Squeaker

Well, last night was the first time as a poker player where I felt like I probably should have lost, but won. I don't know if that means I'm better, or I just got enough to get by.

After a fairly average 2nd place finish in an afternoon SNG and another ticket to step 2 in the play money SNGs, I got back at it at about 7. I sat in a .05/.10 NL cash game at FTP, and from 7-8 just saw disgusting cards, but only ended up losing $1.75. My plan is to sit in on a cash game there again and see about working back up to $3.75, at which point I'll probably run 3 of the $1.25 45 person SNGs. But I wanted to get in some cash game action and see where I felt like I was at, and also I figured it was the best way to work on unlocking my bonus. Truth be told, I think a $1.75 loss w/the cards I saw and the preflop raises I missed on and had to forfeit is pretty impressive. I did my absolute best to not have any leaks, and probably only made a couple of really bad decisions. Now if only I could run well and see what happens.

Then came the 8:00 Poker.com freeroll. I was on the receiving end of some serious donking early and worked my way up inside of the top 60, then about lost it all, only to work my way back to the top 70. After putting it on cruise control for several levels and not seeing much, I called a min-raise in the BB w/AQh, and I and a couple others lost all our chips to the raiser's KK when my Q hit on the flop. That was good enough for a 156th place finish. You could easily argue that I played it wrong, but the bottom line was that neither of us would've gotten away from our hands, and the result would've been the same regardless. With a little bigger stack or smaller blinds, maybe. But if I re-raise preflop, I'm pot committed and have huge odds with 4 people in, and if I put it all-in preflop, he's not mucking his kings. Meanwhile, I played about the worst $2.20 I ever have, getting it all-in w/TPTK and losing to a higher pocket pair that I *knew* my opponent had. Why I gave away $2.20 like that, I'm not sure. Call it a relapse, I guess. At that point I knew it wasn't adviseable to be playing for money the way the night was going, so I used a couple of my Step 2 play money for real money SNG tix, and ended up going 2 for 2 in those. So on to level 3 with a couple of shots, and all that stands between me and a whole dollar is 9 donkeys.

After those encouraging results I decided to play one more $2 SNG. I lost half of my stack early when I knew my pocket 10s was good on a garbage board and bet the whole way, until I got rivered when a tagalong with K4o hit his K. No...there was no 4 on the board, and nothing but a backdoor low straight draw that was squashed by the turn. Guess he just had a feeling. *rolls eyes* After having made a couple hundred chips worth of headway through a couple of levels I picked up AA and chunked away at a guy through the river, where he dropped to my last $200 all-in bet. That catapulted me from 8th to 2nd, and I was back in business. From then on I just played as craftily as I could, and then when we got to the top 5 is when things got interesting. The guy earlier who called me to the river w/garbage, only to hit his king...well...he was destined to win this tournament. He was the big stack all through, and then when we got to the top 5, it just got nasty. He took out 5th by running his 85 through AK, he then took out 4th by calling an all-in on the flop with a pocket pair of 4s, to the player's flopped pair of 8s, only to hit a 4 on the river. After pushing all-in and collecting the blinds on the first 3-handed hand, I pick up 98 on the button and limp. The flop comes 997. This guy min-bets, and I pause, eventually min-raising to look like I'm on a weak steal. He methodically re-raises, and thinking I have him right where I want him, I push all-in, only to get blindsided by his pocket 7s. So I cashed, and I decided to stick around and see what happened. Well, on the first hand of heads-up, luckbox picks up QQ against KJ, and as if pocket Qs wasn't good enough, the flop comes xKQ. Unreal. We all love those kind of runs, and I didn't even hate the guy for it. I was just happy that, as it were, he brought me to the money. That was his SNG from the get-go, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

So, end result for the night is a $1.75 loss at FTP, and a $3.40 profit at Poker.com, for a final tally of PROFIT, on a night where I don't necessarily feel like things were going my way. But I squeezed everything I could out of the cards I did see and turned it into a profitable night, so I'm extremely proud about that.

I also figured out that I love the structure for the Poker.com SNGs. On no other site could I lose half my stack early and even think I had an even money shot at recovering. Playing it by number of hands as opposed to time certainly takes longer, but when I'm battling back from a short stack by outplaying my opponents, its nice to have the level playing field of equal number of hands, as opposed to my fate being at the hands of the pace of play. I love it, and I hope it never changes.

I submitted a discussion piece to PokerBlog.com yesterday, discussing the Cap games that FTP introduced, but I guess they weren't interested. Its been almost a full day and it hasn't gotten published. Oh, well. Guess its not as big of a deal as I'd like to think it might be. I wish I'd at least saved a copy so I could post it here.

That's more than enough for now. I'll be back in a day or two.