Stake It to Make It!!

I confess, I don't read many more blogs than my own. And when reading mine, it's proof reading. However I did just skim through the 'staking 102' blog found in the 'popular' section. This came to my attention as I have had a staking experience myself recently, how exciting! Well, it was, so here's how it came about and how it went.

I was sitting at my computer playing a microstakes tournament, it was going really well, my whole poker night was going really well and I was talking to someone on twitter. We have spoken before but on this particular night he asked if I would be willing for him to stake me into a tournament with the aim of him getting his buy-in back plus 50% of my winnings. I have never heard of this before and the idea of gambling with someone else's money made me think 'is this guy crazy? He's never seen me play, nor does he know me that well.' After a few moments of thought, I decided to go along with this and give it a go. We decided on the $13.50 KO that was already 30 minutes in.

There I went, divng in at level 3, the water's cold. I sat tight, I had such a fear of losing the money that wasn't mine to lose. My starting game plan was to keep tight aggressive and learn the games my opponents where playing against me I became very aggressive, especially against shorter stacks as I know from experience; if you watch carefully you will see the gaps that you can fill in.

The tournament goes on, I didn't knock anyone out but my stack got very healthy, but then I didn't loosen up in time. At an early stage an 8k stack looks awesome, but later on you feel like a melon because you can't really make a move when the blinds are big enough to swallow you whole. You can't be aggressive because everyone else wants a shot at eating you up. So you wait, I missed many opportunities and I could have passed it up, I was 21 off the bubble and went all in with AJo and did not hit.

I felt bad that I couldn't give back what I had used and I didn't know this staking business was...a business. It was enjoyable though, I don't think I played brilliantly and made some mistakes because I had the fear of not making the money back. I had never been in this position before so I really had no idea how it would turn out. It made me nervous to say the least.


Read more: Stake it to make it! (Toniommi) – Poker School Online: Learn Poker Strategy, Odds and Tells http://www.pokerschoolonline.com/blogs/Toniommi/stake-it-to-make-it#ixzz2uBtOuyxh