Blogger Tournament at Pokerstars.com

I played in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker 2010

First hand in and I was in the small blind with Q8 offsuit, one guy limped and I followed suit (blinds being at 25/50 to start off), BB checked and we saw a flop of Q88……well, what can I say, a dream first flop, I checked as did the BB and the limper bet out 100, i checked my cards and smooth called (see online hand below this post…..) and the BB folded, turn came the 10 and i check again as did the bettor, river was a blank 5 and I bet the pot 400, he calls and shows 109, great first hand for me….Naturally I was card dead for a wee while after that and once i dwindled down to 1,500 chips I asked for my remaining 4000 and sat relatively pretty with 5,500.

I was playing pretty good, raising UTG with AKs and managing to get an aggressive player to lay down 99 on a 782 board, I told him he made a great fold as I had 10′s hahaha, build that image any way you have to

I then picked up AA in the small blind, one guy limped so I made it 500 to go, the BB thought for a while and then re-raised another 1,200, he was pot commited with less than 1k behind so I shoved and he insta-called with KK, I took it down and was upto around 7,500 chips.

I was fairly confident and running smoothly when this hand happened…..
The aggressive player who must have drank about 5 pints by now during the course of the game and raising constantly pre-flop (to be fair he was generally showing decent holdings) limped preflop, in front of another tight aggressive player who limped, I had A10 spades in the BB so I decided to play it a little tricky and check to see a flop, the flop bringing A K 4 rainbow.

I checked as did the first limper and the aggressive player bet out the pot, I insta-called, i was pretty sure he was trying to buy the pot based on our relative weakness preflop. The turn brought a J which wasn’t a fantastic card but it didn’t worry me too much, he bet the pot again 1,500 chips, to which I thought for a while, my instincts were to raise as I was still confident I had the best hand, but the way he was playing I thought I could get another bet out of him on the river……in hindsight I should defintely have been raising here), the river came another J which I thought was a great card assumming he didn’t have the ace, which i was 100% on because the way he was playing he would not be limping an ace at this stage, he bet 3,500 which was 75% of my chips, I had to apologise to the table in the end because of how long I was taking over the hand, after a long period in the tank I called and he showed me J3 spades for a turn and river set.
SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

I played it bad, I know this now, I should never have let him see a river there, I should have been overshoving the turn, and I didn’t think ahead to the river to anticipate the kind of bet he made.

I was down to under 3k, and the very next hand I looked down at KQ spades, the aggressor from the previous hand raised it up in position and I reraised all in, he showed K10 diamonds and he was dominated, a Q hit the deck first card out and I had doubled through to around 5.5k.

The blinds were getting high and I didn’t anticipate the structure of the blind levels which were every 30 minutes but once past 100/200 doubled to 200/400 to 300/600 and 400/800, naturally in my position stack wise I would have like to have seen smaller increments like 150/300 and then 200/400 but c’est la vie.

I was down to 10 BB’s and in the BB, it was folded to the SB who limped, I looked down at JJ and shoved, he insta called with KJ and I immediatly shouted ‘NO KING’…..alas a King hit on the flop, gutting…..but there were two diamonds on the flop and I had one of them, another diamond hit the turn, and the river came the Queen of Diamonds YESSSSSSS, back in the game with over 10k in chips!

Blinds were now 400/800 so no time to sit around, but before I could play a hand I was down to 10BB’s again, soon enough I found A10 off in the cut off and shoved just under 10 BB’s in the middle, the player next to me who was new to the table tanked and called with JJ, pretty unlucky really, I hit a 10 on the flop but no luck, i was down to 3,800 so it was shove or fold time.

Next hand I was pretty much shoving any two as I was UTG, I looked down at 36 clubs and reluctantly shoved the 3.8 in the middle, the shortstacked button also reluctantly called with A2 off and the BB bigstack aggressor called with 52 off, I actually hit a 6 and a flush draw on the flop which was great, but the Ace on the turn and the blank river did me and I was done in 15th position.

Not a bad run, but the main regret being not playing my A10 harder on the turn. And also missing a few opportunities to shove with marginal hands in the right spots.

Just played the ‘Daily 30k’ on Pokerstars too, but it wasn’t long before my AK was outdrawn on the river by AQ.

First foray into live and online tournaments for a good few weeks, been delving quite deep into cash lately with pretty good results and haven’t really felt that I’d be playing tournaments to the best of my ability, at least with the always long-haul tournies on Pokerstars you have to be commited to playing for around 7+ hours to win.

Hopefully I’ll be playing a few more over Xmas……Pokerstars have just announced this little special for a start, a new guiness world record attempt to follow up on the last one: http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/world_record_week/2008/world-record-week-stan34powa-tops-field-035425.html

Click here to see the hand: http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/1199839

As you will see it’s very easy to play a hand like this, but what baffled me at the time was the fact that I had two other players extremely interested in taking it down, normally in this situation you pray for action but very rarely get it…..

It was a fairly high action table (the next hand straight after this was another $60+ pot which i unfortunatly wasn’t involved in), but there was very few reraises preflop, on a tight table i would probably be raising here just to take the blinds down, but considering the lack of aggression preflop on this table I tried the same thing, expecting to see a flop but liking the trappy nature of my hand if I hit big.

FlipJames was getting involved reguarly with a wide variety of hands, I assume he was at one point full stacked, he seemed to be tilting tbh, whereas alert308 hadn’t been playing too many hands, playing pretty tight.
The flop was perfect, I was stunned to see it frankly, but my brain instantly knew i had to play this slow praying someone had a big ace, FlipJames bet $1.30 straight away which was a great result, this accurate bet (he had to type that amount in) told me he had a hand, alert308 calling too confused me a little, I thought perhaps he had a hand like 89s or something along those lines, which is perfect right now…..ACTION!

The turn was a good card, it has the possibility to open up some draws, two way flush draws and also an unlikely but possible straight draw, I obviously have to play this exactly the same as the flop, CHECK!
When FlipJames bets $2 on the turn he seems pretty commited to the hand and once alert308 calls to I’m putting him on a flush draw, I thought about raising the turn, i paused for a little while and decided that calling was still the best play as apart from anything else i’m not getting away from this hand anyway, plus i can allow those flushes to come in……

The 5clubs river was pretty much a blank in my opinion at the time, but when alert308 bet half the pot on the river i was pleased, in my head I assumed he did in fact have the hand i put him on earlier in the hand like 89s or something, I had to shove here, alert was telling me he had a monster, and I didn’t really expect FlipJames to lay his hand down considering how much he had put in the pot added with how much was already in there, absolutely perfect situation…..

As it happens alert got unlucky because of his position and decided to call the bet on the flop with his small ace hoping that FlipJames was bluffing, the turn card drew him in with the nut flush draw and once it hit on the river he wasn’t getting away from it, FlipJames was just unfortunate to run into the hands that he did, i’m pretty sure folding the river was the best move for him, but considering he was obviously tilting and there was so much in the pot I don’t really blame him too much for calling.

So a $68 pot at the 10cent / 25cent level, pretty strong. Just an example of how i’m running at the moment.
Don’t worry, my cynical brain doesn’t expect it to last…..

‘Poker Concentration’ is a blog aimed at players such as myself who are predominantly playing the No Limit Micro and Low Stakes Poker cash games as well as Small – Medium stake MTT’s (Multi Table Tournaments).

I will be discussing my own personal progress (I don’t expect to be perceived to be the best poker player out there) and hopefully highlighting some interesting points of discussion in an attempt to learn and improve as a community.

I’m not a Poker Pro. I have been playing for three years, and playing online for around 2.
I have a fulltime job in the music industry, so this is my bread and butter.
Poker is a passion and naturally there have been occasions where Poker has interfered with my job, notably the time when i final tabled a 5000 player strong tournament, finishing in 6th and taking over 9 hours, 1 hour later I got in my car for work and was forced to admit to my employers the reason i was so washed out….

Right now i’m playing at Pokerstars 25NL (full ring – 9 players max) generally playing max 4 tables at the same time (I aim to train my brain to be able to play more than 4 in the future), I don’t mind admitting I’m on a good run this month (December) which probably gave me the positivity to commence this blog (been a project i’ve been wanting to do for a while), I certainly hope to continue running good so that this blog can stay equally as positive, what i don’t want is for this blog to become a sordid-rant-house.

There’s a hell of alot of content online regarding Poker at the present time, some great resources and it’s a great thing, but one downside I guess is that the glamourous high stakes side of things and the obsession with players like Durrrr leads to alot of players playing high and out of their depth.
It takes tons of time to be able to condition yourself to play at the level you feel most comfortable and more importantly the level you are winning at.
I’m not an expert on bankroll management in discussion terms, but I’ve become a very disciplined player when it comes to my personal bankroll.

I will utilize several points of reference on this site to help visualize certain situations, notably:

http://www.pokertableratings.com/
http://www.pokertube.com/
http://www.pokerhand.org/

See y’all at the tables, regular posts commencing soon!