My First Ever Poker Win

Last week was a monumental week for me on the poker front, as it saw me win my first ever online poker tournament. Over the past 2 months I have been dabbling with a bit of online poker at 888poker.com, only playing small stakes so that I can get a feel for the game without doing my bollocks.

I had a go at playing some cash games, sit-and-go tournaments and some larger tournaments with upwards of 80 contestants. I read a couple of strategy books and canvassed the opinion of some friends and associates who have been playing for a number of years. It has been a fascinating learning experience for me and has given me real insight into trying a new form of gambling for the first time.

I spend most days of my working life trying to get new punters for Star Spreads, a high percentage of whom have never heard of or tried Spread Betting before. I must be honest, it is a barrier to entry and on occasion I am sure I have not been as patient as I should have been when explaining the product to first-timers.

I dipped my toe in with the cash games and chose to play a tight/aggressive style, which saw me fold a huge number of marginal hands but play good hands very aggressively in the hope that I could entice callers, make a good flop and ultimately take down a sizeable pot.

I had some ups and downs with this but ultimately got a bit bored with this style of play. I found the larger tournaments to be a lot of fun because I could play a huge amount of poker on the back of one reasonably cheap buy-in and actually managed to make it in to the prize pools on a couple of occasions, simply because some of the punters were either impatient, crazily aggressive or got swallowed up by the blinds as they rose higher and higher.

I have settled upon my favourite style of play though and that is the 9 handed sit-and-go tournaments, in which the blinds tick up every 8-10 minutes. The key reason why I enjoy this form of the game is that there are different stages, each of which requires a different approach. Whilst it may be advisable to start cautiously and be prepared to fold away strong hands if opponents are betting strongly into you, you can’t keep this up for the whole tournament because the blinds will eat you alive. Yes it is the case that K10 suited is a marginal hand early doors but it is a hand to go all-in with late in the game when short-stacked and only a couple of hands away from extinction.

Constant attention to detail is required and I like that you are kept on your toes, having to factor in the blind levels, number of players left in, their style of play, stack sizes and table position. Having gotten very used to finishing 4th (otherwise known as the bubble), which is only one position away from the prize pool, I finally managed to win my first tournament and promptly text the lads in the office by way of jubilation.

The fact that I won $11 rather than hundreds of thousands does slightly detract from the glamour but I only paid $2.90 to enter the tournament and that is still almost a 400% return on investment for less than 2 hours work – not bad!!