Yes, I am still alive..

Bloggers / James Keys / 02 May 2008 / Leave a Comment

It's been a long time since I posted my WSOPE report but to be honest there's not been a lot going on in between, until recently that is.

I'd just been playing a lot of midstakes poker, uninterestingly breaking even whilst I frittered away my WSOPE prize money on beer and expensive ready meals. However I recently graduated from 'one-hit-wonder' to the ranks of 'lucky fish'/'two-hit-wonder' by finishing 2nd in the GCBPT in Nottingham, so now I feel a bit more qualified to be writing about poker rather than just losing at it.

Since then I've actually had quite a busy schedule, and it looks set to continue for the forseeable future. I played in the GUKPT Manchester (direct buy-in for the first time ever :S) to no avail, making me now zero from three for GUKPT cashes, and this weekend I'm playing in the Norwegian Poker Championships, conveniently (unless you're Norwegian I suppose) held at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. Unfortunately Annette isn't playing, choosing instead to beat up on the largely 'celebrity' field at some Ladies' tournament, so if I win this thing I won't be able to say I beat all of Norway's best players, but most of them are here, and I suppose the 80k 1st prize would be of some comfort. I actually played my Day 1 yesterday, playing some of the worst poker of my life. Never have the words "You are English, ja?" been such a put-down. I'll try and play better tomorrow and be less of an embarrassment to English poker.

It wasn't all bad, I did learn how to gain respect from Norwegians: bluff, and bluff big. This was my favourite hand of the day:

Blinds 75/150, 9 handed, avg stack 12k
Folded to late-middle position who limps. Doesn't look strong.
I raise Qh8h on the button to 475, blinds fold.
The limper then reraises me to 1575, 1100 more to me. I have 15k back, the villain has about 10k behind. I call.
The flop comes K73r (r = 'rainbow', 3 different suits)
Villain leads for 1200. First of all this looks weak, because the bet is smaller than the cost of the previous street, so my first thought is to raise. Secondly, the board is perfectly discoordinated, there are no draws I could be semi-bluffing with, so to call with one pair the villain would have to put me on a stone cold bluff. Finally, to avoid giving the villain the option to make a brave reraise and force me to fold, I can raise all in, which is a bit of an overbet, but not terrible. After some thought I decided that the villain, having travelled several hundred miles for this tournament, may even fold AA in this spot, although I don't think he has AA because of his preflop limp, so I'm feeling like an all in raise is pretty safe. I bite the bullet and place my stack over the line, after which the villain folds after an uncomfortably long dwell. I can't resist showing the bluff, after which the table erupts into Norwegian chatter that I don't understand (one word I could pick out was "stonecold". You'd think the Norwegians of all people would have a word for cold stones.) After a few seconds one of the other players realises I don't understand (I'd been very quiet up to now) and says "You are English?!? Nice bluff man, seriously!". Norwegians are fun :D

Anyway that's all for now, I'll let you know how it goes.

edit:: I went out within 5 minutes of the start of Day 2. Oh well, there's always next year..