Sipping at my ice cold beer,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon The Kinks
WARM-UP
With the beginning of summer comes a change of game. I start playing No Limit Texas Holdem Tournaments online. When I can find them I play in tournaments with fields that are limited to a few hundred players. But most of the time I'm playing in $7 27 player SitnGo tournaments on Pokerstars, because these are readily available. I do OK in two of the larger tournaments that I enter in this period. I come 24/267 in one, just getting my money back, and 6/116 in the other, getting 5 times my buy-in back. But there are several others that I enter where I come nowhere, leaving me slightly ahead overall. All these tournaments are played on 888.
Meanwhile, I'm also playing in the Pokerstars on-demand tourneys. These turn out to be tough nuts to crack. During the period leading up to Christmas I play in 6 of these and my best result is a 7th place finish (only the top 5 get paid). The play in these games is generally tighter than that on 888 and definitely less 'fishy'. Nevertheless, I'm just getting started in this game type and figure that I'll improve with time.
As for the live Friday night tournaments, my recent poor form continues and I finish the last game of the year, on the 21st December, without cashing. This one is the 'Champion of Champions' game, where the top points-scorers from the previous year's tourneys play off for a trophy (and cash prizes of course). On the positive side, after getting knocked out early in one of these games I enter a cash game with some of the other tournament casualties and leave with about $50 in my pocket. HOLIDAYS
With Christmas day on a Wednesday this year the holidays start late for me. Work doesn't finish until Christmas Eve, but then I can look forward to about 2 1/2 weeks off. Just to prove how much poker is taking over my life, my wife and I go over to her mate's place for a cash game on Christmas Day. It may be the season of giving, but I take about $70 home. Then on New Year's Eve the Workingmens Club holds another tournament. I go deep in this one, making it to 7th place out of 24, but still out of the money.
Typically for this time of year the weather is patchy. We have some nice sunny days, but also quite a lot of wind, so I have some opportunity to play some online poker. I continue to play in the 27 player SitnGos but my results are very poor. Things are going so badly that I have to reload my Pokerstars account, the first time that I've had to do this. I fail to cash in 12 of these tourneys before finally getting a 1st place on the 11th of January, just before I'm due to go back to work. Then I get a 3rd place on the following Wednesday. Is this the start of a new trend?
On Friday 10th I do something that I'd been meaning to do for a while. I get up early in the morning and start playing in Single Table SitnGos on 888. This is the start of my SitnGo Marathon All Day Session. The level I'm playing at means that I'd have to lose 7 games straight before I went over my buy-in limit. I play 7 games straight without winning a thing. Doh! So much for that idea.
On the second Sunday of January my wife and I go to the Inter-club poker tournament. Although I'd previously decided not to play in these, my wife has joined the RSA team and intends to play every month. So I figure I'll go along too and just play it as a social game, not using my precious poker bankroll dollars. After getting knocked out I get into a cash game and come out of it with money in my pocket. So I'm hoping that there are more cash games going at these events in future.
SALAD DAYS
As usual, the weather gets really good once everyone's back at work. At least with daylight savings there's plenty of daylight time after work. Despite all this, I still find time to play a fair bit of poker. I keep plugging away at the 27 player SitnGos on Pokerstars but my results are dismal. After playing a total of 18 games I have one win and one 4th place to show for all that effort. I'm doing so badly that I have to top up the cash in my Pokerstars account twice. These results may seem odd considering that my last post claimed that I'd figured out a good strategy for tournament play. But I still stick by my plan, which is based on pre-flop action. The trouble is, on Pokerstars at least, I'm getting out-played post-flop.
By this stage I've settled into a routine of playing the small-field tourneys on Wednesday night and the larger 888 games on the weekend. I only manage to play three 888 tourneys in this period as the weekends are getting busy, finishing 64/118, 34/104 and 63/360.
I do much better in the live Friday night tourneys, which have re-started by mid-January. In the first game of the year, in a small field of 22 players, I make 2nd place. Then in week two I come 1st out of 27, making for a nice collect. It looks like I've got my mojo back. Then I come 17/32, 12/33 and 28/30 in the following weeks. In this last result the following happens (just another bad beat story):I push hard pre-flop with KK and get one caller. The flop is J T x and I bet 3/4 of the pot. My opponent pushes all-in and I call. He shows AJ. Then a Jack hits the turn and I'm crippled. The next hand, with 8 big blinds left I pick up AK and go all-in. I get called by J9, a 9 hits the turn and it's goodbye and thanks for coming. That's poker. I'm still very happy with the results so far and hope to get some more deep runs in this tournament.
COOLER
The mornings are getting cooler but during the day there's usually a choice between blazing sunshine or dark heat-cloud and energy-sapping humidity. Meanwhile, I continue to struggle with the online tournaments. Out of 27 players I reach the following places: 22, 11, 2, 7, 13, 13, 11, 19. I have one more Wednesday night session before the end of my summer season so I'm not too confident of a brilliant finish in this game type. On the other hand, on Friday night I make 1st place again in a field of 30. I have no business finishing well in this game but somehow manage to struggle onto the final table, limp across the bubble and drag myself into the big money.
Overall, it's been a pretty enjoyable summer season. Online tournaments have left a lot to be desired but live tourneys and cash games have worked out very well. So it's swings and roundabouts, but my bankroll is still looking better now than it did at the beginning of the season. Now I wonder what Autumn will bring?
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