Late Night Poker Part II

I started writing my last blog with the intentions of writing about my Late Night Poker heat in Cardiff, but as I said at the end, there wasn’t much of any interest to report. It was a pretty tough heat with Tony G, Soren Kongsgaard, Andreas Hoivold, Joe Beevers, Roberto Romanello, and an internet qualifier from Slovenia who was a full time online pro.

Tony G is a very good player, but on this occasion that didn’t matter much because whoever had drawn his seat would have won the tournament I think. The deck seemed to hit him in the face from the off, and from the start I kind of had the feeling that the rest of us were playing for 2nd place.

I was very card dead throughout and didn’t get into any good spots that I can remember. I was down to around 7,500 (from a 10k starting stack) when I was dealt my first premium hand – AK, which unfortunately for me happened to coincide with Soren Kongsgaard being dealt his biggest hand of the tournament – KK. I hit the front briefly on the flop which brought an ace for me and a 4-flush for Soren, but he overtook me again on the turn and I exited in 6th place.

Soren went on to take 2nd place after at one point holding a 2:1 chip lead over Tony G, so I’m sure he was pretty gutted to lose after going so close.

It was a bit of a disappointment in terms of how the tournament went, but I wasn’t too unhappy with how I’d played. After the heat I had a pretty good night out in Cardiff with Soren, the internet qualifier Slobodan, and Andreas Hoivold, who I think must have some Irish ancestry given the amount of alcohol he’s able to put away.

I did my best to keep up with him of course and that probably explains my somewhat hazy memories of the end of the night. I do remember at one point of the evening, Soren was trying to chat up one of the local girls. They looked to be getting on well and she seemed pretty into him, so we were all pretty surprised including Soren, when after about 15 minutes she blew him out and went back to her friends. As Soren returned to us I told him that it was the second time today I’d seen him blow a big chip lead. Fortunately he took it well!

From Cardiff I travelled to Slovakia for the WPT. I’d never played a WPT before but I’d heard that they were generally easier than EPT tournaments, and I thought this one would be especially soft as most of the big players seemed to be swerving it in favour of the Barcelona EPT.

Having played it, I think I read the situation correctly. There were a lot of local players and few faces that I recognised. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to convert value into profit though, and I was kind of shaking my head at how I’d managed to come home with less money than I’d went with.

I played great the first day and got a decent stack together, but didn’t see a single hand for the last 4 hours of day 1 and the whole of day 2, and eventually went out close to the money, making a move with a short stack after recently decimating my stack by semi-bluffing with a flush draw.

I’m at home now after stopping off in Dublin to film my heat of Irish Late Night Poker Stars. Again it was a disappointing result for me, but I won’t give away who won. It was great craic though, and I hope the show becomes a permanent fixture.

I’m spending a couple of weeks at home now and I’m going to play a lot of MTTs and STTs to see if I can do any better than I’ve been doing at online cash. After that I’m off to London to slog it out over the whole EPT and WSOPE schedule. I feel like I’m playing better again despite the fact that I haven’t been doing so well, so hopefully another result is just around the corner.