Nice

I managed to win a $5 SNG yesterday! It went quite nicely, by the time there were three players left I already had 9000 chips (out of a total of 12000). I also reached third place in another SNG. Let's see if I can keep this up. I did not go over the tournaments yet, I will post it later if I find some interesting hands.

There were definitely some dubious plays. In one of the SNGs, I got JJ pretty early on in late position. An early player raised from 20 to 100 and got called by a second player. I went all-in... I can't really explain this move, I was just scared of an ace appearing on the flop I guess. I suppose that I should have just made a reraise to 300 or something. Anyway, I got a huge scare when the BB called my bet! However, (as a result I guess) the two original bidders decided to fold, and BB had AK I believe; I won the race.

It is clear that the level of competition is higher here. (Although you might not be able to tell from this example.) Still, I am already making a profit on average, so let's see how it goes from here. The increased competition also makes the game more interesting of course.

What I find most remarkable about the Harrington books is how much easier they make the game. Of course poker remains highly complex, but there are so many concepts and ideas that he discusses, that I have a far better idea of how to think about a poker hand than only two weeks ago. As just one example: he explains that if you do proper hand selection, you have far less to think about after the flop, because you often have either at least top pair, strong kicker or nothing. This seems so obvious to me now, but I never realized that I was making life so difficult for myself by giving myself so many hard decisions (not that I was playing all that loose, but still). I only realized that it was probably costing me some money to play too many hands.

PS. About "interesting hands": I did once fold AJ in third position (from 9) at level 25/50, stack 1275. Pretty strange. And yes, I would have won that hand. Shortly afterwards, I flopped two pair against one opponent and bet the pot. Smooth... At level 50/100, I flopped a set with 77 and bet 200 into a pot of 300. Very smooth! It is good that the opponents were so cooperative, especially the one with KQ who went allin for 3000 on a board showing AAKKx. I had AQ :-)