2nd - Top 5 2009 Personal Poker Highlights

I started Feb in Thailand and quickly turned an £11,000 profit in the first four days. I then dropped it all in one 2 hour session on the 5th. I was still full of motivation and confidence though and stuck many sessions in to finish +£4,000 upon leaving Thailand a couple of days later. The next week back home was a good one running that up to £40,000 by the end of the 14th after 7 winning days ranging from £800 to £8,550.



Number 2 on my list is Sunday 15th Feb running late into the morning of 16th.



I quote from my blog on the Saturday " It would be nice to enter some tournaments tommorrow for a change but easier said than done when the usual omaha urge kicks in, will have to see on the day" If you regularly read this blog this year you will often see this sort of comment kick in once a month or so when i try to motivate myself into entering a wad of tournaments for a change.



The usual omaha urge did kick in during the afternoon and the 10/20 and 25/50 games were kind to letting me log a +£10,500 session. Despite this i still hoped to enter some multis later and i think i played 5 or 6 in total that evening ranging from $129 to $530 buyins. The smallest one and the one i really entered for fun was the $129 ftops bounty game ($20 per player you knock out) which started with 9061 players.

I played this game for fun like i said to begin with. Any marginal spots were gambled on and it worked pushing my stack up early. I somehow managed to ride this stack through the field and was golden when i did make bad overaggressive plays. Four betting 66 and running into AA rings a bell , first card out 6. Oh then about 30mins later i did exactly the same thing and again first card out 6 :) At this point i had a huge chiplead and i was directed to a special thread on 2+2 about a "fish on a heater" obviously refferring to me. I know i had knocked out a couple of good players as thousands of railtards started abusing me in the chat so it was funny to see how they had looked me up one of them pokerstats site and assumed i was a terrible player as i had only played 1 game on full tilt in the previous 3 months. Anyways i must have done something right as i had the chiplead almost right up to the final table.

At the final table my stack moved up and down and all over the shop. A few times i had 40% of chips in play but the standard of the play was rediculously good for only a $129 game and a minefield of 9000+ players. I remember being only joint chiplead with a few others with 5 or 6 players left but i had been so active i got a near double up in a blind battle with KK vs AJ despite the 2 of us being 100xbb+ deep. When we got to 3 players left there was a lot of plays going on but it was clear that one guy was the weaker of the 3. Eventually he had lost chunks and shoved an A3 into the other guys JJ. River Ace cost me $38k more and a HU match. Soon after i committed to 77 preflop against the A3 guy but he had 99. The 7 flopped but a 4th diamond hit the river to give him a flush.

12 hours after it had started i was left with that feeling of sickness at not getting 1st or 2nd but it was still a massive result to finish 3rd for $54,366 which overtook my previous online mtt record win from Oct 2005 of $51,810. On the day though combining my cash winnings meant i was +£47,000 which remains my best day to date although "no 1" comes in a close 2nd in profits only.