Murphy's Multiplier - The Challenge Continues

On Friday night, when I woke up I got off to a good start with a few stts, this got me up to $177 and I felt I was on a roll. I took a few hours break to go to the cinema and when I came back I had a nightmare period, I lost 8 buy ins at the 5c 10c games and in the STTs I got two and three outered time after time.

One game in particular sticks in my head. I was heads up with a 7-1 chip lead, he doubled with kq v my aq, then I pushed with 88 he called with q7 - I flopped a set and he got runner diamond! Then I push akcc; he called with a7hh and rivered a 7. I have never been so close to throwing the laptop out the window!!

I took a break again as my account was well below the $100 dollar starting balance and I feared that I might play on and tilt the rest away. I came back and played for a few hours and got it back close to the 100, before I called it a night or a morning, which is a better description of the time.

Pokerswat.com have been kind enough to give me free access to their site, so I have been watching videos and reading the articles for an hour or so each day, when I finish up. Paul Moran (DvDFan) writes a good selection of articles, one is a hand chart for micro-stacks 6 max games, which underline all the starting hands for each position and how to play them given the action previous in the hand.

His Hold'em Manager articles and videos give you a very good understanding of how to use it optimally. It is very useful content for all poker players. I have also watched a few of HectorJelly's videos and I am picking up a few things on how to use stats more often and what they mean, as I have had Hold'em Manager for a while now, but usually only to record my sessions and not to use when in play.

On Saturday when I woke up I had a similar sort of night. I got above the 120 -130 mark, but I continued right through until morning time and I played a $1 rebuy at 9 o' clock in the morning, a few hours later there was 14 of us left out of 400 odd and top prize was $164, which would have been very nice indeed, then this hand came up:

***** Hand History for Game 2010633092 *****
$1000000.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, January 25, 12:36:43 ET 2009
Table 750 GP Rebuy 252682083 (Real Money)
Seat 9 is the button
Seat 1: naema47 ( $39366.26 USD )
Seat 2: sparhook ( $194090.00 USD )
Seat 4: bluffntoast ( $26761.67 USD )
Seat 7: BertFace ( $94470.00 USD )
Seat 8: murphymultiplier ( $196728.25 USD )
Seat 9: cleostof29 ( $164453.50 USD )
Seat 10: yvan1984 ( $172075.74 USD )
yvan1984 posts small blind [$5000.00 USD].
naema47 posts big blind [$10000.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to murphymultiplier [ Kd Kc ]
sparhook folds
bluffntoast folds
BertFace folds
murphymultiplier raises [$27000.00 USD]
cleostof29 folds
yvan1984 raises [$39000.00 USD]
naema47 calls [$29366.26 USD]
murphymultiplier raises [$169728.25 USD]
yvan1984 calls [$128075.74 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, Qc, 4s ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 6d ]
murphymultiplier wins $24652.51 USD from main pot
yvan1984 wins $383517.74 USD from main pot
naema47 shows [Ah, 7s ]
yvan1984 shows [Qd, Qh ]

Roll on Sunday, when I started to play some small stakes cash: 2c4c and then 5c10c and I got over $150 in which I won a few buy ins so I decided to play a $5 freezout which had 537 runners, after a few hours I was in good shape and I felt like I was going to go deep again.

Approaching the bubble I was raising every pot, as people had very noticeably tightened up, this actually back fired on me as one guy had called my raise with kthh for 33% of his stack and he flopped top pair. He then called my push with a flush draw which held.

This knocked me back, but I fought back and I managed to reach the final table and come 5th for a nice $134 dollars, (1st place was $564). This was a big boost to my bankroll at these early stages. I was now up over $300 dollars and I took a few hours break and then decided to play some 10c20c, as I now had 15 buy ins for this.

Unfortunately this didn't go to plan, I lost one big pot ($50) wit AK on Ace hi flop v JJ - he bings on the river. I have to admit I tilted a bit after this and another few hands and I ended the session down 2 Buy ins :(

I ended the day with $256, which is disappointing after being over $300, so I will have to go back to 5c10c for a while and maybe get another score in a tournie in this week. Boylepoker have a $3000 freeroll that is on next Sunday, or so I believe. That will be one worth playing in, I can't afford to miss it!!!

My Sharkscope graph and my manager graph are not very pretty looking at the minute but hopefully in time that will improve, I don't know if I will bother much with the STTs any more, as I never really played them much and the variance is killing me.

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes, I hope I don't disappoint!