A week of debauchery and a return to the grind

Until today i had been away from online poker for a week.

Thursday night was the start of the binge with Neilmc and the beej arriving in Edinburgh. We went out for a bite to eat before watching Rangers trounce Fiorentina on penalties in the Uefa Cup semi, I was subsequently chucked out of a club at 2.45am having consumed the bars entire supply of red bull that was making their cheap vodka palatable.

I recall attempting a stealth mission to get back in, which failed, but considering the place shut at 3, it really wasn't worth it.

Friday night saw myself and a few boys (including the beej, neilmc and micky d10) make a trip to St Andrews for more debauchery. It was the annual football club ball on the saturday night and the annual poker society tourny on the saturday/sunday afternoon - perfect.

Friday night ended similarly to Thursday night, which really didn't bode well for the poker the next day. But did introduce what was to be the word of the weekend - "Murder". None of us were directly (or indirectly for that matter) involved in any homicide of any kind, but having heard the word used in place of "terrible" a few times in the past we adopted it as our inappropriate word of the weekend. Think Taggart "there's been a mirdur" and that closely resembles what we were saying - add a cockney twist to that and a little bit of confusion in your voice and you've pretty much got Neilmc's accent.

My tournament was rather short, and i played only a few hands (it was mirdur).

The major hand was as follows:

Belgian guy who could play a bit raised the button to 400, i made it 1.2k in the sb with ATo with 12k back, he called with 8k back.

Flop 3 J T two diamonds.

I led for 1.6k and he called.

At this point I think he is either floating me or is drawing. I think he raises with a big piece of the flop as it is rather draw heavy and i've shown strength twice.

Turn is a brick and i elect to check to allow him to bluff. He fires 2.5k, i think for a while and decided that he wasn't drawing as he would check the turn, and that he was on air, so i called to let him hang himself on the river.

River Ac

I checked, he shoved... i time-banked, now going back over the hand and started to doubt my thought he wasn't drawing on the flop/turn. I decided the way i had played it i had set up a bluff, so i couldn't fold when i rivered two pair, i called and he sheepishly tables QK for the nuts apologising profusely.

I asked if if he would have shoved if he missed and he said he would have done, so i guess that vindicates my play a little, but i wasn't entirely happy with it - but to be honest i didn't really care.

I then shoved AKs a while later and couldn't outrun 77.

Incidentally Micky d10 came 2nd the next day.

The evening approached and having donned kilts or dinner jackets we attempted to ruffle some feathers at the ball, it proved to be a disappointingly tame one. although Neilmc and i tried to liven it up a bit with some sidebets.

We each bought £20 worth of raffle tickets and had money on the other person winning, he won the raffle, i won the side bet - ship it!

After that it was the player of the year awards. Considering we didn't know the players this made it rather difficult, but we settled for surnames from A-L, M-Z. People were looking at us rather bizarrely when we were on our knees as the women's 2nd team most improved player was announced.

Shortly after the awards, desert was served which this year was apple crumble. The tradition at football club balls has always been to eat your desert without your hands, but apparently our table were the only ones who had heard of this tradition. Neilmc laid Puggy as evens favourite but then refused to take Puggy's bet of £100 (yes i am referring to myself in third person).

I took it down anyway, and the lack of any bet didn't take anything away from me despite my tongue having swelled to twice its orginal size.

The boat races followed the speeches - pint downing competitions vs the current students. I tried to set up a book declaring our alumni team the favourites, but again struggled to find action. We won at a canter, adding more fuel to the rumour that the old days were better - there was a lot of looking through rose tinted glasses over the weekend.

Sunday saw another ball, and another chance to show the town what it was missing, and again it was a rather dull affair. We arrived just before the raffle and were disgusted to find out that they had run out of raffle tickets! Who runs out of raffle tickets? Surely that's something you buy more of as they cost nothing and retail for a million times their value.

No raffle tickets denied us the chance of making more ridiculous sidebets. The raffle included a signed Barcelona shirt and ball, and when we saw two girls take both prizes we were appropriately disgusted (sexist often?). The girl who won the ball claimed she wouldn't sell it for £500, so we approached the girl who won the shirt, who agreed to sell the shirt to Neilmc for £150 - his first bid. She later said she would have accepted £100. She needs to learn how to value raise, and Neilmc's pot control was definitely questioned.

The after party events included two St Andrews allies dancing on the table, but that was as rogue as it got. Although there was much hilarity at one ally's attempt at chatting up a girl with the line "So er... do you want to go for a walk on the beach". When she said it was a little far, he didn't give up, instead asking for clarification if she had knocked him back or if indeed the beach was too far to walk. Unfortunately for me, sorry i mean him, the clarification never came.

Monday we stayed and played a £5 rebuy with the students who i think were a little appalled by us moving all in pre blind for the first few hands, and unrivaled nittiness was shown when they refused to call said blind all ins with hands as strong as AQ.

"I can't call with AQ with him behind" As the two guys all in exposed 42o and 97s. AQ boy wasn't done yet "See that's 4 live cards, i'm hardly even favourite. Of course he would have flopped broadway and his head was in his hands. Wp sir, gg.

Only 13 runners, 4 of the 4 allies made the final, i busted in 6th, the beej in 3rd and Neilmc in 2nd. As a side note the winner was a guy who i backed in the annual event on the Saturday - i guess i chose the wrong tourny - damn coinflips.

It was homeward bound for me on the Tuesday, but the beej and Neilmc joined me for one last day. We managed to arrange a golf game with the long lost member of the alliance - Mark "thehills1" Hillson. He's a little better at golf than he is at poker which he proved when carding a 64, which could easily have been a 59 after he birdied the first 3.

Much of the chat on the golf course centred on the beej's conquests over the weekend. He had been claiming 3 in 3, but when pushed it emerged that he had merely kissed 2 girls, one of them on two days. Of course they were both absolute stunners. None of us saw the first one, although i have it on good authority that she was indeed female and the white stick she was carrying belonged not to her but the fluorescent jacket covered Labrador following her around.

The binge wasn't to be finished there, we headed out on the town that night for one last hurrah, but having sat in the corner of particularly quiet club for 3 hours drinking cans of red stripe (from glasses of course) and talking about football, we retired back to casa Puggy.

I really wasn't in any state to be playing poker yesterday, so took another day off planning on blitzing it today.

Blitz it i did, although in the 15 tournies i played i managed only a solitary cash. Not bad though when you win said tourny for $4k.

I have really felt i have been getting on top of my game recently, and i know there ar still areas which require a lot of improvement. I am 8 tabling max at the moment, and i would say that my performance is dipping severely when i go from 7 to 8, so I'm definitely not ready to up that just yet.

I have been looking to replace some tournies in my schedule though with some bigger ones. Until today i had only played the Ongame 50r once as i have a problem with the structure, and I'm a bankroll nit, but i really should be in it every day, so now will be.

Only 6 weeks until our American trip, so I'm looking at putting in a lot of volume between now and then. It's very easy not to bother playing some days, and to take lots of time off for holidays when you play poker for a living, but i believe to be truly successful you need to be putting in the hours. I've had a weeks holiday, now it is time to get back to the grind - and crush!

Puggy.