Backgammon: bad day at the board

Decided to play a couple of games of Backgammon

I like to play the "swing" tournaments as they combine the use of the doubling cube with a fixed amount of money and a tournament format. You get 1000 "chips" to play with and each game point is initially set to cost 200 chips. Every 5 mins the stacks go up and when you loose all your chips you are out of the tournament. Unfortunately it can take a long time to wait until there are enough players (only 6 players in my case, but can take half hour or so before the tournament starts)

Whilst I was waiting I tried to find a cash game, but could only get a $1 game, which is OK but was hoping for a quick $0.40 Had an exciting game, opponent doubled up early on, so took the bet. Went down to the wire and had 1 checker left at the end, so very close. Had a rematch, but soon after this game started, the Swing tournament also started and unlike Poker it is extreamly difficult to play more than 1 match simultaneously. Did my best but the distractions meant I quickly went behind in the cash game and lost too easily.

Must take the lesson onboard NOT to register for tournament then go off an play cash games in future !

The tournament started off well.... first game I offered a double and the opponent quit, even though I wasn't that far ahead. Second game had an exciting match, got doubled and went on to win. After the third game which I also won I was in the lead with the most chips and only 3 players left (out of the 6) but the stacks go up as time progresses so when I lost the next two games, I was all-in on the next game, with the winner of this match likely to take the tournament (as the third player only had a few chips left) Very exciting again, had a bit of bad luck with the dice to begin, but then managed to build a good position but it eventually came down to who got luckiest on the dice rolling by the time we were bearing off, and I lost by 1 checker again !!

Not my night tonight for Backgammon and my bankroll is back down to my starting amount of £20 so will have to start building it up again.

Great way to relax after playing poker though :-)

Computers: RSS feeds rule OK

OK, I am a sad techy and can't stop myself from getting excited about some new techy toy :-)
and it's not even new technology.... just that I found myself struggling to keep up with all the news at work and also was browsing my local council web site and found some interesting local events stuff, which I knew I would never remember to find again..... so what is the answer ? Well RSS is the answer for me on this and luckily RSS feeds are available on the sites I was looking at

What is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) well it is basically like being sent emails about new articles in a section of a web site you are interested in. It is better than email as you get a summary of the article/item and can go and look at the full article if you want to, but otherwise just scan over the articles.

All you need is a RSS reader, which you can either install as a program on your PC or via a Web Site where you use your browser as the reader. For me, a browser based RSS reader is the only way to go so looked at the following sites:-

1. http://feeds.reddit.com/ but the interface is clunky, the site is slow and you cannot even change your password (maybe I shouldn't be so fussy with a free service :-) )
2. http://www.bloglines.com/ interface seems quite good and the site looks fast. Seems to have lots of features like blogs and stuff.... but to be honest I just couldn't work out how to read my feeds after I subscribed to them so completely useless as a RSS as far as I am concerned
3. http://www.google.com/reader this is the one I am using right now. Easy to setup, quick responses and slick interface

Now I can simply login to the reader site and see a list of new articles from the sites I subscribe to, meaning I can easily keep track of local events and work related news all from one place. I guess the only downside is that I will need to login every day to keep the volume of items to scan down to a manageable level.

Mind you, I cope with about 40-50 emails every morning so I guess an extra couple of dozen messages won't make a lot of difference

If anyone knows a better browser based RSS reader let me know....

Music: recent additions

Recently added some CD's to my collection

Goldfrapp - Supernature
Took a bit of a risk buying this one, but it's OK, with couple of really good tracks.

KT Tunstall - Eye to the Telescope
Saw KT on various TV programs and liked what she played. Little disappointed with the album, most of the stuff that I hadn't heard before is a little flat and girly

Gorillaz - Demon Days
Only heard two or three tracks before I bought this album, like KT was disappointed when first heard it through, but more I play it the more I like it

Green Day - american idiot
Best of the four by far. Lots of energy, good tunes, good lyrics. Having said that, starting to wear off a little and find myself skipping one or two tracks now. Overall great album still

Apart from the four albums above, my car 6 disk changer also has The Best of Black Sabbath (double CD) To be honest, thisCD is the only reason I haven't changed the CDs in the car.... I just can't wait to hear it again and again. Olden but definately golden.....

Gambling: Backgammon

Relatively recently started playing Backgammon on the internet for Real Money, so will start to talk about it in my blog

I have always enjoyed a nice game of Backgammon, but never really understood the point of the doubling cube, so one day decided to read up on it. To my surprise it opened up a whole new world of gambling to me :-)

Of course Backgammon has been around for a heck of a long time as a game, (and doubtless people have always put some wager on the outcome) but I just never fully realised how important the doubling cube is, nor how widespread the tournaments and games are face to face and now on the internet.

I had a browse around and liked the look of http://www.gammonempire.com/ so signed up and started playing.

My first 50.00 lasted quite a while but of course drained away eventually. I just loaded another 20.00 so will post in the future about how I get on and what I think I am doing wrong (or right !)
They have an interesting ranking system, in that all players start at 1400 and win/lose one point for each game you win/lose. My current ranking is around 1300, so probably need to improve a little :-)

World Cup: Second Round: England v's Equador

I thought it was actually a good performance by England overall.... Frank Lampard still needs to be shown where the net is and Beckham should avoid Curry and beer on the evening before a match but apart from that England were quite steady and only wobbled a couple of times.

With just the one goal, there was always that nagging dount that Equador may equalise, so was full of nervous excitement (and beer!) watching the match

Portugal next, luckily they didn't seem to be running Holland ragged so should be a good next match

BTW - would you really want this image as the wallpaper on your PC ? Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/football I think it looks really naff, yuuukkkk :-)

Poker: How long does it take to become good at Poker ?

Unfortunately I never kept records of my "Casino trip" poker tournaments, but can tell from my expense claims that my very first game of tournament Poker was the evening of 15th January 2001, in Sheffield. No, the company didn't pay for my gambling, but a work trip happily coincided with the Hold'em tournament night in the Casino near to the hotel I was staying :-) It was a £5 Pot Limit rebuy tournament and although I don't remember how I did, I do remember feeling very nervous until the game started.

I have been keeping meticulous records of my online poker games (the real money one's anyway) but have never really bothered to do any analysis of how I have been doing, so out of interest, I thought I would do a quick summary

First online game was 2nd September 2002 with Ultimate bet. It was a $15.50 buy in to a NL MTT with 160 players. I finished 25th (didn't win any money) but not too bad for a first attempt !

Quick summary (might get around to analysing further some day) as at 22nd June 2006
Ultimate Bet 390 games total loss $973
Poker Stars 17 games total loss $ 50
Ladbrokes 427 games total win $ 67
William Hill 14 games total loss $145
Party Poker 121 games total loss $ 84

My career total so far is therefore a loss of $1040 (about £562 at todays rate) over 969 games spanning nearly 4 years. Not an expensive hobby by any means, but could do better.

So why so many losses ? That I will have to analyse more, but I used to play a lot of MTT with large fields (smaller chance of winning) and also tended to play large stakes games once I built up my bankroll, so if I lost that one game then it would wipe out months of small gains.

To answer my own question "How long does it take to become good at Poker?" the answer for me seems to be more than 4 years :-)

Gambling: How to go bankrupt with Betting Exchanges

I love the idea of Betting Exchanges, it gives you that entrepreneurial feeling, like you are wheeling and dealing.... Unfortunately for me I am rubbish at it

My lessons to be learned with Betting Exchanges are not to get involved with things I know little about and you must do your basic homework !

The first time I got involved was a back in April when Betfair sent me a "free" £10 bet (actually had to deposit £10 to get the free bet) At first I bet on Football games, but didn't do any research (and don't follow football normally) so my £20 soon disappeared. It was good fun though so decided to "invest" another £50, but this time I tried to run a book on horse races. This was even more fun, but needed a lot of time to prepare, check form, monitor prices, etc... which I didn't really do properly so although I didn't have huge losses I was seeping money away again. Having dropped about half my funds, I stupidly went back to football games and dropped my remaining funds in a couple of matches...

So I learned my lesson about betting on football matches

So why this post now about Betting Exchanges.... well, Betfair sent me a "free" £5 bet... and also offered to give a separate free £10 bet as well (you can probably see where this is leading :-) ) For a £5 I will be given £20 to bet with, so the offer was too good to miss.

My first bet was to put a book on a horse race, although I got a bit excited and layed/bet on too many horses so ended up with a profit of exactly 0.00 (better than loosing I suppose)

I seem to have a fatal fascination about betting on football matches, so of course I placed a couple of bets on world cup results, both of which lost, so am back to 0.00 in my account balance again.

So I learned my lesson about betting on football matches

My lessons to be learned with Betting Exchanges are not to get involved with things I know little about and you must do your basic homework (and under no circumstances bet on Football)

:-)

Betting Exchanges are good fun so will probably fiddle around with them again, but don't think I will be making a living as a bookmaker any time soon.....

World Cup: England v's Sweden

It's never easy with England (part 3)

Before the game I would have said I'd be happy with a draw (although I have a sneaking suspicion that Equador want to play England rather than Sweden!) but that last minute 2nd goal by Sweden was just pathetic.... the long throw in, which is then almost accidentally knocked on the thigh of a Swedish player into the England goal.... absolutely dismal.

It was a good game to watch overall, with good plays by both teams, so as I said before it is better to watch something that is exciting than have a boring experience, but for goodness sake, can someone show Frank Lampard where the goal is ! He definitely needs some shooting practice....

Talking of practice, I hope Sven has the boys practicing those penalties.......

Poker: Bankroll strategy

Everyone has a bankroll strategy, whether you know it or not :-) When talking about Casino visits, I guess most people decide how much cash they want to take with them, and whether or not to take their cashpoint card.... well, it is some kind of strategy I suppose

For me, I have always had a simple strategy for Casino Poker Tournaments. I normally play £10 entry with £10 rebuys for 90 minutes and a final add-on, so will ensure I take £100 for the tournament and a separate amount for playing the other casino games before and after the tournament. The other basic premise is that this is money that I have put aside as my "casino fund" so I am not afraid of loosing all of it (I will still be able to pay my bills !) You should never gamble with "scared" money (meaning you are afraid of or cannot afford to loose it)

The reasoning is that if I need 9 rebuys within the 90 minutes rebuy period, then it is clearly not going to be my night so should walk away... but also you need to have enough for several rebuys in case you run into a bad beat or start playing too loose.

So far, so good... so lets think about online poker

When it comes to online poker, my strategy has always been "when I run out of money I will add more into my account" This approach has been fine for me for how ever many years I have been playing online (must look back and work out how long) as Poker has always been an enjoyable hobby which normally pays for itself (well, almost) What I want to now is see if I can make my hobby a source of income to fund other more expensive hobbies (we all gotta dream ;-) ) so will try out my own new strategy for online play

Mike's online playing strategy
1. Play within the bankroll
As with bricks and mortar Casino trips, playing online should follow basic rules
a) Do not load the online account with more money than you can afford to loose
b) Decide what type of games you want to play and stick to the types that really interest you (tournament/cash, Omaha/Hold'em/whatever)
c) Work out how long you want your bankroll to last, then pick the stake level that will allow you to play enough games but not be playing "scared"
d) Identify how long you have got free to play, when and where you will be playing. You definitely don't want to be playing Poker in a hurry, whilst being distracted by the wife trying to read her emails, or somewhere where there are other distractions (like TV)

Those of you who read my previous post about "Easy" money (http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/05/poker-is-there-such-thing-as-easy.html) will know that there are lessons to be learned about switching games and stake levels

So to put my strategy into practise for myself:-

• I find that I can only play low-limit cash games for about 15-20 minutes, then I start getting bored.... higher stake cash games would be more exciting but I simply don't have the bankroll to cope with the down swings that inevitably happen to everyone.
• Realistically the only good time for me to play is about 2 hours on a Wed night, other nights I normally only get about 30 minutes uninterrupted play time
• Although I have started looking at Omaha Hi/low games, it takes a long time to get to grips with a new game so am going to stick with Hold'em.
• I normally load my account with about $75 when needed, but could only do this once a month at most !

Conclusion

My ideal strategy is to play $10+1 single table sit and go tournaments (STT) with 5 or 6 players. (10 seaters can take over an hour to complete sometimes) This gives me 6 games (without winning!) which will probably take me 3 weeks to play. If I can build up my bankroll from $75 to $132 then I can afford to switch to $20+2 STT. I do also sometimes enter $10+1 Multi Table Tournaments (MTT) but this is rare enough to not be a big deal.

Update 22nd June 2006

I started my campaign with my new strategy last night

My current bankroll was $207 so could actually have started with 6 seater $33 tables, but decided to stick to $22 for the moment. Assuming average performance (1 win, 1 second and 4 out of money finishes) I would expect to end up with $177 after 6 games.....

Ended up playing 4 games and achieved two 5th places, one 4th place and one win (Hoorrahh) so am still on track to only loosing $30 :-)

I was particularly annoyed about one of the 5th places as my pocket kings got called all in by two people, one with AQ and one with 98 suited. This made me 54% favourite to win (courtesy of Card Player odds calculator at http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_odds/texas_holdem) Had an Ace come on the flop I would have been OK about loosing, but no.... it had to come 2-4-5 along with 4 on the turn and 3 on the river.... yes, I lost to a straight on the river (dammit....) Had I won that hand, I would have had half the chips available and would likely have had a money finish. Oh well, "That's Poker" as they say...

Update 23rd June 2006

The exciting news is that I managed to get in another couple of games last night (courtesy of Eastenders and Cornation Street)

The first game (game 5 in the series) was a roller coaster ride, first hand the player to my left (we'll call him "Kamakazi") was very aggressive with a rubbish hand and lost about 600 of his 2000 chips. Second hand I was dealt pocket Kings and put in a reasonable raise... Kamakazi went all-in so I happily called, which turned first to delight to see him with KQ (giving me 90% chance of winning) then despair as he hit a straight on the turn, leaving me with 600 odd chips and an uphill battle. Later in the game I doubled up with a Q3 suited against AA (I was 15% to win that time) so I guess the luck evened out, but only managed to finished 6th

Game 6 in my series was a bit odd as well, the 3rd hand someone went all in with nothing and got called by AA and quite rightly lost. After that the players were all tight as a ducks bottom, so I started playing more hands and taking a lot of blinds. With this game strategy they didn't know when I got a hand, so when someone attacked me I had hit 2 pair on the flop against his top pair so took a massive chip lead and managed to hang on to take first place

So to summarise my first series of games

• Played 6 games of 6 seater $20+2 STT
• Time spent 2 hours 35 mins
• Won 2 games
• Lost 4 games (4th,5th,5th,6th)
• Layed out $132
• Winnings $144
• Profit of $ 12 (about $4.65 per hour)

I don't think the professional players have much to worry about from me just yet :-)

So having completed my first series, I re-evaluate my position as per when I started, so what I can do now is play another series of 6 x 6 seater games at the £30+3 level, then re-evaluate again at that point

General: Royal Military Academy

The RMA Sandhurst had a "Heritage Day" Sunday 18th June. Admission was free, so we decided to go :-)
It was quite interesting as the public were allowed into the buildings to see some of the areas, most of which had historic artifacts and/or military related paintings. Outside they had various bands, vehicles, activities etc which all made for an interesting few hours wandering around.
There is also a lot of woodlands and lakes, which we didn't walk around this time, but was very picturesque.
Although we only sampled the ice cream, there was various catering points, with very reasonable prices. The Gurkus had a curry tent which was only £3 a meal.... just a shame I don't like curry really.... and the cream teas looked wonderful but we decided to leave before lunch so didn't get a chance to sample those either.
Haven't seen the heritage day event advertised before, so will have to look out for it next year, probably go for lunch next time

Poker: WPA announced "non-voting" membership

Click to join

The World Poker Association have just announced a cheaper option to enable you to join, which has got to be good news :-)

EXtracted from the June newsletter on the WPA website

The WPA is also moving forward with a new membership structure in hopes of enticing the more casual poker players to support the WPA. After much discussion internally, we decided to offer a $10 non-voting membership opportunity for individuals. The benefits include: participation in WPA events, access to view the WPA discussion forums, and future benefits such as discounts and health insurance.

If you want to join, use the link above and click on the membership tab, or go direct to the membership form at https://www.wpapoker.com/membership/membershipform.php

World Cup: England v's Paraguay

I had to mention it :-)

With all the pre-match hype and hysteria, I was keen to actually see the match. Having just made it home to watch the start of the match, I was more than happy to see the early goal and Englands performance generally in the first half.

It turned into the typical awkward England performance I remember watching in previous world cups..... the second half England played terrible and could easily have lost the match. Fortunately England hung on by their fingertips to take the three points and even got a boost to our chances of qualifying by Sweden and Trinidad drawing their match.

Watching England play is certainly a roller coaster ride and I guess you could say it is more exciting to have your team battle to retain their lead than to just bang in goal after goal against some hopeless opposition (see my posts about F1 as to how watcheable this would be :-) )

In the end, a mediocre England performance against a lesser team so am looking forward to seeing their play improve in the next match (here's hoping anyway)

Cars: British GP

The British GP was not a great spectacle and am not sure how much longer I will be bothered to watch any GP. In my view, there is more drama, spectacle and tension in the Qualifying now than the race itself. The only vague interest was Button's drive to make up places, which although cut short by an engine blow up would probably have finished at around P9 anyway.
Something needs to be done to make F1 more exciting. At the moment it is more like watching Chess and although I quite enjoy watching Chess, compared to other formula, F1 is tedious.
The FIA attempts to level the playing field has clearly not worked. Michael Schumacher/Ferrari may not be dominating anymore, but Alonso/Renault certainly have been and likely will continue to do so this season.
So what is the answer ? OK, in practical terms there is not likely to be much the FIA can do as they have to pander to the teams business realities and politics... but it would be nice to see something simple like making the engines 2 litre turbos and take away refuelling. This would likely introduce more unreliability, which makes things more interesting itself, but more importantly gives drivers a choice to turn up the boost to overtake but have to balance this against fuel consumption. I am sure this would make the whole F1 experience much more of a racing spectacle.
At the moment I am tempted to spend my Sunday afternoons attending Touring Cars or 750mc races than sitting half asleep in front of the TV watching F1 (even cutting the grass is starting to seem more alluring)

General: Holiday in Cornwall - Jun '06

Views of Eden project, Beach at Portreath from hill just above Harbour and view of the Harbour from Cottage window.

Just come back from holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in a Holiday cottage in Portreath which was well equipped, clean and located right on the harbour and about 100 yards from the beach. Portreath is a small village on the very scenic coast and has a nice beach, 3 pubs which all serve nice food, 2 additional restaurants, fish and chip shop, convenience store and a lovely bakery. The weather was blazing hot sunshine all week, so what more do you need for a refreshing, relaxing holiday ! The only small problem was that at low tide the smell from the Harbour was horrendous. Luckily it just meant we kept the doors and windows closed so didn't cause any great issue for us.
There is lots to do and see down in Cornwall so we only scratched the surface of what Cornwall has to offer. We did plan out our week and ended up more or less sticking to what we decided to do.

Saturday
Sat nav tells me it is 255 miles to destination. We take it easy, stopping a couple of times and end up taking about 5.5 hours, which didn't seem a bad time.
Once we settled into the 3 bedroom cottage we take a walk around the small village and soon find ourselves on the beach taking in the late afternoon sun. A short walk around the cliffs is enough after such a hectic day, so go the 20 yards across the road from the cottage to the most local of locals (Portreath Arms Hotel) for nice evening meal and a drink or two...

Sunday
Previously planned for going on the Beach all day, which is probably just as well. Te sea is blooming freezing so end up paddling rather than swimming when the sun bathing gets too much effort. In the evening, decide to go for the tourist option of takeaway Fish and Chips by the sea front. No better start to a holiday.

Monday
Went for country walk round the coastal path to the next town (Porthtowen) Took about 2 hours to do the 4 miles, but was fascinating walk, looking out to the craggy coast and going up and down steep inclines..... also went around a RAF base, so had an armed army guard patrolling alongside us for a while. Reaching our destination, find there is a nice beach, restaurant and pub in the village (is there any other kind of Cornish village ?)
After the walk back, we decide to go to a different pub for our evening meal The "Bassetts Pantry" but actually was quite disappointed that it was "ordinary" pub food rather than the excellent home cooked from the first night.

Tuesday
Went to Lands End which was only about 20 miles away. Satnav took us down some great country roads to get there. Despite it being £3 to park and lots of rip off tourist activities it was fantastic to see the views and wildlife around that area and is well worth a trip (but don't bother with their cornish pasty as it was horrible) As we was close by we went into Penzance for the afternoon. A nice place to visit, very picturesque, the Art Deco swimming pool was very stylish and a fantastic coffee shop serving cream teas. There was also a good view of St Michaels Mount across the bay, so we decided to have a closer look on the way home. The car parking was rip off so only stopped to take a picture in the end. On the way back to the cottage we stopped in the town of Redruth, but as it was 5:30pm by now, everything was shut and it was like a ghost town. We did find a nice cafe attached to the cinema that was open, so ended up eating there. They served a nice sized meal, so much so that I didn't order any dessert ! Large portions of nice food seems to be the order of the day in Cornwall :-)

Wednesday
Another visiting day planned, with the Eden Project first on the list. I wasn't really looking forward to going, but once we got in, was surprisingly fascinating, especially the Biome of course (the great big dome things) In the end we were there about 5 hours, so having had only a short lunch rest were feeling knackered. After all that walking we had to stop at the Cornish Cyder Farm on the way back... with the Satnav again making excellent tiny back road choices, even driving around the area is exciting. There was free tasting at the Cyder Farm, but only had a very small drop as had to drive back, but ended up buying couple of bottles to get stuck into taker... In the evening we hobbled over the road to the Portreath Arms Hotel again for our meal, again having a smashing meal for small amount of money

Thursday
The day that Lynn had been looking forward to the most... where we had decided to go to the Cornish Goldsmiths just up the road. Once there we also found there was other shops selling Pearls, Cornish Silver and Bears amongst some other smaller shops, so Lynn had a great time looking around. I was surprised to spend 2 hours there, but Lynn "only" bought two items of gold jewellery so the holiday budget was just about intact
Then went to Godrevy (owned by National Trust) for another coastal walk. Great (uncrowded) beach, big cliffs, spectacular views and strategically located Ice Cream van made it a very pleasant afternoon spend walking around.
In the evening, decided to go to the Pub for our meal, but for a change went to the Waterfront Inn. The pub looks a bit rough round the edges and although the menu was a bit basic, had a decent selection. The home cooked food was great and for the first time I can remember, I didn't manage to finish my pudding ! (it was a HUGE slice of Bannoffee Pie, with extra cream)

Friday
Our final day, so wanting a "rest" day went to the beach again. Unfortunately, although it was hot and sunny it was very windy, but managed to find a reasonable spot out of the wind to get some R&R
As it was so windy we ended up back at the cottage earlier than normal, so watched some of the German game on TV, before getting ready for the Portreath Arms Hotel for our final meal in Cornwall.

Saturday
Lynn had refused to get up earlier than 8am (to get home before the footy) so just get up, pack and left about 9:20. Luckily for me, we manage to still get home at around 1:50pm (4.5 hour journey) just in time to unload then sit in front of TV to watch England game :-) As luck would have it, noticed a local pub reopened today after a refit, so went there for a nice meal... not quite the same views as Cornwall, but good meal and good beer.

Poker: June 2006

Full details at http://www.statsgenie.com/poker/default.aspx?SeasonID=2066

What can I say ! There was drama, passion, tantrums, despair and joy, yes I can only be talking about the June Poker League game played last night

It was a full house (no pun intended) of 16 players, with the No Limit format and a total of 2000 chips there was always going to be a lot of action. We got 1000 chips to start and the 2nd 1000 chips when the first lot has gone. On my table of 8 we had 4 players needing their top up by the middle of the 2nd level (including me!) Vlad and Bill were creaming the rest of the players in the early stages and both had healthy looking stacks of chips very quickly.

I was trying to limp in cheaply in the first couple of levels and hope to hit a flop, but this strategy wasn't really paying off as it was tempting to call any raises once I had put in a Big Blind sized bet as there were normally at least 4 players seeing the flops. I lost a decent amount of chips to Sean when the flop came with an A to match one I had in my hand. Sean knew I had an A when I bet and I knew he had an A when he put me all-in so the decision was about kickers..... Unfortunately mine was a 4 so decided to fold. Sean showed a 3, but we would actually have split the pot.

I was soon down to 225 chips and struggling to survive, and found myself all-in but hit a flop and went to 900 chips. Soon after I was on the BB with 23 o/s, but the flop was 456 ! I was a bit nervous when a third diamond came on the river, but my straight held up and I tripled through again !

By the time we got to the final table, I had a reasonable 3500 chips, which was about 4th. Vlad and Darren both had around 10'000. Jon and Simon both had less than a BB so were looking in bad shape and it looked like it could be Andrews night as he had about 6'000 chips and was looking strong.

With the blinds at 500/1000 and not long until they went up to 1000/2000 the action was thick and fast. I hit an incredible run of good cards just when I needed it and managed to triple up again knocking out Jon in the process, then Sean went all-in against me when I was holding KK. His AQ had a chance to get him out of trouble, but didn't :-)

Down to 4 players and the chip counts were close, and I was praying to not finish in my normal 4th spot !

Luckily for me, Andy's chips were whittled away by Darren, before the killer blow came from Vlad and I was in the money with Darren and Vlad.

The last few hands were frantic with lots of action and the chips moving around the table. My key hand was A7 against Vlad's A9 which held up for Vlad to take a large chip lead and leave me with very few chips.... but then I got dealt an A four times on the trot and managed to pick up chips putting me roughly even with Darren.

The 2nd last hand saw me push in with KT but Darren had AJ which held up to take me out.

Vlad had enough chips to win without having to play the last hand

Fantastic game and very exciting. With the No Limit format and just one rebuy, there was a lot more tension than normal which made for a more thrilling game. Not sure I can stand this pace every month, so luckily we are back to PL with unlimited rebuys as normal next month !