It’s been a couple of weeks since my last blog. Since then, I’ve played in the EPT London, come home from London, spent a couple days at home, then gone to Melbourne over this last weekend for the ANZPT Melbourne.
London was great, but my tournament results weren’t really. In hindsight, there are only a couple hands that I can legitimately say I wasn’t happy with how I played.
So, even though the results weren’t there I kind of felt like it wasn’t meant to be for this trip. Also, the whole time there I only played 7 events, which is basically nothing.
Things need to be put in perspective
I mean, I can play 20 tournaments a day online easily and not have results for a whole week. So these things need to be put in perspective.
Highlights of the month were the Spurs v Villa game, which Spurs won 2-1. Great stadium, great atmosphere, good game so that was really fun. Then, I’m a bit of a nerd so I thought the museums were great, especially the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum.
The overall vibe in London is pretty cool and it seems like there’s always something going on and there’s a lot of activity around the streets so it’s just fun to walk around and soak it in. Other than that, we went on a tour of Wimbledon, which was cool and makes me want to go back for next year’s event and did a bunch of other touristy stuff, some of which is worth doing like Hampton Court and some of which I could live without like the London eye. Although admittedly we picked a stupid day to go as it was raining and there wasn’t great visibility.
So I came home and spent a couple days here and before I knew it I was in Melbourne again. I got to Crown at 12pm on Friday and was planning on playing the high roller event at 12:30. I went down to the poker room and saw they only had 13 players registered, most of whom were pretty competent so I decided to leave it.
Then I went for lunch, took a bit of a walk around and went back to my room at about 3:00. I was going to go the gym and do some other stuff in the afternoon but I closed my eyes and next thing I knew it was 8:30 at night. Was really hungry, so I ordered some room service and then slept from about 12:00 till 10:00. This is not regular behaviour for me. It just showed me how buggered I was.
Maybe good things will follow now
Anyway after I woke up I was ready for the main event. The first day was almost a perfectly textbook effort despite some late night setbacks that I recovered from through some overly aggro play, which the table was happy to let slide. Overall though, I’d be pretty happy if every first day was roughly the same; double the starting stack without getting all in, through mostly small pots on my terms.
The second day I lost a pot for most of my chips early on to an adventurous opponent’s squeeze play with 7h3h, that hammered my 1010. Then I had a good spot to double up with QQ against AJ. From there, I went on a very nice rush to get to chipleader with about 40 left (36 cashed). Even though a lot happened between that point and the next hand, my stack basically stayed within the 280k – 350k range.
With 20 left at 3k/6k (opponent had 300k and I had 312k), I opened JJ UTG+1 and he 3bet me to 45k. It was the 4th time he’d 3bet me and this was not the sort of player I had any intention of folding to. Anyway, most of the time in that spot I’d probably jam it all in and try and get the guy to level-talk himself into calling with a medium pair or possibly fold AK/AQ. But in this spot, I wanted to try and induce the shove that I thought there was a good shot he’d try with his medium suited connector’s. So I made it 105k and he shoved it in.
I called and he flipped the 99 which went on to flop a set with a 9 in the window and I lost a monster pot to go to chipleader by a fair margin and was left with 12k. Then I made a classic comeback and went all the way back to 200k. But in the last level of the day at 5k/10k my 7h3h nemesis who I couldn’t beat in a single pot all day opened the hijack, I shipped in my full 170k with KQ and he called with AQ.
That was the end of my tournament in 16th place for just under $AUD9k. Always disappointing getting so close, but good to cash and turn a profit for the trip, also it ended the drought I was having with cashes so maybe good things will follow now.
Don’t have much planned for this week and a bit, but I am heading down to South Africa for the WSOP Africa and despite another long-haul flight, I’m pretty excited for it. Also, it’s starting to hit summer in Sydney now and that’s definitely the best time of the year here.
