westside195025-year-old student from Croatia and a semi-pro poker player
Hi guys, this is your newest blogger westside1950 writing.
I'm flattered by the interest you've shown for my first post, so I'm really looking forward to writing this new blog of mine. I play 3.5€ and 7€ heads-up SNGs on Pokerstars and my nickname there is dknight217.
A chip and a chair
I made a fair profit over the last few days, and I ran pretty well. I won pretty much all all-in situations where I was the favourite, so playing was really enjoyable. (unlike those days when you can't win even when you're a 95% favourite)
But some wins were gifted to me from my tilty opponents 
Did you hear the story of Jack ''Treetop'' Strauss? Besides he was almost 2 meters high (Yea, that's why he is a treetop 
), he was a famous poker player.
He played the WSOP main event back in 1982. Soon he went all-in and lost all of his chips in one pot. He wished good luck to everyone on the table and getting up he discovered he had one chip left under a napkin on the table. One lousy 25$ chip.
He won the next hand, after that he didn't just push all-in on every hand, but instead he waited for the best spots and a dozen all-ins later he became the WSOP main event champion!
This was one of the first poker stories I heard and I thought: '' What a lucky bastard!''
He was indeed lucky, but he also refused to surrender - he played the best he could although he was very shortstacked and in the end lady luck smiled upon him. But you can't say he didn't deserve it!
So yesterday I played a heads-up match against some decent russian guy. He played some good poker and after 10 minutes of play I was down to around 100 chips. ( Everyone starts with 1500)
At that point there is nothing you can do then just push all-in, so I won 2 coinflips in a row, then I cracked his KK with AJ and I was back to around 700 chips.
And then the rage-festival stared! ''OMG, lucky donk!'', ''fu*** jokerstars'', ''You are so bad, but you have luck!'' - he wrote all of that in about 10-15 seconds
Few hands later he min-raised and I called with QJ.
Flop came 3 9 10 - no flush draw, he bet a half of pot and I called. Turn was the 8 - I made my straight.
He bet half of pot againt, I thought for a second and just called fearing that he might fold to a raise.
River was a K changing nothing and I waited for a while and then threw pot-sized bet into him.
He insta-called me with a A3 (5th pair?!)
Now we were even stacked and he was sooo tilted that he just pushed allin every hand and a few hands later he ran into my JJ and it was all over.
So, I got lucky to get from 100 to 700 chips - but so what? Next time it will happen to my opponent (saw that a hundred times) and I just can't allow myself to make some bad calls and go tilt just because of that.
Even when I was at 700 chips, he was a big chipleader and a favourite to win.
So next time when you play against someone and he just refuses to die, don't let it get into your head. Keep calm and keep on playin'.
And when you are down to a shortstack remeber the story of Jack Strauss. You won't win it every time, but once you make it you will be glad you didn't just randomly push all-in. Patience is a virtue,remember.
Now go and make some money Good luck to all of you.
Talk to you soon guys!
