Next game - £40 freeze-out - December 1st

11/29/2008 06:37:00 pm / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (0)

Monday's game on December 1st will be a £40 freeze-out. As it's the first Monday of the month it'll be a food night so total buy-in will be £50 or a bulls-eye in common speak.

Let's hope for more than the hard-core 12 runners who showed up for the £20 Omaha re-buy last week which was played out in arctic conditions - the first ever re-buy tournament to also be a freeze-out at the same time... eventually won by Gideon, who without a doubt has sold his soul to the devil in my honest opinion.

The card room was a bit nippy if the truth be told

With so few runners the final table was settled before the first break. Matt and myself were out towards the end of the re-buy period and Big Dick busted out on the last hand before the break and was last seen telling Kathryn he was going out for a walk and maybe some time.

The final table was basically just a bunch of hands where chips were moved from player to player until Gideon inevitably caught the hands he needed to bust everyone.

Meanwhile at the other end of the card room the cash game players were all huddled together using each others body heat to remain conscious wondering whether or not Matt was still alive and weighing up the moral consequences of eating him if it came to that.

League Table inc. 24/11/08 £20 Omaha re-buy

11/29/2008 06:35:00 pm / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (0)

One of a kind

11/22/2008 09:00:00 am / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (0)

Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Stuey 'the kid' Ungar. They say he was the best poker player ever. Not sure how he'd have fared in one of our £10 re-buys with Big Dick to his left, but it's clear he could play a bit. His auto-biography "one of a kind" is well worth a read. Inspirational but very sad also.

Anyway, if you've got a few minutes the videos below are the from the final table of the 1997 WSOP main event. His third and final success.










League table inc. 17/11/08

11/18/2008 02:08:00 pm / Posted by Rich / comments (0)

League table inc. 10/11/08

11/11/2008 12:29:00 pm / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (0)

A shining example of poker

11/11/2008 06:00:00 am / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (0)

When the unrelenting horror of Keiron Baker’s hack and slash style of play is unleashed on an unsuspecting poker tournament it becomes something akin to a scene from the Shining.

A surreal, murderous encounter played out between realities with diminutive ghostly figures looking on who have no apparent reason for being there. Had Stanley Kubrick been a poker director, Keiron would have been his kind of Johnny and a Fox £10 re-buy his kind of game.

There was an eerie feel to the evening - the cold dank atmosphere, the leaking roof, the smell of rotting apple crumble - as if the room had become a physical manifestation of Keiron’s subconscious.

After his victory last week, which has yet to be explained by the lab boys, a repeat appeared to be a possibility after a typically volatile re-buy period saw him enter the freeze-out stage with an above average stack, but became an almost inevitability mid-way through the tournament with approximately most of the chips in play stacked in front of him and everyone else reduced to all-in or fold poker.

"All-in and no play makes Keiron a dull boy"

It’s difficult to explain how without complex equations and a truly world class psychiatrist, but none of those things were available to those confronted with this pink shirted leviathan. Some truly creative play saw him bust Milo (8-8) and Wino (9-10 suited) in one hand when his Ace-8 somehow built itself into a straight. A few hands later a rivered deuce saw him bust Chris’ Ace-7 with a dominated Ace-2.

By this time Keiron was consumed with bloodlust fever and rapidly began loosing his sanity, his catatonic ginger railbird stared on lustfully and I fought hard to back swallow some sick as preparations were made for the final table.

With nine live bodies remaining, the final table began

As the final table began and a slew of bodies littered the card room, one expected the slaughter to continue. Not so much tentative stabs at pots from Keiron, as wild hacks with a metaphorical axe. But no!

One or two early blows to his stack saw confusion begin to set in and weaknesses exposed. Like poor mentalist Johnny scratching around in the deep snow howling at the moon desperately searching for his son in order to finish him off, Keiron, completely incoherent and delusional now, lost his way too.

Through sheer good chance however he was able to shove chips into a couple of pots at the right moments to eliminate a few players and although barely conscious by now he was able to make it to heads-up with a chip lead.

The final confrontation was not a long one however. Some misdirection from Richard Taylor and soon the chip lead changed hands and the final hand saw him take down the tournament with the worst hand, when he paired his Jack (ironically) and his five. Keiron, cold decked, was finally frozen-out.


League Table inc. 03/11/08

11/06/2008 09:40:00 pm / Posted by Windrush Valley Card Club / comments (1)