Back from snowy Denmark, looking forward to a more familiar haunt

Disappointment is something you come to get used to in tournament poker, and so familiar becomes the cycle that it takes. I always have a few mintues of feeling shell shocked, quickly get it out of my system, but then a trip to the airport the next day brings a small reminder of the whole coup. The grim weather in snowy Copenhagen didn’t help, and so I am happy to be home.

Rather than a non-poker weekend, there is the big festival this week at the Broadway casino in Birmingham. I’ll be playing Day 1B of the £1,000 main event tomorrow, and am really buzzing about it. It will be a great comp, and it’s always even more fun to play in familiar surroundings and with familiar friendly faces. It should be great craic, but obviously still a very important event, and one I would love to run well in. Updates on here from tomorrow!

I’ve been thinking alot about the way I play, and the turbo session of the TV heat last week reinforced an idea that I had slowly began to realise.

The turbo heat had an extra rule that each player had to act within twenty seconds, and this provided a good deal of comedy. Mad Marty is a great and sharp tournament director, and so anyone that hit the 15 second mark would hear a broad Black Country accent bellowing “FIVE, FOUR….” It caused a few people some problems, and Fintan Gavin even comically passed pocket jacks in all the confusion!

However, I did not have a single problem. In fact, I did not even come close. This feature of my internet-trained game was useful in this scenario, but of course is not necessary in a normal ‘live’ game. It helped me to realise that I do not give myself much time to think, and it is something that I need to work on. I’ll start at the Broadway tonight, by consciously giving myself at least five seconds to think on every street I play. I may not have to do this forever, but I think it will be a good way to make sure my brain is taking in everything it needs, in order to get the big decisions right.