Oct 12th - £500+£50 NL Hold'Em (Victoria Club)

I'll maybe play 4-6 of these £500+ buy in's in a single year as the variance in poker is such that you have to get EXTREMELY lucky to get your money back on them in general.

Tonight there were 137 runners at the Vic for this event and even though the structure is good with blind increases every 45 mins you're always looking at your cards knowing that this could be the last hand on the night if the poker gods deem it that way!

On table 12 I get pro's Willie Tann to my immediate left and Ben Roberts two doors further away. You know you're not playing with muppets even though the rest of the table looked, and acted at times, as though they themselves were!

I started steadily. A pair of 6's in the hole turned a set on the flop and even though betting was slow I managed to eek out 1200 points in profit which added nicely to my start stack of 5000.

It wasn't long before we moved tables and I get the bucket seat (seat 1) on my new one. Not my favourite position!

Nevertheless I get a few more chips when I make the nut flush with Ac-5c on a scary board of Qc-Qs-Jc-8c-4s and a few more chips then get added when I flop two pair. The wheels though were shortly to come off!

At this level of buy-in I expect players that raise from the off to have a certain standard of hand and I assume that if you took a straw poll amongst other like minded individuals they'd agree. This is where poker becomes POKER though and its a fine line between success & failure!

In LP I get J-J. With blinds still at 50-100 there's a raise, in EP, to 400. An EP raise to me looks like A-J, A-Q or A-K. When the action reaches me I decide that discretion is the better part of valour and simply flat call as the alternative maybe a raising war which I'd be scared to lose.

The flop is 6-8-9 rainbow! EP man bets out 500. I decide to flat call one time and then reraise all-in if no 'scary card' comes on the turn...after all he's missed right???

The turn card is a 4. Its a rainbow flop! AGAIN EP man bets out...this time 1100. Now I'm getting concerned but what the hell has he got?? A set is probably out of the question as he'd have checked from the off. Big pair??? Maybe??? I'm stumped. I call the 1100 bet.

River card is a 3. He now checks! In hindsite I should have just checked and shown my J-J but I decided to get agressive and bet our 2k. He then moves all-in for another 1450 and I'm forced to call. He flips.......10-7 for a flopped straight.....URGH!!!

My chip stack is decimated although I still have a playable 2500 chips left.

The trouble with me though is that I HATE playing short stacked. My game isn't geared to mini-bets & mini-calls. I wanna beat the fuckers out of pots with booming bets and big bluffs which I can't do with mini-stacks.

A short while later I get 3-3 and decide for a double up or die! Some 18 year old kid thinks K-Q is nice and calls my 2200 bet! A King hits the flop and its all over...again!!!

Entries -> 137 - Place -> --- Loss-> £550 Profit/Loss for 2007 -> -£1873(As from 20th April 2007 rate of exchange is calculated at £1 = $2.00)