Landslide

Saw a book at City Books in Hove today. Well, I saw many books. It was a bookshop after all. But while I was perusing the politics section I came across a title called "were you still up for Portillo?". I was extremely excited by this title. It refered to the 1997 election night in which Michael Portillo, then Defence Secretary, lost his seat on a huge swing, considered by many to be the greatest shock of the night and a key signifier to the scale of the Tory defeat. The loss of Portillo's seat was declared at about 3AM, and so "were you still up for Portillo?" became a leading question for people talking to eachother about the election night.

I take a great interest in general elections (more so than for politics itself) and so naturally I was keen to look into this book. I was disappointed, however, that rather than being a general assessment of the campaign, election itself, it was literally just a blow by blow account of the election night itself. Which is fair enough, because the title does imply that. I didn't buy a copy there, as I didn't want to pay £6 for a facsimile of the televised coverage, which I am able to watch on youtube for myself thanks to ajs41. However, there was enough insight and context in the book (from the excerpts I read in the store) and enough references to other networks' election night coverage to make it something I should like to read. So that's ordered from Amazon second hand for £1.28, a price so low it's almost reminiscent of the Tory seats won in 1997. And the scale of the snow outside is reminiscent of the Labour result - unprecedented, beyond the wildest forecast. In my garden I suspect there to be eight inches - it's slightly less significant elsewhere in town as much of it has been shovelled or salted. But in the park you can see it drifting somewhat, snowdunes.

Hopefully this weather does not affect my travel tomorrow - I am trying to get to Bristol. Contrary to my initial impressions, my investigations have revealed that the journey from Paddington to Bristol might be easier than my journey from Brighton to Victoria.

Reading

When I got back from Peru in late October last year I started taking a written record of the books I read - a book log. Admittedly I have never been an avid reader although the medium of books has grown on me ever since leaving university.

The list is now just over one year old. Below are only the books I have finished - there are a few entries which have a 'started' date but no 'finished' date which will not be appearing here. This is either because I am currently reading them (and hence have not finished them) or because I started them a while ago but abandoned them after a few pages/chapters. Well, abandoned is perhaps the wrong word - I intend to return to all of them, in time.

The List (in order of start date)

Stanislaw Lem - The Star Diaries (1971)
Morris Kline - Mathematics in Western Culture (1953)
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Alistair Cooke - American Journey (1945)
Robin Shelton - Two hundred poems from the Greek Anthology (1971)
Robert Harris - Imperium (2006)
Anthony Seldon - Major: A Political Life (1997)*
Jo Swinnerton - The London Pocket Companion (2008)
Robert Beckman - Crashes (1988)
Alistair Cooke - Letter from America (2004)
Giles MacDonogh - Frederick the Great (1999)
Liz Fisher, John Couruts - The Bluffer's Guide to Accountancy (2006)
Christopher Hibbert - George III (1988)
Robert Eastaway, Jeremy Wyndham - Why do Buses Come in Threes? (1999)
Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1971)
G. Ward Price - I Know These Dictators (1937)
Henrik Ibsen - Hedda Gabler (1890)
Richard Sheridan - The Rivals (1775)
Stanislaw Lem - The Futorological Congress (1974)
Jorge Luis Borges - The Book of Sand (1975)

*Did not read in full. 744 pages on one man's career would have been rather a lot - I was primarily interested in the elections (both as a prospective parliamentary candidate and as Prime Minister) rather than the workings of policy units.

Am going to Rome for a week in mid-December so have resumed my Italian studies, having jetissoned the language nearly a year ago when it was revealed that I would not be going to Rome last December. Have been enjoying studying it and testing myself on it a lot. It reminds me of maths (which along with history was my favourite subject as far back as I remember) - learning the building blocks and then using these to build and solve more complicated linguistic equations. It's going to be tough to learn the whole book before mid-December but I have the enthusiasm and patience for it now. That and a cause. I want to be able to spend as much of my time in Rome by myself so I can explore at my own pace (which would probalby involve walking around from dawn till dusk free from the contstraints of other peoples' tendency to fatigue) and attempt a serious piece of journalistic tourism, which would match the Peru Report in richness of detail but would contain no discussion of family politics - I have no family in Rome. Naturally, if I am to spend a lot of time by myself exploring a good knowledge of Italian would be helpful. And this book will give me a good knowledge, provided I test myself regularly and do not slack on learning vocabulary or practicing oral.

Yeah

Haven't posted for a while, but anything which makes me laugh out loud for several minutes on end is worth posting.

And this is one such thing

Hand History - Part 14

Of all the fun months of Third Year, March was probably among the most serene. The weather was just beginning to warm up a little yet exams and long-essays were still a while off. Half way through the month I repeated the previous year's ritual of banning myself from online poker for the duration of the exam revision period. To be honest, what this really meant was banning myself on Full Tilt for 2 months and from Stars for 3 months - I could still play on other sites and I did, including a brief return to Party and a slightly longer period at Betfred. But the main reason for banning myself was to make sure I wasn't lured in by the SCOOP, and I still credit banning myself from the most desirable sites as helping to increase my grades by around 2 or 3 points.

After the end of term things began to get a little more regimented. I had opted to stay at University for the holidays (as most of my friends and housemates were doing too) and try to stick to a revision/long-essays schedule, something I was more or less succesful at.

However, there was one afternoon, the last Sunday of the month, in which I was becoming restless and lazy. I browsed Warwick Poker to find out one of the Warwick pro's had made the final table of the London GUKPT £3K buy in main event. Very quickly a wicked idea popped into my head. Why not go down and WATCH, I can play some £1/£1 NLHE if I get bored too! And I can make my buy-in last the whole night and go home on a dawn train with my return ticket. What could possibly go wrong! I didn't really know the guy who was playing. In fact, I can't even remember his name. Jambon or something? It was just a premise for action, in the same way that supposed 'border disturbances' in September 1939 was the German 'justificaiton' for the invasion of Poland.

I told the Goblin what I was going to do and urged him not to stop me (not that I suspect he would have). My sense of freedom was willing me down southwards, I had to follow it! So off to the Kenpas Highway cashpoint where I took out £250, this being roughly enough for my journey, meals and £200 worth of chips as a bankroll for the night.

As I strolled down the park I felt very happy. It was warm and the people at the park were clearly having fun in that unique start-of-Spring way. I felt very civilized too - a gentleman taking a day off from work to go and play some cards in London. I had even brought a book with me Fernand Braudel's A History of Civilizations.

The train journey was surprisingly quick - I often have to remind myself that Coventry and London really aren't that far from eachother.

It was still mid-afternoon when I arrived at Euston and so I resolved to walk down towards Edgware Road, whose location I only knew roughly. On the way I stopped off at the Poker, Bridge and Chess store. As I got near Marble Arch I still had trouble finding my location. I ended up doing the decadent thing and hailing a cab. He was confused by my request for the 'Grosvenor Casino', but when I started calling it 'The Vic' he knew exactly where I meant. 10 minutes and £10 after getting into the cab, I was there.

It was my first time here. I made my case. I was here to watch a friend, and I was interested in playing in the side too. Do I need to sign up or anything? I showed them my driving license and they gave me a card. The two secretaries were young and pretty friendly, though I remained serious for all their jokes. I was a man on a mission, after all.

I had always been fond of the 'dull English poker scene'. This didn't stem from my own experiences of them. In fact at my first few times at the casino I was pretty anxious. You know, what if one of the regular, fat, bald-headed gamblers starts to make inquisitive glares at you. What if you bad beat the large Polish guy. What if one of the punter's wives gets very lucky in a hand against you.

My fondness for the dull English poker scene came about largely from watching a few televised events. The GUKPT 2007 coverage (which I saw on Pokertube long after it happened) was part of this. I liked the idea of 9 men (and occasionally 1 woman) sitting around after a few days of play, safe in the knowledge that they each have a few thousand pounds behind their belt along with the prospect of a few thousand more by the end of the night. I.e. Final table poker. Yet all rather casual and unglamarous. "I call." I pass." "Pass." "Pass." "How much do you have behind you?" "About 120k" "Right, erm. I raise all in" "Oooh, the online pro from Denmark has a tough decision here. What do you think Roland" "Yeah Ace Queen. Good hand but difficult to play against an all in." "Of course if he did call it would be a race." etc etc

And it was a GUKPT final table I was here to see tonight. Nominally anyway. It had only just started by the time I arrived, though it was very busy. There was no easy place to view from, certainly nowhere to sit down. With this in mind I went to the cash games desk and signed up for three tables, a 1/1, a 1/2 and a 1/3. After around an hour or so there was a space at 1/1 (I have not had to wait so long since then!). I went over to the cashier, bought £200 in chips and took a seat.

Around me was a mixed group. There was one old man who looked a bit like Doyle Brunson, a few studenty types who looked reluctant to gamble. One or two Asian gamblers who bought in for over the £200 maximum.

My plan was to shortstack - buy in for the minimum and replenlish my stack if I lost. The minimum was £40, so I bought in for that. Lost a few chips early on. Was down to about £25. Doyle limps in early position. I raise it fairly large (around £7) with AQ to squeeze out the limpers. Doyle comes over the top. I call. He rolls over QQ and takes the pot along with my first buy in. Nil desperandum, I chuck another £40 onto the table.

One man wanted to buy some more chips from the cashier, but it was closed. So I sold him £40 of mine. After a while I got impatient of sitting on just £40 and so whacked on the other £80 or so which had so far been left unused.

I proceed to lose a few small pots, mainly through playing scared aggressive. This essentially means trying to enter more pots than I really needed to, but entering aggressively as a justification. I.e. to collect the 'dead money' in the middle. I was playing badly, and was not sticking to my original strategy. We already see that I had abandoned my 'five £40 buy-ins' idea! Though such a strategy had its limitations, at least it would have served my intented purpose - playing the whole night, as I may have been able to survive a lot longer on 5 buy ins, even if this meant minimizing my potential profits.

But I was in no state of mind to make a profit. I began to realise how ridiculous this whole adventure had been, and even at one stage thought I might just go and play Roulette because my edge there was probably better (although still unfavourable obviously) than it was at this table. Not that any of my opponents were playing particularly well themselves, but at least they weren't playing scared.

My final hand came at a time when my stack was at around £80. I raised 99 in middle position to £3. The button made it £6. I called. The flop was 865 with two-flush. I bet a small amount,a round £5. He raised to around £10 or £15 (big difference, I know). I paused for a but a few seconds. "All in?" I announced, pushing forward my remaining chips. He called pretty quickly. The turn came a 7. I flipped over my 99 triumphantly as if I had sucked out on his set or something. River was a flush card. He then flipped over his A7 suited to reveal the flush. I was too confused to even feel let down at this defeat. I sorta shrugged my shoulders, picked up my book and scarf and left.

A lot of time had passed, somehow, and it was dark when I took the grim cab journey from the casino to Euston. I decided that cab journey was the last extravegant expense I would indulge in for the time being. I felt guilty and a little stupid, although already a little wiser. I was lucky that I had sold £40 worth of chips - otherwise it would well have been squandered with the rest of it. I got home at about midnight and didn't get to sleep till 3.

Subsequent visits to the Vic have been more successful (and you shall hear about some of them in later installments) but this particular one had been a textbook failure - I had gone down on a whim, I wasn't really prepared and I only got what I deserved. How did I keep my flagging spirits up on the train journey home? I started reading A History of Civlizations.

I wrote a little rhyme about the whole incident the next morning.

It's fun to gamble and buy in deep
£1 blinds, it's fairly cheap
though the rake is fairly steep

But hours later, like a sheep
I had no pile of chips to heap
I didn't fuss, or wail or weep
So out the cardroom I did creep

To poker dreams we must not leap
Those gamblers; do not as idols keep
Their eyes heavy from lack of sleep
and sowing all that they must reap

Hand History - Part 13

I should tell you a few more facts about the sheer excess and pomposity that went into that $800 bankroll project.

I actually kept a folder (purple, it was) in which I would keep a written record of each and every single game I played. That's right. Not even a computerised record - a written record, with a neat little 'bankroll update'. This may not seem bad in itself, but symbolically the idea of keeping these things in a folder essentially evoked a sort of permanancy. Bear in mind that my academic work was also kept in folders (seperated by module) and so I had essentially put my poker activities on par with my academic activities, implying that it was almost a module in itself- certainly something that would be carried on through till the end of the year.

I don't have this particular document any more. I believe I threw it out in disgust as part of my end-of-Third Year cleanout. I believe the purple folder, however, is behind my bed somewhere, along with a few other empty folders.

But apart from that little episode, the rest of the term was fairly successful pokerwise. I don't recall any big wins or major losses. I do recall enjoying PokerSoc. DKSOP home games were fairly infrequent. Although all three of my housemates played poker (to varying degrees of intensity but to a similar degree of skill). One November weekend was particularly memorable. Saturday night me and the others went up to Leicester to visit our old housemate who, having dropped out of Warwick, was now in halls at the University of Leicester. Essentially though it was a DKSOP reconvention, and we played tonnes of turbo tournaments, just like old times. On the Sunday evening we returned. I had a 2,000 essay to write for the next day. Goblin had a FTOPS Event - I believe it was a $129 bounty event and that I had 30% of the action. I completed the essay (by 10am the next morning), though Goblin did not make it very far in the tournament - the bell curve was not very kind to him that night (though he had had FTOPS successes in the past).

I did manage to get a free copy of Poker Tracker 3 through some deal they had running on Titan Poker. Not that I am a grinder - I didn't have much use for the software although it's nice to know that it's there if I ever do.

Early on in the term I played a £20 heads up with Goblin. Though this figure isn't particularly extravegant the structure was: 10k, 1 hour blinds. I ended up losing in the 250-500 level. He trapped me with this Queens - I shoved K7o from the big blind. Funny how I emphasise that it was offsuit. Queens, of course, are offsuit by definition, unless you have a faulty deck!

Either way, he dominated the game and it was only a matter of time before he got all my chips.


Going off to the end of term: I had a rather lonely weekend in early December. I almost wrote reams about it but have chosen not to. Let it suffice to say that I came out of it much spiritually tougher than before, and after a brief re-examination of my life priorities (the most important choice you make in life is what you choose to make important) I had about as much fun in Term 2 as I could have hoped to.

And poker went extremely well in Term 2 as well. One weekend our former housemate from Leicester came down. Naturally, we took the opportunity to go down to Stanleys casino, our friend being a former regular and (rightly) considered one of the very best players there. It was a Friday night. It was a Pot Limit Omaha tournament. I think it was a low buy-in rebuy with a fairly fast structure. All tournaments at Stanleys had fast structures, which is a shame because otherwise it's a lovely place to play.

Me and The Conjurer (one of my housemates) ended up getting to the final 3. We made a deal with the remaining guy and split the beans three-way. Conjurer was first in chips, I was third in chips. DKSOPers being a great fraternity (robbing from the ignorant, giving to the needy - us) we split our winnings with the others. It was a pretty nice tourney, although I had gotten a bit tired of looking down at four cards at a time!

Thus you can understand my relief when, two days later, we all went down for a NLHE tournament. It was myself, The Conjurer, Goblin and our Leicester friend The Dragon, the Lion opting to stay at home. He rued that! Out of the fifteen people who turned up to play that day, we came 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Yes, that was pretty much the best possible result. Literally. Yet it didn't seem that odd. I, and I believe the rest of us, felt the same way I always do when I succeed at something - a sort of calm elation, a plateau of success. A sort of magnanimity. Naturally though, like the young gangsters we were, we took photoes of ourselves with all the cash afterwards (although it wasn't that much! fifteen players, £5 rebuy. Or was it a £10 rebuy? It's strange how some details just go unremembered!)

The event which finished off this rather fun little term was the Warwick Series of Poker. Or, the WaSOP for short. I had known about the WaSOP in previous years. In 1st year I had gone to see it while it was going on, and admired the casual disregard the old timers had for the £50 buy in, although I was surpirsed to see a few fellow 1st years in the fray. In 2nd year I had missed the event - it was a bare few weeks after the incidents which led to my temporary withdrawal from the poker scene (how I now hate hate hate letting that happen! I was 19 years old! Why on earth was I domesticating myself so young?!).

Third year however was different. I had the money, talent and freedom to enter the WaSOP.

First came the preliminary event, the WaSOP Pot Limit Omaha. It started off with 10K stacks at 25-50 blinds, intervals every 20 minutes. But as often happened at PokerSoc events, the blind intervals had to be shortened as the usual we've got to be out of this room by midnight! rush ensued. The Conjurer managed to come third, for which I think he got £80. A good start to the WaSOP.

The next day came the grand event, the one so prestigious we had all bought in for it weeks in advance via Paradise Poker, whom were adding value to the prizepool. The WaSOP Main Event, £57 buy in (transposed from Euros, the currency Paradise deals in) 10k starting stacks, 45 minute blinds.

To get myself in the mood for epic tournament poker (although I was already very much in the mood) I watched the documentary of the 1973 WSOP Main Event. This video represented (and still does represent) to me a sort of classic old-school convention of gamblers, which in a way reminds me of what PokerSoc can be like at the best of times, and how DKSOP is all the time. People who are quite happy to get together in their little group, stake some money, play some cards and see who's the best, while happily ignoring what ever trivialities are going on outside the card room.

And theWaSOP main event lived up to expectations. Held in The Isle casino (now part of the Grosvenorchain) it was a large and fairly glamarous location. The tournament started off well for me - I never strayed too far below my starting stack and found myself playing good, patient poker. I was treating it like a marathon, not a sprint. I was playing my hands for value - I wasn't getting into any disadvantageous spots. Goblin (who was on my table), on the other hand, had nothing but bad luck, and the frustration just oozed out of him.

Conjurer was out later, having been placed at the table of death to start with but essentially succumbing to below-average luck as the afternoon went on.

Jonny, who had joined us, also went bust fairly early on.

The Dragon and the Lion were not playing.

I managed to make it through to Day 2! I was the benificiary of some nutty play of one of the Warwick pros. He didn't want to get through to Day 2 as it would mean he'd have to miss the 'Sunday Majors'. Accordingly he was shoving every hand. With this in mind, my KQ looked pretty good. He had a lower king. And my kicker was good for 35,000 chips or so, and I took this figure with me to the next day.

I turned up again the next day (obviously). Around fifteen remained and the top 8 got paid. My stack dwindled a little to start with but I was making good reads and avoiding calling my chips off behind. Then suddenly we were down to ten. Alas, I was down to about seven or eight big blinds after all that. Two hands into the final table I shove J5o from the button - it had been folded around to me. Am ambitious play, but I had already noticed the small-blind was motioning a muck. Sure enough he did. But then the big blind, after thinking for about 10 seconds, called, rolling over two nines. To suck out I failed, and I was out.

I decided to walk back home, which took ages and took me through some pretty dire parts of Coventry, some of which honestly seemed more like South London than the West Midlands. I felt fairly small on the way back, as one usually does after missing out on a big score (top prize around £1,000 plus lots of PRESTIGE).

And so a fairly eventful term of poker.

Just writing this has made me realise how intensely I miss university life. Ah well, there's a world out there!

But for all these little gems, the most defining of my poker experiences had yet to come. Yea, it was waiting round the corner for now, but soon it would pop out LIKEA BAT. Or should I say, I fell into its decadent nest. Or web. Or whatever. You shalll see!

Waking Thoughts

Between bed and the table
I don't mean to be rude
But to decide I'm unable
Between sleeping and food