My New Topic

[MintTrav]

Like the rest of you, I am devastated to learn that The Captain and Tennille are to be divorced, after more than 40 years together. We need to support each other at times like this.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0sOA6hTg0[/youtube]

[Matt D]

<3 that song. I was also sad to hear of their split

[MintTrav]

Stopped off at The Vic on the way back from Stoke and played a 19-runner £30 rebuy GUKPT satellite. Banked tyvm. I should just play at The Vic all the time; it is by far my winningest venue. I played a 10-runner STT satellite a couple of years ago and won a seat in that year"s GUKPT ME, though the actual event didn"t work out. I also won a 70-runner MTT and an APAT there, and I crashed in another APAT. So this one brings the running score to 4/6 (albeit two of which had tiny fields). My game selection remains as crap as ever, though. I am due to play an LPPL game online on Saturday night, which should be interesting if I"m still in the live game (yeah, I know - won"t be a problem, etc).

This is in stark contrast to my bogey venue, DTD, where I can never win a blasted thing. I have played no end of tournaments there, but never seem to get very far, whether it is an APAT event or one of their own. I"m probably the only person who is delighted that the WCOAP is taking place elsewhere this time.

It"s all very strange. I have no doubt that the venue thing is an illusion - random occurrences showing some repetition, and I am seeing a pattern that doesn"t really exist. I wonder whether other people find the same thing with venues.

[MintTrav]

I"ve been reading the novel Crystal by Katie Price, which I found in a drawer at some company. I recommend this inspirational work, which does a brilliant job of portraying life in our post-modern world. Be warned, though, that it is not an easy read. This book is quite challenging and you may need to stop and absorb what has been presented, probably re-reading certain chapters to grasp them more fully before moving on to the next.

Here is a short extract, to give you a flavour of what to expect, but you will only obtain the full benefit by reading the entire work:

"I"m single at the moment actually", Crystal replied, trying to sound casual. "How about your girlfriend?" She wanted to double-check that he wasn"t with Eve any more. She actually felt herself blush and hoped it was dark enough for Jake not to have noticed. She didn"t think she was the blushing type, but Jake seemed to be having quite an effect on her. "I"m single too." He was looking right at her and Crystal gazed back at him. This was very promising.

Published by Century.

[MintTrav]

So, had a fun day at the GUKPT. I had Willie Tann on my right in seat 3, I was in 4, Alan Vinson in 1, so there was plenty of catching up done. Tann was a lot of fun. He knows everybody, and they all came to touch the garment of the great man. I didn"t know most of them, but those I recognised who came to our table to pay homage included Padraig Parkinson, Boris Becker, Bambos Xanthos and a Boatman.

There were a couple of bizarre incidents. Simon Trumper arrived with his second bullet. On his first hand, he raised my BB from 200 to 5400. He told me straight away that it was a mistake and he had mixed up the 25 and 5000 chips cos he"s colour-blind. Christ. I was mulling over whether it would be considered bad form and I would be disowned by the poker community if I shoved over it. T2 didn"t seem the best option if he called though. As it happened, Tann shipped anyway. Back to Trumper, who says "Oh well, let"s compound the mistake by calling". He wasn"t in such bad shape with 99 against AQ, but he was down to 2500 after the board came xA22x. Hmmmm. A while later, with BB 600, Tann raised. "Thirteen thousand". He puts in 1,300, but the dealer makes him put in the 13k. No-one calls this time. Keith Hawkins came to seat 1 halfway through and told me about his days in Portsmouth.

I was short-stacked all day and, in the end, crawled through to Day 2 with an pathetic embarrassment of chips that I wouldn"t glorify by calling it a stack. I was expecting to be eliminated any minute for at least the last four hours, but somehow didn"t get put out of my misery.

I suspect I"m not long for this game today. I appear to be on a table of mostly shorter stacks, though not many as short as me. Got one of the chip-leaders to my immediate left though.

[Quasar]

Love your blog John, good luck for today, with a few double-ups xx

[MintTrav]

Went back with 16k. After two hands I had over 50k. First hand AK; shoved over a raise, called with AQ by mement_mori himself, Mickey Petersen, which made the original raiser fold. Next hand I get AQ, flop is AQx and I get loads. Then I had KK cracked by someone who doesn"t know the difference between early and mid-tournament play and called a raise with 89 and ended up back where I started, where I"ve been ever since. Went even lower, but shoved anything pretty a few times to get back a bit. Shoved over Brammer"s raise with 22. Told him some nonsense about not minding getting knocked out now that the dinner had just been served. Anyway, he folded.

60 left now, 31 get paid. I"m still favourite to bust soon, but who knows? Looking around, there seem to be only two others from my table yesterday still in, which is amazing considering the stacks some of the others had.

[MintTrav]

Out 47th or 48th, doesn"t matter which - they both receive the same prize as 300th. There are plenty of pro players scattered through the field, but it seems that there are also some people playing these tournaments who regard them the way I regard LPPL games in the pub during the week - as a bit of fun, with a poker game thrown in, but mainly a chance to meet their friends. A quarter of the field re-entered, so those have an advantage over the ones who satellite in with one shot as they can go all out (all-in?) with their flush draws, etc and either get a double stack or come back in with the same chips. If they lose, the other player who can afford to take big risks gets the chips.

Anyway, no spondulicks, but I enjoyed it a lot.

[MintTrav]

A couple of observations:

I saw plenty of people squeezing out the corner of one card and then the other. Slows down the game when a few of them do it one after the other in turn. It"s a K! Aw, the other one"s a 3. Just look at your fecking cards! I haven"t noticed this going on in APATs or other lower-cost tournaments, so why are people in high buy-in events drawing out the suspense like a bunch of housewives playing 3-card poker?

On the Trumper thing, the only place I have seen this happen before is DTD. Some of the tournament chips are quite close in colour there and I have seen people put in a hugely wrong amount on several occasions, not because they are colour-blind, but because the chips are too similar. As I say, I have never seen it happen anywhere else. If he has a particular personal problem in this area, you would think that the issue at DTD could have been avoided.

[Hammerite]

You want see to the the chips at The Mint John, the 500 & 5000 are virtually indentical, I have seen many a massive over raise there, I just don"t undertstand it given the number of colours in the spectrum.

[MintTrav]

Had a strange one the night before last - I cashed three times in the same tournament. Had three entries in the MTOPS HORSE and they all went deep, so I finished 18th, 55th and 107th for a total payout of not very much. As usual, all the cash was top-loaded, so I took on all the flips, was riding high for a while, but eventually lost some huge races. It"s bizarre, though, to look at the player-list during the game and see that you are 11th and 14th at the same time.

[MintTrav]

I know we all get bad beats all the time, but sometimes you just can"t believe it. First, one of my entries got dumped out of the MTOPS 10-Game by a 3-outer, when winning the pot would have put me near the top with 630 left. NLHE KQ v KJ. Bet pre and Flop, all-in on Turn. He called each time.
[ ] []. Can"t blame the other guy too much for that one, I guess.


This pot, though, was to go 14/181 with one of my other entries. Playing PLO, I couldn"t believe his hand when I saw what he had got it all in with. Just an over-pair and a dodgy flush draw, which was drawing dead to my made top Full House. He effectively had nothing, drawing to two Queens. TYVM, that"s the hand I needed to push for a proper result. Already thinking about how to play this big stack. The river is a Q - you"re kidding me!

Full Tilt Poker Game #33933793473: MTOPS Event #27 (263317147), Table 1 - PL Omaha Hi - 600/1200 - 21:03:55 WET - 2014/02/21 [16:03:55 ET - 2014/02/21]
Seat 1: Schdaimler (16,599)
Seat 2: pugalan (58,721)
Seat 3: MintTrav (33,224)
Seat 4: monkabelle (50,980)
Seat 5: SibTom10 (44,422)
Seat 6: Burgo_mr (64,121)
pugalan posts the small blind of 600
MintTrav posts the big blind of 1,200
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MintTrav [ ]
monkabelle raises to 2,700
SibTom10 calls 2,700
Burgo_mr folds
Schdaimler calls 2,700
pugalan folds
MintTrav calls 1,500
*** FLOP *** [ ] (Total Pot: 11,400, 4 Players)
MintTrav checks
monkabelle checks
SibTom10 bets 5,700
Schdaimler folds
MintTrav calls 5,700
monkabelle folds
*** TURN *** [ ] [] (Total Pot: 22,800, 2 Players)
MintTrav checks
SibTom10 bets 11,400
MintTrav has 15 seconds left to act
MintTrav raises to 24,824, and is all in
SibTom10 calls 13,424
MintTrav shows [ ]
SibTom10 shows [ ]

Yes! Home and dry, he hardly has any outs.

*** RIVER *** [ ] [] (Total Pot: 72,448, 2 Players, 1 All-In)
MintTrav shows a full house, Eights full of Sevens
SibTom10 shows a full house, Queens full of Sevens
SibTom10 wins the pot (72,448) with a full house, Queens full of Sevens

WTF!

Not long after, my third entry gets busted when KK doesn"t hold up, AIPF. Two negligible cashes, that don"t even register, when I should have had a top stack twice. I"m as calm as anyone I know regarding outdraws, but sometimes the injustice of poker is hard to believe.

[MintTrav]

Oh God, 82 left from 1,126 in the MTOPS Omaha FL Hi/Lo and I"m sitting in 2nd and 10th. Too stressful.


Edit: Stand down, it"s all over. No glory yet again. Fell out the bottom after posting that and ended 38th and 20th for buttons. As usual.

[dwh103]

I was a little surprised not to see you at the Pompey 25/25 yesterday - you playing it today? If so, good luck!

[MintTrav]

I was a little surprised not to see you at the Pompey 25/25 yesterday - you playing it today? If so, good luck!

Nah, I"m in Dublin, doing family stuff (and dipping into some local tournaments). I would definitely have done the 25/25 if I was in Portsmouth, but you can"t play everything.