The DTD £1000 deep stack event, my final live tournement of the year and my last chance of putting this years nightmare of zero cashes in live play behind me. 20,000 starting chips with 2 hour blinds, the game was set up for good poker. This was my first visit to the DTD poker roon in Nottingham and i wasnt to be disapointed, a wonderful poker room with great dealers and staff, Rob as certainly got an eye for the detail. So to the poker and even though i say it myself i played bloody good!!!! The great thing about the structure was that i could play pretty loose early doors and if things went pair shaped id still have plenty of chips and plenty of time to recover............and thus i played loose and agressive for the first few hours then spent the next few hours grinding it back. The real turning point for me was picking up back to back trip 3's and getting paid both times, this also gave me the chips to step up a gear and start playing the table bully. All was going well, i'd been moved table and was lucky to find a table containing three big stacks owned by three weak calling stations!!!!!!! Problem was though i couldnt hit and they couldnt miss and when that happens against players who cant fold- well its painful!!! I'd managed to get the 20k stack upto 70k , but a few hours missing against the hitting stations reduced me to 40k, the 30k drop also included a 30k pot were i got it all in with AA against AK, the floped flush putting any ideas of the chip lead to bed!

Late on i played one of the two most important hands of my tournement. UTG min raised to 800 one other player calls. I have JJ on the button. UTG is by far the biggest station on the table and also by far the biggest stack, the fella just couldnt pass and certainly couldnt miss!!! So on the button with JJ i want to play UTG HU and i want to make it exspensive, so i make it $5000 to go. UTG instant calls (standard, he CANT fold pre flop)!! The other player folds. Flop A J 2, bingo!!!! Im going to double up !!!!!!!!! But then something very strange happened, my calling station friend starts giving it a bit of hollywood and shakes his head at the flop? He checks to me and i bet out another $5000 which he calls instantly?!! Now you have to remember this fella called any raise pre flop and then called any bet on any street if he had a piece of the board, but hed never shown any emotion until this hand, and it spooked me! When he calls on the flop i really havnt got a clue what hes got but im not happy. On the tuen a rag falls and he checks to me and i check behind him. The river is another rag. He now bets $10,000 into me! FFS ive got second nuts against table fish and i donr know what to do!!!!!!!! After a good 5 minutes i decide to call and was amazed and pleased to see him turn over AA ! If hes played his hand like hed played every other hand he gets all my money, thankfully his acting skills wernt up there with his hitting skills and i some how stay alive. I finished day one were i started with 20,000 but i couldnt help but think how luck i was to still be in it, id got some kind of read , trusted it and survived.

Day two due to the wonderful structure and i still have 40BB, so still plenty of play and plenty of time. Three times i got my stack upto $60k and three times i lost a big hand and droped back to the $20-$30k mark, but each time i droped down i reminded myself that there was plenty of play, no need to flap! After a few hours of nursing the short stack i finally got my reward with a treble through when my AQ found two callers and a board of AAKxQ putting me back up to $50k. Again i tried to up my game but each time i raised i was re raised, even after playing a few hours super solid i was either getting no respect, running into real hands or possibly both. My final hand was soon to follow, after 20 hours of probably my best poker of the year. In mid position i find Kd10d, i make its $3300 to go (blinds 600/1200 with a 200 anti). All fold to the big blind who makes it 10,500. After thinking about the situation i push all in for another 32k. The reason for my push was based on two things. Firstly i was sure my table image was solid, id sat all day taking my time, and since trebling through though id got more aggressive i was still laying down to re raises thus a re re raise from me must look super strong. The second reason for my all in was that i felt my opponent was raising to pass, his bet was enough to make a weak hand pass but also small enough for him to pass to any aggression. After a good 5 minutes i get called by the monster A8 !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say i didnt hit and i leave the table in 30th position. After a few drinks and telling everyone and there dog about the poor call i head off to the toilet were i bump into the player who knocked me out. We get chatting about the hand and being as i am i tell him my honest thoughts about the hand, he then told me his! He agreed with my version of the hand but there was one thing id missed and he hadnt, hed got a read on me!!!!! When hed raised me apparantly id give a slight bottom lip curle! (on reflection i actually remember the twitch). He read this as weakness and figured i didnt have an ace and if i had a pair it couldnt have been a big pair, so at worst thought he was 50/50, he also had enough chips if he was wrong. Well after the chat i changed my mind, i didnt get a call from a donk i got a call from a player who had the balls to go with his read, it was a good read and a great call. It also brought home to me just how focused you have to be to win at this game! Id played for 20 hours and id played good, but one twitch was all it need to be knocked out!!!!! Still it was a wonderful tournement and from my point of view it was also a big confidence booster as it confirmed to me that my game as returned, i also came away learning something- everyones looking for reads not just me!