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.