Blue Man Sings the Whites

Hello, you!

Sorry no updates over the last couple of weeks. To get you all caught up, I did the road-trip to Bolton on Easter Saturday. It was a long day - out of the house at 8am, home about 1am - but an absolutely brilliant experience.

In the main tournament I made it through the first two breaks but went absolutely card-dead for about two hours. I’m just not a good enough player to keep my stack ticking over if I don’t have the cards, plus I think I was a little intimidated by the game and the setting. I ended up pushing in from second position for about twice the big blind with K10 suited, but the button’s pocket 9s stood up to put me out about 90th in a field of 148.

I then played in a £20 sit-and-go and managed to piss away my early chip lead by playing an awful lot of legitimately terrible poker. Recognising I was a tired and tilty, I elected to spend the rest of the evening as a railbird.

Still, I had a great time despite being really disappointed with my play. I ended up travelling with a bunch of regulars from the Tuesday night game who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to make it, and they proved to be a thoroughly excellent group to spend several hours cooped up in a very small car with.

Plus, I’m now a member of a casino. Which really makes me feel very James Bond indeed.

Then this weekend, I got my hair cut for the first time in about 5 years. On the upside, I now look roughly 20% less like the Comic Book Guy. On the downside, my famous Cousin It impression is now a thing of the past.

By way of illustration, I’ve pretty much gone from Bill Bailey to Action Man.

After spending most of Saturday whimpering in a foetal position, I’ve now progressed to the stage where I’m only 40% traumatised and 60% convinced it was probably for the best.

AND THEN today, on getting back from my lunchbreak I was faced with this:

I didn’t have the nerve to ask the burly hard-hatted men in the vicinity if it was meant to be scaffolding for Jedi, or scaffolding by Jedi.

Either way guys, two words - Force Levitate.

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Ten weeks. Three wins. Three times runner-up. Eight final tables.

I promise you, nobody is more surprised than me.

I’d played no-limit maybe five times ever prior to getting involved in this, so there’s definitely a fair amount of beginner’s luck / people not being familiar with my style going on here. That being said, I’ve played a lot of one-table sit-and-goes online over the last couple of months and been wildly more successful than I ever was in the limit ring games I’d been exclusively playing to that point.

The problem is, the final is being held on Easter Saturday at a casino in Bolton. Much as the chance to play in big live tournament is exciting, much as I’m sure it’s be a good experience and a good game of poker, much as it’s a chance to boldly go where I’ve never gone before, that’s a total of 400 miles and about 6 hours of expensive and awkward travel no matter what method I use to get up there.

That’s a long way to go for potentially one hand.

So, gentle reader, I’m genuinely torn. Should I stay or should I go?

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…which is a bloody tricky maneuver, let me tell you.

The fact that I almost never remember my dreams is a source of occasional wistful regret. I’ve always believed that the fact that I don’t have access to the meanderings of my subconscious has held me back creatively, and I really, really don’t need much holding back creatively.

On the evidence of last night, perhaps it’s as well I don’t usually remember. My subconscious is apparently really, really boring.

I was playing poker in a place of no particular import or character. The other players, as generic and forgettable as the room, folded round to me on the small blind. I peeled up the corners of my hole cards, saw the jack and nine of hearts and called. The big blind - a schoolfriend I haven’t seen or spoken to in about fifteen years - raised. I called the second bet.

The flop came down with the king of clubs and the seven and eight of hearts, giving me flush, straight and straight flush draws. I bet out, and was raised again. I called the raise, and the turn was dealt - and it was the miracle card, the ten of hearts, making me an unbeatable straight flush.

I bet, and was immediately raised again. I took one more peek at my cards to make absolutely sure I was playing what I thought I was playing - and I wasn’t. I had an ace of diamonds and the eight of spades. “Oh my god!” I thought, aghast. “I bet out on the flop with second pair!”

And then I woke up. To coin a phrase.

Yeah. Thanks, subconscious. Samuel Taylor Bloody Coleridge gets to visit Kubla Khan’s sacred pleasure-dome and compose a 1000-line epic poem in his dreams, I get this. Fantastic.

Admittedly, I’m fairly sure Coleridge didn’t play as much online poker as I do.

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Semi-miraculously, the run of decent results alluded to last month has more-or-less continued.

Last week was the first time I missed the final table in five attempts, courtesy of a flopped top two-pair vs. a flopped top set, but tonight’s game saw a thoroughly confidence-restoring 2nd place despite my being largely card-dead all evening.

If you’d offered me a string of finishes that ran 5th, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, nowhere, 2nd, I’d have bitten your arm off. I’m a bit concerned that I’ve a) frankly no sodding idea what I’m doing when the game gets heads-up, and b) a tendancy to overvalue and overplay my hands a little bit, but I think that both things will only improve when I get a bit more no-limit experience.

I’ve played a few small-stakes one-table sit-and-gos online over the last couple of weeks to try and get my sea-legs under me and had some decent results in that format as well, but I’m still under absolutely no illusion that I’m any good at this game in general and no-limit tournament play in particular. I await my inevitable Icarus-like tumble to earth with trepidation.

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As part of my new year’s resolution to stop being quite such an antisocial lock-in, I’ve finally given in to m’verygoodfriend Rik’s cajoling and made it down his local the last couple of weeks for their poker night.

I thought I’d better blog it while I still had something to show off about.

I finished 5th out of 18 the first week, eventually being knocked out when the tightest player at the table made a great call with A6 suited against my attempt to steal his blind. This week, much better cards helped me to 2nd place in a field of 25. I possibly should have won, but on balance my bad luck (getting all the money in the middle of the table twice as the favourite and getting sucked out on both times) was more-or-less balanced out by my good luck (winning a previous all-in when my second pair with an open-ended straight draw became trips on the river), so it’s hard to be too aggrieved with the outcome.

I’d never played live poker against strangers before, and it’s good fun, although I reserve the right to amend that judgement over the next couple of weeks when my form settles down to a more realistic (read: mediocre) level. It’s a nice crowd to play in, with people taking the game seriously enough that you can play “properly”, but not so seriously that it’s unfriendly or uncomfortable. The structure also seems to suit my playing style quite well - the blinds start small enough that I can sit and wait for cards, and there are enough loose players that I’ll get paid when I hit a hand. My only reservation is that the blinds escalate very quickly later in the game, which can make the final table a bit of a lottery. That’s pretty much unavoidable when you need to get the game done with in three-and-a-half hours, though.

So yeah, all in all a good, cheap evening out and fun for all the family. I can’t help but feel I really ought to have some sort of Bernard Black-style nickname, though - all suggestions obviously gratefully received.

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