WED 11th OCT - UPDATE

I have been embarrassingly bad at playing since my last update. I wasted Saturday - Tuesday either getting drunk or nursing a hangover, and as I have a rule not to play whilst drunk (cost me my entire roll last summer), I haven't really put any hands in. However, I played a few tournies this afternoon/evening and had limited success in one.

NL CASH - $25NL

Hands: 648
$ won: +$31.76
Current BR: $813.34

Haven't really been focusing on my NL cash this week. Well, I haven't focused on anything. Still, guess I'm still up over a buy-in. I'll take it. Pretty sure I'm a winner at this level, and it's just a case of how long it takes me to reach the next bankroll limit to move up.

STTs - $11s

Games: 12
$ won: -$62
Current BR: $572

Only played one set again this half-week and it went pretty badly. Very short-term variance is all.

MTTs - $11s

Games: 8
$ won: $126.02
Currrent BR: $694.43

Out of the 8 MTTs played this week I moneyed in two. And in both I finished 2nd. The first of these was a partypoker.com 20 man $11 NLH. I really bullied the bubble to go from mid-chips to chip leader, but once I reached HU, my opponent and I both had around 20000 chips each. With the blinds at 800/1600, my opponent limped from the button and I checked my blind with J9o. Flop comes J93. I bet 2400 into the 3600 pot and my opponent calls. Turn is a 3 and to my surprise when we get all in he has aces. Done.

The other was a much more frustrating affair. Only 90 runners in an absolutepoker.com $2 rebuy tournament. I rebought immediately to double my chips from 2000 to 4000. I won a few pots to get upto 6000 by the end of the rebuy period. Final hand of the rebuy I have AA vs QQ pre-flop to double up and a double add-on meant that I came into the freezeout period with 16000 chips (around 10th/50 left). Was card dead for ages, and managed to hit middle set from the BB and double back up to about 20000. 13 players played and when we were down to 17, I really made my move. I went from 20000 to 58000 without showdown. Then had AK vs AK on a A63 flop and AQ vs AQ on a AQ6 flop. These hands really helped my image, and I used them to my best advantage. When we were down to 12, I was chip leader with 100K chips without ever showing down a hand. This was definitely the best I have played and felt completely in control of the whole table. Won JJ vs KJ to get into the final 9 as CL.

From here, it all went wrong. Some guy claimed that he had to leave as he had a live tournament to be at. He proceeded to go all-in every hand. 7 hands later we are down to 4. However, I managed to avoid confrontation with him until I picked up KK which held up against his 86o. A few minutes later, the psycho and I are heads-up. Considering this was only a $2 re-buy, I REALLY wanted to win it. It would have been my first win and the difference was $80 between 1st and 2nd, and I fancied that as well. However, chip counts were 200000 (me) to 400000. As he had to go, he decided to tell me his hand every single hand and then go all-in every time. And I still couldn't beat him. At one point I had 575000 chips to his 25000. However, I then make sure that everytime the money goes in I am at least a 70% favourite. 5 all-ins later, and I've proudly got myself a second. Sick.

TOTAL BR - $2079.77

I think I'm going to try and grind quite a few STTs out while I still have the chance on Party, which might only be for a few more days. Additionally, I still have one STEP 4 to play in the mini-steps which is a qualifier to a $430 buy-in STT, which would be nice to play. And the nice people at cdpoker.com have given me a free buy-in to the $250K qualifier next week. Apparently, I'm a VIP. Always good to know.

skegvegaspoker