Facebook Tourney Run

*WARNING: VERY LONG POST. Many updates as the tourney goes*

I’m doing well in this week’s tournament (surprisingly). If you have read my previous posts on Poker, it was mostly about how i got eliminated from the tournament in like the first few hours of playing. Well, this time i actually lasted 2 days, and then i almost went broke. I build 1000 to 3000 then went to 82 chips. Yes 82. A lot of people in position will just throw that 82 chips away. But not me! i know that we get 100 extra tournament chips everyday, so i could still get 600 chips if i came back everyday of the week. The next day with my 82, i got the 100 daily chips, which made my chip count 182. Then i got posted to the 1/2 blinds table, and totally owned that table lol. I went from 182 to 1000+ really quick. Ok enough of the boring details, i’ll just talk about the biggest hands.

So when i got to 5000, i got placed at this table with someone who plays very aggressive. He was the chip leader on the table, so he raised every hand. There wasn’t a round he did not raise preflop! The blind was 10/20 and you are sure he will raise it to either 140/230/440/540 based on how good his hand was. He raised 140 with cards like 2 4 -.- I find my chipstack quickly decreasing from 5000 to 2800. I wanted to leave the table so many times because i couldn’t stand being bullied by the chip leader.

1st Big hand: I held two pair at the flop. He raised really high. Everyone else folded. I called. Now this guy knows i’m a tight player, so because i called he must know i have a hand. Then came the turn he bet even higher. I re-raised a bit, to see whether he’s bluffing. He raised me all-in. I was like omg he must have 3-of-a-kind. But my instincts is that he’s bluffing as usual, so i just called. Turns out he only had high pair. So i got to around 10000 here.

2nd Big hand: There was a guy on the table who had around 18000 chips, and he just lost a big pot and was left with 8000. As with people who just lost a lot of chips they get mad, and start throwing their chips all-in out of frustration, if you happen to have a good hand to call him, you would probably get easy money there. Blind was 10/20, he raised 8000 everyone folded. Next round he went all in again 8000, i was like this guy is raising out of frustration. My hand was KJ of hearts, good enough to call someone raising out of rage. But the guy before me called too o.o But what the hell i called. I had 16000, so if i lost this hand i would go back to 8000, which is a major ughhh. That guy had like A7 or something, guy before me had AK omg, and i had KJ. Obviously i’m behind but the flop came so fast everything was low like 4 6 3 10 then came J on the river lol so i won that and went to 33000 chips just like that. This was luck i have to admit, pure luck, someone even said ‘nh’ after.. i wanted to tell him no it’s just flop luck. I think he said ‘nh’ to means congrats for winning the huge pot, something like that.

3rd Big hand: I had high pair K. called a high raise on the flop, i really though of folding here, because he might have two-pair or 3 of a kind. Then turn came another K. He continued raising, i re-raised, then won like 20000 here. So i was at 60000.

4th Big hand: This was just an hour ago, i had 70000. My like 3rd hand of the day was an AA. raised the blind from 100 to 500, 4 called. Flop came A64 something like that. I raised 200 to the 2000 pot to give the impression i got nothing, or only a low pair. Of course everyone called this negligible raise. Then came like a J on the turn. Perfect i thought if someone hit that J. Then i raised like 800 into the 3000 pot, very small still to make the impression i was trying to steal the pot. 2 people called. The pot was 5500. The river came a 6. Completing my full house. Now i was freaking convinced i had the best hand, but i’m always careful still thinking whether someone can have like an AJ.. unlikely though. One guy raised 1000, he must have hit the J or the 6 making a 3-of-a-kind which would be perfect as he must be convinced he had the best hand. I raised it to 3000, he reraised to 6000, now it’s all about thinking what’s the biggest amount i can fish from him, so i settled on 20000, it’s a nice number, just 3 times what he raised. Imagine like a 30000/40000, that might really make him think again, but 20000 is callable. He called. And i won like 30000, and got to 98000 chips. Only to lose when i was playing and writing this blog at the same time -.- i had flush, and he had full house. So i’m now back at 72907 chips, the rank 252 is when i still had 93550 chips, now i’m probably ranked about 400.

I would really be careful now and slowly make my way to the hundred-thousands, which was my original goal. The last time i went as high was when i got to like 120000 chips (rank 108!) but quickly lost it because i got too much into a pot and tried to bluff my way out of it and lost it all. This time my goal is to conservatively get like 300,000 chips. It’s okay if i don’t make it into Top 10, although i really want to, but now i just concentrate on finishing the tournament with chips! (which is harder than you imagine).

Better not get big headed now o.o only 2 days left, wish me luckkk. If i get into Top 10 i would make it my profile picture lol.

update: I’m sorry i just re-read this post and found it quite a lengthy and boring read. Will try to cut down on the details next time.

update: 2 hours on, i’m now at $216,212 chips!! Pretty much reached my goal of getting about 300,000. Will aim to get 300,000+ And then see from then. The big hands..

I raised to 500, he went all in for 18322, so i called.

This is basically what happened to me 2 hours ago. I had a flush, only to lose to a full house on the river. Now it’s my turn.

I expected to be ranked about 60-70.. but only 95. (sound so ungrateful). You can see the top guy is at $12,000,000! wow.. 2nd guy is like only 4,000,000. I’m so far behind them. I got to seat with people with 700,000 and 800,000 just now. Hopefully i can reach 1,000,000. That would be awesome. But i think by then i would really want to get into the Top 10 haha.

Update:

Pocket pairs almost always making a set on the flop. And make a full house later. Which has been good to me.

Another sick one… i managed to win around 150,000 on this one. Not bad for such a good hand on the flop o.o

Now I’m at!

So happy beyond words. I feel pretty accomplished. Now I don’t know why i don’t feel very excited about getting to 1m or even Top 10. I should better fire myself up if i want to get into the Top 10. Let’s go! (after i eat dinner). Also a reminder here, my goal here is finish the tourney with a sizable amount of money. And $700,000 is enough already for me. I really want to end the tourney with money, not eliminated and like “hey i was at rank 37″.

Update: I really had a hard time beginning. My 785,000 slowly winded down to 500,000 after a few bad calls and waiting for straights that never came. But most of all i had trouble being motivated, my mind wasn’t in the best condition. Right then i thought that’s it.. I can’t go any further from this. I was listening to some Wonder Girls and Shinee music as i was playing, then i was like, okay if i want something i better put everything else aside, and just concentrate on the game. Then i turned off the music, and true enough i manage to get back to 680,000 which was a psychological boost. Then this came

I totally slow-played him and he bought into it big time. After i called his raise which pretty much put me 80% all-in, my heart stopped for a moment. Then when the chips came to me, i just spontaneously stood up and shouted YES!!!! I totally couldn’t control my excitement lol But it was a great feeling, the hand put me to 1,200,000 in just a second. So what i learned is that patience pays, and just hang in there through the tough times, try to think positive, and most importantly, if you want something don’t do it half-heartedly, really put all your mind to it! Now there is only one goal, and that is to get into Top 10. Of course i can aim for first, but the first position guy has a sick stack of $12,000,000. So I’m trying to be realistic here, just aiming for $3,000,000 and get my picture into the Top 10.

Update Saturday evening:

I went to Kinokuniya today, read a bit of Poker books by Phil Hellmuth, and learn a little about odds. Basically all the books tend to advice smart aggressive play, and i don’t think I’m there yet. I still play certain strong hands like 99 88 and flush draws too weak. Phil recommends betting the flush draw on the flop, i think i should do this more. If it doesn’t hit then maybe it’s also good for my table image because i tend to be a predictably tight aggressive player. Adding in a couple of loose raises can change that perception a bit so people would be more inclined to call me the next time i raise?

If you look at this picture, I’ve been on the same table as Ozan, Nick and Aziz. There is nothing crazy about their play, they just play like everyone does. If you look at the picture before this one, where i slow played the full house, that was actually against Nick, and he’s actually ranked 2nd right now. He was at around 2+ million yesterday, so he must have hit some huge hands today. Anyway I’m confident i deserve to be 1st. Not to appear cocky, but it’s just based on my rational observation. If I’m not good enough, I’d say so, but I really believe my capabilities is on par with these guys. So it just takes some luck, some patience and maybe I’d get up there to the Top 3? I’d be happy for Top 10. Btw i could not find any opponents right now, it’s apparently 1-2am in the US? and no one is online right now! So i don’t have any opponents. I managed to find one guy with 400,000 and played heads-up with him. It was just to and fro, no sizable gains. But it was good to know i can survive heads-up, tight players like me usually suffer heads-up, but I guess it just takes a bit of bluffing and some guts to call.

Aside from Poker:

I have a huge task today which is to apply for Jobs, so that is one thought looming in my head, and also I can’t play poker all the way into the morning like today, because I am going to go to Lexus Cup 2008, this golf tournament with the best female golfers. I thought for $30 i couldn’t give it a miss, too bad one of my favourite players Angela Park is not playing this year, but I’ll get to see Annika Sorenstam, Seri Pak, and other awesome golfers. Still need to figure out how to got there because i think we need to take shuttle or something. Argh! Facebook Tourney, Job Search and Watching Golf, I feel quite loaded right now just thinking of these.. But hopefully all this looming loads can turn into good and positive things. Tonight I’ll focus on job application. Tomorrow morning and afternoon go and watch the competition and then come back and own the tourney!

Update: Sunday afternoon

Today is slow day but it has been a good day. It is yet another day where patience pays. Started the day with 1,200,000 and hovered between 1,400,000 and 1,600,000 chips. Decided to slow play an aggressive player on the table, was waiting for him to bluff, he raised 30,000 and then another 30,000 and then he raised 150,000 into the 200,000 odd pot, perfect i thought, so I raised another 500,000 to make him call all-in, and he surprisingly took the bait.

Just waiting for the tournament ranking page to refresh so i can find out if i’ve managed to snuck into the Top 10. Based on the last ranking, I should manage to get right at Ranked 10. Let’s see in 20 minutes time.

Update: Sunday evening

I’ve just lost $1 million chips. First one i got trips on the river. Guy raised high, i put him all in, without noticing there is a possible straight on the table. it was like 6 7 10 4 4 i didn’t see that possibility of 8 9 making straight. I realise i must be tired. Then came the next one i lost $700,000 on this one for being unaware again, i am so dissapointed with myself. flop came 9 x x 10 K. i held J Q. I even checked the board twice to see i had the absolute best hand, best straight, then i went all-in after a guy before me raised high. Then when he revealed his hand it was 2 spades, then i looked at the table again there was indeed 3 spades on the table. I can’t believed i checked the board twice and still missed the possible flush, if i saw 3 spades i swear i would never put him all in. Just like that i lost 700,000 chips, and my rank from 11 is down to 30+ God knows. All my win from today is wasted. But i learned a valuable lesson today, to take a break when you don’t feel focused, and not play 7 hours straight without walking around and taking a rest or eating. Please bring me more courage to regain my chipstack. Now I’m at $1,300,000. Probably ranked 30+. Okay i need to remind myself i already way surpassed my initial goal.

Update Monday morning:

The tourney ends at Sunday 12 midnight American Time which is Monday 4pm Singapore time. It’s easy to check that you just -4 and change from day to night or night to day. My mom thought me this lol. Anyway i have been slowly increasing my chipstack, now it’s 1,580,000, like ranked 20-25. Been sitting with the chips leaders Ozan and Aziz all morning, they are at 30,000,000 and 9,000,000 respectively. So hard to fish chips from them, they have good intuition. Anyway i find that i have to get out of myself, and start being engaged with other people. I actually have so much more fun chatting with the guys on the table than playing the poker. Maybe that’s the lesson here.. that people always comes first before personal endeavour (ciehhh). Why am i using ciehhh that’s so indo lol Anyway my best friend from college just called me, he’s over in Singapore for few days, and i am going to meet him and go for lunch now. I shouldn’t be able to play anymore of the tourney, which ends in 4 and a half hours time. Nevertheless i think i am contented with what i have, although i was just this close to getting into Top 10, i never wan’t to look back and beat up myself anymore. So I guess this marks the end of the tourney for me. If You’ve read until here, you really deserve a trophy my friend lol. Alrights, I’m out.

Final Result:

I started out the tournament just wishing i could go to 300,000. I had no higher aim because the highest i ever went previously was 120,000 and ranked 108. That was already very good in my estimate. But this time i proved myself wrong, and that anything is possible if you play the game. Thankful to get 1,500,000 back, now my normal account has almost 2,000,000 chips. Someday I’m going to get my Pro 20M tag.

I re-read this entire post, and realised i was actually at 82 at 2nd day, huaha, why am i such a pro comeback-er?!

9pm-2am

Is my favourite time of the day :)

Flow of Attention

The most soothing art and music are those that allows our attention flow into them. Things that are good are always in form of a flow. Music is a play of this so called flow, in the form of tunes and beats, it dances along with our attention. The arts and all things beautiful facilitate flow. Because the object is nice and perfect, our mind has no chance for any intrusive inner voices, instead we keep a sort of quiet attention as we indulge in the object. And that short moment of flowing attention – we coin as happiness.

Hospital Smell

So i was at Mt Elizabeth Hospital yesterday and came at around 7pm on a Sunday so it was extremely quiet. As i walked down through the hospital alone, past the pharmacies and shops that are all closed, i have this wierd but cool feeling like i was in a playground or amusement park. Rarely do you get to be at a place like a public building and have the aircon on, and no one else around. Feels like it’ll be fun if i own the place for a night lol. The smell of the hospital, you know, is like they’ve sprayed some disinfectant into the air, it has a certain smell. And strangely enough, i liked the smell. The aircon was at the right temperature, and i’m just walking down the hallway. Just an undescribable feeling of quiet and peace, kind of ironic i thought as i continued to walk, because so many people who have been here have already died. As i walked past the fruit shop on the 2nd floor i had a random though “How many people who have walked past this spot has already died?” quite a lot probably. But all i felt then was just peace and quiet. What i really liked was that everywhere was really clean and tidy, it does really makes a difference to how people feel.

Finding Job as Last Minute Assignment

So finding a job has its similarities to completing an assignment. And if you see the people who manage to find a job quickly those are the people who normally hand up their assignment on time. Whereas those who are unemployed for months are the ones who hand in the assignments last minute, but still on time. For me, just like in uni, i hand up my assignment 2 days overdue, that is why it’s been almost a year and i’m still unemployed.

The question i get asked everytime is ‘Have you found a job?’ And the answer will be ‘no…’ Then they’ll go ‘Then what do you do everyday?’ ‘Stay at home not bored ah?’ I’m kinda numb to these questions already. Like back in uni, the night before a 3000 word assignment people would ask me where I’m at then I’ll say I’m still writing introduction they just –> O.O holy sh*t.

I know for most people it’s quite hard to understand how a person like me can be so slackkk. I also don’t understand myself sometimes, I know what I am, but why I am what I am i can’t really explain? It’s just like dat loh. If i want to realise my dreams i better ++ willpower. And nows the time.. assignment due in a month.

Soccer and Wireless

Just got home from playing soccer with Yong Teng and friends. I’ve met some of them before so it wasn’t like playing with total strangers. Hm, so i talked to one of the guys who is also Indo. Turns out he went to the same secondary school as my cousin, when i asked whether he knew her, he said it’s his brother’s gf. I was like o.O;; then it all made sense. Because I’ve met his brother before at the arcade and i see the resemblance. It’s funny how the world is so interconnected. But it made me believe more in the invisible hand of fate??

Soccer was great. As usual i am very enthusiastic at the start and managed to score quite a number of goals. Then come the 3rd, 4th game and so on i begin to get tired and unfocused. Basically this is all i do in a soccer game – I’ll be playing winger, and position myself all the way to the line, waiting for someone to pass to me, then I’ll just sprint ahead and take a shot. That’s basically all i know how to do. Defense wise i really suck at playing defender. So what i do is i run down and pressure the other teams defense, or follow players who are running across the halfway line. My weakness is afraid of high balls, and I’m not good at maintaining possession when under pressure, always tend panic and quickly pass the ball away. After soccer we ate at Spize and right across our table sat Andrea Fonseka. She looks exactly like on TV, except she’s taller in person. She looks great basically. I didn’t do any fanboy stunts asking for picture or anything. But it’s great to get to see an artist i kinda like in person.

So i came home and find that i can’t connect to my own home wireless connection. It says ‘out of range’ when like my room is only 6m away from the modem? Except there is a wall in between. So it made me wonder whose internet i’ve been using lately, turns out my computer automatically connects to my neighbours connection. So oops, feel kinda bad stealing my neighbours connection all these while. My bluetooth isn’t working, my wireless can’t connect, i think it’s time to get rid of this old junk! It’s kinda sad right that 3 years is considered a long time owning a tech gadget. But considering i spend everyday on the computer it feels way more than 3 years.. one of my usb port is broken, my keyboard is spoiled so i use an external one, and basically it runs so slow, can’t edit videos with 512ram and can’t play new games with 64mb video card.. But it’s enough for the important stuff like browsing and watching videos. Enough ranting lah.. going to watch some videos.

My Fantasy Stock Portfolio

Ya basically it’s a bloodbath. Now you know how bad the economy is! What I’ve learned from playing this is that investing is not as easy as “Buy Low – Sell High”. Stocks that have gone down a lot might go even lower. Goldman Sachs (GS) was at 164, it went to 119. You must think it’s cheap at that time right, but wrong! It’s now at 50, just 1/3 the price of what it used to be! SKF from around 140-160 shot up to 220. The stock never ever went above 200, it’s always gone to 180-190 and drop all the way down to the 140s. So i shorted it (which means bet on it going down) at 220. Look, now it’s at 262.

I will never, ever buy/short anything i don’t understand again.

Making Music

omg how do you actually make music? i find it so hard.. cause it’s not just something you can think up like say lyrics? you actually have to experiment with tunes to know what is good. and i know nuts about tunes and keys. i should probably buy a keyboard and teach myself..

I’m Never Hungry?

it’s 1:23am right, and i just realised something. I haven’t even eaten a meal today. Amazing right o.o Usually i’ll eat a meal in the late afternoon and one more for supper. But right now i’m not even hungry, tell me nothing’s wrong with me.

Morning i got hungry i ate a cookie i think. Then drank water. Settled my stomach. Then dinner i got hungry i ate like 2 cookies this time and drank water again. I just ate 2 more cookies, going to make Indomie, but I’m not exactly feeling that hungry even now.. oh gawd

Wonder Girls in Singapore

omg watehfugggg! Wonder Girls was in Singapore like 2 weeks ago and i didn’t even know. OMG. I think i should hang out in the forums more to learn about events. This is crazy. I went to US just to watch the Koreans perform, then when BoA went to Jakarta i didn’t go, and Wonder Girls in Singapore i also didn’t. pffff!