Swansea

I headed down to Swansea yesterday with a couple friends - after missing the first train like donks we got there around 9pm and had to make up for lost time. Pleeeeenty of hands to talk about so if you like that kinda stuff you are gonna love this post...

Game was £1/£1 NLHE with an uncapped buyin (dunno how I put up with 150bb max all this time). There was only 1 proper table running and it was full so we did a little flippament between the 3 of us for waiting list order, I won so I was top of the list and in the mean time we got put on a temp table. I bought in for £200, wasn't there for long but I did get into a decent pot:

Hand 1

Hero (£200) is UTG+1 with AT

UTG limps, Hero raises to £7, Chinese guy in MP (~£100) calls, shortstack in SB (£35) calls, station in BB (~£150) calls, UTG calls.

Flop (£35): T92

Shortstack leads for £7, station flats, UTG folds, I think for a bit and pop it to £30, Chinese guy cold calls, shortie folds and station calls.

Turn (£130): 3

I love my life, station checks to me and I ask how much he has, he has about £110 so I stick it in. Chinese guy snap calls, station tanks for about a minute and says he can't fold (surprise surprise) so we are 3 ways in a ~£400 pot.

River (~£400): 6

Decent river since only 87 got there, I flip my AT and they both muck, station later confirms he was chasing a draw.

Shortly after this hand a seat becomes available on the main table so I get moved. I sit down a look around to see 7 Asian guys who are around my age and clearly minted, talking loudly and splashing about, sweet. Doesn't take long for me to notice the average pot is well over £100, almost every hand was straddled and it would go limp, limp, limp, £18, call, call, call, £70 going into the flop. I wasn't that involved for the first orbit or so, then Rob gets moved to my left just in time to witness this:

Hand 2

Hero (£400) is CO with 99

UTG+1 straddles to £2, UTG+2 limps, MP limps, Hero pops it to £15, talkative splashy guy in BB (~£300+) calls, both limpers call.

Flop (£60): Q96

BB leads for £1 (lol), UTG+2 calls, MP raises to £11, Hero makes it another £50 on top, and BB instashoves for what looks like about £300-350 total, although I never got an exact count because it folds round to me and I snap call. He asks me if I have a set and I say yes, he then offers to run it twice and I snap agree since the pot is like £700 lol...

Turn 1 (~£350): 3 (fml?)

River 1 (~£350): 7 (the actual fml)

Turn 2 (~£350): 6 (phew)

River 2 (~£350): 8

He then turns over T8 for the naked double gutter so we chop it up and he says "you should have only run it once haha!"

I then played a few (relatively) small pots, kept getting the crap raised out of me by some aggro fish who Rob aptly referred to as Looney Tunes... bit of a weird character since he was a big white guy playing loose/crazy and raising me postflop every time I got into a hand with him, but he didn't seem like your standard ego player, in fact I hardly heard him say a word the entire session.

Hand 3

Hero (~£350) is MP with JJ

No straddle this time, 1 limp, Hero pops it to £10, several folds, Chinese guy from hand 1 calls on BTN, Looney Tunes (~£400) calls in BB and limper folds.

Flop (£30): KT5

Looney leads out for £5, I think about making a small value raise but decide against it and just call, Chinese guy calls.

Turn (£45): J

Bink. Looney leads out for £15 and I decide against an aggro donk I should try to look pushy so I quickly make it £65 total (obv playing for stacks here, if he somehow has a straight then nh). Chinese guy folds and Looney calls.

River (£175): 3

Brick city on the river, Looney Tunes checks to me and I thought about my bet sizing for a few seconds. I was originally gonna make it £150+ but settled on £125... in hindsight I would make it bigger but I didn't quite know the full extent of his looniness at the time. He quickly calls and mucks when I show, Hero wins the £420 pot.

I was eventually up like £450, Rob was also up a couple hundo after check/shoving flop in a huge 3way pot and taking it down uncontested. Tim was down 300 or so but has been on a bit of a heater recently :)

But don't worry, it's all downhill from here.

Hand 4

Hero (£650) is UTG with A8

Action was getting pretty crazy preflop but I definitely wanted to play this hand when stacks were mainly £200-400. I decided to limp and see what people did rather than making it £5, getting a bunch of callers and getting popped to £35. Strangely it ended up limping round and it was 7 to the flop (I think).

Flop (£7): AQ4

Blinds check, Hero bets £5. Normally a bit thin but these lads are so bad that this is a clear value bet. Folds round to Chinese guy from hand 1 (£280) in the CO, who calls. Everyone else folds.

Turn (£17): 8

Loving life now, I bet £15 and Chinese guy quickly calls.

River (£47): A

After he calls flop and turn, he has Ax a lot which is always gonna bet when I check to him, and is probably call a c/r, whereas he may just flat if I bet. If he has QxI get paid regardless and anything less than Ax is probably just folding to a bet, so I decide a c/r is definitely the way to go. I check, he bets £36, I deliberate for a bit and make it another £125 on top. It's a limped pot so he never has AQ, and I'm thinking of Vegas and the fucking Mirage as he shoves for £96 more. Of course I snap call and get shown AQ for the £560 pot. Marvellous.

There was another huge hand which involves me check/shoving the turn for nearly £300 as a semi-bluff, over Looney Tunes' overbet on a 4-straight board... sounds retardedly awful but I had good reason for doing so. Sadly it turns out he had it and I bricked all my outs so I'd rather not relive the hand in this blog post, lol...

Thankfully I wasn't the only person who was constantly getting owned in £600 pots:

Hand 5

Rob (£275) is UTG+1 with TT

Rob raises to £7, 2 callers, gambly Asian guy from hand 2 (~£260) squeezes to £26 on the BTN, Looney Tunes cold-calls in the BB. At this point Rob takes my advice from earlier that week about shipping over squeezy players when there's mega dead money, and ships it. BTN super-snap calls and Looney Tunes folds. Rob says "I'm crushed".

Before anyone thinks of offering to run it twice, dealer starts dealing out the QJxxx board and BTN flips over AJ to Rob's surprise/disgust. Looney then laments about how he folded Q4 to the shove, lol.

After this the action kinda died down a bit and they stopped dealing at 4:30am, although they let us continue self-dealt with no rake, so of course we stayed and all continued to run awful. No mega pots after this, although Tim had AA < 88 AIPF, Rob had AK < 99 AIPF (K6979 board just to rub it in) and I had a flush under flush, so we finished down about £400 each, despite being the only 3 regs at the table for most of the night.

Ah well, good fun lol... also I think I need to learn Mah Jong cause we heard people playing it all night and there's probably huge money in it!

- HappyPixel