Well I have been running worse than a blind man through a mine field lately, both in life and in poker.
I wake up today with my tenant telling me that there is no hot water and sure enough the hot tank has burst. Great way to kick off the day.
For some reason though that doesn’t dampen my spirits as much as I thought it would. Get it? Dampen my spirits? Hot water tank bursting? You know? The water…damp? Oh forget it.
Anyway what’s done is done and I try and be happy that it didn’t happen in the middle of winter or something and make a call to my friend Duane who has someone to come over and replace it by noon.
In the mean time I finally feel like eating something, the ache in my stomach is down to just a burning pain and I manage to have a sandwich and a bowl of soup, later on in the day I’m actually hungry again, very rare but it seems to give me the energy I needed.
I wait a bit for the water to heat up and make it into work. I get some stuff done and head back home to work on the home computer as it has all the files I need.
Long story short I throw up a game on the laptop in the time being, most of the tournaments don’t require you to watch them the whole time and I try and satellite into the daily dollar. Usually I manage to do this in one or two tries and cash on the one that I miss.
Just to set the stage, the odds of winning when you have a dominating hand like AK vs. A8 or the likes are about 3.5:1 just about the same as the 4:1 favourite you are when you have AA vs 66 for instance.
It should therefore be almost impossibleto lose, on the bubble mind you 10 matches where you get in with either of the dominating hands like above. But I somehow manage to and finally just quit till the daily dollar starts up and just pay to enter, whoa I know, check out the big spender!
I do some work on files while the daily dollar runs in the background but I end up getting into a set vs. set hand which worsens into a boat vs. boat hand and I get crippled. Never really recover after that to anywhere close to competing seriously, I do manage to work back my chips back somewhat but eventually get knocked out when my AQ gets beat by A9.
Oh and then this happens later in the night. Again on the satellite to the daily dollar, I have a small chip lead, I have AQ on the button and make it 3x the blinds, get a call from the other large stack, and the short stack goes all in and I call and the other player calls. Perfect for sure one of us will knock him out.
Flop comes 4J8 and I check it and the other player goes all in. I fold of course thinking he has hit this hard, sure enough he turns over KT and the turn Q and river 2 gives him absolutely nothing which is not good enough to beat the A3 the short stack was holding. The Short stack is now chipped up and I end up getting bubbled again when I flop top pair and get called all in by and unsuited A5 which of course comes on the river. What an idiot, his excuse? “I just started playing cards.” I put the moron note beside his name, I’m not done berating this guy yet. Man that chaps my ass.
Okay, happy thoughts…serenity now…serenity now.
I end up winning two tickets in the FTOPS events and could have won two more if I can just manage to have 80% hands hold up for me, I’m really focusing my energy on these now instead of cash games as the ROI is much better for me since I’m playing so bad in the cash games.
Both were in decent fields of about 200 and wouldn’t be that noteworthy if it wasn’t for the second one, there was one I got bubble out pretty gross on a $55 ticket which was a real shame, thought I had that one.
I started strong in this one top 10 in chips early as was really making a strong showing due to some good hands and loose calls, gotta love rebuy tournaments for that.
I slow down from there mainly because I’m working on the computer and am not stealing like I should be but I’m about ready to start bullying the table as I have about 10,000 in chips and everyone else has about 2,000 or less save one other with 9,675 and the blinds are getting up there. I’m about 28th out of 57 left with the top 21 getting paid, not enough to cruise in, but I should be able to parlay this stack to a ticket as long as I don’t screw up. See that’s the thing with a tournament, you can’t make mistakes.
I raise a limped pot in middle position with KJs and get one caller the big stack who was UTG and had limped. Pot is about 2,300. My intention was to play position and steal the blinds from the SB and BB who were at that precarious all in or fold M.
Flop comes J63 and it’s checked to me and I pot it and get check raised all in, in a fit of stupidity I hit the call button just as I realize she has a set.
Yep sure enough 66 and I don’t hit the miracle to catch up and am crippled, down to 325 chips and I get moved to another table.
I’m now dead last with just a chip and a chair.
I fold the first hand J2 i think it was.
I get KJ next with 225 left in my stack and push, which isn’t that scary because it isn’t even a whole blind.
I do manage to win the pot however and am up to 1,085
Next hand I get JJ and push again. Blam J on the flop and I’m up to 5,000 which puts me 37th out of 45 left.
I’m 39 of 42 then my KQ doubles up on 99 and I’m 26th
I steal a couple pots with all in moves to keep alive as the blinds are getting huge and my M is barely 4
I’m 20 of 35 when my KK doubles up on 66. BOOM! 7th of 35
AK vs. AK vs. a short stack with A4 gets me to 9 with 31 left.
I’m 13 of 22 left when I get QQ in the cut off and raise 2x. I get one caller from the Big Blind and the UTG limper pushes which isn’t even a call.
Flop is AJTKJ and my straight knocks out UTG to break the bubble. At least this time buddy is smart enough to check it down, which you notice I did on the turn with the nuts. In a tournament where you need to win first place I wouldn’t have done that, but in this type of format with such a wide all or nothing bubble it is the right thing to do.
A miracle comeback and I manage to seal the deal to boot. A rare occurrence but hopefully a sign of things to come.
In other poker news I watch the Mouth as he manages his first tournament cash in Omaha-Hi no less, a game he has only played when taking over my HORSE tournament for me in the past. He made a mistake entering the game and since it was seating already he couldn’t unregister and had to play it out, I couldn’t play it for him as I was already in a tournament. I railed him for most of it and he played pretty good, making only one mistake that I could see drawing to the nut flush with trips backup, but forgot the paired board rule of Omaha. He just missed the ticket by one place but was too card dead at the end to manage to limp across. Still a good finish for him and hope that he can start making a more serious run at the Hold’em games too. We had a good sit down the other day and I went over a couple strategy moves that took me a while to pick up, those should help him jump into the tickets faster I hope.
