My biggest cash to date

One of my favourite online tournaments has been the daily $13.k Guaranteed (formerly $11k) at Full Tilt Poker. It's a $24+2 entry fee but you can buy in with $26 tokens won through $6 or $8 two-table Sit n Gos. It's because of this, and the fact I love the structure of the tournaments at Full Tilt, that makes me like this particular tournament. The only downside is that it starts at 11pm UK time, which makes it difficult to play unless you don't have to work the following morning. If Full Tilt did an equivilant tournament starting at, say, 8 or 9pm, then I'd play these every day.

I hadn't actually played one of these for a while, but I had a couple of satellite tokens going to waste, so I thought I'd use one last night. What a good decision it turned out to be. Tonight saw a field of 647 entrants with top 63 getting paid.

I decided to play very tight and not take any chances. This tactic does leave me vulnerable to being bullied and relies on not just decent supply of good hands, but with them holding up.

There are times when you can play 'in the zone' and feel like you are getting good reads and making good decisions. This doesn't happen often with me, but last night I felt I played well and was really happy with a lot of my decisions.

The bubble seemed to approach very quickly, and I was frustrated to be card dead for a long period approaching it. But a nice double up with KJ v KT saw me make the money quite comfortably in the end, and it was then I managed to pick up hands and build up a nice stack. Hands such as AT>KJ, QQ>AK, AJ>QQ and A9>88 (when a guy tried to bluff me on an Ace high board) took me to 95k. This was with about 31 players left and I kept this lead for a very long time from here on.

But the hand of the night happened with blinds at 1500/3000. I held AA. A guy in early position raised to 6000. A short stack went all-in. I reraised all-in because I was confident the first guy also liked his hand and would join in. He duly obliged. They had KK & JJ respectively, and my aces held to take a massive pot of 220k and increase my lead even further.

I sat on my lead until the final table. Before then, there was a good loose aggressive player who was stealing a lot of blinds, and was slowly eating into my lead. He was my main threat, and I didn't want to tangle with him...not yet anyway.

We reached the final table with me still holding the chip lead, and I increased it further when I knocked out a short-stack on the 5th hand. I called his push with KJ. He held A3 and I caught my King on the river. I don't normally like calling with KJ, but I could afford to gamble on this occasion.

When we got down to 6 players, I realised that I was about to make my biggest cash since I started playing. Anything more now was a bonus. However, I had held the chip lead for ages, and I was never going to get a better opportunity to win one of these. My chances got even better when my AK outdrew JJ to take us down to 5 players.

During all this, I was on IRC with a few guys watching me and spurring me on. I had also been playing very tight whilst a couple of the more aggressive players kept raising and stealing blinds. I was worried they would overtake me. It was then that one of the 'railees', JRS, said to me that I had to start playing more aggressively. This was a wake-up call. I didn't thank him properly for this piece of advice, but I'm sure he'll read this, so once again, thanks JRS! I decided I would call more raises and try to play more flops. This worked and I was able to maintain my stack a bit better, and tell the others I wasn't going to rollover quite so easily.

The guy I was most worried about went out in 5th, and the 4th place guy gave his chips to the only other player I was worried about, who also kept making a lot of pre-flop raises and steals. The 3rd guy left had been playing well early on, but lost his nerve and just kept up a tactic of push or fold. This was probably the most difficult passage of play.

However, my hopes of a win were dashed with this cruel hand. Blinds were now at 5k/10k. Mr all-in folded, Mr serial-raiser raised to 27k. I called with J8o. Flop was 8QT, giving me bottom pair and a straight draw. Mr raiser bet 28k and I called. Turn was a beautiful 9 giving me the straight. Mr raiser bet 100k. He could have any 2 cards as he was raising so much, but top pair was most likely in my opinion. I reraised all-in for almost 350k. He called, showing the one and only hand I did not want to see, KJ for the higher straight. Only a King on the river could save me by splitting the pot. Alas it didn't come and I was down to 28k. I went out next hand.

So 3rd place for a cool $1,746. By far my best payout to date. I should be pleased, and I am pleased, but there's still that nagging feeling that it could have been the $3.8k for 1st place.

Recently I've been quite frustrated that I still hadn't improved on my biggest cash of $530 which occurred over 2 years ago, yet I'm a much better player than I was then. It's quite a relief that I've finally got a result that I was sure I was capable of. Let's hope I don't have to wait another 2 years before the next one.

APAT Season 2 - 1st leg

Season 2 of the APAT tournaments got underway this weekend with a new structure. Instead of several large oversubscribed tournaments around the country, APAT decided to have regional events where you can pick up ranking points and the top 10% of each one goes through to regular National tournaments.

I played the first of these regional events at the Grosvenor Victoria casino ("The Vic") in Edgware Road. I went along with Farzad from work and also met 2 of his cousins.

I was a bit disappointed that only 48 players entered. This meant that whilst the top 9 got ranking points, only the top 5 got paid prize money, including an automatic entry to the next national event. The change of structure also meant that we only had 3000 starting chips (instead of 10,000) and half hour blind levels. This meant a much faster structure.

I got off to a bad start losing about a third of my stack early on. A loose young guy limped in early position and I called with 65 both spades. I think we got another caller and the big blind checked. The flop was a nice 9d 8h 5d, and the turn was even better with 7d giving me a straight. Unfortunately there was a possible flush out there with 3 diamonds. I bet 500 (which was about the size of the pot). The young guy had check/called (the others folded on the flop). A jack on the river was even scarier as it also gave a higher straight if the guy had a ten. This time he bet 1200 which was about half my remaining stack. I folded. There was just too much beating me out there.

I managed to get my chips back later when I doubled up with QQ against JJ. A couple more small pots left me at 4100 at the first break.

After the break, another table broke up and 2 guys of contrasting styles moved to my right and made my life difficult. The first guy was a young Indian guy who was fairly aggressive raising first in whenever he could. The guy next to him, and to my immediate right was a poor player who was annoying to play against. Basically if playing first, he'd limp in, but call a lot of raises before him. He particularly liked doing this with weak aces. He would also call a lot of all-ins with bottom or middle pair. The trouble is most of the players who did this against him were either doing bluffs or on draws, so he'd win these pots. The reason it was difficult to play them is because if I wanted to make a move, I only wanted to do it against one of them, not both. The first guy would almost certainly fold to a reraise, the other definitely wouldn't, but I didn't get any strong hands to capitalise on this.

Fortunately our table eventually broke, but I was getting short. I managed to double up with AQ against TT, get a load of limpers to fold when I pushed AK in the big blind, stole a couple of pots and got blinds with pushes with AJ & KQ. Then the poor player got moved to my right again. I lost some chips when I played a hand badly against him considering my knowledge of him. I was on the button with 77. It was folded to him, and he limped as usual. I raised to 2400 (3 times the blinds at the time) and he obviously called. Flop was AJx and he pushed. I turned to him and said "playing your ace-crap again?", and folded. I was kicking myself, I should have just called.

I then got moved again as we were down to final 2 tables. I was struggling again and getting blinded away as I couldn't get a hand. Then down to about 3500 with blinds at 600/1200, I was in the big blind. All folded to small blind who pushed. I look down to see a delightful looking pair of kings. I call and hold against here A5.

I hold onto the final table and seats are redrawn. I am still the short-stack. A few hands into the final table, everyone has folded to me and I see KT both clubs. This is a good enough hand for me, so I push. Guy to my left also pushes but I'm pleased to see he has 99. I'll settle for a coinflip. Unfortunately, the board is all low cards with no clubs and I'm out in 9th.

It was a strange tournament as I never seem to have a workable stack to play with. I always seem to battling against the blinds all the time. I'm therefore pleased to get to the final table, although I got nothing from it...apart from 1 ranking point.

I am definitely preferring live play to online. For some reason I play much better. I think it's because I have more time to think. I'm not very good at reading players yet, but that will come over time. I'm going to play more of these this season as I do enjoy them.