Tunnel Vision

The schedule has been posted for the WSOP Circuit Event at The Horseshoe in Council Bluffs. A co-worker of mine was out there this weekend and did a little asking about it and heard the schedule was posted, and that the only big name they've got a committment from so far is Phil Gordon, which is good enough for me, because he's one of my favorites. So even if I don't get the roll to play, I'll plan on heading the couple hours down the road to rail the Main Event. But I'd still like to be able to play.

The good news is that I've got a total of 10 1/2 days off before the end of the year, not including weekends, so I've got good opportunity to work on my bankroll, both live and online. The bad news, as you know, is that whenever I have a chance to really sit down and make some progress, I tend to lose, lose, lose, and then pull even at the end of the session (at least online). Anyway, I just have to keep focused, play my best game every time I sit down, and I should be able to have some bank to give the Circuit Event a shot.

In the near future, I'm planning on taking Friday off and will put in some decent hours online, hopefully getting to that illustrious $150 mark, when I can start making my money and play work for me with bonuses, then on Saturday the wifey will be gone most of the day, so I'm thinking I'll probably go play live at the local card room. I'd like to try 1/2 NL because I think I have the ability and discipline to be profitable at it now, but maybe I'll start playing some 3/6, set a profit milestone, and if I hit that, switch to 1/2 NL. Either way, its getting down to crunch time, and if I seriously want to be able to try this Circuit Event thing, I have to be absolutely focused and hope variance stays away until mid-February.

If anyone has any information or knows where I can find any information on what the Mega Satellites and Second Chance tourneys are, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I had a chance to play a little last night, and feel like I survived another fairly brutal run. In two of the 4 tournaments I played in, I lost with high trips to flopped broadway straights, and ended up down only about $4 after all was said and done.

I played the $500 guaranteed shorthanded tourney at 4:00, and things were going along quite well, as I was building steadily. I then called an EP min-raise from the SB w/A7o. The flop came AK10, and it checked around. The turn was lower than my 7, and still wary of his holding, I checked. The raiser bet here. I called his bet, not loving my kicker. The river was an A, which of course changed my whole outlook on the hand. I kinda felt like I had just sucked out on the raisers KK, would be splitting w/the raiser's Ax, or will get punished by AK. I bet here, the raiser raised, and I pushed all in, ready to chop. He called and showed JQ, for flopped broadway. This hand irritates me, because I find it hard to put him on that hand. First of all, who raises w/JQ in EP? Second, if you're gonna raise w/JQ, how do you min-raise? And third, it seems the cool thing to do these days is min-raise w/HUGE hands (I have a T-Shirt idea for this new phenominon that I should post about sometime), so you really have to beware of the min-raise. In the end, it worked out perfectly for him, because I had no clue of his holding, and even if I put him on it in theory, probably never could've convinced myself to fold.

The other time was early in just a $2.20 SNG. I had pocket kings and called a raise from another EP raiser. Why did I call? Because I'm a little gun shy right now having my re-raiseable hands going up against hands that have them dominated. Here, I just wanted to see if the flop brought an A, and if it did, I'd get away fairly easily. Well the flop did not bring an A, and instead brought a K, along with a Q and a 10. We checked it around on the flop, and the turn was meaningless. At this point the raiser bet out, I raised him, he re-raised me, and I pushed all my chips back at him, which of course he quickly called, much to my delight. Until I saw his AJ and another flopped broadway. That dropped me to 40 chips, which I'm proud to say I worked back up to as much as 850, before I got unlucky and lost on a preflop jam w/A9 against KJ.

Looking back, I probably could've played these hands a lot better, but I really don't know if I could have or even should have gotten away from either. That's just stone cold unlucky.

My sole cash of the night was in an $11 SNG, where I took 3rd. I feel like I should have at least gotten 2nd, as the 2nd place guy was a pretty unimaginative player, but I got it in racing w/him and his 3s held up against my K5.

So overall a positive night, "surviving" some rough times with only a $4 loss. Of course, I really need to be headed in the opposite direction, but if I just stay focused and keep working on improving, it'll come. I feel like Friday will be a breakthrough day.