The cleaning ladies are guys

My favourite one of Mireille's cultural observations on stuff that's unusual in Germany. I often "celebrate" her German heritage (though technically French, she has very little French blood in her veins: rather a mix of German, Spanish, Breton, Russian and Mongolian) by calling her "hun" (not "hon" which she'd never stand for) and she does fit right in here. Every time I visit Germany I'm reminded of the fact that apart from a few 20th century aberrations, nearly everything about the place underlines the fact that they are more or less the oldest civilisation in Europe with a rich culture and a progressive attitude that invented things like the welfare state.

Anyway, on to the tournament. I got a pretty bad table draw with no real value apart from a couple of slightly softer station type spots. Unfortunately these were all to my right, and when you're up against stations you kinda need cards, particularly with good aggro players behind who can recognise an isolation play when they see one. Plus the stations kept hitting against me which is never good. By hitting, I mean fourth pair on the river, but given how widely I was missing for most of the day, more than enough.

I made a reasonably solid start adding a few K to my stack before the aggressive young players woke up to the fact that I might not be playing standard ABC old school rock (having to turn over T9s after raising utg wrecked the image). Card death for most of the day meant I dropped perilously low a few times, first down to 12K just before dinner, then down to 6K at 300/600/50 just after. Nothing was really happening for me: no cards and it seemed whenever I opened a bit lightish I got reraised behind. The table didn't get any easier when a couple of the stations were weeded out early and replaced by Alexander "Assassinato" Fitzgerald. Eventually I was reduced to the likes of light four betting and check raising air from the blinds, stuff I rarely if ever do live as I just don't believe it's as plus Ev as most people seem to think, which thankfully got through. Then I finally picked up a couple of hands which was exquisite timing as the young LAGs seemed to have wised up to the readjustment of my 4 bet range. First my QQ crippled Alexander Fitzgerald's AQ, and then I doubled up through the aggro chipleader with KK v A9. I ended the day with 34200, which felt like 134K given what a tough struggle most of the day had been.

Plan for today is to take it easy, do a bit of sightseeing, rail Feargal Nealon a bit, and maybe play tonight's turbo.

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