Mr Brightside

[Santino67]

Guilty as charged, I"m full of the meh, fkn dealer, what a fish, he"s a lucky donk etc etc etc...............but I"ll try to do it with a smile (though usually after licking my wounds)  

[pokerpops]

Treacle!!!

Nothing more to say on the matter  

Now Bonnie.. my preference of Hobnob only lasted an hour or so after the original Treacle  

This evening.. was planning on playing the £120 deepstack game at the G with the fossil and pokerpops but after checking bank balance after dog purchase, then the extensive beer funds required for DTD, have an evening of beer from the fridge and some cheapo rebuy action on the APAT or Genting site planned.

Happy days.

That"s not the Brightside approach Phil. The £120 is an investment to generate beer funds...

[PHIL_TC]

Tonight.. managed to donk off my chips in heroic style this evening in the online cup. Squeeze play goes bad its filed under. The brightside? shared my table with some great APATers and had some banter... and 2 beers (yes thats all I lasted.. sigh).. and got the promise of some horlicks from Mair. All good  

Makes me think back to the start of it all really... as I said before The Eagle was the first pub in the area / region to offer pub poker and I was in like a shot. Gary Palmer had invited me to 1/2p home game previously and I was hooked. The league (now I cant remember if it was pokerinthepub or pokerdownthepub) was great and more importantly immense fun. It was run as a league depending on finishing positions but players got extra points for turning up with sunglasses and more for a hat. Haha.. genius!



Thats me back in the day... (looking smashed) final table.. hat..extra 10 points thank you  

We had some fun and "odd" regional finals, back then. Regional at the local casino? Nope.. as we were the only pub in the region we had to play the first regional finals (which I managed to luckbox into.. what made it even better was around a dozen of each pub qualified) which was a "Poker Cruise". The Caribbean? No.. they"d hired the Mersey Ferry for the evening. Full evening on a boat.. band provided.. great craic.

The next regionals I think were on a steam railway in North Wales where we played 4 handed per table per carriage. Such a laugh.. made the whole poker experience an event, a day out, plenty of beer and lots of laughs. This made the whole getting away, playing somewhere random, the lure of playing poker. Kind of like what was to come with APAT. 

From all this the Stockton Massive would form.. more to come on this later.

Happy days.

[Santino67]

Steam railway sounds magnificent  

[PHIL_TC]

Steam railway sounds magnificent  

Was Grant   And if I remember rightly our "own" Paul Pitchford was MD of the pokerdownthepub company back in those days, genius! Paul if this isnt right fire away and will edit this out x

The Eagle poker community grew and grew, I remember agreeing to TD one Thursday for a few beers and we had over 45 people turn up. Now this isnt the biggest pub in the world, and we only had 4 tables. We had players jammed into every area, playing on plain pub tables etc. Crazy. Me trying to play with all that going on... Fail! Also doesnt help you have certain people (Stu) dwelling J5o, then refusing to fold after I"d seen his cards (I was obviously out by then) and insisting on someone calling clock, then taking the full minute  on the final table when the pub was due to close any minute

Close friendships were formed over the years, and as pubs cottoned on to the boom games and leagues sprouted up all over the place. I remember planning the week around Anna and which pubs to play in which nights.. meaning more friendships all over the area. Was fantastic.

As with anything though it was all too good to last. Over saturation and with the Eagle moving to a new league which only offered top 2 places to the regionals meant that people lost interest, either down to having little chance of making the regional (whereas before the top dozen would have gone) or if making the regional it wasnt so much of an event as they were now in casinos, and there was only two travelling...the other of course not guaranteed to be a close mate.

The Stockton Massive and tonnes of friends had been formed though mainly from two main local pubs of the Eagle and the Fairfield..  plus the Cobblers from Newton Aycliffe... too many names to mention but we went onto form the successful "Stockton on Tees" APAT team in years to come. From this a splinter group which we nicknamed the nobber nine Stu "The cock" and Matt "The rock" Ward, Gary "big balls" Palmer, Simon "its a long walk home" and Mark "its all about the win" Wright, Dave "pokerpops" Amos, Dave "Fiddy" Mcgowan, Gary "luckbox" Motson formed, reasons why to follow.. (Brian the fossil was to appear later)..

Anyway I had the bug good and proper by now and started venturing to the local casino and one weekend a drive up to Newcastle Aspers was met with the whole cardroom being booked out to some organised tournament, I was obviously too late to join in and was gutted that the hours drive was in vain. Made me want to know more about this "APAT" lot who had spoiled my Saturday night when I got back home....

[Santino67]

Made me want to know more about this "APAT" lot who had spoiled my Saturday night when I got back home....

Never known APAT to spoil anyone"s Saturday night, that must"ve been the exception. Planning ahead FTW mate  

[Chipaccrual]

If you want to hear bad beat after bad beat story, just pull up a chair at the APAT Update Area during any event.

I swear Rich and I used to flick the auto nod switch at times.

I don"t mind listening to poker stories, but please make sure it is a bad beat that you were on the end of.  Losing a coinflip after grinding for 8 hours does NOT count, and I will let you know this at the time.  

[Fatcatstu]

the good old days, really do miss them poker in the pub times

Sitting there listening to some smack headed chav talking cack about a game he didnt understand (pretty much like me on the satuday night of an APAT) wasnt fun at the time, but looking back now it makes me giggle endlessly

Enjoying reading this Phil, its bringing back some cracking memories. MORE PLEASE!!!!

[fandango]

Does Bonnie need a Clyde?.. Have a rather cute adorable NAUGHTY 5 month old Beagle puppy.. sigh if only Emma would let me re-home lol.. Good luck with yours hope the house, SHOES and furniture survive the onslaught!!! xx

[PHIL_TC]

Does Bonnie need a Clyde?.. Have a rather cute adorable NAUGHTY 5 month old Beagle puppy.. sigh if only Emma would let me re-home lol.. Good luck with yours hope the house, SHOES and furniture survive the onslaught!!! xx

To be honest Carl you"re not selling it mate  

Have bought chew toys, bones, chew sticks.. and the only thing she wants to eat is my Christmas tree nearly three years up and I"m now considering taking it down.. bad times. Came down this morning and it for once did not wee itself all over the floor gave it loads a praise and all was well. Then I found the two massive turds at the front door.. sigh

Eastenders has just come on the TV and this brings back a relationship where the lady in question was a massive "soap" fan. I work from home and she used to come round after work, bung on her comfy clothes, switch on the TV and we had back to back Hollyoaks, Eastenders and Corry. After spending all day at home the last thing I wanted to do was chill out and watch this "entertainment".. what a depressing pile of... needless to say that one was never going to be a winner. Apologies to soap fans. But seriously? Is this stuff supposed to make you feel good about life? Or make your life feel so much better... soaps are well and truly in my room 101 with bad beat stories...

So tonight is another online cup game, Stockton Massive in 3rd after another 2 on the final table (WP Brian and Gary Palmer), have supped extra Guinness in preparation this evening, putting the lack of alcohol down to the 2nd last place for me Sunday. Happy days.

[AceOnTheRiver]

Just caught up with this. Great start and really looking forward to its evolution.

I will be making my Stockton Poker debut on Thurs 6th Sep and really looking forward to it.

In the meantime... there"s a little event in Nottingham

I was worried that It would start off all guns blazing, then I"d lose interest, end up posting the odd poker update, and really not getting anything out of it apart from the odd whinge, "lost another flip" etc..

And note to self, this is exactly what"s heppened to my blog. Must reprise.

[PHIL_TC]

I will be making my Stockton Poker debut on Thurs 6th Sep and really looking forward to it.

Big like Look forward to it mate, beers to be had at DTD prior to that though x

So the online cup was going REALLY well at one point which even deserved a little screen shot, Stockton Massive 1,2,3,4 with 13 left.



However.. as with most things.. it didnt last.. think we were good for 2nd place again though, means we"re well in with a shout come Sunday. WP team x

[gjp100]

You should have taken a screen-shot when you had 3 pair.  I still think you SHOULD win with 3 pair. Stupid rules getting in the way!  

Feel free to delete the above if it"s edging towards bad beat territory!  

[PHIL_TC]

You should have taken a screen-shot when you had 3 pair.  I still think you SHOULD win with 3 pair. Stupid rules getting in the way!  

Feel free to delete the above if it"s edging towards bad beat territory!  

Stupid game isn"t it   3 pair vs 2 pair should always win... but always seems not to.. my fault for getting into pots with raggy crap

gjp100 (Gary Palmer) is the man to blame for me playing poker, took me to a random home game where I had no clue what I was doing, and that no clue has continued ever since.. was there the very first night at the Eagle with me, random trips upto Newcastle Aspers where he seemed to bink everything, all the way through till today. Unfortunately Gary doesnt make that many APATs (think the last one was Spain) but hoping to twist his arm to come upto Glasgow.

ps Gary.. I have a plan by the way for Great North Run sponsorship mate, if you"re there tonight will run it by you, think its genius x

[PHIL_TC]

So after coming back home from a trip to Aspers and seeing that this "APAT" lot had booked the whole place out, I did some googling.. the year is 2006 and I see that there"s a website, a forum with various "characters" on it so I lurk for a long while, enjoying the banter from afar.. then finally join in 2007 as I see something that catches my eye... there"s a trip to Austria. On my birthday in March. Surely too good to be true... a random trip somewhere to play poker you say? I mention to the gang back at the Eagle that I"m going to go.. no-one fancied it.. a 75 quid buyin event, and you want to go to Austria?   Yip.. I sure did.

What followed was a random meet with a complete stranger at an airport, flight to Bratislava, a road trip, Orange Wings, a fantastic tournament, a cash, getting lost in Vienna, and then one of the strangest hotels in the world on the way home in Bratislava. More to come. But needless to say, I was hooked.