WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!

Online poker: +£49 (+26):  CC game: +£62 (+23): APAT: +£326 (+300)

Matched betting this month = +£64;  This year = +£514

Profit on Month = +£413    Profit on Year = +£950

That couldn't have gone much better!  The APAT pub poker tourney turned out to be a total gas.

Before the tournament kicked off I stressed to everyone that the most important thing was that as many folk as possible made the "last 50", which is when the team points kicked in.  This was the main lesson I have learned from playing in previous team tournaments.  Well.  Did they listen?  Yes they most certainly did!

Come the "50 players left" point, we had 7 out of our 8 man team still in the event, which was 2 more than any other team.  As the night wore on we were steadily eliminated but we were scoring points and come the end of Saturday night we were massively ahead on "points in the bag", with 2 men still running.  Sadly, I was the last man eliminated on the Saturday, in 25th place out of the 128 starters.  (A5 suited, called by the deadly 96 suited hitting a nine - as it does).

So, with 24 left, we went into the second day with Phil (Bullmeister) in second place with a massive stack and Andy low, but not desperate.  Andy worked out that if he finished 17th or better we couldn't be beaten so he played to that and we were home and hosed by 4.00 in the afternoon.  The APAT guys told us they could never remember anyone getting 7 out of 8 players in the points in a team tournament.

Meanwhile Phil was playing an absolute blinder.  He isn't a regular tournament player, so he was finding the sheer length of the thing difficult to come to terms with, but on he battled, eventually finishing second when the winner hit a run of top hands at the heads up stage.  A great effort.

The tournament was very well managed by APAT, as usual, the only disapointment being that they had "lost" the trophy somewhere in the system.  Ah well, we can live with that.

Another entertaining feature of the weekend, was that I played a £15 rebuy on the Sunday while railing Phil and Andy and came 5th for £120.  :-)    I only took one rebuy, after I lost with AK suited hitting a flush on the river - to a straight flush.  I "got him" about an hour later.

I've only played odd games on line but a couple of minor cashes have kept me nicely in the black there too.

Matched betting saw quite a few small offers from books trying to keep the punters interested after the end of the football season, so I've mopped those up.  Next up will be horse specialist books when I have the time in the summer holidays and then the spread firms once the football is back. 

Happy Days.

FOUR FLUSHED

Online poker: +£21 (-23):  CC game: +£39 (+7): APAT: +£26 (-37)

Matched betting this month = +£69;  This year = +£450

Profit on Month = +£16    Profit on Year = +£537

I haven't played much in May - too much on at work and too tired come the weekend most times.  I did play in one of the APAT online championships and was going very nicely until a horror show came along.  I had a nice medium stack with about half the field gone.  A big stack in eary position went 3BB's and I called on the button with JJ.  The flop came 3d 8d Js.  My opponent bet half the pot - I raised and he went all in, which obviously I called.  He showed AdAc.  The next two cards were diamonds and it was "good game me".  All you can do is go in with the best hand, but that sort of thing does hurt.  Needless to say I am waiting patiently to have a similar piece of action in my favour some time soon.

The next poker highlight should be the APAT pub poker tournament which is taking place in Blackpool later in June.  The Cricket Club have entered a team.  There is a team from the West Midlands that looks very strong on paper, but it should be a good laugh.

Matched betting continues to tick along. I had lots of nice little ones as offers on the Champions League final and so on, which I cleaned up on.  I even found an arb on William Hills on Barcelona - I didn't go too daft on it though, as I wanted to keep the account.  I've now finished Bet365 with my daughter - so I will be getting all my money back shortly.  She gave the bookies an awful pasting, but it wasn't too clever for my Betfair account :-)

Things will probably go a bit quiet on that front now that the football season has finished.  Either that or I will have to diversify into tennis or cricket.