First I would like to say Congratulations to the winner of the art contest, Chris (ChrisA69 on pocketfives.) I will be sending him his prize money after I am done writing this blog. Thank you everyone who participated, I appreciate it. Chris sent me a few submissions and his stood out the most. Thanks again everyone.

I’d like to send another congratulations to one of my students, Nick, who just placed 10th in the Chicago Poker Classic. He started receiving my coaching about a week ago before he went to play in the poker tournament. It was pretty exciting sweating him. He would send me text message updates and call me on breaks. I was hoping he would take it down but 10th place is a great showing and a nice cash for him. He wanted to win as well but he admittedly still has a lot to learn. He could have avoided his bustout hand if we were able to go over some more fundamentals of late tournament strategy. Still an awesome finish and I’m happy for him.

Let’s see… I played the Isle $575 Heads up Tournament on Friday. I won my first match. My opponent was fairly tight and didn’t make many mistakes. He made a couple big folds where most people would have went broke and I eventually beat him AK vs TT when he had about 10bbs left.

My second opponent played every single hand of the match. It was frustrating because the first match we started with 70bbs and the second match we started with 50bbs. It was a really bad structure. I ended up getting in a pot where I raised with Q6s on the button, he defended and the flop came KcJc7s we both checked. The turn was Js and he checked. I bet 550, he made it 1100. I was fairly certain he had Jx here and I decided to call. The river was the 3s. He bet 2k into a 3100 pot and I had 8k behind. I had him covered barely. I decided the best play was to move all in and he called with J7dd. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t fold any Jx on the river, but it was a tricky spot regardless. His min raise is pretty strong on the turn and can be interpreted a couple different ways. I was pretty disappointed losing the second match, but the structure was really bad. Oh well. Next time.

On Saturday I played online poker and it didn’t go so well. I think I got deep in a couple tournaments but nothing panned out. Today was just absolutely horrible. I think I lost my first 20 flips. I’m not exaggerating either lol. I decided to follow up my best Sunday ever with my worst Sunday ever. I don’t want to cry too much but it was a pretty painful day haha. Luckily I kept smiling all day but the poker gods had it out for me. I cashed in only one tournament, the Second Chance, where I lost AJ vs AT and then 33 vs A2. Let me just leave it at that. There wasn’t much hope for me today. I don’t think I’ve ever ran worse in a day of grinding online poker than I did today. It will all even out though and hopefully next Sunday I run scorching hot!

I have a pretty busy schedule ahead of me. I am going to Orlando early this week to shoot some videos for DeepStacks and then I am playing a Charity Poker Tournament in Daytona. The tournament is Friday. I will most likely be coming back down to South Florida to play the Isle Main Event on Saturday. Towards the end of the month I will be going out to LA for a DeepStacks Live camp. Some of my friends were talking about heading to the Wynn so maybe that will substitute the Isle Main Event.

I had another article in the Ante Up magazine. In the March issue I talk about defining ranges. You can look at the article on page 49 here: Ante Up Magazine March Issue Page 49. There was also a nice article about my third place finish last Sunday in the Sunday 500 on Pocketfives. Tristan “Cre8ive” Wade final tables Sunday 500.

I guess that’s all for now. I will probably be grinding online Monday/Tuesday before I head to Orlando. Signing out…