Please Seek Medical Advice Before Final Tabling

It is Monday morning and I’m really not all too keen on working, so I’ve decided on a blog update instead. I squeezed in some donkamenting on Friday night – I played really well to final table the $100NL on Party, after coming back from 3bb when my AK was no match for AQ and held the chip lead for quite a while. I busted fifth when the chip leader at the final table (with a massive 20bb) shoved 55 from the button, I made the mistake of snap calling with AA. He flopped one 5 and rivered the other, which was a fairly frustrating end given that I felt that I had played pretty well and that I have been due for a while.

The tourney was a reminder of how awful people are on Party. One guy (a long time winning player with an average buy in of well over $100) opened for 2.5bb and then folded to an 8bb shove. I don’t claim to be the greatest poker player in the world but I really thought we had moved on since 2005. Still, I guess it can only be a good thing that people are playing this badly and still winning.

The rest of the night was a bit of a wash out and the usual mixture of bad plays by me, suck-outs by my opponents (including losing to JJ with 22 on a 269 board and KK vs AJs on a K92r board), marginal spots and coolers. Which is a pretty standard night of donkamenting for me or anyone else, I guess.

In the subject of being due, one guy on PXF has won in the space of a week a 30r, 50r, 3r, WPT package and a couple of other things and claimed that he was “due” to win something else at some point soon, which made me piss myself laughing as he is clearly on an enormous heater and may well be “due” for some time.

I’ll leave out any discussion on the Main Event final table, but I’m delighted to see Joe Cade, Ivey and Akenhead there. My favourite poker related story of the week comes from the WPT final table at the Bellagio, where Justin “BoostedJ” Smith leapt up to celebrate winning an all in four-handed and suffered suspected anterior cruciate ligament damage and had to be helped back to the table and will spend the remainder with an ice pack on his knee. Poker, its more dangerous than I thought.

My Dad goes to hospital today for a final assessment on whether his cancer has spread or whether his lower back pain is a slipped disc. I’m anticipating his phone call but in some ways don’t want to receive it at all.

Good luck to England on the final day of the 2nd Ashes Test at Lords today. It promises to be a nail biter. New just in – Flintoff bowls Haddin, Convicts 314 for 6 chasing 522.