UK Trip Report

After a couple of weeks in cold but sunny Ireland, I have just arrived back in Australia to find that winter approacheth with the end of daylight savings. It's funny that even though the weather here never gets too bad, most people tend to still hibernate a little for winter with fewer barbies etc. This period of indooredness augers well for us poker nuts and explains why the Scandanavians kick our butts online.

My trip home was eventful to say the least and there was a lot to do. It wasn't particularly hectic, but mentally challenging all the same. I played some online poker toward the end of my trip and experienced a significant downswing. This was totally due to bad play on my part and I'm not sure if any of that can be blamed on my state of mind. Either way, I am hoping that the next chapter is much more positive and that my confidence returns. I did get the opportunity to read a few magazines and read a few 2+2 posts which provided me with a few more insights. There isn't actually a lot written about PLO yet, so my table time is allowing me to differentiate the quality of what little is out there.

One great find though is a little utility called PokerEV. PokerEV automates the analysis of the Sklansky Bucks concept on your hand histories - HE or Omaha. I fired it up and was amazed to find that I was running away ahead of expectation. The truth is that my first 10K hands I didn't actually play that well probably - I just ran good. The last 5K hands have seen that situation reverse and normal variance is catching up on me and bringing me back to earth. Like a golfer that deconstructs and rebuilds their swing, I am hoping that I can go through a period of analysis and work on my PLO theory and refine a consistent winning style that doesn't rely on running good. As I'm holding my own at 6-max PLO100 already, I'm very optimistic for the future if I can knuckle down and do the study. TAGgier style here I come.

Live action has been a more positive experience for me. I had 3 sessions when I was home, one in Banbridge and two in London. The Banbridge Bridge Club was an all nighter which worked out well because my Dad said that the country roads are dangerous at night. There was a Tourney running with 22 runners where I was chip leader with 4 left only to fall away and take 3rd position. We then started SnGs with ever diminishing numbers of players until 6 of us watched the sunrise. I managed three 1sts and a 2nd of which I was very pleased. They play deep stacked with slow blinds, so it was relatively straightforward to play a Harrington style and avoid marginal decisions for my stack. I also got an edge by claiming in the early hours that Hold'em wouldn't keep me awake so we played a PLO SnG and a mixed NLHE/PLO SnG where I had a big edge in the PLO games.

London I managed to make it to the Vic Casino which lived up to its reputation IMHO. The staff were both knowledgeable and friendly and the tables were well laid out and the area was very spacious. It was an afternoon visit and it was very quiet with the regulars grinding it away on a 5/5 NLHE table. I got on the first 1/2 NLHE table to open (which is actually a $2-$5 table in Oz). The dealers were on the ball and incident free. You are allowed to buy in deep, from memory 400GBP which seems ridiculous. I bought in for 200GBP and was a medium stack. I could only play for 2 hours so I had another 200 in my pocket. I was dealt a few half decent / speculative preflop hands in position and limped, missing my trips etc. Stack dwindled slightly but insignificantly when I found QJs in one of the blinds. The board came T95r and the preflop raiser c-bet to which I called again and found myself in a decent 3-way pot. The K was a dream card for me and I checked OOP expecting a raise but it was checked again. River blanked and a surprising thing happened - the old regular to my left couldn't wait to get his chips in, 40 of them. I hadn't acted yet and they were in already. The dealer directed the play to me and I thought about it. I checked hoping that the 3rd player would come in too (I had the nuts). He folded and now I had the option of raising which I did AI. I was insta-called (presumably trips) and tabled my straight for a healthy double up. The only downside was that the preflop raiser told me that he slowed down on the Turn because he could see that I was very happy with the K. I know that he was telling the truth so I need to work on that. Anyway, my first trip to the Vic resulted in a 186 profit or in Aussie terms almost $500.

I then met up with Stevie, Kate and Indi for dinner near Leicester Square at Browns, I highly recommend it if you are in the area. We have been friends for years and had a good old laugh mixed in with a healthy smattering of opinion and philosophy etc. The wine was flowing but I was abstaining as I planned to stay up late at the Empire. With a flight to Sydney the next morning, I like to pull an all nighter and then sleep throughout the journey. Also, hangovers on a long haul flight are no fun at all. So off we toddled about 10pm and got a table almost immediately. I was the only one playing and sat at a table of dour grinder pros which wasn't at all what I was looking for. Where are the drunk tourists? Anyway, I played a couple of orbits before exercising my table selection right and headed to the bar with my friends to people watch the casino floor. It never ceases to amaze me the amounts that people routinely gamble on -EV table games. As it neared midnight, I returned and found a much better table. Alas, I was relatively card dead and tread water for most of the session. The table broke around 4am when it goes to self-dealt (rake free), sweet. I offered to deal for everyone but the game dwindled to myself and a German online/live grinder. He wanted to play heads up but that was a boring losing proposition for me. He agreed to PLO and we played back and forward with no big pots when the table started to build up again and revert back to NLHE. Throughout all of this, I doubt if my stack went outside of the 100-300 range. Around 7am my patience paid off (I would have been broke otherwise as I really had unbelievably bad cards all night) when I was dealt KK UTG. I limped as it was pretty loose at this stage. Next player who had been ultra aggressive (partly drunk) raised to $10 and got 3 speculative callers. With $200 in front of me, I made it $50 which wasn't even a pot-sized bet. Drunk makes it $200 to go, presumably to isolate but I'm not sure that he thought that far ahead and everyone folded. His hand range was so wide, I reckon that AA was about 10% of his range and I called AI. He showed 88 and I was just trying to avoid a suckout, which I did. From there, I was able to loosen up my starting range as I was deeper stacked and I enjoyed the last hour before heading to the airport.

All up, my live play netted me over $1000 in Aussie money playing what could be considered the lowest available stakes in Europe. The joys of living in Australia. In the context of my immature loose PLO downswing, this was a big positive and a timely reminder that nitty is a hard game for others to exploit. What to do with my offline bankroll is my next challenge. The ANZPT is coming to Sydney this month and there are a number of tournamenets that I'd like to take a crack at. The Main Event is outside my bankroll and the others are probably -EV as I don't think that I'm good enough yet to place unless I run above average. That said, I've had quite a bit of casino table time and online tournies so it is probably time to combine the two and see how I go. Anyone else interested in travelling to Sydney for the smaller buy in events? It would be good to meet up. Maybe we can even pool bankrolls and winnings to reduce variance. This time next year, I hope that there will be a queue of people trying to buy a piece of my action, maybe even Stars themselves. Until then, as always, all advice and support welcome.