PhantomMut

Lately I've been playing more tournaments, for three primary reasons:

• 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.

So, my playing schedule has been erratic the last two months (holidays, changing schedules with the kids, etc.) but for a while I was on a terrific run, so much so that I sold a million play chips for cash.

Apparently the Poker Gods didn't like that.

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.

This time, that would be me.

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.

Okay, stats from last night:

Extreme roller-coaster action in my on-line play for a while now has led me to dread actually posting.

But maybe my feet are solidly underneath me now, so a post is possibly in order. Besides, the things you want to forget are most often the ones you shouldn't.

Two weeks without a Crackhouse run. My hands are shaking....

Okay, not really. But I am looking forward to Wednesday night. Although I shouldn't go.....

Two weeks ago I felt like I was getting sick, so I stayed home and did get sick. Blech.

Last week I was still getting over the flu-ey thing, and Liz wasn't feeling well, so "no Crackhouse for you!"

This week I want to go, but my company has been missing payroll (!) and I'm not sure that budgeting to blow ~$100 is a really good idea right now.

We'll see if my employer can pay me what I'm owed from last check, and what I'm owed on this one, on Wednesday. If not, my Crackhouse habit may have to be kicked, or at least put on hiatus. There be babies on the way.

Which leaves PokerStars and play money.

Let's start with some really bad play by Da Mut.

Update 2/22: But first first....

The player in question told me he's not the player I questioned below the fold. Roger, apologies, but the doppelganger thing has some negative consequences....

Back to the original post....

On PokerStars, in the cutoff holding 89 off-suit. UnderTheGun opens betting with two thousand PSD. SexySnaky (not her real name; solid player, a bit passive pre-flop) calls, as does one other before me. It's a family pot, and I've got one of those hands that can get paid nicely if it hits, so I call.

Button folds, small blind folds, big blind folds, so the pot has something like nine thousand PSD in it.

Flop is 89K rainbow. Score!

Checks around to me, I bet pot. UnderTheGun and SexySnaky call. I figure UTG is being DUMB, but SexySnaky worries me. Pot is now something like 26,000 PSD.

Turn is the Ace of diamonds, putting two diamonds on the board.

SexySnaky goes all in, having me barely covered.

My spidey sense is absolutely zinging. It's one of those "I know I'm beat" things, but I could not put her on a hand, and there's a lot of money in the pot, maybe she's just got aces and a nut flush draw, and I flopped two pair, dammit, and, and, and,....

So I duck into a phone booth, put on the outfit, and out comes Dutch My Inner Donkey. I call.

SexySnaky shows pocket kings. The only way I could have won after the flop was runner-runner 8s or 9s to make quads. By the time I called her all-in I was drawing absolutely dead.

Of course, if I'd stopped to think about what I could actually beat that might have elicited her bet, as opposed to worrying about being bluffed, that should have been the easiest lay-down in the history of the universe. I couldn't beat Aces up. Couldn't beat a set. The logical hand for her to have at that point was AK, which nukes me only slightly less thoroughly than what she held. But I called anyway.

That was quite possibly the worst hand of poker I have ever played.

Aside: After slow-playing the kings to perfection, I have no idea why SexySnakey decided she needed to go all-in there; any rational player (and I think she has me as a rational player, because we have taken each other's chips in the past) folds 99% of the time to that raise, with a 1% chance of calling with a total brain fart. Maybe she had me on A8 or A9, and thought I'd caught two pair on the turn, and maybe she was worried I might catch a river ace for a winning boat. If she had me on holding pocket aces then going all-in when the ace hit the turn would have been butt-stupid, because she would then be pushing with one out, and I don't think she's stupid. So I'm perplexed in retrospect.

Bottom line: a donkalicious time was had by all.

But I'm not (and SexySnakey certainly isn't) the Joker referred to in the title.

Crackouse Monday.

I don't want to talk about it.

But before I don't talk about it, props to Ari for hitting a steel wheel tonight. First straight flush I've seen in the real world. Got paid off on it too.

Another Crackhouse night, another win. I netted just shy of $60. Woo hoo!

The evening didn't start well. I hadn't slept much Tuesday night, so I was tired and emotionally drained by the very good news from the anatomical ultrasound. I got such a rush seeing the PhantomTwins that by last night I'd kind of lost steam.

"So, you won again?" - Dawn

"You sound so surprised." - Mut

So, December (actually starting right before Thanksgiving) has been suck-out-the-Mut month.

In that time, I'm actually up about $20 in online dollars. In PSD I'm now down a cool million from my high water mark of 4.2M.

Quite a bit was from bad play. Quite a bit of that bad play was the direct result of Cooler hands.

I've been meaning to write a post about the holes in my game (which seem to be increasing in number and magnitude) but literally didn't know where to start.

Well, I'm still not up for the complete task, but in the meantime read this about my most recent Crackhouse game.

In the comments I wrote this about my mega-tilt meltdown:

Played some very stupid poker and won those hands. Played some heady poker and lost a bundle. Not good for developing a solid, steady poker game, but probably a good experience nonetheless.

(A good experience is often something you hope has slapped you hard enough so you have the sense not to experience it again.)

Playing smart and losing is just... going.... to.... happen. Worse is playing stupid and winning, because it makes dealing with the smart/losing stuff that much harder.

Unfortunately, more on the holes thing later....

The books all say (or it's said that they say - I've only read one) that game selection is an important part of maximizing your EV.

What they really mean is you don't want to play at a game where you're going to get your ass handed to you on a silver platter.

Oh, sure, you can play under your potential, playing, say, play money games when you're ready to play for real cash. Since I play poker for fun, that doesn't really apply to me so much.

Quick status update, and a few notes:

• The Dime tourneys at PokerStars are like crack.
• In one of said Dime/Crack tourneys:
  • Holding pocket 10s, stack size at roughly 4000, blinds at 50/100, in early position, I open betting with 400.
  • Folds around to a late position caller with something like 2200 in chips, who calls.
  • blinds fold.
  • Flop is QQ2 rainbow.
  • I go all in.
  • Insta-call -- Mut has just bet into trip Queens, Ace kicker!
  • ...which evolves into Queens full of Aces!
    
    I still don't know whether my play was awesome but unlucky or simply stupid. (Numbers may be wildly innacurate, but ratios are correct.)
    
    
• After that, my tourney life was exciting and brief.
• $.01/.02 cash tables are tight.
• $.01/.02 cash players are either weak fish, or absolute sharks.
• If it isn't clear by now, I prefer the $.05/.10 tables.
• It's good to take a bad beat from a fish sitting directly to your right. Call his crap with good cards, and benefit from the entire table trying to cash in.
• Quads still stalk me; Les Deux Orangs dropped quads on my boat last night, and another player hit them in a hand I got away from on the turn.
• Oh, and I had a hand in an early PSD session where my 7c 9c turned into a straight flush on the flop, and I earned bubkus. Played it as slow as I could, and the designated donator still folded on the river -- only won about 4000 with it.

Bankroll status: 3.94M PSD, 50.75 USD

A lot of stuff happening in the mut's life of late. My mind's not been focused on my poker, and it's shown in my play (and, of course, in my bankroll).

Maybe the bad running is over for now. PhantomWife slipped into slumber and I slipped off to the kitchen to play a couple of hours of poker. Finished up 150K PSD on the evening.

Why I think the bad running may be over is that I actually hit a couple of up-and-down straight draws, had a top-pair/top-kicker with a nut flush draw actually turn into the flush, etc. In other words, things broke my way on multiple occasions.

But of course, I lost twice with boats to quads.