I broke the seal!

Finally... I started the year with approx $800 and my goal was to run it up to 5 digits... I was off to a quick start and then May came around and I stalled big time. I was able to lock in another 4 digit profit month but barely and I was pretty upset about my results in May. By April, I was definitely on pace to hit 5 digits so May was supposed to have been the month but I crossed over at one point but by the time I cashed out of the table, I was in the "close" territory. Well, I finally did it. Today, I went past the 5 digit mark and hopefully, will never look back.

I played ok on the cash tables but I had two tournaments that I played in today. One was the Ironman Freeroll and the other was a $69+6 buy-in, $12,500 guarantee tournament on FTP. I always said that Ironman is your typical "rich gets richer" scheme. For the bronze and the silver levels where they are easy to achieve, I think you get a fair number of entrants. But for the gold and the ironman level, there's a lot less. This month, there were only 205 runners in the Ironman level and top 90 gets paid. Yeah, Top 90. That's an insane ratio where almost half the players get paid. Seriously, you can fold to the money (one guy literally did. He never signed on but won because right before he had to go all in, the money bubble burst). I ended up in 53rd place and got $120... which was unfortunate because 45-90 all got paid $120. I could've been conservative and gone for the money bump but that's not why I play, right?

In the other tournament, I played fairly well. I was able to build up my chip stack rather early when I was able to exploit some of the weak tight players at the table (and you KNOW they are weak-tight if I can exploit them). So, I actually tripled my buy-in and was sitting pretty when this stupid hand came up...

I was raising from late position as I was frequently doing but this time I have pocket kings. All our money goes in on the flop when I see this...



Online poker is soooooo rigged. Fortunately, I chipped up early so even though this hurt, it brought my stack down to T2000 which was only slightly below average. Well, one thing I'm definitely good at is that I rarely tilt. I moved on like nothing happened and continued to play solid poker.

As the second break was coming up, I was doing fairly well.



As the bubble approached, I wanted to make sure that I didn't tighten up... except all of a sudden, I went card dead. And other big stacks were raising before me so I couldn't make a move. I slowly dwindled down until I decided to just attack the guys who were raising almost every time. Fortunately, that worked and one key hand where I was able to win the coinflip propelled me into top 8 with about 18 players remaining. I tried to remain aggressive but in the end, I got picked off when we saw the flop four handed, I pushed with an open ended straight draw and a guy who had me barely covered called with TPTK. Unfortunate end to a decent run. Having said that, it's always nice to see these messages pop up...



And believe me, I was pretty happy finishing 13th out of 258 runners even though, I can't help but think what could've been... And this one for the ironman challenge...



In all honesty, finding this blogging community has been the best thing that's happened to my poker life. By reading others' blogs and playing in the BBT, I know that my tournament skills have improved immensely over the past couple of months. Before, I felt like I could eventually win one of these things. Right now, I feel like it's a matter of time before I take one down. I know I have a few more things to learn for sure but I know I can get there. And hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later.

PS. Schaubs, thanks for the email. I'll have the password for future references! And don't worry about not getting back to me in time. At least I had a good excuse for not being in the 4 man tourney... :)