Tuesday, December 23, 2008

back to the $22s with a nice beginning

I have been playing the $11 Full Tilt 9 mans for about 5 weeks now, even though my bankroll could have stood a higher level. There were a few reasons for this:
  • a poor October and November (both negative ROI months overall)
  • early foray into multi-tabling (and Matrix tourneys)
  • felt like I needed work on ICM endgame strategy.

Well, I have played basically even for the past 100 tourneys, but felt like I was ready to move back up to the $22s, so last night I played a single
$22 tourney, and the results were good - I won the thing. I feel like I played well, with the exception of an AKo that didn't work out so well. In this hand, I called a raise from the blinds instead of reraising - mainly because I had open-raised twice in the past three hands, and I didn't feel like I needed to race for all my chips yet. Plus, the initial raiser was tight - so I felt like if I hit my Ace I could stack him with an AQ/AJ checkraise. Sadly, I missed the flop and just let it go, but did so without too much damage done.

The bubble was an interesting affair - there was one other "experienced" player at the table (around 300 tables played, like me), and a beginner who didn't seem to like having to fold before the flop. In fact, he said as much by typing "overbet" in reply to my shove with AKo and 9 BB left. He said he was dying to call, so I asked "with what?" - to which he replied "Q8, same suit". Oh, please
pleasepleaseplease let me get a hand against this guy...

After awhile, one player pulled away and the other 3 (myself included) were about equal. By then I had targeted the player who wasn't going to call my shove without a monster, and wasn't shoving himself - so I raised his blind for a few orbits and was able to pull away from the other 2 and secure a second place spot. Headsup was uneventful - I started off behind, but won a 40/60 type hand to flip the stacks, then put him away with another 40/60 win. Some marginal luck in my favor, which I'll gladly take - it felt good to add $68 profit to my month.

Tonight is the Thursday night cash game, moved for the holidays...



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well Done! Have a great Christmas!

Bumstead