We were back in the Young's lounge, the poker suite out of bounds whilst their Au Pair selfishly enjoyed her first trip home in 18 months. Our players kicked off at 20:40, with the first half hour of the game accompanied by a debate among the ladies over the merits of which of the absent players they would rather have sitting next to them.
Jude backed Dan from the off, while Sharon was initially hesitant due to all the irritating and futile interference with the cards and chips. She was soon persuaded of the lack of wisdom in her choice, when it was pointed out that the alternative to Dan was Scott, and a great deal more farting and belching, not to mention the extra space around a crowded table he would occupy. Both girls eventually opted for Dan, while conceding that either option was not a great choice...
IJ incurred the wrath of Jude early on after turning the last 2 cards over on a hand that she had already folded. The only solution was to erase the cards from her memory, but where's the Haitian when you need him?
IJ got fucked by Aces, when he didn't make a pre flop raise and allowed Charlie to hit a straight on the flop. Hitting trip Aces on the river did IJ no favours, merely bringing back hideous memories of the pasting he took last week from hitting trips. Baz would have raised, with hindsight.
The deja vu was complete for IJ, when he went out first again. Baz raised £3 with Qs and IJ re-raised all in with AQ. Qs held up and IJ went out (10th).
Seeing the game for the first time through his new glasses (which no one noticed) JJ proved his jamminess once again, raising all in with AJ.
Jude went all in with 8s and Lee called with AQ.
Q23 arrived on the flop, giving Lee top pair.
JJ, already heavily committed, bravely went all in, despite having fuck all.
Lee, gratefully called but was not relieved when he saw that he had JJ sewn up.
He knew that despite JJ needing runner, runner for a straight, he'd been beaten by those odds before.
Sure enough, JJ hit the 2 cards he needed on the turn and river, to knock Jude out (9th) and take a massive stack of chips. Where's Bea when you need her to slobber all over the jammy bastard?
Lee won a few of his chips back, going all in with pocket rockets after the flop came QQ10. JJ called with KJ, a straight draw, but Lee hit a full house and doubled up.
Perhaps upset at drawing the short straw for who ended up sitting next to her, Sharon did a 'Dan' of her own, wrongly thinking there was a mistake with the dealing. She quickly admitted her error, but not before even Dan had called her 'Dan'.
Sharon raised £2, holding 10s, only for Dan to re-raise £8 with Qs. Shaz, thinking it was an over bet, re-raised all in, which Dan called. Qs held up, knocking Sharon out (8th).
Mark raised a fiver with Qs, which Scott, also wearing new specs (although these were instantly spotted by eagle eye Isaacson), called with Ks. When the flop brought nothing helpful, Mark went all in which Scott called, knocking Mark out (7th). With hindsight, Lee would have called as his AJ would have hit 2 pair.
JJ lost his ill gotten stack over 2 hands. In the first, he had 9s, but Lee's AQ hit a Q on the river.
In the second, he had Q2 and hit a Q on the flop, but Dan's A9 hit an Ace on the river, knocking J out (6th).
Scott picked up a monster chip lead by knocking Lee out. Lee had an Ace that paired on the flop, while Scott was relying on 4 spades turning into a flush. When it did, Lee was knocked out (5th).
The 'curse' of Aces hit Charlie, after Baz hit a flush on the river and knocked him out (4th).
Threeway action between Baz, Dan & Scott was a bad tempered affair. Nothing to do with the players, who kept losing concentration due to IJ & Sharon having a conversation over the table. Lee was decidedly unimpressed and strictly told IJ & Sharon to stop talking and distracting the last three. We knew things were bad when he asked Sharon to call Gaby...
Baz had most of the chips - Shaz was not distracting him so much. But then Dan doubled up at Barry's expense, after his J10 hit a J, while Dan's Q10 hit nowt.
Dan consolidated his lead, after he knocked Scott out. Scott raised with JQ, only to be re-raised all in by Dan, holding 9s. Scott called but Dan hit trip 9s on the flop, finishing off Scott (3rd).
Heads up started at 23:17 and lasted a single hand. Dan's K7 was enough to beat Baz's A6, after he hit a K and won. Ever the selfless gentleman, Barry told us that he did it for the game and he was glad it was over.
But with hindsight, he would have folded.
Luckily for Dan, he was playing in reality, while Baz was only playing in hindsight.
Well done Dan!
Game 2 – 6 players - (1st JJ, 2nd Charlie, 3rd Lee)
Dan took the money from his win and fled, so we were down to 6 for the second game which kicked off at 23:30.
Early irritation was caused by Scott when, having looked at Barry's cards, he cried out as Baz raised £3.25, giving away to JJ that Bluffer Barry was up to his old tricks. JJ won the pot when he called Baz's Bluff. Barry called Scott a cunt for a while.
In hindsight, Barry would never have let Scott look at his cards.
In a later hand, JJ revealed a new tell when he threw the river way off the table, and won the pot.
After a flop of KJ2, Barry raised £3.25. Scott (without the benefit of seeing Baz's cards this time, or hindsight, for that matter) re-raised £5. Baz called, but then laid it down at the turn, despite having top pair. It was a good lay down as Scott was holding Aces.
Barry then re-raised JJ's £4.50 bet all in. JJ called with his lucky Js, and tripped up to send Barry's A9 home. Baz was stoical about his defeat leaving us with these pearls of hindsight wisdom:
"With hindsight, everything's possible" to which Lee pointed out "You couldn't fly with hindsight."
Barry was not to be deterred "Don't overuse hindsight. It should only be used in context."
Of course. Unfortunately for Barry hindsight could not prevent him going out (6th). Even more unfortunately for Barry, hindsight couldn't drive him home. He had to wait for JJ to go out before he could do that.
Scott regretted a decision to call IJ's all in with a straight draw. IJ tripled up, leaving Scott wishing he had hindsight.
Scott didn't even take the benefit of actual sight, when he chased a straight draw again, doubling IJ up, who was holding Qs.
Charlie, holding A10, raised 2 piles of red, after the flop came down A93. Lee re-raised with AJ, but a 9 on the river split the pot, giving Charlie a lucky escape. Lee was fuming: "I had you fucking beaten, again. You lucky bastard."
Over to Barry on the sofa: he was initially watching soft porn on Sky, but after the others objected (it was a distraction) he changed channel to view Ultimate Fighting, perhaps to get some tips for his next session with his trainer. After a while he got bored and decided to count the Royal Flush Pot.
Back to the table: at that very moment, IJ flopped a nut flush, with 4 cards to a Royal Flush in spades, and 2 cards to come. Needless to say he didn't hit it but he could have won £291.50 (thanks to Barry for that info. If anyone's interested, JJ's guess was the nearest, at £294.)
With JKA on the flop, Scott went all in holding JQ. Charlie called with KJ, 2 pair, but Scott hit a straight on the river to double up.
Flush with chips, Scott returned to his favourite past time of chasing straight draws. Charlie went all in when he hit a pair of Ks. IJ laid down AJ, but Scott gracefully doubled Charlie up.
Charles then called Scot's all in. Scott only had 86, but he'd hit an 8. Charles' bread was generously covered with jam, when his QJ hit a straight. Scott was toast (5th).
IJ went all in with AJ, but JJ's deuces held up and knocked IJ out (4th).
Charlie knocked Lee out (3rd), his KQ top pair beating Lee's 2nd pair.
Heads up between the 2 jammiest boys in the game began at 01:10, with the passion only lasting 4 mins. JJ won after his AQ held up against Charlie's A10. Well done JJ!
2008 Poker Rankings Table:
Baz's second widens his lead to 14 points at the top of the table, but the big news this week is in the 3rd & 4th slots.
From being joint 19 points behind last week, Dan & JJ have closed the gap with the top two. Dan is now only 12 points behind Lee, with JJ a further 2 points behind Dan. Could we see a change in the top 2 in the next few weeks?
Conversation topics of the week:
The 2 iphone nerds continued their discussion of the merits of their new toy. Fascinating questions were posed like "What is the meaning of the '3G' sign?" and "Is it meant to be £35 or £35 + VAT?"
The iphone did liven things up a little though, when Baz showed Sharon how it keeps chains of texts together and she started reading his romantic messages. In her defence, she claimed that he wouldn't have given her his phone, with the texts on show, if he hadn't wanted her to read them.
Other topical questions included: Was Rooney given African bum disease in order to create some football news during the off-season?
In a conversation Dean will be sore to have missed, we debated what size Sky box you really need? Scott only wanted 80 hours, but then he only watches 4 hours of TV a week. At the other end of the spectrum (& really getting value out of their tv subscription) Baz revealed that he watches 25 hours a week, more when during the Premiership season. Charlie wasn't too far behind with 2 hours a night plus some extra on the weekend. We concluded that it was for tele addicts like these 2, that Sky created a box with a terabyte of memory. That's 1600 hours of tv, or almost 70 days.
Scott got academic, enquiring whether "What's in your soul?" would be a good philosophy exam question. IJ thought it might be bette for theology students but there were none available to ask.
Finally, pondering the philosophy of poker we pondered: 'What is the true meaning of a bad beat?"
News, videos & Jokes of the week:
Thanks to Baz for news of this very consderate way to end your own life:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23528839-details/Businessman+uses+Aston+Martin+to+decapitate+himself+in+horrific+suicide+as+revenge+against+his+ex-wife/article.do
Thanks to Dave for some Jewish humour:
Nothing like a yiddisher kop ! (for those that do no understand: Jewish Brains)
Jews have survived for millennia, with a little help from> their brains, not to mention their humour:
The President of Iran was wondering who to invade when his telephone rang.
'This is Mendel in Tel Aviv. We're officially declaring war on you!'
'How big is your army?' the president asked.
'There's me, my cousin Moishe, and our pinochle team!'
'I have a million in my army,' said the president.
'I'll call back!' said Mendel.
The next day he called.
'The war's still on! We have now a bulldozer, Goldblatt's tractor plus the canasta team!'
'I have 16,000 tanks, and my army is now two million.'
'Oy gevalt!', said Mendel. 'I'll call back.'
He phoned the next day. 'We're calling off the war'
'Why?'
'Well,' said Mendel, 'we've all had a little chat, and there's no way we can feed two million prisoners.'
Special Feature: Crime Nation
After Wednesday's night's game, JJ returned to his car, only to find the window smashed and theives had made off with the lead to his Sat nav (perhaps hoping that he had foolishly left his sat nav somewhere in the car. But JJ is no fool...)
As if this wasn't bad enough, a few days later, the north London crime spree spread from suburban East Finchley to leafy Hampstead. IJ witnessed a police chase in his street on Saturday complete with an escaped suspect & full man hunt. Check out the photos:
After a chase round Frognal, the 3 suspects were blocked in by at the Finchley Road. They crashed into the police car, crushing a policewomen who was trying to get them to stop. As she screamed in pain, one of the suspects got out of the car and ran up the road, chased by 2 overweight police officers, passing a meter in front of IJ...
The suspect was too fast for the policemen & he vanished into the front garden of a block of flats. The police closed off the area and stood around for a while wondering where he was....
They brought in a dog & then a chopper, flying low over Hampstead, but still couldn't spot him...
Until a girl spotted him in her back garden, & climbed on this low roof to escape & alert police..
...and eventually the police grabed him, discovering a gun and a load of cash from the armed robery, committed in Swiss Cottage, that afternoon....
They dragged him off....
..... and bundled him into the back of a van...
.... much to the relief of terrified local residents.... not sure I can take any more excitement - think that will have to be all for this week folks!
ilan
