Things slowed down a little after this and we reverted to our lighter schedule of the Sunday/Tuesday tournaments over at Circus, these along with Friday nights down the Grosvenor are the best value weekly tournaments available in Newcastle. No success to report as both Mark and I seem to be making regular deep runs but not quite finishing the job, always seeming to bust somewhere on the penultimate table but cest la vie. Were running below our expected value in these events, they average between 40-60 runners and a very small % of the already small field have a sound understanding of tournament poker. I’m aware of the variance swings however feel like my approach to these tournaments has been a little nonchalant, this has maybe subconsciously lead to a lack of effort as I just expect my experience to carry me through. Evidently it hasn’t and I’ve found myself on the rail whilst others players who aren’t necessarily better or worse than me grind out results, their simply more focused and thus getting rewarded for their effort. So in conclusion a little more concentration required, I’ll report back next month on how that has gone.
Away from the felt I’ve had a few ace nights out with old school friends, friends visiting from out the area, and the Circus crew Spoona, Dan, and Ian (unfortunately not Celia) out and about town, all of which usually conclude with me being a nuisance over one of the three casino’s but all in good merry spirit of course.
Saturday 14th April seen Circus launch their new £50 tournament, this was intended to mirror their old £75 event in terms of structure with a view that the reduction in buy in would attract more runners. I was nursing a hangover after being out with friends on the Friday but soldiered on to show my support to Circus, first off I hit it up over ‘The Living Room’ for a late lunch with Scotty Hocking, Steve Gibson, and Neil Harvey who I’m friends through the local poker circuit and NPF.
An exceptional turn out seen 80 runners take to the felt and generate a £4,500 (including £500 added) prize pool, unfortunately neither Mark or I managed to cash and it was eventually split four ways by our friends Nathan Hope, Brian Ridley, Dominic Davidson, and I believe Jason Elliott but not confirmed. Always nice to see friends get some nice results, so keep up the good work guys. The following weekend Mark was back on the road heading north to Edinburgh for the PokerStars UKIPT £500 main event, I’m sure Mark will be publishing a trip report so watch out for that as he goes over his thoughts and finding a cooler when he runs KK into Dave Maudlin’s AA for a double average stack.
During the same weekend (Saturday 21st) I played the monthly Teesside £100 freezeout, although I lasted longer than my usual 20 minutes I still couldn’t get out of first gear as I lost a race with 77 vs. AKd for an average stack at 150/300. That weekend our luck (well Mark’s) changed in the weekly Circus tournaments as he went back to back splitting on Sunday and Tuesday for £500 and £275 respectively, so it was nice to finally see some return on investment after a baron spell. The Sunday (22nd) tournament was a great laugh as I sweated the final table with Jamie Giles, it was packed with names including Gaz Walker, John Stamatelopoulos, Dave Stephenson, Emma Fullerton, and of course Mark. The dealing was alternated between Ian Robson and Celia Liu so whilst on the rail me and Jamie got the atmosphere going with several chants including “LiuDAWG” in reference to Celia, “FullDOZER” in reference to Emma, and chanting “Jonny Greek, Jonny Greek” when it was John’s turn to act. It was a lot of fun and to make it a little sweeter both Mark and Gaz chopped heads up, I was waiting on Mark (obviously) and Jamie hanging around for Gaz.
The final weekend of August so the Grosvenor host ‘The G Cup’ where I found myself in the unenviable position of being without a team, despite being a proud loyal member of the Cubs since it’s launch last year. Without going into any detail our former captain Patrick retired from the NPF and the team was also retired by proxy, I disagreed with how situations developed and openly discussed this with Dave over the NPF. I ended up contacting Patrick via facebook to discuss the Cubs future and he appeared to walk away from the Cubs in the same casual manner he did the NPF, asking me to take over as captain whilst he pursued other interests. It was never my intentions to captain a team but felt I owed it to myself and the remaining team members to take it on at least temporarily for the imminent ‘G Cup’. I then began to put some provisions in place to get a team together, I found it very frustrating trying to contact people which proved my initial non interest in captaining a team and the duties that come with this responsibility. Anyway to cut a long story short, I couldn’t gather enough interest so handed the responsibility over to Chris Waugh who also struggled to generate the players. This left us both without a team until captain of the Ninja’s (Ian Bertram) kindly asked us to join his team as he had a couple of drop outs, so in the end I represented the Ninja’s for this one off event in my Cubs attire. Ian likely quickly regret offering me a slot as I was ridiculously hung-over after hitting it up in town the night before till like 6:00am, so I made a brief appearance before busting out after 20 minutes.
Prior to ‘The G Cup’ I was still undecided as to how I was going to go forward in regards to the Cubs, I have since decided I’m not cut out for captaincy (as demonstrated by passing the duties over to Chris) and will step down from the position whilst withdrawing myself from selection should any other Cub affiliates look to undertake the role. I would like to close the subject by wishing Patrick and the rest of the Cubs all the best in their future endeavours, both on and off the felt.
Finally next month is exciting with the CBMPT visiting Teesside for it’s fifth leg on Friday 10th, which has a bunch of Newcastle/Teesside characters in the field and is always good fun. I’ll be playing the full schedule which includes;
Date: Friday 10th September
Casino: Gala, Teesside
Buy In: £200 (+£20) NLH
Time: 18:00
Starting Chips: 7,500
Clock: 30 Minute
Date: Saturday 11th September
Casino: Gala, Teesside
Buy In: £500 (+£50) NLH Main Event
Time: 14:00
Starting Chips: 10,000
Clock: 60 Minute
Date: Friday 10th September
Casino: Gala, Teesside
Buy In: £100 (+£10) NLH
Time: 17:00
Starting Chips: 7,500
Clock: 30 Minute
However if I make day two of the main event I‘ll have to drop the closing £100 event. Then the weekend following the CBMPT I’m hitting it up in Las Vegas with Rob Richardson and a few cockney boys (maybe Alex Joblin and Dominic Davidson too but I need to speak with them to see if they still plan on flying out) I met out their last year, staying over at the luxury resort and casino Wynn which is a little out the way down the south end of the boulevard but with;
AAA five diamond
Mobil five star
Forbes five star
Michelin five star
Making it one of the finest hotels in the world, I’m cool with the little extra travel to get into centre strip. Inbetween the drunken nights of debauchery, glamour, glitz, and gaudiness my tournament poker schedule is;
Date: Saturday 18th September
Casino: Venetian
Buy In: $300 (+$40)
Time: 12:00
Starting Chips: 12,000
Clock: 40 Minutes
Date: Sunday 19th September
Casino: Aria, City Centre
Buy In: $150 (+$25)
Time: 13:00
Starting Chips: 10,000
Clock: 30 Minutes
Date: Monday 20th September
Casino: Bellagio
Buy In: $300 (+$30)
Time: 14:00
Starting Chips: 10,000
Clock: 35 Minutes
If I find the time (or can be arsed) whilst not either hitting it up at the bars, clubs, strippers or playing tournament poker I’ll be grinding the 200NL, 300NL, and 500NL over at Bellagio and Wynn so I shouldn’t be hard to find if your in town, so well excited about my seventh trip to the bright lights. Then things go quite in the tail-end of September, where I’ll look to relax and go back to my lighter schedule. So stay tuned guys for next month as I’ll look to do a trip report to detail my Las Vegas endeavours as well as bringing back our ‘In The Tank’ section with a guest I think you’ll all find very interesting.
Hope your all keeping and running well guys, bye for now.
some good films due for release in September mate so you should be fine at Stockton.
ReplyDeleteGood report as norm
n1 dan another great write up,i have the same bother from time to time cant seem to get up for the live mtts gl in boro nd vegas
ReplyDeleteCheers Dave/Peter. ;-)
ReplyDelete