RAISING THE BAR: My first final table!!!!

A couple days after my first qualifying finish in a Pokerstars free roll tournament, I've done it again! This time in the Copernicus Limit Omaha Hi/Lo free roll. BUT not only did I qualify (you have to make it to the final 11 tables, ie top 99), I made it to the FINAL table, finishing 6th overall out of 8545! All quite a big jump for someone who's never made it to the top 11 tables before 2 days ago.

Granted, once you get to the top 11 tables, a good portion of the players start eliminating themselves on purpose because everyone who places gets a ticket into the weekly round 2 tournament anyway. At that point, the only thing on the line is pride and Tournament Leader Board points. But I wanted to see how well I could do and managed to battle it out to a 6th place finish. I made quite a few mistakes at that final table against solid opponents, but hey, it was late at night, it was a long tournament, and frankly, I was just happy to be there :)

But am I satisfied? Hell no! Happy with the progress, yes, but now it's time to raise the bar. Time to make it all the way to top prize. My new main goal will be to crack the Daily Eighty Grand free roll satellite. Top 5 finishers in that tournament qualify for an 80 grand prize pool tournament. Take notice people, the kid is movin' on up!!!!

POKERSTARS WARS - EPISODE 44: A NEW HOPE

44 days... FORTY-FOUR DAYS since setting forth on this Poker journey and FINALLY, U-E the Kid has cracked the Pokerstars Hubble Free Roll!!!! Cue "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey and don't hold back applause on this momentous occasion that deserves multiple exclamation points at the end of every sentence!!!!

Last night, all the pieces fell into place as I applied quite a few of the techniques I learned in Dan Harrington's poker book and BAM!!!! I placed in the top 99 (65th, to be exact) out of 12,000 players in the Hubble. The top 99 win a ticket into a money tournament.

Over the past 23 days of no blog posts, there have been sooooo many bad beats, gunshy moments where I could have doubled up, card dead moments, "I think I'll try being a hyper agressive player" moments and "I want to throw my laptop across the room" moments that I was beginning to think it was impossible for me to break through. Hence, the no blog posts. Believe me, had I made a blog post during that time, there would have been a frikkin' $#!+load of cursing!!!! But I did it!!!! I was actually playing 2 Hubbles at the same time and almost placed in the other one as well. I finished 141 out of 12,000 in the other Hubble, which was my second best finish in these free rolls to date.

So now, this coming Saturday, I get to play in a round 2 tournament with a $2000 prize pool. Still a pretty modest prize pool for the time I've put in, but hey, it's worth it for the experience and NOT losing any money while doing it. YEEEHHHHAAAAWWWW!!!! One small step for the kid in the direction of Future Poker Legend!

CHALK ONE UP FOR FOREVER FISH: Lack of focus, lack of results.

Playing these free-rolls are annoying as hell. On 90% of the tables, the beginning stages are all about filtering out those crazy people who do nothing but go all-in all the time. It's a crapshoot for who capitalizes on them, but whoever does can then use their big stack to bully everyone else. I say I've only had the opportunity to be the bully one out of 20 times so far. No fair!

So alas, my results in these free rolls have fallen off with the frustration of trying to distinguish the idiots from the ones who actually have game (to call or not to call... that is the question). And since I can't seem to figure that out, I have become one of those idiots who doesn't get very far. Bah! Frustration. I am on tilt.

But really, it's my own fault. These tournaments have gotten so boring for me because of those annoying early stages that instead of really paying attention and observing opponent betting patterns, I've just been taking my own hands into account and watching T.V and movies while I play. I'm not even going to post my results here, it's really embarassing. I'll get back to you once things start improving. Until then...