About time :-)

PokerStars Tournament #14414796, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.20
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $45.00
Tournament started – 2005/10/29 – 13:43:52 (ET)

Dear Ingoal,

You finished the tournament in 2nd place.
A $10.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

After catching a cold deck early on, I thought I had the nuts again (Q-Q) with only one player left in the pot…unfortunately he had 10-10 in his hands and called my 400 pre-flop raise…just to catch me down the line with another 10 on the board. How unlucky can one be?

Oh well…so I finished in 1217th place of the inaugural PokerStars Blogger Championship…I guess the tournament will be running for another few hours, so I’ll update this post later on.

Sidenotes:

• 1473 bloggers entered
• First 99 places get prices
• Jeremy Wright of Ensight finished in 1390th place
• Patrick O’Keefe of ifroggy finished in 1078th place
• After 5h 52min of play the tournament is down to heads up: simonvlc vs easy_wind (chip leader 2,3mil
• After 5h 55min we’ve got a winner: easy_wind will represent the blogger world on the carribean adventure!!! Congrats!

…or how to blow the chance to get in the money. So, I played another little Sit&Go tournament this morning (45 players, 1$ buy-in, 7 in the money) and this was really the tournament of pocket pairs for me – I had 2-2, 3-3, J-J, Q-Q, J-J in the tournament.

Early on I folded 2-2 and 3-3 in early position I played J-J and lost some chips. After that I decided to tighten up just a little bit and it payed off as I didn’t win any more pots, but I didn’t lose any chips (apart from the blinds) in a long time. Just before the first break (after 1h) I was done to the short stack and tried my luck with another 2-2: I went all in and another player called my with A-Q of spades – lucky enough for me my pocket 2s held up (Board: 8-8-6-5-9) and I doubled up.

After the break I caught some fire and went All-In again with Q-Q another player called again with 9-9 and my Queens held up again…now I was up to 7465 (4th position).

Then came my next critical decision and in retrospect my downfall: I was so happy sitting at the final table for the first time and not short stacked, but in a nice position. I was dealt J-J and was looking forward to play the pot…another player raised in early position I thought this was an attempt to steal the pot, so I thought: let’s go over the top and raise to All-In…to my surprise the player behind me called as did the other player who had raised out of early position…so it was showdown time:

Early position player who had raised initially: A-A (ouch!!!)
Ingoal’s hand: J-J
Player calling after me: K-8

Flop: 10-K-6 (noooo!)
Turn: 4
River: Q

So the K-8 player and me both busted out – me in 9th place and he in 8th place. Now remember: top 7 in the mony, so I just busted myself out of some money…and what hurt most was that the short stack (sitting around with only 2200 chips) was clever enough to wait and see, not playing another hand until he was all-in due to the blinds and still managed to finish in 3rd place. Now that hurts, but there’s another lesson learned: if you’ve got a big hand or not, is it worth gambling when you’re so near making the winning places (in the money)? I guess not really! Especially not pre-flop! Maybe this lesson will help my tonight at the blogger championship…let’s see how this one goes done (I’m not sure yet if I’m going to live-blog about it or not…you’ll see later on…)

Tonight was our poker night (second time we played Texas Hold’em). News today: 9 players at the table bringing the total pot to 90 Euro (we play winner takes it all!). Live action, which is really different to playing online as you can try to get a tell on your opponents along with other opportunities like talking some trash etc. After catching minor hands early I was able to catch the chip lead for a while and outlasted 7 players to play heads up for the pot. After 3 hands, which I was forced to play due to the huge blinds (6.40 Euro small blind / 12.80 Euro big blind – total chip count at the table 90 Euro as we hand out chips 1:1), everything came down to a coin flip hand which I lost…so close and yet so far…

Because this whole little tournament only lasted for little over 3 hours we discussed about playing a second round with smaller Buy-In (5 Euro each)…8 players, including me, decided to play again and after catching some nice hands during the whole time I was able to enter the final showdown (heads up) again with a minor chip lead. After catching a nice hand early on (A-10) I was able to “steal” the blinds, then folded a dismal hand (5-2), then caught the other player (who was down to 8 Euro in chips because he was in the big blind at the time) so I raised him to All-In…

Ingoal’s hand: K-Q
opponent’s hand: A-3

As the flop show K-8-5 I was out in front but still worried about him catching an ace, that never happened though as Queen came on the turn and a nice little Queen sealed the deal on the river :-)

So I won the 40 Euro pot, deduct my own buy-in of 5 Euro and I won 35 Euro…deduct my 10 Euro buy-in from the first tournament and I won 25 Euro in total. Nice.

Ingoal’s stats of the night:

• Tournaments played: 2
• Buy-In: Total of 15 Euro
• Final Showdown: both times!
• Net winnings: 25 Euro
• Final Rank (I): 2nd of 9
• Final Rank (II): 1st of 8

What a nice evening, although I still would have loved to win the first pot, but hey, who doesn’t? If you don’t come to win, don’t come at all ;-)

…or I think I should slow down juuuust a little bit ;-)

In preparation for the blogger tournament on sunday I got myself into some more tournaments today…2 with a smaller number of players (than yesterday) and a final heads up match to close out my session….

• No Limit Hold’em
• Buy-In: 1$ + 0.20$ fee
• 45 players
• top 7 “in the money”
• Tournament one (starting 6:57pm ET, I came in just short of the final table in 11th position – desperate on a short stack I decided to go all in with my A-6 but was out matched by a Q-Q (which in turn out matched another player going all in holding a A-Q)…time played 1h 16min
• Tournament two (starting 8:23pm ET, I just didn’t find any cards and wasn’t able to steal pots due to some major chip hogs at the table…after 36min I was gone in 30th place – hand that killed me 6-Q vs. my 10-Q, Flop: 5-7-Q (wee!), turn: 10 (weeeeeee!), river: 8 (d’oh!))…

As I was unsatisfied with this result I decided to try my luck with some heads up play (why mess with x opponents when you can face off 1on1?), but as I’m not all that used to playing heads up in Texas Hold’em (yet) I decided not to play No Limit, but fixed limit (going up with the increasing blinds):

• Limit Texas Hold’em
• Players: 2 (d’oh!)
• Buy-In: 5$ + 0.25$ fee
• Winner takes all (10$)
• Starting time: 9:27ET
• End of play: 22:04ET
• Result: Ingoal wins!!!

So my poker day (night – already 4am around here) ends on a high note and I’m now just shy of breaking even again (winning back almost the complete fees of all prior tournaments in one game) :-)

Night all :mrgreen:

Well, what can I say: the no limit hold’em bug has bitten me big time! Nothing much todo today so I decided to play another tournament:

• Buy-In: 2$ + 0.20$ (fee)
• 874 players entered the tournament
• Places 1-81 “in the money”
• Starting time: 5pm (my time zone) / 11am (ET)
• Starting blinds: 10/20 no antes
• Starting chip count: 1500
• My Goal: Play at least 2h and/or get “into the money”

After 30 minutes there were 587 remaining players, my chip count was 1625 with the best hand of (Q-Q)-Q-6-6 so far. Nothing much in the cards for me until the first break (after 1h): remaining players 352, my chip count 1100 (short stack). Shortly after the break I was looking at the lovely Hilton Sisters (Q-Q) again and bet 450$ in late position – just to be reraised all-in by a fellow short stack player. I read it to be a steal of the blinds and went over the top – All-In! He called an showed me his poket rocket (A-A) :-(

The flop, turn and river brought no help for either side so I was eliminated in 323rd place (after 1h 12min of play) :-(

You finished in 323rd place (eliminated at hand #2848744496).

70 hands played and saw flop:
– 2 times out of 8 while in small blind (25%)
– 6 times out of 8 while in big blind (75%)
– 5 times out of 54 in other positions (9%)
– a total of 13 times out of 70 (18%)

Pots won at showdown – 1 out of 2 (50%)
Pots won without showdown – 1

Despite the fact that I told myself to never play online for real money, I took the plunge today with a 1$ tournament over at PokerStars.com.

The setup:

• $1 + 0.10$ (fee) buy-in, no rebuys…top 180 finishers are “in the money” (1: 341,67$, 2: 201,90$, 3: 132,01$…)
• 1553 players entered
• starting time: 3am (my time zone) / 9pm ET
• Starting chips: 1500
• No Limit Hold’em

So, how did I do? Not all that bad I guess, although I didn’t last long enough to get “in the money”. I held my ground playing rather tight all the time. And after some, not many, good hands I was able to double up and keep a nice stash of 3620 chips at the first break (after 1h of play – 67 hands played, 605 players still in the tournament). But then I ran against a wall two times in three hands:

1. My 7-7 were crushed by A-A (pocket rocket) to lose quite some chips (around 1200)
2. I folded the next hand (nothing much you can do with a 8-6 in a four-way-hand)
3. Then I looked at a beautiful set of Queens (Q-Q, the Hilton Sisters, …) and one fellow player called my preflop raise to 600, then called again on the flop (2-6-9 if I remember correctly) and then raised on the turn (another 2 – this is probably the moment were I should have picked up a tell on him, but hey…after all this is my first tournament so it’s hard to lay down a hand like Q-Q after you’ve commited more than half of your stack), then he raise again on the turn (K) and I was dumb enough to call – I thought I had the best hand with K-Q-Q-2-2 (two pairs), but he beat me with a nice set of three twos :-(

So…I’m out, it’s well after 4am and am I sad? Well, a little bit (who doesn’t hate losing?!), but hey…I’m out of a dollar and I had a great time finishing in 552nd pace (out of 1553) beating out 1001 other players, but the fairy tale never happened ;-)

My favourite hands of the night:

• A-K (Big Slick) holding up against a 3-3
• Q-J holding up against 10-10 to double me up

Will this be my last tournament? No! The next one is right around the corner when I take my seat to battle against numerous fellow bloggers over at PokerStars for the first blogger poker tournament…and who knows, maybe I’ll play another tournament even before that :-)

You finished in 552nd place (eliminated at hand #2845203462).

76 hands played and saw flop:
– 2 times out of 9 while in small blind (22%)
– 3 times out of 9 while in big blind (33%)
– 9 times out of 58 in other positions (15%)
– a total of 14 times out of 76 (18%)

Pots won at showdown – 3 out of 5 (60%)
Pots won without showdown – 1

…or how to win a Texas Hold’em Poker Match.

In case you wonder what this post title is all about: yes, I’m a poker player and I’m passionate about it. Tonight we played our first Texas Hold’em match (we used to play 5 card stud poker, where every player has got 5 private cards and that’s it). We don’t gamble for huge wagers, usually it’s 10 Euro (around 12US$ or 7 british pounds) per person and that’s it…so as we’re usually 5-8 players that means that there are 50-80Euro in the pot.

What is the result? Due to our set time limit of 2am there was no overall winner (usually we play until one player has got all the chips). Sad, but hey, I don’t complain as I walked away with a nice stash besides loosing the chip-lead twice and regaining it near the end of play.

Starting basis:

7 players, all bringing 10 Euro to the table. Rules: small blind 20 cent, big blind 40 cent, no all-in until only 3 players remain…time limit 2am

Final result:

Ingoal 25 Euro
Nico 25 Euro
Thomas 20 Euro
Rest: 0 Euro

It would have been really nice to play it till the end, but I don’t complain as I walked away with +15 Euro. Nonetheless it would have been interesting to see how people would have played if there was no time limit…so I guess we will play without a time limit next time…maybe the outcome will be different then…who knows?!

Ingoal’s best hands of the night:

• three nines
• flush of numerous clubs

Now I’m really looking forward to the bloggers’ tournament on pokerstars.com – hopefully the cards will fall my way and if not, no worries as there’s no buy-in :mrgreen: