Going AIP!

One of the media I exploit for my poker edutainment is the Ante Up! podcast. I just started listening about 5 weeks ago, and I'm really enjoying catching up on the back episodes when I have time. They have a great rapport, and the show is a good mix of education/exploration and entertainment.

For the last few weeks, they've been running a mixed tournament series called the Ante-up Intercontinental Poker Series (AIPS). Each week the tournament is a different poker variant, to encourage their listeners to check out some of the other games than just Hold 'Em. This week, the game was "Stud Hi/Lo, 8 or better", or "Stud/8". I guess I probably had an advantage over most of the field, since my local cardroom actually spreads this game, so I've gotten some experience with it in the past 6 months or so.

I got a couple big hands in succession about 40 minutes in, and moved from near the bottom of the field to the top 5. After that, I was able to play big-stack poker, and win a lot of pots through sheer aggression. (This was a good experience for me, because my usual style is much tighter, at least until I get to the short-handed part of the tournament.) By the second break, I had twice as many chips as my closest competitor, and by the time we were down to 10 players, I had half the chips in the tournament. Perhaps needless to say, I won the tournament:



My victory is officially commemorated here. I'm now 6th in the overall player standings, so I'm gonna try to cash again in the next few. After winning the "top banana" trophy for this tournament, now I'm going for the series trophy.