And that’s all there was for 2008. I finished the year with a pretty decent Monday coming 2nd in the PP High Roller for 10.5k and 9th in the 109r for 3k. Whilst I complained/whinged consistently throughout the year I definately have to accept that overall it was a very good year for me.

Good news is I’ve still left myself plenty of room for improvement. Results wise I’m hoping 2009 will be the year I can crack a 4 figure live score (fingers crossed). Online this year I managed to show some much improved tilt control in MTT’s. In all other forms of poker my tilt control was non existant. In fact often I would use other games as a form of tilt control.

This year I went through several periods where I would play a new game, crush it for the first couple of days, proclaim myself as the best player of this game in the poker world and then have one bad session, go on tilt and be back to even or down for that game. I did this for 2/4nl 6max a numerous times, 5/10nl 6max, 2/4 and 3/6 nl hu, limit omaha hi/lo, nl hu sngs and 7card stud hi/lo hu sngs. It would be nice to actually get genuinely good at one of these games this year.

Also my game selection for those games could have been better. I repeatedly thought it would be fun to play tatta at hu omaha hi/lo sngs on stars even though he hasn’t lost a game there since about 2004. I also thought it would be fun to play Jen Harman at a $500 HORSE hu sng (I won woo!). Nevertheless my game selection is not the best. But seriously, who can be bothered to scan around and see what table all the fish are playing? I just wanna play poker.

I leave for Melbourne on the 9th where I’ll probably play a fair few lead up events. I’m looking foward to plonking my ass down, hookin up the ipod and grinding it out!

Kochan

Poker is really such a stupid game. I complained most of the year that I haven’t got to play as much as I wanted due to uni/work and other random commitments. There were many weeks where I just wanted to grind it out for 3/4 full days of poker but I wasn’t able too. This week I finally had absolutely nothing to do but sit on my ass and player poker and after the first day I really couldn’t be fucked. I played Sunday/Monday (though limited b/c my internet died on every site except stars)/Tues/Wed/Mon. None of them were full days though because mostly it was just too painful. A couple of the days I broke even and the rest I was down.

Today I went deep in 2 out of the 30 or so tourney’s I played. Luckily I put up a score big enough to cover my day coming 5th in the Titan 250k for 12.5k, my first decent score in the week.

I had one interesting hand today from the 150r on tilt which is a super deep structure.
<SPAN lang=EN-AU>Seat 1: NoBadBeatsPlz (6,250)</SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-AU>
Seat 2: BegsClutch (7,485)

Seat 3: GhettoFabolous (10,810)

Seat 4: Kochan (11,660)

Seat 5: TheFatFISH (9,620)

Seat 6: phat_cat1 (13,615)

Seat 7: ScoopAndStack (15,550)

Seat 8: youlovedon (9,275)

Seat 9: Scary_Tiger (11,095)

BegsClutch posts the small blind of 60

GhettoFabolous posts the big blind of 120

The button is in seat #1

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to Kochan [Kd Kh]

Kochan raises to 360

TheFatFISH folds

phat_cat1 folds

ScoopAndStack folds

youlovedon folds

Scary_Tiger folds

NoBadBeatsPlz folds

BegsClutch folds

GhettoFabolous raises to 1,140

Kochan has 15 seconds left to act

Kochan calls 780

*** FLOP *** [9s Jh 6d]

GhettoFabolous has 15 seconds left to act

GhettoFabolous bets 1,875

Kochan has 15 seconds left to act

Kochan has requested TIME

Kochan raises to 10,520, and is all in

GhettoFabolous has 15 seconds left to act

GhettoFabolous calls 7,795, and is all in

Kochan shows [Kd Kh]

GhettoFabolous shows [Ah Ad]

Uncalled bet of 850 returned to Kochan

*** TURN *** [9s Jh 6d] [4d]

*** RIVER *** [9s Jh 6d 4d] [3c]

Kochan shows a pair of Kings

GhettoFabolous shows a pair of Aces

GhettoFabolous wins the pot (21,680) with a pair of Aces

I know you’re never sposed to fold here but it just sucks. Its almost a situation where you can almost narrow his hand down to AA. I know ghettofabulous is a very good player and at 90bbs deep vs an utg raiser with a similar stack I do wonder what his range is for 3betting here. If it was me in his position I would be flatting AK most likely…3betting AA/KK and possibly QQ but not always. Maybe I’m just a super nit but I do wonder if there is any merit in folding here?

Anyways I’m off on a 5 day holiday but will be back next Monday to end the year with a 6 figure score!

Kochan

http://kochanpoker.wordpress.com/
</SPAN>

Today I made my return to the virtual felt today after a 2 week absense from MTT’s. It was a very mixed Monday. Overall I have to say I ran pretty well but just didn’t get there when it mattered. Went very deep in the Sunday Million and was pretty sure I was gonna push through to the final table but got 3bet 4 hands in a row and then busted A9<JJ in 37th place.

I went deep in almost all the majors losing a huge flip AK<99 in the 530 close to the money, cashing the 750k on Tilt and coming 8th in the UB 200k. I also went really deep in both stars 55’s but fell short of the final table in both. It was frustrating that I didn’t put up a good score but at same time it was exciting going very deep in some big tournaments at the same time.

I don’t usually track how much I’m up or down for a Monday, I just assume that I’ll have good days and bad but overall I’ll be up. But today I took a rough estimate and I cashed for around 9k and was in for around 7k. Thats probably slightly more than usual because of the 1k ECOOP Main Event.

On a side note, I have to give a big congratulations to my mate pokerguru999 who pulled his first major online victory shipping the tilt 65k for 28k! It’s been a long time coming for the self proclaimed best poker player in the world and hopefully he won’t have to dig around the floors of the TAB for discarded winning tickets for at least the next 6months!

Will be playing next on Thursday and hopefully I can continue my decent run.

Kochan
http://kochanpoker.wordpress.com/