Bloggers / Nick Cantwell / 20 October 2008 / Leave a comment

A great playwright once said, "All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players". A not so great playwright once said, "Give a man a one-day travelcard and the world is his oyster".

So, there I was, one-day travelcard in hand, all set to take on the great and mighty of Betfair - at the WSOPE after-party Live game. The journey started on a train, met my dad who was coming along as my guest at Liverpool Street, and then on the tube to Leicester Square.

Leicester Square was its usual hive of activity - caricature artists, buskers and Americans pronouncing "Leicester" with all three syllables, and not wanting to sit and have our picture drawn by a man in a beret, we headed into the casino.

Having registered, we found ourselves in the rather plush room where the game was about to take place - the room made even plusher by the free bar.

At about 3.30pm the table list was displayed on a monitor, so we all took our seats. At about 3.31pm we all stood up again, as a new list had suddenly appeared - either there had been a mistake with the original list, or the tournament director had a "musical chairs" fetish. Finally after a few minutes of frenzied confusion we started playing.

Four thousand chips sounds a lot, but for some reason my chip stack was going down at around the same speed as my pint - and it wasn't a good start at all. The blinds were doubling every half an hour, and an hour in I had just over two thousand chips - and the blinds were 100/200 - so I found myself in shove/fold territory relatively early.

My first shove was good - no callers. The second was even better - my pair of sevens winning a race against Ace-Jack. This bought me some welcome time, and I made it to the first break.

I got the drinks in (I'm always more generous when it's a free bar) and then we started again. I was still in shove/fold mode, and won a couple of pots uncontested - and then I looked down and saw AQ off whilst sitting in the small blind.

The cutoff limped in, I pushed my stack and I was delighted to see I was up against JQ after the limper called. I was a lot less delighted to see the Jack on the river that put me out of the tournament however.

Being an online player ninety nine percent of the time, I would normally swear at this moment - but smiling and shaking hands seemed the right thing to do (the swearing was confined to cubicle number two in the men's toilets). I did consider staying and playing a side table, but I was a little intrigued by the rest of the casino - so I managed to gamble a few pounds away there - and then we left.

I said goodbye to my dad at the station, and then suffered my second bad beat of the day when I realised I was on the wrong train home...nothing whatsoever to do with the free bar...I think..

A very good day and a big thanks to the Betfair team for their excellent organisation of the event.

Read more Nick Cantwell at the wonderfully named Cloud Poker