First half good, second half not so good
Sven Goran Eriksson regularly delivered the line “first half good, second half not so good” after friendlies, while he was in charge of the English national team. The reason for the declining performance was usually because Sven had substituted the entire first choice XI at half time, and replaced them with whatever players had caught his eye from the Premier League at that point in time. Either that or he let Steve McClaren say something.
My performance last night started very well, and rapidly descended into a cash bloodbath where I not only lost a decent profit, but also blew two of my allocated cash buyins for the year.
Looking at the good news, I played well in the Loose Cannon £50 tournament, taking 2nd place for £140. Given that I only saw JJ and QQ once each, and nothing else, it was a case of picking spots and managing my chip stack effectively. Devski meanwhile flopped a royal flush (!) and also saw AA and KK in rapid succession. I had to make a lot of steals with nothing, but eventually got to heads up with Wilkinson, albeit with about an 7-1 chip disadvantage. Mike had been knocking out players left and right, and had a huge barrier of chips.
I got it back to about 5-1 before losing a race to get me back in the game. For once my pocket ducks didn’t hold up, but 2nd place was a decent start to the year.
The cash started well and I ran my £150 up to nearly £300 before the wheels came off in about a ninety minute period. I lost the following key holdem pots:
- Put a relatively short stacked Uncle Paulie all in with a flush draw and a gutshot
- Called Tom’s turn shove with an open-ended straight and a flush draw 3) 4 bet 108off all in into John’s pocket Kings
The first two I am okay with, but clearly the final one was pretty dire.
Saturday looks like a big day of poker - a bit of afternoon cash at LC with Tom and Devski followed by the £100 deep stack tournament at the International. Hopefully Sven won’t mess around with the subs bench too much at halftime.