Yorky Pud

Hello boys and girls and anything else in between, Yorkshire Pudding here updating his little piece of the interwebs! What have I been up to over the past week or so since I last updated? Well I have actually being playing some poker, not a lot but I have been making some steps in the right direction in terms of multi table tournaments.

Playing poker has taken a back seat in recent weeks mainly due to my current workload and projects I have been working on. Last month I was invited to play in the season opening tournament of the 2011/12 Sky Poker Tour and although I did not cash I really enjoyed myself but since then I have been working away in Amneville for the World Poker Tour and also in London for the Premier League Mixed Game Championship.

I have also been working hard on the PokerNews job I have been doing, working on the launch of a sports betting news project and when some of the articles I have written this month include the Hans Vogl interview that took a total of three hours from speaking to him to writing everything up then I just simply have not had time to sit and play poker as much as I would have liked.

That said I did sit down and play six tournaments recently and went pretty deep in most of them, so year yet so far though. I finished 19/120 (20 paid), 38/266 (30 paid), 40/313 and 54/449 (50 paid) which was a little tilting but going deep in these was a good confidence booster, especially as I was suffering from what is technically known as the **** and was in a right state so getting so deep and not soiling my pants was a pretty good achievement in my eyes.

The day after these deep runs I received a phone call from Betfair who told me they were sticking $50 in my poker account for me to do as I pleased with, which is always nice, so I decided to punt it on some more tournaments with me running and playing quite well. One tournament was the $22 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Low that carried a $600 guarantee. Winning it would hardly make me rich but with only 33 runners you would think I stood a good chance of making it through to the final table wouldn't you? Well you would but in fact I came in stone cold last place after playing like a complete moron. Well played Pud!

The other tournament I entered was an $11 No Limit Hold'em with a $3,000 guarantee on it that attracted 313 runners, making around $800 FTW if I remember correctly. The first two hands so me add 895 chips to my stack then a dozen or so hands later I turned trip eights in a multiway pot with the monster that is 8s6s and managed to get paid off to find myself sitting with just shy of 4,000 chips. Very little happened for what seemed like and age then when the action folded to me in late position I made it 190 to play (blinds 40/80) with Jc8s a bet the cutoff and big blind called. The flop came down 8d-3c-2h, the big blind checked, I continued with a bet of 465 into the 610, forcing the cutoff to fold but the big blind moved all in for 1,715 in total. I don't know what it was but something just didn't add up at all and I quickly called and was shown 9s3s! I held and suddenly I am in the top 20 in chips.

I added to my stack and suddenly I am up past 10,000 chips and really rocketing but a touch of over-confidence kicks me square in the batteries and I lost nearly 5,000 in two hands. The first was a button versus blind where I was trying to represent the exact hand my opponent held and that never ends well and that was closely followed by getting a little too jiggy with top pair against an overpair, again something that never ends well at all.

The next 40 minutes or so were basically spent by me trying not to cough or fart and clicking the fold button, sometimes switching to pressing the F1 key as to spice things up! I then had queens hold against Big Slick, which in itself is a minor miracle before losing 1/2 my stack again then having a pair of sixes hold up all in against fours and ace-nine to get me back into contention. The money bubble burst and not long after I made a big mistakes.

With blinds now 250/500/50a I found myself UTG+1 with 9,675 chips and I think I should have just open-shoved but instead I min-raised to 1,000 and picked up two callers, the dude to my immediate left and the big blind. The three of use saw the 5d-9c-Kd materialise on the flop and the big blind checked. For reasons unknown to me I decided to end the hand right there and moved in for 8,675 into the 3,650 pot, which folded out my friend to the left but was a heaven sent bet for the big blind who held Ks5s and had flopped two pair. I couldn't runner-runner and was sent home 40/313. Ah well.

Tonight, despite being busy with things I need to get sorted before I fly to Prague tomorrow, I am taking part in a $30 tournament that the new Bubble Protection site is hosting. They have paid for my entry and if I or any of the other fishes bubble, which is not 10% of the field I believe, then we receive the $30 buy-in back, despite the fact it cost me nothing to enter. Checking the lobby just now shows 51 players registered with the top six being paid between $96.39 and $509.49, which would be a nice going away gift!

As mentioned I fly to Prague tomorrow to cover WPT Prague. I love Prague, it is such a beautiful city so I am really looking forward to being there. It is a shame I cannot stay longer because there is the WPT, EPT and GSOP taking place concurrently and it would have been good to being around until the end, but such is life. Hopefully we will get at least one early finish so we can have a toby around and of course sink a few cold ones! I am not particularly looking forward to taking off from Leeds & Bradford airport in these horrendous winds we have been having esepcially as I am flying with Jet2.com who I am sure will charge me extra money because of rainy conditions or some other hidden charge rubbish but I am looking forward to the free welcome party I have to go to, yes have to go to.

Oops, this blog has drawn on far too long so I will end it there for one day. As always, thanks for reading and the very best of luck at the tables.