European Poker Tour Part III - Omaha at The Vic

Read part I and part II of Galen’s EPT London blog…

There was a young glasses guy who had this air of superiority as if every chip on the table belonged to him. Tony told me that he was a strong regular in the live games in London. My stack had dwindled from £1k down to £500 and I’m sure he noticed how much I had been folding.

He raised from early position to £20 and it was folded to me on the button with 2-2. I folded. My logic has many branches. First of all live poker plays so much bigger than the blinds as people have little to no concept of bet sizing. I didn’t want to flat and have one of the blinds three-bet forcing me to fold. If I try and set mine I’m going to hit my set one in nine times but I’m not 100 percent going to get paid 9 x £20 when I do hit.

The times I do hit I’m going to lose the pot anyways a certain percentage of the time to oversets or other made hands. In my mind I don’t have a stack deep enough to justify putting in 4% of my stack heads up with no post-flop playability against someone who is assuredly going to barrel at least the flop.

Most of the time I’m going to miss and have to fold the flop. Tony argues I can continue on a lot of flops to “take it away” but as I stated earlier his flop continuation bet will be too big to justify floating in most cases. The times I do float I have no idea if he’s going to check-fold and as I said he had that arrogant “I’m the best ever” look to him. Since all my friends in London are pot-limit Omha players or multi-table tournament guys we never came to a conclusive answer on who was right. In my mind the days of set mining on 100x stacks are dead and gone. People just aren’t bad enough anymore to support that style. I’d really like a no-limit cash pro to chime in here.

The PLO table went according to plan for the first hour with me winning the majority of the pots without showdown. I ran my £500 back up to £1k before losing it in two hands. The first half of my stack left me when we were 5 handed and cut-off raised to £15. I made 45 with KQ T 9. The small blind called and the cut off called.

The flop came down 9-5-2 with two diamonds with two checks to me. I bet £100 and SB pots all in for 400ish. Clearly I call and somehow he tables A K A-K! Its just shocking how badly some of the older guys play.

In this case he did “trap” me but he allowed two hands to draw at him out of position with a monster. He loses so much value flatting preflop but what can you do. The last half of my stack came in another heads up three-bet pot with me having K-K-4-x double suited on a 8-5-2 with two back doors for me. I got check raised all in and lost to A-4-3x on the river A. At this point I had lost all interest in playing live left Tony to continue his live grind. It’s so sick how many hours this man puts in. I just couldn’t do it.

I’d never been in the area around the Vic and let me tell you its not the nicest street I’ve seen. There wasn’t anything wrong but it just had the aura of shadiness in the air. Tony had told me to head to Edgeware station down the road but hadn’t told me which way to turn from the front door. I gambled and went right. This brought me to Hilton hotel where all the tournaments were being played.

I went in to try and find Serena, the PokerStars Social Manager, but didn’t see any signs for the EPT so I gave up. I later learned that I had to go to the third floor but that’s a story I’ll get to later. Refusing to ask for directions to the Tube I left the Hilton down a random street and found my destination. I pulled out my Iphone and looked up the tube map. Two more tips for travellers to London are download a free Tube Map app and make sure your phone is on airplane mode to avoid absurd bills back home. I planned my route back to the compound on the Northern line but on a leap of faith jumped off early at Kings Cross Station.

During my last visit to London my old roommate Rob had brought me to the restaurant he works at near Kings Cross. He’s now the manager and told me to stop by when I got to town. Armed with the information that it was near the station, on the first floor of an office building and near a channel of water I searched for the restaurant I didn’t know the name of. I couldn’t call Rob as I didn’t have a SIM for my UK phone yet.

I remembered the walk talking us down some long straight street so I gambled on the first one I saw. This took me to the London Arts University. Clearly this wasn’t the right road so I started looking for water. Eventually I found a channel of water and followed it for awhile. I found the place but was on the wrong side of the channel. A few minutes later I walked in and ambushed Rob. He was pretty surprised that I found my way there and sadly couldn’t hang out with me as the owners of the place were in for drinks.

He set me up with a few cocktails and we made plans for the next night. I found out the next night that the few cocktails were actually alcohol chased with other alcohol to the tune of about 4oz per drink. Nomnomnomnom.

Its amazing how quickly alcohol hits you when you’re jet lagged and on 30+ hours without sleep. I took my buzz back on the Northern line back to the compound and crashed. I’m going to stop things here and continue next week. You’ll get stories from a few wild drinking nights including my first night at Fabric and the 4 a.m., 20km walk across London leading into the ultimate “Enter the Norwegians” blog.

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