News / John Tabatabai / 23 March 2009 / 1 Comments

Since I last blogged I have continued to play mostly live and it has continued to be very interesting.

Everyday a new situation occurs which just wouldn't online, whether it's a case of odd tells, or bad etiquette.

Recently I had a spot where after I raised preflop and got rid of a couple of limpy nits, one of them started shrieking when the flop came J-J-6 and exclaiming in Italian that he had folded a jack. Naturally I had a 6 and the turn was a 6, this sequence of events even though I knew I was beat played in my mind and psychologically I didn't make the fold I normally would have on the river.

Just little things like this helps develop you as a player and keep you calm, all great practice for when playing big live field tournaments as it is inevitable that you are going to come across some unsavoury characters as well as plenty of bad beats and coolers. By playing a lot live and trying my best to stay focused, I am hoping to improve my life tournament results drastically. It can't be just a coincidence that certain people always do well. It's the easy way out for us just to say that so and so always cashes because they run good, or "must be nice".

These are easy way outs when we don't want to admit that there is a lot we can do to learn from those individuals and improve our own game. Hopefully this new practice of playing more live cash will show some fruits over the coming heavy tournament schedule that is approaching us.

London tournaments

London has recently seen a flury of lively cash games as well as tournaments. The Empire Casino is now at least bi annually running a £1,000 tournament with an incredible structure, 15,000 starting chips, 25-50 blinds and 1 hour clock. Plenty of play. Empire is not alone in this, a new startup, London Poker Circuit are running tournaments every few months I believe throughout their chain of luxury 5 star hotels in Central London with buyins ranging from £200 to £5,000! Hopefully these tournaments are sustainable and I can finally justify living in Central London!

Wayneo

I played in the £1k in Empire with an old poker friend who I started playing with 5 years ago, his alias is Wayneo. The guy is a complete loon bin and has had many highs, unfortunately for him followed by many lows due to his special mental thought process. In the tournament he was 2 seats to my left and a complete pain in the ass even though we were friends. Consistently calling or 3b anything I ever played and he ended up devastating Ryan Fronda who was left shell shocked for about an hour!

One of the hands where Wayne put me in a home was just after he had bluffed me in about 2-3 pots a hand developed where it was unfeasible for him to be bluffing as it was a very bad spot, I only had K hi but could feel he was bluffing although it didn't make sense. I was contemplating whether to call his raise on the turn and ch c the river or just reraise on the turn and end the hand.

As I was thinking which option to exercise my hands without any command from my brain threw my cards into the muck. It was like playing on ipoker and being timed out without a time bank. Serious misclick. Anyway, this set me off and the very next hand I held KQ on a flop of QJ9 and refused to fold to him, where he obviously had KK. This leads me nicely to share some of his HH I have recently witnessed. I strongly urge you to view these and laugh!

Standard Omaha call looooooooool

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3989192

Level 42

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3983146

Just search the rest, quite funny.

Prop Bets

The only other thing of interest I can think of at the moment is a no red meat bet I had with a friend, DJPonyTale, however, it was rather uneventful as he managed to forget about the bet the morning after and eat a Full English Breakfast which obviously included sausages and bacon. Unfortunately for Steffan, he doesn't even like sausages and said afterwards that he just wanted to see what it tasted like. Seeing as everyone else is making stupid bets to do with weight loss, boxing or what have you; I may do something on a smaller scale for health purposes. If you think about it, it makes sense, you make money to get healthy? What better motivation does one need?

Got to sign off now as the new breed challenges started tonight which I was really excited about, hopefully see you guys at the tables and best of luck to you all.

John

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