Amateur Poker Association & Tour
Poker Forum => General Discussion => Topic started by: lukybugur on September 06, 2008, 08:51:17 AM
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Having won the first of the six InsidePoker Freerolls back on January 10th and the prize of VIP Trip to London and personal Poker Training from Annette Oberstad in the WSOPE Training Camp, I have eventually received the phone calls and emails I"ve been long awaiting. After much to-ing and fro-ing and general stubbornness regarding my expenses, I"ve managed to get them to agree to reimburse me for the full £132 flights.
So, if anyone is interested, my itinerary reads;
Wednesday 17th September 2008
Flight Glasgow leaving 11am > Heathrow arriving 12:25pm
Tube to Hammersmith where I"ll be met by Estelle at Hammersmith Tube Station for the short walk to the BetFair offices.
Whenever I get there "til 13:30 - An informal buffet lunch
13:30 til 18:00 - "Exclusive tuition for both Single and Multi Table Tournament strategy from the reigning WSOPE Champion herself" and "a Single Table Tournament along with the other five winners" ($1,000 Winner Takes All)
Wed Night - Dinner with Annette (she"s been roped into this apparently as it"s being billed as a dinner to celebrate her last full day as a teenager).
More drinks and a night out on "a substantial drinks allowance". I"ll be quite happy if they want to live it up with the Pros in the WSOPE Lounge if such a place exists :)
One nights accommodation in the 4 star Novotel Hotel a short walk away.
Thursday 18th September 2008
Flight Heathrow leaving 13:05 to Glasgow arriving 14:35
Wish me luck! And if there"s anything anyone would like me to ask / thinks I should ask the Norwegian Millionairess and current WSOPE Champ, feel free to post it on here.
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Ask her how to play AJ ??? :D
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Good luck with it mate. Can"t wait to read a write up of the day, if the drink doesn"t make you forget. ;)
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Ask her does she need a boyfriend. :D
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Not jealous. At all. Much.
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Ask here what she"s doing Friday?
Have a great time M8 8)
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Ask her how to play AJ ??? :D
You don't need to ask her, I will tell you ;)
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Wow Neil, sounds like a great day. I hope you have a good time and get a lot out of it.
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Have a great time Neil.I hope you dont learn to much from Annette or the rest of us wont stand a chanced at the regional"s. :D
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ask her why she likes playing raggy suited sevens 74s 73s 72s
if you have seen a lot of her mtt replays on PXF you"ll notice she has a thing for them..
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Have a great time Neil.I hope you dont learn to much from Annette or the rest of us wont stand a chanced at the regional"s. :D
It"s a day with her, I"m not turning INTO her!
Ask her does she need a boyfriend. :D
Colin fancies you, OK, got it.
Ask here what she"s doing Friday?
Have a great time M8 8)
lol, erm ... I think I might already know the answer to that one :) Thanks.
ask her why she likes playing raggy suited sevens 74s 73s 72s
if you have seen a lot of her mtt replays on PXF you"ll notice she has a thing for them..
I have noticed that and I will do!
Keep them coming. I"m quite shy around girls so if I get stuck in a corner with her, it"d be good to be armed with some diamond APAT chat to break the ice :D
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it"d be good to be armed with some diamond APAT chat to break the ice :D
Why didn"t you say so.
You can discuss the merits of ginger nuts over jammie dodgers, or discuss how difficult it is to get a drink out of Des, or
Ask her if she knows when season 3 will start. ;D
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make sure u wear your apat t-shirt, and take down the $1000 STT! hope u have a great time ;D
as an ice breaker, why dont you ask if she will pay u into this years wsope?.....worth a try!
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You can discuss the merits of ginger nuts over jammie dodgers
Oh yeah, I forgot that this was an example of the kind of chat I was dealing with on here. Maybe I"d be better off on my own after all.
make sure u wear your apat t-shirt, and take down the $1000 STT! hope u have a great time ;D
as an ice breaker, why dont you ask if she will pay u into this years wsope?.....worth a try!
APAT shirt WILL be worn and when I take down the STT I"m pretty sure Annette"ll approach me of her own accord offering to sub me into the ME ;)
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Good luck Neil, have a great time. Isn"t she too young to be giving out advice ;D
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Ask her how to play AJ ??? :D
You don't need to ask her, I will tell you ;)
I was hoping to improve, not get worse ;)
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Have a great time Neil.I hope you dont learn to much from Annette or the rest of us wont stand a chanced at the regional"s. :D
Have you been thinking about giving up the drink Mickey???
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I was wondering when this was taking place.Thought it was last month.
Hope you have a great time mate and take some piccies if you can. :)
If only my aces had held up it could have been me,"sigh" ::)
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Oh aye, that"s right. The mighty A4 taking out your AA AIPF - LOL
I"ll be sure to get photos.
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Here"s to having a great experience Neil. Take your pad and jot down those all important gems she will dole out. just enjoy, then bring home the $1000.
See you soon
Paul
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Tomorrow I"ll be leaving for the big shmoke that is London. I have just had the following email from Estelle at BetFair ...
I hope you are all looking forward to annettes tutorial tomorrow as much as we are so onto the plan.
Plan for the day:
1.00 collection from novatel to betfair offices
1.00 to 1.30 arrive betfair HQ
1.30pm buffet
2.00pm tuition followed by game
6.00pm drinks and meal at fire station.
I"m hoping that the night won"t end there so if you know of a poker club nearby where I can try out the new "skills" I"m going to learn, I"d appreciate a heads-up on where nearby is good for < £100 Tourneys / where other APATers play on a Wednesday night.
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Sounds good neil, have a fantastic time.
Kenny
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Have a good time and lets see you take the £1 k
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6.00pm drinks and meal at fire station
they couldn"t afford a restaurant then??
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6.00pm drinks and meal at fire station
they couldn"t afford a restaurant then??
Hot curry with extended precautions ::)
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How"d it go?
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Still typin it up ... patience my friend ...
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Could you type a bit quicker ;)
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Are you writing a novel?
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Still typin it up ... patience my friend ...
Its aight... we dont really need a pop up book uknow! :D
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I reckon he"s copped off with Annette!
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:D he"s a slow typer could be next week (kidding Neil lol). Will be interesting tho once ya read it ;)
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I reckon he"s copped off with Annette!
maybe thats why the pop up book is taking soo long! Cant get an accurate artistic impression of the cop"in off via the pop up bhook????
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I suggest we give him until 8pm, then I"m deleting the thread and we"ll all pretend it never happened. ::)
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Right right ... haud yer horses.
First off, I haven"t kopped off with Annette (truly not my type!). I"m watchin the Ryder Cup, fixing a couple of laptops and watchin MasterChef Final - I"m a busy man!
The main reason that it"s taking so long to report on the Annette trip is that I feel have to be careful how I word my critisisms of BetFair of which there are a few. I"ll hopefully have it finished and up on here by tomorrow morning.
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Right right ... haud yer horses.
First off, I haven"t kopped off with Annette (truly not my type!). I"m watchin the Ryder Cup, fixing a couple of laptops and watchin MasterChef Final - I"m a busy man!
The main reason that it"s taking so long to report on the Annette trip is that I feel have to be careful how I word my critisisms of BetFair of which there are a few. I"ll hopefully have it finished and up on here by tomorrow morning.
I like the building up of anticipation. Are you sure it wasn"t a training camp hosted by Mr D Duffy instead ?
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Right right ... haud yer horses.
First off, I haven"t kopped off with Annette (truly not my type!). I"m watchin the Ryder Cup, fixing a couple of laptops and watchin MasterChef Final - I"m a busy man!
The main reason that it"s taking so long to report on the Annette trip is that I feel have to be careful how I word my critisisms of BetFair of which there are a few. I"ll hopefully have it finished and up on here by tomorrow morning.
I like the building up of anticipation. Are you sure it wasn"t a training camp hosted by Mr D Duffy instead ?
Nah if he had he would not have been specific with a day (although thinking about it tomorrow never comes)
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Was a typo...........he turned up and all he saw was Annette Curtain
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Well ...
I started typing this when I returned home but due to some critisisms I have of BetFair I have delayed the publishing of this to make sure I"m not being unfair in all I"m going to say.
I have just arrived home from my day at BetFair offices for the Annette_15 Training day. For those of you who just want to know if it was a profitable trip, I"ll start by telling you that I did cash in the $1,000 SnG after cutting a deal with winner Nick when I had 10.5k to his 15.5k - just one hand before I shoved with K4o with an M of 6. I brought home £170 and Nick (given the current exchange rate), took home £230 from the deal and the remaining £150 from the prize pool.
Right from the start and with Matt, Leo and Annette from BetFair all playing with Bounties on their heads, it was clear to see that each of the other 4 guys were gonna be happy to fold their way to the money. I had no intention of doing likewise so stepped it up even from my normal LAG game to something bordering on maniac / suicidal. I was showing T3o and Q6o type hands that I was raising from early positions to try to entice some action but still no one would play back at me. I took an early lead when I took Leo out with JTs UTG after he"d re-raised me pre-flop. The flop came a magical 789 and with 57o (yeah, seriously!) he shoved from the BB. Easy call and an easy bounty of a WSOPE BetFair ChipSet. It begs the question; Did having three players in the game who had nothing to lose ruin / lessen the experience a bit ... ? Somewhat, yes.
I continued to push my stack around and had a healthy lead by the time it got to push-fold poker and my card-dead period. Saif and Alan went out quite shortly after each other and by that time Matt sitting to my left, had started to push over my 3xBB raises forcing me to fold.
I was the best player of the five winners IMO and deserved to take it down but Nick, who took out Annette after she pushed with AQs and he woke up with QQ, and who doubled up through Steve (a Punter"s Lounger) when he caught him making a play at the pot with a weak A2o type hand. To finish Steve off, Nick pushed OTT from the SB with K9o I think it was to force me and my 44 out. Only after a lengthy consideration I did reluctantly fold face up - you know that way when you just KNOW you"re gonna hit??? And true to form, although folding was clearly the correct play, the 4 came on the turn - even without it I would have had Steve out and Nick crippled!
So that"s the story of the cards ... now onto the trip as a whole ...
We were advised that InsidePoker may request a phone interview with us so I thought it would advantageous to get my thoughts down on screen first so that I don"t miss anything.
Starting with the lack of contact from both BetFair / InsidePoker which I"m sure you"re fed up reading about now, I and the others remained very unimpressed. And the same could be said for the hassles about the expenses situation that wasted hours of our days leading up to the day we were supposed to be looking forward to.
Please let me reference again how this Prize was advertised both in the magazine and in subsequent emails sent between 3rd and 15th September;
A VIP trip to London
including Travel and Accommodation (residents of UK and ROI only)
personal tuition from Annette
on STT and MTT strategies
in Annette"s pre-WSOPE Training Camp
Collection from Novatel to BetFair offices
given a buffet lunch
then we"ll play in an exclusive $1,000 SNG
be taken for drinks and meal at "Fire Station"
and we would be "well looked after" throughout
Right, I"ll start at the start ...
"A VIP trip to London"
Budget Airline and underground (booked myself) and a 10 minute walk (no escort) to Novatel Hotel. I text Estelle from the Underground to ask if she would still be able to meet me at the station. Aparently they were short staffed so I had to make my own way there.
"including travel and accommodation"
BetFair"s first email denied us this, then after each of us emailed Alun Bowden of IP, £50 per person was offered, more emails back and forth before my full £150 was eventually OK"d. Hotel couldn"t confirm our reservation when we called on the night of 15th as it hadn"t been booked until 16th - just 24 hours before.
"personal tuition from Annette"
"on STT and MTT strategies"
Our tuition took the form of a 5 man no-one-goes-out Sit"n"Go with Annette dealing. Our cards would be kept in front of us until each hand was finished and Annette would disect them and comment on our play. As each of the other winners appeared "scared" to get their chips in - 88 was folded after a flat call, A8s was folded on the button after it had been checked round - it would be fair to say that such tight play didn"t make me feel as if I learnt as much as I wanted or expected to.
"in Annette"s pre-WSOPE Training Camp"
Erm ... this was a hallway in the BetFair offices
"collection from Novatel to BetFair offices"
A 10 minute walk for the three of us who met in the Hotel lobby with Leo the BetFair rep.
"a buffet lunch"
Laid out was a tray of sandwiches, 6 packs of crisps, a small selection of fruit, a dish of cold chips and some bottles of juice
"playing in an exclusive $1,000 Sit"n"Go"
Some of the guys had expected this to be a $1k Buy-In Event (a winner take all prize of $6k) given that 2nd to 9th places in the Freeroll got a $212 Token into Annette"s 20k GTD Tourney. I read it corectly in that it would be a $1k prize but having re-read the adverts, I can see how they got confused. Some were MOST upset hearing this.
"Drinks and meal at Fire Station"
"we"d be well looked after throughout"
Fire Station was closed for refurbishment so "Pizza Express" was booked. For someone who doesn"t eat cheese, this was far from a welcomed change. Not being told about it until 90 seconds before we walked through PE"s front door was pretty pish. I had taken the time to research the Fire Station online and knew that finding something without cheese wouldn"t be a problem. Not so in a Pizza and Pasta only joint :( In fairness, the pasta dish that I had specially made was very acceptable and within the hour we were there, we each had about two drinks. With all that was going on with WSOPE and in the personal lives of Matt and Leo, they excused themselves from the rest of the night"s action and said goodbye at 8:30pm after pointing us in the direction of a pub where we could watch the footy.
Annette herself was very pleasant and exactly as I had expected her to be. If you like her from what you know of her from TV / YouTube / PokerPlayer Mag whatever, it"s fair to say that you would like her if you met her. If you"re adverse to the various reported outbursts directed at Marc Goodwin, Isabelle Mercier etc., you probably wouldn"t. I liked her and it had nothing to do with being invited to her 20th birthday party and being on the same guest list as Phil Hellmuth, Layne Flack, Vicky Coren and Sorel Mizzi - she didn"t mess about, took her role as trainer seriously enough in that she didn"t suffer the idiotic plays of the BetFair staff lightly; "**** off if you"re not going to take this seriously" she told Matt during training when he decided to donk around. I think we all considered the invite a very kind gesture indeed seeing as we had only "known her" for about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, as I had already booked my return flight etc., as the hotel was going to cost me £140 for the extra night and as Julia was having a rough Wednesday with HBOS announcing that they"d be axing 40,000 jobs, I quite happily returned home as planned.
It"s now Saturday morning and I haven"t received my £170 prize or £150 expenses in my BetFair account yet. All things considered, I suspect I"ll be having to badger them for this pretty shortly. And when my BetFair WSOPE chips arrive, I"ll give some of yez a shout for a home game to show them and my new skillz off.
:)
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Sounds like a, erm, great (?) experience...
So you never summed it up - was it worth all the hassle in the end & did you enjoy yourself on the whole? Unlucky that you couldn"t attend her birthday party... I"m not a massive Annette fan but it sounds like she was the only party acting in a professional manner.
Cheers for taking time to write everything up & well done on the cash!
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"Pizza Express" was booked. For someone who doesn"t eat cheese, this was far from a welcomed change.
:D - This bit made me laugh out loud!
Nice write up - worth waiting for. Good luck getting your money out of them.
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And when my BetFair WSOPE chips arrive, I"ll give some of yez a shout for a home game to show them and my new skillz off.
Pick me, pick me..... 8)
great post mate, its good to get ur honest opinion of it all. shame it wasn"t all you hoped it would be but at least you came back in profit. which in itself must have made it worthwhie.
do you feel you learned anything from the tuition?
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Looking at the bright side, you"ve at least got a story to tell in the future, and a few quid (hopefully) :)
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sounds a bit disapointing but good showing in the sng, would have been cool at the party.
kenny
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A well written account of your day. Shame it didnt quite live up to its billing though.
Give me a shout if you need those chips broken in too ;)
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Thanks Folks. Good to have a few names for the Home Game even if you are just using me for my shiny new chips ;)
So you never summed it up - was it worth all the hassle in the end & did you enjoy yourself on the whole? Unlucky that you couldn"t attend her birthday party... I"m not a massive Annette fan but it sounds like she was the only party acting in a professional manner.
I did enjoy certain parts of it and I always enjoy live poker.
Would I enter the Freerolls if they run them again next year? No.
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I"d get Trading Standards and DTI on to that mob for their false advertising :D :D
Hope it was still a worthwhile trip for you Neil. A unique experience all the same 8)
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Fair play to you for the honest summary of it all and thanks for taking the time to write it.
Would I enter the Freerolls if they run them again next year? No.
Does this also include the passworded satilite freerolls into the better live events?
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.............given that 2nd to 9th places in the Freeroll got a $212 Token into Annette"s 20k GTD Tourney
Would I enter the Freerolls if they run them again next year? No.
Nice piece, really enjoyed reading it. After all that hassle and the fact that Betfair were only putting up $1k for the STT in prize money the preference would have been to take 2-9 places - at least that would have given you the chance to win a nicer sum of money.
VIP trip to London....... booking your own flights, sandwich buffet and a pizza, and then to put you in a Novatel..... :o mmmmmm wonder what Betfair classes as "a budget trip"? ::) Not good advertisement for Betfair.
At least for all her young years Annette sounded like she was a nice person to meet :)
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Such kind words of support. Many thanks to all who have bothered to read.
Would I enter the Freerolls if they run them again next year? No.
Does this also include the passworded satilite freerolls into the better live events?
I"m sure I"ll still play some even if they"re on BetFair. My biggest wins have been in Freerolls and as I"ve busto"d my bankroll and as APAT S2 is over, freerolls may be ALL I play for the next wee while :)
Hope it was still a worthwhile trip for you Neil. A unique experience all the same 8)
It was a unique experience and one I won"t forget. Imagine having Annette dealing at your home game - that"s how special / strange it felt at times 8)
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Well done Neil and thanks for your time filling us in. I think you are deserving of a lot lot more.
P.S. I probably won"t be able to make your home game though ;D
Still. I"ll await my invite :-*
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Imagine having Annette
I did enjoy certain parts
It was a unique experience and one I won"t forget
that"s how special / strange it felt at times
Mmmmmmmmmmm..... would you care to explain further before I give Julia a call :-)
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Explain further? I take it the 8 lengthy paragraphs wasn"t enough for you ... ? Geez, you just cannae please some folk :-\ I"ll make sure you get the extended version when you"re over for dinner next.
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wow just looking at this thread again Neil, my comment could read indifferent. You are deserving of more, re: more from betfair is the point i was trying to make. A great ambassador for Apat in short. Hope this helps to clarify my undying love for you. Err umm? Admiration......No wait liking?? Oh hate then(he protesteth tooooo much)
Anyway, you get my drift, well done again m8y.
Paul
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Get a room :D
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11:54, Friday night, declaring love for me ...
You reckon there was any blood in his alcohol stream?
Right back at ya Paul :-*
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Don"t encourage him Neil, he"s a lousy kisser anyway :D