Well, even though I haven’t updated this blog in more than a month, I have been playing a ton of poker. I have decided to really focus on cash NL games and see how I fare. Of course, I am still playing tournaments as well to satellite into different land based events.
I have been playing a lot on CarbonPoker and just recently started playing on PokerStars more since PokerTracker works there to track my results. A couple of noteworthy things that have happened in the past month (other than just making a few thousand playing 1-2 NL):
I played in both of the $530 50 seat guaranteed Aruba qualifiers on UltimateBet. In the first one, they were giving away a $1000 bounty for the person who knocked out Phil Hellmuth, who was playing in the event as well. Well 5 hands into the tournament, I get dealt pocket nines and Phil, who is at my table directly to my right raises preflop. I call in position and see a beautiful flop of 9 6 5 with two hearts. He bets about the pot, and I smooth call, planning to pop it on the turn if a heart doesn’t come. An offsuit Ace comes on the turn and Phil leads into me again. I raise about 3 times his bet and he pushes! I instacall and he is still drawing live with A9 of hearts for top 2 pair with the nut flush draw. An offsuit 6 on the river makes me a cool grand and makes Phil the second person out of the tourney!
Unfortunately, I was knocked out a bit later in the tourney, but taking out Phil was almost as satisfying as winning the tourney. I made it pretty deep in the second qualifier, going out about 200th when the top 50 got seats. I got all my money in good on a 60 / 40 and would have been in the top 100 in chips if I had won that pot.
I have also had a great week in the tournaments on CarbonPoker. First I qualified in their Super Seat Freeroll tournament. To do this, you have to make it into the top 10 of a daily freeroll tourney. I accomplished this which gets me into a freeroll tournament on September 29th which is giving away an Aussie Millions package as well as 4 APPT packages. CarbonPoker also has a nice series of freerolls that you gain entry to by earning a certain number of comp points, which you get for playing in ring games or tourneys. They have daily $1000 freerolls during the week as well as $2000 on Saturdays, $10,000 on Sundays and a $50,000 once a month. That same day I was playing in the $1000 and actually ended up winning it along with the $200 first prize. This was on a Tuesday and on Saturday, they were having their $275 Grand Final tournament which gives away a $8750 package into the APPT Sydney Event. They were giving away 2 packages since there were 75 entries or so and I ended up winning one!
Clearly this was a good week for me. I will give more details on this once I receive them, but the tourney is in Sydney, Australia December 13-16, 2007.
That’s it for now, but I will try to update again soon.