These limited rebuy tournaments seem to suit me - I often go deep in them, and tonight I actually won it to book my seat in the main event at the Virgin Festival at the Loose Cannon in September. I didn’t even muff many people through the whole tournament. Let’s hope this tourney win signals a change in fortunes - I’ve had virtually no success for ages now.

I like being an independent traveller - it’s really quite a lot of fun planning your own holiday, particularly nowadays when so much information is available about potential destinations. I’ve got my spreadsheet drawn up for my baseball tour of the US in the late summer - all the home games played by all the teams for August and September. Now, I can start planning the route, deciding which teams I want to see. I’d like to see both Shea and Yankee Stadium in New York, both in their final years with their respective teams moving into brand new home for the 2009 season. Having made it to Fenway Park last year, I’d like to catch Wrigley Field this year so that I’ve done all three of the major league baseball cathedrals. I need to catch my Giants somewhere along the road - Cincinnati seems to be the only place to catch them this side of the mid-west, though.

Well, I got terminated pretty quickly, without any heads at all. In the end, I ran into aces when I had AK and that was that. There’s nothing else to say about it, really, except that it makes a change to go out to a genuine hand for once!

I also played the early afternoon regular DTD tournament, but didn’t manage to do anything in that either. Perhaps I was simply worn out, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the main Virgin events. Afterwards, a group of us went to the Beefeater restraurant back next to the Holiday Inn for an evening meal and drinkie.

It was nice to meet some familiar faces and some new ones - looks like our next chance to convene is going to be at the Loose Cannon at the end of September for the next festival. Qualifiers start tomorrow!

No sooner have I recovered from the Team Challenge at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham, than I’m going back there for the Virgin Festival. Since I’m already a member, having signed up a couple of weeks ago at the Team Challenge event, I was able to bypass the queues and walk straight in and save a little time. Having said that, I’ve been impressed with the way that DTD is run: the registration process was proceeding very smoothly and was much more efficient than the previous festival at Aspers. This place is really very nice - the only downside is that I think that in future I will consider other venues rather disappointing.

Well, the main event was both up and down. I managed to flop quad nines in the first level, but I possibly overbet the turn and lost my customer on a K99x board. The problem was that I was out of position and was trying to ensure all this chips went in by the river. In the very early stages I kept on picking up big aces and big pairs and raising on the button with them, much to the chagrin of the lady whose big blind I kept picking up. The whole table was convinced that I was at it, of course, but in reality, I was a total cardrack for the first couple of hours and didn’t really lose any hands that I played. Unfortunately, I never saw much after that, and I managed to lose 20% of my stack to RealScot with 88 vs AA - although we could consider that I got away with as little as I could.

There was a break after every 2 levels. At the first break, I’d almost doubled up and I was up there with the chip leaders with 19175. The next session was not so good, but I did at least improve to 20225 before dinner. Then I went card dead, and dropped to 16400 by the third break. After moving tables, I then struggled to win any pots at all and dropped to 10975. I went out half way through level 9.

Killer hands? 8-5 diamonds, trying to steal off an extremely passive player who just turned out to have picked up his first big hand of the tournament as he showed aces. After this, I needed to start collecting chips as quickly as possible and went all-in pre-flop from early position with a pair of sevens, called by a shorter stack with 6-4 spades: he hit two sixes. After that it was push every hand until my QJ lost to AK, so I finished around 135th so not quite into the top half with 259 entrants.

With my performance in the main event being pretty similar to my performance at Newcastle, let’s hope that the terminator tourney goes at least as well as it did at Aspers and that I can go deeper than 8th on the final table and pick up a stack of heads.

I’ve been chipping away at my best time to complete this game over the past few months. I managed to complete Voodoo Vince today, 100% completion - in 4 hours 41 minutes. I still died 31 times - most of which were silly repetitive fallings in the water. I think the game can probably be put away now - at least for a few months!

I was just sitting having my breakfast this morning, when there was loud thump from the blocked up fireplace behind my gas fire. After a few seconds, the sounds of furious flapping started. I don’t know how the stupid bird managed to fall down the chimney - it must have had to prise the protector off the top, no doubt whilst eating the berries off the tree out front so that it could drop the stones down the chimney as well as down the roof to clatter into the greenhouse and patio too. It was clearly trying to get out, but couldn’t fly back up the narrow chimney for all the frantic flapping.

After giving it a chance to wear itself out and perhaps calm down a little, I opened the patio doors fully and then I managed to pull the gas fire out far enough so that the vent, which pokes through the metal sheet blocking off the chimney, came away from the sheet to leave a small letterbox-shaped gap. After a couple of minutes, the frantic flapping started again, and thankfully, the bird managed to get through the tiny hole, and it headed straight out the door into the garden and away - what a lucky escape for it!

I spent yesterday in Nottingham and the Dusk Till Dawn participating in the live final of the DTD Team Challenge II. It was my first visit to the DTD club and I was very impressed with it. It makes such a difference not having the other non-card games going on around, as everybody’s there to concentrate on just the poker. Many thanks to Crespo for taking me there - due to the strike on East Midlands Trains, I’d have had to go via London or Leicester otherwise, and that would have taken ages. Similarly, many thanks to RoboSquirrel and family for ferrying me back to the hotel and out for food afterwards.

After 4 and a half hours of play, I finished 19th out 60, collecting 675 points for my team. Notable hands were few and far between really. In the very first round, I had KK and rivered a full house, but didn’t get action from my opponent (on reflection, maybe I should have checked the river and tried to get him to bet it so I could come over the top). Didn’t see many more pairs the whole day, really. Called off a quarter of my stack with K10diamonds against an all-in player - I’d had recent history with this guy leading me to make the call, but he had AK and I didn’t improve. I put down JJ to what turned out to be a steal by Bas (he just can’t help playing K10). Finally, I was eliminated by my team captain, who I called with 99 - when he’d raised with KK.

Fortunately, the other two members of my team who lasted longer than me went on to be the final 2, securing the team challenge trophy for EMS team 2 - and the small matter of £1960 to share between the five of us! I’ve never held so much cash in my hand at a time, although unfortunately, the other team members wanted their shares too.

In this era of multi-channel television, I find little of interest to watch nowadays, although my Sky planner might beg to differ. Most of the dramas out of the USA don’t interest me; more of the comedies don’t make me laugh. Some of the UK dramas are OK; few comedy sketch shows are funny. However, I did notice that Paramount channel has started showing the old Kenny Everett shows from the 1970s and 1980s. These were some of my favourite shows from when I was growing up. Granted, I didn’t understand some of the humour 25 years ago, but looking at them now, they seem mostly tame and much of it’s almost children’s tv material — even the sketches featuring Cupid Stunt! Maurice Minor was a personal favourite - it was brilliant, and you can still only rarely see the join!

There’s plenty of TV to go around on Paramount Comedy, Dave, UKTV Gold, Bravo, even Challenge. And when you get bored of those, you can usually guarantee that you’ll find Logan’s Run on TCM or Total Recall on ITV7+9.

Amazingly, I have qualified properly for the Nottingham festival! This was an EMS private satellite, so a strong field - but it was my lucky night. I did try not to muff people too much. It’s a huge relief to get it all sorted at an early stage without the stress of trying several times a week to win a seat elsewhere. I won’t be entering any more satellites - personally, I don’t think it’s right, and there’s nothing much good that can come of it.

I can’t remember the last time I spent a weekend at home. In Oxford a fortnight ago, Newcastle last weekend and now away for a special family birthday party this weekend. I’m signed up for the DTD Team Challenge, which will lead to a live game at Dusk Till Dawn in June. Hopefully, this will go somewhat better than the Ladbrokes WSOP Team event, which hasn’t been filled with glorious results except for TonyCorbett’s heroic efforts. Now, even he is running bad, so we’ll probably not bother playing until the final money-added event.