Downs, Up's and Up's

So, the first update. I'd love to say that i've been grinding out 100's of STT's a day, but I've been feeling pretty awful over the last couple of days so haven't achieved the volume I'm looking to hit on a daily basis.

Pretty much straight after my first post earlier in the week i played Rush poker on Full Tilt, which i've been doing every day to reach 'Iron Man' status. As I've mentioned previously cash games are currently the worst part of my game. Whilst I want to improve this isn't going to happen over night. I played for 2-3 hours and dropped $400. I played pretty poorly and paid off made hands trying to make hero calls that i just didn't need to make. Pretty pissed off with myself i took a time out for a hour or two before opening Stars and grinding STT's. I played my A game and stuck to a set formula that i've been playing STT's to for the last few months. I made $450 in about 2 hours, so i finished the day in profit, but could have been sooooo much better if i'd spent my time just playing STT's, rather than cash.

Yesterday i slept until nearly 1pm and woke feeling rotten still, and so the good intents of playing 100 STT's (around 6 sets) went down the toilet. I felt a little better by the evening and so went to the International to play the new £100 freeze out and have a chat with Anthony Tsang about how i can best make money from poker moving forward. The comp was full of very good regulars, and the standard at the International has been getting better and better over the last 18 months or so. There's very little easy money in the games now and picking your spots well to accumulate chips is very important. Also moving up and down the gears is very important in my view. I can think of distinct phases last night where i shut up shop and went maybe an hour without playing a hand, and at other times i might play 3 or more back to back.

In future i'll try and post more hands, but the only major hand i recall last night was this one. I apologise in advance as i can't remember the chip counts or even the blinds, but the action roughly went like this. I'm in MP and the action is folded to me. The blinds are 150/300 with an ante or maybe the next blind level. I peek at my cards and see KK, tres sexy. I raise to roughly 1000 (I have 16k at this point). My image is pretty solid and i've only shown down solid hands and i've been playing very few. It's folding to a guy called Phil in the SB who dwell raises to maybe 3.8k. Miriam is in the BB and pretty quickly shoves over the top for her whole stack. Both players have me just covered. I go into the tank and Miriam is as vocal as ever about not wanting to be outdrawn. I'm pretty sure i have her beat and think whilst she has a decent hand it could easily be anything from JJ+ to AK and i'm beat all but AA. I then take a look at Phil who's only shown down big hands too and he looks ready to snap call. I fold. Now regardless of what happens next is this right? I've put KK down pre-flop only a couple of times in the past, once was right and once wrong. As it turns out Phil had AA and Miriam QQ. Cold deck or what!!?

No one believed I had KK and I asked the dealer to turn my cards over as they were visible still, but he said they were in the muck now and wouldn't. I'm never that bothered what people think, but it would have been nice to prove that I was telling the truth in this spot. After that I went card dead for 90 minutes of so, but picked the odd spot to steel and made the final table. This started about midnight with me as the short stack. I thought I played the FT pretty well and ended up coming second for £850, roughly $1300 and $1200 profit on the night.


A good night all in all. That just leaves $1800 to hit my target and 3 weeks to do it in. Should be easy right?

I'm going to take a day off today as i feel rubbish still, and hopefully put in a few sets tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone who's read my blog and posted on the forum. Your support is much appreciated.