Cars: Lotus track experience

I finally got to go on my "Scare yourself sensible" experience last Saturday. (http://www.grouplotus.com/media/car/doc/LOW%20RES%20SYS.pdf) You are not allowed cameras on site, so put some "official" photos above....

Just being at the Lotus factory was an experience in itself, with unregistered cars lined up ready to go to the lucky new owners.

The 8am start wasn't too bad as we stayed in a hotel about 10 minutes away, but still felt a bit tired. Coffee was available at signing on to wake everyone up, and the sight of the first few people going out got the adrenaline rushing as well

At last it was my turn to go out on track. We were in showroom standard Lotus Elise 111S which was a little surprising, not even a 4 point harness, but it didn't detract from the experience at all. The track was a bit tricky to remember, particularly the 2nd half which had lots of twists and turns. Despite my confidence that I knew roughly what to do, I was driving quite carefully and trying to listen to the instructor telling me what I did wrong on the last bend, whilst rapidly approaching the next, not easy to do ! To my disbelief the instructor told me to turn off the track, but the 20 minute session was up already, it really only seemed like 5 minutes had passed. Really was a great session, but clearly leaves you hankering for more.

We both then went round the Lotus factory tour. Despite having no engineering experience (or real interest) I found the tour extremely interesting. We saw the cars being assembled from the basic glued chassis right through the process to the finished car. The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and open about their processes and products, and you really feel you are getting into the guts of the production process (you are even encouraged at certain points to touch and feel) The favourite part of the tour must be wandering around a selection of finished cars, deciding which options and colours you will have on your own Lotus !

Despite the brief drive, I really felt we got value for money and came away wanting more driving and desperate to order a new Lotus. I am now saving up for the one day "Driver Training" day (http://www.grouplotus.com/media/car/oth/Driver%20Training%202006.pdf) and a Lotus Exige (or a Europa if the Wife gets her way, although this type of argument I almost look forward too ;-) )

Poker: Bankroll strategy - part 6 of 6

This will be my last regular post about "Bankroll strategy" as I called it (unless you tell me different!) although I will of course be continuing to play :-)

The previous post (see http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/08/poker-bankroll-strategy-part-5.html) I had another average run, but managed better this time.

For this round, I played $20 (+2) 6 seater tournaments with the following results

Game 1 : 25 mins : 4th (-$22)
Game 2 : 40 mins : 3rd (-$22)
Game 3 : 25 mins : 5th (-$22)
Game 4 : 40 mins : 1st (+$50)
Game 5 : 40 mins : 2nd (+$26)
Game 6 : 35 mins : 1st (+$50)

Played 6 games of 6 seater $20+2 STT
Time spent 3 hours 25 mins
Won cash in 3 games
Lost 3 games
Layed out $132
Winnings $192
Winnings of $60 (win of $17.56 per hour)

Summary of all the 36 games played since publishing my "Bankroll strategy"
Played 36 games in total
18 games of 6 seater $20+2 STT
12 games of 6 seater $30+3 STT
6 games of 6 seater $50+5 STT
Time spent playing 17 hours 10 minutes
Won cash in 13 games
Lost in 23 games
Layed out $1122
Winnings $1116
Loss of $6 (loss of $0.35 per hour)

Not bad for a hobby, but could do better :-)

To conclude bankroll strategy:

I will continue to follow my own advice which is

• Never play with money you cannot afford to loose
• Once the bankroll has gone, its gone !
• 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"
• If you are doing this for fun, then you should enjoy the games you play, so play whatever game type you enjoy the most
• When playing ensure you have enough time to play, you are away from distractions

Hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences in the online poker world

General: Weekend away August 2006

Went away this weekend and had a lovely time

Traveled down to Devon to see some friends on Saturday, but decided to go the scenic route (along the A30) which as it turned out was a good plan as the A303 was chocked up apparently !
Stopped in Shaftesbury for an hour to walk around and get a cup of tea. Very nice market town, worth a visit and certainly better than most service stations

Found the house via Sat Nav via a slight detour, there are miles of single track country lanes to traverse so definitely out in the wilds :-) Great house and land attached, and great time had at the party despite my needing to drive to the hotel afterwards

On the Sunday, decided to stop off at Stourhead (National Trust house and gardens) It was surprisingly busy there, but the gardens were fantastic. Of course it started to rain as we got halfway round, but not enough to make us run to the car. Stunning views and lots of surprises around the walk to keep you interested. The house was very grand and full of stuff that all country houses seem to be full of. The cafe was reasonably priced and the cakes definitely recommended !

We also stopped at Stonehenge as we have always driven straight past it previously. Found a space to park on the road to avoid the £2 parking charge for the car park. Even if you queued and braved the crowds to get into the stones area itself, you didn't get much closer than viewing from the road (which is what we did) The only amenities around the site were some grotty toilets and one burger van, so really not much to see or do at all. All in all, we were very disappointed by the whole experiencee and almost wished we hadn't bothered.

All in all a great weekend away,albeit a little tiring....will happily sit and veg out in front of the TV for the rest of Sunday afternoon now !

Cars: Hungarian Grand Prix - wow what a scorcher....!

I was bemoaning the lack of excitement in F1 races earlier in the weekend and stated that I prefered Touring Cars now (see also my previous post at http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/06/cars-british-gp.html ) but then I watched the Hungarian GP......

Wow, the wet track and rain really spiced things up, and Jenson Buttons victory made the whole thing even more sweet :-)

The event packed race is far better described by other people, for example at the F1 ITV web site http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=36958

Perhaps the rule change that the FIA should consider to make things more exciting is to only race when it's wet... this will also have a positive side effect to ensure Silverstone keeps its GP ;-)

Poker: August 2006

Another full house this time round, although only thanks to our "reserve" Ant who stepped in at the last moment to fill the last seat.

Once the game started, even by our normal manic standards it was completely mad ! On my table we had 4 people all in on the first hand (which went to Ant) and so the standard was set for the early stages of the game. The other table was keeping up with us, so after about 20 mins play there had been 32 buy ins. Ant won another big pot taking him to large table chip lead, which he kept for large amount of the game

My luck wasn't good to begin with. Got pocket 10's on the button and debated whether to call or push all-in. Just called a small raise to start. Another T on the flop gave me trips, but there was 2 spades and possibility of a Str8. Decided to go all-in anyways and sure enough someone hit a flush but lost to a Full House..... trips just ain't good enough these days :-) Eventually I hit a but of luck and quadrupled my stack, and couple of hands later took a bundle of chips again... so had gone from no where to table chip lead in two hands.

By the break and last rebuy, myself and Ant were well ahead on our table with about 5000 chips each. On the other table I think Andrew W was tournament chip lead with around 7000 chips

With the unforgiving blinds people started dropping out and some had miracle survives. When we got down to 10 players I had to move to balance tables. Andy was massive chips lead so my 7000 odd chips looked a bit insignificant compared to him, although was joint chip lead on my original table. On the second hand I raised from the big blind making it 3000 to go. Only Andy called me and seeing nothing on the flop we both checked. On the turn Andy bet to put me all-in so had to fold. Unfortunately that was half my chips gone already !

With the blinds going up to 2000 it looked like we may run out of time before we got a final table, but then 2 players went out in quick succession, leaving 7 to go to the final table with about 12 mins left to play

As Andy had a large chunk of the chips and three or four of the survivors having little more than a big blind or two left, it got busy quickly. Simon W was on small blind with most of his chips, so stuck them all in, with only Andy calling and taking him out. Steve only had 1000 in chips so just needed to decide when to stick it in. Luckily he won the first time, then was on big blind... went all-in and tripled up again.... then won another hand and was suddenly up to around 15'000 in chips and second place ! On my big blind I had half my stack in, so seeing AT stuck in the rest of them with only Andy calling (a pattern emerging here....) but showed QQ. I didn't hit my A so went out in fifth.

Dealing out the next hand the time ran out so had 4 hands to play. Simon called Darren's all-in but lost, leaving him with 900 in chips, which of course went all-in next hand. Darren went all in again and Steve also called. Steve won the hand taking two players out, with just 2 hands left to play.

Steve went all-in but Andy folded. The chip's looked close, so for the last hand we did a quick chip count and found that there was only 1000 in it, so however won the blinds won the game. Both went all-in with Andy taking the pot and first place.... what a game, exciting to the last hand !!

Great buzz to the game tonight and lots of manic play, probably something to do with the heat :-)

Results posted to Statsgenie as normal (http://www.statsgenie.com/poker/default.aspx?HH=1&OrgID=1499)

See most of you next time......

Poker: Bankroll strategy - part 5

In my last post (see http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/07/poker-bankroll-strategy-up_115212553760217054.html) I had had a bad run in the $30+3 games, partly down to bad luck I must say :-)

This time I have been playing $20 (+2) 6 seater tournaments with the following results

Game 1 : 50 mins : 1st (+$50)
Game 2 : 30 mins : 4th (-$22)
Game 3 : 15 mins : 6th (-$22)
Game 4 : 40 mins : 2nd (+$26)
Game 5 : 40 mins : 3rd (-$22)
Game 6 : 30 mins : 5th (-$22)

Played 6 games of 6 seater $20+2 STT
Time spent 3 hours 25 mins
Won cash in 2 games
Lost 4 games
Layed out $132
Winnings $120
Loss of $12 (loss of $3.51 per hour)

OK, so I achieved "average" results and therefore just lost the house fee, so not too bad a result I guess. There was only 1 game where I had "technical problems" with NTL, one game where I was blitzed by a lucky idiot and another where when down to 3 players the chips leader literally went all-in most hands and got lucky against me when I got a good hand.

All in all, I can't complain and had a lot of fun for my money :-)

Will probably play cash games to raise the $8 I need to get another $22 round in, then report back for the last time about progress..... and will try to summarise the lessons learnt and how effective the strategy has been in my next report

Poker: APAT

In case you're wondering, it stands for Amateur Poker Association & Tour :-)

Poker Player magasine is one of the sponsors so of course they pointed me to the APAT web site (see http://www.apat.com/) It's only a fiver to join up, so I did - just for the heck of it really... but their stated aim is to :-

aspires to represent the interests of all non professional players in the UK. The APAT will engage government and industry bodies to enhance the player experience; with standardisation of rules, player friendly structures and the provision of a clear communication channel for player feedback at the top of our agenda.

More importantly they are running both online and Live tournaments with the possibility to win a trophy, so sounded like fun to me :-)

Unfortunately the online tournaments start at 9pm on a Saturday (8pm GMT), which is going to be a little tricky for me but hope to attend one or two of the live tournaments in the year to get some benefit of joining.

Will let you guys know of any developments and/or benefits of being a member as and when

For now, I need to work out if and how to get to Birmingham for the weekend of 23rd-24th September for the inaugural tournament !!