18/07/2010 Donkament Bracelet

It has been a few days since I donked my whole bankroll away (ok, it wasn’t much, but it was precious to me), but yesterday I finally saw the light again. Since I didn’t have a roll to play with, I wasn’t sure what to do next; should I deposit, should I look for some kind of bonus, or should I just say goodbye once and for all to the fabulous game of poker?

It was a quite boring day so I filled it with pointless surfing on the web and playing the guitar through the day, until I was looking for freerolls on the several poker clients installed on my laptop. I still had 32 cents on my pokerstars account (why I had 32 cents on pokerstars is a very different story, later on more about this) and couldn’t help but notice the 2 cent mtt’s (990 players) and the 10 cent mtt’s (360 players).

I entered one of the first, that turned out to be the biggest crapshoot ever; huge blinds from the start and even bigger donks all over the place (ok, I’m a donk too, but what the heck, those players were even worse).

Although it was only 2 cents I didn’t want to play that anymore, so I entered one of the 10 cents mtt’s. Everything went quite fine, won quite a lot of big pots, and medium-sized ones as well. I didn’t lose any big pots, and found myself playing mere ABC poker, which was just fine for this tourney.

Only the first 30 players or so (not really sure) were ITM, so at about 35 players everything cramped up. I had a real healthy stack so I used that to gain even more. BAM, I was already ITM; things couldn’t get any better…

Suddenly I lost a huge pot which put be back with the mediocre stacks. No problem yet, I was already happy with the money I could win, so I played rather loose.

What happened? I got back to the chiplead again, and managed to get to the final table, nice!

New goal: finish 5^th or better. Finishing 5^th would give me a little bit more than 2 dollar, enough to shortstack on two 2NL tables.

How it happened, I can’t remember exactly, but I stayed chipleader until there were only 3 players left (me, another one with a nice stack, and a shortstack). Didn’t last long before the other one fell of, and then for the first time in the tournament I felt like I really had to think about how to play cards; I wanted that first place!

We played and played, and finally, I had something like 460k and the other one 40k with blinds of 8000/16000; I’m thinking I’m done, until….. ‘players are now on a break’.

CRAP, now I had to wait for another 5 minutes to claim my money!

Ok, so after 5 minutes I won the tournament: 8,66 dollars! Wow, that’s really something you can work with! I was back in action, ready to hit the tables.

From here on, 18/07/2010, my goal is to be a winning player on whatever level I’m playing and never to look back and think about depositing. Of course, if I manage to do so, I will always remember that little mtt!

Before I can tell you guys more about what comes next, I should tell you about my history with the great game of poker (and I also can’t tell you guys more about the future, since it’s now 19/07/2010)

Prologue

 If I recall everything I’ve done or everything I am doing, I must say there was never actually something I had to do my very best to succeed or to even be able to accomplish whatever needed to be accomplished. Even half-heartedly I managed to do whatever I wanted to do.

I say this not to sound cocky or whatever at all, also I must admit I never tried to be the very best at anything, being better than moderate was enough for me.

Now, something new entered my life, and for the very first time I found myself in a rather difficult spot; I really had to commit to this otherwise I wouldn’t succeed, which I had witnessed in first person: poker.

I’ve encountered the needed problems and drawbacks in order for myself to find out that the way I’m trying to beat this game, I will not succeed. I honestly feel this is the first time I cannot succeed without help,study or whatever is needed. Therefore I decided to write everything down. First of all because of the slow learning curve I believe poker has. This way I will be able to review my ‘career’ and analyse my game better. Secondly just to write my thoughts and read them again later on.

Now everything’s clear just why I want to write this, let’s start. Not from the beginning of my poker-career, but from the day I knew I would not succeed without further study and help.

Later on I’ll write about how it all started, my baby steps down poker-avenue, and after that, I’ll review my present play, write my thoughts and whatever I think is suited for this.

I think the first part (‘HISTORY’), about how it all started and how I got to really committing to the game, will be really really boring for just about everybody but me, but then again, I only write this for myself.

I won’t be posting hands from that time, neither will I write about my thoughts about the game or whatever, because most of the time I can’t remember them or I didn’t care back then about hand analysis. The frist part is just to give you an idea about how it all started. Feel free to skip that part, for it’s just not interesting but for me. In fact, I will even put in a summary at the start of part 1 just for those who don’t want to read it and want to know what was going on. Actually I suggest everybody just reads the summary.

In the second part (‘PRESENT’), I will write about the present (du’uh), which should be much more interesting.

ATTENTION: This is mainly written for myself. I know I’m still a huge donk and have a lot to learn. But I believe that by writing everything down I will be much more able to analyse my own game, rethink my thoughts and whatsoever.