Blogger Championships on PokerStars

Result of the Blogger Championship @ PokerStars: Went out 593th of 1473 players.

Took a bad hit early in the tournament with KK. Played them aggressively but got called by one other player. The flop and the turn weren't scary at all. He didn't had anything until the river. The Ace there improved his AQ and I lost about half of my chips. I managed to survive the first hour (were we lost only about 400 people). After the break it was time for a move as I had only 1200 vs. 150/300 Blinds. Got two great hands: First 9-9. Went all in and got called by AQ. The 9's held and I doubled. Second hand QQ. Went All-In again and busted AK. Two hands later I got Q's again. Called a short stacked All-In bet, just to run into Pocket Aces. Again down to 1200 I was moved three times without getting dealt a single hand. It was amazing how fast we lost players now. About 5-10 a minute. I called with A5 of spades and the flop put me on a nice flush draw with two more spades. I decided that it was time for a decision as we had a nice pot due to several callers. Went All-In and it was folded around - except for JJ. To bad - my draw didn't complete and I was out of the tournament.

There are a lot of people around who may tell you that playing a tournament is similar to playing cash game. It isn't!
Harrington on Hold'em Part 1 and Harrington on Hold'em Part 2 helped me a lot to improve my game. There is a big difference if you play with a big, average or short stack. You have to play hands in different ways as well as you have to use different betting patterns. After reading Harrington's books I realized that I wasn't playing poker but shooting craps in my first tournaments.