Christopher Hamilton

After a recommendation from my good friend Lance I decided to read Cory Doctorow’s latest novel “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves town”.

As Cory has released his novel under a Creative Commons License I was able to download a copy for free. What can I say…this book is very weird but extremely fun to read. I won’t go into the plot but let’s just say it revolves around a very strange family, (the main character is Alan and his father is a mountain, and his mother is a washing machine….like I said, weird!)

I had so much fun reading it that I have decided to go out and buy Cory’s first book, once I’ve read that I’m definitely going to buy a copy of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves town it’s just too damn strange not to own a copy. Go buy it, you won’t be disappointed!!

A few of the guys and I decided to take advantage of my new casino membership since we all had the day off together. So early on a sunny Monday afternoon we decided to forgo the unusually beautiful weather to sit in a room with no natural light and throw our money away.

Things started of smooth but tedious as it took a good 10 minutes to get everyone signed in and their pictures taken. After the vigorous screening we all headed up to the gaming floor, with the anticipation of going broke very quickly upon us all the general consensus was to grab a beer and get a feel for the place.. When we got there no-one was behind the bar, so I turned and began to walk over to the dealers and the guy who was obviously in charge when I made a total rookie schoolboy error and walked into the dealer area….holy shit!! I’d taken about 2 steps when all the dealers turned too me and the biggest one there firmly informed me that I was not allowed to be there…oops!!

One quick backtrack and very red face later I was back at the bar with one of the dealers not involved at a table coming over to take our drinks.

With beers in hand we all decided to go and try our luck at the BlackJack table. We all sat down and the big guy who informed me of my earlier mistake sets up the card shuffler and starts chatting to us…

“So I take it you haven’t been here before?” the dealer asks.

No shit Sherlock!! He’s looking right at me and I just want to crawl away and hide.

“Yeah” I answer, “I just got my membership so we thought we’d come in and check the place out!”

The dealer smiled, and then as we all started to get our cash ready to buy chips said, “It takes about 5 minutes to shuffle the cards so no rush guys!”

We start to relax as he begins telling us the table rules, minimum bets, general terminology, basically everything he thinks we need to know to get started.

Once the cards are shuffled and we’ve all bought £20 worth of chips we begin to play, with the dealer guiding us all for the first few hands to get us warmed up. We all start to get the hang of it, there’s really not that much to BlackJack but we were all in new territory so we were a little nervous. I managed to get up to about £65 at one point.

Then the dealers changed.

If ever a dealer brought a run of bad luck it was this woman. It wasn’t just me, it was every single person at the table. The worst being the guy 2 to my right. His first 2 cards were 8’s, so he doubled up only to get 2 more 8’s. He doubled up again. 2 of those hands got 8’s so he split again. The best hand he managed out fo them all was 19 and he had a hell of a lot of money riding on it…the dealer caught BlackJack…AQ…we couldn’t believe it.

I think she caught BlackJack about 10 times, it was a nightmare. On top of that almost everytime I played I was getting 15 after 2 or 3 cards so I always had a difficult decision to make. My £65 dropped very quickly and I ended up buying in for £10 more. That disappeared in about 2 minutes so I bought in another £20. This was the last of my cash for the afternoon so I didn’t want to do anyting too stupid. after a lot of back and forwards the guys had left the table with nothing and I cashed out £20 with the idea of having a beer and taking a breather.

while we were all relaxing Dave spotted someone he knew playing Roulette so he wandered over to the table to get a quick lesson and basically throw some money away. After a few mnutes we’re all over watching Dave play and get a few tips from the local players who obviously know what they’re doing.

I’m not really a big fan of Roulette so I was content to watch for a while before I went back to the BlackJack table. So I left Dave playing and headed to the bathroom. I’d been gone a couple of minutes and when I got back all the guys had cashed into the roulette table and seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Since I’m not one to miss out on a good time I threw my £20 into the mix and bought in.

I played it safe for a little while by betting on sections of the wheel..1st 12, 2nd 12, and 3rd 12. Doing this I build up a nice stack of chips ad decided to put a couple on individual numbers since they have the best odds when you win. It was always 2 or 3 chips on both 7 and 18 and then occasionally a few chips on other numbers. Luckily for me 7 came up when I had 3 chips on it for a very nice win. A few spins later 18 came up with 3 chips which was another very nice win.

For a while I managed to build my stack pretty high, even with the winnings from my 2 big wins off to the side, (I’d decided that I was going to cash them out no matter what.) Towards the end of my playing stack I hit the 2nd 12 general bet and also the black 24 with 2 chips on it for another big win.

Very shortly afterwards I cashed out as we had all decided to call it a day. I had managed to turn my losses at the BlackJack table into a positive. My £20 had been turned into £130, which made my day. I’d expected to spend the £50 I had decided I could lose but instead I came away + £80.

We all had a really good afternoon even though I was the only person in positive figures at the end of the day.

Hopefully it’s going to be a more regular thing but even if it’s not it was a lot of fun and one hell of a day.

Tonight is going to be my first live game of No-Limit Hold-Em.
Last week one of the guys from work who regularly has a home game found out that I had started playing and asked if I wanted to join them.

My online game is getting better but how much of that is going to translate into live action poker? It’s only a home game so it’s all going to be really relaxed, but I still don’t want to make an ass of myself. I suppose the main thing I’ll have to do is play my normal game but make sure I don’t give any tells away when I get a good or bad hand.
I’m really looking forward to tonight it should be fun!

To warm up for tonight’s game I played a $5 + $0.50 SNG on PokerStars last night. It was an eventful SNG but I played a pretty solid game throughout.

When I got to the final table I became one of the shortest stacks, (since my AA was cracked by trip T’s first hand of the table for a big loss), and was in real danger of being blinded away. After a couple of orbits, I was dealt A8o. These were the best two cards I had seen in a while and I was pretty much a goner unless I bet, I threw my chips all-in. Thankfully they held up and I doubled up. The blinds and antes then went up and a couple of orbits later I found myself in a little bit of a tight situation again. I was dealt A8o again and thought well why the hell not. There’s only 6 players, I’m in a good position, there hasn’t been any raises in front of me, ”All-In”. They held up again, (A, 8, x on the flop). I went on a little bit of a run at this point, getting some good cards, and more importantly I think, making correct decisions with the bad cards.

Eventually I managed to get into the final two and go Heads-Up with the big stack. I was walking away with decent money whatever happened, and he had about 6 times my stack so I thought it would be over pretty quickly. The heads-up swayed back and forth with me winning big hands and nearly busting him out, to him winning big hands and nearly busting me out. This went on for a while, and at one point when we were relatively close in stack sizes, I was dealt K9o. Not a great hand but at heads up it might be enough. I was the BB so I checked to see a flop. The flop came out (x, 9, x) I had top pair plus a good kicker.

He checked

I thought about it and decided to go for it. (Plus it was 1.30am and I was shattered)

All-In

He turns over KQo

Oh crap! I’m still in the lead but this could get ugly.

K comes out on the turn giving me 2 pair and him a pair.

I’m sitting there chanting “No Queen, No Queen” again and again

River comes.

It’s a fucking Queen!!

Bang SNG over I finished in second place.

I can’t complain about it really since I had to really work the trenches to even get heads up. Plus I had really badly rivered someone earlier in the table.

**about 30 minutes earlier**

It was an all-in play for me. I was short stacked after taking a beating the hand before and I only had about 4 orbits till I was done.

I had suited connectors, 78h.

He turns over AA.

I though my time here is over.

The flop brought out 6, 5, x.

The turn was a blank.

The river was a 9 and I had doubled up again.

**********

I was happy with the way I played last night, especially since I was short stacked for almost all the final table. I was glad I was able to rough it out and go from almost being the first off the table to coming so close to actually winning the thing.

I was so please with the way I played that instead of being annoyed at the river Q that finally beat me. I just shrugged and thought that I was glad I’d managed to do so well to get into the chance where I could win it.

You win some, you lose some!