Monday, July 24, 2006

Sunday Million

I decided to play some tournaments on Sunday as supposed to grinding it out on the limit cash tables. I have been playing pretty well and I have a decent T$ BR from satellites in the past few weeks.

I donked out of a couple of the rebuy sats early on in the day. I seem to do much better in the $3R with normal blind structures than the $11R turbo’s which are a bit of a crapshoot, even if they do offer far more seats.

Since Stars were offering a $100 50% bonus to those playing in the Million this week, I decided I needed no further excuses to play. I also got involved in the worlds biggest shared prizepool.* 15 players from the ITH forum decided to join in the pool, each donating 20% of their winnings.

The tournament took to a slow start for me and I got wrapped up in a horrible pot early on and went from my 2500 starting stack to around 1k in chips. I had an OESD and flush draw on the flop, needless to say neither hit. Just before the first break I picked up AA in MP and an AKx flop had lots of action from the two other remaining players.

Just after the break I had a rush of good hands, resulting in an all-in on the flop from TPTK when I held the nut straight. I went card dead for a while after this. I got moved 3 times in the second hour too, and started after the 2nd break with a healthy stack but desperately needing some cards.

My next big hand I doubled to about 30k with AQs after hitting a flush on the river. At this point I was sitting 10th overall with about 2700 left. I floated around in the top 30 for a while before dipping out after loosing a couple of smallish pots and some failed steals.

I was stealing quite effectively after this. My table had a few good players but I felt quite comfortable. I got moved for what would be the last time in the tournament to a much more active table. My steal attempts were sometimes getting rasied and re-raised by the time they got back to me so I tightened up a bit and picked my spots more carefully. I got up to about 40k in chips as the blinds started to get scary for most at my table. I managed to maintain my stack for a while and take advantage of a few smaller stacks after the bubble burst.

After the second money level I went absolutely card dead again and no longer had the stack to steal properly without putting myself at risk. I slowly ground down to about 25k when I got a free run with J5 in the BB. The flop Came down J89 all of hearts and I held the 5h. I raised and was re-raised all in by a big stack at the table. I had a fealing I was already beat, but if I won the hand I was back up to avg stack, and folding left me needing to push very soon.

My opponent flipped the straight, no miricale cards for me and I busted in 313/5884 for just over $700.

Not a bad showing for my first outing in the million and I’m sure it won’t be my last. I made just under a $100 contribution to the ITH pool which got to something like $350 from the 3 players that cashed.

*may not be true

Friday, July 21, 2006

Party Poker Challenge

I logged into Party the other day for the first time in a while and a message popped up offering me a $25 restricted bonus.

This type of bonus you don’t need to deposit for. They put the $25 in your account and you can use that to play on the tables with but only cash out if you play 200 raked hands.

I didn’t have anything else to do and I thought it would make a ncie change from my normal limit games.

There was another catch for me however. Due to the cash out options available to me I could cash out a minimum of $50. So my aim was to turn the $25 into $50 inside the 200 required hands and then cash out.

No time for an appropriate bankrolled game. $25, need to play raked hands, need to double my money in a short space of time and have some fun. $25 NL Time!

So I picked a half decent game from the tables available and got to work. Didn’t see a thing for about 30 hands until I got AA UTG. I raised to 3 x BB and a player in MP raised all-in for about $18 (I had about $22) I called and he flipped QJs! 2 pair for him by the turn and I’m seriously low. I decide to push next hand with JT and just over double to about $8.

By 100 raked hands played I’m up to about $14 and I pick up QQ in MP. A player in EP raises to $1 and I just call. It folds round and the two of us see the flop of KQ5. He raises to $2 and I re-raise. He thinks for ages and calls. The turn sees another 5 and he puts in his last $3 and I call seeing off his AK.

Now that I had a half decent amount I started to play more aggressively again and got to around $40 by 200 raked hands without hardly showing down a hand . I was a bit gutted that I didn’t hit the $50 mark I needed to cash out but another 20 hands did the trick and my Neteller account was just over $60 richer.

Since NL isn’t my normal game I was pretty impressed I managed this. It was good fun and I can only hope that Party try to tempt me back again with another bonus. Next time I think I’ll try my hand at Omaha .

Since I have no reason to deposit the $60 anywhere and my BR doesn’t need it, I might use it for another challenge. Suggestions are welcome!

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Fish & Chips

So, I decided to call my blog 'Fish & Chips' because I think I'm witty and clever. The name occurred to me when I was in bed this morning and after a less than extensive search on Google to see if anyone had taken the name poker-wise, (which they probably haven't) I decided it would have to stick.

It’s bloody hot here in the UK at the moment, so not too much time to play poker and other indoor activities. While I was out on a bike ride with a couple of my friends, I noticed the alarming number of people with their windows up on their cars. Now I assume this is because they spent all their hard earned cash on a car which has so many gadgets that they feel inclined to use them. I’m not talking about the people trying to have conversations with other people which would be inconvenient with the wind noise at 70 MPH, or the people sitting in traffic with no breeze. I’m Talking about the people in cars, on their own, on the open road. Please, wind your windows down and enjoy the sunshine! You might even like it.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

It's blog time!

I thought it was about time I did the whole blog thing. It seems to me like a good place to keep a random collection of thoughts for both poker and anything else I care to write about. Enjoy!