Tonight saw one of the best value games being held in Blazin’ Aces in a long time which may have cost everyone €80 to play, but $50 is being reimbursed onto our Ladbrokes account. I haven’t checked the exchange rates in a while, but I’m pretty sure the dollar hasn’t jumped in value to make paying €80 for the $50 transfer worthwhile in itself, so the €3,000 prizepool in the tournament was also well worth playing for!

When the tournament started, I asked for a cup of coffee and took my seat. For about three orbits of the table, it’s like I have butter on my hands because I just can’t catch a card! I was just about to complain out loud when I find Queens in the small blind. The crying baby gets the bottle I think to myself as I see 4 players limp into my small blind. I make the obligatory raise and get just the one caller – the button. We see a flop of 5-6-9, with two clubs on board and I bet out 1500 which is around 2/3 the pot. I get minraised (and a bit) to 3500. I kind of freeze for a moment. Surely he’s raising his button with tens and better preflop so his range for raising the flop like this must be made up purely of sets and flush draws with the overs, but never something like AK or AQ which he probably would have raised with preflop. I really want to fold, but I call which is horrible, I know. The turn completes the flush draw AND the straight draw and I check-fold when he bets 3000… into a pot of almost 10k.

A few orbits later and I get my coffee. I take a sip and see two queens again. Alex raises under the gun to 550 with blinds at 100/200. He’s fond of the minraise and a bit in all kinds of positions at the table so I wouldn’t read too much into that. I’m a sat a few seats behind him, in early position, and make it 1800. It’s folded around to the small blind who calls. He’s just arrived at the table and I have never seen him in my life but I tend to assign new players to the table a pretty generic range of hands until I see evidence to prove otherwise. I think it’s quite prudent to do this at the table as it means you don’t get into any nasty spots with players whose tendencies you have no idea of! Anyway, I rarely think that a new player to the table is going to flat call a 3bet and then call a shove, so when Alex ships from under the gun when action gets back to me, it’s usually going to be followed by a fistpump. In this case it wasn’t. He had Aces.

I didn’t even have time to finish my coffee!

I eagerly await the $50 to arrive into my Ladbrokes account, but in the meantime I’ll have to try find something to keep me occupied and I think I’ve found something in the form of a gym membership. Running around like a Duracell bunny on Wednesday reminded me that I like to exercise so I looked into joining the local Kingfisher gym and have been offered a day pass to check out the place before committing. They offer some great Student deals so I look forward to trying out the place tomorrow! Even if the place isn’t to my liking, I at least get to kill a few hours before work!