My Poker Million Experience – Page 3

rhinoneil · 2008-08-08T12:56:06Z

I first found POKER in March 2004. I, like a lot of people it seems, watched Late Night Poker one night and was immediately hooked. As it happened a friend had received a CD with Ladbrokes Poker software on it so I loaded it up and opened an account. I tried play money for a while then deposited $100 and started playing micro no limit ring games. I didnt even look at the tournamnets tab for the first 6 months, then in the build up to the Poker Million Final 2004 which was being televised on Sky Sports, I noticed that Ladbrokes was running a series of freeroll qualifiers to the following years event. This seemed worth a shot. So I entered one of the daily freerolls having never played a stt or mtt before. Amazingly, not really understanding what I was doing, after 6 hours of play I managed to finish in the top 3 out of several thousand entries, to qualify for the final. On the Sunday, a few hundred of us sat down to the final dreaming of a place in the 2005 televised stages of the Poker Million. There was only one main prize plus an additional 2 or 3 places paid a cash prize. I remember one significant hand after about 2 hours play when my stack had shrivelled to the all in or fold stage. In the big blind with 77, there is a middle position raiser so all my chips go in and the raiser flips AA. Turn card was the 7 I needed and I doubled up. From that point I didnt look back, hitting everything, getting paid off with the best hand and crucially no bad beats. After about 4-5 hours we are down to 3. I am chip leader, closely followed by a player with a similar stack then another with about a tenth of our stacks. I managed to take out the other big stack with another big hand and the last player then said he was happy with the cash for 2nd place ( about $2000 ) and sat out while I blinded him away. What a high!! I couldnt sleep of course. I poured myself a beer and celebrated winning a $17,000 seat into what was going to be the biggest poker tournament in Europe. And I was the very first person with a seat. A couple of weeks later, in the 2004 final, Donacha O'Dea and Dave Devilfish Ulliot are heads up with roughly even chips. Devilfish is dealt QQ in the big blind and slowplays it. The only problem is that Donacha has limped in with AA! In the end all the chips go in and Donacha walks away with the first prize which then was about $100,000. Donacha joins me as 2nd qualifier for the 2005 finals. The only problem then was that I had to wait for over a year before I got to play at Sky Studios. More to follow....

Waiboy

Joined: 18.09.2008

Posts: 4,877

24.04.2009, 06:27 0

Wow.. I remember seeing both of those heats on telly - unfortunately I remember the post break blowup in 2007 with more clarity... :rolleyes:

Watching these were part of my formative poker experience.. just a buzz rhino... thanks for sharing this!!!

"...and then I was like "?", and they were like "..." and then it all came down to the cheese making method. Needless to say

rhinoneil Topic starter

Joined: 16.04.2008

Posts: 1,158

28.04.2009, 15:21 0

Thanks Waiboy, appreciate the comments and hopefully my blow up days are behind me

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Verre

Joined: 24.02.2009

Posts: 708

28.04.2009, 20:43 0

I opened up this blog and saw a crazy wall of text, and closed it.

For some reason I came back and started reading and man, is this a great read.

rhinoneil Topic starter

Joined: 16.04.2008

Posts: 1,158

12.05.2009, 14:46 0

As I am trying to qualify for this year's Poker Million I thought I would resurrect this blog.
It may not last long as the qualifying is much harder this year.
For anyone who doesnt know, Full Tilt is the new sponsor and in my opinion, they have been particularly mean with the online qualifying. Whereas Ladbrokes had something like half the field from online qualifying, it seems FT are going for direct buy ins with apparently maybe only 2 online qualifiers, one from a series of freeroll satellites and one from a $500 cash buy in satellite, which incidentally I wont be entering.
So the only route for me is to qualify via the freeroll trials.

This whole thing has been clouded in secrecy for some time but luckily, Neil Channing and Jesse May both independently told me that Full Tilt had the deal wrapped up about 2 weeks ago, so I managed to get a tracked account sorted prior to the qualifiers starting.

First one was Sunday night but as I didnt switch my laptop on at the weekend I missed it. Luckily for me, Bulldog Steve posted me that the freerolls had started so I duly entered last night.

There were actually 2 freerolls, a standard and a turbo, 2 hours apart. Top 27 from each qualify for the next round on Saturday or you can buy straight into that for 200FTP.

It looks like the top 11 from Saturday go into a final which you can buy in for 5000FTP and top 1 or 2 from that get entry to Poker Million.

The freerolls were last night (Mon) and also tonight. I figured I would play all 4 and then if necessary buy in for 200FTP on Saturday.

Anyway, last night I played both freerolls.

I will deal with the turbo first as this didnt last long. I only had 2 hands better than AJo in 74 mins, AA which I doubled up with and TT which I lost minimum with (120). I finally went out with A10 suited to this crazy overshove:
Hand converted with online PokerStrategy.com hand converter:

$0/$0 Fixed-Limit Hold'em (8 handed)

Preflop: Hero is UTG1 with T:s, A:s.
Hero raises, UTG2 folds, MP1 3-Bets, 5 folds.

Flop: (0.00 SB) J:c, 3:h, J:s (2 players)

Turn: (0.00 BB) J:h (2 players)

River: (0.00 BB) 4:s (2 players)

Final Pot: 0.00 BB.

Results follow:

Hero shows three of a kind, jacks (T:s A:s)
MP1 shows ( )
Hero wins with three of a kind, jacks (T:s A:s).

Oh its not showing villains hand, but it was the monster K4off, which as everyone knows is a standard overshove hand, lol.

Continued in a bit...

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rhinoneil Topic starter

Joined: 16.04.2008

Posts: 1,158

12.05.2009, 15:06 0

Back to the other freeroll.
After deciding to play tight early I lost 700 nearly half my stack in the first 5 minutes playing KJo really badly and letting villain hit river 10 after a K10x board and calling his pot size river bet when I knew he had it, HE SHOWED Q10.
Anyway I played pretty tight after that, taking advantage of a few non players - dont know why they bother signing up then not playing.

Managed to make chips with good hands, AA twice, KK twice, JJ, AKo and another monster, 62 off in BB hitting river 2 pairs to beat villains slow played top pair.

215 mins played in total to reduce 901 runners down to 27. Last half an hour or so was a bit hairy, 24th out of 32 and blinds pretty high but managed to scrape in 25th so onto the next game on Saturday.
Wish me luck, think Im gonna need it.

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LuborC

Joined: 20.04.2008

Posts: 1,243

29.05.2009, 12:51 0

So what's new on the MTT front?

DISCONTINUED:Should I stay or should I Sit'n'go? LuborC's blog...

rhinoneil Topic starter

Joined: 16.04.2008

Posts: 1,158

29.05.2009, 13:34 0

Not much tbh.
Played second rounds of PM and Late Night Poker.
PM didnt go well, really card dead and any move i made got slapped down.
Finished around 40th.
I am hoping that FT put up some cash satellites, pretty sure they will once freeroll is over this weekend.
LNP was mad. 2nd round was just a crapshoot, actually really disappointing, no play at all.
Even so, I managed to bubble ha ha.I have been playing a lot of SH NL25 trying to improve my cash game. Had a bad day yesterday though, AA all in on a 2 diamond board called by AQd, river diamond. QQ V KK on a board of KJJQx, dont know how it didnt all go in preflop but it certainly did on the turn.

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My poker million experiences