Highway to hell...

What a night/day it was. 40th spot in the biggest online tournament that there is (Pokerstars 5 million dollars guaranteed) from 3000 runners. Some people may think I should be happy with $24,733.50 however I was playing the game with a friend a bit similar to Punkfloyd (who also done great and finished 49th). My friend started the game (route666) and had to catch a flight in the morning as he had some problems to see to at his casino so he asked me to play for him if he made it past the first few hours. So the $25000 is not all for me unfortunately! Also another english person who done great was Joseph Lovelady (Dynamite321) who came 67th having won the stars million a few weeks ago. He too will no doubt be disappointed at coming so close. Winning 10-50 thousand dollars is nice but its not going to change a fulltime players life in any way. However make the final table and get from $100,000-$1,400,000 and then it is life changing.

With the big events online from what I have seen nobody ever wins without getting lucky many times, I had my fair share of good luck. I won most races I was in although when there was around 600 places left I had bad beats and cold decks with hands like KK/QQ. Just after those hands I made a bad shove all in with KJs and cracked aces but that and one other play are only ones that over 15 hours of poker I would take back. I was sat next to Greg Raymer (FossilMan) for much of the tournament and it must be said that he deserves full credit for responding to observers and players. I don't think he failed to acknowledge a single comment or question made to him.

The last few bigger online events I have played I have lost with AK v AK and then AK v KK button v big blind. I remembered this and when in the last 100 i folded AK AK QQ in a short period of time due to the way hands went. The QQ I was especially pleased with as I ended up getting all the chips of the reraiser a short while after. Some plays made by others were very bad considering the magnitude of the game, when down to the last 60 I had all other tables open and was watching out for who I thought was good and who I thought was not so good. You could see some players clearly did not want to race if they had chips where others would not fold a single pair or ace hi. Two players who are both great online players were on my last table before I busted and had chips James Campbell (jcamby33) and Matt Giannetti (hazards21) who surprisingly busted soon after finishing 22nd and 28th respectively. Both of these players consistently win huge sums in online tournaments and no doubt will win huge amounts in live tournaments in the near future. They are friends with the likes of Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin) and Jared Hamby (thewacokidd) who in an earlier post i spoke about as great poker players who will win lots in the future.

The hand I went bust with was AQ v 99. I had around 550,000 chips and I cannot recall the blind levels as I was comatosed for the last few hours, I would guess they were 15,000/30,000 with an ante. Utg made a small raise and I went all in next to act with AQ, I had not played many hands and hoped to just take the raise and blinds although if I was called by the initial raiser I expected to be ahead or 50/50 the worst way. He called with 99 and I did not get lucky for a change! Although he had to call around 450000 for a 1,150,000 pot with just 100,000 invested he could have folded if he took all the factors into consideration such as chip stacks, tightness of my play and the fact that he was 39 spots from 1.4million. The average stack at this point was around 2 million chips and i had to think to myself if i fold here will i get another half decent hand before I am blinded out? With just over a million chips I would have been comfortable as I was playing fairly well, the guy busts me goes to just past two million chips and himself busts out a few hands later....what a waste.

Congratulations to all those who made a good cash in the tournament and I shall hopefully do better in the not so distant future. Pokerstars is easily the best online pokersite and has many great additional tournament features. The time bank is a great feature and often it helps to have several minutes to make a decision that can make or cost you a lot of money. Although the timebank feature was annoying when near the bubble we played maybe 10 hands in an hour. Lastly thanks to the many people who gave me much appreciated support, may you all go one step further than me in the future.

p.s. what a shame that several days after issuing my million dollar challenge I couldn't achieve it so soon!