Viennese whirl (part 2)

It's fair to say I played badly in Vienna. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I made some good moves and some good decisions, but it wasn't enough. I still cocked it up.

I'm not one for trip reports, but I'll give it my best shot. I was amused to see that the Concord now has a policy of offering players either smoking or non-smoking tables. Simon Hennessy's theory is that all the sick gamblers are likely to be smokers, so that's where you should go; he clearly wasn't the only one with this idea. On my table I counted just 3 of us who were actually smokers. I found it quite satisfying to know that I was being victimised because of my addiction. Unfortunately I proved them all right.

I got off to a sticky start. With tiny blinds and a conspicuous absence of lunatics, we struggled to get a pot going early. I decided to take advantage of this by raising someone on a board of 9956 with KJ. He looked ill for a while and then called. Marvellous. The river was a 6 and he led out. Inwardly fuming, I gave it a full Hollywood dwell-up before mucking.

Ok, so I had 4200 left from my 5000 starting stack; no worries. I yawned my way through the next hour or so. Finally I picked up a hand - JdJc in the small blind. The cut-off seat made a standard raise. He was a young narcissistic twat with wraparound shades (Gryko mould); last time he raised he'd got himself in a mess with T3 suited, and sucked out. I know a lot of people hate JJ, but I'm completely the opposite - I love it. I find decisions very easy with JJ. In this situation the blinds were too small to merit a reraise, so I flat-called, and we saw a flop.

Inevitably, I now got myself in a spot of bother. The flop of K75 (2 diamonds) was not exactly the answer to my prayers. I could have led out here, but I bottled it. Wunderkind bet 250, an extremely gay bet (about 2/5 of the pot). Being a filthy non-believer, I called. The turn was the troublesome 3 of diamonds.

After checking again, yer man now bet 550. Usually once called on the flop he had tended to switch off, so now I figured he had a piece of it. However, it seemed likely he had little more than a king, probably with a not-so-wonderful kicker. I moved all-in for another 3000.

He certainly gave me a good sweat-up, so eventually I had to resort to sitting back in my chair swigging my gin and tonic, generally making it look as if I couldn't give a tinker's what he did. Finally he passed. Marv. Somehow I had clambered my way back up to 5000.

It didn't last long. Two hands later I was dealt QQ. As ever, there was a flurry of limpers for 50 in front of me. In true David Young style, I decided not to do what any sane person would do (raise), and instead went for the canny round-the-back limp. Now it was on the BB, and I was readying myself to not look too smug when the inevitable Q27 flop arrived. But no, wait... the BB has raised 300!

One by one the limpers dropped out, and it was round to me. Hmm... what to do? Ok, time to let the cat out of the bag and put it among the pigeons and then swing it around a bit... or whatever. Time to raise. Fearlessly I made it 1300. Take that, you wienerschnitzel-munching surrender monkey! Predictably it took yer man all of about 0.13 picoseconds to go all-in. Oh, goody. I mucked my hand face-up and he reciprocated by showing me KK. Very nice hand sir, very well played.

It baffles me how poorly people play KK sometimes. Going all-in is not the only option you fucking losers! If he had any nous he would have looked miserable for a while and just called. He could have split me open on a rag flop. But ohhhhh no, his feeble little brain replies, 'MUST GET ALL-IN BEFORE FLOP IN CASE ACE COMES'. Your loss, moron.

I won a few insignificant pots over the next few minutes. At one point I had consecutive hands where I was dealt exactly the same cards (QJ clubs), called exactly the same raise from the same player, and won it on the flop by betting my gutshot straight draw both times. Just call me Johnny Chan.

Obviously after the break I pissed my chips away in about 90 seconds. In the first hand, I somehow decided to call an under-the-gun raise with 97 of hearts. The SB also called, and we inspected a flop of Q84. Both the blind and the raiser checked to me. Normally I would simply take a stab at it right away, but I was feeling particularly tricky, so I decided to dwell for a while before checking.

The turn was an offsuit 5. Gutshot fun for me. Now the SB decided to take off, betting 800 into the 1400 pot. Obviously the raiser passed like a shot. Now my instincts were telling me that the geezer was weak, probably betting an 8 or worse. Like a bullet I raised him, 1800 more.

Following the table tradition, he gave me a right old sweat-up. As soon as he started looking at his cards and fiddling with them, I knew he was passing; at one point I even thought he had passed. Without a care in the world, I crunched on some ice from my umpteenth gin and tonic. Then he announced all-in. Triffic.

Ho-hum, give it the standard dwell-up (surely no-one was falling for this shit by now?), muck with a sigh, go back to nursing my decimated stack. Next hand could be fun though, it's my old chum AK. Ok, if I raise it up here everyone will think I'm steaming and maybe they'll play back at me. Woohoo, sure enough someone reraised! YBA sir, don't you know I've got a monster down here? I proudly table my AK, and he flips over AA. Arrivederci Lord Miros, come back soon.

I went to the bar and proceeded to drink myself into oblivion. Alice followed shortly thereafter, having run KQ into AA on a K-high flop. As it was my birthday, I managed to cadge at least a dozen free drinks off various barflies. I can't recall much of what happened after that.

Roll on Las Vegas.