Brags. Beats. Battlestar Galactica.

So decided to play in the Oxford Cup, a £20 rebuy event with 200 runners, along with three others from Cambridge poker.

The tourney was pretty well run considering the size and that it was half run by students, and it's a shame that we'd never get anything of that size in Cambridge.

It was a pretty standard awful structure live tourney though, with fast increasing blinds and little play, which is a shame considering that the player standard was really soft. People would call off 1200 from a 4k starting stack pre insisting "well I can't fold this, I can't fold this" and then flop trips on a 998 board.

Also this bad loose guy owned me pretty hard by calling my iso from the SB for a third of his stack and then donk shoved a 874r board 4-way for half pot. I call with KJ and he shows A2 and he's like "why did you call?" so I'm like "It was only 950, why did you bet?" and he goes "I was repping."

Was in for £120 after a few rebuys and add-on, got back after the rebuy hour and busted very first hand back with Q8 vs AQ on a QJ8 board.

Pretty much had nothing to do for a few hours until a cash game started, playing 20p/40p NL, where I had this huge douchebag on my right who I wanted to bust (and did, won a £200 pot vs him with AT on T9x board vs 87.) Unfortunately live poker is so slow that it takes way too long to get profitable situations versus even the worst player in the world, which this guy probably was.

Anyway, he proceeded to slowroll me later. He opened and I called with KT with clubs. Flop comes 763 two clubs, and he checks, I bet, he minraises, I call. I hit a T on the turn and he checks, so I bet, then he minraises me again. Like whatever, I think he has like close to the nuts here and I call to hit a club. River comes a blank Q and he checks, I check back.

He turns over a 6 and points at it. I show my KT, then he rolls over another 6 like a champion. I ask him what he's doing and he says "I'm slowrolling you. I wanted to make you think you had me beat. There's no nice in poker." At this point I decided that this game isn't actually fun anymore, and even though I would like to bust this guy, there's ultimately no point to sticking around waiting hours for the right hand, especially as the money doesn't mean anything to me and it would be all about ego at this point.

I did play the £1/£1 PLO game for a while and boy is live PLO really boring when you're a nit like me. People were really bad though, somehow dry aces got it in on a 34Q5ccdd board and was ahead in a ~£500 pot. Though instead of busting one of these guys, I ended up taking George's money (one of the Cupoks guys). He 3-bet from the CO and I cold 4-bet from the SB with AAT6ds, he called with KTT9ss and got it in on a J73r board. I think his pre call is slightly losing, and his 3-bet is probably bad considering there were guys coldcalling 3 bets really wide, but yeah, whatever.

Probably ended up £90 in cash, so was down overall from the trip but it was a fun overall, and good mixing it up. I kinda like the social aspect of live, although the downside is there are a lot of really tilting people.

My biggest regret was not asking Gus Hansen to play triple draw (he was there as a special guest, not sure why) and I imagine there was some likelihood of his eyes immediately lighting up when hearing those words and I could have an actual interesting story to tell from this trip, but I pussied out.