Worlds Apart - Part Two

Monday 29th March 2004 - www.planetpoker.com

No Limit Hold Em - £20 Freezeout PJK Tournament

After my very poor performance at Salford this evening, the last thing I wanted to do was play another tournament. Sometimes though, you have to simply take punches on the chin, pick yourself up off the floor and dive back into the fray.

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The internet can be very peculiar in many ways. I find it amazing how I can form friendships with people whom may live thousands of miles away if a different country, and have never met. But what is more amazing is that I have any friends at all. A close friend once summarized my personality as, “Incredibly difficult to get to know”. This comment was made after seven years of friendship, which I am glad to say is still strong today.

Two people whom I do regard as friends are Felicia and her husband Glenn. Felicia has just recently become a public relations and customer care manager for a well know casino in Laughlin, Nevada; whilst the entrepreneurial Glenn has established his own business producing boots, crutches and wheelchairs for dogs. I wish them both well in these dubious occupations.

I first became acquainted with Felicia and Glenn through a poker discussion forum, which I joined back in January 2003, and we have been in contact ever since. Felicia claims that I helped teach her how to play no limit hold em, although I’m not sure what she learned from me which she didn’t acquire from other sources.

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The PJK weekly tournaments are the result of many hours of hard work by Felicia, who organised this event for a peculiar breed of poker player, who are collectively called “bloggers”. These are poker players who keep a journal, in one format or another, of their experiences whilst playing either online or live. Felicia herself keeps a journal of her poker adventures, which prove to be a very interesting read (www.felicialee.net). These private tournaments are graciously hosted by www.planetpoker.com. To generate added interest, several professional players have been approached to act as special guests, one playing each week. This particular week, the guest player was Ray Cooke, professional poker player, cardroom manager for PlanetPoker, and author of many published poker articles.

I had earlier advised interest to play in this tournament, although, if my fortunes had been different, I would have still been playing at Salford. Typically, I was home for midnight with nothing much to do, so I was kindly asked if I still wanted to participate. I jumped at the chance.

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Unusually, I were more nervous about this tournament than the live game at Salford just a few hours before, for several reasons. I have played against professional players before in online tournaments, including two WSOP champions, but even so, it still gets the adrenaline flowing. I was also feeling a little out of place, as I am not a “blogger” in the strictest of terms. To many of the other players I was an unknown entity, and wanted to create a good impression. Normally, this is not very important to me whilst playing online, but generally I’m not pitted against twenty prolific writers. Additionally, I wanted to prove that I was still capable of winning tournaments, in defiance of the poor results which I have had to endure throughout the whole of March .

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The tournament was due to start at 9pm EST which is a 2am start over here in the UK. Whilst I don’t normally play poker at such early hours in the morning, I will make exceptions every now and again, if there is something special going on. I logged on and was seated at my table. Aside from myself there was another Brit already seated called McKormick. We sat and chatted and waited for the tournament to start……… and waited……..and waited. No-one else had bothered to log on. Then we slowly realised that we had just switched to summer time and the states don’t move their clocks forward for another week! So in actual fact, the tournament started even later than I originally anticipated. Time for some strong coffee and a good book……..

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When the tournament finally started, I found myself seated to the left of Roy Cooke. Out of all the seats, this was probably the best place, as you can see what actions the strong player is going to take first, before acting accordingly. As for individual hands played, I can never recall with online play as the action is always too fast for me to remember. But suffice to say that for once, I played to the best of my abilities, resulting in a second place finish and $99.75 credited to my account. Now that is music to my ears………..

PJK Tournament Results 28/3/04
1 gpoker $199.50
2 EOS $99.75
3 Mean_Gene $59.85
4 tpfelt $39.89
5 Paulburbon $0.00
6 Antifuse $0.00
7 MaudieB $0.00
8 Lucas67 $0.00
9 Mckormick $0.00
10 RoyCooke $0.00
11 thechainsa $0.00
12 RicksCafe $0.00
13 PaulyMcG $0.00
14 hdouble $0.00
15 oysifly $0.00
16 Iceyburnz $0.00
17 nevins $0.00
18 stinkypant $0.00
19 DontPokeMe $0.00
20 AlCantHang $0.00
21 DOMIT $0.00