Hot Streak

In my last blog i posted my schedule of the tournements i planned to play over the last few weeks. To a large extent i was able to stick to this whilst managing to avoid to many cash game sessions at the same time. I also wrote that i would hope to either win money or learn a lot and thankfully both of these expectations came true.

ONLINE REPORT:

Very happy to tell everyone that i have had a fair bit of success in online mtt's over the last week or so. I played 7 tournements, had 2 minor cashes and 1 big pay day in the super thursday on the 14th of march. On the link below it says that i came 2nd for $4.5K but in reality it was a 3 way chop and i took home another $300 on top of this: http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/partypoker/Wendyx25/poker/results/F4DE92F9A291412A8156389C9FD4E9B4.html?t=2

The first time we discussed a deal i was actually chip leader and would have made $6K but one of the other players refused. The very next hand he gets his 10 bb's in the middle with 9 2 V my A5 and of course hits the 9 on the river to stay alive and by the time we dealt 10 minutes later we had the same size stacks which was a little frustrating.
I've saved a lot of hands from all the tournements using pokerhand.org and plan on going through them all and blogging the best/most intresting ones in the near future. I've also stuck to my plan of playing a lot of $55 turbo stt's and plan on getting to 100 and then putting the results up. At the moment i'm up a bit but running very badly in crucial coinfilps and general showdowns, i'mtrying hard to concentrate on them by not playing to many at the same time cause i really want to find out how much money i can make from sit and goes. I would certainly say that i don't enjoy them in the way that i enjoy mtt's but i think i have a long term edge and i need to see the kind of financiel return that brings.

LIVE REPORT:

Now we get to the fun stuff the good old live poker action!! I got to play all 5 of the live tournements that i was planing on participating in and i think its only fair to go through them in the correct order. First up was the £75 FO at the gutshot last wednesday. Starting stack was 4000 and i had built my stack painfully slowly to 7300 when this rather sick situation came up. Blinds were 300/600 when its folded to me in mp. The bb has a totalof 2000 chips and has told the table he is going to be all in this hand. The co and button both have 4000ish and the only player that has me covered is the sb with 10K. So anyway i look down at AQ and make it 1300 to play with the following logic, if the Co or button move in i call. If the sb moves in i cry and in an ideal world they all fold to the bb and i'm in 1 4K showdown with what will 9 times out of 10 be the best hand. Also made it 1300 so if the sb calls and the bb moves in i can re-raise isolate. Co folds, button folds, sb calls and bb CALLS! Leaving himself 700. Flop 7 5 2 with two clubs and they both fucking check! WTF! So 3900 in the pot and i have 6K left what the hell do i do? After a while i think about the sb's range and decide to shove. After about 2 minutes he calls with A8 of clubs and the bb calls with K9 so i'm in an 18K showdown with ace high and i'm in front! obviously the club hits and i go busto but even now i'm still confused by the hand. My bet pre flop is weak but i think the logic is there and my shove onthe flop is ballsy but its hard to put the sb on a hand he can call with and ace high is probs good against the bb. Any advice on this hand would be welcome and it was certainly nice for me to play a hand in tournement that could cause such confusion.
Anyway the next day i jumped on a train to Reading for the second annual Reading series of poker. Met the boys at the union about 2ish for a few games of pool before event 1 the £20 PLO, lost about £40 playing pool which is pretty standard for me tbh but the beer was flowing and we were all excited about the w/e and the inevitable stupid side bets that would follow. Event 1 was a bit dissapointing as we only managed 10 players for the PLO. Think quite a few of the guys this year are just holdem players and the people from other uni's were gonna focus on the main event. Despite some nice deep stacks it was an early exit for me with a very dissapointing 9th. Played like a drain and was feeling quite sick with the combination of beer and whisky along with the drugs i had been taking for my in-grown toenail. Made 1 very nice fold with middle set but couldn't ever make a hand when i needed to and made a shit play when i got busted bluffing into top set wooooooooops!
Thankfully was feeling much better the next day. Mike, cashy and ben decided to go and gamble it up on the golf course but Ant and i thought we would just hang out and relax in the 4 star hotel. Had a swim, sauna and a steam so by the time the next comp started at 6pm felt more than ready to defend my iho championship against a slightly larger field of 21. Despite a nice early double up witgh AK v KK all in pre flop in holdem against cashy (lol) i once again was unable to make the final table.My timing was off and even though i really wated to win i just kept getting caught bluffing and made 1 or 2 shit calls. Also i thik it's time to give some credit to a few of the boys from last year who have improved a lot. I thik a number of them have got a lot better and as much as it pains me to say it sometimes i had no idea what they had. Josh Igoe was really aggressive and even though i think he can give away a lot of info with his speech during a hand thought he palyed very well and his mate Martin has got a lot of game these days.
So it was not a good to start to the RSOP for me. I was down £30 on poker and about £80 ish on side bets. Six of us also decided to put £10 into a bet on overall player of the series with double points for the main event, I only had 4 points after two events and Ant was winning with 12 so was gonna have to get the best result of the six in the main event and hope Ant had a shocker to have a chance (thankfully this had a very good chance of happening).
Day 1 of the main event was another big dissapointment for me. I had quite a tough table draw and lost 2 big hands early with JJ v AA and then 44 having to fold on the turn on a board of 4 5 6 8. So in the 100/200 level when i finally got my last 2700 in pot with K6 v AK i thought that a very dissapointing RSOP was over for me and i could concentrate on the far more important issue of getting drunk. Six on the turn and i'm back in bussiness. Lose most of it back again over the next hour before finding myself all in again with AQ v KK for my last 3000 chips. Once again i suckout and its happy days. Finally play a hand well by trapping my opponent and getting him to bluff his stack off to me with king high against my top 2 and end the day with average stack of 18,500 with 42 of the 80 starters left to come back the next day. Saturday night was an absolute classic! About 20 people from last year were out in the union and everyone was having a good time. Drank far to much including 4 aftershocks in a row which was not a good idea. Hangover of the century and wasn't expecting a great result the next morning but things actually went very very well for me as my outrageous luck continued. First was all in with 77 v J10, i won. Then i find KK on the button and find a re-steal from the sb with Q 10 and before i know it am up to 40,000, still hungover but feeling a lot better. By the time the bubble came round was in full steamroller mode and had 120,000 playing 1000/2000 blinds. Was chipleader on the final table with 200K playing 3000/6000 blinds thanks to a lot of aggression and winning two more coinflips against shorter stacks. Was certainly nice to see 7 from Reading on the final table and by the time we were down to 5 it was just Readig left. Ended up splitting it 3 way for 900 each and playing for 100 and the title. Only managed to finish second but by the time the chop was sorted we all relaxed and started calling all in with utter filth, well done to Paul for finishing third and Steve Windsor for winning. Think they both played well all tourney and even though i feel i had a decent edge 3 handed think the cash was a big deal for them both so was more than happy to chop. Overall was very happy with the weekend, the hotel was great value and the piss up on saturday was legendary. My poker wasn't great the first 3 days but i played one hell of a final day and won a lot of big showdowns at the right time.
By the time i got back on sunday was totally exhaused and had the best sleep of my life. I was tempted to skip the the £100 at the gutshot last night but felt like i would go for one more big win. Only 23 runners but i managed to chop HU for £700, very nice!!!!!!!
Wow that is a very long blog! long story short, I LOVE POKER! Up about £4000 over the last 10 days which is way above expectation. I'm going to take a few days off poker now until sunday when will play some of the big online comps. As far as going back to being a full time poker player goes i'm doing some thinking at the moment. Certainly made a lot more money in the last 4 months playing than working but is very nice to have a guaranteed income and working at the casino is still ok. Think the best thing to do is work till the summer and then make sure i have a big enough roll not to have to worry about living expenses and rent and can focus on playing and staying fresh.