New Year, New Poker Pain

Read The Introduction To The $1 Challenge Here

As it’s the festive season I thought I would give you a little update about my $1 account challenge. I have been very busy recently, and as a result have not been able to put in as many hours as I would like (I was hoping to be over $500 before Christmas), but have still made good progress. The account is currently $419 - and could be much, much higher.

Mostly I have just been playing pot limit Omaha cash games, alternating between buying in full in the .10/.25c games and buying in half to the .25/.50c games - this has been going really well and I have won about $100 over a couple of short sessions. I’ve also been donking around in a few $6 and $11 turbos sit and goes (why I play these crap shoots I’ll never know), and have made a slim profit from these, around $30 since the last update.

The most frustrating poker event to happen to me so far in this challenge was a deep run into the Full Tilt 6 max $5 rebuy. I managed to build a monster stack by the last two tables, going in as chip leader with 12 left. Three hands later I bust out 12th. I got $100 for this (not amazing considering I did 5 rebuys), first place was $1,800.

The first of these nightmare hands I run AK into tens and lose for about a quarter of my stack. Next hand I re shove a laggy player who opened on the button, putting him in with AJ suited from the small blind and watching him snap call with KQ (obviously I can’t win this either) - now down to about a third of the chips I had two hands ago.

The final nail came from a player a very skilled player I had been battling with since I sat down. I picked up tens and raised from the button, he re popped from the blinds and I decided to shove. We had both been three betting each other a lot, and I think tens were well ahead of most of his range here. He snap calls with AJ, flops a jack, and that’s me out.

I was really disappointed with this result, not only because it would have really boosted the account, but because it’s been a long time now since my last $1k tournament score (23rd June for $1,361 to be precise), and despite playing very few tournaments (often less than 5 a week) I set myself very high standards in them, and playing well for hours just to be broken by a few races is always heartbreaking.

Here’s to another year of heart break, bad beats, donking about, and general poker related grief - God I love it.