Poker: trip to Farnborough Poker Club

In order to get some deep stack live play practise for my Black Belt Poker London Live II event, decided to go to the Farnborough Poker Club for the Friday night game.

Apart from myself, Jon, Jock and Steve W also attended.     There were 54 entrants (although a few of these were “re-entries” which were allowed in the first two levels)

At the first break, we were all doing reasonably well, as with the average stack at 11’739 we had:

Mike : 11’500
Jon : 9’900
Jock : 16’500
Steve W  :14’400

I didn’t see Jock out of his seat, but when Jon was knocked out, discovered Jock was out before and was watching the cash games!     

Steve moved to my table, on my immediate right! and was a bit short, but in quick succession he doubled up with 6-6 then hit an A on the flop with his A-K.      I had gone the  other way and was a bit up and down, but at the 2nd break the average stack was around 24’500 and there are 22 players left.

Mike : 24’400
Steve W : 33’500

We get down to 20 players and we move tables, but Steve is still on my table.  He gets lucky to double up with K-4d but later on runs his J-J into A-J and A-A and is eliminated in around 18th place (?)

Most of the remaining players have roughly similar stacks, so it’s quite tight/tense, but I manage to maintain average and eventually get some good hands.  So eventually we have the last 9 players for the final table and take a break

With 9 players left, average is around 60k and I have 83k   There are a couple of similar size stacks, and around 3 short stacks left.  

I’ve still got some work to do, as only top 6 get paid.    Luckily I manage to pick on and take out a couple of short stacks and with 7 left and chip leader, which  maintain more or less all the way to the end.    There is a £60 bubble prize for 7th, so we are all now in the money, but I can afford to sit back and wait for hands, picking my spots.

As it turns out, we get down to three players and I’m big chip lead.    With my normal blind aggression I get stealing and end up with Q-T all-in against the short stack with K-Q, but I hit a str8 and we’re heads up!

I’ve got about 2:1 chip lead but the blinds are 16k/8k by now, so the short stack has <10 BB left.   After a couple of hands, I raise from the button and he shoves and I call with A-2 but he’s got K-K which holds up.    As we’ve both got very similar chip stacks, and it’s nearly 2am, we agree to chop the pot 50/50.    I’m very happy to have made a profit of around £485 on the nights proceedings

There is a final twist in the tail, which is the winner of the tournament also gets a seat in the £100 Sunday Special (this Sunday!)   To determine the winner, they dealt one hand face up to us and I managed to luck a str8 with my 7-3 and have got the seat as well !!

I told them I couldn’t make this Sunday, so will be attending a future Sunday special for free Reeesult !!

I’m also on the Leaderboard (30 pts) for the clubs Vegas Series 4 (whatever that is!)

Whilst the result is fantastic, my main reason for going was actually to get Live practise, so how do I think I did.   Well actually, overall I think I played pretty well.   I was able to maintain focus and was able to get good impressions of players playing styles fairly quickly which allowed me to make the right choices in the tricky/crucial spots.   There were a couple of hands when we were down to the final 3 where I think I should have folded rather than called, but was probably influenced by fatigue and my huge chip lead!    In one hand I knew I was behind for sure, but still called with my weak flush (and lost to the inevitable bigger flush) so just need to watch out for that in future.

All in all, am tired but very happy this morning and am looking forward to next weeks trip to Reading Casino