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Feb 27, 2011

CnaC Live February 2011 Newcastle - trip report

Sunday, February 27, 2011 Posted by Unknown , , No comments
The trip on Thursday started pretty well and fortunately I had a 2h30 gap for my connection flight at Amsterdam, because due to heavy fog every departure and arrival was delayed and the takeoff at Nuremberg was about 50 minutes late. We arrived with about 90 minutes delay and the majority of the passengers missed their connection flights, I could relax and grab a drink … only the Wi-Fi at the airport was down and thus no internet duh.

At Newcastle, I got ripped off at the taxi (never take the airport taxi’s at Newcastle, #### bastards! lol) but arrived at my final destination. A fresh Geordie coffee and a big hug was already waiting for me and I could relax a bit … it didn’t take me long to check my emails and get some work done though. 

As you can see, there was a pussy in my bed at Newcastle:



On the Friday I went shopping with my “host” Dawny because I actually missed the birthday of my lil sister (she is 7yo as of Saturday) and hopefully I got the right present for her ;) The meet and greet at the casino was fun as usual, a bit of time to catch up with everyone because it has already been a year and a drink here and there of course, gotta love Guinness. The bounty tournament on Friday evening saw 37 participants and I was pretty much card dead for the first 2 hours, finally I got to a new table and was able to pick up 2 pots.

The end came in a battle of the blinds with 67cc on blinds 50-100 against 1 limper and Katy in SB filled up as well. The flop was 4 4 5 and I picked up an open ended straight draw, Katy bets 200 and I just flatcall – the turn is the 8 and I got my straight. Katy leads out 400 and I decide to raise to 1025 … she thinks about it for a while and calls – river is a blank Queen and she bets 1k into the pot, I shove all in and get called by Q4 who rivered the full house. Taken out by one of my divas ughhh!!!

Don’t think there is much that can be done because postflop the chips would have gotten in anyways, unless I didn’t hit my straight. Katy went on to get second place and she only had one single bounty throughout the whole tournament! Skunkr won the event same as last year and we got back home pretty chuffed around 6am local time. Some more work on the Saturday and the mental preparation for the freezeout later in the evening.

My old and new card protector:



We had 43 players and all started with 5000 Chips, on 25-50 I already took a huge hit when I flopped top pair and turn top set with straight draw, the river was a blank and I called a bet of 2000 just look into a flopped set 3s that got me crushed the whole way through. You can imagine my mindset (grml not again ####), but I stayed tight and picked a few spots to steal with my short stack.

The first double up was at blinds 100-200 and a stack of ~2k when my KQ flopped a queen against pocket Tens. Only a few orbits later I get pocket Jacks on the Big Blind and there are 2 limper, I decide to push all in to isolate one of them and get called by KJ, the board blanks and I am back into the game. Two more steals and I am at around 13k in Chips and can breathe for a few minutes. 

Just before the dinner break, I get AK on the cutoff with blinds 300-600 and raise the short BB all in, he calls and flips over KTdd and flops the nutflush … 2.8k gone. Exactly one hand later I look down at A8dd and raise to 1500 to steal the blinds in the last hand before the dinner break, the SB jams all in for 6k and I muck my hand in disguise … down to 7.5k at that point and blinds were up after the break to 400-800.

A few steals and resteals and we are down to the last 16 players, I get JT in the BB and the button shoves all in for 4.5k … I think about it for a while and decide to call, get the 2 live cards / coinflip I expected and my Ten hits to bust the pocket 6s … back to 11k whew. From 16 to 10 players everything went pretty fast, but the bubble play took more than 30 minutes. I was able to steal my way to 20k and also had two sets that didn’t get paid, one short stack went out with AJ against my AK.

The bubble finally burst as we just had 9 players on the final table, the Blinds were at 1000 and 2000 and the button pushed all in with A5, the BB called even stacked after thinking about it for 2 minutes with QK. The flop K 2 3 delivered top pair and a gutshot, but none of the outs hit on turn or river and the bubble boy was found.

Unfortunately I didn’t last long on the final table, the blinds were already up to 2000-4000 after 2 orbits of non playable hands and I pushed all in for 20k with KT. The Small Blind had approx. 35k and called the all in with 99, the doorcard was already the 9 and even though I picked up a king and gutshot, I could not improve anymore and busted in 7th place. I am not too disappointed because after that awful start it could have been a lot worse, but obviously once you reached the final table you also want to win.

This time the game on the final table went pretty fast and it was soon down to HeadsUp, the underdog managed to take the lead with very aggressive play and the final confrontation with KJ vs 44 also seen a Jack on the flop to finish the tournament around 2.30am. A few more drinks and lots of hugs at the end to say goodbye for a while and we all headed back home, hopefully I can make it to the next live event at Stoke in September though because it is always good fun.



The trip back home was not really spectacular, despite the odd rush at Amsterdam Schipol again when I almost missed the connection flight due to the laziness of the dutch security check … but hey, why open a fast / priority lane for people that have connection flights within the next 30 minutes when you can take your time ;)
A quick message on Facebook that I am okay and off for the boarding, the flight was just an hour and I got my train back home from the airport just as planned.

It was pretty funny though when I saw some students in the train and one of them was joking around that they could barely understand some Germans due to their different accents and one of them even thought they were French. I looked over, smiled and said “well it is pretty easy to recognize that you are from the UK and you got a charming accent”. She blushed and said “thank you” lol.

Pictures and videos will be uploaded later, I gonna relax a bit after the 8h travel now and have a drink or two.

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