Poker (with added blinds!)

I haven't posted in a while mainly because I've been arranging today. It was Karolina's idea, and I liked it, so I got onto the regulars, stat (James, Eleanor and Tom). This was all very well and good, but I was fully aware that I didn't have a sixth person. I decided to ask Chris, my old primary school buddy, turns out that he used to watch it on TV all the time. Sorted.

So the match was arranged. Our players were:

• Adam "The Showman" Batchelor
• "The Pro" James Ellwood
• Eleanor "Pokerface" Goodman
• Tom "Call" Black
• "The Addict" Chris Green
• and Karolina "Stealth" Malinowski.

So the game started, not so well for me. Tom, Eleanor and James started to run away with it all and I quickly ran into trouble, falling to an average of 13-20 chips. While I was struggling for survival Chris started to crawl back and Tom fell into calling ridiculously obvious hands (hence the nickname "call"). This fully distracted me from Eleanor's sudden downfall, she'd had a few straights and flushes and I don't think anyone saw it coming. Alas, she couldn't hang on and crashed out of the game. This made things easier for me because I could never tell if she was bluffing or not.

The blinds (minimum bet before cards are put on the table for those who don't know) were at 30/60 now and Tom looked like he was in trouble. Chris and myself had made almost full recoveries (I had to go all in twice) and were ready to make the kill, I can't remember who actually finished him off...The blinds hit 50/100 and things really started to speed up. James, who until then was in the money, started to lose a lot of hands and took a huge loss to me, leaving him with only three chips. Suddenly the splits struck, and a win by him took only 12 chips from the huge pot. The rest came to me, he was taken out in the next hand.

At this point I was panicking. Even though I was comfortably in the cash, I had no idea how Chris and Karolina played. Also, I couldn't see most of Karolina's chips from where I was sitting so I had no idea how well she was doing. A few big hands later and Chris was all in against me and Karolina, Karolina took the pot.

Now I knew I had a problem, Karolina was a very good poker player. I hadn't noticed her until half the players were out of the game (hence the nickname "stealth"), and I knew that there was every chance that she could win. The blinds hit 400/800 during Chris' last hand. I was in a comfortable position now, because I love to raise by 1,000 at the end of a hand (hence my nickname). I lost a few and won a few against Karolina and things seemed quite even, until I started getting lucky. It only took a few hands, it could have gone either way with the blinds, but today was my day.
After poker, we all settled down for a few Mario kart tourneys. I knew Tom would be some trouble but didn't expect Karolina to be so good, just didn't realise that she actually played games I guess. I scraped the win in the first tourney, sat out so Chris could play the second (which Tom won). The third tourney was tough. Tom won the first race with me just behind him and I took the second race with similar conditions. For the third race I chose a track that truly hates me, to mix things up a bit. I came ninth, Tom came fourth. It was already decided that Bowser's Castle would be last track, which luckily i know like the back of my hand. I came just in front of James and Tom came sixth. Good competition, I'm sure I won't be so lucky next time I play them.

I'll upload the rest of the pics to Facebook ASAP.