{"id":1281,"date":"2006-06-19T23:02:36","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T06:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2006-06-19T23:02:36","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T06:02:36","slug":"pokerstars-changed-my-july-2006-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/19\/pokerstars-changed-my-july-2006-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"PokerStars changed my July 2006 plans"},"content":{"rendered":"
Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.
\n–Mason Cooley\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>I often hear that winning in tournament poker requires a dose of luck, so provided you play good poker in enough tournaments, you’ll make it deep and win from time to time. Like this guy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I had more than my share of good luck on Sunday in the PokerStars<\/a> 2nd Annual World Blogger Championship of Online Poker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lucky Break #1<\/b><\/p>\n

I was seated at a table where 6 of the 9 players were sitting out and never showed up to play. Not only did that mean all the blinds one could steal, but also a lot of short-handed pressure play. Once I knocked out the player to my left (AQ vs AT, A high flop), it was heads-up play with a 2:1 chip advantage and a positional advantage (seat 9 vs 6).<\/p>\n

Lucky Break #2<\/b><\/p>\n

While heads-up with seat 6, I called a min-raise with a suited Q. The flop came K high, all in my suit. Check, check. The turn put a non-threatening card on the board. Another check from the raiser and I put out a normal sized bet. He called. The river pairs the board and seat 6 wakes up with a sizable bet. I raised a few times the size of his bet and he re-raised. I thought about it, discounted the possibility of the boat or the higher flush, and put him all in. He had a suited J for the 3rd nut flush and I was sitting on a lot of chips.<\/p>\n

Lucky Break #3<\/b><\/p>\n

At level 13, with blinds\/antes at 1000\/2000\/100, I found myself getting short (m of 5.6). I steal-raised to 4xBB from the button with a suited K, but laid it down to an all-in re-steal. In desperate shape, I re-raised the short stack’s all-in with a pair of sixes. Unfortunately, Columbo<\/a> quickly called all-in with his pair of queens. The short stack had AK and the flop came down Ah As 2s, leaving me with 2 outs twice or running spades to win. Then the beat: a 6h on the turn. This was probably not as bad as the beat I handed out last December<\/a>, but it was pretty bad. I apologized in the PokerStars chat and on IRC, but I’m not sure if anyone bought it. With that CJ-esque suckout, my stack was back in the playable range.<\/p>\n

The Rest<\/b><\/p>\n

Honestly I don’t remember the rest too well. I do remember not wanting to win a Letterman jacket. I’ve got one of those. \ud83d\ude42 The iPod mini would have been nice, and I would have preferred it over the $215 seat in the Sunday Million or even the $370 seat in the WSOP Satellite. Once it got down to the 10th place bubble, I took a few opportunities to steal some blinds\/antes, but probably not as many as I should have. <\/p>\n

At the final table, I made some bold moves, knowing that 9th place would pay just as well as 2nd, and bold moves were needed to come in 1st. Unfortunately, trying to push someone off a hand by re-raising all-in in response to his re-raise of your raise doesn’t always work. Especially if you have 99 and he has a pair of kings. Strangely enough, I survived that hand with a few chips, survived the next with a crazy 7 high straight, and finally went out in 6th place.<\/p>\n

Once again, a big thank you to all the people who cheered me on and gave me encouragement. These things are always more fun with friends watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects. –Mason Cooley I often hear that winning in tournament poker requires a dose of luck, so provided you play good poker in enough tournaments, you’ll make it deep and win from time to time. Like this guy. I had more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/psIKy-kF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}