The Story to Date

I started playing this game almost 2 years ago. I was on holiday from work at the time and received an email from Betfair telling me about their poker site. I had seen it played on TV from time to time and I'd always wanted to give it a go...well now was the time.

Within an hour I was sat playing Limit cash...I lost, always likely to happen when you barely know the hand rankings. Anyways not to be deterred I did some reading and thought I had a rough idea of how to play the game and came back the following day....and lost again. Now this continued for a few days before I discovered tournaments...I lost at them as well.

Gradually however my understanding of the game developed and the losses slowed down and before long I was actually showing a profit, and after 6 months of playing I was making a decent return from the game, picking up some decent four figure cashes in a few online multis..everything seemed easy. For the next few months everything was easy, there were ups and downs but the ups were significantly greater than the downs and life was good. I then had my biggest cash to date when I picked up 2nd in the weekly Sunday tournament on Crypto (think it was 40k GTD at the time) for a tasty 6.3k then a couple of months later I qualified for my first ever offline tournament, the EPT event in Baden.

Then things turned sour..I couldn't beat an egg, day after day week after week I was shipping money left right and centre. Mixture of tilt, bad luck and downright crap play was responsible. At this point I was predominantly playing MTTs with the odd ill advised foray onto the cash tables, and to be honest at the time my game selection was awful. This continued until the start of this year when I decided I had to make changes..I didn't have an infinite supply of cash that I could piss away day after day after day. Changes had to be made, and first to go was the cash tables, I don't have the correct mindset to play them, I am far too prone to tilting and throwing away one weeks profit in the space of a few hours. Next to go was the number of MTTs I played, I reduced them dramatically and was far more selective in choosing which tourneys I did play. So that basically left me with SnG's to rebuild the bankroll. I started off playing the 6paks on Crypto before moving over to Pokerstars where I now play the majority of my poker.

Things started to pick up and the bankroll was being rebuilt at a steady rate, was frustrating at first playing at lower stakes than I was used to but I just had to get on with it. My game was improving and my confidence was being rebuilt. This carried on for a couple of months until I felt I was getting stale playing solely STT's (I get bored easily), so decided to spend a week playing some multis. Things started well, made 3 final tables out of 5 played on Stars, no big payouts but helped to build the confidence. Then on the Sunday (21st May) I decided to play a sat for the $1m on Stars, whilst playing I had a look at the lobby and noticed a $25 rebuy sat for the $650 WSOP qualifier was about to start. Last year I mist have pissed away around £1k trying to qualify and didn't get close and this year due to the bad run I had I had no intention of even trying to qualify, however I thought what the hell I might as well give it a go. A few hours later I had a seat in the $1m and the WSOP qualifier, despite some skullduggery in the WSOP sat. I was 2 hands away from being allin on my BB on the bubble, however on other table the BB was allin, inexplicably UTG moves allin and obviously the rest fold...he turns over 94o v the BB's T8 but the 9 landed and I had my seat in the qualifier which kicked off at 11pm that night.

The structure is great with 30min levels and 2500 starting stacks there are 474 runners with 26 seats. Things start well and I hit a couple of flops early and build up a decent stack before I lost a big pot with 200ish left which put me in trouble, my stack kept on dwindling and at one point I was down to 5BB's and that WSOP seat looked a long way off. Anyway I battled on and slowly managed to rebuild my stack, details are a bit hazy now but I do recall getting lucky when I pushed with T9s from the SB and BB called with 99 and the 10 landed. Slowly but surely other started to fall and before I knew it there were only 50 left, I was below ave stack but that seat was moving ever closer. Only 24 to go and I knew a few of them would dig their own graves with awful calls/plays. I was still below average but managed to maintain my stack with the odd steal here and there (I picked up no big hands). I was in desperate need of chips when this hand cropped up (can't find the HH but I posted it and my thoughts on blondepoker)

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=10641.0

Once I won that hand I knew the seat was mine and at 7.30am it was confirmed when the unfortunate bubble boy was KO'd. Happy days....oh and I cashed in the $1m as well. Since then my good form has continued with some decent results, most notably winning the 5000euro added on Betfair for £3300, I also had a good run in the $1m on Stars but faltered in 40th when my JJ ran into the chip leaders AA for a $1900 payout.

With the World Cup and what not I have hardly played in last month or so but I have developed a habit of blowing big chip leads on FT's, twice I have had the chip lead going onto the FT in the 15k on Crypto only to finish 7th, one was not amused. Anyways think thats enough for now, will be playing a bit more in the next week or two before I head to Vegas...16 days and counting :)

Bazza