Incase you hadn't heard i have just won the weekly Wednesday Quarter Million $320 buy in on Pokerstars yesterday for $65k and i am feeling better than ever! Since my last post only 5 days ago i was feeling very miserable and exhausted from so much time, effort and near misses. I had about 3 final table bubbles including a very disappointing finish in the shootout FTOPS event falling just short yet again of the 6 max final table. So i have no doubt to say that even though things haven't been going that well i am still bringing my A game to each and every tournament i play. Now it has all turned around just like that!
Since Monday i had been really struggling with things. I had got myself to a stage where i had no choice but to ask a few friends for favours in staking me in a few events and after talking to a few of them none could help untill one friend did. He staked me in about 10 tourneys for the Monday and i didn't cash in a single one! The feeling of a friend helping you out and you unable to help him back is hard. But at this point there wasn't much i could do.
The following day i weighed up my options and realised that i had no options. Well no real options. The only thing i could do was punish myself and play the low limit games to build back my bankroll. So i got my grind on. Real Hard. I played every sng and 45 plyr sng on full tilt for hours on end and worked my roll up to enough to play a few decent tourneys (even though they still may be outside my bankroll i like to take shots here and there) and i had decided to play the FTOPS shootout for $320. I came 7th there just short of the final table which was super disappointing but still great cos i got paid a decent $6.5k for that which gives me even more room to improve the roll.
I then had put that money straight into good use by playing a bunch of bigger tourneys the next day including the WQM and every tourney went horribly except this one. I had started playing at 9am and found myself mono tabling this tourney from about 3pm onwards till the end at about 10pm. It takes a great deal of patience and focus to play one table for so long but it makes it so much more profitable because i have so much more time to make the best possible decision in every hand.
When we reached the money, which was top 120 or so, i had found myself to be the chip leader and cruising just fine. The structure is great so there was lots of room and time for patience.. if you have it. I did well to maintain my lead the whole way and grind away for the rest of the tourney untill there were about 18 of us left but then thats when i made an ill timed 4 bet shove with A9 and ran into AK and lost half my stack, then lost another pot and suddenly i was coming 15/15. I was real gutted that all it took was one or two misreads and then i only had about 20 BBs, which is still an ok short stack, there is still room.. i am not desperate just yet. I hit the short stack mathematics for the next hour and a few people got knocked out. There were now 12 left.
After a series of shoving and re-shoving i finally found myself all in with pocket 5s against KJ and held! Yeww.. time to get the ball rolling. I then played my game and built up a little more then lost a little. It was a sick roller coaster untill i got it in pre flop for about half my stack with AcQc but unfortunetly i ran into AA. It wasn't over yet as the flop peeled a promising 2c 4s 5c then no more sweat as the turn fell an easy 7c to lock in the win for me! Very lucky for me ofcourse but if anyone knows tournament poker they should realise that there are certain hands and situations that you will run into and you have to get all your chips in and hope for the best. We call them coolers.
So going into the final table i have about 900k in chips as chip leader and the total of chips in play were 3.6 million so i have 1/4 of the chips which means my position and equity to put pressure on the other players is amazing. With a 5 min break just as the FT started i took the opputunity to have a shower, reset and recharge the batteries as it is about 9pm now and i had been playing all day already for about 12 hours.
With the start of the FT i played pretty tight for about 2 orbits to get a feel for who is loose, who is tight and who is boss. After a few people got knocked out i then opened up my game and started putting pressure on when the money jumps started getting bigger. The whole FT was an easy glide as the tournament was one of the softer ones of the weekly schedule and i never dropped below the stack that i started on the FT with. I had a few decent hands too which is always the ideal way to win a tournament. There were lots of hands of interest there but i won't bore you with poker jargin.
After some time some people got suckered, some people bluffed off their stacks and some blinded away. I was now HU and had a 2.5:1 chip lead on the other guy, who wanted to do a deal but i denied.. respectfully. We played it out for about half an hour and i played a real small ball strategy of keeping pots small and taking bit by bit from him and watched his stack go from 1 million to 800k to 600k to 400k then eventually we got his remaining money in the middle on a 8c 9c 4d flop with my 7c 4c against his 9x 10x and he was safe on the 3x turn but not the golden 6c river! Boom!! Must be nice, i guess!!
It was a relieving feeling to finally put that nail in the coffin and take down a much, much needed win. I want to thank everyone watching for their support and kind words. It's always nice to know that you've got good friends and family behind you when you are doing well at what your heart is in.
I am going to be taking today off but putting those hours in for FTOPS over the next week so keep an eye out for me cos i'll be on those tables trying to build that roll again! Go to www.chipmeup.com and keep an eye out for my events there cos i will be selling some action in some tourneys coming up.
Take care people and good luck to those playing the FTOPS events!
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