Weekend in London (Part 1) – The International Club

My luck started with London accommodation as my brother in law lives in the centre of London and let me have access to his flat while he was in Scotland for the weekend. As it was a couple of hundred metres from Buckingham Palace I was freerolling.

First stop, Browns for a meal and a few beers with Stevie before going to the International Club (new Gutshot) where there were a number of familiar pros playing in a PLO tournament with approx 200 runners as part of a Festival of Poker. Barney Boatman exited in 57th while I was there.

We sat at one of the first cash tables opened for the evening, a 1-2 pound NLH, equivalent of $2/$5 and it played as aggressively. Stevie in only his 2nd live game got involved in the 2nd hand. He raised to 7 pounds preflop. As he was keen to survive a while, I knew he had a hand. Flop came QT2 (2 spades) he c-bet. Turn came another spade and he checked. Big guy with headphones who fancied himself as Phil Hellmuth bet the pot, next guy AI and Stevie semi-reluctantly put in the rest of his 100. River paired the 2 and I knew straight away that he had the QQ for a FH to beat the bluff and the baby Flush. Sweet.

We put our names on the 1/1 list and ended up on 2 different tables. Stevie ended up winning significantly. I on the other hand suffered a string of 80/20 suck outs but didn’t tilt. It was a friendly table (apart from Hellmuth who’d spewed 650 pounds in about 2 hours and left). After my 5th bad beat, two of the better players across the table commented on how I handled them which pleased me. To quote Fleur “you are the only one in this room that would still be smiling after that run”. I put it down to online PLO training.

Anyway, my thanks go to the Asian girl who had been interviewing the exiting players in the PLO Tournament for GutShot.com. I was down to a residual $21 when I got KK in the SB. I decided to shove it looking like a Tilt raise. She called with KQ and genuinely wished me luck. When I won she seemed happy too. It is a pretty cool Club with the same culture as the Gutshot. I managed 2 more double ups and finished the night down 80 pounds. A good result all things considered.

On our way home, we went looking for a cleansing ale and short of paying for 30 minutes in a pub or some nightclub full of people half our age, we decided on the Empire Casino, Leicester Square. Stevie won again, and I lost again, this time only $45 in a very loose/drunk/ unprofessional (but funny) game. Cold decked and didn’t get to the Turn once, I don’t think.