The Worst Winner

Things I Hate  In a Hellmuthian manner, you set up the perfect trap over maybe hours of play, you've totally nailed how your opponent plays and now you've set the trap and are about to reap the rewards, but no, they've hit their 3 outer and knocked you out the game. Games that you simply cannot win. Sometimes you play games and you watch hands play out that you would have won if you hadn't folded, others would have gone differently if you'd won that flip but some games you sit in despair because even if you played EVERY hand, you still wouldn't hit a goddam thing. And as soon as you do get it all in, you're out. Player dealt tournaments. I cannot believe this is a thing. I cannot believe people stand for it. It's probably acceptable for a £5 game down the pub, but in a casino? A scheduled tournament with a £40+ buyin? Fuck right off. And as far as I can tell, it only happens in Scotland, I've played a fair few tournaments in England, not a thing ther...

I decided to give up playing poker. I was in Leeds with a couple of friends for a PKR community meetup. There had been a lot of drinking on the Friday night, which led to me being pretty tired and hungover from the previous night's reveling, but I forced myself to the casino in order to play a rare omaha tournament which was starting at lunchtime. I enjoyed the tournament for the most part, it had been a lot tougher than I had hoped but I made it to the final table nonetheless. Unfortunately, I lost a flip and bubbled.   There was just enough time to grab something to eat before the casinos' big monthly tournament started. I don't recall the numbers exactly but it was something like a £30 buy-in, plus rebuys and while there were only enough seats for 150 players, there was literally a queue to the door with players waiting for spots when someone bust. I got sat down at a pretty chatty and friendly table, lots of players seemed to know each other and play regular...

I was being plied with all kinds of drinks on my stag do, so my memory of the night is poor, I can recall events up until the coffee tequila shots. We were in a bar and some promo girls were going around with a bottle and some shot glasses offering shots of whatever this new form of tequila was, as if tequila in itself is not enough, anyways, being the stag, I got a number of these thrust upon me and shortly after my memory goes blank.  Blank...  ...until I sat down at the poker table!  The poker player within me awoke. I had £100 in front of me, it was a £1/2 cash game, full ring and I was wearing a cape.  I don't really like playing the cash games at the casino because I'm not rolled for it, but the standard is generally pretty poor, so I always feel like playing would be a good idea but I don't, for fear of losing. I later found out my friend and fellow poker degenerate, Brentos, had given me the £100 as a sort of stag do gift/gesture, splitting any p...

With my WSOP dream over, it dawned on me that there was still a whole bunch of things I wanted to see and do in Vegas. Despite living it up in Vegas, we were essentially broke. We hadn’t intended on even having a summer holiday at all but then I won the satellite in a “freeroll” and Mrs Mack wasn’t going to be left at home so we scraped together the little spare cash we had to cover her flight (the package I won only really covered me) and planned to make the most of it. Mrs Mack and I had spent our first morning exploring the Palazzo-Venetian resort, it's a massive shopping mall, in faux Venice stylings with a fake blue sky painted on the ceiling, with two casinos either side of the canal. Most of the stores were so fashionable or cool that I had never heard of them but the price tags spoke for themselves. I'm not really sure if these shops are just for show because I didn't see anyone shopping in any of them. Eventually we stumbled across the food court, finally some...

I awoke at 4am, 3 weeks after winning a $3000 WSOP package with PKR. The alarm wasn't due to go off for another hour yet but clearly my first trip to Las Vegas had me buzzing in anticipation. Mrs Mack, was making the trip out with me, she's got no interest in poker but wasn't going to miss out on a holiday to Las Vegas. We arrived mid afternoon and it was hot, crazy hot, I can't stress that enough, it’s hot in Las Vegas. After a quick taxi ride we got checked into the Palazzo which is like the newer half of the Venetian hotel (you know the one with the gondolas) and headed up through the casino to our room. Although it was 4pm in Vegas, it would have been midnight back in the UK and having been awake since 4am, we just wanted to go to sleep. I have to say I was pretty envious of Mrs Mack at this point, while she got to relax in our lovely hotel suite, I was faced with heading back out for the PKR Welcome Party. While I would like to think I'm an affable kinda guy...

A fter having such a good time the night before we tried to retrace our steps and find the casino from the night before, alas none of us knew our way around Manchester, we didn't know street names or could even remember where we'd been, so we struggled. Giovanni had given us a business card the night before so we could try out his restaurant but we had lost that, and couldn't remember the name of the place, so that was also a dead end. After a fair bit of wondering and asking for directions we arrived at the Grosvenor Casino. Only it wasn't 'our' Grosvenor Casino, but surely they knew where the other one was, so the same motley crew from the night before waited in line to talk to the girl at the front desk, and when it was our turn, we ended up having the following 'conversation': Us: (not in unison or anything but we were all trying to answer at varying times): "hi there, where is the other Grosvenor Casino?" Girl: "are you members?"...

I was on my cousin's stag do in Manchester at the weekend, obviously the man code rules say I shouldn't reveal anything from the weekend but i had a most enjoyable, scandal free time at the city's casinos, so I reckon it's ok. I didn't really know anyone, apart from my cousin obviously, but that didn't matter much after a few beers. On the first night, five of us found ourselves in a small Grosvenor casino, it was possibly the smallest casino i've been in, certainly not the swankiest, but it nice enough and as we found out over the course of the night, the staff were very friendly and not too strict on policing a bunch of rowdy drunken Scotsmen. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but I don't really 'do' casinos anymore. I play poker, and that's about it. I used to be attracted to the idea of casinos, and tried my hand at various games but since getting into poker, everything else just seems like, well, gambling. But I was happy ...

It's been over a week now since PKR Live 3, and after spending far too much time trying to log the weekend in the format of a poem (not actually what i intended, it just kind of happened), I've finally got round to collecting my thoughts together and blogging my experience properly, in one MASSIVE post, you have been warned. Friday I flew down to London City Airport on Friday with my girlfriend, having now experienced most of the "London" airports, I would strongly recommend that everyone uses City airport whenever possible, not only is it closest to the city, you know, actually being in London unlike the others, but it is very simple, straightforward to navigate and pleasant, which is what I want from an airport, best experience of a London airport ever, so far so good! Club Quarters was one of the most touted hotels on the PKR forums, so that's where we'd booked, and bar the strange check-in machine procedure, everything was to a good enough standard, as you...