Twas the week before Vegas...

My quest to get in live practice before Vegas has cost me over £450 and not really a sniff of a draw. I came 8th in the Sportsman's £40 freezeout yesterday - started well but the tourney got crapshooty quite quickly (1500 chips and a 20 minute clock starting at 25/50) and I found no hands once it became a blind stealing comp (so I never had enough chips to make a raiser pass).

I did venture down for the £100 rebuy a couple of Fridays ago - here's the report I wrote for Blondepoker.

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Vegas is not long away, so live practice is required. To this end I made my way down to the Sportsman Casino in Marble Arch for the Friday £100 Rebuy. Strictly speaking, this would be outside my bankroll if it turned into a 'Billy Deep Pockets' contest, so I wanted a nice passive table which would play 'proper' poker during the rebuy period. Oh look, there's multi-millionaire Sir Clive Sinclair at the end of my table. And who is this sitting in the seat directly to my right? Why, it's a WSOP bracelet holder. D'oh.

So, the 90 minutes of the rebuy period passed by with the Mini-Bike Knight and the Bracelet Holder seemingly take turns to go all-in with any old crap, which didn't leave much chance for me to pick a spot with the cavalcade of rubbish I was being dealt. I took a chance with a hand where I got dealt QQ. I thought that, having sat there and folded everything for an hour, a raise from me would ring too many alarm bells, so I limped behind a couple of others, waiting for Sir Clive to push all his chips in the middle (as had become the custom). Sadly, he did not oblige and about 20 of us saw an 833 flop. Of course, I'd let the big blind see a free flop with 63 so I had to blow the cobwebs off my wallet.

Time passed by. I made more folds than an origami champion. No playable hands or playable positions presented themselves. I vowed never to play rebuys again. On the final hand of the rebuy period I found myself UTG. I had 1200 chips and after the break blinds would be 200/400. I'd decided I was going all-in no matter what I was dealt as I wasn't paying another £100 for 3BB. A5 was good enough. Sir Clive duly looked me up with 65. What a result - a handy double up is coming my way. That'll give me a chance after the bre...what's that? A six on the river? That's be the end of my night then.

Highlight of the evening occured earlier, though, at 50/100. The Bracelet Holder had raised pre-flop. He threw three chips out - two 100 (yellow) and one 500 (white). "No, no, no - I only wanted to raise to 300", he says. The bet of 700 stood. It's folded round to a guy who goes all-in with pocket nines. The Bracelet Holder immediately calls with pocket aces. Genuine mistake, or brilliant moody? Mr Pocket Nines was not happy. The Bracelet Holder was all innocence - 'why would I raise 7BB - I wanted a call?'. The rest of us chuckled to ourselves, marvelling at the mastery of the game we'd just witnessed.

Unethical? Unfair? Maybe, maybe not. It was great to watch though, as it was done with such charm. I wonder if I could get away with such a stroke in the WSOP later in the week...
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I didn't post the name of the bracelet holder on Blonde, but I suppose seeing as no one really reads this blog I can tell you it was Willie Tann.

My final proper practice for Vegas was in last night's £50K Guaranteed on Crypto, but I only lasted about 25 minutes. I raised pre-flop with AQ and got a caller behind me. I bet out on the AT2 flop, and called the reraise. A turn of 8 went check-check, and we managed to get it all-in on another offsuit rag on the river. He had A8, so made a horrible reraise on the flop, got lucky on the turn, then profited from my bad play on the river. He was a luckbox, but I didn't half help him out.

I will have my laptop in Vegas and will be doing updates for Blondepoker, as well as sticking stuff in here.