Poker Target Hit : Breakthrough at the Local Race Day

I'd been struggling with my poker the last couple of months. Like everyone advises, I've been recording all of my results in a spreadsheet to track my progress and until late November last year it was a pretty steady incline. However, I hit a wall sometime in December and went on a horrible run. Out of 14 tournaments I only cashed once so my chart plateaued and then started to dip. Coming into the new year I was feeling pretty unmotivated for poker...

For a while now I've focused mostly on what I call "Entry Level" live poker tournaments, but I do occasionally step up and play the bigger buy in tournaments without much success to date. One of my local tournament directors had put together a couple of more expensive Race Day games in the past and even though I do love the races I'd missed those days. I had been looking forward and talking this one up for months but when the day got closer I just wasn't feeling it....

Even though I was flat, it'd been almost a year and a half since the last Race Day Poker Tournament and my wife also loves the races so she wanted to play too. We wanted to support the event and not miss out again so in the end she pushed me to get the tickets and have a go. However, going into the day I didn't have high hopes. I just wanted to have a fun day out...

We dressed up classy like a normal race day and she won the Best Dressed Female award, which was kind of cool, but it was the poker that clicked for me. I was grinding early and got to a point of being 5x my starting stack when there was still all tables operating so I was feeling good. I took some setbacks and got moved to a different table which made things harder. As we got closer to the Final Table I was fairly card dead and bleeding out badly. I was going to be the Big Blind next hand with half my remaining stack committed when the tournament director called a knockout on the other table...I'd scraped onto Final Table and not a hand too soon.

Two hands later I was in the Big Blind on Final Table with a 6 and 3 of hearts and 2 other players moved their chips in. These were rubbish cards but I had to Call and take my chances. I was up against QQ and KQ but a 6 hit and then a 3. The crowd erupted, my stack was more than tripled up and I was back in the game with almost 7 Bigs!

From there I ducked and weaved my way into the final 3 and we agreed to chop up the remaining prize money. However, I'd managed to get myself into the chip lead so the trophy was mine. There was a dozen or so players who stayed to cheer the final outcome and it felt like they were cheering me on too. It was definitely a breakthrough win for me and I was buzzing.

Not only was it the biggest win I've had to date, but my performance chart has returned to the previous trendline and I hit the profit target I'd set for myself when I started playing. Unfortunately The Road to Vegas still has to wait a bit longer and while I've learned a lot, I know I've still got a LOT of work to do before making that trip. For now I'll have to put some thought into what my next goals are going to be...