Started a little early

I purchased a debit card with $25 to make sure that I would have an easy option to deposit on Poker Stars. The request went through, and I had a small $24 bankroll to begin with. In February I’ll deposit the $275 to complete my starting bankroll for this challenge.

I decided that I would play a few tournaments to see if the advice and mindset from the Harrington on Hold’em series had stuck with me. I joined a 45 seat $1.20 NL Hold’em tournament, played very conservative for the first 30-45 minutes then opened up my game a little bit to try and build a stack for a run to the final table. When we were down to 21 players, I picked up a monster in the SB. A guy in Middle Position raises 5x the big blind. I’m looking at AA with no callers behind me so I push all in for $1635. Middle Position calls, showing KK. On the flop he strikes out a K and I go out in 21st place.

Kind of made me a little sick to be seeing that on my first day in, but as in life shit happens.

Before going to bed, I played a few more tournaments with the same result. I was down to around $15. Later in the evening I decided to give it another go, I played in another $1.20 45 seat tournament. I played the same game until we had gotten down to 3 tables and opening my game again. Soon enough we were down to 12 people on two tables and I was in the top 5 with around $8000. At this point I just stayed kind of stayed out of the way as I had a very loose aggressive player to my right trying to knock people out of the way.

When the final table started I was down to $7200 in chips, with the big stack to my left. I just played very tight aggressive until we were at the bubble and started opening pots. By the time we were in the money I was looking at $16000 after winning a few pots off the big stack. I slowly grew this to $22000 after realizing there were three nits to my right who played very scared. By the time it had gotten 3 handed I was looking at $35000 with the same two nits in the game. I had the pleasure of taking them both down, taking down the $14 first prize.

Here was the final hand of the tournament.

Poker Stars $1.00+$0.20 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t1000/t2000 Blinds + t100 – 2 players

AcesHigh300 (BTN/SB): t16294 M = 5.09
Hero (BB): t51206 M = 16.00

Pre Flop: (t3200) Hero is BB with Qc Tc
“AcesHigh300 raises to t6000, Hero calls t4000

Flop: (t12200) Th Qs 9h (2 players)
Hero checks, “AcesHigh300 bets t10194 all in, Hero calls t10194

Turn: (t32588) 6c (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: (t32588) 9d (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t32588
“AcesHigh300 shows 3h As (a pair of Nines)
Hero shows Qc Tc (two pair, Queens and Tens)
Hero wins t32588

With that win it put me back in the green for the day, with my cash bankroll sitting at $26.43.

After that win, I decided to play in a 1FPP+Rebuy satellite for the Sunday 1/4th million. I only ended up spending 3 FPPs, 1 for the seat, 1 rebuy and 1 add-on. Did very well in the tournament and mostly just stuck to getting my money in there as if I was constantly playing in the Yellow Zone. Going into the final table I was sitting at $230,000 in chips. When it got down to 4 handed a big play came up which ended up knocking out the 4th place player.

So I ended up $2.43 for the day and a $11 tournament ticket. I unregistered for the Sunday 1/4th a million, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to play in it.