Came home nearly dead even from the Thursday night game - left with $80, came home with $81. I was down $25 in 45 minutes - it seemed like I was wearing a T-Shirt that read "please checkraise me" because everyone got in on the fun. I was playing solid, tight poker, hitting pairs and such and getting checkraised off of them.
With only $15 on the table, Tony made a raise on my small blind. I had AJo and decided to shove over him. He looked a little annoyed at me and tossed his hand away, saying "I don't need to race for $15". He also said "this isn't a tourney". I replied, "well, I know, but if I call your $4, I have $11 left in a $10 pot. What do I do then?" I found out later he had AQ.
I realized shortstacking wasn't the way to go on this table, so I bought back in for $40 more. This loosened me up to make a few moves and play some more interesting hands, like limping into multiway pot with JTs and such. I was able to work my way back to even, which left me ecstatic.
Online play continues to be a disaster. I was tired after trick-or-treating with the kids tonight, and my online confidence is at its nadir, so I logged into Poker Academy to wager fake-money-PAX instead of real loot. I soon found out that my online luck followed me from full tilt onto my old site. I was chip leader for awhile on a 10 man table when I got AA in against AK, but the makeup hand came soon after when I limped in with KQ, hit two pair on a JQK board, got someone to put it in with AQ, and watched them hit their straight on the turn with a T. Got my money in good once again, about 75%, leaving opponent drawing to 6 outs, but one of them came.
Later, while 4 handed, I saw that same person hit a ten on the river to save their ass with another Ace high straight against someone with a better hand when they got their money in. That hand would have knocked them out of the tourney, putting me into the (fake) money. Instead, I was the shortstack and got knocked out on the next hand, as I make my ICM shove with J-crap, but (of course) someone has a decent ace and makes the call, knocking me out on the bubble.
October is over - I suffered my first official negative online month, and it was a bad one - down $229 for a -31% ROI. Ouch. Of course, at the rate I play (only about 40 tourneys a month), the sample sizes are so small that I could have turned this number around by having a 2 or 3 of my bubbles turn into first place finishes. It's really that simple. You can't really chalk this "downswing" up to bad play, although I did review my play and find a couple of problems (one of which I mentioned in a prior post, overplaying small pairs). This is mostly simple variance - the poker gods having fun with me, testing my resolve and so forth.
I am amazed at the 2+2 forum guys - they had an "October results" thread today, and people post their numbers. The first guy in the thread stated that he played 1187 SNGs in October. That's nearly 40 tourneys per day. Sweet Zombie Jesus, that's a lot of poker. My goal for next year is to get my own tourneys up to over 100 per month, mostly by multitabling (and maybe by playing more).
To contrast, my live play for October was much better, with my second place finish in the 53 man tourney - I ended up $403 richer there, so my October net is +174. Ok, fine, I'll take my net positive month and move on.
7 months ago
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