Poker back at Warwick Uni

Ok! As i have not posted recently you can clear guess that i have not been playing much poker which is true! I am definately happy about that, as i want to cut down as it is the last year for me at uni, not that i want to work more but want enjoy the uni life style as i only have one more year left. Also my car broke down again!!!! I had to take the bus today!!! (poor me!!) oh well but also went to some car dealership in birmingham to buy a new car!!! Getting a Black Ford Mondeo Diesel! Looks sweet!! But to be honest i just want a reliable car that does not break down!!! (my old car broke down like 4 times on the motowayy at like 3am!!!)
Ok back to poker!!!!

Star City

Went last to Star City last sunday to play the £20 rebuy. Me and my house mate Guv went with a 70/30 deal in each other, i was running well with good cases in online tournaments and also have a very good history at Star City, i have never played a cash game there purely due to the fact i always get deep into the tournament, when you hear me playing a tournament then playing cash after that means i did badly in the comp, and i didnt get my poker fix for the nite. So i was feel good going into the comp. The tournament director remembered me from last time i went which was about 4 months ago, ask where have i been?

The £20 rebuy had about 70 runners and we started off 12 handed!!! Ok with so many players on the table i felt in the 1st level just play very big hands! I picked me AAs early on and doubled through after someone check raised me all in on a flop with top pair. I then could play a few more interesting hands with my bigger stack and also a few ppl droped out, so we were down to 10/9 handed within 35 mintues. The clock was 45 minutes for the 2 rebuy levels then 20 minutes there after. By playing this 'interesting' cards such as 52, 57, 79, 8T, QJ to raises my stack quickly disappeared. I then took a rebuy and picked my AT raised and got re raised i moved in and AT was clearly no good against AQ but i did pick up a tell on the young guy. Apart of me called to get lucky, another part to see his hand for future reasons and another part just felt AT might be good! I then rebuy and get my stack up quickly, cant rememeber the hands to be honest but i remember taking a nice pot with 52, on a 345 board, two people moved in infront of me and i raised all in. Was up against 69 and Q6! I had the best hand!!!! My hand held up aswel!

Guv then moves over to my table near the end of the rebuy period. So about 10 runners had dropped out. You start with 1k in chips and i got my stack up to 9k and spent £80 included the top up. Guv had a reasonable stack as well. Things were looking good, another reason why i was feeling confident was the fact the players are RUBBISH!!Im talking really really bad! They have no idea how to play the game, so many people over valuing hands, no betting when checked to them three times in position, betting into empty side pots, just really bad poker!I felt that the £1600 1st plzce was in my pocket well atleast 70% of that!!!! (Damm you Guv!)

After the rebuy period there is a break with a free buffet which was really nice, chips, sandwichs, pasta, and some sort of meat curry which i'm clearly not interested in. also free coke and orange juice, i wasnt too hungry but ate a bit to get some of the £60 i wasted on roulette back! Also apparenlty been on a full stomach can really mess your game up!!! Well thats what doyle says! He claims he has been out in more tournaments straight after eating then at any other time! But to be fair he is a big guy so he must eat a lot!!! Oh No! Have i just insulted the grand father of poker on my blog!! Hmmmmmm! I didnt mean it doyle!! But i did hear he used to be a lot bigger, apparently he won a $1million bet to see if he could lose 1oolbs in a year! which he did successfully!!! Nice!!!

Ok back on the poker!! Star City in birmingham have a nice poker room but they have alot of inexperienced poker players and some people who just seems dumb to me, so they have placed this rule to aviod string betting, if you want to RAISE you must say the word RAISE! It does not matter if you stick all your chips in , it still goes as a call unless you say raise! Which is fair enough and everyone knows that there but i do not like it. But i always say if it is consistent i do not mind!

The reason i mentioned this was because Guv tried to raise in MP and he moved 3/4 chips in but it went as a call. I was in the SB with A4 and called and the BB checks. Flop came J 2 9, i check, BB checks and Guv bets outs, i fold and the BB calls, turn is a 2! The BB fires out!!! (not good news! These ppl cannot play poker, they just play there cards, i hope Guv can beat 222 or is able to throw his hand away, i was hoping he didnt have KK AA QQ or AJ) Guv thinks for a while and moves all his chips in! BUT WAIT he didnt say RAISE!!! It goes as a call, i get worried thinking Guv has not worked out that this guy has a 2! River is a blank and the guy goes all in and Guv calls instantly by now, quite pot commited, guy flips over 72! (as expected) and Guv gets up and leaves showing KJ!!! Guv was does hellmuth say!! Never get your money in with KJ!!! Just kidding that is unlucky i suppose he did call a bet on the flop with bottom pair! But to me these kind of players love their pairs!!! Another thing i reminded Guv of at the end of the night! Never go BROKE in an unraised pot!!!!

So just me left in comp and my stack built up a bit, got quite chatty to this guy and he gave me the impression he was a super rock so i took his BB on more than one ocassion. I tried to took tangle with the chip stacks and tried to pick off the small stacks as there were alot of them. I do not play a hand for 3 orbits and there was a raise pre flop every hand. I was dying! i could even find spots to take the blinds down which was annoying but i was still on about 15xBB but the next few level jumps were going to be huge. I then pick up AAs!!! I needed to get paid off this hand so i limped UTG, hoping to get a raiser and shove, the players are soooo bad they would put me on pockets 55s rather AAs for sure. So i limp and so does 3 others and the SB and BB check! Shit!!! Thats not good! I say to myself get ready to fold AAs. Flop is 9 5 4 rainbow. Sb fires out and BB fold i smooth call. reason for this is because i do not want to lose my chips in this hand, against 5 other players it is difficult for AAs to hold. Also very difficult to know where you stand in a shooty tournament without committing your stack. I called thinking if someone else calls behind or raise i will dump the hand. Lucky no one else calls. So i'm heads up with someone who bet the flop, which means he is unlikely to have a big hand. I decide if no 9 on the turn i move in. The turn was a 6 and he bets and i move in, he calls instantly and i say, ' i think you got me, i got one pair' He says one pair to! Big smile on my face but he has 97, up and down str8 draw with a pair so he has alot of outs!! Any of the 2 9s, 3 7s, 4 8s, and 4 3s so 13 outs! he is about 28% to cripple my stack, the river is a sweet 4 and i knock him out and pretty much double my stack to double the average stack with 3 tables left!!!

Final two tables takes ages!!! Didnt play too many hands, made a bad call with A4 against AQ when i raised and he re raised all in, i was not quite getting the odds but i felt he may have KQ but when he flipped AQ i was not surprised! Also i witnessed some really bad poker where people moved all in for like 24xBB and only to be called by KK and QQs but the Ace always managed to fall. Also people did not understand odds and not even close odds i'm talking about someone getting 14 to 1 on their money to knock someone out and they fold!!! It sooooo bad!!!!

I get to final but the bubble tooooook so long that the clock had worn out so much that average stack on final was 5xBB. I picked up AQ and pushed and got called by KKs, i was out in 7th place and took £127 gave Guv 30% which left me with £10 up!! Very annoyed by the end of the night, so many bad players helped keep more bad players in the comp. For example on final this guy limped into every pot, and when the BB had 2 BB left and pushed on the flop for one BB the limper folded unless he had a pair!! It was so annoying to watch! The tournament ended about 30 minutes after i went out and i felt like one extra hand to hold up or one lucky hand would have got me into top 2 or 3, oh well there is always another tournament!


Poker Soc

In week two but the 1st official week poker soc got 184 runners for the £5 free buy in double chance. Thats a lot of runners! Made final table last week but there was only 42 runners but i was still confident, i walked in late as i had a lecture just before and it felt like walking into the WSOP, so many new faces and so many FISH!! I mean seriously there were people who could not hold they cards right, and people whose body language suggested they have never seen a pack of cards before. As soon as a walked in someone asked me for ruling!! Was madness, one guy was actually wearing massive sun glasses!! On a nice note relating to the WSOP poker we had one of ou former student make appearance a player who came 54th in this years WSOP cashing in the region of $165,000!! A Mr Scott O'Reily (hope i spelt that right!)

I ended up making final 3 tables where i got all my chips in pre flop with AAs (nothing less) against KKs and with a K on the flop i needed an Ace but no such luck! I bust out in a massive pot!!! If i win that pot i definatley make final and maybe defeat the 184 runners! which is very impressive even though there were some awful players is still a good acheievment! Oh well not for me though!

The guy who actually won it got given an extra life! What i mean is that with 2 tables to go (all in the money) Mr Winner moves in and is called by the SB and the BB (a very experienced player) a Mr Lu decides to push all in with A3 to get the SB to fold and let him take a shot at a bigger pot against one oppenent!!! Ok is this the right play?? At this stage of the tournament i do not like it! You want to knock people out and A3 is not good enough to come over the top with, i just do not see the value in you gained better 'odds' at the pot than knocking someone out of the competetion, the SB folds 22 and would have rivered a set and knocked out the eventual winner, so Dave Why would you do this???? Im not saying this with hindsight i actually mentioned it while it happened, i was shocked, i have seen him do this on more than one occasion and he did it later in the tournament again! Dave POST HERE ! I want you to put your arguement across (he is an awesome player, thats why i care, but he does win donkey of the day AGAIN!!)! I just really do not like the play, you need to knock players out!!!

All these tournaments have really messed on my $1/$2 game on rivercard! I'm moving along in the action points up to 555,000 + but slow down so much because of uni! I should still make the million mark and get a $1000 entry into a WSOP event! Running bad on cash dropped about £500 ish this month!!! Made more iin tournaments but i like to focus on cash as its something that you can win at every day, in tournaments certain things need to go you way! I cant remember too many hands, like i said i do not like to describe internet poker! But i kept losing alot with top twp pairs!!!!