It was the pokerstars blogger tournament tonight
which you may remember was gaudily advertised in this entry. I had been hopeful of dong quite well in this as I wondered how many people would both fulfil the remit of having an up and running blog and also be any good at poker. The first prize was a pretty excellent package to take part in the Caribbean cruise tournament so there was everything to play for. As it turned out almost 1500 people were eligible and thus I knew my chances of doing well were very small. I was also tired and hungover after drinks last night to celebrate the end of HUWRH and so not on top form.
Annoyingly it became apparent that a lot of people who had signed up had not even bothered to play. About four people on my initial table were "sitting out" which means you have to wait until their funds are depleted gradually by the blinds (the two bets you are forced to make in every round of the table). I realised this meant there was an excellent chance that I would be beaten by people who hadn't even bothered to turn up. Two of the non attenders were to the right of me which was irritating as it meant the player before them had a lot of opportunity to steal their blinds when everyone else had folded before him. This fella wa also bluffing a lot and showing off about it. Early on he practically went all in against me and I was pretty sure I had a better hand than him, but I decided the rewards were not great enough and let him have it. He then gleefully showed his rubbish cards (I had actually put him on a flush draw- which didn't come up- but he was worse than that). Shortly afterwards he did the same to someone else and I could tell from the way he bet that he almost certainly had nothing, but alas he got away with it again and was accruing a nice lead.
I was constantly fighting against getting knocked out and managed to come back from nothing a couple of times and after an hour had managed to turn my initial chip stack of 2000 into 2005. But at least I was still in.
The standard of play was very variable, presumably because a lot of people who don't really play poker were playing and predictably people were winning hands with the most unlikely combinations.
Just after the point where the sitting out people were knocked out I found myself short stacked again and went all in with a 44 hoping that everyone else would fold. I got two callers which was bad news. one of them had 10 10, which was worse news, but the other had 4 4 as well which meant my chances of getting anything out of this hand were practically zero - no more 4s in the pack so only a straight or possibly a flush would help me.
I came four hundreth and something out of 1500 which isn't a disaster, but would have hoped to do better. Poker is a very depressing game. Don't ever play it.
