In terms of the event itself, not a huge amount of poker action to report. Starting off with 30,000 stacks, I lost the opening few hands by letting my opponents draw too cheaply and hit their wonder card on the river. This took me down to around 25k where I sat for ages whilst picking up next to no playable cards, and when I did get something marginal (say 33), I would be facing a raise and 3bet, so I couldn't play them. After whittling down to the 15k mark, I picked up Aces. Whilst I would normally advocate raising to isolate, I went down a riskier route to either double up or bust out. UTG raised, and I felt that in UTG+2 position a 3bet would telegraph my hand, especially as I had played very few. So I called and of course there were several more callers. Luckily, when the money eventually went in it was against a guy with top pair and I doubled up, but it was a dangerous play which could equally have seen me head for the door.
So back at the starting stack, I wanted to kick on. There was one guy at the table in particular I felt had a very exploitable game however I needed to find spots to 3bet him pre-flop to make any use of my theory. In the spots where it was possible I had absolute trash so had to back down from that approach.
We were in level 9 (I think there were planned for 12 levels on Day 1), and I played a very spewy hand chasing a flush which with the impending blind increases would see me down in the red zone with about 10 big blinds. Made up my mind I was just going to wait for a vaguely suitable spot to shove, and picked up A5s UTG - shoved, and a guy in mid-position shoved his big stack over the top. He had AKo. Despite the dealer showing one card at a time and seeing a 4 land on the flop, the next card was a K and I didn't improve so that was it.
On reflection, I definitely didn't bring my A-game to this event. I went in with a strategy but threw it out of the window in the opening 30 minutes, which saw my stack hurt and more importantly made me impatient to get back into things, which eventually I did - more by luck than judgement. Then the impatience arose again as I wanted to 'play my own game' which I couldn't do with a below-average stack. A badly played flush draw saw me short stacked and then it was all down the card-gods in the end. I routinely play more a more focused, patient, tight-aggressive game these days and yet it all went out of the window. I would blame my recent lack of poker (barely played a hand for a few weeks), but thats nonsense. I just didn't stay 'in the zone' and I have to learn from it.
It wasn't all bad though. Given the buy-in, there were a smattering of poker 'celebs' playing such as Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliot, Roberto Romanello, Rupinder Bedi, Jake Cody and Sam Trickett. Also, whilst I was on the same table for the duration of the event, I had two very interesting players sat next to me. On my left was a older guy called Tim Blake, who seemed to be very popular within the club and won a huge amount at the Irish Open the other year. On my right was a vegas cash-game pro who hailed from Doncaster called Gareth Teatum. Both players provided great conversation - mainly about Vegas - in the early hours, and Gareth - who seemed like a really nice guy - kept tabs on the championship football scores, as he supports Doncaster Rovers (although has bet against them staying up this season). It does make all the difference when you spend a number of hours sat with interesting, friendly, chatty people rather than silent players or - thankfully not very often - egotistical arsehole players!
Anyway, the event is still going on a day later and they will be at the final table soon. Naturally, I've been keeping tabs on the two players I chatted to on Day 1, and whilst Gareth was sadly knocked out earlier, Tim Blake is still going strong and stands a great chance of making the final table. Devilfish is also in, although he was knocked out around the same time as me yesterday (thats what a second bullet does for you!). Looking on the updates on Blonde Poker earlier, it seems Mr Blake is a big favourite with the forum, although it seems like he has sold many pieces of him so that my explain part of it :)
Good experience though, and whilst the standard of play was obviously higher than lower buy-in tournaments, I don't think it was *that* different and I could spot various opportunities to exploit weaknesses. Hopefully next time I will take my A-game and stay in longer.
