Tournament Take Down.

After five long, hard attempts at the weekly local tournament, I finally managed to take it down this week.

This weekly game represented the "next step up" on the ladder to me and it has given me a real sense of achievement. The reason for this is because I know that one or two months ago I didn't have the skill, knowledge, experience, or confidence to win it. I didn't luck my way to winning.... I learned how it win it.

The first thing to note about this tournament is that minutes before I arrived at the venue I had one of those random confrontations that comes your way every now and then that really tests you. It had me worked up and a few years ago I would have let my aggression get the better of me, but by the time I sat down I already knew that I had to chill out or I wouldn't last long. I almost sat out, let my heart rate reduce to normal, and gave it time for my body temperature to return to normal. I knew not to let personal things come to the table, so I sat back and let them all play while I folded until my mind was really on the game.

For the first hour or so, I played tight and just played the top hands as per usual, but I also played the suited connectors as best to Doyle Brunsons instructions in Super System as possible. I am finding these cards to be very profitable in a very different way than the traditional top hands and I feel that every hold 'em player should read what he has to say about them.

There was only 21 players but they all wanted to win it within the first few orbits of the table. It seemed that they turned up to double up or go home. Nobody wanted to just grind it out adding to their stack bit by bit. It is something that I have noticed at all live poker games that I have played. You can almost smell that certain players at times feel the urge to push all-in no matter what their cards are.

I got to the final table without much drama.

When we got there I had pretty much the same amount of chips that I started with. I had been here before and knew where I went wrong. In the past when I was short stacked I was waiting for the big hands and hoping to double up. This time I decided that I would get a read of the players and raise them out of the blinds when I thought they were week. It really didn't matter what i had, it only mattered what I thought they had. As long as I had position on them, and I thought they were week, I would really go for them and not give an inch until they folded.

I managed to slug it out and work my way into a pretty good chip stack by the time we were at the bubble. This is the time when I think I played very badly. I was playing super tight and was scared to do anything. This was stupid because to me, poker isn't about the money, it's about becoming the best poker player I can be. With that said though I became the turtle that retreated in it's shell when everything I read tells me to do the opposite and attack every bit of weakness at the table.

We got past the bubble and I played good solid poker, but this week I was playing it aggressively. I made sure that I was the player at the table that they all had to beat and they all took shots at me. This is what I wanted. I wanted players to be firing bullets at me. the further into the game we went, the more confident I was becoming. I was going through a "rush" of cards when three players went out quickly.

We were heads up for the first time, and I had a massive chip lead. I must have had three or four times more than my opponent and it was only a few hands before he went all in with a Queen and a King to my Ace King. The community cards came to create on of the most uneventful hands on my journey so far (my Ace high to his King high), but as the river hit, I knew that I had achieved something.

I now have complete and utter confidence in what I am trying to prove, that being a winning poker player is all about studying and practising as much as you can. It was just a small tournament in the grand scale of things to come, but it was a huge step for me.

I am going to continue to play in the same weekly game with the same dedication and concentration, but I am going to look for another game somewhere, another tournament with higher stakes and hopefully a higher skill level. I want to be able to keep going along the steep learning curve and adjust to a higher game.

But for tonight at least, I want to feel happy with myself and the people that have helped me. Not for winning a few hundred pounds, but for finding out that I can really do this, not with some set of skills that I was born with, but by dedication to learning how to become The Future Poker Star.

I have updated the latest statistic page and it has made a big difference.

Quick Super System Notes

I received Doyle Brunson's Super System in the post the other day and decided to give you some quick thoughts on it so far.

I read the introductions and skipped to the no-limit hold 'em section, so this is by no means an in-depth review but more my initial thoughts on it.

For those who don't know, Super System is known as the bible of poker books and has been selling well for years. By the time Brunson had written the book he had already won millions in poker and had won the World series Of Poker (then known as the Poker World Championship) twice.

When it comes to poker, he knows his stuff.

After a read though the specified sections I took two things away straight away which will defiantly improve my play.

The first one is that the way that he plays hold 'em is aggression, aggression, aggression! One particular quote that I took from the book is this:

"If your going to call, then bet."

By that he means that if you aren't on the button, and you would call say 100 chips, then instead of checking and waiting for an opponent to bet, then bet the 100 chips yourself. This may sound simple to some readers but it opened my eyes to another major flaw in my game. I really check sometimes knowing that I would call a bet that may come may way. Doyle explained that I should bet in those situations.

The other thing that I picked up straight away is the value of mid sized connecting cards. By this I mean 6-7 suited, 7-8 suited, 8-9 suited etc. He writes a huge chapter on it which I am currently absorbing. I hope that I don't do his millions of hands of experience an injustice by explaining the power of these cards in a few sentences.

Basically if you raise pre-flop with these hands then most poker players will throw away cards other than picture cards, like aces, or kinds, or queens etc. If you have four players in the hand with picture cards and you hit your straight with your mid-sized connectors then you know you will have the best hand and the chances are if they have a big pair then you can get a lot of money from them.

It's like making sure that everyone is beating themselves up and fighting to make their way to the front door, you can wipe them all out by quietly sneaking out the back. You are setting them up perfectly for a fall.

Again, I have just read a few sections and I can't say I properly studied them. These are just my initial thoughts and observations on a huge course on poker. However, I used these tactics at a local tournament on Tuesday this week and finished higher than I ever had done before.

Back To The Drawing Board

I have just come back from the regular Tuesday evening local tournament with a revelation.

Over the past month or so I have been completely humbled in just about every game that I have played and it has to go down as more than just being on tilt. I can't seem to get any good cards and if I do, I seem to get beat by weaker starting hands.

I guess this is luck, or the lack of it.

But what i am really starting to worry about is the fact that I am starting to play crap. I back down to re-raises every time, I am not concentrating on other players reactions or betting patterns, and I'm not being aggressive at all unless I happen to flop the nuts.

The fact of the matter is that I need to get back to basics. I need to get back to where I started going wrong and take it from there. I have to go back to the times when I was winning by being the best player at the table.

I have ordered Doyle Brunson's book "Super System" and I am going to read and re-read it before I play one more hand. I'm going to use the next few weeks getting back into my winning ways by learning more than I have done before and I simply must get back to playing smart poker so I can play my way out of this bad patch and continue towards our goal of becoming The Future Poker Star.

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Once again, thank you very much to Olly who gave his time and patience to it.