Another #TPTE takedown and mixed results at the cash games

Thursday was a mixed bag of results for me at the tables. In the morning, I played at PokerHost.com on the Limit Hold ‘Em tables and had success at the games that had blinds of .25/.50. I was able to double up my buy-in on one session and triple up on another session.

After a short break for lunch, I was prepared to play the Thurday Twitter Poker Tour – Euopean edition which started at 2pm ET or 7pm BST. I enjoy playing in any of the Twitter Poker Tour tourneys due to the fact that I know the players and communicate with some of them on a regular basis. I consider them my friends even though we may be hundreds or even thousands of miles apart.

But there is a saying … there are no friends at a poker table and I was playing to win. Again. I had won the previous Thursday in first place and that was my ultimate goal.

The tourney lasted 2 hours and 10 minutes and I played in 192 of the hands that were dealt. There were only nine players and the lead changed many times during the event. I had gone from first to last place at least a dozen times but was able to keep my chip count high enough to give myself a chance to win.

The game started at 2pm ET and at 3:46pm there were only two of us left:
Seat 6: Steve_Treys (3450 in chips)
Seat 7: excalibur41 (10050 in chips)

I had my work cut out for me. Getting his chips away from him was not going to be easy. It never is. And sometimes you don’t succeed. The following hand was pivotal in giving me the chips needed to win heads up.

Seat 6:	steve_treys	($3,325)	Dealer
Seat 7:	excalibur41	($10,175)	Small Blind

Seat 6:	steve_treys	Ante $25
Seat 7:	excalibur41	Ante $25

Dealt to excalibur41

CALL

steve_treys

$100

RAISE

excalibur41

$800

CALL

steve_treys

$600

Flop (Pot: $2,000)

BET

excalibur41

$3,800

ALL-IN

steve_treys

$2,400

RETURN

excalibur41

$1,300

Turn (Pot: $8,200)

River (Pot: $8,200)

SHOWS   excalibur41

SHOWS   steve_treys

There were 62 more hands played to finish the heads up portion of the tournament. At the end I prevailed and took down my second #TPTE tourney in a row. The finishing summary was as follows:

1: Steve_Treys (Fremont)
2: excalibur41 (Glasgow)
3: TaikiYa (Mannheim)
4: The420Gov
5: amuzulo (Berlin),
6: sionweeks (New Tredegar),
7: RawrStar (Littleborough),
8: Fingolfin3 (DERBY),
9: b3ls3pub (Valkeala),

The number 6th finisher actually did not actively participate in the tourney when he lost his Internet connection after about the third hand played. The online system was designed to give the disconnected player a chance by giving additional time to reconnect. The first couple of hands, two minutes were given before folding his hand, the next couple of hands, one minute was given, and finally only 15 seconds was given before he timed out and his hand was folded. 6th place for not playing actively is not bad. Sort of says that the less hands you play, sometimes the better off you are.

I ended the day playing some more cash games of Limit Hold ‘Em at the next level of stakes, the .50/1.00 levels and lost almost all of my buy-in. I dropped back down to the .25/.50 tables and recovered a little of what I had lost. I will give the higher level a try again later to determine if that level is too tough for me or that I just had a bad run.

All in all, it was a good day of poker. Fun, excitement, and cashing in.

Do you find it helpful to play against people that you know versus total strangers? Does it help when you know their patterns of play? Do you vary yours so that they don’t have a good read on you?