Defending Titles - Part 1

So I've still got another few weeks to enjoy that, but it still means I'm going to be title-less at the end of the year - unless I can pull something out of the bag at the GUKPT London or the IPC.

Obviously I didn't really expect to make a successful defence in any of them, but it still would have been nice to get a decent run in one of the tournaments that I'd won in 2008. Unfortunately I didn't last more than 4 hours in any of them, and never so much as doubled my starting stack. The most recent two that I played were the Poker Million and the World Open, and while I wasn't exactly confident of winning either, I was feeling really good about the way I was playing going into them after my 10th place finish in the London EPT.

First up was the Poker Million and it was a really tough heat including JC Tran and Huck Seed. I actually felt a bit nervous before this one, partly because of how good I knew the other players in the heat were, and partly because I'd won it last year and really wanted to do well. As you will know if you watched it on TV last week, I busted out in 4th place in a 50-50 hand which would have given me half of the chips in play if I'd won.

I generally feel pretty good about the way I played my heat, although there was one hand early on which I feel I made a mistake in. JC Tran raised in early position and I re-raised with . The flop came and he bet out. Obviously this isn't the flop you want to see when you hold pocket Queens but still, my initial thought was that if he had an ace he would have checked to me and he was betting out with nothing hoping that I'd re-raised pre-flop with a pocket pair rather than a big Ace.

Then I thought some more, and reasoned that JC Tran is one of the best players in the world and he'd know that betting out here looks like an obvious bluff, and therefore deduced that he probably wasn't bluffing, but was doing it with a strong hand knowing that I'd think it was a bluff...

I probably over-complicated the situation and should have went with my gut instinct, but another consideration was that if I passed I still had reasonably good chips left and it was still early, whereas if I called or raised and was wrong then I was effectively going to be out of the tournament. It was the first hand that I asked Paul Spillane about when I got knocked out and went back into the green room, and I kind of knew the answer before he told me - it was a bluff. Still though, I'm not too disappointed with myself and like I say, overall I was happy with my play.