Well I've been out here almost a week now and my results have not been great. The pain of playing for hours upon hours each day only to finish short of the money is taking its toll on my psyche. The first Event I played was Event 4 - $1000 NL. I found it quite easy to manoeuvre the table and pick up chips going from 3000 to 8000 within the first 3 levels with hardly any showdowns.

Then I ran my over pair into a set to lose a 7000 chip pot that would have put me in firm control of the table, so had to go back to grinding. Every time I managed to build my chips back up to the average, I would get knocked back down and eventually had to shove my 10bb stack quite light @ 200/400 (50) as I didn't want the blinds to go through me and lose my fold equity. I ran my Ks7s into QQ and that was that. All in all, I did not bring my "A" game to the table...I played some great hands and some really passive hands that looking back on make me want to shoot myself.

The next event I played was the $550 Caesars Deepstack tournament. I liked this tournament as you start with 18k in chips and a 50 min clock. They have a few less levels than the WSOP competitions but the general standard of play was terrible. I managed to get my 18k stack up to 85k before the first break and was by far the chip leader. I played about 60% of the pots and managed to win a 60k pot when I raised utg (under-the-gun) with Qd 10d to 600 @ 100/200 and saw a flop with about 5 callers. I flopped the nuts on a 8s 9s Jh board and managed to get it all in and hold up against a set of 99's and a KsQ s. I was cruising until the biggest fish at the table managed to crack my KK with 4h3h for a 90k pot :(. My stack fluctuated massively but ended up with only 20k by the time the blinds were 600/1200(100) as I lost a few flips and players started to play back at me. After the dinner break I managed to go from 20k up to 160k in 1 level by raising and winning basically every pot. At this stage the average stack was 55k so I had 3x the average with 40 left and the top 20 got paid. 1st paid $20k and a Main Event seat and I was already starting to think about the final. That was until I lost 2 160k pots in a row to be out in 40th!!! The first 1 was an interesting spot in which I don't need to get all my chips in, especially with my "mad man" table image, and my opponent probably steaming after bluffing of 40% of his stack in the hand prior to this.
I raise utg+1 to 4k @ 800/1600(200) with 88 and get flatted in mid position (mp) by a fit or fold fish with about 90k and the villain in the big blind by the villain who auto calls. The flop comes 3d 3h 5c and it is checked to me. I fire 8700 at the 13800 pot. The fish folds and the decent (just ran a big bluff and probably steaming) player from the big blind raises to 22k out of his 80kish stack. I think about it for about 42 seconds and decide that if he had 1010 plus from the bb he would at least consider 3 betting as he was quite an aggressive player. So I decided the only hands that I was afraid of were 55, 33, a random 3x hand and 99. I eliminate the 3 x hands from his range and decide that if he flopped quads or a house then good luck to him! I can probably get 99 to fold and am ahead of the rest of his raising range which is basically bluffs and under pairs to the 88's. You can probably guess what happens next...I shove and get called by 99 after he tanks for 6 mins. I could have played it differently but hate flatting him on the flop because he is most likely shoving any turn which makes it a very tough call as it would have been the K of hearts. The 2nd pot which finished me off was a pretty standard blind vs blind race losing 88 vs AK.

Well I've rambled long enough now but have also played 2 more WSOP events since my last post but did not cash or make day 2 in either. Was going to take a day off today as I lost/spent $5k yesterday playing the worst poker of my life. I have managed to let off some steam by doing a load of shopping and partying it up at a nice little spot in town last night with some balling players.
Off to play the WSOP Event 11 - $2000 NL event now

Laterzzzzzzzzz