SPUKT, Pokernews and SNGs

Bah! I'm sick of starting blog posts with the line 'long time no post'.

First off, had a cracking time in Nottingham for the SPUKT grand final. Sky Poker were as hospitable as ever, good bunch they are. Thankfully I got more than one hand in this time, actually making it till late in the evening. I got my stack up to 22,000 which sadly is about the biggest I have had a chip stack in a year, it comes to something when your girlfriend doesn't believe you when you call and say you are still in the comp at 9pm.

Lots of players went expecting it to be a walk in the park, that they could just stampede over the sky poker players, I said to everyone from the start they were wrong. Big respect to Neil Blatchly for staking 14 players into the event, I would have done the same if I had a spare £2400 lying around, but this was not shooting fish in a barrel. Yes we saw some bad plays, overplaying of one pair hands etc but all the sky lot took it really seriously.

Still they must have been bad if I nearly made it to day 2.

One fortunate hand did come up early on in the day, a young player who I am pretty certain was playing one of his first live games was making a point of betting every street when checked to irrespective of the information in front of him. I decided way before the hand in question I was going to slow play any top pair or better hand against him, and soon after flopped bottom two pair, with 8-9 on a K89 rainbow board.

Check-call, check-call and by the river we now have a nasty looking K89JT board with three hearts and I’m stuck with the problem of not being able to bet this board, because I will never get called by a hand I beat (Though I could make an argument for turning my hand into a bluff, I really didn’t want to bluff at all in this event) so I check. He reaches for the biggest pile of chips, relative to the pot, I’ve ever seen. It looked like about 4,000 for a 1200 pot. There is no way I can call this, even though it’s blatantly obvious he has nothing.

Luckily for me, in an attempt I am sure to make his hand look big, he places the chips over the line one at a time, chequers style. The dealer tells him he has made a string bet and only the first chip counts, a tiny 100 chip, and I snap call like a wuss, relieved that I get away with a showdown when I know inside I should probably have tried to get a ruling that would have maximised the times I am ahead. I was, he had nothing, but I never would have called him even though I knew I was good

Pokernews is going well. I'm getting a lot more original content on the site one way or another. I, in particular, was very pleased that James Atkin agreed to do a column. He is a really nice kid who I think endeared a lot of people to him when he missed out on a blue belt in the BlackBelt grading and has done well since. Really good writer too and his 'crazy high volume challenges' are exactly what we want on UK Pokernews.

Loads of interviews lately too, I'm trying for two a week at least even though I hate doing them, I am turning them more into a 'quick chat' for that very reason. We had the SPUKT winner Robbie O'Brien who seems a really sensible lad for a 19 year old with an extra 17k in his skyrocket. We also had Jude Ainsworth who is winning everything at the moment.

I interviewed Ian Frazer this morning and was really surprised what a nice humble bloke he was. I think he probably has one of those table images, such is his style of play and the format he plays, I assumed he was a bit of a git but nothing could be further from the truth. Neil Channing will also be on the site tomorrow, he can talk for England that bloke, but thankfully its entertaining enough, even though my ice cream melted while he was rabbiting on.

What else? Well I didnt expect to see this


SNGs are going pretty crap after a great start to the month. Having gone over the hh its very clear whats been going wrong. I have run really really bad heads up, which means I have something like 50 2nd places and 13 firsts for the month (In 6 max games). Now obviously getting the 2nd places is waaaaay better than bubbling, but its a bit frustrating getting outdrawn heads up so often because the difference between 1st and 2nd is worth a few grand to me, I would have been up a couple of grand this last two weeks, instead Im down a few hundred.

Hey ho. Gotta go, dog is tearing up my house.

PS. Terminator Salvation - very average.