December write-up

I've not been playing much recently due to another bout of man-flu - I've only been to Gala once since my back-to-backs and I busted approx 20/90 shoving 12BB with KJ and the SB looked me up with an equal sized stack holding A6. I think calls like that deserve to be punished, but on this occasion it wasn't. Perhaps I do shove when too deep - and I'm fully aware of the weakness of KJ.

I've won a couple of pub games this week though - I think they had about 18 and 23 runners. The first one was a weird game - I got very short on the FT bubble - I got it all in pre with AQ vs Q8 and he rivered his 3-outter which left me 1400 chips and I was straight into the SB on the FT @ the 800/1600 level. I built my stack back up and on the way busted the Q8 guy when his KK were no match for my AJ. This time the karma gods were watching though as he raised and I shoved for not much more, it folded back to him and he thought for a bit and then said 'I guess I have to' and flips the cowboys. I had my coat on by the time I binked the river. He had a moan about being unlucky in a typical short-sighted poker player kind of way.

I then get crippled yet again with QT on a KJ9 flop versus A9 and then it comes running Jacks. By the time HU started I was short yet again - the other guy is a bit of a skinflint and wanted to deal for the £40 or so in the pot but I refused cos I didn't want him to go gung-ho on me. It seemed to work as I shoved every single button and he folded hands he shouldnt be folding. There were only 20bb in the game. Eventually he decided 97sooted was what he had been waiting for and my Q6 held.

As it happened, I got up against the same guy HU on Tuesday. He hadn't bought in to the pot though so the dynamic was different and I chipped away at him before he once again decided 79 was the hand to go with. He doesn't grasp the difference between a good all-in-pre showdown hand and suited-connectory cards which play better post flop.

I also binked a 220 player tourney online - shame it was only for €26 though. I've been losing for the past four or five online sessions and am down around €200. BRM means I can take a several month losing streak like this though - but I want to use some of my roll to fund some UKIPT and CBMPT festivals in the New Year.

January and February looks to be a busy month for me right now poker-wise. There are both the APAT and Not-the-APAT team events in Bolton and Birmingham, plus a UKIPT in Nottingham. I'm also in Amsterdam for a few days and one day I'll be all alone but I've sniffed out a €100 f/o which looks promising. I run good when playing in other countries so I hope this continues!

I'm off to Tanzania for the majority of March and then April-onwards I'll be playing the festivals.

One area which has been bad for me this past quarter are Bristol Poker Meetup games. I think I'm down around £200 when usually I'm a winning player. I'm not sure why that is. I offset that loss at a cash game the group hosted which is unusual cos my cash record isn't the best.

I hope both my readers have a very Happy Christmas and New Year.

Flaming Galah

I won the Saturday afternoon game in Gala for the second week on the trot - 88 runners meant there was £610 up top but after savers and suchlike I got £530.

I made a special point of playing it this week because it seems whenever I get a result anywhere I always follow it up with another result a week later. This is true of both pub and casino games. I'm not sure why it is. I've won 8 tourneys this year in Gala from approximately 50 attempts and 6 of these have involved some kind of back-to-back action.

Alas I am unable to play this Saturday as I have plans.

I have a question to ask about deals though.

When we got to heads up play the blinds were at 8,000/16,000 and the 350,000 chips were split roughly 250,000/100,000 in my favour. The payouts, taking into account a £20 saver for tenth, were £590 & £360. I offered him £60 to walk away and he accepted. I was prepared to offer a little more if he pushed but this wasn't necessary. I figured I was offering him a quarter of the money-in-play and he was just a double up from us flipping stack sizes. Does this seem reasonable?