Last night was my first attempt at qualifying for the Virgin Poker Festival. Unfortuneately 7th was the best I could manage and 5 places out of 47 were awarded a seat, gutted!!!

TBH I was pretty lucky to reach seventh as I hit a cupl of 3 outers on the river to survive. However it wasn't to be as I attempted an ill fated steal of the blinds by shoving on the shortstack, woops! My reasoning behind it was that we were on the bubble and I was second last in chips, therefore I thought that he might fold and that I needed the chips which equated to 1/3 of my stack. Unfortuneately I had been pretty aggressive in that position and so he felt committed with his J-10 offsuit to a call. I had J-6s and no help came leaving me severely crippled.

Why am I writing about this hand in such detail? To help me reflect upon the decision to push... Part of the influence for this was that I had been watching an Annette_15 training video earlier that day (http://promo.betfair.com/gmd/landing/2008/player/). For those that don't know, her style is ultra aggressive and in this spot she would shove any two cards... BUT perhaps not against a desperate short stack when so close to a qualifying position!

Anyways for those of you don't know the prize for this tournament was a seat in the Virgin Poker Festival in April worth £150. I will have two more attempts!