Saturday May 19th - Result & Latest Table

Radge

1. Gingle Berries
2. Wee Rambo
3. The Raiser
4. Petawatt
5. Bottleneck

Apologies: The Gynaecologist (Londinium), Killawatt (Deaths Door), Dunderfunk (Washing his hair again), The Professor (Retired), The Damage (Babysitting).

Taking advantage of a weakened field at the Rare Books Arena on Saturday, The Ginga Prince bagged his second win of the season to explode to the top of the 2012 table with some "unstoppable fackin cairds". His words. Backed up by a flotilla of pairs with some bullets thrown in, when the blinds began to bite, Messrs Rambo & Raiser couldn't find an answer!!!

The last hand exemplified what had gone before. Heads up the Ginga Prince (3-3) and Wee Rambo (Q-J) found themselves in a classic Texas Hold'em showdown. The flop helped neither before a killer Jack appeared on the turn. Then the river produced an even more killer 3. Quite a sight watching their 'Happiness Graphs' shoot past each other in opposite directions.

Earlier, much earlier, Bottleneck was first to exit with unseemly haste. A pre-flop raise by in-form Mr Raiser holding A-10 couldn't shake him off. The Raiser hit both cards on the flop and raised again, but was in turn re-raised all-in by the host. All the Raiser could do was call and hope to hold up, which he did when Bottleneck turned over Q-10 which appeared to be gasping for air. You'd struggle to get a Chilean miner out of a hole like that!!! Back to the drawing board for Bottleneck or the recent win might attract 'fluke' status.

After the break Petawatt bowed out around the beginning of GingaStinga's assault. KQ might be good enough most of the time, but AA in the hands of the GingaAssasin ended Petawatt's participation.

The Raiser has spent a little too much time recently whinging about bad beats and naturally, this continued well into the evening. Having more than covered Wee Rambo in the previous game four times and without prevailing, he came to the conclusion that the only way to tackle the Luckius Gittus was to go all-in miles behind. The opportunity arose with a 3-4 off-suit pre-flop and all Rambo's chips on the table but the walk didn't match his talk and he folded. The rabbit was chased and a 6-high straight for The Raiser would have sent Wee Rambo crashing. What a game eh???

After being ahead at the break, the blinds were squeezing as they do and The Raiser eventually chucked a couple of grand at four clubs on the flop. The GingaAssasin was at it again though, pairing his K on the flop and avoiding clubs henceforth to make it 'Cash-on-the-table' time.

Quite a good game I thought, Bobby Bawbag might disagree. Your scribe played quite well with sweet cards for the first half. Then there was a bit of a 3-way tussle near the end before the Ginger Spring swept all before it. Some unusual composure from Young Rambo was in evidence with less of an issue regarding the Break than normal. In the end, the cards were the winner.

No date or venue for the next game yet. I'm keen and I'm sure those with Manflu or other barely credible excuses will also be keen to re-engage, so come on Wattleneck Fixtures Committee, get emailing.

Finally, below is the up to date table for 2012.

                       P    W   2nd     L   Pts    Ave
GingaStinga     6     2      1     2    60    10.00
The Doctor      4     1      1     0    53    13.25
Killawatt           5     1      0     0    61    12.20
Wee Rambo    6     1      1     0    51     8.50
Bottleneck        5     1      0     2    40     8.00
Petawatt          6     0      1     0    65    10.83
The Raiser       6     0      2     1    58     9.67

4 games must have been played to qualify.

Latest Table - May 12

Gentlemen of the cards, please find below the latest standings in our venerable little organisation.

                           P      W      2nd      L      Pts      Ave

The Doctor         4       1         1        0       53      13.25

Killawatt              5       1         0        0       61      12.20

Bottleneck          4       1         0        1       40      10.00

Ginga Prince       5       1         1        2       40        8.00

Wee Rambo       5       1         0        0       36        7.20

Petawatt             5       0         1        0       60       12.00

The Raiser         5       0         2        1       48        9.60

Sea Cock           1       0         0        0        5         5.00

Andersfunk         2       0         0        1        9         4.50

Next Match

The next Ranker shall commence not before 20:00 on Saturday 19th May at the newly refurbished RareBooks Arena. Combatants are advised as usual to bring enough solid and liquid sustenance to last an Andean plane crash.

Midweek Misery

Reports have arrived at the PP$ office of a non-ranking Midweeker held at Kev's Colosseum on Wednesday last. The Raiser, Wee Rambo, Killawatt & Petawatt faced off in a 4Playa.

The Raiser announced beforehand that he would be retiring from poker after the game as he'd swallowed too many bad beats over a period that stretches back into the mists of memory. It is far, far, far from enjoyable, made even worse when the finances are so constrained. I must add a disclaimer of sorts in that I am not a believer in 'luck'. In my experience the more you put in, the harder you try and the better you are, the luckier you get over the longer term.  However it was pointed out to me by Mega/Peta & Killa about 14 months ago that I seemed to have been having a lot of bad luck over the course of the last couple of years. Since then things have been a joke. Then on Wednesday it got worse!!!

Raiser in hair trouble

The tussle was lengthy and all players made it past the break. Petawatt was first to fade out as the blinds ramped up. Killawatt had a frustrating evening, two or three times slipping below a Grand in chippage, only to scrap back up, before being squeezed back down again. Eventually he exited in the 3rd position. The Raiser was once again very happy with his play and led the game for most of the evening. Wee Rambo hit the nicest hands early on during Draw with a couple of 4-of-a-kinds. Later he became the only player to show pocket A's all evening. He also survived FOUR all-in's v The Raiser where every time he was more than covered chipwise AND holding weaker cards AND two times out of the four had only one live card in his hand. It was a quite incredible display of overcoming increasingly insurmountable odds, the main hand twice doing the damage being an otherwise innocuous 5-8 suited. As the taker of all this increasingly unfeasible ass-whupping you can imagine my delight when Wee Rambo eventually won the cash. His post-match lack of hubris matched only by my own girly whinging in this report.