Channing reflects on day 1

Channing reflects on day 1

Friday, 20 August 2010

As the action begins on Day 1B Neil Channing gives his views on his play the previous day.

Neil Channing is not only a walking encyclopedia of hands but also has the enthusiasm and passion for poker to recount them in depth. Here are some of the highlights of Neil's play yesterday;


HANDS THAT GO BAD


Neil saw an A 2 3 flop with 5 4 , describing how he was obviously delighted with flopping a straight. His opponent bet and Neil flat called. The next card was better , another ace , which his opponent again bet. Neil was growing happier now , pretty sure that his opponent had now trip aces to his made straight. The last card however was a 3 , pairing the board and with a bet of half his stack Neil folded. This was the first of two hands in quick succession that Neil had to throw away as the board paired , the other being two pair with Q9.


PLAYING SOFT
Neil flat called a raise in the big blind with pocket tens. He explained that he did not re-raise with this hand due to the context of the table; he had already re-raised this opponent on a few other occassions and felt there was a good chance the player would push back. Neil knew if this happened he would be forced to call and he did not want to play a big pot with tens at this stage. The flop came down 8 high and Neil surprised himself by check calling rather than check raising. He surrendered the pot on the turn to what ended up being pocket nines.


This combined with the previous hands described , left Neil pretty disgruntled. He then went on to , as he admits himself , play "way too many hands - badly". Neil realised at this stage he needed to get his focus back and saw a massage as a solution to this. He played only a couple of hands for an hour and got himself back on track.


SUCCESS STORIES


Neil had begun the session well , as reported yesterday , hitting two nicely disguised sets. His massage saw him back to his winning ways and he was particularly pleased with how he check raised all in on a Q high flop with KQ and got maximum value when he flopped trip 8's with A8. Neil finds himself relatively short stacked going into Saturday but remains upbeeat about his chances.



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