The million gtd

Last night, after sitting in the garden all afternoon getting sunburnt while playing on the wireless laptop, I decided to deposit money in a poker account for the first time in 8 months. This was to allow myself to play in the $1m gtd without damaging my bankroll any further… and besides it's payday tomorrow and with the exchange rate so good at the moment it only costs £110 to buyin to the $215 event. After 4 hours of solid, but to be honest too tight play, I busted 50 away from the money. Eight-hundred and something out of six thousand folks. It was a tough tournament for me, I got some good hands in the first hour which got my stack up to just above average at the break, I made a mistake with trip tens, winning fewer chips than I should have but otherwise it was fine. In the second hour I got moved to a pretty donkish table, but had few good opportunities, or was too distant to notice when they came my way so I just maintained my stack. In the third hour I twice failed to make the right move when my instincts told me to do so, playing scared instead of well. I was so lost in one hand that actually let a guy beat me with 7 high in a showdown because I bottled my river bet even though I knew he hadn't hit! That left me pushing my 4 BB's I had left with KJo into an equally short stacked BB who had no option but to call with 10-8. An 8 popped up on the turn to leave me crippled with just 7 chips left and out of the tournament on the next hand.

The really frustrating part of this is knowing that I could have played better. If I had been more focused on tourney style, as I was before I went to Vegas, I'd be trusting my instincts still and would have had a healthy stack in the 3rd and 4th hour. Unfortunately because I've been playing so much NL cash the last two weeks I was in cash game tight mode, getting a bad run of cards for 2 hours in a cash game is virtually a non-issue. In a tourney if you aren't focussed on how everyone else at your table is playing it means a slow, painful death.

So I'm quite frustrated today, and can't decide whether to play a cheap 180 tonight or carry on at the cash games, which I'm beating at the moment, but poker is pretty boring on the cash tables whereas the tourneys really fascinate me and give me a bigger sense of achievement. Speaking of tourneys, the wsop main event starts this Friday, so you should be reading the Tao of Poker.