Took a week off from poker after last Sunday"s excitement. An annual trip to Edinburgh for the first three and a half days of the Fringe.
We hit a new record of 26 shows seen this year, ranging from the sublime - Nick Mohammed as Mr Swallow, James Acaster, Simon Evans, Phil Jupitus, Lucy Porter, a couple of excellent sketch troupes Beasts and Pappy"s to the ridiculous "Boris & Sergey"s Vaudeville Adventure". Words can"t do justice to that last one, but it was classic fringe theatre and at one stage involved my wife sitting on a tiny folding stool and dealing a four-handed game of Hold Em in which Boris ( a 2" high puppet operated by a team of three) lost his soul.
I can"t recommend a trip to The Fringe enough - three days is about right and going at preview time allows us to see lots of shows at around £5 a ticket which is half price. The odd mistake in bookings is shrugged off and in 6 years we"ve walked away from no more than 4 or 5 shows wishing we hadn"t bothered.
So, a gentle train ride home on Saturday - First Class, booked online a while ago for the princely sum of £32.80 (for both of us). SO civilised having food and drinks delivered to you at your seat and with no extra cost :-)
Last night I returned to the G for the £15+£15 and was joined by PhilTC and Brian "Fossil" Harland. It"s a fun game with a halfway decent structure which allows some play into the later stages. The standard isn"t of the highest and TC and I ended up chopping 1st & 2nd for £265 each.
Run good much? Me?
Well, I flopped the nut flush with
on a
flop when my caller held
. Thought the fourth diamond on the turn would kill my action but no - he wanted to donate.
On the bubble I min(ish) raised
from the button and and got a call from the big blind who open shoved the
flop .... he muttered, stood up, walked the long way round the table to avoid me and left the building.
Three handed Sb completed, I shoved tens and ran into Kings - ten on the flop and it"s me with 330,000 vs TC with 68,000. Care to chop? says Phil...
We play a few hands and I get a duece in pretty much every one of them and then lose a flip.
Phil asks again for a chop and I say - if I get one more hand with a deuce...
Sure enough out comes the
, it"s late... chopped!
One quality moment in this came when one of the local "experts" in the BB with a stack of 17000 flat called my utg+2 raise to 9500 behind one caller and then checked the very raggy flop and turn, before folding to my called bet on the turn. Folded his small blind too ... and he ran deep in the last two day £100 at the G...
I"ll be playing tomorrow and Thursday this week. The nobbers game is moving to G ton Thursday with dealers supplied to say thanks for the support at the GP. Maybe this week it"s my turn to win that. It"s been a while since I even got close to it.
