Oct 10th - £100+£10 NL Hold'Em - Western (London)

You work your bollux off getting into a position of strength and then it all disappears in a puff of smoke!

Tonights £100 NL event at the Western was attended by 49 souls all looking for that first prize of close on £2k.

The start I had was indifferent. My J-J got squished by 10-10 when a 10 appeared on the flop (lost 2k) and my 9-9 holding had to be dumped after a flop of A-2-3 and a big bet (another 1k). Apart from that though things went well.

I got VERY fortunate on one hand. On the button, and with blinds at 100-200, I raised to 600 with 6h-2h. I get one caller. The flop is A-K-4 and my opponent checks. I bet 1500, attempting to look strong, and my opponent called. Ok...well that was that then...or so I thought!

The turn brought a 5. My opponent checked, as did I. Now it got interesting. The river card was a 3 giving me the most unlikely straight in history. Again my opponent checked. This time I bet out to 3.5k. No hesitation and my opponent called all-in but was properly disgusted at my hand. So was I!!

At the break I had 14k and moved quickly to 20k shortly after seeing off a couple of 'all-in' opponents with better starting holdings than they. Nice when the best hand holds up!

Ok...so there are 23 left and I look down to see 10-10 in LP. With blinds at 200-400 I raised to 1200 and got a call from the BB. The flop was 9h-3h-5c. My opponent immediately bet out to 4k. This, to me, looked like an obvious bluff to get me off my hand. Either that or he'd hit a 9 or something! Anyway I wasn't about to let him off cheap so re-raised all-in!

Surprisingly he called!! So what could he possibly have? It turned out he has the Ah-Kh. Nice hand sir!

Of course I now had to duck & dive. The 5d fell on the turn followed by the 2 of bloody hearts!

There is such a fine line between winning & losing that it can be difficult to retain your sense of rationale after being 'outdrawn' again. As a poker player you learn to live with it but its a real pain in the arse sometimes!

Entries ->49 - Place -> 23rd - Loss -> £110 ($204) Profit/Loss for 2006 -> +$12894

(As from 7th August rate of exchange is calculated at £1 = $1.85)