THE KID’S GOT GUTS: And then the surgeon removed his guts.

So it’s been a little over two weeks since my last entry. Is that me being a blogging slacker? Nope, I have a legitimate excuse and no, my dog did not eat my blog entry. Here’s the story:

The night of my last blog entry (Wed Aug 27 evening/Thu Aug 28 morning), I started having severe stomach pains to the point where I was puking my guts out for 8 hrs straight. I chalked it up to some kind of food poisoning or stomach flu and remained bed-ridden and eating soup.

That weekend (Aug 30/31), I was still in pretty rough shape but I sucked it up and played in the round 2 tournaments I qualified for. The first round 2 on Saturday, I ended up winning 1 dollar! That one dollar let me enter in a few 10 cent tournaments and 50 cent tournaments where I was able to earn a few more cents.

The second round 2 tournament, I played really well. Despite horrible stomach cramps and fever and chills, I managed to finish 20 out of almost 7000 entrants! I played for 6.5 hrs and I won $3.40. Had I managed to survive for another hour of play, I could’ve won a first prize of around $270. So close, yet so far. Not bad for someone who’s been playing poker for less than 2 months, but I was a little sore, knowing how close I was to much bigger money than I finished with, and because I lost on a bad beat.

At that point, I could have chosen to call it a day, take the small victory. But no. Still smarting from my loss, I decide to take my $5.15 of weekend earnings to a 2cent / 5cent cash game pot limit hold’ em table.…. After playing 6 and a half hours of mistake-free poker, I make one big mistake in about 2 minutes. I put essentially my whole stack on the line with top pair and lose to trips from a big stack. With about 35 cents left and looking like a complete idiot at this point, another dude at the table notices that I obviously made a mistake and asks if I’m a “noob”. I wanted to say hell no and get into it with him verbally. Instead, I kept my cool and started building my stack up again. I got back up to around a dollar, then went all-in with pocket tens and lost to someone’s King-Queen who ended up hitting the straight (the second card that came down was a ten, so for a split second, I was sitting pretty with trip 10’s). Despite all my hard work, I ended up with zero in prize money. Ouch. Poker pain and physical pain, all coming together.

Throughout the next week, the “stomach flu” continued until one night, I felt like I was shot in the stomach and went to the hospital emergency room at 4am in the morning. It turns out, the first night I had stomach pain, I actually ruptured my appendix. My surgery ended up being a full week AFTER my appendix ruptured. Because of that, I had to spend the next week in the hospital hooked up to an I.V with 3 different types of antibiotics, only able to eat ice chips the whole time. THAT was the worst pain of my life. But, on the bright side, I managed to come out of it alive and on the road to recovery, feeling grateful to be alive.

It also means I played 6.5 hours of tournament poker with a ruptured appendix! Had I finished first in the tournament, that would’ve went down as a classic wounded performance, like Ali fighting through a broken jaw or Jordan playing an NBA Finals game with the flu!

And the legend of U-E the kid continue...

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...

DOWN GOES THE KID! DOWN GOES THE KID!: K.O.'d in the Negreanu Semis

Future poker legend? Maybe. Still a fish? Most definitely. It hurts to admit, but before you can truly know where you are going, you must first realize where you're currently at. And where I'm at is the land of the fish, me being one of them. That lesson was taught to me by the sharks that ate me this past Saturday.

I started the tournament at a table with 4 of the nine sitting out. The active agressive players took turns stealing the blinds and I felt helpless, so I tried making a run at them myself, but to no avail. I had to back down and the cards were never in my favor. Then, I got moved to another table, this time with 5 people sitting out and the other 3 were big stacks with about 3 times as many chips as me on average. I played tight and couldn't break through their agressiveness. I'd then get medium pairs all the time, hoping to hit trips on the flop then try to make a move, but after an empty flop and not enough chips to chase 'em away, I was done for.

By that time, I was desperate, frustrated and went all-in from the cutoff with A-J offsuit and was called and beaten by the big blind. Ouch. Finished 4272 out of 6686. Two weeks preparing, only to challenge the wrong people and get my butt whooped the worst it's ever been whooped. I can't sit now. It hurts too much.

Despite this lackluster showing, I will say U-E The Kid will be back. Mark my words, people. Mark my words.

CRAMMING FOR THE FINAL... WELL, SEMI-FINAL:Negreanu Semi’s this weekend.

I'm a day away from the Weekend With Daniel Semi-Final online tournament that I qualified for last week and I've been trying to get in as much poker knowledge as possible. Being a slow but thorough reader, I'm now about half way through the second installment of Dan Harrington's Hold 'Em series of books. I've also been running through jungles and swinging from vines with Yoda on my back to get my stamina up. Oh, and punching frozen meat in a meat cooler to get my... meat... punching... in a cooler abilities up.

The last few days I've been trying to apply what I've learned and my results in the Hubble Free Roll Tournaments have fallen off: 5094 out of 12000, and 756 out of 12000. But hey, sometimes you gotta get worse before you get better. Harrington describes how to stay in contention in these quick tournaments where the blinds go up like crazy and it involves taking a lot more risks. I swear, in the one where I finished 756, I felt like I was developing an ulcer by the end, what with all the all-ins and agressive betting. Playing poker is stressful! Screw this, I'm getting an office job with tight deadlines and presentations to give.

But the proof was in the stats: I had won about 25 pots when I was eliminated, 20 without a showdown. I definitely came out of it feeling a lot stronger as a poker player. I pretty much just made one big mistake at the end, challenging the wrong guy at the wrong time. Otherwise, I was in the best position I had ever been in stack-wise for that late in a tournament considering the cards I was getting (i.e, mostly crappy ones). The time I finished 234 out of 12000 I seemed to be getting A-A, K-K and Q-Q at all the right times. The 756 finish feels like my best so far.

And the beat goes on for the kid...

WHAT THE, WHO THE... WHERE AM I????: We're Not In Texas Anymore. We're In Omaha!

So I'm fresh off winning my first single table sit & go tournament (1.20 buy-in, won 4.50! Yay!), then I come in 3rd place in a slightly higher buy-in sit & go (3.40 buy-in, won 5.40), and I feel I'm ready to take on the 5.50 sit & go. But the tables fill up super fast, you have to be quick on the mouse click to get in on them. A couple people beat me to it as I try to get in, but the next one comes up and I'm in there just in time!

I'm relaxed, ready to take down the $13.50 first prize... And suddenly, they start dealing out FOUR cards. Apparently, in my haste to get into a Texas Hold'em tourney, I entered an Omaha Hi-Lo tourney by mistake! Baaahhhhh!!!! I was choked.

After whining like a school girl for a bit (just a split second though, tops), I suck it up and try to pick up the game as quickly as possible. I take out my copy of Poker For Dummies and read the Omaha chapter as quickly as possible, and beginner's luck must have kicked in or something, because I took down about 5 out of the first 15 hands, doubling up a couple times in the process!

So things are looking good, I'm in first place, way out in front. That's when my Dad asks me to help him move some furniture. Since I'm up big, I figure missing a couple hands won't hurt. We end up re-arranging the whole living room, then eat lunch and only afterward do I realize I totally forgot about the tournament! When I got to my laptop, I had already finished in 5th place out of 9. Blast! Lost opportunity.

After that, I was intrigued by the hi-low aspect of Omaha. I decide to try it out at a regular table. I get this one hand, can't remember what it was, but it was a decent high hand and a KICKASS low hand. I decide to get a good chunk of my stack into the pot. The two other players and I showdown our cards... And I come away empty! I'm thinking, "What the hell? How'd they beat my low hand?" It turns out I was in a regular Omaha game where you're trying to win with the high hand, not a high low game. So yeah, now I'm thinking of dying my hair blonde, just for shits and giggles...