Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Road Kill

GUKPT leg five Newcastle was the destination last weekend. Myself, Paul Smallwood, Keith McFadden and Chris Dowling headed for the ferry and long spin from Holyhead to Newcastle in Paul's jeep Thursday evening. We arrived in Newcastle about 5 am and I got a decent few hours kip before the 2 pm start.

I was feeling well up for this one and looking around my starting table there wasn't to much to be worried about. This dude on my direct right looked vaguely familiar but as you can see from the picture he had obviously been out drinking all night. There was a lot of action on my table early but it became apparent that it was down to big hands rather then aggression. The only two hands of consequence I played in the first session came at the end of level two. I picked up the aces in the SB and just call an early position raiser. Flop is J 6 5 and I check/call, I check/raise the blank turn which brings a second spade. The river brings the flush which doesn't bother me and I'm about to put a hefty value bet into the 4.5k pot. I decide to check call instead and he checks a set of fives behind, phew. Shortly after this the rough looking guy on my right raised the cut-off and I called from the button with AQ. Flop Q 10 7 call, turn low card bringing flush draw and I call. River brings an 8 which I call and am a little surprised to see 69 for the straight. Hmmm must be nice.

We hit the break shortly after this and when I reviewed both hands, I decided that I was lucky to have any chips left. I was quiet happy returning for the 75/150 level with 4025 chips. Shortly back I got a very soft double up with the aces and my stack stayed around the 8k mark until the dinner break at the end of level four.

Couldn't get anything going the next level and because of the poor turnout on day one ( they had to stop down to 14 players ) we were only playing 35 minutes of level six. I was looking for a spot to get my 6k stack in and found a pretty bad one; 66 v 1010, I did hit a 6 on the flop but it was false hope as the turn brought a 10.

That's four times I've played in the UK since last September and on each occasion I've exited on the last level of play on day one. The other three lads in the car and the vaguely familiar drunk looking guy all came back for day two but as Rob reported on boards they all exited before the money.

I played the €250 game on Saturday exiting in level 2 in a flopflip holding a unimproved flush draw and over card. So a pretty abysmal weekends poker and I added to the misery with some bad sports bets :-(

We headed home Sunday evening and the satnav decided to take the piss. It sent us off towards Carlisle then over the Pennines for about 90 minutes. If you were a furry animal in the area that evening you were in trouble. The fecker on the left took out two Pheasants about six Hedgehogs and more Rabbits then mixamytosis, there was also lucky escapes for a few sheep and a deer, horrendous stuff.