Latest change of plans and another cash!

After playing around 5-8 PLO tournaments and coming close to making the money at least 50% of the time (only to go out on a crazy bluff normally) i made the money. $2 90 man tournament, came 3rd for $20!!!! With all the talk on 2+2 about PLO being the next big game, i think its a good time to learn before it goes main stream (i.e tv time etc). Ive spent £17 on PLOP by Jeff Hwang and Secrets of Professional PLO by Rolf Slotboom. Apparently these books are good for FR game where a conservative approach usually plays off. 6-max a looser style is probably required and where there is more money to be made (and lost). This area i will learn through 2+2 discussion and i think signing up to a training site would be profitable. Stox is offering 6 months free if you sign up to certain poker sites, this is very tempting for when i get back from OZ. The books i am going to fully study while in Oz, so when i come back, i can crack on with PLO cash and tournys.

Now on to the big news. I now have a BR on Everest! I took down my first MTT by winning a $2 rebuy, 240 runners for a cool $591. This is a similar cash to my other 2, but winning feels a lot better than 3rd or 4th and 1st in this case was worth an extra £110 compared to second place. The tournament started well when i managed to double up to 4500 (2000 starting) but i sea-sawed around that figure for the rest of the rebuy period and ended with 5000, a bit below average. From 5-30k i really had no make or break races where my tournament life was on the line! I just picked spots very well and stole pots from the right people. In the history from 30-90k more stealing and a few big'ish pots took me to 90k. A race against a short stack for 35k Ak vs my 44 took me into the chip lead of 125k. I was already to go hyper-agro and steal every pot as the final table neared, but the 2nd chip leader got put to my right! I was dealt KK UTG and made my standard 3BB raise. Big stack in BB called. Flop Td7d4s- BB pot bets and i reraise him all-in. He thinks for a while and calls! He turns over JJ and i make 85k profit and hit the 200k+ mark with 950k chips in play and 16 people left! The next biggest stack was about 90k! I cruised to the final table and to the last 5. A top 3 finish looked easy with 2 very short stacks left and with 400k+ in chips to my name. I told myself to just avoid the other big stacks. 2nd in chips kept raising my blind so with A5o i reraised him. bad timing! He 3-bets all-in and i get given 1:4 odds, but it costs me another 100k. He turns over Ako and im down to 180k and looking at maybe a less than 3rd finish. i survive to 3 handed and short-stacked i get lucky with Ajs vs AA, hit trip jacks. Later bust the other short stack to go heads up for evenish stacks. Trips queens and the final hand of slow playing AA vs T8o (he hit top pair), and i win. My only major mistake of the tournament was the A5o hand and i got lucky with AJs, but the rest was good agressive poker and using a big stack to steal. I was happy with my play. I think having read Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen and other advice, i picked my spots and played a lot looser than i have in the past, while everybody else was playing tighter. I think the key hand was the KK vs JJ hand. Having an ante running also called for a more agressive style.