Last sunday I went to the gutshot (now known as the international) to watch the superbowl. To be honest I don't have much interest in american football but thought it would be a fun experience.

About halfway through I got bored (too many pauses!) and decided to take the empty seat on the £1/2 PLO table. As is my current strategy, I bought in for £100, with the intention of reassessing after an hour or so; the table was on average about £800 deep, and looked juicy. After a couple of seat changes the game settled down and I was happy to stay in my seat, especially when the target directly on my right, pretty loose-passive-unbluffable, won a big pot by getting very lucky, at which point two of us both called for chips.

I played about 11 hours in total and never lost when all-in. I was still in for £1k, though, just topping up for the first few hours until I started to win heavily. I didn't bluff very often, but kept on hitting big draws on the flop, nailing them on the turn after betting or raising, or just flopping top set on a drawy board and having it hold up in a multiway coup. With 8866ss, I raised preflop (in a straddled pot), had a caller before someone else 3bet. I have an obvious call, with the 3bettor having about a pot-sized bet behind, and the overcaller had a deep stack and was big value. The flop came K66 and the 3bettor shoved pretty quickly, there's no need for me to moody as I'm only getting paid off by the deep stack if he has kings full, I call reasonably quickly but the deep stack folds equally quickly.

Around this point I won a flurry of pots and was up to about £2,500. Joe raises in middle position in a straddled pot and I call with 6689ss, there are I believe three others in the pot, all value. The flop is K72r, and it gets checked through. The turn is the 6h putting a flush draw, and Joe bets near the full pot. Knowing that I'm repping a fairly narrow range, I raise, expecting to get action from a fairly wide range from him. My 89 straight redraw is important here - in the unlikely case I'm behind to a higher set, it gives me eight more outs to win the pot, but he has a few straight wraps in his range, and I'm not only blocking some of them, I'm now chopping when he hits his high or low end. He thinks about it for less than a minute or so, I recall, and then shoves for a total of about £1k. I snapcall, he has 789T no hearts, and blanks - the hand is discussed on 2+2 if you're interested.

Another interesting hand is when I 3bet AKJ5ss against Wilson, an overaggressive dealer, OOP. The flop comes K44r, I checkraise his roughly halfpot bet putting him all-in, and he moans and folds after thinking. Virtually impossible for him to have folded AA there but maybe he folded AK also, maybe KQ, or QQ - I'm not sure.

A hand I may have played badly: I can't remember the preflop action but I have AdKJ on a QdTx4d board and call a checkraise, intending to bluff diamonds and valuetown when I hit. The turn is an eight, villain goes all-in, and I have odds to call against anything but a flush draw. I call, he turns up JT92 with diamonds - ups! I hit a black jack on the river to scoop anyway. Good times.

Over an eleven hour period, I won £4,080. With breaks.

It happened to snow that evening, and I happen to believe that actually had a lot to do with it. A foot of snow fell on london over a 24-hour period (absolutely unheard of - and unlikely to happen again in my lifetime), but by the time many of these guys wanted to go home, the roads were too full of snow to drive on. So many people didn't actually go home and stayed at the club, and what's there to do at the club other than gamble? The result was that a lot of money that should have come off the table not only stayed on but was played by people far too tired and tilty for their own good.

I played pretty well, but I don't want to go on winners tilt, as I have done in the past after winning large sums. This was the largest win I've had in a single session before. To that end, I am A) refraining from spending too much money, and B) continually reminding myself that, while I played well, winning such a large amount was more a function of good game, session and stack selection, but mostly lucking out, with the right cards at the right times, the right bums on the right seats, and even the weather pitching in.

I'm going back tonight, leaving quite shortly. I must fear tilt, though. It's likely after you've had any big swing, even up: to be breaking even after a few hours is a much worse result in comparison to last sunday. To counter that, I must remind myself that I'm playing for an hourly expectation and I'm liable to lose some of the time.

Here is a picture I took on the way home on sunday afternoon. Given we get it so rarely, snow turns me into a little kid - I've been walking round London with a permanent smile on my face this week. :)

wazz