Well I’m back winning which is obviously a good thing. Since my last post I took down the stars $50 freezeout $70k guaranteed for $12k and change, won the Mansion $20k as well as taking a 5th place in FTOPS Horse lmao.

FTOPS HORSE was pretty much the funniest thing ever. I wasn’t even going to play as I wasn’t particularly keen on just blowing $500 in a tourney which I hardly knew the rules of a couple of the disciplines, however, thanks to late registration I decided to eventually join the tournament and mainly saw it as a chance to finally learn all the disciplines of the game. Basically my plan was to learn as I went and with the great structure at the start of the tourney I had a bit of time to work out what was going on and to try and go from there….. plus I was a limit holdem pro after my 20th finish in the ftops lhe event the other week lol.

Well I exceeded all my expectations and actually had a decent stack going into the bubble. To be honest I was just ecstatic to cash in this competition and thats pretty much the only time that has been the case in my poker career (apart from say my first ever cash etc). I played really well in the limit holdem rounds deep in the comp (helped that it was shorthanded quite a bit when we got to these rounds) and I also felt my stud hi game was decent as well. The hi lo games I was pretty wank at but managed to get by and as for Razz well anyone with half a brain can play that one lol.

On the final table I managed to ladder to 5th place for around $13.5k. I got really lucky to double up whilst shortstacked in stud hi versus Rex (special mention to her for a great run t0o) but my major downfall came when I missed a low draw in omaha 8 and got snapped off. Eventually I busted in Razz to the eventual winner Yuvee04. Such a sick accomplishment from him that day by winning two ftops on the same day (tilt turbo as well). I know little about the game of HORSE still but I could tell he was a different class to the rest of the table at the game.

So all is great right? Well no not really lol. That fifth in the HORSE was a great feeling. It was probably the only 5th I have ever been 100% happy with, I didn’t even once think about the difference between first and 5th (70k to 13.5k) and I was so happy to finally have a great day again and then came the FTOPS $300r 6 max event….

Wow this was brutal! Maybe even up there with my bust in the original $2500 FTOPS event where I lost AA to AK sooted all in pre for a monster pot with 25 left and $400k for the win. The 6 max comp got off to a slow start and I was pretty much grinding all tournament. I got really lucky when I made a bad reshove with 95 sooted blind on blind when I was semi-tilted and got looked up by a3 but got there. I then said to Rex on Aim (who was ghosting most of the tourney) that I need to make the most of that bit of fortune and I certainly set about doing that as I began to chip up in the mid to late stages. After the bubble burst I was moved to a tougher table but things continued to go really well and despite playing 1 pot particularly horrible I found myself as the chipleader with 40 left

From here on in I managed to stay in the top 5 till we got to 13 left. Despite having what appeared to be a very comfortable stack with 520k at 6/12k I knew that one flip could easily make or break my tourney and shortly after the hourly break I got royally screwed here to bust out in 13th http://www.pokerhand.org/?3046660. $250k ftw and I get $9500…. NICE.

To be honest I hate empiremaker2000′s line here. The much better play would be to raise and then 4 bet shove when I obviously re raise him. That way when Im bluffing he gets like an extra 100k chips. This way he obv takes the pot down like 95% of the time but I can assure you when I call I have Aj+ 88+ which Aj obv plays terrible against. And although he wins the pot 95% of the time he is not exactly winning a massive pot when I fold to his limp shove. Also his hand has a ton of value post flop if I do just flat call in position and If an ace were to flop and I had just called with a low sooted ace for example he could get 3 streets of value as I would most likely put him on trying to barrel me off middle pair on the flop as it was unlikely that I had an ace with my flat call pre flop.

So I’m still awaiting that HUGE score. Soooooo many near misses in the big ones now and nearly all of the time I have been screwed right in my eye I’ve had a lot of people say to me don’t worry its just a matter of time etc but people have said that for over a year now and it still hasn’t happened. Sure I’ve had loads of big scores and I’m grateful for them but I just really want to win that Sunday Major, That Ftops, That Wcoop and even that Live tournament. It’s not even about the money to be honest (obviously it would be nice!!) but its really just about being the best, thats what I want to be….. Lets see if I can do it in the FTOPS $2500 2 day event which starts on Saturday….

Until then take it easy Chris.