Magical Mystery Poker Tour

Online Weekend + Upcoming Live Events

2 min read

Played a number of tournaments on Friday night, and it didn’t go too well. I think I cashed once quite deep in the PokerStars 25k guaranteed, but this was not enough to prevent me being USD 800 down for the night. I think my treatment of online tournaments is going to have to change a little. At present I play many at the same time (up to 7 on split screens), but there are numerous downsides to this:

  1. If you don’t have a good night you lose $1k+ instead of $300
  2. You can’t see how the other players on your table are playing
  3. You can’t evaluate odds correctly and chase too many draws

Clearly, there are also advantages as well, but I play pretty loose in the early stages of online tournies, and my brain is just going into overload at the moment. I think I’m going to try to play 2 or 3 tournaments maximum from now on, and see how that works for me. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the 6 or so times I have cashed big in online tournaments over the last 2 years, I have played (for the most part of the evening) that tournament alone. This coming bank holiday weekend I have a rare chance to play the Sunday tournaments, so I’m going to try and put together a schedule that won’t overcrowd my screen. It’s always tricky, of course, as you are never sure how long you will last in a tournament, but I’ll try and budget for 3 hours in each one I enter and see how that works.

I also had another small $100 win in my online cash challenge, which takes the roll up to $2k, but to be honest, I’m just not getting the time to play this enough, so I think I’m going to knock the challenge on the head for the time being.

It will also be Newcastle UKPT in a few weeks, so I need to get a bit more live tournement practice in before that, so I’ll be playing (and blogging) live tournaments twice a week for the next month or so. After that, it’s only 3 weeks till we leave for WSOP which I’m really looking forward to. Unfortunately, post Vegas I’ll have used up most of my days off for the year (I’ve committed several days in the future to seeing my son) so it will be a bit less exotic after that. There’s a chance I’ll play WSOPE (althought the 10k GBP entry fee is eye-watering) and perhaps the UKPT Grand Final in November. Otherwise, it will be about building up the bankroll for next year, and trying out a few new playing styles ahead of 2009.