Two Kinds of Oblivion

I never managed to win a WSOP seat and, to be honest, I never got anywhere in any satellite. The sums are in and I spent $2200 on sats for Vegas, for no return.

Time then to rebuild the bankroll at the cash tables. Did quite well initially but then the profits stopped. Thankfully, this wasn't because of a bad run at poker, but because I started playing Oblivion instead, which is ace. It is also one hell of a resource-intensive game, even though it is over a year old. I bought a new widescreen LCD monitor over the weekend, finally ridding myself of the CRT behemoth which was testing the structural integrity of my desk. What I had failed to take into account, however, was that whilst Oblivion just about went along OK with the resolution at 1024x768, the widescreen's native resoultion of 1680x1050 makes it crawl to a halt when five goblins are attacking me, rendering my attempts to kill them useless in the face of one frame per second stuttering.

I was planning to rip the heart out of my computer at the end of the year, but I've decided to bring that forward to now - new processor, motherboard, RAM and graphics card will be ordered this week. This is the great thing about putting your own PC together - I essentially can build myself a state of the art new PC for £550, simply by changing the core components. Case, PSU, hard drives, DVD drives, mouse, speakers etc all remain in place.

In light of all this time spent battling skeletons and trolls, I went down to the Casino at the Empire in Leicester Square for their £50 rebuy on Saturday to get out of the house. I'd been down once before a few weeks ago and not really got anywhere in the comp, so decided to have another crack. The afternoon £10 rebuy had attracted 77 players and was still going when I arrived, which meant the cardroom was much busier than I was expecting.

We had 31 players spread over the four self-deal tables (only the final table was dealer dealt, and that was at a self-deal table, not a kidney one). I was sat opposite Kevin Daly, whom I recognised from having played against him in a £100 rebuy at the Sportsman last year. He'd had some WSOP success last year so I knew he could play and, indeed, he was quite active early on. I was getting rubbish cards and had noticed that most of the other players were, quite frankly, as bad as my cards, so decided to sit tight rather than bluff off to the calling stations. Got through the rebuy period by just about doubling up over the 90mins, thanks mostly to an AK v 99 race against Kevin late on, without disturbing my wallet further until the add-on. So, I'm in for £100. Interestingly, we had 24 players left at the break, and only 7 took the add-on - always a sign of a novice field.

Kevin bit the dust early after the restart, betting out with AQ on an AQx flop, and getting called down by a novice's KJ, which sent him packing when the Ten hit. With Kevin gone, I opened up a bit and gradually got some chips. I was about average when I got moved to another table.

With only an average of one rebuy per player, and seven add-ons, the blinds started to bite rather early as there weren't that many chips in play. My new table was passive, with a mix of new live players, and 40-something players who had no notion of pot odds and M etc. I pushed one 40ish guy off a couple of pots pre-flop and it clearly annoyed him. The third time I did it with JJ and he immediately called with A9, seemingly fully expecting it to be ahead. My Jacks held up and I was in pretty good shape. It would have been even better had my all-in with KK not come up against an identical hand for a split pot.

We're on the final table bubble of two 5-handed tables (though the money didn't start till 7th) when the crucial hand of the night happened for me. I'm on the SB with QT. It's folded to the button who min-raises (we're at 600/1200). He has about 12K and I have 19K. This guy was a new live player and I'd seen a previous hand when he'd ummed and ahhhed for ages before calling an all-in against a player who'd re-raised him. He well covered the re-raiser and yet still nearly folded AK. I thought that a player like that would be almost certain to fold almost anything in the current situation when I could knock him out on the final table bubble.

I pushed with my QT and, right enough, he put his thinking hat on. Eventually, he called with AQ and I doubled him up. That knocked me back to about 5BB and sent me into 'push in any unopened pot' mode. I made it onto the final table and was surprised to see two stacks smaller than mine. The first guy (who had under one BB at the start) doubled up about four hands in a row, then the new shortstack won the two hands he played. I'd previously made a bad error when I min-raised to win some blinds(these were getting through) but forgot the blinds had increased so was forced to put in 3200 at 800/1600, instead of the 2400 I'd bet. There was an all-in behind me for a little bit more and I had to call another bit with my KT, which missed. This left me with exactly one big blind and, after two hands of filth in early position, I was all-in blind on the BB. Two players saw the flop and checked it down. There was an Ace on board, and when one player revealed his JJ, I turned over my previously unseen cards to reveal AJ and I stayed alive. Two hands later someone busted out and I made the last payout place of £150 with some mighty relief.

I still think I played the QT hand right and if he'd folded, I was in great shape to bully the other players. I'll definitely try and play in this more often, as I have to take advantage of a moderate buy-in tournament which doesn't take place on a schoolnight.