If Stevie Wonder played Poker.

Did something really brilliant today at Poker - no I didn't win a big prize, in fact i had another bad day (-$10) on the cash tables - i didn't hit a Royal Flush, or at least I don't think so !

What I did, after my bad session on the cash tables, I went onto a really low buy in STT, and decided to play with a piece of paper over my hole cards. I read it a few times in magazines, they reckon it improves your positional play - and the ability to interpret betting patterns.

So I got the sellotape out of the draw and slapped a piece of paper over my cards, in a 10 man STT, and played. I played on Titan, which gives a nice graphic hand history - so I could keep looking back and seeing what I'd folded.

I played very few hands when the blinds where small - although I got a little lucky when I came over the top of a short stack on a AKK board, and he called it showing TT ? - which to be truthful IMO was an awful call for all your chips. Anyway I was apparently hold J5, and hit my J on the river.

That put me on a good size stack, I then used position to attack blinds, and any early limpers usually faced a raise. I think I knocked one more out when he called my large raise with 55 - and I was holding JJ !!

When heads up came I had about a 60/40 chip advantage - but i thought this was were my game would finish, as I know aggression pays heads up - but you usually need to know when you've got a hand that can win !!

This did prove a stumbling block, and the heads up session was very long. Although it did show more than ever that at this stage of the tourney, its not about the cards. I raised their blinds probably 80% of time - and flat called the other 20%, just so I didn't become to obvious.

We played 60 hands heads up - and I won 40 of them, although when they were really short and I was forced to call their all-ins - ( as I had odds to do so) - they won about 4 of the all-ins we had.

I was only ever behind chips wise Heads Up for 2 hands. My tactic when I was chip dominant was to keep the pots small and be aggressive, putting in small raises often.

My tactic when I was behind was to make the pots big - and instead of small raises, I would put in large raises -which meant any mistake on their behalf, I would win big.

I eventually won with this hand (below)- and my lap of honor lasted a full 5 minutes !! .... the prize for 1st ........... a whole $1 !!

But I'll definitely make it a weekly exercise... as I played in a Freeroll strait after and finished 7 of 77, and I could sense that the experience had done me good.