Sunshine on a rainy day

Weekend saw an early departure on Saturday morning as me and the Mrs and a group of friends headed south for Ascot. Jack had chosen that morning to take his 1st tottering steps and so despite the slightly bleary eyes from a late Friday night and 6:30am wakeup on Saturday morning I was in good spirits.

Dodging the downpours at Ascot, me and the Mrs had already polished off one bottle of fizz before it was time to look at the card for the 1st race. I'd not had anything to eat and the legs were feeling a bit wobbly so while I went to get some food I left the Mrs to put some bets on.... she managed to put twice as much as I'd asked her and the nag failed to place. The double up on the red hot fav in the 2nd also went south and I was already staring at a £300 hole after two races. 3rd race followed suit. 4th was more disappointing as my pick was nosed out on the line after being in front for the last 300yds.

5th race saw a 10-1 shot come in 2nd and returned some money back in my direction. 6th bailed out the day and paid ticket, taxis and all 3 bottles of bubbly we'd consumed by this point , as another 10-1 shot stormed home. Can't remember what happened in the 7th as we had another bottle to celebrate not losing. After this the day starts to blur a little.

We got a taxi across to Basingstoke in time for the start of the now legendary Duffs home game. 53 runners at £100 a head saw a decent enough prize pool. A few more beers to top up the levels and we were off. I vaguely remember playing like a total headcase and bulldozing the table while yo-yoing up and down my stack. I've been assured that I was suffering from acute verbal diarrhea much to the amusement of most of the table. The cards went well and when they didn't I stuck them in and picked the pot up taking care not to put the stack in too much danger ( i think). Managed to upset one of the Bf forum guys with a KJ vs AK suck out but and i had him well covered.

Mrs Splash was also playing and went stage left early doors after walking into Ariston JJ with AK and no help. Quote from Mrs Splash on Ariston "Talks a lot doesn't he?"

Next thing I know (I may well have dozed off at some point) its final table time and Im chip lead with about 105k. 4 hands later I'm down to about 15k after highstack refused to lay down top pair decent kicker on a flush board. One double up with AK and another with a very lucky A5 vs QQ where i somehow managed to river three 5s and it was game on again. (On a side note I was going to title this entry "Sunshine on a rainy day... makes my fives trip trip waheyyy!" but decided it was far too naff!

The decisive hand of the night came via what i think was a mistake by the guy to my right when we were 4 handed. There were three big stack and one short stack. Blinds are something like 6000-12000 and the short stack jams for about 30k.... the big stack just flat calls and leaves me no choice but to call with K3os. Flop makes me 2 pair and him an up and down. He checks, I bet, he jams and i call. No help for mateyboy and I take two out to leave me heads up with about 75% of the chips.

By this time its 4:30am and Im cream crackered and in no mood for tactical raise pass play, I call an ALL IN with Ace Rag and he catches one of his two under cards to make it about 50/50 chips wize. Two minutes later and Js9d sees a Jd 4 d7d all the money goes in and he flips 6d 5c for an up and down. A diamond obliges on the river and it turns out I've got him covered by just 500 chips.

So Wonky is Duffs Homie Champ for 2007 :) £1800 plus a nice trophy for the trouble.

The HU stuff is still going very well. Still trying to catch Hawko on the BF leader board. Made up a lot of ground but may have to wait until next month in order to mount a full challenge for the top spot. Buzzer is currently 2nd and I'm pretty confident I can overtake him in the next week. Without a total tilt session this week, the month should be safely looking at a five figure +ive ....... boy it's good to be back!

Mojo returns!

Well so far so good on the heads up experiment. I’m sat here trying to figure out why I didn’t do this a while ago. In the space of two weeks I’ve managed to eradicate 5months of decidedly average cash games and build the bank roll back up to a decent level. To be honest it’s a big relief and feels bloody good to win a decent chunk.

I’ve really been working hard at it on the $200-$400 games on BF and Crypto and showing a very good return on both. Even though I had a bit of a late start in June on these I’m well placed on the Betfair High Stakes STT monthly league. I think hawko (Mr G Reaper) will take some catching in 1st spot but if I can put the hours in I’ll give it a go. The HU STTs on Crypto are gradually gaining more players but these sort of games are ideal for playing across multiple sites to ensure I can always get a game.

BF is now playable and they seem to be ironing out most of the bugs that were causing all those problems pre Christmas. The new resizable screens are good. I think the games are a touch softer than Crypto in places, there is some value in the MTTS but they still lagging a bit behind Hills on the rakeback stakes running at 30-36% compared to Hills 30-55%.

The prize for winning the Dream Team weekly league was an entry to a $750 WSOP sat on BF. It’s just about to start now so I’ll be off. May well post some pics from Duffs home game/ ascot over the weekend.

Good Luck

Jim

Two big chances go begging!

Well I'd like to say the holiday in Spain was totally relaxing, but 4 couples and 5 babies (4 of which were under 12months old) made for a bit of a hectic week. Jack, who usually sleeps like a log from 7.30pm to 7am was ill and very grumpy for the last 4 days and promptly gave it to me on our return. The 'break' seemed to work well for the poker though the last few days in May proved quite profitable with a £2k + and saw a nice bounce back from what could have been a very poor month.

The 1st week in June saw two golden opportunities to qualify for major tournaments, the first being the final of the BadBeat Dream Team league. Our team (ChipsMonkies) were hands down winners of the league and this translated to bigger starting stacks in the live final for the 4 team members playing. I was up in Manchester for Jacks birthday but Doobs kept me updated with progress. In the end we just lost out in 2nd place when Doobs jammed with Kings on the final table only to be called by QT! A king on the flop looked to seal it but running J and A sealed the ChipMonkies fate and saw the 8 EPT seats go begging.

Not all was lost as each team member picked up a few hundred quid for the two final table places and a complimentary entry to this Thursdays $750 WSOP qualifier on BF. I also played in a $7000 WSOP ten seater freeroll with Hills. Only 5 from 10 turned up and one of those was 30mins late!! I ran ok early on when it didn't matter and very badly as the blinds started to kick in. I picked up Jacks on a ten high flop and had to pass when I was re-raised all-in by the table rock. 10mins later and it's me and Mr Rock again. I'd told him that I didn't have enough to pass to a re-raise again and AQ on a Ace high flop looked good enough to me.... in go the chips and he flips AK. Very disappointing, but when it's not your day, it's not your day.

I've decided to have a bit of a change in June poker wise, Crypto have finally introduced Heads Up Sit and Go tournaments. I've played a few of these on Betfair recently with a few quid I had in the old BF account and i've enjoyed some success. I've decided to play little or no cash in June and concentrate on these HU games to see how it goes. So far so good, I'm mainly playing £100-£200 games and already managed to tilt a few of the better players with some quality nutcase play. The target is to play 400-500 of these a month and aim for a ROI of > 5% plus rakeback. I'm still finding it hard to put the hours in, it seems like every weekend we've got something on or somewhere to go. The house is finished downstairs now and we've just had 2 weeks of non stop parties for Jack and Shells birthdays. Hopefully I can pull my finger out and knuckle down. The good thing about the HU games is you can squeeze one or two into a spare half hour as opposed to sitting down for a few hours for a cash session. It also places less pressure on a depleted bank roll than cash games do, so hopefully it will suit.

The Mrs has booked some tickets for the Saturday at Royal Ascot (23rd) so I need to dust off the suit, it's on the same day as the legendary Duffs Home game in Basingstoke so me and MrsSplash will be making the trip across (half cut I should imagine) to play in the £100 Freeze out. I'll prob take the camera and post a few pics for the Betfair forum readers.

Cheers,

Jim