So, a lot of water passed, er, under the bridge since last post.
I managed to take my play money account at PokerStars busto twice in the six months. Mostly playing at tables with stupid variance late at night stupidly.
I'm beginning to understand why people play slots. It's disturbing that (a) it happens and that (b) I seem to be susceptible to the urge. I must stop doing that.
Live playing has been non-existent until recently. Not Dawn Summers has re-instituted the monthly Crackhouse Tourneys of late. Played in both the most recent. Bubbled the first, hit the lowest money spot in the second.
In both cases I played tight early, using position on occasion to pick off blinds, and waiting until near the money to shift gears into more creative play. It's a pattern that has worked well for me.
A couple of notable hands:
From the May tourney, I'll quote NDS herself:
Four handed took forever.
I was trying to stay out of pots, because, as you all know, I am a three handed specialist. Me no know from four handed. Instead, I ended up calling a standard raise from phantommut in the BB when he was SB because I thought he was just stealing. I had Q7 and flop was Q75. He checked, I pushed. He insta called and showed pocket queens.
Awesome.
She later busted me on the bubble when I tried to push her off pocket fours while I held AQ off, I couldn't, and she turned another superfluous four while my AQ didn't improve.
In the June tourney, I was down to about a quarter of my starting stack after being generally card dead and insta-mucking too many middling suited connectors that flopped air when I caught pocket aces in the big blind. The table limps around to the small blind (something like five runners) when the small blind bets what was about 400 (eight times the 50 big blind). I just call, leaving me with 200 chips.
Someone makes the brilliant observation that I was now pretty much pot committed.
Anyway, two others tag along for grins and giggles. An ace lands on the flop (Ax Kx 8x). Small blind goes all in. My chips beat his into the pot. The two other runners call (!).
My top set holds up for a nice quadruple-plus-dead-blinds. Whee! (Small blind busts out with AK.)
After that I go into chip accumulation mode, and manage to bust another couple of players out of the tourney before the original two tables are consolidated to one, arriving with one of the bigger stacks in the tourney. Again, I started off tight, stole some blinds when the time seemed right, but was losing ground to the average, when I went into “Mut, he's crazy” mode on a hand. Again, here's NDS:
Then came the biggest hand of the night. I don't remember the action until Alceste said "all-in" on a board of Ks5dJs Ah. Phantom was thinking. He had Alceste slightly outchipped, but they were the huge chip leaders. Everyone got quiet. This was essentially the tournament. Mut says "I know you have AK. But I have a five and two spades. So any five or spade makes me a winner." He takes a breath says let's play poker and flips his 4s5s face up on the table. I'm not sure what it means.
"Is that a call?"
"Yeah."
Ok. Alceste has KQ.
I burn and deal the final card.
8s.
Phantom is now overwhelming chipleader.
Well, she's wrong about the board. It was more like Ks 5d 8s Ad. I know that because I had 5s 6s (not 4s 5s as reported) for the flush draw with a backdoor straight draw on the flop. (Yeah, the backdoor straight draw was very backdoor, but it was there.) I had limped in, so there were three runners at the flop. Alceste bet something like half pot, I called, the third person ducked out, we see the Ace come on the turn. Alceste instantly goes all-in.
What I said was more like “Let's assume you have AK.” (Actually, all I was sure of was that he had a King.) Even assuming AK at the time of the flop, my hand would have still been a slight favorite. After the turn it would be something like a four- or- five-to-one dog. But I knew he didn't have a flush draw (the king killed it) and he couldn't have a straight draw. Since I discounted the idea that he had a set (limped on the big blind) the worst case scenario was AK for two pair, and the big re-raise was to push me off either of the flush or straight draws on the board.
I think Dawn is also wrong that we were huge chipleaders at that point and wrong about how many more chips I had than Alceste; had I lost, I would have still had chips to play, and both my available buy-ins, and frankly I felt what was coming. So I gambled, and a flush finally worked for me.
After that, the Poker Gods did their taketh away thing, and the next decent hand I saw was the AJ that busted me out of the tourney in fourth. Massive chip leader in the small blind raises my standard raise from the cutoff, I re-pop all in, she calls with Queens. (It was a dumb move; she'd been playing very tight aggressive and busting people left and right showing the nuts. But I was in get-lucky-or-go-home mode, because at least two of the three other players left were obviously better than me.) My AJ doesn't improve, she gets a bonus Queen on the turn (sound familiar?) and that's all she wrote.
But I came home with $90 more than I left with, so I'm a happy dog.