Poker: Casino Trip July 2006

On Thursday the CamberleyBoyz went to the Casino to compete in the weekly Hold'em £10 pot limit rebuy tournament (billed as Beginners night!)

Events as far as I can remember....

With 1000 chips per buy in, the blinds started at 25/50 for 45 mins, 50/100 for another 45 mins then rebuys stopped and the blinds go up to 100/200, and keep increasing every 20 minutes thereafter (200/400, 300/600, 400/800, 500/1000, 600/1200, 800/1600)

40 entries
7 CamberleyBoyz (Me, Derek, Bill, Zoran, Alex, Sean and Darren)
Top 5 players get paid (about £750 for first, going down to £160 for 4th and £80 for 5th)
Started at 8:30pm and we left at about 2:30am !

On my table everyone played loose from the first hand. Two guys went all in on the first hand, three on the second I think and so on. I sat back and let then fight it out, content to wait for a hand. AQ came for me so raised and got two or three called, then A came on the flop and I bet pot. 1 guy called me and he had nothing, so I won a large pot. Then we had an incident, which luckily I wasn't involved in! in that all the players tend to just throw their chips into the middle of the table, but with 4 players going all in with differing amounts of chips there was a big argument over who had put in how much (shows how sensible we are to leave the chips in front of the players!) After about 10 minutes of trying to reconstruct the hands, they called the supervisor over, who took another 5 or 10 minutes to sort it out.. chaos... one of the guys who had lost all his chips had enough agro so went home :-)

Few hands later I got AQ again and raised again. This time got 2 callers and the flop came AQQ - wow can't get much better than that! My check raise all-in only got one caller who had a sole A so I took another large stack of chips and was probably table chip lead.

At the break when rebuys stopped, I had about 11'000 in chips and was table chip lead. Sean had about 13'000 chips and was tournament chip leader at this stage, with two other tables having about 10'000 as the chip leaders. Derek only had 900 chips so was looking a bit shaky, Alex had 2000, Darren had about 3000, Zoran had apparently gone home ! Bill probably had about 3000 as well.

On the restart, the nature of the game had changed, with no more rebuys the guys with chips were playing tight and the short stacks had to get busy. I got AQ again! which was again kind to me and I took out our chip bank (the guy who had the most rebuys :-) ) The next crucial hand for me was when I was big blind with 89c The flop came 887 so had trips. Checked and the player to my left bet the pot. It folded round to me so I re-raised but then he went all-in which was vast majority of my chips. He had to have the other 8, but what kicker.... but I was pot committed and called. Luckily for me he shows 86 and lost, giving me a huge number of chips

It all gets a bit hazy after that but I continued with my policy of playing very tight and in the main the play on the table was tight aggressive overall.

As the number of players decreased we went to two tables. Sean joined my table with what must have been the tournament chip lead (or joint with one other player on our table) After a few hands, a nondescript flop of T86 (or similar) provoked the two large stacks to raise/re-raise each other. Sean called and showed T2 but was up against TQ and was out of the tournament (I am sure the hand will be replayed in his mind many times)

Before I knew it, we were down to the last 9 players and I had made the final table !

The final table had a dealer so the pressure was off on the admin side of the game, but only 5 places paid. I was about 3rd or 4th highest chips with 27'000 Darren also made the final table with about 10'000 and the blinds were at 400/800 (I think) There were 3 guys quite low in chips (less than 5000)

The first hand of the final table saw the lowest chip stack go all-in and get called and busted by the chip leader (around 40'000 in chips) After a round of play the blinds went up to 500/1000 which prompted the lowest chip stack to go all in. His A7 got taken by Darren so we are down to 7 players. Soon after another low stack goes, so we are on the bubble. This stage is particularly tough as everyone is super tight, not wanting to finish out of the money... and more so when the lowest stack doubles up. We are all in the 10'000 to 25'000 chip count range so very close between the players. I was lowest stack and saw K3c so with the blinds coming my way went all-in. Got called by big blind with KQ so looked all over for me. Two clubs on the flop were not enough and I started packing up, but then saw it was a split pot and there were two pair on the table.... phew a lucky escape for me.... Eventually another player was busted out so we were all in the money now.

Still a tight game and everyone playing well. The chips were going around the table but it was Darren who finished 5th. Another blind round saw me all in with pocket 4's. The flop of 567 looked OK for me but the two callers both flipped over 89 so shared the pot with their straights on the flop.... oh well, made 4th place (I was about 55% to win pre-flop so a little disappointed)

In rough finishing order, the camberley boys were
4th - Me :-)
5th - Darren
13th - Sean
18th ? - Derek
Bill
Alex
Zoran

Great night out for me, great poker, very tense and exciting at times, dramatic and gut wrenching at other times.... this must be the beautiful game, you can see why it can get addictive ! Will "re-invest" my winning in the £100 freezeout tournament next time I think, but as I have the day off today (Friday) I might play some online poker :-)