One long long session on the felt

Hey guys,

Today was a bit mad. I arrived at Dusk Til Dawn at about 1:45pm for the 2 O'clock £150 tournament and I left the club at 4am. So that was in fact a pretty heavy 14 hour-session. Any my word was it swingy.

In the end I managed to have my first big loosing day at DTD down about £650 (including the tournament buy-in). Although this is only 3 buy-ins I had numerous 5 buy-in swings today. Yes, the games were mental.

The funny thing about today is that I really think I played well and kept a focused, patient game throughout. Especially in the £150 tournament where I was slightly unfortunate to find myself in a large pot holding AK on an AK9 board against pocket 9's. But hey, that's variance folks! At least the guy who had the 9's went on to win it so I guess the chips went into good use ;)

Other than that, I had a lot of success on the NLHE games but managed to lose every 60/40 and 70/30 that I got myself into at PLO. Nearly all to the same player, Pete Linton grr... Over the past two months he has ran like God against me. I just can't win a pot that we go all in vs the bloke!

Anyway, it got to around 1am and I was around even despite the PLO swings. The table had lost most of the donators, and a new game of £2/£2 Dealers Choice opened up with quite a nice line-up of players. So I grabbed myself a seat and got into the thick of the action.

In the end I lost 3 x £200 buy-ins during various games which was a little frustrating. Originally I had planned to start taking some shots at the £5/£5 dealers choice game as it is true a lot of rich donators do play them but I think there is just too much gamble in the games and too little skill-edge. Here are the pro's and con's

Reasons to play the DC:

1) Rich gamblers
2) Fun mixture of games which stops the repetition
3) There is usually really good table banter which makes it enjoyable to play at

Reasons not to play:

1) Games like 6 card Omaha/Paduki/Super-Stud are all that really run. These games just don't seem to have much skill at all. I really think you would have a tough time gaining a considerable edge in the long run.
2) Sick sick swings due to the nature of the games
3) Because a lot of the games like super-stud and 6 card Omaha hi-lo take so long, I think you get about 7-20 hands in an hour. Which is pretty bad.
4) A lot of the older guys really are a lot better than me at the stud games. I don't enjoy them that much and probably see myself being out-matched here.

Therefore I think I will in the future try to stick to the £2/£2 PLO game as I still believe there is a lot of dead-money to be had and it is more enjoyable to play the NLHE live. I will also start to give the £5/£5 PLO games a shot when my bankroll increases to £15,000 but that depends on the line-up too.

I'm going to withdraw about £300ish from my bankroll to buy some summer clothes before I leave Nottingham. Then I'll be off home on Tuesday afternoon for a week. Should be nice but not sure how much poker will be fit in during the next few days!

GL at the felt all.