But in the end, I know they're going to take me for all I'm worth, and I'll feel good about it.

• My luck has been terrible.
• My ring game skills have gone to hell in a hand basket. (I have yet to shake habit of letting bad luck turn me into The Incredible Dulk (like the Hulk, only more like a Donkey.)
• My bankroll has been bleeding like an extra in a Roger Corman film.

Tournaments have the following characteristics that help me in my time of distress:

• After the first couple of hands, a large percentage of the "wheee!!!" all- in- or- bust- oh- wait- that- should- be- an- "and"- eventually- shouldn't- it? crowd is bitching to themselves about not catching their three-outer, and not ramping up the variance for everyone else.
• Tournaments reward a focus on playing the cards and not the ROI of the cards. Which makes it easier to lay down good hands that are probably winners and focus on looking for hands that are truly solid.
• Tourneys have a built-in stop-loss; you don't make the money, you've lost your buy-in. Period.

And I have been doing very well in tourneys the last few days. In that time I've:

• Finished 22nd in a 12,000 person NLHE Hubble's Hold'em freeroll tourney, earning a ticket to a tourney with a $2,000 prize pool.
• Finished in the top 200 in a 2900 player tourney (play was suspended at that point) to win a ticket to a second qualifier which in itself was a qualifier to a tourney with the prize of a seat at the National Heads-Up Championship.
• Finished 59th (9 away from winning a ticket, dammit) out of 2369 runners in that qualifier.

(Thank you, les4316 and Clemens22, for following the tournament. You both probably brought me luck.)

It's been an active few days, so I didn't take my shot at the Weekly Round 2 today; I'll wait until next weekend to see if I can turn that ticket into real cash. If I play as well then as I have been lately, that's not an unreasonable hope.

Anyway, there'll be a post tomorrow about the bone-headed play that cost me a chance at playing in the National Heads-Up Championship, but I want to publish the last hand I played, and discuss my logic.

Depending on what my duties are to the twins, and whether PhantomWife is sleeping or not, I play on one of three computers in the house. PokerStars software stores "Find a Player" info on the PC, not on the PokerStars server. So I've been keeping notes and such in my Yahoo! notepad. But that's a mess. So I thought, why not on the blog?

Well, one reason not to keep profiles on a public blog is that its kind of rude; I'm basically storing public scouting reports on selected players. (I'm NOT doing this for all players.)

OTOH, considering the kinds of things I want to keep on the types of players I want to remember, I'm getting to be okay with rude.

So, without further ado, here's the first:

Apparently the Poker Gods didn't like that.

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.

PokerStars Game #11886184443: Tournament #60314038, 2000+110 Hold'em No Limit - Level X (400/800) - 2007/09/05 - 12:40:34 (ET)
Table '60314038 3' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: phantommut (21560 in chips)
Seat 7: mdmccormick (45940 in chips)
phantommut: posts the ante 50
mdmccormick: posts the ante 50
phantommut: posts small blind 400
mdmccormick: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to phantommut [Ah 4d]
phantommut: calls 400
mdmccormick: checks
*** FLOP *** [Ac 4h 5s]
mdmccormick: checks
phantommut: bets 800
mdmccormick: calls 800
*** TURN *** [Ac 4h 5s] [7s]
mdmccormick: checks
phantommut: bets 3800
mdmccormick: raises 3800 to 7600
phantommut: raises 12310 to 19910 and is all-in
mdmccormick: calls 12310
*** RIVER *** [Ac 4h 5s 7s] [9h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mdmccormick: shows [Ad As] (three of a kind, Aces)
phantommut: shows [Ah 4d] (two pair, Aces and Fours)
phantommut said, "gack"
mdmccormick collected 43120 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 43120 | Rake 0
Board [Ac 4h 5s 7s 9h]
Seat 1: phantommut (button) (small blind) showed [Ah 4d] and lost with two pair, Aces and Fours
Seat 7: mdmccormick (big blind) showed [Ad As] and won (43120) with three of a kind, Aces

So cold you don't want to stick your tongue on it, that's for sure.

Flop Aces-up, you don't expect your opponent to flop a set of aces, that's for sure.

Earlier in the tourney, I maybe get away from that hand. As is, I think this has to qualify as a "whatchoogonnado?" situation.

Okay, Les Deux Orangs did make an extremely loose call on my all-in on the flop (as have we all) to suck out on me (as has everyone on PokerStars) when he hit his inside straight draw on the turn, making a better straight than the one I flopped.

It's poker. Chit happens.

Anyway, I got mad and acted like a petulant prick, which is a shame considering I'm really happy with the way my game is progressing. (I need to actually sit down and write about what I feel is the significance of my stats profile at some point, but I want to take some time to do it when I have the time, which isn't now.)

Just wanted to note there's more than one way to be a Donkey. A wiser Mutt tries to not do any of them.