Phase 1 Donkey Challenge - Complete

It only took me 22 games but I eventually got a 7/10 ITM streak to complete phase 1 and go up from $5 to $10 games. I actually started my 23rd game and came in 7th in it, but it is still 7/10 so I am still good to go. I will post my stats for all 23 games because that's just fair:



I think the ITM and ROI are pretty decent. I effectively doubled my moeny (if you don't subtract the $6+.50 that I put into the Token Frenzy tournament. Let's see how I did as far as finishes:

1st - 4/23 - 17.4%
2nd - 3/23 - 13%
3rd - 5/23 - 21.7%
4th - 1/23 - 4.3%
5th - 2/23 - 8.7%
6th - 1/23 - 4.3%
7th - 1/23 - 4.3%
8th - 0/23 - 0%
9th - 6/23 - 26.1%

As you can see I placed 9th more times than any other place. Is that sick or what?

Ok, so here is the obligatory screenshot dump. Let's see what we have here.

I hit quads twice, once with presto:




In this hand I made the mistake of limping on the button with JTo and giving the BB the chance to bust me. He slow played his flopped set and check-called my first bullet. He then slow played his boat on the turn and check-called my second bullet. He then checked his rivered quads to me and I was already readying my third bullet when I realized that I may be in a lot of trouble. Too many hands will call my bluff and so I just checked and saw the horror. Poor play by me, but I lived to go on and money in this game:



One game I played had an unbelievable amount of push monkeys and we were actually in the money in 21 hands. I shit you not. I made a big laydown (for me at least) when holding Jacks from CO+1 after two limpers called the BB. I made a 4xBB raise and got re-raised by UTG all-in AND then an all-in call from the player to my right. I sat there in shock and was certain that at least one of these donkeys was ahead of me. It had to be. I decided to make my huge laydown and to my amazement the original UTG push monkey has QTo and the idiot caller has K7s. All-in boy UTG makes top two pair on the flop, but crazy caller makes a runner runner set of 7s. I would have lost to both these idiots. So good laydown I guess. Thank you push monkeys for that valuable lesson:



I managed to dodge some bullets (while ahead) when I shoved my short stack and flopped the nut spade flush. To my astonishment my opponent who called with JTo made top two on the same flop but did not make a boat (like I am used to):



Here, once again, I managed to dodge the club flush (which is usually the 100% calling draw at Flush Tilt) to bust another player:



And once again I managed to slow play Aces and got my opponent who was big stack at the time to push all-in with only top pair on the flop:



I have about an hour to sleep before I have to wake up and head out to the airport. This is going to be a long travel day and at least I got upgraded on my Paris to ATL leg of this trip.

One more interesting note. TV here is quite pathetic. Like most of non-English speaking Europe they dub almost everything (including the Comedy Channel). I watched CNBC Europe for a bit and then to my surprise they ran the Tongight Show and then Conan. After Brian William's Nightly News the real surprise arrived.

Turns out they carry Poker TV and show all kinds of tournaments. The first night it was some British Poker Open Full Tilt Shootout. It was a 6 handed SNG with Mike Matusow, Kristy Gazes and Clonie Gowen playing against 3 online qualifiers. The two ladies were gone first with some seriously horrific play. It was quite boring and I fell asleep after seeing Matusow bluff like a mad man.

The next night was even weaker. They showed a few online tournaments from PokerHeaven.com with some live commentary. Apparently they are running some "around the world" freeroll. The players are awful and the poor commentators didn't know what to say in some cases. The recurring comment was "....and, oh no, he hit his card on the river!". If anyone reading this is outside the US I would implore you to head right over to PokerHeaven and take advantage of these soft freerolls. You owe it to yourself. And then send me a postcard from every city you go to on your trip around the world.