finally up to date

I started uni in October 2007 looking forward to living away from home and moving on with my life. After the commotion of freshers week I found my first poker game a £3 sitngo in college which I bubbled in. Fortunately there was another game available heads up omaha sitngos with Matt Gamble. I offered to play for £1 a go but we eventually agreed to play for fun as we were still unknowns to each other. At the time I had played few live games and gave away the strength of my hands readily. One memorable hand occurred when I had the nut straight on the turn on a non-paired board with two spades. The river came a third spade and gamble pulled off a well timed check raise bluff sensing I didn’t like the spade to take the pot and the pride.
I started to play poker society tournaments every Saturday evenings and cashed in the first two. Through Gamble and showing an interest at poker society I got an invite to a 5p 10p student home game at James Key’s house the society president.
Gamble assured me it was a loose game with some crazy play. Unfortunately on this occasion I was one of the biggest fish, I played tight weak nervous and got destroyed dropping four buyins. This result sounds like a disaster but I was ecstatic about it, the play had shown me how far I had to go and the next level of play to aspire to.
I played a lot of poker over the two terms with most of it being live. The most notable action being the New Inn game, a game set up by locals and played in the New Inn. Gamble again assured me it was fishy but I was wary this time. It is a gamblers game 25 50p with a £10 buy in with a few locals and a few students. For the first hour of my first attempt I took a while getting into the swing of things, this was a bigger game than I was used to as a 50nl player online and this game effectively being 100nl with people looking for a gamble. I had to survive 2 all-ins in the first hour to avoid re-buying, once when I had an up and downer and once when my opponent had the same draw, fortunately I won both of these hands. After that I started to get comfortable (a couple of pints might have helped) and around 12-1am we had a lock in. For the rest of the game I thought I played well, this I believe was partly due to the fact that I stopped viewing the chips in monetary value and just counted then as chips, and cashed out about £100 at 3am. This is my biggest win on a single cash table to date, overall in the New Inn game I’m up about £120 but I feel I ran well in two of the three sessions. They are great fun games and a social occasion more than anything and I feel I have learnt a lot playing against the regulars improving my game greatly.

In late February Gamble as social secretary of poker soc organised its first social of the year a trip to aspers casino in Newcastle on a Friday. I had been awake since 7.30am and had already put in a few hours poker before Keys picked up the aidans crew at about 7pm to go to Newcastle. I had been meaning to visit aspers from before I got to Durham so was happy to be finally going. There were about 12 of us altogether planning on playing the £20 freeze out and having a few drinks. We arrived in aspers with plenty of time to have a drink before registering for the tournament, me and Gamble agreed to swap 10% of ourselves to make things more interesting. I was very happy with my table as it appeared some of my opponents had no idea how to play the game however I played too tight and at the first break my chip stack was the same size as it had started. After the first break the blinds started to rise quickly and it turned into a bit of a craps shoot, I was out shortly afterwards when I overplaying KQ pre-flop. Fortunately my investment in Matt paid off when he cashed for £90 or so cutting down my losses for the evening.
As we were leaving aspers at about 2am I suggested we carried on the poker back in Durham, a group of us were up for it so we started playing a 5 10p cash game when we got back to aidans in the early hours. This turned out to be one of the most entertaining games I have ever played. There were seven of us playing in the jcr and we eventually got £200-300 on the table. I had a cup of tea at about 4am which gave me an edge over the sleeping Matt and Nick. Somehow we managed to play until midday having some food when breakfast opened at 8am. You can find Guy’s account of the night here http://diaryofagrinder.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
That brings us to now and the easter break, ill cover my online status and results in the next post. Isaac