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.

Sunday saw the second side event - the terminator tournament. With 155 entrants, the top 10 got paid, plus you got a tenner for each player you knocked out of the tournament. This event was partially self-dealt, as there weren’t enough dealers to deal with day 2 of the main event and the terminator. Fortunately, one of the players on my table offered to deal for everybody, as he often deals cash games elsewhere - and he was very good at it. I nearly took him out with my 8-7 offsuit vs. 10-10 - all the chips went in on a J-8-8 flop. After that, everything proceeded all very quietly, as usual, no hands to speak of until I tried to take out our jordie - and failed. I thought my A3 was a massive hand against him - unfortunately, it wasn’t bigger than the pair of aces behind. By this time, I’d not accumulated any knockouts, and my stack was getting smaller, but then my big hand came along. I’m in the cut-off, the button has a fairly large stack, small blind (2005chelsea) and big blind both short stacks and I have them all covered. It’s folded around to me and I find 2-2. I decide to pressure the blinds and raise enough to put them all-in. Button re-raises all-in! Blinds both call all-in and I have no choice but to call, expecting to see at least one of them with a pair. Button shows 4-3 off-suit, Chelsea shows K-4 (but it was sooted!), big blind shows 2 off-suit cards. I flop a set and Karen’s flush doesn’t come, so that’s 3 knockouts to me in one hand, well chipped up now, thank you very much!

As the number of tables dwindled, official dealers were provided, which was good. Nothing much happened from thereon out, and I made it to the final table, and hence the money, as a medium stack. Finally, I busted out after raising with Ad6d and getting re-raised by the big chip leader who’d just won a giant pot. I was pot-committed and so, even though I thought I was probably behind albeit with diamond flush chances, I called and he showed AQ. Flop was AQx, turn Q and it was all over. 8th place paid £120, plus 6x£10 knockouts. So that covered the entry fee and the hotel costs for the weekend, I won half the train fare in a Stars turbo SnG on Saturday morning, and my free £10 bet that I got out of a fortune cookie at the restaurant came up red on the roulette wheel. I have over £20 in bonus points on my Aspire card that I didn’t get a chance to use up too. The only downside to going deep in the terminator MTT was that I didn’t get to see the final table of the main event, which featured 3 EMSers, although we heard the highlights thanks to Tikay’s ongoing commentary on the action.

So, all-in-all, a very enjoyable weekend that cost me 40 quid for the lot.

After checking in to my hotel, I made my way along to Aspers to go and sign up and meet up with everybody else. Obvously, lots of people were having to wait in the queue to become members as for most of us it was out first time there. After the 20 minutes of so, though, I made it onto the gaming floor and met the EMS crowd - by the bar, by no great surprise! What was a surprise was being grabbed by ramchip and scottie as soon as they saw me and told me they’d got me into the main event as a substitute for one of our other members who hadn’t been able to come! After a quick bite to eat in the restaurant, it was off to play. Dealers were provided for this event, which was a great relief - although I love a game of cards and I can deal at home, I’d be useless under the pressure of having to do everything right in a real event - there’s so much more to it than shoving the cards around.

I was pretty much card dead the whole game. Starting with 10000 chips, I was at 8820 at the first break after level 2, 4400 at dinner (which was a recovery from the 1700 I was down to due to a little accident), 8400 at the third break after doubling up with K6 vs A6 on a K high flop avoiding a flush draw. I won half a dozen races to stay alive until my luck finally ran out with A9 under the gun finding queens to my left. I finished around 113th out of the 230 starters 7 hours into the event. Then I failed to do anything in the EMS SnG qualifier for the SnG Champions MTT on Sunday.