News / John Tabatabai / 10 November 2008 / 3 Comments

It seems that the blogging utility software is back up and running so I have no more excuses for being so lax with my updates.

I got quite a bit to tell, to those whom are actually interested. Firstly, I'm currently in Portugal for the Betfair Portugal Poker Tour which as most of you should know is the Portuguese League sponsored by Betfair Poker. It runs every couple of months, 500 buyin, 15k starting stack, 90min clock, very good structure. Great tourney and lots of value as a lot of the players are new because poker is still a young game in Portugal.

This leg has been hosted in Espinho, north of Portugal, approximately 30mins from Porto. What a beautiful place it is and they have some pretty cool local food dishes. The first day I tried a local specialty called Francesinha; I believe that is how it's spelt. The dish is basically a carnivores dream sandwich with a twist. It is a toasty of sorts, with multiple layers of steak, sliced ham and chorizo covered with melted cheese. This toasty-like dish is placed in middle of the bowl surrounded like a moat by some type of tomato sauce with chips (fries) in the moat. On top of the sandwich in some places they put a shrimp!

Random hey! Very filling at least.

The tournament itself for me wasn't as much fun as the last one in Estoril, I got no cards throughout the first day and hardly any moves went through. On the plus side I had a very fun table with some crazy Portuguese players who loved to bluff me and show what turned out most of the time to be very, very thin value bets; nonetheless everyone seemed to have fun.

I finished the day with a dwindled stack of approximately 8k. The next day the blinds started at 150-300 with antes of 25, plenty of time for my stack. I waited for a couple of hours until the blinds rose to 200-400 with 50 ante. The table was 7 handed as a couple of players just bust and given it was quite a weak table I opened utg with A-10cc for 2200. There were a couple of players in LP who were seemingly inexperienced and were willing to make huge calls preflop regardless of their stack sizes with any 2 suited. So I thought id rase 1/3 of my stack so they can't bluff me and just give me the 950 in middle. Anyway, one of the stations described above called my raise. The flop came QQJ with one club, over 5k in middle and I had 5k left. Apart from hitting I can't really ask for a better flop so I just shoved my last 5k expecting the majority of his preflop calling range to have missed this flop and correctly fold (so perhaps I shouldn't shove, if he is correctly folding?? Anyway, discussion for another time) and he snap called me with 33. Unfortunately I didn't have enough outs and I was busto. Finito.

Away from the tables, I was explaining to Annette why I had been playing a lot of 0.5-1nl lately which is because I had a bet to start with $1k and see how long it would take to get to $100k. Annette then said it would be very difficult to do it in 2 months, and I can't remember how it happened but I think it involved quite a lot of tequila and somehow I ended up making numerous bets with her and members of the Portuguese contingency that I can't turn $1k into $100k in 2 months on Betfair.

In hindsight, I don't think it's a smart bet on my behalf, it's going to be very difficult especially with the given time frame. The first and last week I imagine will be the hardest. I'm allowed to play anything I want, cash, stt, MTT, even Betfair Sports Betting or Casino but I won't do any of those. Keep it strictly poker. On the plus side, rakeback counts so you will be seeing a lot of me at various limits over the next couple of months so please, please feel free to donate!

Chris "Jesus" Ferguson did a similar challenge of $1 into $10k which he did in around 6 months. Hopefully I can join the ranks of accomplished challenges.

Good luck all and see you at the tables.

J

Kunku

Play John now at the Betfair cash tables