Here's a token picture of Pete and me on the lake.
We didn’t think we’d have internet access initially but being the poker addicts that we are Fraser and I immediately went down to the Telstra shop to buy a $150 wireless connection (not including credit) when we arrived (while the others did the grocery shopping). I played the Full Tilt majors on Monday (no Stars majors as I used all my money to buy the PCA package) and was going really, really well in about three of them but only ended up cashing in the 750K (in 165th out of 3485). I also came 7th in a 100 person two seat satellite to the Aussie Millions on Cake Poker, busting out in ugly fashion with AA v AJs.
Fortunately my luck took a turn for the better later in the week when I cashed in 5th in the 65K on FTP for $5.9K, my biggest online score to date. I wonder how much of it came down to the fact I was only one-tabling the entire time and thus could concentrate better (I had woken up at 11:45AM which meant that the 65K was the only tournament left with a 10K+ first place prize and so it was the only tournament I ended up playing). I have however found that concentrating and taking notes in tournaments is fairly fruitless and annoying. You either
a) watch a hand intently only to find that it doesn’t go to showdown,
b) note down a bad player only to see him bust the remaining 30% of his stack before you even play a pot with him,
c) make a nice postflop read only to never get involved in a similar situation again anyway (probably because stacks are now so shallow that postflop becomes non-existent), or
d) (and this one really gets my goat) the table breaks!
It’s funny how much things can change in a couple of weeks though. Towards the end of last month I was on a downswing and everything seemed to be going wrong. I had 36K online and planned to spend 13K on the PCA package, meaning that with 23K or so left I’d probably have to return to playing some 2/4 again.
At that point I set myself a few sequential goals.
a) Win 7K, so that I could have 30K after buying the PCA package
b) Win 17K, so that I could have 40K after buying the package
c) Win 40K, so that I could have made 100K for the year
d) Win 47K, so that I could have 70K online after buying the package and say goodbye to 3/6 in 2009
The first two were realistic, the latter two were pretty ridiculous. Somehow though, I’ve pretty much managed to achieve them all (with a few qualifications). First, with my 46K AUD score in the APPT Sydney event I’m now safely over the 100K USD mark for the year. I’ve also won 27K online (19K in cash and 8K in tournaments) and now have 50K online after buying the PCA package and none of that is due to depositing my APPT score online (I decided to keep it all offline and just invest it basically). While not quite 70K, I’m definitely happy with it as it’s certainly a lot better than 23K and it allows me to continue playing 3/6 and 5/10 comfortably.
The only ‘drawback’ to all this is that when I said I wanted to make 100K for the year I really meant 100K in cash games as I really wanted to have a 100K graph. Due to playing a lot of tournaments and less than 25 hours of cash this month my graph is sitting at 77K and I really don’t think I can get there. I could lock myself in a room and grind for these last 10 days of the year and maybe get there if I run well, but really I want to spend this time of the year just relaxing and chilling and taking stock of what I’ve achieved this year. I don’t want to be stressed chasing this goal and I certainly don’t want to be in a bad mood at Christmas and New Years if I fail or run bad. So I don’t think I’m going to make a push for it. I think I’ll just try to make 3K more to get it to 80K for the year and call it a day (or year, you know what I mean :)).
In my next and last post for the year I think I’ll do a review of the entire year. Till then, Merry Christmas!
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