Update... Monday July 2
Greetings poker fans,
It has been a while since my last email update, but I seem to have managed to find a few minutes this Monday evening to bring you the latest.
Joe Lipscomb is maintaining a steady lead of 200+ points in Oakington, ahead of a fairly evenly spread field thanks to a strong start to the season.
Meanwhile, over in Longstanton, they pattern of the league reflects the number of games played, with the only significant deviations being Chris Cormack and Dom Bradley who seem to have been unlucky.
The averages tell a slightly different story though. After 4 games Steve Symonds is in 6th with an average of just over 100 points per game, and Joe Lipscomb's average is over 106.
Will we see these two players heads up for the Championship at the end of the Summer? I wouldn't be surprised.
This week's etiquette reminder...
I think that the standard of play at both pubs is pretty darn high really. However there are a couple of things I've noticed recently that could be improved. The first is verbally stating your action. Players should state 'fold', 'call', or 'raise' before pushing in their cards or chips, and when raising, the amount raised should also be stated. Chucking your cards under the dealer chip isn't really going to cause problems, and most of the time throwing a call in won't either, but raises can often be missed if not declared, causing backtracking which slows things down a bit. The other problem I've seen recently is mis-raises and mis-calls, i.e. a player pushes in a number of chips higher than a call but lower than a legal raise. There's never been a hint of any foul play or string betting, and mistakes are inevitable and we all make them, which is why stating call or raise should be encouraged as it makes correcting any mis-call or mis-raise very easy.
The only other issue I've noted recently is to do with handling the cards when dealing. It's very easy to show the bottom card when dealing, and sometimes to show cards as they are being dealt. My number one tip for avoiding these problems is to keep whichever hand you hold the deck with in contact with the table as you deal