7th April

I played in the daily dollar tournament on Fulltilt last nite, because I reside in Ireland, that meant it was 1 in the morning for me. Being nocturnal, I played well into the early hours. The tournament had roughly 7000 players, each buying in for a single dollar. The prize pool was $7k roughly. Making the final table would mean that you make at least 100, first place being about $1800. I played pretty tight, reading the players well, not calling huge raises or risking high portions of my stack. I got an early double up on a high pocket pair so that helped. I will outline and refine my tournament strategies in the coming days. I began to pot bully players out of marginal hands, folding to strong resistence or huge re-raises. I won a few good pots within a short space of time and decided I had a good table image. I was aggressive and took down most of the pots I was in. When being the big stack, I decided to small ball and change my image. More on this later posts. Long story short, I played aggressively when I hit my cards, stole blinds in position etc.

I ended up finishing 88th of 7000 which I was quite happy about. The hand I went out on was like this. I was on about 180k which was 50k above average stack. I held Ace 9 of clubs. I decided to limp in under the gun. I was first to act so I didn't want to raise much to face a re-raise. When playing suited aces, i'm hoping to hit a flush draw. What ended up happening was that everyone else folded to the blinds who also limped in. The pot is now at about 20k. The flop comes down, 2 of clubs, 7 of clubs and Ace of hearts. The small blind decides to check and the Big Blind decides to bet the pot. i figure the best he has is a pair and I wanted to build the pot so I re-raised min. The pot is now about 80k and I have about 40k more than him. I have him covered. He goes all in after i re-raised, at this point I put him on two pair or trips, I figure with the pot so big and my drawing possibilities, I am in pretty good shape. I call and he turns over 27, which is actually pretty good for me. Any club would've made my nut flush, any ace or 9 would've hand him beat. I ran the stats on pokerstove and I was actually slight favourite. Being a coinflip, my odds were roughly 1:1, pot odds however were much better, nearing 2:1. Unfortunately I don't hit my flush. I'm left with only about 40k with average stack being 140k. I decide to move all in with Ace5suited and unfortunately I got beat by Q7. Oh well.

Tonight I played at a friends house and out of about 12 players, I was fortunate enough to win it. 5 euro buy in and I took back 45 euro. I don't count these in my bankroll. The bankroll project is for online play only. The game tonight was poorly structured, one table being 5 handed and the other being 7 handed. I was also stuck at the 5 handed table. One absolute maniac was raising ridiculous amounts with nothing and ended up short stacking me to half my stack. I made a note of not getting involved with him and started attacking the others whenever he wasn't in the pot. eventually when we got down to 8 players with merged tables with one guy having about 7 times average stack. This was where I felt more comfortable, playing 8 handed is much easier, especially when you have aggressive 6 handed players. I probed a few of them about how they play and figured out a few tells on players. They were incredibly easy to read. People give away so much in what they say, one guy said "do i have to play this hand when he was in small blind" then he decided to limp in and I quickly raised him and he instantly folded. Most of the players played their hands and not the situation. This let me capitalise on the times when they didn't catch their cards.

Overall:
88th of 7000, made 11$
1st of 12, made 45euro