It has been a long time!
I was chatting to a friend the other day, and was saying that I had played about 7 hours poker in 17 months. Nearly two years since I played a face to face event (that I can remember).
Glorious sunshine in London - so I decided it was time to return to The Vic.
Super stack event - £150+15 (One re-entry allowed) - 30,000 chips - 12 * 30 minutes levels - likely to be £15k+ up top.
Level 1 25/50 - Maniac"s standard raise to 1050 - wait for cards none come - maniac will broadly three barrel anyone who calls him so an expensive game to play.
Clearly getting too much action with his 21BB approach - he goes for the raise to 1350 UTG - amusingly gets 4 callers (not including me). His first barrel only gets rid of one caller ... second barrel gets rid of nobody ... River brings a possible flush and the BB jams it all in. Escape route not taken - he dwell calls - next to act also calls - last to act folds trip tens. Pretty weird hard on level 1 of a 600BB event ... BB has the Queen Flush ... Maniac mucks ... other caller trip aces from the flop ... so we have a mega stack and two exits on level 1.
Level 2 - only 300BB now - we lost two more - happily one to me with 73s in the BB - flop 732 - he triple barrels 200BB with his UTG Q5 raise which never improved.
Now chipped up I can happily play everything in position and happily take out a speech maker with 42o, making the wheel on the turn and three times average chips by level 6.
Beautiful table is split up but momentum continues with another gift AQ vs A4 into AQx - they re-raised pre flop and barrelled it off. This took me to c170k and still 2.5 times the average.
Next table split is promising but no cards and I finished the day on 127,400 vs 104,400 average - all to play for.
I think more like £18k up top now - maybe more. Likely to be c145 runners left for today.
Looking forward to day 2 - hoping for a favourable draw to hoover up short stacks.
Standard was generally terrible - which is incredibly encouraging but there are some monster stacks kicking about - will be nice to attack these too.
So it"s a ... steak and eggs ... sunshine ... poker day ... life is good.
L
