Tuesday 5 June 2007

Down then back up again

I made the decision to avoid all the Sunday Major tournaments this week to try and press on with meeting my target of making $20k from cash this month before flying to Vegas. Early on it seemed as though I had made a good choice as I was $4k up and listening to bad beat stories from a few other players on MSN who were on the tournament trail.
Then a run of bad play, bad situations and missing countless draws saw me end that particular session down over $6k.

I knew I was playing badly and decided an extended break was required. I went and had some food, played on pro evo 6 for a bit then watched a couple of Cardrunners videos, one by Sbrugby and one by Green Plastic. When I watch their videos, I don’t often take a lot form watching them play, but extract a great deal from their commentary. It is always very insightful and stimulates my thoughts on my own game, how I played in previous sessions etc…

After this I had a quick review of my losing session earlier and soon realised I had not managed my image at the tables well and was blatantly obvious the moves I was making were going to get snapped off. It was now the early hours of the morning and all the action had dried up on the European sites I play, so fired up Full tilt and they had 3 tables of 10/20 running, perfect. I played for about 1hr 30 mins and managed to book a $6k win almost erasing the session from earlier that night. I took a screenshot of my recovery which can be found at the bottom of the blog entry. I played much better in this session, and had a nice AAvsKK situation for a full buy in at the end.

Monday saw the start of the Crypto golden cup series of poker, which looks a pretty good online festival with superb structures to boot. The first event was a £100 f/o with 4500 chips and a 20 min clock. I never really got going and was stuck at average or below average stack for my entire stay ion the tournament. The blinds were 300/600 – 75, and I had just over 10k. Since moving to this table I had not played a hand in 3 orbits so I presumed my image was tight. A fairly active player opened for 1800 in mid position when I held KQ on the button, I felt my tight image and chip stack would mean only a really solid hand would make the call. I shipped it in and the original raiser beat me in the pot with AJ, ugh. I lose the 40/60 and exit stage left about 30 places short of the money. I also played 2 other mtt’s on crypto at the same time and failed to cash in either of those, leading to -$800 in tournament buy ins and no return

The cash session later that evening was only 50 mins but was a profitable one, $6.7k in profit, mainly from a £10/20 game that was 3 handed. I had 2 $10/20 tables at the same table but only made a $300 on one, and lost $100 on the other.

Pokertracker for june, now shows +$13763

On target so far, but my aim is to be +$20k after deducting the tournaments I play over this period as well. Also, less than 2 weeks till Vegas, :-)


3 comments:

Schweigi said...

nice results, Pab ... always good to take a break and reanalyze the game!

Alex Martin said...

nice :)

how are you going about table selection in these games?

Pab said...

The player pool at 10/20+ isnt that large so you get to know the really strong players quickly. I usually dont mind sitting in any game, but do try and avoid if the 6 max table has me and 5 really strong players.