Sep 26th - £100+£10 NL Hold'Em - Western Club (Acton)

In order to be a success at poker there are certain 'pre-conditions' you must adhere to. Any attempt to play whilst digressing from the following list will lead to your demise at the table in a rapid like fashion...

1) Don't drink too much either before or during the game - Makes the game fun but forget about winning as your brain contains nothing but thoughts of sex

2) Don't eat too much either before or during the game - Your body becomes pre-occupied dealing with the food in your stomach and loses interest in the though processes that go into playing poker.

3) Be relaxed and WIDE AWAKE - Being snoozy leads to no coherant thoughts whilst playing as you're too busy thinking of bo-bos.

So having broken 2 of the three rules, as set out above, in last nights £100 NL game at the Western I lasted precisely three hands...two of which I passed.

I ate pie & chips (very nice it was too) 1hr before play commenced, had stayed up till gone 1am on Monday night, up at 6.30am Tues AM was ready for snoozies BIG TIME!!

Hand 3 then and I'm in late position with 6d-7d. An EP player raised the blinds up to 250 and I was the only one to flat call. The flop came 3h-5d-7h. My opponent led out to 200 and I flat called thinking he had a hand like A-K, A-Q, A-J etc and was seeing where he was at!

With top-pair I should have perhaps raised here to see where I WAS but food & snooze kicked in! The 8h fell next.

I wasn't too concerned about that as now I had a straight draw AND a pair of 7's. I immediately bet out to 600. My opponent called. Hmmmm???

The 5c fell on the river, pairing the 5d. I had two pair and was feeling happy. My opponent though immediately bet out 1500. WTF! I couldn't fathom that. No way did I put him on a 6-9 or a 4-6 (for the straight) after he'd raised from EP at the start. A bigger pair was certainly possible but why bet it when the board had paired up? No way did he have a 5 either!

Maybe he was trying to scare me off the pot...uh...we'll see about that! 'All-In', I announced ans shoved my 4k+ chip pile into the middle.

He turned away in disgust...turned back and called!! He flipped Ah-Jh for the nut flush and I was gone...mind you I was in snooze land for 10pm!!

Entries ->44 - Place -> 43rd - Loss -> £110 ($203) Profit/Loss for 2006 -> +$13988

(As from 7th August rate of exchange is calculated at £1 = $1.85)

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The rest of this week will be taken up by 3 events on-line.

Tonight...Wed 27th...I'm playing in the $300 PL Hold'Em event on Pokerstars. Tomorrow the $100,000 guarantee event via the Gutshot website and on Saturday I'm playing in my first Partypoker 'MONSTER' $100,000 Weekly free-roll event. Not really a free-roll as I had to qualify via a $10 satellite but for a $12.5k 1st prize I'll take what I can get!

I'll do a brief write up on each event over the next few days but you'll find me on all sites as UKPOKER!