So I was having unbelievable luck on Full Tilt as I was working of my superawesome 100% matching deposit bonus. Full Tilt hasn’t generally been awesome to me, but the World Series of Poker qualifiers and other tournaments that they have are too enticing for me to pass up. I probably already mentioned this, but in case I haven’t: I really hate the interface for Full Tilt. It’s too cartoonish and the cards and chip counts are too small. The size issues probably have something to do with the fact that my monitor is either on its last leg, or my eyes are getting worse. I’m not sure which it is, but I’m not having trouble reading my laptop screen at work. Either way, I can’t see the cards very well.

There are some awesome things about full tilt though. The little things that make life grand: instant chip counts throughout tournaments. A variety of tournament options, including heads-up tournaments (a new addiction for me). The tournaments are also smaller and impose the antes in later rounds, which work to speed things up a bit. I never thought I would say this, but I like the fact there aren’t 1000 people in every tournament. I’m also back and forth as to whether the players are generally better or worse on Full Tilt. In the cash games, I’ve been getting killed. Seriously killed at all levels. 5/10, 3/6, 2/4 structured as well as at NL. But I’ve done remarkably better in the tournaments than I have in the past. But I’ve seen some really poor play in tournaments. I’ve had a tournament where I doubled up on the first hand when my pocket 8s hit for trips on an 8 high flop, I checked, and the guy behind me went all-in with his pocket queens (over betting the pot by roughly 8x). It may be nothing though, my switch to Full Tilt has coincided with a change in my tournament play, which given the results I’ve had, is apparently working. It’s a nice feeling to make the money in tournaments somewhat regularly though.

I had a crazy streak to start out, where I cashed in I believe the first 6 tournaments I played. Nothing really significant as I continue to get busted early in the money, but it’s still been nice to make it. One tournament qualified me for a WSOP qualifier last Sunday, which (of course) had to be when my luck took a turn for the worse. I ended up busting 10 before the money after making a bad decision with pocket 10s. Ohhhh, pocket 10s. I replayed the moment in my head a thousand times. Chip leader in middle position has everyone at the table covered by probably 5x. Full table, he comes in for double the blind. That should have been my first sign. I mean, when you’re chip lead by a tremendous amount, what do you do when you have a monster hand? Of course, I didn’t think about this at the time. Next to act after the chip lead bumps it up, quadrupling the blind (which is about half his stack). This play is why I think my mind shut down. The re-raiser was pissed off at the chip lead from a previous hand. I (stupidly) shrugged off his raise as tilt-madness. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Everyone folds to me. I have roughly 3x the big blind, so I push all in with my pocket tens thinking I’m some kind of genius. BB folds back to the chip leader, who without hesitating puts the re-raiser all in. In an ignisecond, I wished CTRL+Z worked for poker. Re-raiser thinks for a while, calls all-in. I would let you guess what they flipped over, but I don’t think it would be much of a challenge. I was up against AA (chip leader) and QQ (re-raiser). The community cards didn’t help anyone and I was sent packing.

This week I’ve continued to play a number of tournaments on Full Tilt. While I’m not having the luck I had last week, it’s still going alright. The big difference is I’m not getting the unbelievable luck on the heads-up tournaments like I was last week. Last week I had three heads up tourneys that went three hands (all three against different players). It’s as if they’ve never heard the term “slow play”. And their screens must only have two options on the river “Fold” and “go all-in for 1400 on a 40 pot”. To save space it’s probably just “Fold” and “Attempt ridiculous bluff”.

In other poker news, I’ve offically been ordained as a poker blogger. April over at This is not a poker blog was even kind enough to put me on her list of Austin poker bloggers. Now I’ll just have to learn how to play poker. Look for me to add April and the rest of the poker blogs that I read on a regular occasion to my links soon.