Posts Tagged ‘alea’

Earlier this month, myself and George headed down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire social at The Adelphi for a few drinks.

James had a voucher for two meals and a bottle of wine – so we ended up having a rather romantic evening. Surprisingly as well, I found myself around the median age range – shocking for HSoWY! 😛

Having had to eat and drink at quite some speed in order to make it to Alea on time to register for the poker tournament, I was somewhat intoxicated by the time I left and ended up doing quite well – adding further evidence to the idea that I play better poker when I’m drunk.

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.

While I’ve enjoyed playing poker at Grosvenor recently, I think to learn the game I need to play against good opponents and a lot of the time at Grosvenor you have to play past a lot of bad players before you get to the real players.

As such, I decided to head down to Alea for a few tournaments. They don’t get the turn outs that Grosvenor do, but as I’m not playing for the money (well, obviously I am playing for the money, but I’m not expecting to win quite yet), it isn’t too much of a problem.

So far, it’s not gone so well, but I’ve learnt quite a bit. I figured it was probably worth blogging about my experiences so that anyone who is good at poker that reads my blog can point out when I’ve made silly mistakes.

The first tournament I entered I ended up going all in on a pair of pocket queens pre-flop, and two other players followed me in with pocket kings and pocket aces. Despite hitting trip queens on the flop, a king came out on the turn.

The second tournament I entered, I was sitting on pocket aces and with a flop of 3, 7 and 10, all off suite, I check-raised all in. Someone called with an ace, 10 and hit a third 10 on the turn.

Last week, we headed down to Alea Casino for a poker night that had been organised by the analysis team.

Row One, aka myself and Jason where there to represent the office and I brought Norm along too. After the night we had, I think future tournaments might be restricted to analysts only though.

As part of an elaborate tactic, I went out first to make sure I wasn’t stealing chips off Jason and Norm. They then went on to place first and second, taking almost all of the prize money. Good times.

On Friday night we headed down to Alea Casino for my birthday celebration.

We almost ran out of space as I had only booked the table for 15 people and 16 people ended up turning up, not that the restaurant could cope anyway – it took them 50 minutes to bring us our starters, of which they then forgotten one, they manged to forget one of the desserts and to top it all off they even got arsey when I told them I didn’t want to pay the service change because the service was rubbish. Food was nice though.

Afterward we hit the casino floor and effectively ended up with our own private table – there was blackjack table down the end that nobody else seemed to know about so we had it to ourselves, even if it was £5 minimum bet. I put down £50 and managed to walk out even but somewhat trailed James’ returns after he hit three blackjacks in a row!

Thank you to everyone who came down, it was a good night.

I ways always told that gambling doesn’t pay, that you would always lose money and it was a bad habit to get into.

On Thursday we had a work’s nigh out to Alea Casino down at Clarence Dock to take advantage of their special offer dinner which also includes a free chip to use on the casino floor.

After dinner hit the roulette table and to my surprise I managed to hit the right colour several times in a row. I then moved onto strips of numbers and hit lucky again. Indeed by the end of the night I cashed out and left the casino with £1 more than I went in with even after factoring in my coke, a two course meal plus an extra side and two glasses of wine.

What this means is that I have done the scientific research and it turns out that gambling actually does pay! I know, I’m as shocked as you are but there you go. Of course part of the scientific method is being able to repeat the experiment, however most of the office managed to walk out of there having won some cash. So take that science!