Rock Bottom...Please?

Poker has not irritated me more in the past 5+ months of this bad run as it did yesterday.

I played in PokerStars World Blogger Championship thingie first yesterday afternoon, and after what I felt like was a mostly solid first hour, I made probably the most donkalicious play I've ever made since I've *really* been taking pride in my game, and exited in 8XX/1200ish. In the first hour I was getting hit upside the head with the deck, and about the only thing I could do wrong was extract the most value out of my hands, which I feel like I *didn't* excel at when I had a couple of BIG hands. But I'm just so afraid of getting sucked out on I'm just trying to end pots with the lead as much as I can. There was one hand in particular where I flopped a set of aces and probably could've stacked a guy who claimed to have flopped bottom set, but I was so afraid of the flush draw on board I bet him out on the flop. And had I stopped and thought about it, I could be pretty sure he wasn't on a flush draw. So that was irritating.

Anyway, so after being as high as 17k, I end the hour with around 15k (10k starting stack), and as we head into the 2nd hour I win another pretty big hand and am moved to a new table with my 17k stack. First "real" hand I play at this table and I go broke. UTG limps, which I dully note to respect, but after it folds around to me, I made a 4x raise w/A10o just to see where we were really at. Blinds fold, UTG calls, and we're heads up. Flop comes AJx, 2-suited. UTG checks, and I bet at it about 3/4 pot. UTG pushes. After not enough thought, I call, and go broke against AJ. Just an absolutely terrible play. Limp-call UTG screams AK, AQ, AJ, pocket pair, suited connectors at the VERY least. Which means I'm either dominated, he flopped a set, or he has a flush or straight draw. Best I could hope to be is 70% if this guy is actually a complete donk and happens to have gotten in dominated against me, but otherwise I'm 60% at best against even any draw he likely has. But for some reason when he pushed after my 3/4 pot bet, I thought about every single wrong thought possible.

The quick conclusion I came to was essentially "this donk is on a flush draw and this is a huge spot for me to pick up a lot of chips and go deep". Lets break this down. "This donk"...this is a blogger tournament, and although not all bloggers are by any means good poker players (present company included), most are not going to make this all-in push on a flush draw like I see every day in the $2.25 SNGs I play. "is on a flush draw"...I'm lying a little bit here in that I put him on AJ or a flush draw when I made my call, and if I was beat, oh well its just a freeroll. Well I had *instant* regret upon busting because this wasn't "just a freeroll". This was a legit tournament w/a 10k starting stack (I've only played in one other tournament w/a 10k starting stack) with a pretty amazing $40,000 prize pool, that PokerStars just happened to be putting on for free for bloggers. "Just a freeroll" couldn't be further from the truth. "and this is a huge spot for me to pick up a lot of chips and go deep"...Again, a laughable statement. Fact of the matter is, I was sitting in about 185th out of over 850 left, had an above average stack, and still would have had an above average stack if I folded to his push. We all know there's "those spots" in a tournament where you have to make a ballsy call to really pick up chips and make a deep run. I thought this was that spot (and obviously I wanted this to be that spot), but it absolutely was not. The deck had been hitting me pretty hard, I had enough chips to splash around in pots and pick up the orphans, and then I manage to go broke OOP w/A10o. Just really fucking pathetic.

So that depresses me to no end. I go from playing for a $10k prize package to the PCA, back to my $22 bankroll on Full Tilt. But I figured I'd try and ease the pain a little with some SNGs.

3 hours, 7 SNGs, and 0 cashes later, I closed Full Tilt with a bankroll of $6.74. Yep, I'm back to my "last" 2 SNGs again. Same ol' story. Couldn't hit a flop, couldn't complete a draw, couldn't win a coin flip, and got sucked out on if I got my money in good. Just mind blowing.

So like I've talked about, I feel like I've weathered this storm pretty well so far, but yesterday was just plain depressing. I put myself in a good position in the PokerStars tourney, only to piss it right away with some of the worst thought processing one could ever imagine. Then I try a little SNG therapy only to get run over by the deck.

The really ironic part in all of it is how I play these SNGs as flawlessly as I can imagine day in and day out and get destroyed by horrible players and cold decks, but can at least come away with moral victories and hope that someday things will start to work out in my favor. Then I get this one time shot at this really nice tournament with strong opponents who actually know what they're doing and can play some actual poker with, shoot out of the gates with good cards and strong play, then manage to bust on quite possibly the most donkalicious thought process and play of my "career".

What's the least encouraging about whether I'm playing good in "unimportant" spots, or playing bad in huge spots is that the end result is always the same...failure.

Until next time...