Christina v The Ricoh Arena Part II (Taking on the Goliath)

Well, I took about £80 off this guy in one hand. I had kings, on a 7/8/9 flop. I bet about £10, he made it about £60 (which I think was all I had at the table), and I felt I couldn’t really fold kings. Due to the betting pre-flop, I was not putting him on j/10, and somehow felt he couldn’t have a set, as he was more likely to have an overpair, in which case, the only pair I was fearing was aces. I think the board then paired twice (another nine, and another eight), and my kings were good against his 10s (luckily, he also missed his straight draw). I think I took about another £50 off someone else, so was fairly pleased as since going out of the tournament, I’d made around 2 of my buy-ins to the Goliath back playing cash.

At the casino, they have unconventional electric fittings, which means that you can’t charge your phone inside (unless you find the one or two rare spots that have the normal fittings). This means they can make a business from charging people to erm, charge their phones in a charging booth upstairs. Well anyway, I’d sent a quick text to Xtina letting her know that my phone would be out of action for a bit.

Then suddenly, about 40 minutes into quite a successful spell on the cash table, I heard what I thought was Christina’s name being called to play on a cash table over the loud speaker system! Could this be true, I wondered? And if so, it most likely meant only one thing – Christina was OUT!

I made my way hurriedly to the main hall where the Goliath was being played, and ran into a guy who’d been at the first table I played at on the Thursday who I’d got friendly with (did not catch his name) who confirmed this fear. I went back into the casino, and now bumped into Crissy. She was clearly a bit upset to be out, and typical her, did not want to stop playing poker, but instead, go straight into a cash game! I was trying to urge her to stop – again, I had not been there at a crucial time. She’d still done amazingly well, in my eyes. She wanted to tell me what had happened, but it sounded a bit complicated.

Chris had gone out of the Goliath in 149th place. They were calling this the live tournament with the biggest ever field outside of the US. There had been over 2000 entries, and over 1000 re-entries. For a player who had been playing for less than a year to come in the top 150 in a tournament like this was pretty good going, I reckoned. Something like the top 450 had made the cash, so Christina’s prize was around double the min cash. The serious money did not come until the top few places, of course, but Christina could quite easily have been amongst them. She had got to over 1 million chips at one point, and was on 800,000 shortly before going out.

The crucial hand for her had been when she’d missed a flush draw, but still had second pair, and had shoved all-in (a semi-bluff) on the river, only to get called by an over-pair to the board. Not too bad a play, as her opponent’s tournament life was at risk, but crucially, Chris had not realised just how many chips this player had behind. She’d put him on a lot less – she wished she’d asked for a count – and was expecting to be left with around 300-400,000 even if she lost the hand. So unfortunately, losing that hand put her down to around 100k, and she was out shortly afterwards. She could have hung on for a better place finish, but it didn’t necessarily surprise me that her tale of how she went out did not revolve around a bad beat, but getting called by a semi-bluff – much more like her!

I was a bit flustered while Christina played at a cash game. I couldn’t exactly stop her, but I imagined that her frustration at going out of the Goliath might lead to her losing some of her winnings. I got her a cocktail as a small reward for her achievement, but she wasn’t really able to acknowledge that she had actually done well! I pottered about doing this or that, occasionally checking on her progress, and I could see that she was not doing so well at this table.

There was some talk of a tournament at another casino, with a much more regular buy-in of £20 taking place, and we had aimed to make this (there were some players who’d entered the £250 buy-in tournament that was being played alongside the Goliath at the Ricoh), so at least I knew that Chris would aim to finish at the cash table in time for this other tournament.

She finally dragged herself away, quite a bit down from when she’d joined the table, but fortunately, she still had a good amount of her Goliath winnings over. Actually, we never made the tournament at the other casino. We elected to retire to the hotel for a rest to begin with, then did go out to try and make it before late registration ended, but the sat nav sent us to the wrong place, so we ended up just going back again! Had some nice burger and chips, watched tv and went to bed. Took some time to get to sleep as the wedding party continued to the early hours, and the following morning we used this as a good excuse to sleep in long past the official checking out time.

We thought about trying out the pool the following day, but it was almost 2pm when we checked out – we really were pushing it! – and with a long drive ahead of this, we thought we might as well press on. Christina wanted something from town after all. We had another brief look around Coventry, where a small Palestinian protest was taking place. Had a look around the Herbert building, which had quite a smart exhibition from Roman time to present day (and took a few pictures of the building for my friend Matthew Herbert). Our Coventry trip finally came to an end with a drink at Brown’s bar, between the Cathedral and the Herbert.

A very swanky place, with lovely carved wooden seats and interior. We inadvertently ordered the most expensive draft lager on sale, but couldn’t go wrong by sharing a lasagne for £7, which came with 3 side dishes, and so was plenty for the two of us. A quick google informs me that this bar was the one that for some reason turned away two soldiers in uniform, prompting an avalanche of complaints and forced closure. Presumably it’s since re-opened, but a shame it’s got a bad reputation, because this was a really nice bar that I’d definitely return to.

And return we very well may, and in the near future, because the Ricoh is holding another quite major tournament in just a couple of weeks, this time named the Titan. Look out for Christina v The Ricoh Part III, coming to a website near you soon! She took on the student tournament in March, she battled long and hard against the Goliath – could she finally come out on top and take down the Titan?

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