Helsinki, Final Table

After another of poker’s emotional day’s, I have just finished in third place in the Helsinki Freezeout, for 58.5k Euros.

To a small degree, I’ve experienced the poker paradox that even a third place finish can bring mixed emotions. However, I’m sure I’ll feel really happy soon, and in a tournament, this is very much helped by the fact that the final two hands were no-decisions for me.

The poker gods have handed me a really lucky run here in freezing cold and pitch black Helsinki, and this is made all the sweeter as it comes at the start of the year.

I feel that I played OK, but not too great here, and so feel really thankful for the lucky run, where twice a double up quickly nullified a possible mistake. It makes me feel really determined to use this as a platform to keep on working on the ‘live’ game, and I am really excited to see what I can do this year.

If you look at it in isolation, I actually had a bit of a cruel end. Ten minutes before the final blow, I had 1.3 million of the 3 million in play, and had the 770k short stack all-in before the flop with AQ off, against his A9 off. Thoughts of taking a 2:1 lead into the heads up were quickly ended by a nine on the flop, the first time luck had really turned against me over the three days’ play.

Two hands later, I was seeing a route back in, as I was all-in for a 800k pot with AsJs against two black tens, and had binked an ace on the flop. However, poker’s “get there-stay there” lacked it’s crucial second half, as a turned ten sent me out of the tournament.

Obviously, it would be incredibly ignorant to think of these hands as bad luck. When you get to the last three of a tournament, it is simply a case of whether fate will make it an incredibly lucky run, or leave it as the really lucky run that this has emerged to be.

Previous to that point, I had faded KQ vs KJ on K55, survived QQ vs K9 all-in pre flop for my life, survived AA vs 99 at the start of the final table for my life, faded KK vs A6 all-in on a 864 flop, and binked Qc5c all-in pre flop vs A9, for most of my chips.

Though I love it, poker has always seemed a silly game of luck, and the amounts of money ridiclous. This feeling was made even starker when we heard about what has happened this week in Haiti, and so I’m going to ship 15k of this money to the earthquake fund.

Poker’s feeling great at the moment, and it’s especially nice to see an exciting new place like Helsinki.

Talking of exciting places, the next stop is Bolton. Bring it on.