Turned up early to have a mooch around and was pretty impressed by the whole set up.
As far as casinos go its got all the
flashing lights in the right places and all the games available to loose your money on. So
don't hang
around get yourself down there with your wages in hand and they will be more than happy to take them off you.
On a more serious note though the card room seemed spot on. The card room is up stairs and looks down over the
restaurant floor the
smoking area is upstairs on the outside through a fire escape job with heating lamps and all that carry on. It could of been a bit warmer but i guess we are supposed to be there to play cards and not for smoking so i cant call that a bad thing. The plus is if your a smoker like me then you
haven't got a mile walk for a quick puff if
ur in desperate need of a smoke.
T he structure was as expected lay out was good tables not over crowded as like some try now and again with eleven to a table and all that. No No this all seems spot on with a professional approach. If i had a bad thing to say about the place or the set up the only one thing would be the dealers. It seemed as though the dealers although all pleasant and helpful
seemed new to their job. The dealer on my table and others mentioned it on the other tables seemed to be very slow. I would of expected to get
alot more hands in per blind
level with a half hour clock than we did and this could of been helped just by
the speed of the cards being dealt. One level which was 30
mins only generated 7 hands. At the end of the day most people like my self go to the better
structured games with bigger clocks to get more play in but i can honestly i would of got more hands in at the
Blackpool game which is only a 20 min clock.
As for my game.......
I went out around the 30 runner mark which was pretty dreadful considering there was only 60 plus runners. The game itself was of a pretty low standard initial
raises going in for like 10x
bb from a mid position with no
limper's and getting 2-3 callers. Very first hand hand consisted of three players on the flop of A5J first to act bet the pot got raised by mid
position initial raiser to get called by the button then
re raised by the small blind. Result was the three players ended up with all their chip in on the
turn Sb had trip 5's initial raiser had
ak for two pair and the button hit the king on the turn for a straight with k10.
This set the game up to be a nightmare for me because the guy that won the first pot was on the
bb when i was on the button and so made it very hard for me to get away with much in position as he was hitting like wild fire.
I lost most of my first lot of chips when
getting involved and after laying down
aq on a queen high flop after i had
raised pre on the button and bet a 3/4, i got called by the fish and
chk raised all in by
teh other caller.
Result was that
check raiser had had
qj top and open ended and the fish had j8 flopped the straight. Then the king
arrived on the turn for a split pot between the two.
Another bad hand for me was when I had to lay down 2 pr in a similar situation for the had to get
lifted by a flush draw being made on the river.
Got my double chance and was having trouble making an
impression on the table lost a hand wit
aq suited against
aj off.
I got to the stage where i had around 14
bb and called on the button after a late min
raiser on my right and i called with
kj off and the
bb called as well.
Read to this stage was that the min
raiser had shit because his usual form was bet huge with a hand and bet less with out. BB was the fish who be now was shorter than me and had blown all the chips he
accumulated by pushing with shit.
I think at this stage i could of
raised but the way the other two were playing they would of called
pre and folded if missing flop but i
don't believe i could of got them to fold
pre. S o i decided to try and out play them on the flop with my position.
Flop arrives j high 3 spades, and the
bb pushes
all in and the min raiser folds.
Initial thought was if my king was a spade i call if not i fold. The king was a club. oops what now.
I go into the
table for a min and go through everything i know.
This guy has hit a ten high flop twice before now and put all his chips in once with a 3 kicker and the other time with a nine kicker. So right away i think
I'm probably ahead. I
don't put him on a flush of any kind because he had slow played everything he hit all night like straights and flushes. My decision is that he has hit the j with either a 10 kicker or a q kicker and i most be ahead, surely if he had
aj he would of raised
pre flop because he has pushed before now with A10 suited and raised with A10,
AJ,
AQ,
Ak. I ask him if i fold will he show he says i will show you one...... I
dont rate him as a good enough player to pull that one with an ace kicker and i call.
He turns over
aj and no help for me.........
And that was that, i was pretty unhappy with my call on the end but i had decisions like if i had of folded and left myself with 10
bb,s would i of got the chance to get back into the game as the standard raise being 5-8
bb,s and the table full of calling stations. My
re raise would never of got an initial raiser to fold and so i was probably always going to need a made hand to push with.
Final thought was
It was probably a bad call because i
didn't have a spade in my hand but at the end of the day, the most
important part of playing poker is collecting the information available to us as the game goes on and then making decisions based on it. The way this fellow had played for the last 4 hours had indicated that i
should of been
in front and
that's the info i based my decision on.
I
felt at the time because i had never been able to
accumulate more than my
initial starting stack i was going to have to double up at some stage to be in with a chance to take the comp down. With the hand i had at the time i had now real reason to think i was behind. If he turned over queen jack i would of been laughing to myself asking what i was ever worried about in the first place...... Overall i think i actually played well and can only take the positives out of the game and improve from there.
Until next time Skipper
