinos. I know they have a mental $4/$8 limit Omaha Hi Lo there that is almost always 6 ways capped to a flop and people capping until the river with 67TJ (two cards for hi, two for lo innit) , so I might get myself over there seeing as Uber is in Vegas now and it'll cost me like $10 each way.

PartyPoker have a Grand Prix mini in Milton Keynes which might be worth a look, probably do the day 1 online and try and see what happens. Maybe it'll put a bit of atmosphere into the place, because the last couple of times I've played there it's been people sweating their football bets on the telly and maybe playing a hand during half time.

Until the next one,

GL GL





 

[hhyftrftdr]

''for that 2 minutes of excitement after take off where you look out of the window and think "If these engines give out now, we're all going to die".

Nice to know I'm not the only one who does this

I think the seat back entertainment is free on Thomas Cook, but they charge for earphones if you need a pair. It was on a loop and very limited when I flew with them back from Vegas 2 years ago, but I think its on demand these days after a refurb of their long haul fleet.

Looking forward to more Sin city reports, always a great read.

[redsimon]

There was 7CS 8/b running at Bellagio and the Sun Coast (in Summerlin!) but the Orleans one hasn't run much for ages. Strat card room is awful but they used to have a decent comp the last Saturday of the month last time I was there.

Will certainly be in the 4/8 and 8/16 O8 at Orleans as several tables run at peak times and always very loose.

[Simon Galloway]

But then, you could probably find that IN the Luton G if you looked hard enough.

FYP.

I stayed at the Strat several years ago for a few days. They offered a large suite for peanuts, so I took it.  I'd recommend at check-in blagging/greasing/paying your way into a 'Select' room.  When I was walking along the corridor to my room, I could often see maids cleaning these rooms and they looked pretty decent tbf, more than an improvement on a medicore hotel mid-strip. 

Not sure if you can drive or not, but renting a car is going to be useful, particularly if you are playing @ Orleans a lot.  $10 ew in Uber is great, but you can rent a car for about the same.  All around the strat really is a cr@ppy area, don't be tempted to walk over the road for middle of the night Carls Jr etc.  At the point where you have a big piss patch on your shorts and a little bit of sick in your shirt, the menu in Roxys Diner is 24hr and will do the job for pennies. 

[IT5PAYDAY]

Great blog mate...

New to Blonde myself but I am based just outside of Luton in Milton Keynes and can be classed as a 'semi reg' up G and Genting...

My name is Adam, sure we must of crossed paths at the felt before but can't be the name to the description you previously gave...


I am also flying from Manchester with Thomas Cook for 10days in June.... What date are you flying? Im leaving 8th June till 18th June.

[Omm]

Welcome Adam, finally, you need to get all the other Cats to sign up! You would recognise Ransom if your saw him, although he still might be self barred from G. You playing the monthly at Luton this weekend? If I'm not working I might make it over.