DTD Opening Night
I went down the opening weekend of the DTD Poker Club in Nottingham this weekend. The club is pretty spectacular and is easily the best poker room I have ever been in. It had a great bar and restaurant area as well as an over the top VIP area with its own private bar and poker table which Simon Nowab showed us around.
The Friday night was the £100 NL Hold'em tournament. It had about 100 runners and I went out around 60th at a guess. I was really shattered as I hadn't even slept the previous night, not a good idea when a tournament on the next night might finish at 4am . I thought I might try and play cash or hang out later that night but I felt like I was going to fall asleep any second. I actually got to sleep at around 2am which was pretty good and necessary =)
I travelled down with Bob Mitchell (Lawyer and Poker player from Scotland) and my flatmate Steve Hamilton. On the previous night we had started talking about chess as Bob is very good at it. He has achieved as high as a 2350 rating which is very strong indeed. I started winding him up a bit and he challenged me to blindfold chess, where he would play without looking at the board once with me saying my moves out loud. I agreed to this and then started winding him up more pretending I was good at chess and how he had zero chance at winning. I knew this wasn't true but at the end of it he looked to have lost a little confidence =). I slept like a baby that night and Bob probably tossed and turned going through games in his head for practice.
Breakfast time came and over it we went back to discussing our impending chess match and I suggested that as well as him playing blindfolded that I should have white too. He absolutely refused this and said he would only agree to do that if he could look at the board three times. I refused that. We started the match and within six moves I had made an error in the opening which was the French Defense I believe. It basically meant that I had to move my queen around whilst his pieces were developing all over. It probably put me 3-4 moves behind in development early on which is of course a big no no. The game lasted a good while longer with me not making any big blunders until he overpowered me later in the game. My best bet was probably to force him into playing a more bizarre opening where he couldn't reference his memory banks so easily and make playing blindfolded truly a test, but that was kind of tricky as he had the initiative from the very beginning. At least we had no money on it =)
The Saturday night was the £500 tournament and had around 80-90 runners. I got much deeper in this tournament finishing around about 25th or so when I was forced to go all in with AQ which was called by both AK and KK =). The upside to this was I won my £100 last longer bet with Bob Mitchell who had beat me at chess earlier that day. Travelling down was more fun for me to finally meet if only briefly some people I knew online or had watched playing before in tournaments or on tv. At my initial table that night was Julian Thew, recent winner of an EPT event and John Kalmar who finished 5th I believe in the main event at WSOP this year. Both seemed like very nice guys. Jon Wong aka DJ3Way was also there as well as a couple of other guys I know from online poker. I also finally met some people like Simon Nowab, Simon Trumper, Rob Yong and Paul "ActionJack" Jackson who are involved in the the actual running of Dusk Till Dawn. I also finally met Kirderf(Fredrik Ostervold) who some of you may know as Slayer(winner of a WCG in Broodwar) from Norway. I've known him for nearly 10 years online and it was good to meet up and hang out with him in real life!
I thought I may actually play some cash down there but I was too tired on the first night and on the Saturday night we finished kind of late again and I preferred to hang out and talk with Kirderf and others. Not to mention the fact that the biggest game seemed to be £2/£5NL which was a little bit too low to tear us away from the bar =)
The actual club was very well run without any apparent hitches that you would expect on an opening weekend. I hope they manage to get some deals with the WPT, EPT or other tours and manage to hold some big televised tournaments there. It is certainly a venue that could cater to such an event. Fingers crossed that the club goes from strength to strength!
The Friday night was the £100 NL Hold'em tournament. It had about 100 runners and I went out around 60th at a guess. I was really shattered as I hadn't even slept the previous night, not a good idea when a tournament on the next night might finish at 4am . I thought I might try and play cash or hang out later that night but I felt like I was going to fall asleep any second. I actually got to sleep at around 2am which was pretty good and necessary =)
I travelled down with Bob Mitchell (Lawyer and Poker player from Scotland) and my flatmate Steve Hamilton. On the previous night we had started talking about chess as Bob is very good at it. He has achieved as high as a 2350 rating which is very strong indeed. I started winding him up a bit and he challenged me to blindfold chess, where he would play without looking at the board once with me saying my moves out loud. I agreed to this and then started winding him up more pretending I was good at chess and how he had zero chance at winning. I knew this wasn't true but at the end of it he looked to have lost a little confidence =). I slept like a baby that night and Bob probably tossed and turned going through games in his head for practice.
Breakfast time came and over it we went back to discussing our impending chess match and I suggested that as well as him playing blindfolded that I should have white too. He absolutely refused this and said he would only agree to do that if he could look at the board three times. I refused that. We started the match and within six moves I had made an error in the opening which was the French Defense I believe. It basically meant that I had to move my queen around whilst his pieces were developing all over. It probably put me 3-4 moves behind in development early on which is of course a big no no. The game lasted a good while longer with me not making any big blunders until he overpowered me later in the game. My best bet was probably to force him into playing a more bizarre opening where he couldn't reference his memory banks so easily and make playing blindfolded truly a test, but that was kind of tricky as he had the initiative from the very beginning. At least we had no money on it =)
The Saturday night was the £500 tournament and had around 80-90 runners. I got much deeper in this tournament finishing around about 25th or so when I was forced to go all in with AQ which was called by both AK and KK =). The upside to this was I won my £100 last longer bet with Bob Mitchell who had beat me at chess earlier that day. Travelling down was more fun for me to finally meet if only briefly some people I knew online or had watched playing before in tournaments or on tv. At my initial table that night was Julian Thew, recent winner of an EPT event and John Kalmar who finished 5th I believe in the main event at WSOP this year. Both seemed like very nice guys. Jon Wong aka DJ3Way was also there as well as a couple of other guys I know from online poker. I also finally met some people like Simon Nowab, Simon Trumper, Rob Yong and Paul "ActionJack" Jackson who are involved in the the actual running of Dusk Till Dawn. I also finally met Kirderf(Fredrik Ostervold) who some of you may know as Slayer(winner of a WCG in Broodwar) from Norway. I've known him for nearly 10 years online and it was good to meet up and hang out with him in real life!
I thought I may actually play some cash down there but I was too tired on the first night and on the Saturday night we finished kind of late again and I preferred to hang out and talk with Kirderf and others. Not to mention the fact that the biggest game seemed to be £2/£5NL which was a little bit too low to tear us away from the bar =)
The actual club was very well run without any apparent hitches that you would expect on an opening weekend. I hope they manage to get some deals with the WPT, EPT or other tours and manage to hold some big televised tournaments there. It is certainly a venue that could cater to such an event. Fingers crossed that the club goes from strength to strength!
posted by TillerMaN | 7:16 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Tillerman
I am a 2300 FIDE rated chessplayer if you can post the moves of the chess match it would be great :)
Bob would be able to write the match back down from memory. If he reads this perhaps he will respond with the moves :)
come back to warcraft tillerman :D
what can ya dew vs human?! lol :-]
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