Who's Da Man?

I have been playing poker now since 2003 and I am pleased to say that practice seems to be paying off.

Last weekend I took part in a tournament staged by a local poker league. I managed to beat 173 players to take first place. My prize is an all expenses paid trip to Atlanta where I will be playing in a World Series Of Poker Circuit event. It's only a little tournament with a $500+$60 buy in, but for an amateur player like me winning my way into such a tournament is a very exciting achievement.

I played my best poker ever in the league game to win my spot. The crunch for me was a pot at the end of the first day (the final hand in fact). I had top two pair on the flop. A player moved all in as a bluff which I correctly read as an act of desperation. Another player called the all in bet and I correctly put him on a flush draw. I moved over the top and went all in myself costing the other player more than half his stack to call. He was unhappy about my play, but called anyway.

The turn was a massive scare card for me as it gave my flush draw opponent the flush he was looking for. But the river gave me the boat and I took down the largest pot of the session making me the chip leader by almost 25%. My stack was over triple the average at that point.

When I returned for the finals I managed to turn my stack from $75,400 to $167,000 in an hour. By the time I went heads up I had around $850,000 and my opponent had $250,000. While he was not a bad player it was clear he had little experienced at heads up play, and was quite easy to read. My aggressive play combined with my scary big stack soon whittled him down to $150,000. I finally put him out with top pair. He was the 11th player I had personally knocked out which won me $50 as the player who knocked out the most other players.

So this time next week I will be in Atlantic City and on Tuesday I will be playing in my first 'real' tournament. Go me!