The black hole that is Star City

With ten fellow slackers last night I visited the Star City casino complex to compete in the £10 rebuy competition.

The whole place looked like a circus, and I was particularly perturbed by the lavatories being named "restrooms". However, I am sorry to say that this shocking inditement on the establishment was perhaps only a minor irritation in comparison with the other horrors that awaited.

The dealers' incompetence was a disgrace, they clearly shouldn't have ever been employed, couldn't they do something more useful, like claim "Jobseekers Allowance"? The speed of their dealing was incredibly frustrating and splitting the pot and calculating sidepots clearly regarded as a massive inconvenience.

The structure of the tournament was incredibly fast which enabled me to adopt a hyper-aggressive style in order to build my stack by blind-stealing. I became incredibly frustrated with our dealer; incidentally I have played snap with 5yr olds who are more articulate and better card handlers than the travesty that was our dealer.

Clearly not being one to suffer in silence it became apparent that our charming dealer was aware of my displeasure. Obviously rather than treat the cause of the problem i.e terrible dealers, I was apparently threatened with being asked to leave the tournament, although this was never mentioned to my face.

Being a polite lad at heart I managed to add a scrap of sincerity to an apology. Upon the final table I felt I was the most accomplished player and was feeling very confident of my ability to take many pots down to China Town preflop. Buoyed by a glass of decent red wine I became a raising machine who one of my opponents described as "one aggressive bastard".

One particularly amusing hand occured when I held 85o..With 2 limpers and blinds at 2k 4k and a couple of limpers a 15k raise from the Small blind seemed the order of the day. One player, the ep limper called, and uponn hitting a 5 (mid pair) I put the chap allin, he called off his chips with AJ and my hand stood up. The old guard at the table were visibly shocked, and I felt that no-one fancied getting involved with me, as I had a tonne of chips and was capable of running anyone over…

Unfortunately a pre-flop raise met with some resistance from this chap, Ronnie, I had AJ and made a pot sized continuation bet on the flop, and he moved right over the top. I had to lay down.

I now started raising like a man possesed as my stack was around 40k and blinds at 3k-6k. One memorable moment was moving in with T3s utg only for my opponent to fold 77 face up, claiming he didn't fancy gambling against 2 overcards. Other raising hands included 84,26,27,2T etc….

So I stole my way back up to 100k with four players left. Unfortunately I made a move that clearly led to murder on the dance floor when my pre flop allin with K3 failed to convince 'The Kid' and 'Frenchy' that their 99 and AK were inferior…

Out in 4th for a somewhat dissapointing £340. I felt I played incredibly well, and received compliments from several players. Whilst I could have tempered my aggressive style after having resusitating my stack, the blinds were still high, and I was playing to win.

Returned to leamington, and was in bed under poker stars table cloths by 6am…

: 23 Feb 2006 18:02 |  Tags: Casino Poker Star City |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem