Travel Skill, EPT London, Cashgame win.

Woensdag, Oktober 07, 2009 16:36

Getting good at travelling

No jetlag. Does that sound like a lie? Does it sound impossible? Am I that running good? Or did I just figure out how? I think it might be the last one. I didn't sleep before my plane left Vegas at 6 am. I slept 3 out of 4 hours from the flight to Washington. Ate light at the airport, had a good connection, and was on my way to Amsterdam 2 hours later. In the last leg of the trip, I watched Hangover, while half falling asleep constantly. I was half-awake when eating my steak, denying the cheesecake as dessert. Went flat, took a sleeping pill, earplugs in. I fell asleep to be woken up by the pilot, saying "Cabin Crew, prepare for landing". Best message ever. We landed in Holland 7 am local time. To my body this must have made perfect sense. I left tired when it was dark, hadn't seen daylight till I got out of the plane, and I slept a lot. After I got my bags, took a cab home and I felt really rested.

As soon as I got home I went to get some food for the next couple of days and some new released movies. Eating a lot definitely helped me getting through the day without crashing. I played some Rock Band and Guitar Hero to not doze off. At night I had dinner with some of my best friends and we had a blast. After some chilling at my place I went to bed around midnight, taking some melatonin half an hour before. This pattern repeated itself the next 3 days and I felt great every day. Maybe felt jetlag for an hour total. Eating shitloads of healthy food and strictly keeping to normal schedule helped enormously. I took care of some chores and business and that must have added to piece of mind.

Random Rockband video I made, for those interested Smile

London

EPT London has never been one of my favorite EPT's. I think it has to do with the fact I have bad results in both tournaments and cashgames, but also I never liked the food, the traffic and the weather. This time around though, Jaco and Maarten, two friends of mine, were coming with. Maarten lived here for half a year and he was determined to change my mind about London. Jaco, Maarten, Fatima and me left for London, on the 50 minute plane ride. It might have been having friends with me, or maybe I was a bit more unbiased this time, but I'm loving it so far. The first day we immediately went into the city center, to find some food and walk around. First we had to checkin though. The tournament was held at the Hilton Metropole, one of the more quality hotels in the city. I'm very happy with this decision, because the London casino's are small and cramped up. The hotel offered us the possibility to upgrade to a deluxe twin room, getting 2 queen sized beds in stead of 2 regulars. We got to the room, but I couldn't see myself spending 10 days there, so I spewed a bit and asked for the biggest room they had open.

This room is very nice (definitely for Eurohotels standards). It has a kitchen, bedroom and a living room, consisting of a dining table, a couch with saloon table, and a desk with a comfy deskchair. It definitely helped me to relax and enjoy London a bit more. Everyone is haning out in my room, playing online or just chilling. In the city we walked around a bit I liked the atmosphere. After we went to the Pokerstars party, catching up with some friends and meeting some new ones. The next day I went shopping and bought some shoes shirts and a new jacket.

EPT

I played day 1B and had an ok table. A couple of spots to my left were Huck Seed, Theo Tran and Thayer Rasmussen. I got off to a good start winning a pretty big hand vs Huck. The weirdest hand of the day definitely was in the 200-400 50a level, where a guy to my right, who I had constantly been 3-betting, made it 1100. I 3-bet to 3100 with KTo. Everyone folded and he 4-bet to 8000. We both had 28k behind. I didn't feel like shoving or folding. I was expecting him to make a stand after all this time, and I wanted to play a flop, even though we weren't deep at all. The flop was perfect {10-Spades} {9-Spades} {3-Hearts} . He bets out 12k, I shove, he tanks ??!? and calls with {10-Clubs} {7-Spades} . My read was right preflop and I was pretty happy it worked out like that. I finished the day with close to 90k.

Not much to say about day 2. I played bad and in the hands where I had good holdings I missed, but I definitely fucked up myself. A good lesson to learn. I felt very uneasy and restless and it showed on the table. Made stupid continuation bets and bad calls out of position. I busted in the 3rd level or so and felt pretty demotivated. Jaco and I hung out a bit and played some online with Jornxx and Busto_soon.

I found the perfect anti-tilt remedy though:

Rest

Tomorrow I'm playing Nam Le in the 10k heads up tournament here in London. Im pretty confident about my heads up game so I can't wait to play. No matter what happens in the tournament, I'm staying in London till I have to leave for Austria. I'm playing the Nations Cup there for Holland. If I have some days off, I'll play online. I have been playing and running a bit better and booked some wins. I discussed my upcoming travels the upcoming months with Pokerstars and I don't know if I will make it to supernova elite with all the travelling. I would like to, but it hasn't been a priority since I didn't do any bets on it. We'll see though, might change. For now, lot of live stuff happening. Hope to write about headsup win next time Laugh .