I Love L.A.

Good games at the Vic are a bit like buses - you're waiting and waiting and waiting; just when you've given up along come two or three all at once.

I played in a good £250 PLO game last night and then sat in a blinding £250 NL Holdem game. The Holdem game was great all because of a super spewy bluff station from L.A. When I got in the game this guy had about £8k in front of him which steadily decreased as one by one the different players at the table picked off his bluffs.

To give you an idea of how good the game was I experienced a 3 grand swing from winning to losing back to winning which is unusual for me. I played KK really badly out of position at one point and lost a big pot to this guy, but still managed to come back and end up winning on the night.

This guy said his regular game was the $20/$40 NL at the Commerce. I've never played there, but my experience with this player only confirms all the good things I have read and heard about the Commerce. He's probably a winning player in L.A....

As an aside I noticed Gary the Armenian was collecting the £2.50 chips (these are for the half hour time collection of £7.50). Of course it slowed down the time charge as now the dealer had make change etc and at one point even had to ask another dealer to go to the desk and get us some more £2.50 chips. What reason would somebody have to take these chips and put them in their pocket?

I wanted to call him out on it, but Gary is a bit of a hothead and I didn't feel like getting into an argument. Instead I mentioned it to a couple of other players and a few of us "innocently" asked where all the £2.50 chips had gone when the collection came around.

Also in the game was Neil "Bad Beat" Channing, fresh from his Irish Open victory. It was nice to play with Neil again seeing as recently he has been playing only the monkey game or higher (the big games have been his regular feeding grounds for a quite a while now, not just since his Irish win btw).

I think Neil was a bit disgusted with me when I ironed out the L.A bluffer at about quarter to 3 in the morning and then immediately got up and left. To be fair to myself the L.A player got up as soon as he lost the hand and looked like he wasn't coming back, plus I had been intending to go at about 1.30 originally, but the game was so good I decided to stay another hour (I must stress I wasn't staying on just to "get out of it". I broke that bad habit long ago). Also when you have a 16 month old baby at home whom you have to look after in the morning it makes it tough playing til 5am like the old days.

Kenny Wong was also in the game and it was great to have him back and hear the banter between him and Neil about who was the better tournament player.