Twirlies

Mrs A and I had our wee nephew staying over last night so I only logged on to play poker much later on in the evening.Step A was on the msn chat thing with her friends when I noticed a “friend” called Lewis on chatting.Step A’s wee friend reckoned this was Step A’s boyfriend! Much mickey taking and mirth followed although to be serious for a moment Lewis may be in for a visit if I ever see his name appear on Step A’s msn again.(ok I’m not being serious but what happened to “I don’t like boys”)

I suppose I forget it’s a long time since I was 12 and Susan Peters tried to munch my face off during a fire alarm at school.Memories came flooding back of learning those traditional dances such as the Dashing White Sergeant and the mad sprint across the gym hall ( boys on one side and girls on the other) to try and ensure you weren’t left with the Uncle Fester lookalike.


Anyway to the poker and I began slowly last night.So slowly in fact that in my first $11 FT turbo I crashed out the first time I entered the pot.We had only played 16 hands and already the table was down to 5 players when I looked down to A3 sooted when it was folded round to me in the small blind.My flop seen % was 0 and I literally handn’t played a hand except from the big blind so I decided to make a move.I have been trying to open my game more and steal when it’s folded round to me but the villain had AJ,called and that was that.

I won the next one and then played poorly and threw away a decent chip lead in the sng after that.I’d broken my golden sng turbo rule and called a bet rather than stick to the raise or fold strategy that seems to work.I’ve said I like to be aggressive when I do enter the pot and I’ll usually make a large continuation bet ( unless I really hate the texture of the flop) even if I miss with a hand like AK sooted.In this case I also failed to take into account that I was trying to push the biggest fish/calling station at the table off a hand and that was never going to happen.

As usual I can recall in great detail my donkey moves and have very little memory of the hands which won me the 4th and last sng of the night aside from remembering that I beat Miami Mark heads-up at the end :-)

They say you learn something new every day and I’m now able to reveal to anyone reading why pensioners from Liverpool are called Twirlies.Pensioners ( over 60’s ) get cheaper bus travel after 9am in Liverpool and bus drivers are always having to answer the question “Am I too early?”.( try it in your best scouse accent)

To more serious matters and I read today that The Gutshot Poker Club in London has lost it’s landmark court case after a jury decided that luck, not skill , plays the greater part in our favourite game.I didn’t hold out much hope for a good result because the prosecution argument was that poker is a game of “mixed skill and chance” and the jury were instructed to find against The Gutshot if they agreed.

The Gambling Act states that a licence is needed to host games of chance such as blackjack and roulette, but not games of skill, such as chess and quiz machines.In my opinion it’s ridiculous to compare poker to roulette but it looks like the onus was on the Gutshot to prove poker is only about skill rather than it being up to the prosecution to make the complete opposite case.The prosecution only had to muddy the waters to win.

I’d rather see poker labelled as a game of skill and probability but I did wonder how the Gutshot were hoping to win an argument stating poker is purely a game of skill as I’d still rather back a steady winner than a highly skilled poker genius with a severe tilt problem.Perhaps dealing with bad beats and staying on course emotionally is a skill in itself.

Ok,thanks for reading…