At Last A Cash in London

I’ve finally had a bit of a result in a big tournament. Okay, 77th isn’t really anything to write home about, but it’s definitely a big relief to get a half decent cash under my belt after the way things have been going. In fact after my last few tournaments it was actually a relief when I made the dinner break on day 1.

I’ve felt pretty low about poker at a few points over this past year. I’d be the first to admit that some of my exits have been due to bad play, but I genuinely felt like I’d been playing well lately and just running horribly, so I turned up in London desperately hoping things would change for me and that I would get some kind of run in the tournament. 



Any sense of optimism I had at the beginning of the tournament didn’t last long though. I deliberately joined the tournament late to avoid the queues for registration, and sat down just as the dealer was dealing the last few cards of a hand. If I’d been five seconds later my hand would have been dead, but instead I looked down to find A 8 in late position with everyone having passed to me.

One minute later I had lost 20 percent of my stack, having flopped a nut flush draw, picked up a straight draw on the turn and missed everything on the river.



Ten minutes after that I was down to 17,000 in chips from a starting stack of 30,000 after I flopped top pair with A-3 suited on an A-J-2 flop in a multi-way pot and hit my 3 on the turn.

John Magill had checked his A-J, allowing me to catch up. 
If I’d went on to bust shortly after that hand I’d have been absolutely gutted, and to be honest, I fully expected to be bust before the third level… it just felt inevitable.

As depressed as I was at this point, I wasn’t going to throw my chips away, and I tried to get my head straight and get back in the zone. I didn’t do anything particularly fancy or run especially well over the rest of the day, or the next day for that matter, but I picked up a few good hands, didn’t get any really bad beats, and slowly managed to grind my way up to 124,000 in chips by the end of the second day.



This meant I was in the money in a major tournament for the first time since the last London EPT, and while the £7,500 I was guaranteed was far from life changing, it was a massive result mentally if not financially.

124,000 in chips was a bit on the short side with the average being around 200,000, but it’s a position I’ve been in at some point in every tournament that I’ve won, and I knew that I’d only have to run good in a few big pots to put myself in with a real chance of a big score. It only takes a few steals to get through without running into big hands and two or three double ups, to get close to having a final table stack.



I came back on day 3 to find myself in a pretty awkward spot, with the ultra-aggressive Benny Spindler to my immediate left, and the tournament chip leader two places to my right. I knew I was going to have trouble stealing blinds here, but I knew I’d have a great chance of doubling up if I could pick up a good hand. 


Unfortunately I didn’t. I was dealt absolute rubbish for two hours while Benny raised over 50 percent of the pots, and managed to maintain my stack at something around 130,000 with a couple of re-raise shoves with pretty marginal hands.



I then took a bit of a hit when I raised K-Q on the button then passed to a check-raise on a 7-4-4 flop (my opponent showed 6-6). This left me very short indeed, and I went out soon afterwards, pushing all in from the button with less than 10 big blinds to find my K4 dominated by the small blind’s A-4. 



It would have been nice to have gone a bit further but overall I’m very happy with the result, and I picked up £11,000 in the end which is nothing to be sneezed at. I’ve thought sometimes over the last year that I hated poker, but I know I don’t really – I just hate losing. Even for a winning player, losing is a big part of the game though, so I suppose I better get more used to it.