Christopher Hamilton

I’ve been playing in the OfficePoker.net tournaments over the last few months when I’ve had the time. So far I’ve played four tournaments, and final tabled twice. The first time I bubbled out, and the second final table appearance was on Saturday.

There were 53 entrants to the tournament, and it was, as always, a pretty tough field. For around 7 hours I played some solid poker, slowly building a decent stack, and only ever really in danger a couple of times throughout the entire tournament. There was one memorable hand that I completely sucked out on. With a small stack, and escalating blinds, I looked down to see KQ off, and faced an All-In bet from my friend Rufus. Knowing I had to make a move, and was sure I couldn’t wait any longer, as the blinds were approaching me in the next few hands, I called. This put me All-In as Rufus had me covered by a decent amount.

I flip over my KQoff, and he tables Rockets. Oh man. It looks like my day is at an end. So I casually said to the dealer, “A king and a Queen would be good please.” Can you guess what happened?

Yep, the flop came Queen, King, Rag. Then the turn, and River were blanks. I managed to double up, and severely tilt Rufus at the same time. Double Score.

He went out a few hands later, as I made a push for the final table. I won a few more decent hands, and ended up at the final table with the second largest stack. To my left sat the chip leader with twice my stack, and probably more than the others at the table combined.

We played for about an hour, with the chipleader busting people out two at a time, and completely bullying the table with his huge stack. I eventually knocked out the third place player to go heads up almost level in chips with the chip leader, who had doubled me up not long before. As soon as we were heads up, we decided to chop the prize money 50-50 and each took home £400, continuing to play for the tournament trophy that the winner receives.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t me. After about fifteen minutes of heads-up play, where to be honest neither of us were too bothered about, and we just had some fun, I lost when my monster hand, (J7off), was beaten by the winners pocket 3s.

It’s probably the most significant cash in any tournament I’ve played in. I’ve had some tournaments where I’ve won a few hundred dollars, but nothing this much. With this cash, I can start to rebuild my live bankroll that completely disappeared when I moved into my new flat, and finally get back to having it completely separate from my day-to-day money, which is a relief.

We have another tournament coming up in a few weeks that I can’t wait to play now. Followed by another one at the end of May.

There’s nothing quite like cashing in Vegas, followed by a solid cash in another tournament within a couple of weeks, to make you love playing the game again. I fixed a few problems in the way I played before Vegas, and my confidence in my game is at an all time high just now. I can’t wait to get back to the felt.

Technorati Tags: NL Holdem, Poker

I’ve uploaded some photos from the Vegas trip to my Flickr account.

There are a lot more photo’s on my laptop, and I’ll go through them later to see if there are any others I want to add.

At the moment the upload speed from the train is terrible, so I’m hoping they all get up onto Flickr before I arrive in Edinburgh

**Update**

The connection was so slow it timed out. There are a few photo’s up at the moment, and I’ll add the rest up tonight when I get home.

Technorati Tags: Photography, Travel, Vegas

Well the positive thinking seemed to work yesterday.

I got to my hotel to be told, that because they were so busy I was going to be upgraded. Now I thought an upgrade would have been a slightly bigger room than normal. I was wrong.

I was directed to one of their suites, which is almost the same size as my flat. It has a separate area that is in effect a lounge, with a large sofa, a couple of big chairs, and a small TV. Personally, the sofa and a large TV would have been better, but hey, I can’t complain since the place is huge.

After I’d trekked though my room, and discovered all the landmarks, (mini-bar), I headed along to the Waterstones at Gower Street. Once again, I spent a fortune there. Well it wasn’t really a fortune, but four books worth of hard earned cash.

I headed back to the hotel, and ordered some room service. I had a pepperoni pizza, which was meh. I was getting tired, but I tried to stay awake for as long as I could, and decided to read for a few hours. At some point though I must have drifted off, and I slept last night for longer than I have in days.

I think I’ve finally broken through the jet lag barrier, which is a great relief. I really didn’t want it to ruin this weekend since I have plans. I have another poker tournament down at the Stanley Cascades in Leith, plus I am going to have to spend some time with the Good Lady Friend, and one of her friends who is over visiting for a few days.

Tonight I think I may go to a pub near the hotel for a couple. Although I can;t get carried away as I might have to come in early tomorrow to do some work.

I’m back down in London for work this week. I had a grand total of two and a half days in Edinburgh after my trip to Vegas, and I really wish I had a few more days to relax. My body clock is totally screwed with jet lag, and I’ve managed to get a grand total of 4 hours sleep in the last few days.

Normally, because I have to get up at 5am to come down to London I’m completely exhausted by now. Today I’m not. I can only assume it’s because my body clock is such a mess that it thinks 5am is a reasonable time to be awake. I think the fact that I’m jet lagged has actually benefited me this trip, which is the only benefit of jet lag I can see.

Another issue I had with coming down this week, was the fact that I only got to hang out with the Good Lady Friend for two days, which just wasn’t enough.

I’m going to try to make the best of this trip though. It’s my new positive thoughts approach to work. I’ll try anything at the moment to re-spark my interest in the IT industry. I’m a huge geek, and more into my tech than I have been in a long time, but I’m having trouble getting myself together to do support day in, day out.

I actually have a tech project brewing in my head, which could be fun if I can figure out all the details. It all depends on whether the positive thoughts process manages to hold, and keep me sane. If it doesn’t I can see my enthusiasm for technology taking a nose dive again, and the project possibly falling away before it really gets going.

Thankfully though, the working day is almost over. In about 15 minutes, I’m going to head to my hotel and check in. Then I’m taking a walk to the Gower Street Waterstones again, because that place is awesome.

Technorati Tags: Tech, Travel

A recap of our first day in Vegas is here

A recap of our second day in Vegas is here

A recap of our third day in Vegas is here

A recap of our fourth day in Vegas is here

A recap of our fifth day in Vegas is here

I’m sitting in McCarran airport at the moment, and I thought now would be a fine time to post the last two day recaps in one hit. I’m totally burned out at the moment so this will be quick.

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Days 6 & 7

The last few days have seen us completely wind down after the drunken debauchery of my birthday on Wednesday. Thursday morning we had a trip to Hoover Dam planned, but actually getting out of bed to make the coach was something of a challenge. We managed, barely, to get to the coach on time, but I felt absolutely terrible and wanted nothing more than to go lie down.

The drive out to the dam is only about an hour, and it passed pretty quickly, thanks to an entertaining driver. We arrived at the Dam and went for a walk around the area, and across the Dam into Arizona. Unfortunately, unless you were doing the tour inside the dam, which cost more, after about ten minutes you had seen all there was to see, and photographed everything.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very impressive sight, and I’m sure if I wasn’t so hung over it would have made more of a dramatic impression on me. I was hungover though, and after those ten minutes I just wanted to leave.

About an hour later, we got back on the coach and headed back to our hotel. Once we got there, the only thing we could do was go back to our room, put ESPN on tv and lie down for a few hours. By the time the hangover lifted it was getting late, and we had another early start the following morning. We were off to the Grand Canyon.

We were picked up at 8am by the pinkest jeep I have ever seen. This didn’t come as a surprise, since the company was called Pink Jeeps. The tour was supposed to be more fun than the large coach tours, because there was a maximum of six people to a group. Our jeep arrived and we headed off to pick up the rest of the passengers before we made our way to Hoover Dam, it’s on the way to Grand Canyon, and we were told we stopped there for five or ten minutes max.

True to her word, our guide stopped at Hoover Dam for a couple of minutes for the rest of the group to take some photo’s before we were back on our way.

We travelled through some amazing scenery, a lot of which reminded me of the centre of Australia. There were lots of deep red rocks, and so much desert foliage, as you would expect with us being in the desert.

After a few hours we arrived at the initial point of the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately for us it was windy as hell, and raining sporadically. Even with all that though, it couldn’t lessen the fact that the place was remarkable. I headed as close to the edge as I dared, and snapped a few photos of as much as I could.

The way the tour out there works, is there are two individual stops along the Canyon. The first was remarkable, and is where the SkyWalk is situated. The second, was far more impressive in my opinion. It has a small trek, which takes you to a pointed edge of the canyon and gives you the most amazing views of the Colorado River, and all the surrounding parts of the Canyon. Thankfully at that point the rain had stopped, and the wind had died down. If it had been a sunny day I could have stayed there for hours.

We were on a limited time though, so we all got back on the Canyon bus, and headed back to our jeep. From there we went to a small ranch, that is part of the tour, for some lunch. The chilli in a bread bowl was ace.

Once we had lunch, we got back into our jeep for the two and a half hour drive back to Vegas. Our guide kept us entertained with stories from when she was a Blackjack dealer, and stories from other tours.

Eventually we got back to the casino, after a great day, and relaxed in our room for an hour, watching the baseball. We decided to head up the strip to do a little shopping and grab a beer, but it didn’t take long for us to get bored/tired and decide to head back to Circus Circus and have a drink there.

We sat and drank in the bar for a few hours,until I decided I wanted to go play roulette, and Keith decided to go to bed. I sat myself down, and changed $100. For the next couple of hours I was up about $100, or down to about $20, with wild swings in between. Once it got to about 1am, I decided the money on the table was either going to be hugely increased in the next bet, or it was all going to go. So I put out about $20 in bets onto the numbers, and then put my last $50 on red. It was 26 black, an number I hadn’t covered.

Oh well, time for bed, and the end of my Vegas holiday. With a good night, and good luck folks. I left the table and ended my trip.

Technorati Tags: Travel, Vegas