Blogger
Well, since I played in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!, I feel pretty much obligated to write up a performance evaluation.
One word: eh.
Only played four significant hands. Early in the tourney a player who got himself short-stacked raised it up on my big blind with a four-times-the-blind bet, which I called with 8T suited on principal. The flop was something like King Ten Nine, and I bet half-pot, he goes over-the-top all-in, and I call assuming he's missed. Well, he hadn't missed; he had KJ, the Jack on the turn gave him two pair, and the Seven on the river gave DonkeyMut a healthy stack early and the other guy a pretty good bad-beat story.
I was soon shortstacked again when someone pushed their pocket Sevens into my pocket Queens. I went all in when the flop came 67T with two spades, he instacalls, and I'm a saaaaaad rottweiler.
After stealing some blinds and smacking down some would-be stealers of mine, I was back up to nearly my starting stack (but seriously short-stacked relative to average) when a shorter stack pushed into my pocket Kings (which was only the second quality hand I during the entire tourney) with AK. I fade the remaining Aces and make it past the second break.
Busted out after being massively card dead for, like, forever, when some new guy to my table raised big his fourth hand in a row in front of me, and I pushed back, going all-in with KQ off. By that point I had 17k in chips, average stack was around 40k, blinds and antes were 1000/500/75, and I figured I was probably up against an average hand and he'd fold, because no one had challenged him to that point. If he didn't fold, I figured I was favored or in a coinflip situation.
But no. Push monkey had caught pocket Aces. Mut goes down! Mut goes down!
Bottom line, out of 1337 entrants, I finished at 395. Besides for an inexcusable donkey moment early on (which worked out well for me, of course) I was pretty happy with my play considering the cards I was getting. I might have picked a better hand on which to make my stand, and I might have noticed that instead of his usual raise of 4000 chips PushMonkey had raised 5000 on the last hand (but even then, that could be read as a sign of weakness relative to his other, uncontested hands) but, as they say, I was playing to win and was getting to the point where I was running out of fold equity. Just picked a bad hand on which to semi-bluff.
A final note: I recognized exactly one player I played with as a poker blogger I actually read. Nice to meet you Drizz, and someday when I have money and the attention span of at least a lower primate I hope to play with you again.