Feb 21st - £20+£3 NL Hold'Em - LCI Club (Brighton)

Ok. The first things to note about the differences between playing in Dublin and playing in Brighton is that the play is very much looser in Brighton than Dublin. I've never seen so may calls with bottom pair in my life. Needless to say I capitalised on the willingness of players to go 'all-in' on most crap early on and by the time the rebuy period had ended, after 90 frantic minutes, I had a stack approaching 20k.

Now thats not to say I didn't buy in myself...cos I did...twice but I soon realised that unlike Dublin where they increase your chip count the more you buy in the level of chips you receive for each £20 note you whizz at the dealers remains constant thereby making top-ups a no-brainer in terms of forget-about-it!

I mean...who in their right mind's gonna top up if you have more than 10k in chips if you're only getting 7 BB's in return for another £20...duh!

Anyway...early on I hit cards. My pairs were beating the high cards and my high cards were beating the pairs so everything was right with the world.

After the break I got lucky & unlucky, as you do, and found myself at the last two tables with around 25k in chips and blinds at 1k-2k.

It seems to be always around this time that I make a mistake and go out. I was determined not to let this happen but....!!!

With 12 of us left and two tables of 6 players the blinds were coming around quite rapidly. One player on our table was raising every other hand and generally scooping the blinds each time. On this ocassion I look down and see 3-3. Not the greatest hand in the world I know but certainly stronger than A-K or any two cards that didn't make a pair.

Anyway...the player across from me raises to 7k. He had a few more chips than me so I decided to put him to the test and lump in. 'I call', he states and flips Q-Q. Doh!! The flop is 2-5-6 giving me all sorts of possibilities but a 9 followed by a King puts paid to my ambitions once again and I go out in 12th, 3 off the money.

Fifty-nine runners and a prize pool of £5000. Not bad!! I'll be back!

Entries -> 59 - Place -> 12th - Loss -> £63 ($110) Profit/Loss for 2006 -> +$1736