Tuesday 6 January 2009

From Gala and beyond....

I'll start this post with something I've been saying to women all around the globe. Sorry this is gonna be so long. lol i wish.

As I mentioned before my bad beat post (I won't be posting too many of them hopefully), I really got into the casino when everyone began to knuckle down for exams. It was just doing a bit of blackjack and roulette, never really for much money at all. I would often call it quits after losing like £80. God bless being a nit. I miss those days. It wasn't til one night when I was in the casino and loads of my mates had come in for some free drinks and to generally mess about after a night out that I decided to show off so I maxed the withdrawal on my card and put it all on one spin like I didn't care. (I was fcking shitting it). I think I hit number 34, a number I don't think I actually ever put a penny on again. Pretending it was a standard bet, I collected my winnings - put my chips in my pocket and bought a round of drinks. Everyone was kinda shocked but I loved the buzz and from that moment kind of lost my fear and respect for money. Coincidentally I remember the first time I lost £200 at a casino. At the time I couldn't comprehend this and didn't sleep that night. Every time I shut my eyes all I could see was a roulette wheel where the ball never landed but just kept spinning round the wheel. A few months later and losing £200 was a good night of table games.

I played a few tournaments at gala, which was an intimidating place if you were an 'outsider' to the card room. In my first one I literally hadn't played a single hand until raising with queens and finding two callers. wtf- did they not know how tight I was?! Got it all in against both after an AQ6 flop to be shown AQ and 66. This live poker shit was a piece of piss. I'll just do this every night and clean everyone out. hmm.... I ended up making the final table of the £20 rebuy without a single rebuy. Once again, god bless my nit days. We were down to seven players when everyone started shaking hands and the guy in 8th looked gutted. wtf? Was I part of some sort of collusion that I didn't know about? well no, but I HAD entered a satellite tourney. oops. This gave me a £250 seat to a gala tourney but being aware that I still needed to learn so much about poker (beating my mates more often than not in £5 home games and uni games hardly qualified me to expect any sort of a result in this tourney) I started going to play the tournaments every night to practice.

On my starting table was Dave Smith, Lee Rawson and some guy wearing sunglasses and a top with a sponsor on it. I was pretty nervous and before I had chipped up I passed pocket jacks pre flop to a single open from Dave Smith. LOL donkaments. I had about 20k in chips when I was dealt 44 in the Big Blind. A guy moved in for his last 2k and got 2 callers. I made up the 1600 more in the big blind and bet all 3 streets of the 949 flop being called by a flush draw and K9. I caught a set against another local when I called his small reraise with 55 to see a Q85 flop to which he massively ridiculously overbet all in with 99. tyty. Then Anthony Nicholls didn't like the fact I'd started to open up a little and jammed 45k over my initial open to 3200 with blinds at 600-1200. Mbn to have Aces in this spot and instacall. I was already biggest stack in the tournament about 40 out with 120k in chips so getting to 165k I was planning to coast my way to the 20k first prize. The deck seemed to agree with me when the door card was an Ace and Anthony had AJ off btw. The four clubs which followed fitted his his jack of clubs a little better than they did my set though. Wow I was gutted. My first truly sick beat in poker and I was gutted. I don't think Anthony lasted more than 4 more orbits with my chips too. :(.

We make it down to the last 11 and now I have about 120k. I can't remember what the blinds where but it must have been pretty crapshooty as six handed Julian Thew opened to about 45k and I jammed with AK. I was met by a short dwell but a reluctant 'I think I have to call' to see 88. Obv I brick and go out 11th as the bubble boy. The final table played 9 handed as someone went out on the other table at literally the same time to collect like £1k. I felt sick. Probably told everyone in the casino what happened that night, taking a little comfort in the fact that I was knocked out by William Hill's superstar pro Julian Thew. Only thing was, about 2 months later I was sat at a final table with Julian to realise the guy that knocked me out was actually Chris Bruce. oops.

As expected I didn't pass my year. I passed the few exams I attended but its hard to get 40% in the ones you don't turn up to. I basically went to the doctors in Nottingham for the 3 exams I missed and got illness letters. Faking ftw! However, I didn't realise that I had to submit them within 3 days of missing the exams so I had to resit. I couldn't resit for lectures I hadn't been to, with books I didn't have etc etc and I was booted. Oh shit. I came up to Nottingham from London when I got the letter home in the summer holidays and begged for like 3 straight days to be repeatedly told no. I used every excuse under the sun and basically got the bluff through. I was allowed back in as a first year on a slightly different course...

In my second first year I attended around half my lectures in the first term, submitted my courseworks and got my exams out the way. This was pretty good for me, expecially since I would have rather put my bellend through a cheese grater than listened to some of those lecturers drone on and on about shit I really had no interest in. But I did it and allowed myself a week of degenning it after exams. This week quickly became 8 months solid and I'd fucked up again. Lost all my dosh and was out of uni.

I thought I was happy playing the donkaments and cash games each day, whilst regularly doing my bollocks on house games. Wasn't like I had any bills to pay or children to clothe and feed. It just takes change to realise that it isn't a healthy lifestyle and whilst I love poker and am fascinated by gambling I couldn't be more happy that part of my life is over. In the end one of my housemates at uni rang my mum and told her I'd just got out of control. At first I was furious with him for not talking to me first but I realised that wouldn't have made the blindest bit of difference. Not like he had many chances either when I got in at 7.30am every morning, slept til 5pm and then jumped straight in the shower and headed straight for the casino. Pretty ashamed of what I had become back then.

Cut a long story a little short, my parents came and collected me from Nottingham and brought me back down to London. My dad nearly kicked me out and for a few months didn't really talk to me. I eventually got a work placement after temping and bumming around for the most part and then got kept on permanently after working really hard and making a good impression. I'm still playing lots of poker but online. My bankroll management has gotten loads better and hopefully with this blog the intention is for it to be 100% where it should be. My life is pretty normal again too after how mad it got in Notts. Going out, drinking, going to the gym, spending time with mates and family comes first and poker fills the gaps. Obviously I'm still playing a lot but you get the idea...

Before I finish I would like to indirectly thank Blondepoker. Posting and reading on there makes you realise that its possible to play poker and not be a degenerate. I've certainly learn't certain things from it. After ineveitably spending some 000's to learn the game I eventually became a winning player, even though more often than not in Nottingham I decided to play a gambling game rather than a proper poker game. There's a lot of guys on blonde with similar knowledge (and some who would pwn me I'm sure) of the game to myself who have conducted themselves properly enough to be very successful in poker. Something I'm now 100% I will be doing too. Just a shame I didn't start earlier but we all make mistakes. Anyway, it's a great site with a good community and great resources - free to sign up and I'd recommend to any poker player.

My next blog post will be a poker update hopefully, with a little story about a fish named Amatay who posted on his blog for all the world to see about my idea to merge pokertube and redtube to create the ultimate website of them all.

Be cool to get some comments on this blog too.

gL at the tables.

6 comments:

Joppa Road said...

good post, can you link me up too?

Anonymous said...

Good post mate, mega sick degenerate stuff?

What u work as now?

Greekstein said...

Working in a media solutions company now, planning advertising campaigns.

Who's this?

Tinca Tinca said...

Great start mate.

Looks like being a fine tale or two here.

Amatay said...

u degen fuck, had no idea lol. Sort the brm out this yr mate and start crushing u fish. look forward to the next post :-)

Anonymous said...

What is your name, age, where u from etc. Would be good to know who is writing this gem.