So this week I was in Manchester for the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour, debuting as a live tournament player for Absolute Poker. I had played one of these events before after satelliting in the night before it was due to start, so at least had some experience playing this particular tourney. It was a good structure with 10k starting chips and an hour clock and I am finally getting used to playing a deep-stack now after years of sub 30BB starting stacks in pubs around London! Another bonus was that this meant a return trip to Manchester for the first time since I graduated three years ago, and was looking forward to seeing the old town (and friends!) once again.

The first hand of the day was rather unexpected and certainly got the blood pumping for one who tries to take the first level very slowly. I was dealt 10s in mid-position and UTG limped and then called my 3x raise. The flop came down a perfect 10-5-4 with 2 diamonds, woohoo!! UTG checked so I made it 2/3 pot and they raised 4X that. I flat called and the turn came another 5 - the only time a young lady can be happy to say she "filled out". Mr UTG then checked called my 1/2 pot bet on the turn and check folded the river muttering about how he shouldn't bluff so early on. Fine by me matey.

The next few hours passed unremarkably, with me exercising the patience that Annie's lessons had taught when it all went card-dead for three very frustrating hours. After ten hours when we'd lost about 60% of the field my stack had dwindled (partially due to being a bit passive on a few occasions and the rest due to getting bugger all in the way of cards) and I have to confess to getting a bit impatient...

I was in the SB and the guy on the button with a short stack (half of mine which was about 18BB) made a standard raise when it was folded round to him. In line with every other time he did this, he made it 4x BB to go. I was utterly convinced he was at it AGAIN and so re-pushed him all in... only for him to flip over Kings. Oops.

Therefore I was now in the disaster zone of 9BB and the very next hand got dealt A-10 diamonds on the button. Once again it was folded round to me so of course I pushed, only for the ****** BB to dwell up and call for half his own stack with, wait for it, A-7 hearts.

Why would I call him a ****** BB you may ask? Because he then proceeded to catch every damn bleeding Heart under the sun to send me packing to the rail with only one hour to go before the end of the day. Arrrgh. Still, in hindsight my big error was getting impatient and playing the previous hand like a moron, but it doesn't make it any the less frustrating! However, I did then take the next day to go and behave like a student again, so not all was lost...

Oh, and here's an interview from the event should you be interested. Warning, I prattle on a lot!

This week was the Comms Solutions Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, which was a two day IT Communications industry event where I had been asked to provide some "entertainment" in the form of poker lessons. I'm not entirely sure why they approached me to do this as opposed to any other poker player, but either way I was very happy to take on the role as it meant I could sit playing poker and chatting to people all day long; two of my favourite pastimes!

As the brief I'd been given was to "teach and entertain" the clients in short 15 minute lessons (sounds slightly dodgy, but I assure you it wasn't!) I decided the best way was to run two levels; beginners and intermediates. The beginners, as you can imagine, were complete novices without an inkling of how the game was played. The intermediates ranged from a couple of fairly seasoned online players to those who occasionally played family and friends at home for smarties and toothpicks. However there was not one person who actually played regular live tournaments, which was even more surprising as 95% of the people there were 20-40 year old males!

The intermediate lessons were the most popular however, and I found the best way to condense actual useful information whilst satisfying their desire to just get some playing time in was to let them play a few hands and then talk through what they should have done. As expected, everyone started off playing every single damn hand regardless of the filth they were holding despite the raises and re-raises that had occurred behind them (which most of the time were silly min-raises). They started to improve once I explained exactly why their call of a re-raise with 4-6 UTG+1 is not a good play and also when they started picturing that every chip they put into the pot was worth £10, but there were still a couple who insisted that "the best strategy is always play and pay to see a flop". Idiots! However, I'd like to think that the few tips and pointers that I could fit into 15 minutes hit home with a few people, and everyone left with a smile on their faces which I guess was the whole point of me being there!

In the evening was a big sit-down dinner with champagne and all the classy bits you'd expect from a smart industry event. I'd somehow agreed to join the five sports celebrities that they'd bought in, most of whom were famous footballers from the 1980s. To be honest I felt slightly fraudulent being up there among them, but then again Russia does class poker as a sport.... Hmmm. Anyway, we were then individually auctioned off for charity where whoever won got the pleasure of having us at their table for the evening. I was quite concerned as everyone else was probably going to go for loads and they'd have to stop the bidding for me at a tenner, but in the end I went for £450, which was more than everyone else! Again probably due to the fact I was female more than anything else, but still was a pleasant surprise. All in all, it was a fun two days, and at least I now know my going rate...

On Tuesday my good friend Kirsty got us tickets to the London premiere of "Leatherheads" starring George Clooney. Therefore we donned out best party dresses and headed off down the red-carpet pretending to be famous and sadly not convincing anybody. However, we did manage to exchange handshakes with the lovely Mr Clooney which made it all rather wonderful. The film itself was not really my cup of tea being about American Football and the 1920s, but was enjoyable nonetheless mostly due to the complementary mini bottle of champagne in everyone's arm rests.

This week's bounty tournaments on Absolute Poker were as lively as ever, with me finishing somewhere nondescript in both. A particular shout out must go to my new friend and arch-enemy SQUID299 who insisted on calling my all-in re-re-raise on a blank flop whilst actually declaring "I have absolutely nothing but want to knock you out anyway" and hit his miracle card on the river. I'll get you back one of these days, Batman.

Over the weekend I went 'oop North for my Sister's wedding which was classically northern i.e. full of alcohol and bad dancing to the Beegees and the YMCA. Admittedly, most of the bad dancing came from me but it was a very enjoyable evening from start to finish, and really great to catch up with family members who I hadn't seen for a long time. However, they were very curious about this "gambling" career I have chosen to follow instead of Physics, which is what the life plan was last time we had met. A solid career choice, I would say.

It's been another quiet week for me, interspersed with some mid-week poker and a masked birthday party which the less said about the better. On Wednesday I decided to go down to the Gutshot club in central London, which I feel guilty to say I hadn't been to for over three months. I felt guilty because the Gutshot is one of the clubs that really needs support from the poker playing community due to London's councillors deciding that it should be made an example of and be very publicly shut down for allowing the "evil" game of poker to be played on its premises without a full casino licence. And where do you propose the poker players will go to play their game Mr Councillor? In some dodgy back building without proper surveillance and regulations? Do you think they'll just give up and the game of poker will magically disappear? Garr, the ignorance makes me mad! Anyway, I won't prattle on about this because I'll start getting all political on you and then you probably won't want to read anymore...


So as I was saying, I went along to play a £75 freezout which I'd been told had one of the best structures for a live game in London. Now, 4000 chips and a 25-50 starting level is reasonable value for a buy-in of that level. The trouble is that 20 minutes a level, which is pretty much standard throughout the UK for any average sized weekly tournament, just doesn't get enough hands in to allow any kind of imaginive play once the blinds get up to the 200-400 mark (unless you've somehow gathered a monster stack in that short time). This was a dealer-dealt tourney, and a very well dealt one at that, but the trouble is that despite this we were getting only 10 hands per level (trust me, I was counting). So after just 60 hands, unless you've had a couple of big pots you have a stack of around 15BB and are on the cusp of the all-in zone. Which is exactly where I found myself after losing a race with my 10s vs A-J, nursing 4k chips with blinds up to 300-600. Thankfully, I found QQs to push with shortly after, but they unthankfully didn't hold up.

I guess what my point is, is that whilst Online Poker might get a bad rap for being full of maniacs, out-draws etc etc, at least you get a hell of a lot more than 10 hands a level. Unless of course you are a poker masochist and actually choose to play turbos.