The entry is £30 + £5 for a starting stack of 8000 chips, although in a bid to encourage players to turn up on time you can purchase 1500 extra chips for £1. So my starting stack is 9500. There are two 30 minute blinds of 25/50 and 50/100. Afer this they go up every 25 and 22 minutes.

Blinds 150/300 I have won 2 hands in 90 minutes. My desperation is such that when I finally get aces (my first playable hand) I slowplay and just call. Bad idea. Even the aggressive players limp. There are 5 in the pot. Bugger it. Okay it’s my own fault, I know that. The flop comes K T 8 rainbow. That is not a bad flop so I bet 500. Everyone folds.

I am in the BB with 69. One caller in middle. The flop comes 5 2 J. It goes check check. There’s a 4 on 4th. I look very carefully at that 4, and bet 300. The flop looks like a BB special. My opponent folds. A very good player says “good fold.” At least my table image is still good.

I call with AQ under the gun. There is a very aggressive player who nearly always raises when there are limpers. He knows what I am planning. I look at him and smile. “Any raise?” I ask. He just flat calls. Flop comes K J rag. The ultra aggressive player bets 1200 and I am done with the hand. Doesn’t matter if he is bluffing. He has been stealing my blind and I have let him. I later go all in on his BB but I did have AK at the time. The score for stealing blinds is 2-0 to him. He is a very good player, and I give him credit for that. It’s just sometimes he oversteps the mark. Half an hour later he raises and gets called by a good young player. Flop comes Q and 2 rags. The aggressive player moves all in and gets called. The aggressive player has AK and the young player has JJ. A jack hits on the river although not needed. The aggressive player is out. He has previously moved all in with T5 from under the gun and got it through. I cannot play like that. I sort of admire those who can. He has controlled aggression for the most part, and can sense weakness.

Blinds 200/400. I am down to just over 10 times the BB. I find AK and TT in two out of the next four hands. I am all in no matter what. I don’t get called. There are murmurs about me going from a rock to a maniac. I find QT in the big blind. Flop comes 8 9 J rainbow. It doesn’t get more perfect than that. I honestly don’t remember the last time I hit a hand full on. It must be a million years. I bet 600 and get called in 2 places. There’s a 6 on the river and I am not messing about. I do not want to see a king, queen, or ten hit and give someone a higher straight. I bet all in for another 4000 and am stunned to get called by a 78. He is pretty much drawing dead. I don’t understand the call, but I don’t have to.

Blinds 600/1200. A massive stack joins our table. He must have about 50,000. He is the first of two chip leaders to join my table on my right that night. You always wonder how they got them. How were they playing and what were they doing? Both the leaders were young. The second one was young and Asian. I expected both of them to be highly aggresive. I was wrong. In fact both of them are destined to play very well, get cruel luck, and find their stack decimated through no fault of their own. The young leader plays his first hand after about 20 minutes. He raises to 7000. It is his first raise and he had hardly contested a pot willingly yet. It looks like a big raise from someone who doesn’t want too many in the pot, rather than that of a bully. I put him on QQ KK AA AK or AQ. He gets one caller, a middle aged woman who has played quite conservatively. The flop comes a rainbow Q 7 4. The chip leader instantly moves all in. The woman thinks for ages then calls 14,000 more. The leader turns over aces and she turns over trip 7’s. Unreal. She said she was thinking he had trip queens, and was unsure about the call. In all honesty if you are going to play a hand like 77 to a massive raise from the chip leader preflop, and then hit trips it is one of the few things in the game that is a no brainer. Have to admit I’d have folded those 7’s preflop. I thought it was a horrid call. The poor lad with the aces looked pretty sick.

Blinds 800/1600. I am in the BB with 6-3. Two callers, the ex chip leader, and his nemesis, the middle aged woman. The flop comes 3 6 K. I bundle 7000 into the centre and get called by the woman. The ex leader has since lost some more chips and is down to 10,000. He reraises all in. I put him on a king. I don’t know what the woman has, but I fear a higher two pair or draw. I really want to reraise and say so. One or two think I can, but it’s an under raise. So I have to call. If I am dead to a higher two pair so be it, but I do not want to give the woman a chance to hit a draw. A 4 comes on 4th. That is a very dangerous card and looks to be good for a drawing hand. I go all in. I want the woman out of the pot if she is behind. She folds telling me she was drawing. Thankfully it wasn’t a 4 she was looking for. The ex chip leader does have a king but misses his outs and he is gone. I am up to a stack of around 50,000. For the first time in ages at a table I have a comfortable stack.

Things have gone so swimmingly I make the horrible mistake of thinking AK is a fu**ing poker hand, and raise with it preflop. The short stack reraises all in for an extra 4000 and I cannot remember the last time I won a 50-50. Naturally he won with his 44 but at least it only cost me 9000. I have no problems with the reraise either given his situation.  

A rock like woman who has not seen a hand goes all in from early. I have AK in late and reraise all in to discourage anyone else from calling. It’s heads up and I win one.

Blinds 1000/2000. I have AQ in the SB. The chip leader to my right has just called. I just call with AQ. The BB to my left calls. He thinks for an age before checking preflop. The flop comes A 7 2. I bet 6000. Thankfully the chip leader folds, I was suspecting (wrongly) he was slow playing a monster, but the shortish stack to my left in the BB calls. There’s a rag on 4th and I push all in. I half expect the BB to turn over A7 for two pair. I think he has an ace of some sort, especially as he took a long time to consider whether to raise pre flop or just call. I figure by now I am ahead. He thinks for a couple of minutes then calls with A6. There is no suckout and we are down to 11 players.

Final table. I take about 45,000 chips. Blinds 1000/2000. There are two calls from early. One from a middle stack and one from a short stack. I have JJ and move all in. There are no callers.

I find AQ in middle. There is a raise from the woman who hit trip 7’s. I reraise her all in and she calls with A7. She says she hasn’t seen anything for ages and is getting tired. Her stack has dwindled since the suckout but she still has about 15,000. That’s enough to hurt me. My hand holds up.

I did not play that well I have to admit. I played far too weak tight. When down to 7 players and blinds 1000/2000 the big stack in the SB raises to 7000. I look down at a pair of 9’s and fold. I am one of the 3 big stacks and he is the only player at the table who can bust me. He is probably stealing, but on the other hand he has shown down nothing but quality all night. He is shortly to go on a run so painful it could usually only happen to me. I felt genuinely sorry for him.

The first hand of his fall sees him call an all in with 88 against a late position all in from a short stack. The short stack has K2. The king is the door card on the flop. He then loses a 50-50. Then against the next biggest stack he gets reraised and calls. She is a very aggressive female player. He turns over kings, she turns over aces. This isn’t online. It’s an age since I have seen kings versus aces live. The aces hold. He then finally wins one all in. A few hands later the agressive female player raises to 12000 from early. He is all in and she only has to call another 10,000 from his all in. “That’s the trouble being over aggressive with rag hands,” I said, “you are then committed to the pot as a huge underdog.” She had A7 against his AQ. A 7 came on 4th and he was out. Brutal.

Earlier I had been outplayed by her. In the SB I raise with 77 against her BB. She calls. The flop is A A K. I bet 10,000 and she folds. Next time round I have A9 clubs on the button. I raise to 9000 as there is a player on only 11,000 in the big blind. She is in the SB and calls. The BB short stack folds. The flop comes Kh Ad 6h. She goes all in for 20,000. That is half my stack. I think for a long time. I fold. I play too weak. She turns over Kh 8h. She has 9 outs for the flush plus 2 kings and 3 8’s. She is favourite but a better player than myself, one who was truly going for the win, would have called. “I just don’t understand why you made that call with K8 suited,” I said. “Maybe to do just that.” “Yes exactly, to do just that,” she said. She is well known as a pushy player, but it isn’t my sort of game. I am folding K8 to a player who only plays nut hands, under those circumstances.

Maybe it was the poker gods punishing me for playing too weak, but that was the last hand I saw. I was down to 30,000 and blinds of 4000/8000. It’s 3 handed and I am on the button with K8. It’s all in. I get called by the other two and I am out.

I would like to note that despite the aces against kings we have played for 6 hours and I have only seen one pair against a big ace, and only that one big pair match up. There have been very few all ins and big match ups. We play at about 25 hands an hour. That’s 150 hands. How many big match ups do you see in an online game in 2 hours at their rate of, say, 60-70 hands an hour? It is a relief to play a live game compared to online. It’s real poker, and very rewarding even though I feel I have been through World War 3. Most hands that won were top pair or middle pair even in a multi way pot. When I had aces how many times online would I have been able to bet and take down the pot without even one opponent hitting big? It is a good feeling knowing you only have yourself to blame if you screw up, and then coming through it all. There is no rigged poker site trying to set you up to increase their rake. There was the one big suckout of trip 7’s against the aces, one big pair match up, and there was one pair v big ace all in – the 44 v my AK. Hardly a classic big ace v big pair.

I was not the best player there. I wasn’t even one of the best if I am honest. I played too weak tight all night. The reason I did so was that getting a high position meant more to me than going for the win. This is not a winning attitude. But my morale just could not take another oh so close to the money but not quite, finish. I sacrificed my chance of winning for a better chance to finish high in the money. It’s a psychological thing. I needed a boost to help my morale and that high finish achieved that. In many respects I was playing more for my morale and state of mind than the money. In the long run that can be worth something in real terms if it helps me play better. I know that even an idiot can play good cards. I probably survived longer than an impatient player would have, given my early cards, but a better player would have made more of my later cards.