Asian Poker Classic
Kingfisher, Pouilly Fuisse, mouth-watering curries, Lobster Thermidor, pool with bar and big sunsets over the Indian Ocean; it is very nice here.
Most of us arrived at the Inter Continental in Southern Goa yesterday, stopped up late in the bar and slept through until lunchtime. With just a five and a half hour time difference I think I’ve managed to avoid jet lag.
I’m torn between feeling terribly guilty that Amanda and the two boys couldn’t come along for the ride and rejoicing at the prospect of seven uninterrupted nights sleep, a week on the rip with a good crowd and a shot at a million dollar pot.
I’ll post more in a few days and hopefully get some snaps up if I can find someone with a downloader type thingy.

Club II

I finally got to get a good nosey around the Dusk Till Dawn premises this afternoon. It looks great and the attention to detail is very impressive.

It's still kind of hard to imagine but I'm guessing this will be a very regular haunt of mine in the not too distant future. The thought of rolling up there one or two afternoons a week is most pleasing and I imagine it will be a great success.

Me in cash games, now there's a good advertisement, titter, titter.

Av'it!
A few weeks of paternity leave appear to have worked wonders on my temperament with two 500NL finals in a week, resulting in a heads-up chop at the Broadway and a four way deal at Walsall.
Both events proved very tiring as Barney's arrival has meant that we have very little free time to ourselves. The few hours between Day 1 and Day 2 at the Broadway were particularly testing; twenty one of us finished the day at 5.30am and it was 6.30am by the time I'd driven back to a frosty Nottingham.
When I got in there was no electricity, it was -3° C outside, Reuben had thrown up in bed, Barney was bawling and Amanda was trying to light a fire, all by candlelight. I eventually got my head down at 8am, but had to set off through the snow at midday to make sure I was back for the 2pm start; not ideal preparation but it's hard to grumble when everything went to plan.
The most memorable hand occurred with fourteen left. With the average stack at about 60k, I was running well with 120k. At 1500/3000 Will Mitchell pushed all-in from first spot for 40k and Paul Jackson followed suit with a short 15k. I found A-K on the button and called. Will flipped up A-A, Paul had A-J and I shipped a third of my stack over.
In hindsight I don't really know if there's a right or a wrong play there. The big all-in looks suspicious and I think it's rare that you are gonna see someone turn over aces there. But on the flipside I didn't have a chip in the pot and perhaps the option of passing and not getting involved should have at least crossed my mind.
At Walsall a few days later the sickest/most amusing hand I played was the following: With a big stack two tables out and Burnley John and Mickey Wernick on my left, I was of course doing my best to keep them both out of trouble when they were in the blinds.
I expected one of them to look me up at some point and sure enough Mickey came along for the ride when I'd raised with a K-5s. We both checked the 10,6,7 flop and I bet 5k into the 13k pot when another blank hit the turn. I wasn't overly surprised when he called and was sure he'd lead out on the river. The seven paired and he led out for 11k, with about 9k behind.
Boy it pains me to leave any chips out there and I was sure this was one of his patented chip garnering plays, it looks strong and pot-committed but I just had a hunch he was on a J-Q or J-10 type hand. I pondered for a short while and called - he tapped the table, preparing to muck.
'Good call, king high', he said, and flipped over another K-5s.
'Aargh!' I lamented, as we chopped the pot,
'I shoulda pushed!'
My arm was twisted last week and as a result I head over to Goa for five short days at the end of the month. There's value of sorts in the million dollar guaranteed pot, but the catch is that the there's a very strong British posse heading over.
The short-term goals then will be to win the event, get a golden tan, eat spicey food for breakfast, lunch and tea and of course, wash it all down with something very chilled and dry.

On The Box
The bulk of televised poker is pants but I caught two excellent shows last week.
The first was the second heat in last years William Hill Grand Prix. Johnny Lodden put on a beautiful display of how to play a one table satellite. Throw all your books away, all you need is to watch this one show, let it sink in, then watch it again;
he did half his chips early doors, made some terrific laydowns with ease and just appeared to be that little bit more aggressive than the opposition without ramming it down their throats.
Now I really do like and respect Ross Boatman’s game a lot and believe me, he ain‘t no slouch when it comes to closing out a final table, but when I spoke to Johnny a few weeks later he said there was just no way he could lose that heads-up match.
I’m guessing that Johnny and his ilk have just put in that many hours online that their game theory is spot on; they know just how much to push and how often to bet when it’s checked to them, giving them a big enough edge to prevail over the length of a match. Sounds easy.
The second show was the lead up to the big EPT final table in Monte Carlo. Five handed and on the bubble, with by far the lowest stack, how Ash Hussain didn’t go broke with 7-7 was not only a mystery, but more importantly an eye-opener to me.
Finally, it pained me to watch Ben Grundy’s demise at the hands of Marcel Luske (Marcel raised with rags, Ben re-raised with A-J but checked the flop and the turn, Marcel bet and showed the bluff).
Maybe I’m just too soft, I mean I know Ben has had a high tilt factor in the past and in all fairness this is a competition with big wonga up for grabs, but there’s no way I could ever bluff someone off a big pot and then large it up for the cameras while your opponent feels like chucking up.