DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

December represented a turning point in my poker life. I consistently went deep in MTTs and managed to win almost double what I had ever won in a month previously. Many of my friends in the online poker community, in particular those on the badbeatspoker.net forum, have asked me to what I attribute my new-found MTT success. In short, I am playing more of them, I have developed a more extreme game (going from extremely tight in the first hour to maniacally aggressive after the introduction of antes), my bubble play is now fearless (bordering on reckless) and in general, I have a much clearer idea of what line I am going to take in a hand.

I played significantly less for the week of Christmas but stepped it up again in the new year. January started brightly as I took down Full Tilt's $11500 Guarantee for over 3K and followed it up with winning the nightly $24 Heads-Up Tourney for about $1200. I won 8 head-to-heads in a row to take it down and I can say in all honesty that I didn't bad-beat a single opponent for a significant pot until the final match where I cracked aces. The flop gave me the nut flush draw with one over and I re-shipped my stack versus an aggressive opponent. He insta-called with his aces and I insta-hit the turn. UL & GG.

Just a few days ago, I made my fist significant cash on Pokerstars, having made a $600 deposit just before Christmas to avail of their 25% promotional bonus. It was the $10k Guarantee ($10 one rebuy, one add-on) and it took an epoch to complete. Six hours in and I had $700K and a commanding chip-lead with 40 remaining. The next nearest in chips had 480K and in true randomised seating fashion, he was sitting two to my right. The 3rd, 4th and 6th place players were also seated at our 'table of death'. I picked up aces in the BB (such a lovely place to have them!) and waited with spider-like patience to see who would take an interest in the hand. A standard raise to 20K from mid-position got me licking my chops and a re-raise all-in for 105K from the Cut-Off had me positively salivating. When the button smooth-called, i had to wipe the drool off my keyboard. I had to raise but how much to keep my Button-wielding friend and his 480K stack interested. I decided that with over 250K already in there, it was prudent to chop my playable stack, (after all, the smooth call from the Button could be an indication of super strength and I wanted to give him a chance to get it all in with QQ or KK). I made it 240K, the original raiser folded and the button called. How peculiar I thought that he would call half his stack against the only player in the tourney that had him covered. Oh well, we're all-in on any flop anyway. The flop came k93 and I shipped it. He calls with pocket 9s and takes down a humungous pot.

Well I was left with just over 200K (about the chip-average) and had to rebuild. Another hour past and it was final table time. I was 4th of 9 with 1.1 million chips. Well never since the '07 WSOP Final Table did I ever see such donktastic play. Players got it all-in preflop with hands like 44 versus k9 and 66 versus a7 and in jig-time we were 6-handed. The chipleader sat on 3.4 million chips but inexplicably he was next out. The one other decent player at the table went bananas, reraising the UTG raiser with 85o and walking into 1010. 4-handed, the guy to my immediate left decided that his only raise would be an all-in one and he proceeded to ship it 6 of the next 7 hands. At this point it is worth noting that he had 1.6 million and the blinds were only 30K/60K. Anyway, this tactic actually worked the first 5 times until he eventually got called by AJ. His J4 hit a 4-card flush and he was the chipleader with 4 million 3-handed. I was the shortstack with 1.3 million and the other guy had 2.2 million. I doubled up with 88 versus a2 and then took down another decent sized pot to become the chipleader with 3.6 million. It looked to be all falling into place until my QJ on a Q42 board failed to hold against the nut flush draw. I was suddenly shorty again and got it all-in soon after with a10. My opponent had 44 and they held to knock me out in 3rd for $2300. 8 long hours but a nice cash at the end of it!

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