**BUFFET REPORT**
GG on the buffet Circus. Rake well spent on cold meat sandwiches, salad, and even chilli with rice. Overall buffet rating: delicious/10
Pretty late now, 5am-ish. Gonna head to bed, will try to put in the last 500 cash hands tomorrow before I head out for Hogmonay. Ta to the Circus staff for putting on such an ace tourney.
It’s 4am, just got in, I finished 12/140 for £160. The tourney had it all, yoyo swings, busting out 3 players in 1 hand, great reads, moments of table domination, and the inevitable brutal dick in ass ending. Walked back from the casino and wrote this report in my head so mayaswell type it up. I like long walks through the city after big tourneys, usually find that by the time I get home I’ve cleared any bad beats from my head and analysed most of my play.
They got the capped 140 runners, which was pretty amazing, generating a huge £20k ($40k) prizepool, with £7,500 to first place. Really top heavy structure, with 11-20 being paid basically their buy-in back. Tourney structure was really good, 40min blinds the whole way and antes in the later levels, I love antes.
Dealer draws in the monster pot and deals the flop. My eyes immediately catch a Q in the window then she rolls out a J and K behind it making him a flopped straight. Utter brutality. An A on the turn gives me a few outs, but river is a blanko. Congrats/condolences from the table and railers for making the call, but I’m really too gutted to care. I’ve got so much adrenaline that I somehow manage to get paid out and leave the casino without remembering to steal a copy of Bluff magazine lol.
** WARNING: BUSTOUT HAND… WEHHH **
The very following hand it’s folded round to me in the SB and I look down at AQo. BB is a good solid player, I’ve got a lot of respect for his online game, and he’s got about 80k in chips. Interesting thing here is that he called out my hand in the previous hand where I picked up the pot with a resteal. He said I had 67s, which made me aware that a) he knows how to resteal, and b) he has noticed that my image is very LAG.
Walking out I’m obv just feeling like smashing things. That pot would have put me 3rd in chips with 12 players left, the final table paying £7.5k, £4.5k, £3k, etc. It’s just not easy to take a beat like that, but after the walk home I feel great about the tourney now. I had a lot of fun, got lucky and had my hands hold in situations… and ultimately lost a 75/25 in the late stages. Such is the nature of the tournament poker beast.
I think I made 2 mistakes the whole tourney (6-7 hours) other than that I played awesome poker, made great decisions, and had a lot of fun. I’m really happy with the way I played. I didn’t go in expecting a whole lot, I was really just taking a shot and having some fun, to break even is fine with me, what’s most important is that I played my AAAAAA virtual online games. (ta for the reminder Neil)
When I left another OP player, Adam, was still left playing hand for hand on the final table bubble. Apologies for not wishing GL on exit, I pretty much forgot in the heat of the bustout. Hope you’re taking it down right now sir!
Ok some hands. We’re 300/600-50a, I’ve got about 6500 (from my starting 7500) and pick up TT in UTG. Pretty standard insta-ship. MP player reraises, LP shortie calls all-in for 4k, BTN calls all-in for about 5k. Err, shit. I’m hoping they all have AK/AQ
They table AK, KK and AQ. T88 flop, and I hold. Puts me up to about 22k. Thankyou poker gods!
So arguments could be made for shipping it here due to the antes and being OOP with AQ, but I think I’ve still got room and raise to 13,500 total. He thinks for about 30 secs while playing with his chips then announces all-in. At this point I know I can’t lay AQ down, but take a few minutes to think the hand over. With my loose image he could put me on a wide range, too much of his range consists of resteal hands. I call all-in for 50k more, making a 120k total pot. He raps the table and flips ATo.
So anyway like fuck all happens in the first few levels, I go to the break with my starting stack. Played really TAG and only been involved in relatively small pots. I’d got a tight image as I literally can’t bluff because my table is full of stations, and I’ve not picked up many hands to value bet.
Table 3
Now down to 30 players, my stack is a little below average. Here I just continue to keep it pretty tight ’til we’re down to 23 players and the blinds have ramped up a lot. Now I’m stealing and restealing trying to pick up as many chips as possible on the bubble. I run up to about 40k, bubble breaks and we’re down to the last 2 tables. I’m guaranteed my buy-in back (yawn). I stick pretty tight as people like to gamble after the bubble and more bust out down to 12 players.
Anyways, we’re about 600/1200-100, a really strong player (Gerry) has just joined a couple of orbits ago, so he doesn’t know how stupidly tight my image is. He makes it 4000 more from the CO, I’ve got 13k (he has me covered) after paying the blinds and look down at QQ. Now obviously I’m shipping it here, but I want called. I know his steal range from the CO/BTN is wide, so I try my best to look pained by the decision for 2 or 3 mins, including even at one point turning round to analyse the tourney timer/blinds on the plasma lol. I move in, trying to look pretty stressed/frustrated and he snap calls with A9o. I hollywood good. He’s getting close to 2/1 but it is for about half of his stack, he said after that he only called because he really didn’t think I had a hand. My ladies hold and I’m up to 25k.
Table 2
Tougher table this time, people seem to know how to play here. I get cold decked and barely any good steal situations and fold for an hour and a half solid, getting chipped down to about 14k. I did have one situation where I should have made a resteal, an all-in player got in my way but I still should have done it as I knew the original raiser was weak. Didn’t have the balls though and I should have taken down a 10k pot.
First Table
God damn, I have a good table. Is everyone’s table this good? I mean seriously there are like 3 players who I’d class as “good at poker”. In the first few levels a few people stack off in ridiculous ways. My favourite was a guy who shoved all-in 6k into a 2.5k pot with A4 on a JJ6 flop, to get called by AQ because she thought she had AJ. lol are you serious? Who’s play was worse, I can’t decide.
Have a great new year all!
I’m up to about 50k now with some well timed steals. Folds round to the SB who’s a good solid player, we’re 2000/4000-400a. He makes it 12k total and this is a beautiful spot for me to ship it with 98s in the BB. He folds and I’m chipped up to 64k now, just around the average. Life is good.






They’ve got £50/£100/£500 MTTs, lots of STTs and cash virtual games from £0.50/£1. I’m planning on playing in a £100 MTT, maybe the £50 too, and some £1/£2 cash. More details at the DTD site.
Been chilling out for the past few days. Played some home virtual game poker, but none online, not really felt like it… which is cool, not going to force play when I’m not in the mood.
Playing more tables means that I’m getting more hands in, gone from playing 400-500 in an evening session to 600-800 per session. Over halfway through the new 10k hands, I’ll easily get done for the end of the year. 

