Feb 1st - £50+£5 NL Hold'Em (Loose Cannons)

Thursday night is league night, well at least until the end of March, down at Loose Cannons and the offer of the $10k freeroll taking place next Tuesday night down there has brought new members in like wildfire!

A few dained to join tonights £50 (+£5 bounty) event so upon starting at 6:25pm we had 16 runners. A record me-thinks!

For those of you new to this blog I'm attempting to win a free trip to Las Vegas, courtesey of the Loose Cannons club. The 'league' takes place every Thursday night and entrants accumulate points based on a) entry (3 points) b) bounty buttons collected (2 points each) & prize money points (18 for 1st, 15 for 2nd, 13 for 3rd).

Points accumulate on a weekly basis for 13 weeks at the end of which there's a final tournament where every point you've collected over the 13 weeks are worth 25 'chip' points for the final. The winner of that wins the trip to Las Vegas in June!

There's one more thing as well. At the start of the evening a player draws a card, from a choice of 4, to see if the league games, that night, are for 'single' points or 'DOUBLE' points. Of course doing well when its single points is not quite the same as doing well on DOUBLE points night but we try our best!

Upto now, and after 4 weeks, I'm on 90 points (1st - 2nd - 1st - 6th) but its important to continue to do well as some lucky brick got 44 points last week and is on 110 already!

Ok...so what about tonight!

The usual fish were on the table and as its been the usual set of players these past few weeks its now fairly easy to see how most of them play and adapt accordingly!

Early doors and I make an ill advised 600 point bluff at a point with Q-10 only to get called by opponent with bottom pair on a board of J-9-7-A-5. After that I tightened up somewhat!

With blinds at 50-100 I held 5h-7h and flat called a small raise to 200 from Mr MP. Three of us saw a flop of 9h-10c-Jh. I checked. Mr MP bet out to 500. Mr LP re-raised to 1500 and I, after a tiny amount of thought, went all-in looking for any 8 or a heart!

Surprise, surprize when BOTH players called. Mr MP held J-K (no heart). Mr LP held 10-J (no heart). The 3h was followed by the Ah and I now had circa 7k in chips!

Players started to drop at the 100-200 level but I just bided my time kocking another player out when my A-Q beat out K-Q and I reached the final table of 9 with circa 10k in chips.

There were three prizes tonight (£400-£240-£160) but the points mean that little bit more so I sat back and waited for the drop-outs to commence.

I didn't have to wait long. At the 300-600 level 4 players dropped. The 400-800 level started and there were five of us left. An all-iner with 9-9 was called by a player with A-K. Both an Ace and a King hit and we were down to 4.

The short stack went all-in with A-4 to be called by player with K-K. Now we were 3. Points time!

As I'd sat back and waited for other players to go my chip stack had gone nowhere and I was down to 8k. Compared to the other two players left I'd have to come out swinging to get back into the game...so I did with A-6 and ran into A-K.

Oh well...3rd place and £170 (£160+£10 for my 2 bounty buttons) was ok by me. I also got 20 points from the night so now sit on 110 after 5 events. My nearest rival now has 115 after he got knocked out early with 1 bounty button to his name.

I reckon if I get upto 200+ points by the time the final comes around I'll be in great shape for a shot at the Vegas trip!

Entries -> 16 - Place -> 3rd - Win -> £115 Profit/Loss for 2007 -> +£797

(As from 1st Jan 2007 rate of exchange is calculated at £1 = $1.90)