The Good, the Weird and the Ugly (Plus Random Notes on the DADI)

Three hands from the PS tourney the other night kind of show the range of experiences I had. The theme that runs through all of them is aggression. From a hand that shows aggression at its best to a hand that shows the problem I’m having with managing my aggression. I’m great at initiating it, but not so good at responding to it or dealing with someone who plays back at me. In those cases I seem to either fold the best hand or play back with the worst hand.

First, the Good.

I’m sitting at a full table with just over 24K in chips, 4K more than the second stack at my table and 10th overall in the tourney. Blinds are 400/800 with a 50 ante. I’m in the SB with Ah8s and I make it 1600 when it’s folded around to me and the BB, who’s third in chips at the table with about 19K, calls. The BB has been nursing this same size stack since I got to the table, while I have almost doubled up, and we’re three from the money, so I’m thinking he/she is going to play tight. Flop comes T43 rainbow, and I lead out for 2500 and get another call. A 2 on the turn completes the rainbow and I toss out 5000 and get the fold, putting me ninth in chips with two to go for the money.

The weird was a couple of hands before that and it’s the hand that vaulted me into the top 10. It’s also a pot I technically “lost,” which is what makes it so strange. I’m sitting on the button with an about average stack of 14K, which is only the fifth largest at my table, and pick up pocket Jacks. UTG+1 raises the 800 BB to 2200, the next player calls and a short stack in MP goes all-in for 1448. I’m thinking I want to drive out the early raiser and caller to isolate against the short stack, so I push. The blinds and the initial raiser fold, but the caller has me covered and calls. The caller turns over 99 and the short stack KQo, meaning that I’m a decent 2.5-1 favorite over the larger stack, but just a slight favorite over the short stack. After all the cards are turned over, the short stack takes the 7K main pot with Qs full of Ts, but I rake in a 25K side pot when my JJ holds up against the 99. (The initial raiser, who folded before the flop, claims to have had AQ. Whew! But that shows you what aggression can do to help you.)


The ugly came when we were in the money with me sitting at a new table with 28k in chips, good for ninth place overall, but another player with 37k sitting across the table. I’m UTG with Qd8d and—figuring to keep up the aggression (never mind that none of these players has seen much of anything from me, or course)—open for a 3x bb raise to 2400. The larger stack calls and a short stack pushes all-in from the SB for a total of 5251. Getting nearly 4-1 pot odds, I’m forced to call at this point, and the big stack comes along for the party. When the flop comes Kd Th 4h, I wimp out and check. The big stack checks behind and the turn comes the Qs. Sensing weakness from the big stack, I check-raise to 12800 after he throws out a bet of 6400. He reraises all-in and I call. The rest of the cards are inconsequential, as the big stack turns over AJs for the turned nut straight. I was drawing dead and the short stack was close to dead with AA in the hole.

I clearly have no chance of winning this hand no matter what the big stack has, as I’m way behind to the short stack's AA from the get go. My only hope here is to minimize my losses, which probably would best have been handled by throwing out a feeler bet on the flop. I’m pretty sure I get a call (or a raise) from the big stack based on his combination of the nut flush draw, inside straight draw and an overcard to the board. But I’ve defined my hand and can comfortably go away if I’m raised or play much more cautiously on the turn if I’m called. Since I didn’t do that and I tried to get tricky on the turn, my last best hope would have been to run screaming in the opposite direction when my check-raise was reraised. Obviously I'm not that smart.

Two lessons: First, this was not a good situation to try a check raise. It was stupid; but I suppose I was just feeling my oats after my success in running up my stack on the bubble. Second, when your opponent comes to life like that, get out of the way (of course I came to life like that, but he wasn’t going to get out of the way with a made nut straight and a nut flush draw). I’m definitely hurting with only 10k in chips if I fold at that point, but I’m certainly not crippled and would have lived to fight at least one more day.

Donkeys Always Draw Invitational

I did play in my first blogger event when I made the scene at Jordan’s and Tripjax’s DADI on Wednesday night. I’d love to say that I shined in my debut, but I didn’t. Was pretty card dead for most of the night and couldn’t get any action when I did pick up a hand early on. I even checked pocket aces from the BB, when only the SB was in to see the flop with me. He folded, however, when I threw out a token bet on a rag flop. The only hand that troubles me is when I raised with AKo, checked behind on a ragged flop and folded to a big raise from an unknown that had been playing LAG, after betting out when a K hit on the turn. Not sure what he may have had, but it didn’t smell right. I do wonder if I folded the best hand, however.

DeadMoney busted me (right after taking out two others on a single hand by getting all in with KK before the flop) in 36th place when his 44 held up to my KQo. He gets a link on my blog roll for his trouble. I'm sure that makes his day.

Other than that, it was a good time. I railbirded Will Wonka for a while and got to see him pull down a big pot when his hammer turned into deuces full of sevens, then watched some excellent play (and a few suckouts) at the final table. I was getting pretty drunk by that point, however, so I’m not sure if any of my side comments made any sense. I promise I'm really not an idiot (although I'm pretty sure that my brain works just a little bit differently than yours), if anyone came away with that impression.

Congratulations to the winner, Change100, and the runner up, Joe Speaker, and the rest of the final table.

Finished the night with a third place finish in a $10+1 SNG to offset some of the DADI buy in, so whoop de doo.

Holidays at the Virtual Tables

Had a great holiday weekend and hope all of my readers did too. It was great to spend time with my family in the spirit of the season. I played some PS2 and did Legos with my son (8), had some great talks with my daughter (soon to be 12), and spent some quality time with my wife. Even cooked a kick-ass Christmas Eve dinner, featuring bacon-wrapped fillet mignon and twice-baked potatoes with bacon and horseradish.

Since my wife took ill on Christmas Day and went to bed early Sunday and Monday, however, I wound up playing more poker than expected over the holiday weekend. My game was…there.

It started on Friday night, when I fired up Poker Stars and sat down in a $10 SNG, finishing in third place for a tiny profit. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I just haven’t been able to get any traction on Stars since I started playing there a few months ago. As a result, this seemed like a major event to me.

When that wrapped, I plopped down $10 and joined 642 other people in a NLHE MTT. Up until the first break, I floundered around; not getting many decent cards and not hitting much on the flop. As a result, I went into that break below average and without much hope. Things got worse after the break and I found myself staring at a rapidly diminishing stack in the face of increasing blinds and the added problem of antes.

I started to get a few decent hands and managed to chip my way up to about average going into the second break and stayed there until we were closing in on the money (top 63 places paid). Then things got interesting and I would up ninth in chips with the bubble closing in.

The pivotal hand was a strange one because of how it happened. I’ll have to check the details, but there was one MP limper and an all-in from a teeny tiny stack ahead of me. I had a hand I felt would hold up against the likely holdings of the short stack and I had the limper covered by a little bit, so I pushed to isolate myself against the short stack. Lo and behold, however, the limper calls. I wasn’t happy about that, but it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, as the short stack took the tiny main pot and I would up scooping a much larger side pot and vaulting into position to make the money.

Once that happened, I moved into selective aggression mode, stealing the blinds a few times, winning a few hands and even bluffing a nice pot away from the player to my right with a big bet on the turn. When the money came around I was sitting pretty in ninth position and trying to figure out what to do with the big payday that was sure to come my way.

Of course you know where this is heading. Once the bubble burst, I wound up at a table with one of the chip leaders who had about twice as many chips as me. A few hands into that table I raised in EP w/ Q8s (things had been pretty tight) and got a call from the big stack in MP and a short stack in MP. Checked around on the KTx rainbow flop and I checked. Then a Q hit on the turn and I lost my mind, throwing a big bet into the pot, which was called all-in by the short stack and then raised by the big stack. For some reason, which likely will remain unexplained, I decided the big stack was trying to buy the pot and pushed the rest of my chips into the center of the table. He obligingly called with his turned nut straight and the short stack turned over AA.

I was out in 61st spot for a whopping $16.07 payday. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaawwwwwwww!

Ah well. At least I have a cash next to my name in thepokerdb now and I’ve broken my Stars MTT curse.

Spent Sunday and Monday nights treading water on Stars and UB. Dropped a couple of $20 SNGs on Pokerroom, including one where in the second hand I found AA in MP, raised an EP raiser and was looking at three all-ins ahead of me when it came back around. I knew I was ahead, but I also knew that I probably had only about a 50% chance of winning (closer to 53% in the actual analysis). I called anyway and saw myself facing KK, QQ and 44 (!?). QQ flopped a set and the rest of us went down in flames. At least it was quick.

Hold the Bus! Vegas in February?

I've just found out that I may be forced to go to Vegas Feb. 6-8 for a business meeting at the MGM Grand. This development could significantly alter my bankroll allocation plans, as I likely will look to free up some offline funds to play in live games when I'm there.


My preliminary thinking would be to hit MGM's nightly $100+$25 tournament on Feb. 6 or Feb. 7, and fill in the rest of my time at the $2-$4 limit and/or $200 max NLHE tables there. If I have any success or feel the urge to just drink and play donkey poker, a return the the Excalibur might be in order at some point too.

Anyone with other suggestions for my itinerary or who may wish to join the fun is free to get in touch with me through my comments or via email.

Great F'n Start to the Night

Here's ten minutes of my life I'll never get back. I think this is self-explanatory:

$30+3 SNG, Pokerroom.com

Seat 1: DaScrub ($1,500 in chips)
Seat 2: redbulnvodka ($1,500 in chips)
Seat 3: CRIXXXX ($1,460 in chips)
Seat 4: JohnnyBankn ($1,620 in chips)
Seat 5: barofsoap ($1,460 in chips)
Seat 6: rick114 ($1,500 in chips)
Seat 7: x HELLAS ($1,500 in chips)
Seat 8: sambuk ($1,460 in chips)
Seat 9: Jestocost [KC,AH] ($1,500 in chips)
Seat 10: mparrott ($1,500 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDSbarofsoap posts blind ($10), rick114 posts blind ($20).
PRE-FLOPx HELLAS folds, sambuk folds, Jestocost bets $80, mparrott folds, DaScrub calls $80, redbulnvodka folds, CRIXXXX calls $80, JohnnyBankn calls $80, barofsoap calls $70, rick114 folds.
FLOP [board cards 10D,KD,2H ]
barofsoap checks, Jestocost bets $300, DaScrub folds, CRIXXXX folds, JohnnyBankn folds, barofsoap calls $300.
TURN [board cards 10D,KD,2H,4H ]
barofsoap checks, Jestocost bets $500, barofsoap calls $500.
RIVER [board cards 10D,KD,2H,4H,QD ]
barofsoap bets $580 and is all-in, Jestocost calls $580.
SHOWDOWN
barofsoap shows [ 5D,6D ]Jestocost shows [ KC,AH ]

barofsoap wins $3,180.

My only comment, "Is that barofsoap as in, don't bend over to pick up that bar of soap?"

I think I'll get a drink and try this again in a little while. I need to pound my head somewhere.

OK, I guess I can't complain too much, when my next SNG featured this hand:

$30+3 SNG, Pokerroom.com

Seat 1: bostoncaleb ($1,535 in chips)
Seat 2: knicksiny3k ($1,690 in chips)
Seat 3: Jestocost [4H,5D] ($1,450 in chips)
Seat 5: jbrekka ($1,240 in chips)
Seat 6: mook_7 ($1,410 in chips)
Seat 7: bigdawgkk ($1,275 in chips)
Seat 8: Tress10 ($1,465 in chips)
Seat 9: Kenny Webber ($1,425 in chips)
Seat 10: hockey166803 ($3,510 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS
knicksiny3k posts blind ($25), Jestocost posts blind ($50).PRE-FLOPjbrekka folds, mook_7 folds, bigdawgkk calls $50, Tress10 folds, Kenny Webber calls $50, hockey166803 folds, bostoncaleb folds, knicksiny3k calls $25, Jestocost checks.
FLOP [board cards 7S,5S,5C ]knicksiny3k checks, Jestocost bets $75, bigdawgkk folds, Kenny Webber bets $200, knicksiny3k folds, Jestocost bets $600, Kenny Webber calls $475.
TURN [board cards 7S,5S,5C,6S ]Jestocost bets $725 and is all-in, Kenny Webber calls $700 and is all-in.
RIVER [board cards 7S,5S,5C,6S,5H ]
SHOWDOWNJestocost shows [ 4H,5D ]Kenny Webber shows [ 8S,10S ]Jestocost wins $25, Jestocost wins $2,950.

OK. So I won that one and am up $84 for the night. Maybe I'll play the $50+4 US Daily MTT?

Shameless Pimpage

I learn a lot from a number of the poker blogs that I read. There are some tremendously smart people out there who provide great insights into how to improve your game. But sometimes I appreciate even more those bloggers who share experiences that are similar to mine, providing me with hope and a better sense of reality. Recent posts by Dugglebogey and Joe Speaker are perfect examples of this.

Dugglebogey reflects on how his belief that he can outplay the horrible donkeys he faces in SNGs and MTTs winds up leading to a lack of success in these events. I can empathize with that completely. As noted below, I start playing marginal hands against terrible players and almost invariably get the crap kicked out of me as a result. For me as well it’s largely a matter of ego, but also sometimes a matter of impatience. I get bored with folding hand after hand, only to watch horrible opponents take down a pot with middle pair when I would have flopped a straight. Fighting the boredom by trying to get cute is usually death, however.

Joe Speaker notes that he plays better against better opponents. To me, this is common sense. Against better opponents I am more focused. Against better opponents I can have a reasonable expectation that they will respond appropriately to the plays I make. I played better ping pong as a kid against better ping pong players, but I was never a great ping pong player. Today I play better poker against better opponents, but I am far from a great poker player.

And, finally, even some of the random shit I come up with finds like minds among the bloggers. Yesterday I finished my post with a John Bender quote from “The Breakfast Club” and today Drizztdj posts this related item.

I certainly can’t claim to be a mainstream member of the poker blogger community, but I’m pleased that one or two bloggers have now posted links to the Pile (OK, only after I asked them to. And two bloggers actually have posted comments at this worthless site. Thanks to SirFWALGman for being the first non-spam contributor to my comments. And I am humbled to have had the Blogfather himself acknowledge--if only in a small way--my existence.

Log on to Pokerroom tonight (and maybe even late tomorrow night) to have the opportunity to take my money from me.

Worthless

As I have long believed and this site has confirmed, the Slag Pile is--in fact--worthless. In the interest of providing a self-esteem boost to those bloggers whose corners of the interweb are worth more than $0.00, I've included a nifty little banner advertising my complete lack of value at the base of the Pile.

Poker has been "eh" lately. No great play, no horrible play, no wild beats, no massive suckouts. I did "money" in another UB $1 Ultra MTT, taking in a cool $1.82 for finishing 84th out of 1,100 or so. Now I can afford that pack of gum I've been saving for.

Otherwise, I really haven't played much since the holiday started. I should be spending a few hours on Pokerroom in assorted MTTs and SNGs on Wednesday night, so maybe I'll have more to report during or after that.

I know you're on the edge of your seat.

"Screws fall out all the time, the world's an imperfect place."

-- John Bender

One of Those Nights

Did you ever have one of “those” nights? I’m sure you have.

When the flop came 98x and you were short stacked with A8o, but the big stack had A9o?

When the flop came Kxx and you had KJo, but your opponent had KQo?

You had JJ and bet hard into a ragged flop, turn and river, only to run into QQ?

When you get the suckouts when it doesn’t matter, and get sucked out on when it does?

Let’s live blog this latest table, an ill-advised $50 SNG on Pokerroom:

First hand, one limper ahead of me and I limp with 66 in MP; SB calls and BB checks. Flop Q89 rainbow. I bet slightly less than the pot and get one caller. Turn is a 6 and I lead for $200, not liking the straight possibilities. Opponent folds and I’m the table chip leader.

Q5o (no heart) in the BB and I check to two limpers. Flop is 288 with two hearts and I bet out $50 and get one caller. Turn is the Ah and my $100 bet is raised to $200, which I call. River is another heart and I give up, checking. Opponent bets $400 and I fold.

Blinds at $15/$30. I get AJo in the BB and raise to $120 after the UTG, the button and the SB call. UTG calls, and the button and SB fold. Flop is AsQd6s and I have the Js. The software fucks me up and I wind up min betting $30, instead of betting $250 as planned. Turn is the Qh and I bet $300 and get called, which makes me nervous. River is a J, which pleases me no end and I bet $500. Opponent calls me and shows AKo, giving him the pot with his kicker as my pair of Jacks is counterfeited and I’m down to $870.

Blinds take me down to $855 and I find AKo in MP. Raise 3x the BB to $150 and get one caller. Flop comes J44 and I bet $300. Caller folds. Yee ha.

Blinded down to $980 giving me an M of just over 6. Still 9 players at the table and I’m the short stack.

A3d UTG and I push. Everybody folds and I take the blinds.

J5o in the BB and I fold to a raise from the button and a call from the SB.

Q5s in the SB and I call a raise to $200. Flop is Q33 and I push. Button calls with AQo and IGHN.

One of those nights.

Other than the obvious donkey play with the counterfeited Jacks, any major problems there?

The Curse of Success or How to Start a Death Spiral in Three Easy Lessons

After the MTT success I documented in my previous blog entry, my MTT and SNG play went straight into the toilet. It’s interesting in hindsight that what I actually did at the tables was completely detached from what I know I should do.

During this time, I’ve been faced with what everyone who plays poker faces. I’ve been completely card dead for three or more tournaments in a row. I’ve taken a number of bad beats. There’s surely nothing I can do about the former, except to try and hang on. And in the latter case I can—at least intellectually—appreciate that it means I’m getting my money out on the table with the best of it, which is all anyone really can do.

(Warning: Obligatory bad beat section follows; please skip to next paragraph. Allow me to vent just for a second. KK all-in goes down to a call from K9 when my opponent flops a pair of nines and rivers trips. KK goes down to a call from 99 that rivers a straight. Red pocket tens all-in flop a set, but wait, all three cards on the board are spades, looking suspiciously like the 8s in the pocket eights that called me with; a fourth spade hits the board on the turn and nothing pairs on the river. JJ all-in is called by TT and, after a ragged flop that puts me ahead by nearly 14-1, the third ten hits on the turn. Blah, blah, blah. Boring, boring, boring. Please cry for me Argentina. But, as I asked the K9 caller, “Why don’t the donkeys ever use lubricants when they mount you from behind?”)

But the reality is, in most of those cases, I was pushing pre-flop near the bubble because I was short stacked and needed to double up to stay in the tournament. And the fact is that in most of those cases I got there by being a big freakin’ donkey myself. I’m not talking about any complicated leak, for the most part, just a simple pattern that I find myself falling into after a run of success.

1) I start playing too many marginal starting hands. Little pocket pairs, middle suited (O, even non-suited sometimes) connectors; Ax, on and on. My recent wins have me convinced that all of my opponents are idiots and that I can push them around and out play them. But they’re not all idiots (even though many are) and even an idiot gets dealt good cards and hits a flop from time to time. All that it gets me are lots of middle pairs with no kicker, bottom pairs with big kickers, assorted gutshots and backdoor draws, and complete garbage on the flop.

2) I push those marginal hands aggressively and get popped. Everyone sees the crap I’m playing and they play back at me, forcing me to fold, or they string me along and suck me dry all the way to the river. Continuation bets actually work if you use them judiciously and show down some strong hands every once in awhile.

I struggle and donk it up, losing in tournaments early or watching my stack bounce up and down like a three-year old after two liters of Hawaiian Punch and half a birthday cake until I bubble out and die. Then the final phase of the death spiral hits:

3) The return of Captain Weaktight, hero of the stupid. I don’t play anything but group one hands, unless I’m completing from the small blind or checking from the big blind. Unless I flop a set or better (maybe TPTK, if I’m feeling particularly frisky) I’m checking and folding. If my set isn’t top set, I’m folding to anyone who plays back at me. Bubble city guaranteed, boys and girls.

So here I am, crawling out of that hole again and trying to play better. This time, I mostly have tried to play my way out of my slump, but is that the best way? It helps with some things, certainly, but it almost invariably seems to require me to play out the full cycle. Should I take a break? Read a book? Hit myself in the head with a brick? What? Is there any way to short circuit this cycle once it begins?

Pokerroom's Latest "Upgrade"

On another topic, will some poker sites never learn how to complete a software update without screwing things up? I haven’t played on that many sites, but Pokerroom—a site where I play frequently and generally like as well as any—can’t seem to get it right. Just this last spring, they screwed up enough that they had to roll out a series of $ added freerolls just to try to appease the pissed-off masses. If you have an account there and like these events, get ready for more of them.

Yesterday, Pokerroom rolled out their newest software update (for both the downloadable and Java platforms). In the process, they’ve managed to put themselves out of the MTT business temporarily and even those new things that are working just plain suck.

SNG registrations are impossible, with multiple tables with the same game and buy in level registering at once and no method of organizing them by # of registrants or anything. As a result, you get people filling two or three $20 NLHE tables at once and it takes forever to fill them. Maybe this works at Party or Stars, but not at Pokerroom, there’s just not the volume of players. Oh, and some of these SNGs are now multi-table games, but there’s no way to tell that from the menu. You have to click on each one individually to see if it’s a one-, two- or three-table event. Nuts.

SNG blind levels also are now just eight minutes. I think they did it by hand count before and it was manageable and no worse than other sites, but now the things are pretty much push fests. When your base SNG is effectively a turbo, blah.

They’ve blown up in the past and eventually have fixed things, but we’ll see this time. One of the big selling points for Pokerroom is the Java version, which I can play on the road, but I’ve had the largest share of my bankroll there for a while and I don’t know if that will continue without some fixes.

Is Something Going On?

Yes, definitely. Either I’ve actually improved my tournament play or the winds of variance are simply blowing in my direction. After playing probably 50 MTTs in the past year and making one final table (last January), I’ve now made the final table in three out of the last five tournaments I’ve played; including my first MTT win, as noted below.

Of course, ego leads me to favor the first of those two possibilities. And even if improved play is responsible for my recent performance, there’s no doubt that luck has played a significant factor in that success. However, let’s look at the arguments for both possibilities.

In favor of the improved play option, there’s the fact that I have made some substantial changes in my approach to the game. Most importantly, I’ve applied some of the Yellow/Orange/Red zone strategies from Harrington on Hold ‘em Vol. II. In the past, I’ve typically had little problem making it to the middle stages of a tournament, but I’ve usually been short-stacked and essentially DOA. Harrington’s concepts have given me a better sense of when and how to press in those situations to put myself in position to get further along. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that my primitive attempts to apply these concepts have turned me into the next WSOP champ, but even my rudimentary understanding has allowed me to see how I had misplayed these situations in the past (and also to recognize just how few players in these low buy-in MTTs have any clue).

In favor of the luck-sack argument is the fact that we’re dealing with a very small sample size here. And I also haven’t seen the same kind of improvements in my SNG results. (Although in all fairness to me, I’ve been a reasonably successful SNG player and a pretty bad MTT player, so the opportunity to make huge improvements in my SNG play is significantly smaller.)

Also weighing in against the actual improvement choice is the fact that my most recent final table was in one of the ridiculous nightly $1 Ultras on UB. For those of you not familiar with those, that means you and 1,200+ of your closest pals playing with 2.5 minute levels. So after the first few levels pretty much everyone plays most of the tournament in the Yellow, Orange or Red zones.

Even playing hand for hand to the final 10, three people busted at once and the final table started with only eight players. The final table was pretty ridiculous. Blinds were 8K/16K with an 800 ante and there were six players in the 200K-300k range along with two short stacks giving the chip leader an effective M of just about 8. If you were one of the six with a playable stack and took the blinds and antes with a raise, you probably took the chip lead for a hand. The short stacks were gone within two hands and we were down to six. I was gone a few hands later and the whole thing was done by 10:00 p.m. CDT; one hour and 20 minutes after it started.

Since an Ultra is your basic crapshoot on steroids, I’m pretty sure that success can’t be firm evidence of any kind of solid play. However, I was smart enough to realize that playing the straight Harrington zone strategy won’t cut it in that kind of schmozz. You can’t just push with any two even first-in in the Red zone, since you are almost always going to get at least one caller and probably more. You have to be a little bit more selective, even if it means you sink a little deeper, but just about everyone else is in the same boat.

I also made the first move to push all-in with a fairly wide range of hands, but I called all-ins very seldom. Usually only when I had the original raiser well outchipped and didn’t have a big stack yet to act behind me. The one exception to this was the final hand, where I had two all-ins in front of me, both with stacks bigger than mine, and picked up AKo. Given what people were pushing with and the fact that I was a worse than a 2-1 dog to only AA or KK, I had to do that. Win and I have a big chip lead with only four players left. Lose and, well, that was 6th place with a payoff of $41. I had a nice match up against a middle pair and a weaker A, but just didn’t match the board. The player that went out with me started the hand with a few more chips and picked up fifth.

Playing better? Probably. There certainly was tons of room for improvement, so that’s not necessarily saying much. Getting lucky? Definitely. Not in a hit-in-the-face-with-the-deck way, but in a hitting-my-draws-when-I-need-them way (frequently with straights, oddly). However, I think I’ve made some of that luck by being aggressive and forcing the other players to react. Still, I’m sure I’ll make the same plays in the coming weeks and won’t have the same level of success.

Whatever the case, it’s been fun!

“Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.”

Ted “Theodore” Logan

Holy Shit!

Just won my first MTT, outlasting 330 opponents in a $10 tournament on Pokerroom to win $825! Unlike my other recent final table, there were plenty of hands that I won by sucking out. For the most part, however, I played aggressively once things got going, made some good calls and some good lay downs, and generally played solid. Time for bed, but this more than erases the Excalibur losses from a couple of weeks ago.

"The New Phone Book's Here!"

Thanks to Al Can't Hang and my first listing on a blog roll, I feel like Navin Johnson, Steve Martin's character in 1979's "The Jerk."

"This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need! My name in print! That really makes somebody! Things are going to start happening to me now."

I expect to see my visit count skyrocket and, in honor of Al, pledge to try SoCo for the first time since an unfortunate incident in—coincidentally—1979.