Posts Tagged ‘cards’

At the start of the film Rounders, Matt Damon points out that you soon forget your big wins in poker, but your bad beats linger on in your memory forever.

That is true even when given a generous definition of bad beat, as realistically, it wasn’t even that bad. But as Norm had organised a poker night a few weeks ago, we found ourselves sitting round the table, cards in hand.

Chris was obviously going to win at this point – by the time the first two players had gone, he was so far ahead in chip count that there was almost no coming back (we would have probably needed three double ups in a row). So when it got down to the final three, paying the top two, it was between myself and James for second place, both short stacked.

Then a gift of a hand arrived. James shoved on a jack eight, while I was holding pocket kings. Better still, Chris called with an ace ten. Now all I needed was James not to win – if I won, that would obviously bag me second, but even if Chris won, I would place second as well, and there are no jacks or eights to be seen.

James’ only out is a ten to make is straight, and one of those is in Chris’s hand – it was all going so well. Until the river…

I’ve been playing a lot of poker recently. And by a lot, I mean I’m pretty much at work, working for CWF, or in a casino. Luckily, Leeds isn’t exactly a high rolling town, so you can enter quite a lot of tournaments without it costing you much money.

The good news is that my poker is improving. Norm joined me for one of the Sunday tournaments at Alea, which had potential as many of the regulars were playing in the end of league winners’ freeroll instead.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far after my aces got cracked and then I shoved post-flop with an over pair, only to have Norm call me with nothing and hit two pair by the river to knock me out. I actually quite enjoyed the night though because for once, I was able to walk away from the casino without having to think “you would still be in that tournament if you hadn’t made that stupid mistake.”

This was less true of the tournament on the following Thursday at Alea where I Was getting great cards and quickly became chip leader and stayed that way for four hours – right until the two hands I went out on. Haven’t dominated the tournament I made some really bad calls looking for straights and it cost me what should have been an easy cash.

The day after at Grosvenor didn’t go any better. I made it through the rebuy period on my freeroll stack alone and despite being short stacked for three hours I made it to the final table – only to be the first person to go out. Bad times.

My squandered stack from Alea.

Yesterday, I blogged about Poker Stats Library, a couple of scripts I wrote which I’ve now published on Github. On Saturday, it was time to try them out.

I headed down to Grosvenor to take part in their freeroll tournament. I say freeroll, it was a £10 rebuy tournament, which gets you twice the number of chips, so almost everyone buys in again. As I sat down at the table I found myself sitting opposite a guy named Christopher Norfolk – while I’m aware of the laws of probability, it’s still an amusing coincidence.

I ended up placing 11th, out of the 79 that entered. I was doing quite well but having started at 2pm, I had arranged to meet Elina at 6pm and by this time it was 7pm, so I went all in on an ace high for boom or bust and lost. Still, an enjoyable evening none the less.