10th April

I played in a $2.25 double stack tournament on Fulltilt. Double stack means you start with 3000 chips instead of the regular 1500. There was about 470 entrants. Top prize would've been about $220. I ended up coming 32nd. I was playing quite passively whilst chatting with friends on msn. When we got close to the bubble, I decided to play tight because I was preoccupied with chat. A few badly played hands and I found myself on the chopping board. Fortunately I made a good hand when I needed to and stole blinds when in position with a decent playable hand. I made the bubble and realised that if i wanted to get to the final table, I'd have to shove and hope for the best. I decided to shove on 2 live cards, 7 10 suited and unfortunately I lost to kq. Oh well. At least I made the money.

I decided to play in the $1 daily dollar tournament tonight. There were 6000 entrants. Initially I got some good hands and got a small early lead. But as blinds started to increase and as players were getting knocked out so quickly, my small lead became incredibly negligable. I was playing pretty tight and failed to get playable hands in a 9 handed game where people generally wanted to see a flop regardless of price. I feel that in those situations you really just have to be patient, see more flops, hit something and then bet hard. At one stage I was down to 2000 chips with the average at about 7-8k. Fortunately I got moved to another table and was in late position with KK. I had a raise and a call in front of me and decided to push all in. I had one caller and I was very happy to see that he had AK. I ended up taking that pot and got my chips to about 3700. Then several hands later, I got AJh in the Big Blind. Again I was about half the average or even less than half the average stack. For some bizarre reason, either due to my connection or odd coincidence, it seemed like everyone hit the autofold button all the way up to the button. The button decided to make a routine raise of twice the big blind which was at 200. I decided he was obviously making a move seeing that I was shortstacked. I decided this was optimal time to re-raise all in. I would be happy if he called or folded, knowing that if he did call I would very much likely have him beat. He took a long time to think and I already knew his hand wasn't all that strong. He called with A3d. Without any disappointment I took down that pot and doubled my chips. Sitting on about 8000chips, I seemed to be in pretty good shape to at least make the cash. We were down to about the last 1800 players. After about an hour of small pots and myself not getting a decent or playable hand, we get to last 1300players and I am sitting on about 5700 chips. Which is not great compared to the average stack of about 12k. I get dealt pocket Aces in the Big Blind which blinds being 250/500. What I didn't really like about this was that there was one caller one raise and a caller of that raise. I decided there was only one way to play this and decided to shove all my chips into the middle so I could narrow the field. I get two callers and eliminate one of the limpers. One of the callers was clearly on tilt so I put him on a range of hands. The other pushed himself all in to try scare him off the pot but he couldn't. We all showed our cards and I have to say, I was clear favourite. I had AA, tilt boy had A2o, and the other guy had 99. If it were heads up, I would have A2 dominated so bad, and I'd be 4:1 favourite over 99. But unfortunately As this was 3 handed, anything could've happened. The flop came down 10 5 4. No one had a flush possibility so I was quite happy. It did leave A2 with 4 outs, which were the 3's left in the deck. The turn was 7. Which helped nobody but me. Sadly the river was not as accomodating and showed the dreaded 3. In retrospect, Shoving with Aces when there is so much action is probably not the best play but I definately stand by it when you are short stacked in a tournament and need the double up. Especially when you have great pot odds. I ended up finishing 1200, about 120 places short of the money. So basically if I stuck it out for another half an hour or even shorter, I might have made the payzone. I felt like I could do with a big win rather than just edge into the money this time. I believe I made the right play, trying to cash in on a player on tilt and someone who I thought I had dominated and turns out I did.

I just ran the odds on pokerstove and the findings are as follows. I had 73% equity,I would win 72.4% of the time, the other .6% is for a tie. A2 had 6% equity, and finally 99 had 20%equity. But that is poker, you will get a bad beat sometimes. If I had to play the same situation again, I would probably play it in the same way. If I just called then It would've been a 4way pot which would have even greater variance and with my short stack I wouldn't be able to lay it down and leave myself with less than 4-5 big blinds.

Overall: Buy ins $3.25. Return $3.40. Profit of $0.15. This is so incredibly negligable lol. I figure the more cash ins I make, the better I will fine tune my strategies and playing styles. When I become confident enough that I can place no matter how many players, then I will play for much bigger buy ins.