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20.08.05
The Sheriff's star continues to shine
by Richard Prew (Tight End)
It was a disappointing turnout this year, with only seven of us venturing through the roundabouts and the V5/H3 type road-Signs to sunny MK. Still at £200 a pop this still made it a decent sized single table Sit'N'Go for most of us mere mortals.
Here are the seven, in no particular order:
Awesome Ali The hostess with the mostest. Excellent player, consistently high up in the league and all round superstar (Ali, will this do?)
Sheriff Fatman Another consistent winner, fresh from more live success and an inexorable climb up the Poker rankings. Always accompanied by badged card protector and baseball cap. Just in case we forget who he is.
Dazza Another regular winner. Million dollar card protector. Shows maniacal tendencies. His poker game is aggressive too.
The Arbernaut Watford fan. Lose a point. Likeable Gutshot globetrotter with a penchant, as we will see, for all-in moves on semi bluffs.
Woody Unknown quantity. Works in financial services. Gets up at 5.30am every morning. Presumably to catch the late night US players on Stars.
Egg Quiet, reserved, uses hand signals to let us know he's raising. Had voice box removed at birth.
Tight End A misnomer…Yes, tight, but never there at the end.
With a one hour clock, 10,000 chips and 25/50 blinds and Ali having catered for feeding the five thousand things began at a leisurely pace. In part this was because of waiting for Dazza to help himself to his fifth plate of lunch, him having last eaten a month ago at the last home game.
After a couple of levels Dazza has 13k, Sheriff has 12k and the only two under water are Woody and Egg. Which is where the fun began.
Egg betrayed to me that he had a monster. I was sitting on his direct left and I'm sure I heard him say something. Nevertheless he checked in the BB after Ali had flat called on the button. A raggity bobbedy flop was checked by both players. A seemingly innocuous 3 materialised on the turn. At which point Ali bet. Egg flat calls. That couldn't have helped her could it Egg? You wouldn't have thought so. Ali puts a big bet in on the raggy river, which Egg calls, proudly turning over his AA, for the ultimate in slow played monsters, never having raised once. Unfortunately Ali has tripped up with the 3 on the turn to deal Egg's stack a blow from which he would struggle to recover.
The next time you see Mark check calling, kick him under the table!
Meanwhile Woody is struggling at 4k, having been a close second in a number of pots. Watching Woody play for the first time was certainly an experience. When faced with a decision in response to a decent sized post flop bet he would verbal rationalize his decision making process to the whole table. Interesting!
If I was good enough I could have taken advantage of the free information being provided. Unfortuantely I left that to Sheriff. I am convinced that several times Sheriff would represent the A on a flop of A/Picture/Rag just to hear Woody say "Well you've obviously got the Ace, but I've hit the flop too, I call" but then again, knowing Sheriff's luck these days, he had the Ace.
With five levels gone and Egg struggling it all began to go wrong for Tight End. Hovering on 11,000 chips he began raising with a run of marginal raising hands with mixed success and the leak of chips began on hitting a series of flops only to face re-raises.
For example in the big blind with 66 in an unraised pot with three others he sees a flop of 8,7,6. A bet to find out where he is, answered resoundingly by Dazza's big re-raise. Then the dwell begins. The grass is growing outside and day is turing into night. Ali puts the clock on and he passes reluctantly. Dazza flashes 5 4 for the flopped bottom straight. Good pass, especially as Dazza could have made the move with a lot less than that, but still 15% of a shrinking stack down the drain.
Shortly after we lose Egg, shoving it all in on a medium Ace and losing to live cards elsewhere.
Not long after Tight End, still affected by a nightmare level that saw 11k turn into 4k, raise with K10 (Soooooted. Made all the difference. Pillock) by the Sheriff on the button. Patience was lost and frustration was evident as he called, to be faced with the inevitable AK offsuit. No miracles and off he departed, leaving 5 and Sheriff in a chip lead alongside Dazza.
Old sparring partners, I assumed they would lock horns soon as when those two get together it's like watching those dodgy old Lions in the Lion King (and Dazza's definitely not the one played by Jeremy Irons) fight over their territory.
Next to depart was Ali, who whenever I see her in her own home game seems to be completely card dead. Surely she could rig a few decks, after all, it's her gaff.
Having struggled along for several levels without making much headway she was off to the inevitable washing up.
Throughout all of this The Arbernaut was a model of calm consistency. Betraying the odd irritation at being consistently outplayed by the Sheriff in Small to big blind confrontations (he couldn't have had a hand every time could he James? Stick it up him!) he nevertheless displayed a lot of muscle and aggression by going all in with KQ of clubs on a board of Jc10h6c rightly declaring afterwards that he had a lot of outs and getting an AJ to pass. Nice play sir. Potentially awful play if you are called sir!
Early evening was upon us. We knew it was serious stuff four handed. Dazza hadn't even mentioned the Chinese yet. Who would break first?
Unfortunately my details at this point are a bit scarce. I blame Bondy though. Stick a compulsive obsessive hopeless gambler (me, not him, though I could excuse you for wondering) next to someone with a Betfair account permanently on his laptop and trouble is imminent. Though quite why the trouble came in the form of betting on X Factor I'm still hazy about. Still, it could easily have been everything else we discussed from Baseball, the NFL, football, basketball, cricket and, though not for long, poker.
Suffice to say that Dazza departed in fourth followed shortly thereafter by The Arbernaut When I asked (not entirely lacking in glee, sorry Dazza but you are a pain to play against. That's a compliment in case you hadn't noticed) how it happened Ali replied "Dazza got caught bluffing". Tell me something I don't know Ali.
It was never explained to me how he came to be all in with 10 4 Versus Woody's A6 but I suspect Woody was short-ish stacked and Dazza hit the flop. When it went against him Dazza was being consoled by Bondy and a Poker Odds calculator (and both are rather unreliable) Hard luck Dazza.
And so to Heads up. Sheriff with a 60/40% chip lead always looked like he was favourite, though Woody had done tremendously well to battle back from his earlier mishaps to get this far.
After a battle lasting approaching an hour Sheriff triumphed with another notch on his ever more intricately carved poker bedpost, leaving Woody with a sizeable consolation for being runner up.
Just as well he left immediately rather than sit down in the Dealer's choice cash game then. Sensible lad.
Finally, a tribute to the Sheriff, a bloody good player who I've shared several tables with on big live comps and at Alis. The simplest thing I can say is that whenever the chips go in, he's always ahead…a mark of good timing, good fundamentals and a tough opponent.
The Sheriff's star continues to shine Cont.......
by Curtis Ledger (The Sheriff)
Nice report Richard. I promised Ali an 'addendum' to fill in the details of the later stages so here goes.........
Richard's report pretty much covers things upto the game becoming 4-handed, but then his Betfair watching took priority so he missed a few things.
We were playing the WSOP blind structure and, by this stage, the running antes had kicked in and were making the pots more significant. However, this also meant that the stack sizes compared to the cost of a round were shrinking rapidly, resulting in numerous changes of lead.
Eventually, from a point of roughly equal chip stacks, Dazza managed to steal his way to the chip lead.
Woody (who had been a coin flip away from being the first out early on in the game) had clawed his way back into contention, Arbernaut was playing a relatively steady game, while I found myself becoming increasingly short-stacked due to a lack of cards.
Dazza seemed to be committing grand larceny at every situation, including an opportunistic all-in bet when Tight End (who had been torn away from the TV to deal) had erroneously prompted me to check out of turn in a heads up pot. My hand was not good enough to call with for all my chips. However, it was clear that at some point a stand would eventually have to me made.
The opportunity came soon enough, Dazza made yet another raise from the SB and I pushed the remainder of my ever-diminishing stack holding A6s. Dazza, sensing an opportunity to knock out his arch-rival made an 'interesting' call with T4o. Ali, who had now taken over the dealing from TightEnd, proceeded to deal a 6 and a T on the flop. Fortunately (for the residents of Ali's street that is) she then flipped over another 6 on the river, prompting Dazza to start complaining about bad beats (!?!) and giving me a much needed double-up. (Richard's report shows this hand as being between Dazza and Woody, which is incorrect).
As the game continued Woody started to eke out a chip lead whilst Dazza's stack started to shrink, partly due to an astute laydown holding JJ in the face of a bigger pocket pair held (if memory serves) by Arbernaut. (For the record, this is indeed a complimentary remark about Dazza's play by Sheriff!!!)
Eventually, Dazza's opportunism got the better of him. Once again he took advantage of an inadvertent check out of turn, this time by Woody, to announce 'All-in' on an Ace high flop with a flush draw showing. This time, Woody called him and flipped over A9s giving him top pair with the flush draw. Dazza showed KJ giving him very few escape routes on his bluff. Unsurprisingly, the miracle didn't occur and, after counting down the chips, Dazza was eliminated in 4th place, leaving him to 'contemplate' matters in the garden with the aid of a cigarette or two and a few kickable cats!
Memories of the 3 handed game are a blur but the end result was elimination for Arbernaut (I think at my hands, although I can't remember the hand) leaving Woody and myself to battle it out heads up.
The heads up proved an interesting battle. Chip leads changed hands on several occasions, with each of us in turn being crippled and then doubled up. I managed to pick up a lot of pots uncontested and was fortunate to have my 'radar' working well.
On most occasions I managed to get away from hands where I was behind or had been outflopped (with the notable exception of running into a nicely slow-played full house at one stage which Woody was delighted to see me move all-in against).
Eventually, after the inevitable Chinese Take Away break, the end came when Woody became incredibly suspicious of my apparent overbet of 15,000 chips into an 8-high flop. After much thought he called all-in with A8 for top pair, top kicker. However, I was holding the Cheesey powerhouse hand, 99, which held up to give me the trophy!
Despite the disappointing turnout, the buy-in and the fantastic structure made it a game well worth playing and it was a fun day in MK for all concerned.
My luckfest continued into the dealer's choice cash game which followed, where Woody attempted to throw his 2nd place money into 'learning' the high-low split games, and I finally left at around 1am with a healthy wad of cash in my pocket. Good times!!!
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