Thursday night is double chance night at The Western and I was a bit undecided as to go or just stay in and play some online games last night. It's been a tiring week and I haven't' slept much plus I've had some bad nights sleep with our daughter waking us up at some unknown hour, but I managed to knock of work early and got an hour and a half sleep in in the afternoon so by 7pm I was almost ready to go and have a game. With APAT Cardiff at the weekend, I also wanted to play live after playing on the net all week to get back in the feel for it.

One thing on my mind was my exit hand from last Fridays game. We were down to the last 12 and I was fair short and it folded to me and I had pocket 7's. I pushed and ran into queens in the big blind, no complaints, but I was wondering if I should have taken the time to consider my stack size in relation to the big blinds. He had me well covered, probably by about 3 times as much so he was likely to call with pretty much anything resembling a holding. I wasn't the shortest stack and could have easily folded to the final table so was it wrong to push here? Making the final is important to me, but I decided that I had to get there with more chips than I had. Anyway, right or wrong, it was on my mind for last night and I decided that I wasn't going to argue with big chip leaders with average holdings at critical times if it meant missing out on a final table seat.

First real pot I was involved with was AJ on an Ace high board. I limped preflop OOP and it was raised by someone that had been raising a lot and making a lot of risky moves very early on. She called my bet on a gutshot and duly hit which miffed me a bit, but thankfully she was looking for the check raise, but I checked behind and mucked my TPTK. Anyway, said person raised, 3 other callers and as I was last to act, I called too. Flop came ace high so I bet 1k in to it. All fold to the guy to my right who moved all in with A4 and I obviously called and thankfully doubled up.


Not much exciting happened to me until I made the final table really. Well, nothing that exciting happened there. I made it there in my usual shorty stack but patience eventually paid off and I found a hand or two to go all in with. I was once in as a massive underdog with A2 against AT, but the blinds were 2k/4k now and I only had 10k and was in the BB next so I lumped it in and thankfully hit the two on the river and doubled up.

Made it to heads up somehow but was in very very bad shape. 159,000 chips in play and I only had about 20k of them. First hand heads up and with blinds now 3k/6k I was in the big blind first, looked down at 72o and for some reason thought I was in the small blind and just mucked them! Not a great start for my short stack. I suddenly twigged that I was at least 2nd but if I didn't do anything I wasn't going to win. With nothing to lose, I went on a bit of a rampage and took down quite a few 'small' pots here and there, doubeled up, and all of a sudden had a slight lead.

It was mentioned that we could chop it if we wanted and whilst I thought I was in pretty good shape here, I had to agree and we split the money 50/50 taking £250 each. Chopping was for the best, mainly as the blinds were now 4k/8k and we only had around 80k each. I'd been lucky up to now and it would only take one wrong move and that would be it. I had a slight lead by about 10k, but it's not even a round of blnds, but I'll still claim first spot - not only for the chips but my name went top of the prize sheet!

And that, was my first live win!