I got back to the grind last night, putting it a losing session on the Full Tilt tables last night. Last month was a huge month for me financially and this month started off in the same vein. That was until about a week ago when a long overdue period of bad variance crept up on me. Not that a down-week could ever make me gun-shy but it did cross my mind to hit another live game while I'm here. Dave took me to The Empire Casino on Leicester Square last Monday (the venue for next week's WSOP-E). Well suffice to say, the 1/2 NL game was soft and it certainly had more drama than my average night of 8-tabling. I made about 80 pounds and I know if I had stayed another couple of hours, there was a good chance of doubling or tripling that. But Dave had work the next day so we left. I didn't mind as I was pretty tired anyway but I had gone through my 'sussing out the table' phase and was well into my 'pass the bacon' phase.

By my estimation, there were only two other players there of any caliber:
 
- a young bespectacled Hungarian bloke who liked the speech play and clearly knew the weak points at the table (I took my lead from him)
- a blonde 20-something who played the prima donna/femme fatale at every available opportunity but had developed a way to maximise her gains from the older gentlemen by using her assets (if you know what I mean)

They were both solid opponents who played position well and knew who to value-bet to the max. The rest of the table were a variety of Asian Maniacs and loose-passive donks. I played very few hands early on but about an hour in, I flopped bottom set and managed to get two players to call my turn and river bets after I had check-called the flop. On a board of 3JQ28, I had managed to extract 100 pounds each from both Q9 and KJ. That's right! They both called 25 on the turn and 55 on the river.

So, maybe I should return tonight, stick a couple of hundred pounds down and try to turn a wee profit. Or maybe I'll curl up with my laptop and go back to the grind, spreading 600 dollars over 25 online tourneys. To be honest, it's not really a contest. I love the convenience of online play - how I bring my laptop with me when i want to make coffee, how I can just play 4 games and easily maintain a conversation with someone in the room, how I can wind down partially (to 7 tables) so that I have room on my screen to watch an episode of a poker show on YouTube and how there is a suitable game filling up every nano-second.

 


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