Glad to be Here

I hope I take to this blogging lark as I am very grateful that the On the Rail guys have asked me to contribute. This is my first attempt although I have wanted to start a blog for a while now; I never really plucked up the courage in fear of being inconsistent in my ramblings. So I’ll dually begin with the recent filming of the Women’s World Open III:

So I found out at the end of May that my heat was billed as the toughest out of the 6 heats. There was a recent Dortmund EPT winner in Sandra Naujoks and hyper aggressive May Maceiras whom I thought shone in her display in the same tournament last year. I would much rather have a heat full of decent players than unknown/inexperienced players that I need time to work out first.

Luckily for me though I got off to a good start due to one of the qualifiers on my right calling off a fair percentage of her stack with 2^nd pair and a flush draw. It didn’t seem long at all until with 4 players left i had half the chips in play, which is nose bleed territory for me in these events. I do have a rather good record in these 6 seater, fast paced affairs. Out of 5 events, I have played 10 tables, coming 1^st in 4, 2^nd in 3 and every time by sticking to the same SNG formula and never really getting busy until at least 3 handed. This time I had chips and didn’t know what to do with them, so I proceeded to donk them away after losing 100k out of my 300k stack in a classic AK v QQ race. Now 4 handed I am shortest stack in push mode, so shove my A6 into 10’s, bink the Ace and I’m away again! I really enjoyed my heat and the rollercoaster ride I took. The heads up with Lisa Edwards didn’t take too long thanks a lucky situation where I make a standard button raise with 56, Lisa smooth calls with AK (which I do 99% of the time) and I got rewarded with a fabulous 55x flop. It went check , check – Queen on the turn, I check raise Lisa a small amount and she went into the tank. I really had hoped she connected with the Queen but instead had AK, didn’t believe me and went all in which I obviously called and won the heat.

I just wished the final went as well. Unfortunately, this time 7 handed but with the same 21 hands per level structure and same chips – it was a crap shoot in no time at all. I was card dead apart from strangely getting Kings twice on the button when it passed round to me, raised on both occasions and blinds pass both times. Every other button move I made with trash, I got snap raised and soul read lol. In the end 5^th place and $8,000 is better than a smash in the face with a blunt instrument but you know poker players. A strange breed who usually feel devastated when they win money!! This was no exception, with Vegas coming up I have to admit that $50,000 was very mouth watering indeed. I don’t want to sound bitter and twisted because I am truly happy for the winner Aisling Collins, who had to do it the hard way by winning the runners up heat to get to the final and then trampled over everyone in the final to take a deserved victory.

Well I guess I’ll stop here because its 3am and I have another tournament in the morning. This time it’s the SKY Poker UK Tour Grand Final at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham. Not only am I am on home turf – but I also won the first leg of this tour last year which was also at Dusk Till Dawn (pattern forming here? Hope so). It will be a great weekend as it’s already sold out of its 270 player cap and a prize pool now stands at £54,000. Not half bad free rolling at a shot of £17k to the winner! Trip report on its way if I stay sober….

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