Barbeques >> live poker

Mark came with me to Neil Channing's Black Belt mansion barbeque. Neil really looks after his lads, some place he's set the lads up with, complete with its own tennis court, swimming pool and Xbox. Being poker players, it seems the availability of the Xbox trumps the pool and tennis court. Great night with most of the UK's "poker royalty" in attendance and a few stray foreigners like recent bracelet winner Fabrice Soulier. Most people are just not very entertaining when they're running as bad as Neil right now, but not Neil who has taken on seems to be turning into the Victor Meldrew of poker mantle, complaining about aggro whippersnappers making poker a preflop game in hilarious style and abusing them in the social media he's such a master of. You tell 'em Neil!

Mark's a great guy to bring to something like this as he buzzes with positive energy. We had a good natter with a nice couple from England, Martin Johnson (independent bookie of the year in the UK) and his wife Nadia who is the very definition of bubbly despite being teetotal. When Nadia expressed concern at Mark's status as designated driver as he skulled the beers, I told her I wasn't too worried about that: Mark's eyesight being a far bigger concern :)

The drive home was quite entertaining as Mark identified the first exit at the last possible millisecond. He wasn't quite so sharp on the second one so we had an exciting little offroad excursion before we got back onto the ramp (as did the driver right behind us).

Next morning, Mark picked me up to go to the Binions main event. After a tilting hour in the reg line, we got in just before the first break. I still managed to do about 3k barrelling in the one hand I did play. No biggie when you have 30k starting though, and I played very well from there to get to 80k before I butchered a hand that left me with 20k. I rebuilt again to just over 110k. It wasn't the easiest of tables: mostly silent robotic Ritalin kids (the dealer actually said at one point that Binions had a new rule: you're allowed to talk at the poker table), apart from one kid whose meds must have been misfiring and couldn't sit still (or shut up).

The gabby redneck kid was no fan of the Irish either: after initially accepting the view of the guy beside him that the redneck accent is just about the worst, he said "wale, thuh Arish eck say aes even ugliuh ah gaysssss". I don't think he realised I was Irish though, my accent clearly not complying to his version of Arish.

At the dinner break I walked around the Downtown area a bit. Fremont Street is something to see. Then you get to the end and wander a bit more into what look like pretty dodgy slums. Fearing for your wallet, you immediately u turn back to the more sanitized Fremont Experience with its street showgirls and hawkers.

My exit, in level 12, was pretty tilting. Card death and an attempt to do something about it getting a few loose raises and threebets snapped off saw me drift back to 75k at 1500/3k when I opened jacks in mid position to 6300. An English kid I'd never seen before or heard of (he didn't seem very good, or rather he was like a lot of onliners: good enough to recognize "spots", but not good enough to be able to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones taking game flow and table dynamics into account) threebet the button to 15k and then announced he was obliged to call after I shoved. He had ATo and binked an ace on the turn, which is rapidly becoming my least favourite street. Live poker is pretty tilting at times: like when you sit and play well for the most part for 12 hours only for that to happen. But that's (live) poker.

Next up is tomorrow's 1k bracelet event, which would be a great time to start running well live again.

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