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Bigger Deal Tournament

I played in my first multi table tournament for a month last night. The tournament was hosted by Anthony Holden of Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player fame. His sequel was called Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit and this book has inspired a blog with inputs from a number of well known writers and poker celebs. It is this blog which hosted a $10 event at PokerStars with $2,700 added money. Also in the field was Al Alvarez who wrote The Biggest Game in Town.

My intention in this game with 15 min blinds was to play real tight and just go with premium hands in the first hour and this is exactly what happened  but sadly because of the tight image I cultivated I only managed to reap the blinds when I got my aces (twice!!). At the end of the hour then I was pretty much where I started. The next hour was again fairly tight although I was trying to loosen up a bit but that is difficult with what seems lik 83 every hand..lol. Anyway I managed to double up this time with Aces as I had only 5 big blinds so it was not too much for the big stack to call. This did put me up to about 25 spot with just 45 of the 191 entrants left and the prospect of getting into the money for the top 18. After another round or two I was getting short again so when it is folded to me on the button I push with my KJ and the big blind ends up with QQ! I was just typing in GG when I hit runner runner Jacks to stay in the game and put my opponent on tilt. After the break the blinds were 300/600 and I had only 3500 chips so I pushed with my AK and double up and then I managed to win a few more hands before we got to the last 19.At this point I was between 16-18 place depending on the blinds and I know I should have been raising but we had the 3 shortest stacks at our table and 3 of the biggest stacks. Any raise that I make is in my opinion always going to be called by a big stack so given the dynamics I decided that the best course of action is to just squeak into the money. The payout for 10-18 spot was around $56. The bubble though lasted around 15 mins and I did eventually push with AK to double up again and therefore managed to outlast one of the other short stacks. That done and being in the money we then come down to 2 tables and I managed to pick up KQ early so I push with my last 5k and I am called by A8 which holds up and I am out in 17th.

This was a good tournament and I had plenty of support from the guys at the UK Football Fans forum which did help me to focus at a time when I was really card dead - thx guys and gals! The next tourney is in 3 weeks so I’ll be up for that and hopefully this time I will get one of the celebs and at table and go bounty hunting!

I was just saying today…

that I needed to play some tourneys again as I have spent most of my time recently on Sit N Gos and a little while on some cash games. Fortunately I have been sent an invite for a game tomorrow which has some UK celebs in attendance and a nice $2,700 added to the prize pool. As you should know if you get games with added money then they definately offer value so I have registered for the game. I just need to make sure I get home in time but with 15 min blinds in won’t matter too much if I am a bit late!

Absolute Poker cheating controversy

Not a day goes by without an accusation from players that poker sites are rigged but in one case it appears that the accusation has some foundation.

Absolute Poker have just been caught with their pants down with one of their top consultants accessing some old unused accounts and having a superuser account also open which shows the players cards at the table. He then contrived to play these accounts and dump chips from one player to another to avoid suspicion and then he went on to win the $1,000 entry fee tournament that he was in. He was only caught when a player at the final table requested a hand history and Absolute accidentally sent him the hand history for every player in the tournament. It was then established that player PotRipper managed to avoid all the accidents that players would get into with big hands vs AA etc. I have to say that at the levels that I would play then the cheating would not be apparent as the guy was going for big stakes. Presumbaly networked site such as Vegas247 also had players affected by the actions of this guy