We headed down to Circus Casino for the following tournament:
£30 double chance - £2K guaranteed
5,000 + 5,000 chips.
Blinks 25,50 - up every 20 mins.
~80 players
Phil, Shinksy and I sat down to find out if we had registered 10 minutes earlier (like everyone else, you get a free 2,000 chips to start with)! Great, already on the back foot and barely taken our coats off.
First live tourney for the Shinkster and he found himself on the live streaming RFID table - no pressure then! He seemed to enjoy it, played a few loose hands by the sounds of it and the details of his final were that he had pocket 10s. The flop comes A,10, rag. He manages to get all his money in and 1 caller. The caller turned over pocket Aces!... trips over trips. Very unlucky.
Info on the RFID table is that all the cards had RFID tags in them so instantly, you can detect what hands people have and display them on the screen live (with stats of % of winning etc.) It beats hole card cameras where someone has to translate all 10 cameras into digital cards on the display. The Liverpool Circus Casino daily tournaments are broadcast live (from the RFID table) [15 minute delay to prevent cheating of course]
http://videos.gentingpoker.com/circus-casino-liverpool-live-poker-stream/
My tactic from the beginning was that "I haven't played since Vegas, very rusty, I need to run good or I'm out". And run good I certainly did. The first hour was simply a roller coaster of pocket Queens, Kings, flushes, straights and even quad 3s early on. Not all of these turned out to be the winning hand but it meant I was always involved.
Key hand was pocket Queens, small blind. (blinds 200/400) A small raise behind me and a call. I raise 5K (with 6K behind -half my stack) to try and isolate the raiser. He calls (all in for him) and the other player with a large stack thinks and then calls. I didnt want 2 callers.
Flop A,K, rag.. nightmare and I'm first to act. I check. Other checks also. Flop 9. I wuss out convinced the big stack has an Ace or King, check again (what am I doing?, I didn't want to bust so was foolishly hoping for a check down!) He uses his position and bets 6K. I fold reluctantly. - he shows pocket 6s... and the all-in guy, pocket 7s. I had them smashed, gutted.
Incidentally the river comes 6 but I could have pushed him off on the flop with a bet. Terrible play, out of practice.
Another key hand lost was - pocket Kings. Medium preflop raise from me, again two callers. Flop comes J,J,5, two diamonds. I shove all in trying to make it look like a fake "dont call me" overbet and also chasing away any flush draws and weak aces. One guy folders after thinking for about 10 minutes. The other guy insta-calls, I had ran into a A,J !. (12% chance of that begin the case, and I ran the risk of it to take the pot down there and then). What ever would of happened in the hand from that point, all my money was going in anyway. Luckily, I just had him covered in chips so lived on until the next hand...
Final hand for my remaining 6K. AQ suited. preflop raiser makes it 3K - I go all-in. He says "oops, I was bluffing but have to call now" - he does and shows K,2 offsuit!.. Happy days.. THEN rivered with a 2. Out.
Just reading that back - that's 3 big losses with QQ, KK & AQs. WTF?. 1 bad play, 2 unlucky i'd say.
Phil was treading water for a couple of hours doing pretty well, then boosted up to about 30K in chips. He then got all in with 2 other players post flop holding K,8 - flop was 8,8,10. - surely in the bag and heading towards the chip leaders in stack size?... except one of the others turns, A,8 ! - no King came, dead in the water. Out.
To the bar, shake our head lots about our hands... "mine's a pint of G!", all forgotten (on the outside anyway!).
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