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I’m playing poker on TV again!
It’s almost as exciting as being on an American cable show that got cancelled in the UK before my episode was shown. This time I’m going to be playing online poker under someone else’s name with someone else’s money, but still – it’s on Poker Night Live!
Not only can you watch this from 9pm tonight (unless it’s cancelled in the next few hours) on Sky channel eight thousand and something, you can watch live online here. Although the only time I’ve tried to watch their webcast before it was so blocky you couldn’t actually see what the hole cards were. Then again, I was trying to stream it using the 3G connection on my phone – what do you expect?
I’m making up the numbers in a $25/$50 blinds no limit game, sitting down with two dimes. Wow, looks like it’s a somewhat bigger game than I’d usually play, where a dime actually is 10c. Ah, the magic of television. The money is real, but every player in the game is a prop so it really doesn’t matter who wins or loses.
I’ll shatter two illusions in one go. It’s also not live. We’re recording about 2pm.
Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be "Super Hero"…
So I tried and just couldn’t do it. I started writing up my play-by-play for the GBPT Teesside £200 Freezeout and sent myself to sleep before I’d got half way.
 So, believe it or not, this is the very short version – minus many of those pesky bet amounts and without most of the minor details about who was in the pot and from what position. Doesn’t really matter, does it?
I nearly got in a mess early on with pocket queens. I had one caller pre-flop and took it down with a re-raise on a J33 flop. I bet, he raised, I thought and eventually managed to raise without moving all in. The pot was getting far too big, far too quickly for my liking and even though I suspected the usual overplayed KJ, I didn’t like my hand that much I didn’t like the thought of being pot committed with that hand.
From the small blind, I raised six limpers with ace-king and five of them called – seven times the big blind! Then I didn’t really know what to do on the ace high flop, out of position. It got checked around on the flop, I bet the turn and check-called a small river bet. He had jack high and I wasn’t quite sure where all my chips had come from.
I faced off against three short stacks before the blinds became silly: My AK beating AT; QQ losing to A6; KK actually dominating KQ.
I check-raised all in with a flush draw against an agressive player who had minimum-raised from first position. I’d called on the button with AQ, the flop was three small spades and I held the ace of spades. He thought for about a week before showing one card that made an inside straight flush draw.
I laid down A9s to an all-in re-raise preflop getting about 2.5-1 on the call. I’d called with worse the night before, but this time I figured the chips I already had were more valuable given the speed the game was moving, but I thought about it for too long and as a result the big blind went up just seconds before it reached me. By now, an average stack was less than ten big blinds, and I now had an average sized stack.
There was an early position raise and a short stack moved all in for less. I found AK in the big blinds and re-raised all in. The raiser folded so I got some change when I lost to pocket aces. The short stack said he’d only looked at one card. I said bullshit. He said no really. I said nice hand.
In the big blind for 4000 I had to call a push for 6100 more. My Q9 lost to a mighty 94. Racing off garbage like this is what poker is all about.
I moved all in with A6s and got called by AT. The board brought K244… I called for another 2 or 4, but a jack was just as good, and I was the only person in the room who realised it was a split pot. The dealer fumbled a bit but I got my money back.
It was folded to the small blind who moved all in and I found ATs on my big blind. Instacall. I lost to QT and went home via the late night garage for a consolation flapjack.
The most interesting thing I saw this weekend by a mile, but that’s not saying much. The brick train sculpture in Darlington, marking the location of Britain’s first railway line. Now the site of a Morrisons supermarket.
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I’m still due some luck then. Today it wasn’t a case of being crippled because I couldn’t win 50/50s, it was that I couldn’t win the hands where I dominated. I finished 19th from 100, lasting long enough to collect the goody bag they gave out to the final three tables, but not long enough to collect any cash. Still, I’m now the proud owner of a GBPT swimming bag which came preloaded with a t-shirt (size L, and not good enough to motivate me to lose that much weight), a pen, a chip, a keyring, a pin badge and a card protector which is actually rather nice. Oh, and the obligatory pack of cards, but the guy next to me spoke for everyone when he said "like I need another one of those".
I’ll probably post some pictures of the freebies when I get home, along with as much as I managed to photograph of the local places of interest. They’re not all that interesting at all – I was bored after not much more than an hour of driving round trying to find stuff. I’d seen a sculpture of a train made out of brick, which "pushed at the boundaries of brick technology" – boy was I impressed – and a transporter bridge, apparently the world’s longest but so much less useful than a road bridge that you could cross at any time without stopping, instead of at fifteen minute intervals during the day and not at all at night.
Yes, it’s grim up north. This far north anyway. This is up beyond Yorkshire, where you have a city with rich Roman and Viking history in York, the fastest growing city in the country in Leeds and a lot of picturesque moors, which have only been spoiled by the occasional serial killer. Up here in Cleveland, the world is stuck in a timewarp, and not in an endeering way. Parts of the towns I explored could very easily have been the set for any period drama based in the 1970s. It may well already have been used for that, I just can’t be bothered to check. Getting back just now I filled my car up using a petrol pump that had a mechanical seven-segment display, none of your newfangled liquid crystal that’s becoming so popular with the rise of the pocket calculator. Not quaint, just crap.
I also wondered if we were stuck in the 1970s after an indicent at the poker table. One player had raised pre-flop and got one caller. The board was queen high, the raiser bet and the caller called. The turn brought another queen, the raiser bet again and the caller moved all in. The raiser must have had kings or aces and eventually folded and the caller – a dark skinned fellow, seemingly of Indian origin but a Teesside local through and through – showed his king queen. Disgusted, the raiser shouted across the table, "Why don’t you go back where you came from?". For a brief moment, if felt like things might be about to get ugly. "Whadeeya mean, like?", he asked. "Back to that other table", came the reply. Oh right, he hadn’t long been moved here. False alarm then, probably.
I’m not writing a match report tonight, but I probably will. I have to be in Hanley tomorrow afternoon for an eye test, and so sleeping before the three hour drive (Autoroute said 2h15 but I don’t believe it) is a good idea. I have notes from all my key hands and this time there were a few interesting confrontations. However, for at least the last hour I was there, the tournament structure left a person with an average stack less than ten big blinds, so there was no poker left to be played. Short stacks had to move all-in with any old garbage and big stacks had to call them with not much better, and everything just went a bit random. In the midst of that, I couldn’t get lucky enough to capitalize on the strong position I’d got myself into during the first four hours.
The tour hits Nottingham next month, I might get to have another crack.
I don’t get the A1(M). There are motorway parts that are just two lanes and non-motorway parts that are three lanes. Aside from making life difficult for learner drivers, what’s the point? One sign on the way up this afternoon advised me that "narrow lanes remain in place for my safety". Clearly much safer than those pesky wide lanes. And why is Scotch Corner signposted from 40 miles away when all that’s there are two roads and a Travelodge? I was somewhat underwhelmed.
So today begins by two day poker trip to fabulous Teesside. I’m staying near Darlington in a very new looking hotel right off the A1(M). It’s nothing fancy, but it would do just fine for anyone considering the Alan Partridge lifestyle in this part of the country.
Did I know how to use the swipe card to get into the room, the receptionist asked me. "Isn’t it just …?", I asked, accompanied by an obvious action. I started to wonder whether electronic door locks were just too modern for northern England. If training was available, could I get a certificate? But in fact it was me who is behind the times. First time I’ve seen this: you have to put your key card in a slot on the wall to turn on the electricity. Great for the environment I’m sure, but no good when I needed to leave my iPod charging when I went out.
So onward to Stockton I went, and there’s not much to report really. I got about half way, lasting 3.5 hours. I lost two out of two races and that was enough to do me in. No interesting hands. Sorry.
I’m still not sure if the real reason I busted was that I was hungry. I’d arrived at 6.30 for a 7pm start, but there was no food available until after 7. Although I did see someone else order food at the table, I was never really comfortable enough about my chip position to do the same, and glad I didn’t too as it took over an hour for a chicken salad to arrive. I was holding A7s in the big blind and after everyone folded to the small blind, he moved all in for virtually the same chips that I had. 7k to call, blinds at 500/1000 with a 100 ante. Eight handed, 2300 in dead money on a 7000 call wasn’t that great, but his range was that wide that I figured I could be ahead often enough to make it not a dreadful call and to go much further in this tournament now I had to gamble to get ahead. He turned up KQo, the flop brought an ace and a king, and he hit a second pair on the river. With a classy hand clap and a little scream of joy.
I just crunched this through Poker Stove. Getting 9-7 pot odds I needed 44% pot equity for a breakeven. A7s is 43.9% against a range that only includes any pocket pair or any ace. If he would push with any other hand than these – which he surely would, and should – then it’s apparently a +EV call. If he’d push any two cards in this spot, I’m 60.9% to win. Doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better about busting with ace-rag (actually it was the next hand, I had 275 left and forced all in on my small blind) but it turns out that I’ve made worse decisions. Maybe I’m just in denial about my subconscious desire to go broke so I could get a burger though.
For the first two hours I was playing on a table that was so well padded it felt like a bouncy castle. Chips would not stand in stacks of more than five or so unless you used the rail to prop them up, so players just started to gather mounds as they won pots. Three tables were built like this, apparently – someone must like foam.
Whoever chose the chip colours needs to be shot too. I can live with non-standard colours (altough why the hell not just use a tried and tested scheme?) but they need to be better thought out than this. 25s were red and 100s were purple, with the Great British Poker Tour logo taking the majority of the face of the chip so the value numbers were tiny. These two looked virtually identical, even close up. 500s were green and 1000s yellow and with the grey edge spots – the same colour on every chip – being bigger than the amount of chip colour left visible on the edge, it wasn’t exactly easy to see at a glance how many chips another player had. Even the cheap composite bought-off-ebay chips that they poured over Michelle from Liberty X would have been better.
Anyway, back tomorrow. Same structure, more money. And it’ll be my turn to get lucky.
… but there is apparently one close match, according to Hertz. This is the choice of locations I got today when I asked for a car rental quotation.
People who bring their kids to Vegas deserve to be dangled from the top of the fake Eiffel Tower until they see the error of their ways. That’s if having to stay at Circus Circus isn’t deterrent enough. But now there is a Las Vegas that it actually is OK to take your kids to.
Legoland California last week opened its doors to Miniland Las Vegas. What model village on earth could be cooler than Las Vegas made out Lego, I ask you? I’m sure there must actually be a Lego Empire State Building or Sphinx, but now there’s also a whole miniature town of fake landmarks made out of tiny building blocks. Fantastic. I’m hoping we get chance to make the trip over there in the summer (it’s a four and a half hour drive to Carlsbad CA, about 30 miles north of San Diego). But until I can take my own photos, I’ll link to other people’s.
 The press release puts the brick count for the ten replica hotels at 2 million and time to build at 16,000 man hours, over three years. Three years is a long time in Las Vegas, and so not surprisingly it’s already a litle bit out of date.
The rides at the top of the Stratosphere date it as circa 2004. X-Scream (opened October 2003) is there but Insanity (opened March 2005) is not. The High Roller coaster, which was dismantled and removed in December 2005 – possibly using a big parachute, although really that’s just wishful thinking – is still there in Lego form.
The Treasure Island replica still features that cumbersome name in full, although it is built from bricks that resemble its new colour. Perhaps a post-production paint job? The new "TI" sign has been around since late 2003 but is missing in Legoland, although the Disney-esque skull and crossbones has been removed from the marquee.
A few feet over at Excalibur, the Merlin figure is missing from his window in the castle – he was pulled out in real life only last month – but I expect that yoinking a wizard is a fairly easy modification to make. I know it’s no longer cool to be a themed resort (as shown by the rumours about Luxor’s new name, which might not actually be nonsense) but just how are Excalibur going to get away from the fact that their pretty big hotel – the largest in the world when it opened – is shaped like a giant castle?
The sign at Paris appears to say "Paris Rock". Presumaly this is a reference to the Queen show "We Will Rock You" which used to play there. It closed in November 2005. If you look closely, you can also see a Blue Man Group advert on the Luxor marquee. They moved to the Venetian in October 2005. I’m sure there’s more, but I’m working from only a few photos that have been put online since it opened a couple of days ago. Not bad pedantry at all, I don’t think.
There’s a video here if you want to see more, including a working model of the Monorail. So far that one is still just about accurate.
A very bizarre – and a little premature – April Fool’s gag from Party Poker? Actually it’s not a joke, just a cock up – I have a 25% deposit bonus waiting on the account – but it was a very effective way to get me to log in to my account and check…
Gutshot’s apparent criminal mastermind, Derek Kelly, was just given the following sentence:
– A conditional discharge for two years, the condition being that Derek Kelly will not contravene the Gaming Act in that period
– No fine
– A payment of £10k towards prosecution costs (thought to be in the region of £25k) – this to be paid in monthly instalments of £500
Hardly even a slap on the wrist, relatively speaking.
With the club carrying on doing much the same as it was but with the term "service charge" simply replaced by "voluntary donation", was it really worth all that fuss in the end?
Pocket nines. I’d raised to 600 from early position and been reraised all in by another player who developed a bad case of verbal diarrhea. Whilst I paused to make it look like my decision was harder than it was, he talked himself into a pokery grave.
OK, in fact it was a closer decision than I first thought. The all in bet was 1400 more to me, so throw in the dead money from the blinds and it’s about 2-1 pot odds. It’s just about a profitable call against all but the very tightest players, but in a tournament I almost always fold here. Unless the other guy just got impatient, he doesn’t have to play here with a worse pair than mine, which typically puts someone making this bet on a strong hand which will send me packing more than half the time. I actually have a few more chips than him, which gives me 8 big blinds and enough time to try to find a better spot than this one.
Tonight, I called. I’d like to say it’s down to my superlative reading skills, but really the other guy just threw it away. Whilst I went into the tank – at first acting, but then actually considering just how weak it was to fold here – he started talking:
"It’s a race against your overcards. I have a pocket pair".
The more he said, the more I believed him. I just waited and let him carry on as he insisted that he didn’t care if I called, he’d be in good shape. A look of horror crept over his face when he finally realised that he should have just kept quiet and given me chance to throw away the best hand. I called and my 99 held up against his pocket sixes. I’ll still file this one proudly under "trusting my reads", even though I had significant help.
Three days and two nights in working away from home gave me the chance to play back-to-back evenings at Gutshot. Not that I would have been able to have a quiet night in my hotel room if I wanted to. Although I’d scored a surprise ensuite room, it was still a shoebox and had a peculiar separate shower and toilet cubicle arrangement at opposite ends of the room. Opening the door to either bathroom involved moving some piece of furniture in front of some other door.
The tournament was Tuesday’s "beginner night" with a variable buy-in structure that I’ve not come across before. I don’t think it makes much difference. You can choose to pay £5, £10, £15 or £20 to start with 500, 1000, 1500 or 2000 chips respectively. Nobody on my table started with less than 2000, and I can’t imagine the cheaper options are very popular. There’s a £3 daily membership fee to get into the club now (this did not replace the raked "donations" at cash tables, but there was no additional collection for the tournament). A £5 tournament with £3 entry fee really doesn’t sound attractive.
I finished about 20th of over 90 players, after deciding to push with KQs. There were two limpers and I thought I’d found a good spot to pick up a decent pot, or have a hand with a fighting chance if called. Naturally the first limper called me with AQ and I was doomed.
On Monday I played the £25-£50 pot limit game and I came real close to breaking my streak, going for two good hours without a sniff of anything at all. My recovery began with a fortunate mistake. The player to my right had been raising with all kinds of garbage and raised to £7. This time I found AK and I immediately reraised the pot. That was £26 apparently, and the mistake was that neither of us bothered to look at my stack. It left me with just £17 so my bet size couldn’t be have been much more wrong with that small stack. I’m not crazy about his smooth call either – decide now: either you’re going all the way or you’re not.
There wouldn’t be many flops thats I could to get away from with so little left to play with, so when it came jack-eight-six in three different suits and he checked, I moved in for a pathetic 1/3 pot bet. A little bit of folding equity can go a long way: he not only folded, but also announced that he was giving up AK.
I definitely owe something to that game. I’ve not yet been in a big pot where I’ve had the best hand cracked, and not getting unlucky in a £150 pot is what set me up for a winning night this time. After limping with 67 in the cut-off, the flop was a gorgeous A67. I found a player who liked his ace and got a pot-sized call on the flop with the rest following on the turn. What could have been better than a deuce on the turn? He didn’t show his hand, but it wasn’t AQ as the river brought a queen and my hand held up.
I lose to any ace or deuce here as well as a paired kicker – it’s only 8 cards from 44, but that means I’m still "looking after" £30 from that pot alone, and there have been several others like it. When it’s my turn to pay back, it’s gonna hurt.
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