A week of sick rivers ends on the TV

I travelled down to London last night, full of hope for my TV filming of the 888 UK Open. Unfortuantely, a frustrating run ended gruesomely as I got all my chips in with K3 on a KJ10 flop, against a Spanish player’s A7. The king on the turn gave me hope that I might survive, but a few mintues later I was saying in the exit-interview “I thought I might hit the miracle non-queen on the river, but it wasn’t to be.” 

Things were looking good as we lost Mr de Wolfe to a simialrly sick beat in 6th place, but the structure in these things is even more ridiculously bad than it would seem on the TV. There are  a couple of spots where I maybe could have done better, and I will include these in the “50 worst mistakes” section. There was not too much poker before an all-in fest ensued, but today really was another example of what I’m trying to drive towards: If your luck is going to be mediocre, you need not to just play pretty well, but to get every little thing right.

It really has seemed like a never-ending run of bad luck, and of course it leads to some gutting moments. However, it really has made me confirm my principles about these live poker events. My ambition is not really at the moment to get good results, but just to improve as much as I can, and not accept any mediocre play. There’s so much to learn from, even from the most disappointing day like today, and I’m going to try to use as much of the learning potential as I can.

It has actually probably been easier to do this during this fairly shocking run of luck, but it will be important to do so even if things do improve. Just as this crap run of results hopefully doesn’t mean I’m the worst player of the world, it will not make me a great player if can get a run of being on the lucky end of these situations.

Chin up, I’ll try and play better next time. That will be at Star City this weekend, in a tournament that is shaping up to have some very good value with lots of satellite qualifiers, and then to Amsterdam for the excitement of the Master Classics.

Good luck at the tables!