Here's to beginners luck

Thursday January 10th Circus Manchester. £20 rebuy. 72 runners

I've been a bit busy in the last week or so what with getting ready for the cruise etc and so I'm a bit late posting these and have forgotten most of the hands of interest - not that there were that many of note.

In fact I remember coming home from the Sunday tournaments thinking that there were very few hands that would be worth talking about.

Anyway, I actually bubbled in the Circus tournament last Thursday.

I had no rebuys or add ons since I was able to stay on track with the average stack most of the way through the tournaments without making any moves or showing down many hands at all once I had won my first pot.

I actually went out when I was on of the shorter stack and the small blind flat called and I went all in with A8. He called with 9T and spiked a ten on the river to win.

He said that he would have checked it down with me if I hadn't raised because of a situation where another player had folded AQ a couple of hands earlier when there had been a raise and reraise before him. He thought the player was colluding because one of the raisers was his mate and that is why he had folded but in actual fact it was just a simple fold based on the action in front of him.

I suppose I should have know he would have called even though I was almost certainly ahead after I had raised a few orbits before when had limped into the pot with TJ and found it difficult to fold when I reraised with JJ.

But, as I told him after I was out, I've got to raise with A8 in that situation with only 4 big blinds left.


Sunday January 13th. Circus Liverpool £100 DC F/O 70 runners


Anyway, it was off to the Circus Liverpool on Sunday for a new tournament that has aroused some interest and didn't disappoint other than table service and result.

As I said earlier, there were not many hands of note.

I did lose a lot of my first stack of 4000 chips when there were 5 limpers on my big blind with 74.

The flop came down 742 and I lead out for 1000 into a pot of 1200 only to be reraised an extra 1000 all in by the monster holding of J7.

Obviously I didn't know what he obviously knew (that a J turn would kill me!)

Most of my other raises involved me either winning the pot there and then, facing a bad flop or my hand or getting my continuation bet raised by a hand that I had to fold to.

The only other hand of not was my exit hand when I was getting short with only about 4 big blinds. I pushed on the button with Q7 and the small blind told me that he wanted to call because he was waiting for my push. He folded Q9 as it happened, unfortunately the big blind had aces and even though I hit a 7 on the flop that would have beaten Mr small blind, I went out after only 2 hours.

Anyway, I'm in the process of teaching my wife Julie how to play because there is a $10,000 Ladies Freeroll on the cruise and, with the help of Andrew (my 8 year old son)

We are teaching Julie some of the basics so that she has an idea of what to do and doesn't just call down every bet to "see whether I win"

Julie has played a few of the freerolls that Pokerplayer magazine and Inside poker mag run.

These are not like your normal all-in freerolls as there is normally a good prize on offer - ie WSOPE entry at the end of the series and there are only 300-600 runners, a lot of whom take the game seriously.

Julie has been doing quite well finishing in the top 150 a couple of times and now that I've sorted out the hand history storage on betfair I can have a look at her play and hopefully give her a few pointers.

Basically I'm telling her to raise or fold the majority of time. That way I think she'll have the best chance of utilising the beginners luck concept and you never know she could even cash since the top 20% of players will cash on the cruise (if I have read the info correctly).

Anyway, that's all for now.

I'm playing my last live tournament before the cruise on Thursday. I haven't cashed for a while and I'm half hoping that I don't cash on Thursday either because I find that one win is normally followed by a few cashes in a row and I'm hoping to start a streak next week!

That's all for now….