Ok, I am going to come out and admit something that few players dare say. I run good. The turn and river look after me. I am a cuboid with the letters “L”, “U”, “C” and “K” scrawled upon the side.

I’ve been playing 50NL on Stars trying to clear their $240 bonus in standard whore fashion and I am running above my expectation for a 13,000 hand stretch.

The pleasing news (and a barely concealed micro stakes brag it is) is that even when the fact I veer round ladders and swerve away from black cats in the correct manner I should am making money according to the mysterious ev calculator.

This post is here to remind me not to moan when fate is being an arse.

Well, Las Vegas seems another world now… an insane, glittery, glory laden one of endless chuntering of fruit machines, but with the seductive lure of the World Series of Poker just a short bus ride away. If I get good at the game I might be able to afford a cab.

I’m seduced, I’m hooked, I’m smitten….by the carnival at the Rio. The eternal riffle of the chips, tables as far as the eye can see. Hey is that Negreanu over there? Can Phil Hellmuth be any more shameless and obnoxious (clearly not) - and how can I get that marriage proposal to Isabelle Mercier without a restraining order becoming imminent? I fancy a quick foxtrot, at least, at the big dance. Add the seductive aura of the event with Kara Scott’s fabulous Main Event run that even pragmatic realist me is dreaming of the big score. This is not an implication she got lucky by the way, it’s just renews hope the journey from grovelling around at the basics to accomplished player might be within us all.

That’s the hope…the reality is thinking do I have the ability to do myself justice..and can I grind out the cash to even have a shot at one of the small events. It requires a semi professional attitude, a good rakeback deal (woot, got one of those) and perhaps a bankroll to begin with which is serious money by my recreational standard. Dreams are suddenly grown up all of a sudden. Damn….

Well, as is standard blog updates have not been appearing as regularly as they should. To some degree this is obviously the joys of having poker, giant steaks, 40 degrees celsius temperatures and a pool all within walking distance - even in this heat.

After a good start in cash games things fell apart rather. Some spewy calls, a couple of really bad basic mistakes in big hands (not following the river principle being one) followed by two unpleasant beats all in pre-flop put a rather nasty dent in the bankroll and the confidence.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t over hopeful in what I decided would be my big tournament of the trip, a $340 deep stack event at the Venetian. 12,500 chips and 40 minute blinds beginning at 25/50 guaranteed plenty of play (in theory) bar car crash hands early. A structure that puts the WSOP $1500 NL events to shame.

More than 500 people coughed up the cash with the first prize an eye watering $42,000. I was waiting for it to be full of baseball capped super aggro players with mirror shades. Mostly though, it was a battle of seemingly solid TAGs, with the weaker players weeded out gradually. The one nutcase at my first table twice triple barrelled with Ace high and got opponents to fold on the river, but that was then busto’d by an absolute soul read call by the player to my left who called down his UTG raise and eventual river shove on an Ace high flushening board with just 2nd pair. It beat Mr.Balla’s 8 high and off went the Phil Ivey wannabe.

I was able to keep floating along after an early big pot when I hit a flush on the turn against someone who kindly paid me off with what I have to think was on overpair - bless him for pricing me in with min raise pre flop when I had raised it up with KJ sooted. That mostly saw me through the opening 2 hours. A successful flush representing river bluff and a very welcome double with set v overpair got me through hours 3-4, all without having my table broken and nicely sitting just above the average stack.

The last 3 levels felt like a struggle, with a lot of staring at J2 sooted, getting moved tables, paying the blinds at the new table and being moved again..then I got moved to a new table where I would ultimately play till the bubble. Again I was surprised by the lack of super aggressive players. It was all very solid TAG stuff mind you, with the chips filtering round the table. The key hand for me came with an uber suspicious limp under the gun from a short stack. It’s folded round and I couldn’t resist sneaking a look at a cheap flop with QT in the small blind, and the big blind checks. flop KQT and I think bingo. I check, the big blind shoves which I new was coming and then…so does the limper. At least I have them both covered but it’s essentially a tournament life decision.

Eventually I call, the limper flips AA and the big blind has J3 for the open ended straight draw. They both fail to improve and I am back in the happy spot picking mode.

By this time though, the brain is a bit wobbly. It’s not pressure (being staked help curiously in making sure I didn’t just blind to death), it’s just trying to take in everything at 6 hours play. “Oh short skirted waitress…another red bull please.”

I keep ploughing away, pick up AK once - shove getting 9s to fold. There is KK once and run QQ into AK and lose the race, but again to a small stack. I seemed to get away with being a bit of a shove monkey. I have been pretty tight, probably too tight in fact - but perhaps when you move up they do respect your raises? My main technique for pre-flop shoving is to then stare at the floor and hope all goes well.

The bubble tension was relieved by a slightly farcical scenario where people on other tables are accusing people of slow play and the tournament director is grabbing a microphone to try and explain what is going on to bemused competitors and railtards alike.

Eventually the bubble pops and it’s cash time, with my stack around 75k at 4k/8k blinds and 1k antes.

I get a lucky double up with AJ v AQ that puts me back in play, but I hang myself at the end after being flat called by Aces. I really vowed not to go out calling for my stack, but alas I did. 36th, and $571 for a long, long day. 11 hours in total including a one hour break. It was a great experience but surprisingly tiring, and I was definitely going a bit gaga (or more so) by the end.

Perhaps I should have more religious faith judging by my last table. A woman two to my right shoves for her short stack and literally starts praying, looking up to the heavens. Jesus clearly does loves her, she flopped quad Queens….here endeth the lesson.

Well, greetings from the most nakedly hedonistic place it would appear on god’s earth. Judging by the casinos I have visited just a small house edge goes a long, long way, in terms of paying for giant hotels, ludicrous fountains, guys singing in questionable keys on gondolas and delightfully short skirts for cocktail waitresses (imo).

The weather is very, very hot in this bit of desert (around 40 degrees C) but mercifully dry heat and air conditioning units the size of one of Jupiter’s moons keep everyone feeding their money into machines - or deciding what to do with 7-4 offsuit - cool. I usually fold.

The scale of the casinos is giant. Spanning more than one building, sometimes more than one storey, even the relatively modest Imperial Palace where the EMS crew hang out has a hall of apparently never ending slots, blackjack tables and roulette wheels plus a small poker room tucked into one corner. It’s dwarfed though by the likes of Caesar’s Palace and the Venetian (where the gondola singers do hang out on an under cover canal.)

So what of the poker? Well a little dabble in the 1/2 cash arena has shown widely varying abilities at the table, and AA v KK twice already (mercifully I was just a spectator in such tomfoolery). I’ve seen people limp and then call pot size bets with nothing but a gutshot, people betting $5 into $50+ pots on the river with the second nuts, but there are also some intelligent players who understand how to exploit the limpfests you can get and punish those involved. However, 5/6 or 7 way pots on the flop not uncommon at a full ring ten seat table.

I also saw a Scandi get stacked having built up a large stack of chips through hitting with all sorts of rubbish. A happy note on which to end.

More impressions of Vegas to come as I battle with jetlag, hotel wireless conectivity and my own donkishness.

Apologies for the lack of updates.

I got hit with a savage bout of super monkey tilt that wiped my €500 bankroll down to €300, I will return to that challenge a little later ready to let rip again on the Scandinavian community. Suffice to say I’m not a nice creature when tilting and the chatbox is frequently lit up by a number of concise words, usually of 4 letters. It’s a touch of the Jekyll and Hyde. Well, more a bucketful. Eventually the full moon passes though and my more serene side returns. Hopefully with it a stemming of the losses.

I have also been kept very busy my employer and remain entrenched in a ideological battle with said organisation. A futile exercise but principles should matter, shouldn’t they? We can have an argument about where that has taken some of the world’s most infamous dictators though.

I am hoping to muse on a number of other subjects soon touch wood. Podcasts, history and Oxford United’s home defeat by Northwich Victoria could all feature. Plus a hundred and one other things. Possibly.

I had one of the pleasures of corporate life today. A review meeting with my line manager. I work for the BBC. Apparently now being “clever” and “Radio 4″  are terms of abuse and bad things. I’ll let you fill in the gaps for yourself. We’ll ignore the idea of the Daily Mail abusing the BBC of dumbing down as too ironic for words yet it would appear they have a point. There’s a first. I better switch off “Analysis” and remove any words in this blog more than seven (7) letters long.

I’m in dreamland so far in my self imposed challenge to build a special Las Vegas bankroll, where my ambition is to grind a 4 figure sum playing micro stakes cash. My €52 initial deposit is now just over €400 having initially played on the .05/.10 tables and moved up to the .10/.20 “heavy hitters.”

From a filthy burst of initial variance, I am convinced I have been running good. I hope I have finally learnt these means hands consistently holding up when I put the money in ahead, like dodging the worst when those crazy Scandi flush draw pushers come over the top. Plus for the first time I hit a straight flush against the nut flush which was rather welcome.

Dropping back down right to virtually the lowest limit has had benefits for me in hand reading and extracting value which I have had some joy in trying to apply at the newer level. I still have to make adjustments in calling down people light compared to some of the people with “omfg 2nd pair is good disease” you get in the very basement regions but it ought to be within my ability.

Hopefully as and when the variance returns - armed with a red hot poker no doubt - I will be braced, keep getting the money in good and ride the wave. It’s about time someone caused a run on the € for the Scandinavian poker community.

I’m enjoying the ebb and flow of the US Presidential race from afar, as the “anti-establishment” - clearly this is relative - Obama - squares off with Hilary “been there and done it in all but name” Clinton. Obama’s seductrive mantra of change might see him home, despite recent defeats.

The candidate who merely offers a different feel from the last one has a charm and attraction. For Obama read ethnic background, inclusivity and so forth compared to the Bush jr era of extreme hawkishness.

This parallel extends neatly to football managers. Look at England’s recent bosses. For the “passion” (read idiocy) of Keegan to the “tactical genius” of Eriksson, to the Englishness and “matey” approach of McLaren to the stern overseas Mr.Capello, see the giant lurch from one direction to another.

Ploughing the middle ground is apparently impossible. Give us a new direction, now! The problem is spotting the reactionaries, exploiting the desire for change, compared to the visionaries who can bring it. Plenty of the first about, not many of the second. In politics, football or poker.

Well I should start this blog with some poker chat before I divert off on musings of other kinds.

Micro stakes cash boy here is heading to Vegas in June for two weeks of fun and frolics during the WSOP. You can stake me for the main event by all means - but assuming your lobotomy has not gone through you will have worked out I need some cash to play with.

So I am grinding up my special Vegas roll by playing on Sense Poker, a site on the B2B network, the home of Scandinavia’s finest and most insane players. Why go there you ask, compared to that snazzy Full Tilt software, or those tables on Stars. Well, it has an auto-rebuy button, it’s full of nutcases and it makes a nice hooting sound to say its your turn. I also get rakeback. So far the graph is upwards, I will keep you posted.

Cash games are my preferred form, though I will indulgent in some tournament action for variety. Given I handle variance with all the grace of an arthritic warthog, you may understand why I go for the long haul form of the game.

I’ve been playing for a fair while now and the fact I am still in the low stakes tell you my game isn’t bursting with natural talent. There is some slow development there though that makes it a stimulating pastime. That and being a degenerate dreaming of fluking a big score of course. To be serious though, it’s not the game for you if that’s the plan.