First off, I would like to apologize for not updating this the last two weeks. I really don't have a good excuse, I was just being a slacker. Now on to the good stuff, or bad stuff actually.
After my short break from poker to get my head straight after the last big tournament, I have been playing more the last week with some moderate success. My real job keeps getting in the way of all my poker fun, but last night was the big monthly tournament. We had 42 players at $500 each, so the pot was rather nice, and first place was over $8500.
I start off with a couple bad beat and get short stacked early, but make a nice comeback with back to back hands of AdJd. The irony of it all is that I have been knocked out of more tournaments with AJ than any other hand (or at least that is how I seem to remember it). We get down to 11 players and I am under average stack, but still not in desperation mode when I get 3d3c in middle position. We are at 400/800 with 75 ante and I have about 10K in chips. There is one caller in front of me. I call. Two callers behind. SB fold and BB checks.
Flop is 6c4c3s. BB goes all in and has me barely covered. Fold. I actually stress out for a minute about my call because of the possible flush draw, and the possibility that he might have 74 in the BB. I do eventually call. Fold. Fold. He shows Qs6d, and immediately starts counting out how much he has to pay me out. As you can probably guess from the title of this blog, he had a 1.92% chance to win the hand. Since this gets us to the final table, we have a crowd of about 30 people watching the hand. Turn is 4h. River 6s.
Obviously I was in shock and disbelief. I did handle it about as well as you can possibly handle a beat like that. Since it is the tournament I run, I then had to consolidate to the final table and then distribute the cash prizes. It was difficult to go from devastated tournament player to courteous tournament director, but luckily I have some good friends who helped with the transition. Everyone was very supportive and apologetic, especially my friend who actually won the hand. Unfortunately, you cant cash supportive and apologetic chips.
I still had a great time, but $8500 would have been much more fun. I promise to update this every Friday from now one.
Good Luck!
Martin
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Burnout?
As you may know from my last update, I had my big tournament a week ago. I kept a positive attitude the whole way, but still went out around 23rd with 54 entries. I went card dead for almost 2 hours. I bled from 13K in chips to 5K in chips before I pushed on the button with K5 and hoping to take down the blinds. Both called and the SB knocked us both out with A4.
I really wasnt that upset. It was a fun tournament, and I just could get rolling. After that, I decided to play in a side cash game. I went down 2 buy ins immediately and began to get frustrated. I then made a huge turn around and built up my stack to 8 buy ins before disaster set in. I lost 6 hands in a row that busted me out and another buy in. All 6 hands, I flopped the nuts, got all the money in on the turn, and my opponent sucked out on the river.
At this point, I was extremely frustrated and upset. I left the place with such a bad attitude that I decided it was time for a break from cards. I was getting wrapped up in trying to force good things to happen, and that is usually when it all falls apart. I really think I burned myself out that night. So I have pretty much taken the week off, but more like a golfer takes off. I still played a couple of small cash games this week, but only sat down for a total of 3.5 hours. I made $200 combined sessions and was happy to go do something else. I will probably get back on the train in a week, but I do have a $14K freeroll to play in this Saturday. I am playing for a friend, so we get to split the winnings. Wish me luck!
I really wasnt that upset. It was a fun tournament, and I just could get rolling. After that, I decided to play in a side cash game. I went down 2 buy ins immediately and began to get frustrated. I then made a huge turn around and built up my stack to 8 buy ins before disaster set in. I lost 6 hands in a row that busted me out and another buy in. All 6 hands, I flopped the nuts, got all the money in on the turn, and my opponent sucked out on the river.
At this point, I was extremely frustrated and upset. I left the place with such a bad attitude that I decided it was time for a break from cards. I was getting wrapped up in trying to force good things to happen, and that is usually when it all falls apart. I really think I burned myself out that night. So I have pretty much taken the week off, but more like a golfer takes off. I still played a couple of small cash games this week, but only sat down for a total of 3.5 hours. I made $200 combined sessions and was happy to go do something else. I will probably get back on the train in a week, but I do have a $14K freeroll to play in this Saturday. I am playing for a friend, so we get to split the winnings. Wish me luck!
Thursday, August 2, 2007
My favorite day of the month
GCP has asked me to make my regular updates to my blog on Thursdays. It just so happens that this coincides with my favorite day of the month this month. Once a month, I run a very large poker tournament in Austin. It used to be over 200 people at $100 buy in with $100 rebuys for the first hour. It was great, but just got to be too large to manage without compensation. (it is illegal to make money operating a poker game in Texas. Stupid law, but that will be a topic for a future post.)
Anyway, I started these up again 3 months ago but with a much larger buy in to thin the field a little, and Thursday, August 2nd, is the next one. The format is $300 buy in, with unlimited $300 rebuys for the first 2 levels (40 minutes each) with a single $300 add on. The tournament is capped at 50 people and should be full. I finished 2nd in a small $300 buy in on Tuesday, so I am ready for this one. I will post my results Friday or Saturday, and I will try and remember a few key hands for your critique, but for now, I want to talk about what I will call "tournament anticipation."
I am sure everyone gets this, but I am convinced that this is what keeps me coming back and spending insane amounts of money to enter tournaments. I don't think there is a better feeling in poker than knowing you are about to participate in an event that could pay off a great deal of money. Everyone walks in the room, absolutely sure that they are destined to win. Once you get started, every win reinforces that feeling, and every loss forces you to dig deep to believe that you will overcome that drop in chips to win in the end.
What I have noticed playing many tournaments is that when that 'invincible' feeling starts to fade, that is when I lose. Although I am just beginning to analyze the effect of this feeling on the game, I really believe that maintaining that feeling is a key factor in winning tournaments. It isn't that I believe that emotions can control the cards that come, but I believe that your beliefs and emotions can project tells to your opponents, thus making the feeling a self fulfilling proficy.
For example, in the tournament on Tuesday when I finished 2nd, I had that feeling I was going to win all the way until we got heads up. Suddenly, I just started to 'feel' that I was going to lose. From that point, all the decisions I made were wrong. The odd thing was, the entire final table, I was hoping to get heads up with this guy, because I thought he would be the easiest to beat. He did get a crazy run of cards (KK five times heads up), but I should have been able to overcome that.
Tomorrow, I will focus on maintaining those positive thoughts and see where it takes me.
Anyway, I started these up again 3 months ago but with a much larger buy in to thin the field a little, and Thursday, August 2nd, is the next one. The format is $300 buy in, with unlimited $300 rebuys for the first 2 levels (40 minutes each) with a single $300 add on. The tournament is capped at 50 people and should be full. I finished 2nd in a small $300 buy in on Tuesday, so I am ready for this one. I will post my results Friday or Saturday, and I will try and remember a few key hands for your critique, but for now, I want to talk about what I will call "tournament anticipation."
I am sure everyone gets this, but I am convinced that this is what keeps me coming back and spending insane amounts of money to enter tournaments. I don't think there is a better feeling in poker than knowing you are about to participate in an event that could pay off a great deal of money. Everyone walks in the room, absolutely sure that they are destined to win. Once you get started, every win reinforces that feeling, and every loss forces you to dig deep to believe that you will overcome that drop in chips to win in the end.
What I have noticed playing many tournaments is that when that 'invincible' feeling starts to fade, that is when I lose. Although I am just beginning to analyze the effect of this feeling on the game, I really believe that maintaining that feeling is a key factor in winning tournaments. It isn't that I believe that emotions can control the cards that come, but I believe that your beliefs and emotions can project tells to your opponents, thus making the feeling a self fulfilling proficy.
For example, in the tournament on Tuesday when I finished 2nd, I had that feeling I was going to win all the way until we got heads up. Suddenly, I just started to 'feel' that I was going to lose. From that point, all the decisions I made were wrong. The odd thing was, the entire final table, I was hoping to get heads up with this guy, because I thought he would be the easiest to beat. He did get a crazy run of cards (KK five times heads up), but I should have been able to overcome that.
Tomorrow, I will focus on maintaining those positive thoughts and see where it takes me.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Online Poker Tournaments - Disconnect!!!!
Since I decided to start blogging for Gulfcoastpoker.net, I thought I should start playing online poker again. I pretty much stopped playing online in October and just stick to live games. However, since there are many online players out there, and you can find nice sized tournaments, I thought I would get back into it. I traded a friend $80 to transfer me some money on Full Tilt and got started. Since $80 isnt much of a bankroll, especially for tournaments, I started playing Omaha hi/low cash games to build up a small bankroll. After a couple days, I got up to over $300, so I decided to start in on the tournaments.
Tournament 1: Min cashed in the $24+2 multi-rebuy.
Tournament 2: Made it fairly deep in a $69+6 freeze out, but lost with QQ vs TJ
Tournament 3: This was last night in the $150+13, $50K guaranteed at Full Tilt, and the main subject of my blog today. I happened to be tiling my kitchen while playing, so I missed quite a few hands early, and I got my laptop pretty dirty. I started out very strong and built up a nice chip stack and made it as high as 2nd in chips overall. For the first 2.5 hours, I maintained a position somewhere in the top 5 overall. Cards were running over me, and I was using my stack to push people around. Then I get AA under the gun and make a 3X raise. The big blind makes a call with ThJh. The flop is 6h7hJc. He bets about 1/2 the pot, and I raise 3X his bet. He moves all in, and I call. He catches a heart on the river to cut my stack in half.
I managed to rebuild and make it into the money. We are down to 4 tables when my internet connection craps out. I was short stacked and was about to get the BB blind, so I panicked and tried to get it to reconnect. By the time I did, I was under the gun again and down to almost nothing. I went out on my small blind with A2 vs AK. Needless to say, I wanted to throw my computer through the window. I spent 5 hours to go out because of a technical failure. I dont mind losing because of bad luck or bad play, but losing because I cant access the tournament to make a decision feels like the worst beat in poker. I have taken runner runner suckouts better than this.
So keep those modems in good condition and give yourself a backup when big money is on the line.
Tournament 1: Min cashed in the $24+2 multi-rebuy.
Tournament 2: Made it fairly deep in a $69+6 freeze out, but lost with QQ vs TJ
Tournament 3: This was last night in the $150+13, $50K guaranteed at Full Tilt, and the main subject of my blog today. I happened to be tiling my kitchen while playing, so I missed quite a few hands early, and I got my laptop pretty dirty. I started out very strong and built up a nice chip stack and made it as high as 2nd in chips overall. For the first 2.5 hours, I maintained a position somewhere in the top 5 overall. Cards were running over me, and I was using my stack to push people around. Then I get AA under the gun and make a 3X raise. The big blind makes a call with ThJh. The flop is 6h7hJc. He bets about 1/2 the pot, and I raise 3X his bet. He moves all in, and I call. He catches a heart on the river to cut my stack in half.
I managed to rebuild and make it into the money. We are down to 4 tables when my internet connection craps out. I was short stacked and was about to get the BB blind, so I panicked and tried to get it to reconnect. By the time I did, I was under the gun again and down to almost nothing. I went out on my small blind with A2 vs AK. Needless to say, I wanted to throw my computer through the window. I spent 5 hours to go out because of a technical failure. I dont mind losing because of bad luck or bad play, but losing because I cant access the tournament to make a decision feels like the worst beat in poker. I have taken runner runner suckouts better than this.
So keep those modems in good condition and give yourself a backup when big money is on the line.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
My first blog entry
Since this is my first blog entry, I am assuming that it will get little attention. It will be nice to get my feet wet on this without a large audience. This will also give you a little background on my poker experience.
I was first introduced to poker sometime in grade school. I used to play different games with my friends for pennies. We stepped it up in high school where we would play pot matching games and it wasn't unusual to win or lose $100. That was a lot of money for some 15 year old kids. After the 2002 WSOP main event, I really started to get into Texas Hold'em. We changed our dealer's choice game to hold'em tournaments, and my quest for bigger and better poker began.
After playing at least 20 hours a week online, I got with a group of investors and started an online poker site called www.letspoker.com. Unfortunately, that site didn't make it, but it was a great experience, and we built some really great software. During that time through today, I have played in many large casino tournaments, including 9 wsop events and have 6 cashes that qualify for pokerpages rankings. I hope to dedicate more time to playing in large tournaments in the near future.
Although my favorite part of poker is playing large tournaments, I tend to play in a lot more cash games as the time to payout ratio tends to be higher. There are also a lot more cash games than tournaments, and the time commitment for cash games is less. The attraction to the tournament format for me is that it is set up as a competition with a clear winner. I have always been an overly competitive person, so tournaments fit with my natural personality. I will be playing in a local freeroll tournament on Sunday, so I will post my results then.
Til my next post. Good Luck!
I was first introduced to poker sometime in grade school. I used to play different games with my friends for pennies. We stepped it up in high school where we would play pot matching games and it wasn't unusual to win or lose $100. That was a lot of money for some 15 year old kids. After the 2002 WSOP main event, I really started to get into Texas Hold'em. We changed our dealer's choice game to hold'em tournaments, and my quest for bigger and better poker began.
After playing at least 20 hours a week online, I got with a group of investors and started an online poker site called www.letspoker.com. Unfortunately, that site didn't make it, but it was a great experience, and we built some really great software. During that time through today, I have played in many large casino tournaments, including 9 wsop events and have 6 cashes that qualify for pokerpages rankings. I hope to dedicate more time to playing in large tournaments in the near future.
Although my favorite part of poker is playing large tournaments, I tend to play in a lot more cash games as the time to payout ratio tends to be higher. There are also a lot more cash games than tournaments, and the time commitment for cash games is less. The attraction to the tournament format for me is that it is set up as a competition with a clear winner. I have always been an overly competitive person, so tournaments fit with my natural personality. I will be playing in a local freeroll tournament on Sunday, so I will post my results then.
Til my next post. Good Luck!
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