When I think I'm out... they pull me back in
The bankroll neared doom earlier this week. As Wednesday left less then $1 in my account! It was sad and I was ready to hang up the mouse as my poker challenge was about to be no more.
Thursday night and my account is reserected. I get a deposit of $20 from the money that I fronted earlier to another individual. With this $20 I will fight back and gain momentum! ...at least that is the thought.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that one of my favorite tournaments is the nightly $1000 guarantee limit holdem tournament at 7:00PM. The buy in is $4/0.40 and this night attracted 360 players paying out the top 45. I have played this tournament about 10 times in the past few weeks and never once made the money. My strategy changes each time and I am determined to find the right blend of play to cash in this tournament.
Things start out slow and right away I am down to about 1500 chips from my initial 3000 chip count. Slowly, but surely I turn things around which started with a call of 8-10. Now 8-10 is not a great hand normally, but it has become my new favorite online hand. I have taken many pots with this hand and believe that the numbers just work for online play. After taking down this pot I go on a nice mini heater and build my chips up to 5000.
Now at the same time as this tournament, I make a quick exit from the nightly 7:45 HORSE $1 tournament in the second hour. Just so I don't get bored, I buy into a $1/0.20 9 person sit-n-go. With 8 players left I take a commanding lead of about 8000 chips leaving my closest competition near 1500. Time to get aggressive and I start raising every hand preflop. Finally someone gets the balls to call me and oops, I wake up with AQ. Flop top two and river the full house to which my opponent keeps betting into me. Make the raise on the river and bye bye. It takes me a total of 45 minutes to knock out each player one by one and take my very first #1 in a tournament. Of course it wasn't a huge pay day $4.50, but it was a confidence builder after my last week of play.
During this time I am still building chips in the limit tournament which has been running for about 3 hours now. Strategy was pretty simple, play good cards and don't chase. Now in the past I would chase anything as this was a limit tournament. Any suited cards and connectors were fair game. My new strategy was to play a similar game to pot limit and try to control the size of the pots. Even though this is limit, there is no need to raise with TPTK or a draw. Wait for the hit, then attack or become a calling station and takes pots with little risk. This strategy worked and I found myself in the top 10 when the bubble broke. We get down to the final table and it looks like this:
and a few hands later I am chip leader.
You give a player like me the chip lead on the final table and I will pretty much make a top 3 finish which is fine as first is a cool $360.01 and 3rd is $148.90. We get down to the final 4 and I have increased my lead to over 400k in chips. Now the blinds are a ridiculous 10,000/20,000 and fortunes change very quickly. I lose a few key pots and now we're all about even with average chip stacks of 250k each. I ask the players for a chop with no answer. One of the bigger stacks loses a few chips and I pick up a few more to which a chop is asked for by another player. Since this is such a crap shoot at this point, we all agree to chop 4 ways even. I tell everyone to use the sit out button and contact support. I'm not sure if support is always this slow, but we must have waited between 10 - 15 minutes before a support person came to our table. During this time the 4 of us had some pretty funny chat and they were all great characters. You couldn't ask for a nicer bunch of people to chop. Below is my opinion of the profile for each player.
ROMEO1973 - Fairly new poker player. I would say mid 30's female. I could be wrong in this, but convo came up about how he/she did not get cleaning duties done due to this tournament being so long.
JuniorMi11er - Teenage or early twenties amateur player. He mentioned school and the chat seemed like a younger person. Nice fellow.
iaasc - I would say mid level late 20's player. Didn't chat much, but was an overall good player. I pretty much had to put him on a hand with each bet, but occasionally he would throw out a steal which worked well with my re-steal.
It was a fun tournament and after all was said and done, we ended with $209 and change each. We went all in after the deal was made and I received tournament points for 4th place. It was a great feeling to finally have a win. Even though it was chopped I feel as I have won my first online tournament (including sit-n-go's). The tournament went really late and it was 1:20AM. Time for bed.
Round 3 for those of you keeping track. I hope to incorporate some BR management to help me hold on to the money this time around. It sucks to build and lose, build and lose but at the same time it really is fun! See you all on the tables this week.
Current Bankroll: $218.00
Thursday night and my account is reserected. I get a deposit of $20 from the money that I fronted earlier to another individual. With this $20 I will fight back and gain momentum! ...at least that is the thought.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that one of my favorite tournaments is the nightly $1000 guarantee limit holdem tournament at 7:00PM. The buy in is $4/0.40 and this night attracted 360 players paying out the top 45. I have played this tournament about 10 times in the past few weeks and never once made the money. My strategy changes each time and I am determined to find the right blend of play to cash in this tournament.
Things start out slow and right away I am down to about 1500 chips from my initial 3000 chip count. Slowly, but surely I turn things around which started with a call of 8-10. Now 8-10 is not a great hand normally, but it has become my new favorite online hand. I have taken many pots with this hand and believe that the numbers just work for online play. After taking down this pot I go on a nice mini heater and build my chips up to 5000.
Now at the same time as this tournament, I make a quick exit from the nightly 7:45 HORSE $1 tournament in the second hour. Just so I don't get bored, I buy into a $1/0.20 9 person sit-n-go. With 8 players left I take a commanding lead of about 8000 chips leaving my closest competition near 1500. Time to get aggressive and I start raising every hand preflop. Finally someone gets the balls to call me and oops, I wake up with AQ. Flop top two and river the full house to which my opponent keeps betting into me. Make the raise on the river and bye bye. It takes me a total of 45 minutes to knock out each player one by one and take my very first #1 in a tournament. Of course it wasn't a huge pay day $4.50, but it was a confidence builder after my last week of play.
During this time I am still building chips in the limit tournament which has been running for about 3 hours now. Strategy was pretty simple, play good cards and don't chase. Now in the past I would chase anything as this was a limit tournament. Any suited cards and connectors were fair game. My new strategy was to play a similar game to pot limit and try to control the size of the pots. Even though this is limit, there is no need to raise with TPTK or a draw. Wait for the hit, then attack or become a calling station and takes pots with little risk. This strategy worked and I found myself in the top 10 when the bubble broke. We get down to the final table and it looks like this:
and a few hands later I am chip leader.
You give a player like me the chip lead on the final table and I will pretty much make a top 3 finish which is fine as first is a cool $360.01 and 3rd is $148.90. We get down to the final 4 and I have increased my lead to over 400k in chips. Now the blinds are a ridiculous 10,000/20,000 and fortunes change very quickly. I lose a few key pots and now we're all about even with average chip stacks of 250k each. I ask the players for a chop with no answer. One of the bigger stacks loses a few chips and I pick up a few more to which a chop is asked for by another player. Since this is such a crap shoot at this point, we all agree to chop 4 ways even. I tell everyone to use the sit out button and contact support. I'm not sure if support is always this slow, but we must have waited between 10 - 15 minutes before a support person came to our table. During this time the 4 of us had some pretty funny chat and they were all great characters. You couldn't ask for a nicer bunch of people to chop. Below is my opinion of the profile for each player.
ROMEO1973 - Fairly new poker player. I would say mid 30's female. I could be wrong in this, but convo came up about how he/she did not get cleaning duties done due to this tournament being so long.
JuniorMi11er - Teenage or early twenties amateur player. He mentioned school and the chat seemed like a younger person. Nice fellow.
iaasc - I would say mid level late 20's player. Didn't chat much, but was an overall good player. I pretty much had to put him on a hand with each bet, but occasionally he would throw out a steal which worked well with my re-steal.
It was a fun tournament and after all was said and done, we ended with $209 and change each. We went all in after the deal was made and I received tournament points for 4th place. It was a great feeling to finally have a win. Even though it was chopped I feel as I have won my first online tournament (including sit-n-go's). The tournament went really late and it was 1:20AM. Time for bed.
Round 3 for those of you keeping track. I hope to incorporate some BR management to help me hold on to the money this time around. It sucks to build and lose, build and lose but at the same time it really is fun! See you all on the tables this week.
Current Bankroll: $218.00
