Short Sessions

Ahh, it feels like all I really ever have time for during the week is short sessions. After class today I decided to log onto pokerfantasy and play some 15/30 before I had to go meet a friend of mine to do some homework. The table was 5 handed and I got off to a nightmare start. I was playing my normal loose aggressive style and was hitting strong hands, but the problem was that I was almost always heads up and my opponent outdrew me 5 out of my first 6 pots. So 15 minutes into my session I am down $1,000 and getting a little unerved. Everything is going wrong, another very strong player is at the table with me, my image is bad, I'm now not hitting and getting called down.... it sucks. I sit there and think about my two options; One, I can get up from the table put my laptop down and take the 1k loss. Or two, I can put my head down, take this as a challenge to bear down and play my best poker through the adversity and get my money back. If you know me well at all you can probably guess that I'm not the type of guy who would choose #1 because as Achillies said in the epic movie Troy "that is why no one will remember your name". So I put my head down and I ground it out one pot at a time. Eventually a couple guys left and I busted one other so I found myself heads-up with the good player I mentioned before. I usually don't like to play heads-up against other solid players because there just isn't enough of an advantage after the rake is taken. But I had been playing this particular player heads-up several times over the last few weeks and was enjoying the challenge, even though he was slightly ahead in our matches. When we started playing he shifted gears way down and I had to adjust accordingly, playing super aggresive from my button and very tight from the BB. I think at one point in time we went 10 hands in a row without seeing a flop. Eventually I started to catch some cards and play them for optimum value and fought all the way back to even for the session. I ended the session after about 90 minutes at +$4.50 and it felt like a huge win after the start to the day.

Only 3 days till I take off for Vienna, Austria for the EWSOP, which I heard is also called the Austrian Poker Championships. PartyPoker is sending a large number of entries so hopefully there will be over 500 players. I really didn't like the small field at the CPC simply for the fact that there wasn't ever much side action, and when there was it was usually NL cash games (not my strong suit). So, hopefully I will be able to grind out a few more thousand before friday and leave for Austria on a good note.