what a week

It's taken me a while to get this post up but I've got good reason for the delay, I've been playing loads and this is a fairly long one by my standards. First things first though, blogfather Iggy is back to his best with a new workplace productivity destroying post, so go take a gander after you've read this... you know you want to ! By the way, the correct method for destroying workplace productivity is to cut & paste the entire post from said blog into a "real work" application, I find Visual Basic is pretty optimal in this regard, it looks well complicated to the untrained eye, and with a quick Ctrl-Tab you can instantly switch code modules so there's no trace of bloggerdom when the boss walks by !

Ok, without further ado, here is the week that was...

I've been playing the $4 180's for more practice and because they are mega soft, I highly advise it if you're after some MTT experience. Sunday last week I played one and placed 14th, which is only $8.64 in prize money so no biggie. Wednesday I won one for a $216 prize - much nicer ;o) Hooks has started playing online in preparation for our Vegas trip and on Wednesday night I sweated him through to a 7th place finish in a $20 180, in which he played superbly. Between the two of us talking through the hands on messenger we only made 2 errors on the way to the final table and the final bust out hand was a 50-50 that I'd take any day in that spot. Well played mate.
On Thursday I was trying to qualify for the $1M guaranteed through a double-shootout. I didnt make the satellite, but finished fourth at the final table for $35.

Then it was time EuroFriendly Friday!, Wil's tourney on Stars. Blogger tourney's are massively negative expected value for me, they put me on tilt like nothing else ! I dunno why, I start off trying to make 'cool' plays, which are really dumb. Then I get short stacked and bust out to someone elses 'cool' play with the Hammer. Well this one started like any other. I donked off a few chips, got greedy with trips and allowed myself to be sucked out on and got to my usual spot of being short stacked only 30 minutes into the game. But this things went differently, I hit a pretty lucky run of hands in quick succession, doubled up a few times and before I knew it, was at the final table in a heads-up battle with another British Blogger, Zen Taff. He played a great game and we had a good heads-up battle, even with the interruption from some random guy asking for a $1. Eventually I got lucky enough to trap him with a big hand and I took down my first WWdN victory for a $148 score. In case of any of you find it useful, interesting, or just want to see how lucky I got, the full tournament summary (using JeffreyGB's very cool Tournament Trimmer) is on the previous post. Any comments / questions would be cool.

Saturday I played yet another $4 180 while at home when 'Hurricane' Dan came round. I made the Final Table and finished 5th when my KK was rivered by the chip leader's A7 sooted - another $46.80. Immediately after that we played a $20 180 and I busted just inside the money, finishing 18th for $43.20. Sunday I was in another $4 180 as a warm up to the $1M, and finished 4th for another Final Table and $57.60 :o) And then we were down to the big one, sadly no, I did not win $127,000 this weekend, which is what the 1st and 2nd place guys took in a split, but I did continue my streak of playing well and finished 886th out of 5359, 750 was the ITM spot. The hand I busted on went something like this - blinds are getting high, something like 800/400 + antes, I have an M of about 7.5, I can last a little longer but really would like some kind of hand soon. I'm in middle position and get dealt AcKc and take a deep breath. UTG+1, who only has about 1800 more chips than me raises to 3x the Big Blind, it's folded to me and I take another deep breath and push for my 7800. Everyone folds back to him and he almost instantly calls with AhQs. I stand up, screaming "Hold !" at my laptop. The flop soon shuts me up though, 4dQcQd, the turn was a blank and the river was the Ks, as if to say, nice try fella but u aint getting everything your way this time. I was a little gutted, but the first thought I have when I bust these days is "did I make a mistake?" and the second is "could I have played it any better" I hadn't so I just shrugged and got on with it. I did however keep the table open long enough to see a little karma in action - 2 hands later the same guy pushed his AK and got called by KQ, the Queens were out to play on the turn and the river this time and he was busted by an almost identical suckout to the one he'd plastered on me. That gave me a little chuckle :o)

So hey that's poker and getting a personal best in the biggest weekly tourney on the net still makes me happy cause I played well and it was a decent end to a good week. Needless to say I feel bloody great about my game right now, and can't wait for our week in Vegas in June!