I played in my second real life poker tourney last night. It was with a group of friends, as was the last one. I lasted longer this time, but oddly enough, was out of the tournament in the same order as last time. Well, I suppose you could say I did better -- I was the third eliminated out of maybe 15 people, and last night I was the third eliminated out of 7. So if you count from first place, I did better.

Didn't really get any cards. The first hand I got worth playing was AK offsuit, which I was able to make pay when an Ace hit the flop. I don't know why the guy kept betting at me though. If this had been online, I would have folded, but the guy I was playing against had been somewhat loose, and I figured he had second pair and was trying to buy the pot. After taking roughly a third of his money (he was throwing the $100 chips at me), he seemed to give me a little more respect when I entered a pot.

The only other real hand I got was a pair of Queens that I had to fold when an Ace hit the flop and one of the tighter played started betting at me.

No other real hands happened. I bluffed the table off of a pot, and really enjoyed showing my cards, but that was really it. I had to make a move, and I did, and I got killed.

I need to learn how to change gears to a looser style -- the table was very loose, and I was just watching all of this money fly back and forth because I was unsure how to play it -- all of this online play has caused me to adapt a very tight aggressive style that works well online (it's all about patience and hand selection) but just didn't fly very well at this game.

In general, I've been pleased at my progress in learning how to play poker. Now if I could just stop my hands shaking. I actually couldn't count out my stack when I made my move (I had about a 50% shot at winning, and it was as good a shot as any) because my hands were shaking.

It was fun, and I hope we do it again soon.

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