Awful Day

I played a million tournaments today and made the money in zero. The only one that was looking particularly proimising was the Stars million, but I blew off 80K chips in 2 hands 20 players from the bubble. Both hands involved resteals as usual, though the 2nd was perfectly standard and I just lost a flip. The first was at least slightly crazy but probably not bad overall, however I ran into a big hand. I have to be a little more selective still I think. It seems to me that ideally I should be making my moves earlier before they're expecting them. Once I'm short enough that I'm kinda desperate they're going to call more because they're getting better odds against my shorter stack and they know I have to make a move. It's obviously a very high variance play so I'm going to bust out on them a lot even when picking good situations, but I think I'm doing it a little too much. In particular, I need to stop shoving hands with marginal showdown value like Ax or KJ when it's otherwise a bad situation to resteal because having a few extra % against his range when called doesn't come anywhere close to making up for getting called every time, compared to having a weak hand but in a situation where he's going to fold a large % of the time. Once I get this all balanced I will be a tougher player then ever.

Edit: After consulting my databse and adding numbers in my head: 19 tournaments played, 0 cashes, $4220 in buy-ins. Thinly veiled brag post?

Mike

Every Sunday I lose thousands of dollars

OK every now and then I have a little luck on my side and make a decent score, but in these big field tournaments you're going to lose a lot more often than you win (but your wins occasionally be huge to make up for it). The only tournament I was really doing well in was the $150 8:00 tournament on Full Tilt where I was top 3 for quite a while, but I cooled off to drop back to the pack and then got rivered in a big pot where I was able to get a guy to put all his chips in with 5 outs on the flop. This was my only cash of the day.

Pocket Fives has their new tournament leaderboard up on their site now. It's based on the results of the biggest tournaments from all the main online sites. I've always liked these leaderboards, so getting a dececnt ranking on there will be added to my list of goals, though I definitely don't have the time to play enough to have any chance of competing with the best players. Oh, I finished 4th for $3k Saturday night in a $100 tournament on Full Tilt when I blew a huge chiplead 7 handed on the final table bubble (it was a 6-max tournament). I think I say this every week but I'm really going to have to look at reverting to a more conservative style. More players seem to have figured out how to adjust to the loose aggressive players properly, at least at the higher stakes. At the very least I need to pick my spots more carefully and recognize when to switch gears. There are too many times when I know someone is very likely going to reraise me if I steal or call if I reraise them but I go ahead and make my default play instead of adjusting to the specific situation. When I'm playing well I tend to have a good feel for the flow of the game and I know when people are likely to make certain plays before they do, but I don't use or trust this information enough a lot of the time.

Mike

A couple decent scores

I finished 3rd in the 30r on UB for $2300 and 3rd in the 22r on Stars for $5K last night. I should probably try winning some of these 4-figure in EV coinflips 3 handed next time. Still a pretty good night!

Mike

Attention Grabbing Blog Entry Title

Wow what a roller coaster weekend. This picture should explain what I mean:

The hands on Friday and Saturday went pretty terribly, but as the picture shows, Sunday went more than a little well. At one point I had over $5800 on one table (the most you can buy-in for is $600 but profit stays on the table). I made $6300 on the day for 10.5 buy-ins. Awesome hands include the following:

How not to play AA (my flop call is pretty marginal but I know what he has and I'm pretty sure I can bust him if I get lucky, so the price is about right)

Set over set

Set over bluff

Straight Flush!

Of course I also played a lot of tournaments and despite building several promising stacks I only managed a few small cashes, so I lost a bit back from those. Still, what a sick rush it was. Also, since as a math guy I love these graphs, here's an extra BBV-style commented graph of all holdem hands from all limits in my database, before this weekend.

Mike

Bahamas!

I won my seat in the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure (WPT event) at the Atlantis resort in Bahamas today. I played the $650 supersatellite and after some stressful hours where the shortstacks refused to bust I managed to squeak into one of the last spots. A guy at my table sat out thinking he could fold his way in I guess (or maybe connection problem or something), but he miscalculated slightly. He was sitting out about to blind off in two hands, 19 people were left with 18 receiving seats, so I got to make one of the more interesting folds in poker:

Pocket aces go in the muck

I'll be down there Jan. 4-11. The $12K package includes the $8K buy-in, $1K for travel expense, and the other $3K covers hotel, meals, etc... from what I understand Pokerstars takes care of its satellite winners pretty well at the event. Also, I finished 2nd in a 150+13 tournament on Full Tilt for $7600, so I have some extra money to donk off down there. Maybe I'll write more of a report about these tournaments later if I have the time but I'm gonna call it a night now. Woot!

Mike