Steady Improvement

Sorry its been a while since I posted, but I was pretty damn busy at work last week, and I played a lot of poker otherwise.

Incidentally, I was supposed to make the trip over to the WSOP-C event at Council Bluffs today with my brother-in-law, but due to some dicey weather forecasted we decided seeing a handfull of pros and the buffet probably wasn't worth the possibility of doubling our time on the road. So I guess we'll hope it comes back next year and maybe we can go out then. In the mean time we'll use the day of vacation for something like the first nice day (if it ever comes), or another pokery related activity.

So let me start with last weekend (2/16-17).

As is much of anything with me, this was a rollercoaster. We had no plans for the weekend, so I wanted to work in as much poker as I could. After a nice first place score in an $11 SNG Saturday morning, I started to look toward some sort of nice guarantee tourney for later Saturday night. First of all, I'm surprised that Stars doesn't have better lower stakes guarantee tourneys about every hour after 8:00, but I guess I don't run a poker room, so I'm sure they have some sort of good reason. After seeing that there wasn't much in my range past the $11 20k guarantee at 6:00, I found the daily 50k I think it was, with a $162 buyin, and went after that. I made some decent progress in a $3+R+A turbo sat, making it through the hour with my initial buyin and then taking advantage of the addon. Yeah, I'm that donk in the rebuys who sits and waits for a big hand to bust the serial rebuyers. So sue me. I despise rebuys, and nothing gives me more pleasure than playing tight and making it through with no rebuys. At any rate, I bombed out at some point in the 2nd hour. Well not too long after that I got into the $11+R+A turbo sat, this time with my bankroll challenges prohibiting me from any rebuying or addding on no matter what. And I'll be damned if I didn't get myself a seat. But then I got to thinking...geez...I just spent $17 to win $162 for a shot at one tourney that I may or may not cash in...would it really be wise to spend it, or would it be better spent for 29 $5 tourneys or 15 $11 tourneys? Not to mention the kick in the pants it gave my measly bankroll. Its a different story if you can't use the T$ for SNGs, but since I could, it was a pretty easy choice to unregister instead of taking the shot in the 50k. So it was back to some grinding away at SNGs, not to mentioned quite a piqued interest in the value of satellites.

So...lets have a go at this $10 Double Shootout to the Sunday Million, shall we? A SNG with 15 minute blinds?! Count me in! It didn't fill, so I think we ended up with like 8 at our table. And I didn't have a whole lot of trouble winning it. Half the players played like they were in a turbo, let alone a winner take all SNG w/15 minute blinds. I steadily chipped up, and another guy was kind of running over the table but wasn't showing any real prowess as a player, and we ended up heads up with big stacks and moderate blinds, and my confidence and comfort level VERY high. The heads up match didn't actually last as long as I expected, as I rather quickly got a spot to double, then made pretty quick work of him. He cursed me in the chatbox before he left. It was all surprisingly easy considering there were $215 prizes on the line.

Moving on to the final table, we were paying 4 spots, with three seats and some chopped liver to spare. I was VERY confident in my ability to make top 3. Sparing the details, I got 4th. We went into the money with me as the short stack, struggling the whole way, but confident that my chance would come. And boy did it. I found AKo and open jammed more than 10x from the button, because I knew the BB was just as likely to call as he was to fold. And call he did...w/10 7 off, and caught a card. $18 for me...$215 for everyone else. So wrong.

It was at that point that I should've stopped playing. My balance stood around the $220 mark, more than 3x where it started at that morning, I'd had an amazing day, and had a whole other day ahead of me. But how could I stop on that AK vs 10 7 atrocity?! It must be avenged! So I donked off $60, getting unlucky, and moreso, probably playing some of the worst poker I'd played in a while. Passive when I shouldn't have been passive, aggressive when I shouldn't have been aggressive, expecting to win...just about every way you could play badly. But I also got REALLY unlucky on more than one occasion. Anyway, before calling it quits I played 1 $22 SNG (bubbled), and 5 more $11 SNGs, getting 8th and 9th in two of them, cashing once in third place in total. Spewing.

Sunday I looked to get things back on track, and also went after a Sunday Million seat in two different formats at the worst time to try and sat in...the day of (some may say the best time...I disagree). Not only had the AK vs 10 7 hand tilted me, but it was also the doom switch for me @ Stars. Sunday I cashed in 2 out of 9 ($11) SNGs, and didn't even come close in an $8 Turbo DS and $11+R Turbo to the Sunday Million. In the midst of a streak where I'd cashed in 7 of my last 28 SNGs, I shut 'er down with $114 and didn't play the whole week.

Ok, so I sorta lied. I played live on Wednesday night for a couple hours and took $40 off a 1/2 table. It was one of those tables where you wish you could sit for 6-8 hours and just let all the chips come your way because the players were so eager to get them out of their stacks, but I had a co-worker in from Portland that I was there to hang out with plus work the next day...so looking for an opportunity to leave, I let some guy chuck chips at a pot as I called him down w/AA the whole way, and took my $40 and left.

This past weekend also saw plenty of opportunity for me to play, a moderate recovery, and some encouraging results. After refocusing and getting back on track, I cashed in 4 out of 8 SNGs, coming out moderately ahead, but perhaps moreso important in my journey towards bankroll management and growing as a player, I dropped down a level prematurely just incase I was still running bad. But my crowning achievement for this weekend was getting 127th out of 3767 in yesterday's $5k guarantee at noon. The tourney was very well rounded in that I stuck to my style, tried not to get discouraged, and just kept persevering.

In the early going I was completely card dead, not seriously playing a hand in the first hour. As the lack of any playable cards continued, I managed to find hands and double to the average two different times when I got to push & pray mode. Then after another double up to survive, I got my money in bad w/TP,TK against an overpair. I needed an A or 9 to survive, got my 9 on the river, and doubled through the newly seated big stack at our table, and suddenly I found myself to be table captain with twice the average stack, and in 60th or so as we approached the bubble. The next hour and a half or so was spent looking to pick up pots, and I did so successfully, scooping several times to keep my stack steady against the high blinds, but also having to fold to some re-raises. Then, as the average again approached and started to pass my stack (although I still had 20-25 big blinds), I went on a rush which right now I can't even recall, and suddenly saw my stack skyrocket to 100k and around 20th place out of about 250 remaining. Still a lot of work to be done, of course.

A while after I had amassed this stack, I was moved to a different table for the first time, which proved to be trouble for me. I was at a table where I was fortunate enough to get a lot of chips, but overall it was a very tight/passive table with a lot of average stacks, where the average/big stacks pretty much stayed away from each other, a good raise would generally pick up pots or get you all-in against a shorty, and we all just kinda took turns going at pots. There wasn't a lot of chips moving onto or off of the table, and it was all just very systematic. I was also the significant chip leader and could be content to sit and pick off pots as I saw fit. The new table I was moved to had a couple of other big stacks, a lot more active players, and fewer real short stacks.

I'd been there a while, but I wasn't fully adjusted to the table yet when I went after a pot from middle position w/A10. Someone behind me jammed another 30k or so on top, and I made a relatively easy call and lost to AK. Looking back, it was actually a pretty easy fold based on a timing tell with his raise, and aside from a pretty terrible play overall, the catalyst for my impending downfall. So with a stack of 60-some thousand now, just below average, and blinds at 2k/4k/200, as I do, I started to get antsy. And I made another mistake. Facing a pretty standard LP raise and a call in the SB, I called w/Q9s getting around 3:1 in the big blind. Flop comes 9-high. SB jams his 36k or so, I instantly re-jam, and the original raiser thinks forever and tosses his 24k into the pot as well. In a little bit of a setup hand, SB shows 99, I show my monster TP, decent kicker, and original raiser shows KK. I'm not sure how I get away from that hand, though, without chucking it preflop. And I'm not sure if my preflop call was right or not... So at this point I'm down to like 15k and on life support. I did manage to take someone out and essentially double on the next hand with two live cards against at least one over, and then I jammed on the button again w/56h. I actually flopped a monster open-ender w/a flush draw, plus the fives and sixes were still good. The turn was a 10, which left me needing a heart, 4, or 9. River bricked, and I'm done in 127th.

So for the first time in a cash MTT, I sniffed real money for a while. If I can fold A10 to the 30k re-raise, maintain my patience, continue to feel out the table before getting involved, and wait for my spots with a strong stack, this story may have a different ending. I just started to get nervous when I was switched to a table with stacks as big or bigger than mine and would be forced to refocus and start playing poker again, and hadn't adjusted to the table yet when I tried to get in the mix. Another lesson learned for next time. The top 4% finish paid a disappointing $24.49, but when I'm eventually making final table and top 3 money, I'm gonna be happy that everyone else is getting scraps, right? ;-)

After that I wanted to have another go at a DS to the Sunday Million, and after I struggled early, I finally found some opportunities to get in the mix, and got down to three at my first table. I had a feel for the players, and looking them up on Sharkscope confirmed my read on both. One was a strong, 4 figure winning player, who had gotten to the big stack with strong, assertive play and big hands, and the other, a total lucksack donk who was all over the place and had sucked out on just me twice already. In the end, the donk called my 9x push from the button w/A5o in the big blind. I actually held A4 and flopped 2 pair on a 10 4 A flop, but the turn was a 10. With a zillion outs to chop, the river was a freaking THREE, and I'm busted. All I'd shown down was strong hands, and this guy calls me w/A5o. Unbelievable. With that DS full, the whole final table would've made at least $35, with the top 4 getting seats. I will be mixing these tourneys in quite frequently, because it seems like a nice way to pick up $215 on an $11.70 investment.

While Stars may not have a satelliting format like Full Tilt is famous for with the $26 and $75 tokens and your ability to pretty much get to whatever you're after with those tokens, their T$ setup really gives you a lot more versatility, because you can satellite for x amount of T$ and use them for any of Stars' varying tournament buyins...or even SNGs, to more readily turn them into cash. Brilliant.

Ok, well this has been another doozie, so its time for me to quit. Thanks to anyone who stopped by to read. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.