I was tempted back to Full Tilt by their new "Matrix" tournaments at the weekend. Basically it's a series of 4 sit and go's played at the same time against the same players. Basically 1/5th of the buy-in is allocated for each of the 4 games and the other 5th is for the top 3 performers in the game. This means that to play the equivalent of my usual $11 buyins I need to play $55 matrix tournaments ($11 per game (x4) and $11 for the matrix pool). The games seemed to take a while to fill up though and so I ended up playing a couple of $33 ones as these filled quicker. Promising results too:
My sit and go game has always been based around playing very tight in the early and middle stages and then loosening up when my stack gets to around 8-10BB's. This obviously means I rarely exit sit and go's before there are 5 players left which is very good for this format it would seem. To cash in 8 of the 10 I've played may well prove to be "beginner's luck" but hopefully it means that this sort of game is suited to my style and in the long run can be very profitable for me.
One of my biggest faults when playing these days is that I don't really pay attention to what people are doing at each table (I usually have 6 tables on the go) and don't make notes so when I come up against a marginal decision I have nothing to base making that decision on. By playing against the same 8 players on 4 different tables there is much more opportunity to get useful information as players will usually play the same way on each table rather than mixing it up so you can cross-reference notes and situations.
So my Full Tilt account is now back over $400 which is nice. On to Party.... took a bit of a hit the other night...when I went back to the dark side. Yes that's right I played some cash games. Oops. I was watching the Cannon destroy the field in a tournament (think it was the Super Thursday - he eventually took 2nd for over $3k) and it was quite late but I wanted to rail him for a bit more. I thought there was no point starting a sit and go as he might bust out in a couple of hands so I thought I'd just play a bit of $0.25/0.50 on a couple of table until he went out. About 20 minutes later and I'd lost $200...
Basically I played like a prat and the players on the tables cottoned on to that. The number of times I check-raised and then got reraised was unreal! Anyway, I had a stack of $75 on one of the tables and I finally got a break when I came up against someone who had been playing back at me a lot and had me covered. I raised pre UTG with JTs, BB calls. Flop comes Ace Ten 7, he checks I bet the pot, he flats. Turn comes Ten. Bingo! He's never going to believe me, he leads out...what? I raise, he reraises..."he must be playing back with something marginal" the voice says in my head, I make the call, he shows 77, goodnight Cheese.
Also - damn the weak pound! That little session would have only cost me £100 a month ago, it cost about £130 then though! So my roll shrunk by over 1/5th from £500 to £370. Managed to play a few more sit and gos over the weekend and get it back up to £400, so I'm going to take that as the price I pay for a lesson in sticking to the games I win at...until the next time that is...
Won't be playing much over the next week or so, got a lecture tonight, going round my parents on Wednesday for a meal and to watch the Arsenal-Spurs game and then I'm in Loughborough Thursday and Friday for a work course.
On the topic of Spurs, what a shock that was...got a text Saturday night about midnight from Marc saying Ramos was sacked and Harry was lined up for the job! Switched on Sky Sports News and they're talking to Mr Redknapp himself and he's confirming that he's the Spurs manager...then an even bigger shock....Tottenham won a game! So we must have turned a corner? Doubt it... Arsenal and Liverpool next up...
In all seriousness though I think he will do well for us. His teams all seem to have a great team spirit and he's a good man-manager which is something Spurs have been lacking since Martin Jol got shunted. On that note I would much rather have seen the headline "Ramos, Comolli and Poyet sacked...Jol back in." I miss the great man. So glad to see he's doing well at Hamburg. One thing that annoys me about virtually ever manager is the way they complain about every single little thing that goes against them (Southgate excluded). I never heard Jol have a go at a ref or bemoan the teams luck once, even when Mendes "scored" that goal from the half-way line against United that went about 2 yards over the goal-line but wasn't given he just laughed it off. He is my hero and I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from him:
On Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger: 'I did really well to hold myself back. I really don't think he realises how strong I am, otherwise he wouldn't approach me with headbutts and everything.'
