Trip Report (Wednesday)

So before I get into the trip report Wednesday I just want to note that one thing I really want to do more of is add more pictures.

I know for me pictures really help cement memories as well as jog them too.

“Nice range merge Tom”

Tyty

Anyway my main point is that in x months/years time when I likely look back at this in some hour of the early morning I feel that pictures will make make the reflective period far more special.

I’ll cut the sap and get to the trip report.

The Trip Report (Wednesday)

I wake up with no real plans for the early morning, seems like an ideal time to grind some online.

tom14

 

Whilst I don’t have that many readers currently I’m still going to address some potential comments/thoughts some of you might have.

The above is basically a half-hearted excuse to pose questions to myself in my own post.

[SPOIL]Don’t tell anyone[/SPOIL]

“Nice setup wink

Trust me I know it’s pretty rough, I haven’t even had the laptop for long but it’s already been through a lot. That line you see on the screen doesn’t go away either.

You know how your eyes have like natural blind spots, well let’s just say I hope this line somehow joins that category (my A in GCSE Biology obviously serving me well..). It’s pretty tilting to say the least.

What I do plan on doing is buying a monitor which I can attach to the laptop and pretty much do everything off that. I’ll likely get one in September, it’ll also make me play at my desk more which is definitely +ev and something I’ve been slacking with a lot.

Some of you may be curious about the session and how it went. I could go into some detail but cliffs are probably easier.

-It did not go well

“Want to give us any more detail”

Yeah fine, basically the traffic was awful, I don’t know what I was expecting but barely anything was running (believe it was around 10-11am UK time).

I ran pretty bad and busted things pretty quickly. By the time it was around midday I decided to end the session.

“Hang on a second are you not going to even mention the banana and stuff?”

So I eat a lot of banana’s, they’re portable, easy to eat, tasty, give you energy. One of the most GTO fruits imo.

The eagle eyed among you might of also noticed a glass mug which was at one point full of tea.

I drink tea a lot too, this may sound pretty sad but after drinking tea for countless years in the usual ceramic mugs I found it quite mesmerizing to watch the various shades of brown/beige swirl around when I poured the milk in. I’m considering buying a see through/glass mug for that very reason, I’m obviously still a child at heart… Again this is something I should be taking pictures of but I’ll work on it.

I look ahead and I’m thinking about playing some more live, I had a good experience the day before, the people were pretty nice and hey, maybe I liked the feeling of shuffling chips and raking in a pot and even mucking hands.

Basically all my live poker playing has been at Aspers in Stratford up to this point. I enjoy playing there, it’s pretty close by but I feel like I want to play somewhere else and get some new experiences.

I look at a fair few places and eventually decide on The Vic in/on Edgware Road.

They have a tournament in the evening which is a £50+7

LOL Juiceaments

I know, I know..

I wasn’t going for the purely +ev viewpoint, more just to have fun and play some live poker so I was fine paying the rake on this occasion.

Just as a disclaimer, my experience with casino’s is pretty limited so lol sample size but I still think this is a fairly interesting point to bring up.

I know when I signed up at Aspers over a year ago the lady at the desk gave me classic smiley faced “Are you going to win lot’s of money today? (trololol)” statement and was interested in getting me signed up as quick as possible. We all like saving time so I was happy but I also had knew that this is probably the GTO impression casino’s want to give off when you first go there so you feel comfortable.

Fast forward around a year ahead when I’m at the registration desk of The Vic.

It’s just past 8 o’clock, I get to the desk ask to sign up, the standard reception woman is there but reluctantly looks at me.

“Huh, does she think I’m trolling and underage. I don’t look that young, this is weird since last time I went to a casino they were eager to sign me up as quickly as possible”

After 20-30 seconds I ask if everything is okay as this woman looks around.

I hear her mutter to her colleague “my shift ends at 8pm”.

It’s like 8:01pm currently..

Another quiet 20 seconds occurs after this and I’m just there like LOL this has to be a pretty big joke.

She asks literally every other member of staff in the reception area if they can do it and they kind of look at her funny.

She ends up doing it eventually, the process is really quick as you’d expect, like one minute max. I get the card and head upstairs to the poker room.

The funny thing about this if she was proactive and just did mine straight away she would of finished her work about 2-3 minutes earlier.

LOL Shiftaments am I right? (I know I use this way too much, I’m still going to until I get really bored of it)

Anyway enough of the bs, let’s get to the donkament action.

**** okay one more thing, I’ve always been apprehensive to use a camera in casino’s, I’m trying to be respectful etc but every TR I see has chip porn and all that stuff so I think I’m going to try and do more of that stuff.

I sit down and a dealer who kind of looks like Firaldo is at our table, maybe it is Firaldo, I mean the games are getting tougher nowadays right, maybe he needs some low variance income.

We as a few people register late the table gets full (9 handed) and things kick off.

As you’d expect mainly older males at the table, there was one young guy who looked kind of like Fedor, (let’s actually call him Fedor) who I chatted to after a couple of times happened. Fedor seemed pretty competent and likely one of the better players at the table.

There was this other guy who was talking a lot which was actually pretty nice to have. Better than everyone being in silence anyway.

This guy, (let’s call him generic white male (GWM)) went on the biggest early stage heater I’ve since in any tournament I’ve played (online included). GWM must of flopped 3 or 4 sets in a row and got paid, got aces, kings all that stuff and got action every time.

Another guy, (let’s call him kinda old guy (KOG)) was literally one of the biggest nits I’ve ever seen, I mean I’ve seen a few nits in my time but this guy was on another level. Actually let’s rename him to massive ****ing nit (MFN).

MFN folded QQ on J52 to a small raise and said it’s a must fold, that you just have to fold etc.

I also end up paying MFN off in a spot where I really shouldn’t of, it’s a spot where an unknown would be bluffing a fair bit but I should of just folded. I guessing at the time I didn’t realise how much of a massive ****ing nit MFN actually was.

This was also some standard fishy all in with like K2s with 75s or whatever for pretty deep stacks and MFN just couldn’t take it, he was like shuddering in disbelief, pretty funny to watch.

There were a few spew fish at the table as you’d expect, I always enjoy playing with them live, I think it makes the game/table more entertaining too. I’d hate to play with 8 other versions of me at the table. One thing I like about live is the variety of people you get to meet.

So as I continue to chip down Fedor has been doing pretty well and chipping up a lot. He gets into a spot vs a super old guy (SOG) where it’s all in pre for about 30bbs each.

Fedor has AKs and SOG has AQ.

Fedor is looking pretty happy, why shouldn’t he be he’s in a good spot. I think Fedor was French but spoke good english.

Before the flop was dealt Fedor utters:

“Bon chance”

And smiles at SOG

“Click click click as the flop is dealt”

Bam queen in the window and SOG ends up winning a massive pot.

This sends Fedor into major astro-tilt. Smashing the table, banging his chips against the felt, swearing to himself.

This is something I’ve noticed a bunch especially live, a lot of players who seem decent just going into monkey tilt as soon as something happens. I now start to question if Fedor is actually good, I have no idea what to even think now.

So time passes and surprise surprise, everyone’s getting shallow. I run super card dead for a long time and I eventually get it in with ATs for like 8bbs.

I’m called by TT and 88 but no worries as I bink the ace and triple up.

So I have around 25-30bbs now and it’s nice to actually have some room to breath.

As you’d expect that also gets cut short and I soon get under 20bbs.

I’m in the BB, UTG jams for 4bbs, and UTG+2 (who we haven’t and likely don’t need to name) jams for 16bbs.

I have around the same as UTG+2, I check my cards and see QQ, snap call.

UTG has like 74o (he was a massive spew fish) and UTG+2 has 33.

I’m in a pretty good spot to chip up here on a pretty good table but a 3 in the window crushes that dream.

The guy who jammed with 33 is profusely apologizing and saying sorry and I just say it’s fine man don’t worry about it.

He says that it probably wasn’t a jam with 33 and I’m nice and say don’t worry it’s fine (in regards to the play).

I’m not actually sure how fine it is (probably not that great on a pretty spewy table where he’s going to get called off a fair bit) but whatever, I’ve already ran pretty well earlier on and hey, it’s a tournament, not the end of the world.

I walk out and onto Edgware Road and whilst it’s very cultural and imo a pretty cool place to walk around, I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around with money at this time of night. I knew I was sticking out so much. It was like 10-11pm at the time and I made a mental note that if I won anything considerable in the future an Uber would be on the cards.

I get back home and it’s pretty late, I’m already tired so I crash. I’m not sure if I’ll play much more live on the trip since I don’t want to blow too much money.

So that’s the end of the trip report for Wednesday but before I post this I’d just like to make some brief comments about my poker plans for the future.

I’m currently taking a break from actually playing and doing a lot more studying instead.

I also plan to switch to cash and whilst tournaments will always have a place in my heart I think the best thing to do for my game currently is to try and get good at cash.

Even when I’m at university I think a better thing to do than play live and potentially spew money every weekend or get lucky and run something up is to grind online cash instead and try and build a decent roll.

I’m still unsure about the exact direction I want to take at the moment but the good thing is you guys will be the first people to know about what my plans are so stay tuned.

I’ve been in a pretty reflective mood recently and have been listening to a lot of music when I’ve been on trains/tube etc.

Whilst posting dog pictures on every post is an okay idea I know I’m eventually going to be running out and it may get a bit samey.

I still plan to post pictures of my dog from time to time but I thought a cool thing to do would be post a song I currently like at the end of every “main” post I make.

There’s so much variety in music and I think it’s great that people like different types of music. One thing I’ve never really got is judging someone on their music taste. When I was at school I used to get **** for liking Top 40 songs.

1) Who even cares about what song someone else likes, it’s one of many things that has next to no effect on your life.

2) It’s pretty ironic (probs wrong word) that I got **** for liking something that is what the majority of people like. It’s in the charts because it’s popular etc. Idk I always found that funny that it’s was/still kinda is more acceptable to like more indie music than chart hits. Music is such a personal thing in my opinion and I wish people (especially my age) would stop giving so much of a damn about what music people like.

All that aside this has been one of my favourite songs to listen to whilst reflecting on life over the past week or so.

Click here if you want to listen to it!