There is only one rk

Seemed like barts and I were bored come sunday afternoon, I had
a lot of stuff to do, but still thinking about poker, and spent
the afternoon watching world series footage, kindly downloaded
by nai and jon. Everyone needs to watch these clips to start
to understand how to play poker. Great thing is there are lots
of different styles, so you can pick something that suits you.

The not so hush hush matchroom game on Sunday nights, seemed
to me to be as much myth as it was reality. Whist driving down
this little lane in a dodgy part of town, there was a dimly lit
sign saying matchroom. There amongst the billiard club were
a few nicely laid out poker tables. Chad who knows the guy who
knows a guy who knows another a guy who plays, made us feel
pretty welcome. I guess they picked us for suckers and easy money,
but they explained the rules, which had to be explained to me
3 times and then I had to explain it 3 more times to barter. Chad
turned up as well, and he thought wat the hell, initially we were
going to watch but why not play, seemed pretty casual.

Heres quick brief rundown on the competition.

Venue: Matchroom - look it up in whitepages.
the game: No limit texas holdem, nothing else will do.

players : last nights competition saw 46 players, the most they
had, and by the sounds of it, and word of the competition is
spreading quickly, with 15-20 players more in the last 2 weeks.

Composition of players: Nearly all male crowd, prolly 4 female
players, not like the 6:14 ratio on saturday night's game. Its
a young crowd, with alot of younger greek guys, uni students,
and then some people of a variety of ages, older / middle aged
men.

Table size - they ran 5 tables of close to 10 tables. Dedicated
dealer on each table made the game speed fast,

Table play - reasonably strict betting, no bet stringing, pre-call
your bet, else your presumed to call were the type of rules enforced.

Chip betting and rules - ok this is a little confusing, but let
me try...

It cost $5 to make a 1000u chip buy in. 'u' is unit and im
using it instead of $ as its misleading.
Your buy in was made up of:
4 25s 4 100s and 1 500 chips.

So you dont have heaps of chips in front of you (9). You are allowed
to rebuy another additional 1000u worth of chips if your chip stack drops
below a 1000u a max of twice during the first hour. So for example if you
lose 100u after 10 minutes. For $5 you can buy another 1000u, and increase
your chip stack to 1900u. Say with 10 minutes to go your down to 500u,
you can make your final re-buy for another $5 and increase your stack
to 1500u.

At the end of the first hour if you are out, then you have been eliminated.
If you do make it to the end of the first hour with say 1500u, you have
an option to buy 2000u worth of chips for $5. Everyone does this.
So now youd be on 1500u, after spendig somewhere between $10-$20.

From now on there are no re-buy options, and you play with the
chip stack infront of you. Tables are shrunk in size with people being
moved around based on the lowest chip pile being asked to move to
fill in the empty seats. With the idea of getting people on the final
table.

Prizes - Prizes of 10% for 4th , 20% third, 30% second and 40% for
first were allocated on the total prize pool, after a 10% rake was removed.

Blinds - This was the neat part of their tournament, the fast increase
on the blinds based on set time limit, worked well. Blinds started
off at 25/50 for the first half hour, then increasing to 50/100.
Every half hour / 20 minutes they doubled the blinds to 100/200,
200/400, 500/1000, 1000/2000 , 2000/4000, 4000/8000. They froze blinds
at this stage, but increased them when there were only 2 players left.

Let the games begin ....
I sat down on a table, which was typical. 3 young greek guys,
1 older guy, 1 middle aged guy, 1 girl, 1 uni student and
1 guy quoting teddy kgb from rounders . After winning
an early pot, I thought i could strong arm people early on, try
and get to a chip lead in the hour, always knowing if i needed to
I could re-buy chips. Typically I would re-buy early. So if i dropped
to 975, i would buy a 1000 to take me to 1975 and try and win from
there. I soon discovered there were a lot of call stations, a few
people who would go on very little. I had to change my tactic and
after getting into a bad position after 59 minutes, I went all
with about 1300, won that pot and had 3500 had the end of the hour.
Paid the extra $5 for another 2000u and had 5500u going in. Blinds
were 200/400. Our table was dissolved. Barts and chad had a couple
a thousand less than me. With a few people above the 10000u mark.
Really 5000-10000u+ is a number which is competitive. Anything
else and you will get eaten up by blinds early if you dont win
early.

I Played tight, made another 4000 all in at the end of the next table
i was in, won that. Play got moved to 3 tables, barts was also
doing ok. Finally got down to the final table , with 12 people initially
on. People were falling quickly with blinds being increased from 1000/
2000 to 2000/4000. Chad fell 9th. 7 people left, i went all
in, stole some blinds. Went all in again, though i had stolen some more
blinds, barts decided to call me, fker. King/jack v his ace/nine us
were the hands.

Nothing fell, and barts took my stack off me. The final other three players,
not including barts, were all good. Could do the chip tricks and were good
players. Barts caught a boat against a straight on the river, took out
a player, called an all in with jacks and suddenly was in second position.
Eventually he got slow played against a pair of kings and lost, but
not before winning $230!

Lot of fun, very fast and efficient poker. Not really as relaxed as my place,
coz its not friends, and even tho its not really more serious, theres less
sipping beer etc. But highly recommened! Jon would like it coz its fast
paced, and they keep increasing blinds :)

Review of the players - Chad prolly once again called too many pots, but
played pretty well. Those sunglasses of his seemed to work to his disadvantage,
considering he folded a big blind for no reason after laying out 400u, woops:)

RK - I learned pretty quickly, the advantage of the tight game, especially
without chips, at one stage i think there were 13 players on a table, which
is ridiculous. Didnt really come prepared to play, didnt wear my contacts,
so trying to see the flop which seemed 2 miles away. In the end came down
to the all in on barts, perhaps could have made some stronger moves early.

Barts - definately was cautious too, but had the fall of the cards that night,
was he lucky ? well we'll see next week ! But still 2nd prize was great.

I wish i had got the final two, at the moment im running 4 and 0 from
heads up situations. I think its the game of chess style feel, and i start
to get a good read on the player. May be next week ill get a crack.

Prediction: matchroom overflowing to 60+ppl soon, may be they will need to
expand.

thats a lot of blog for one day, and unlike barts i didnt call in
'sick', adios !