Poker Blues

I wasn’t able to get much hands in over the weekend because I was too busy running around a hotel like a headless chicken looking for things to take pictures of and then I was absolutely shattered for the past two days because of all the work I did! Today saw my first venture onto the poker tables in a few days. What I needed to instil confidence in my game was a heater, God knows I’m due one!

Instead, I couldn’t help but feel that someone at Carlospoker has flicked my doomswitch in the hopes that I won’t be able to clear my deposit bonus! I had 4 hours of fun, and by fun I mean excruciating pain! A few hands of note was when I flopped top set on a 6-3-4 board and got it all in against two other players for a $75 pot which is quite considerable playing at .10/.20 blinds! Both players had overcards and were drawing dead, or so I thought. The turn brought a 2 and the river brought a 5 meaning we were chopping it up! OUCH! I then got it all in with 44 on a KK4 board versus another two players, one with 88 and the other with K8. Turn was a ten and so was the river! I nearly got sick everywhere!

Tonight there’s a $3000 Guaranteed Tournament on Bodog for all those who attended the Waterford Open during the weekend. I lodged €20 onto the site and registered, leaving $9 in spare change. I sat into a .10/.25 table with what I had left and without having to showdown a hand found myself with $26! I then doubled up when someone tried to bluff the river with a busted 4-high flush draw! Bodog seems to be stuck in time as far as the standard of play is concerned - it’s great!

So amazingly, I’m up for the day which I’m quite impressed with! I’ll play the Waterford Open Online tournament tonight and hopefully I’ll have something to brag about on here tomorrow - for once!

My Waterford Open 2008

Thursday saw me take the trip out to Tramore in what would see me put more hours in four days than I would usually put into 2 weeks! I was originally meant to be dealing for the weekend but by Saturday I had perfected the art of running around the ballroom with a chicken and cheese panini in one hand, a notepad in the other and an expensive looking camera around my neck! I was living the hectic life of a tournament blogger!

I’ll spare the details of the weekend, because they can all be seen at the Bodog Waterford Open Blog, but I will say that I was absolutely run off my feet as this whole tournament blogging scene was new to me! I can’t think of the number of times that I had taken note of a hand, taken a picture of the players and had gone to the laptop to post the story only to have to hop back up again to cover another hand!

I think I eventually got the hang of it as I just took a picture of the board and the players, went to the laptop and reconstructed the action using the pictures of the table… resourceful huh? The fact that by Day 3, there were only a handful of players left in the tournament also helped as I was no longer being summoned into the tournament areas to cries of “ALL-IN” every 15 seconds!

Having covered the whole event, it really highlighted the luck-factor in these tournaments. In looking back through the blog, I noticed that every player on the final table had two things in common 1) they were all involved in some kind of hand during the tournament where at best they were racing for all their chips and 2) they all left a trail of destruction in their wake!

So, after working for 50 hours over the 4 days, I stumbled back home with my various bits and pieces making sure that I had the most valuable things of all… the tiny orange notebook that now had the email addresses of two models that were down for the weekend? A thinly-veiled brag? I think not :p