It feels like I've been kicked in the groin repeatedly

Today was the best Sunday I've had in a long time, I doubt I've ever gone deep in as many tournaments in one day as I did today. But it was the same story that's been happening every time to me lately, things just didn't go well when I got down to two tables. I final tabled the $530 tournament on Party but busted 9th for $1100. I went pretty deep in the $100 massive overlay $150K guaranteed tourney on Mansion before shoving all-in with 53o to win the blinds not realizing there was an UTG raise because the chip was almost the same colour as the felt in the interface, which is still a completely stupid thing to do, and I busted 35th when his AK sucked out on me. Next was the Full Tilt 750K Guaranteed, where I ran 88 into QQ to leave me with 400 chips at the 300/600 level. 90 mins later I had 50K, well above average in the money, but my cinderella run ended in 150th or so when I finally lost a race. Next up was the UB $530 tournament, again I made the final table, with a solid stack this time, but I made a small mistake that cost me a few chips, and then got busted when my AK was unable to hold vs AT on the river. Alright, well at least I have a few tournaments left I guess and I happen to be doing reasonably well in them.

The Full Tilt $150 buy-in was a roller coaster where I had a huge stack early, then donked it off, and then grinded my way back. In the end my AKs was no match for an opponent's Q2o (on the river yet again) in a pot that would have given me an average stack with 15 left. Nonetheless, I was running so good in the early part of tournaments today that I had yet another chance to make that big score. My last tournament of the day as usual was the Stars $200 rebuy, and it's a pretty big one. As we got close to the money, which was the final 3 tables in this case, I finally started to pick up some hands and by the time we got down to 15 players I was in the middle of the pack. Anyways we'll proceed to bustout hand I'll at least talk a little strategy because so far this entry is just me whining.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1740682

So it folds to me in the SB with 55. The effective stacks are around 21xBB deep, so against a good aggressive player like roothlus if it comes down to it I'm almost certainly going to have to play for my whole stack, my hand is just too strong to allow myself to get pushed off of in this situation. However, with so many short stacks still in and approaching the final table I'd prefer to play the hand in such a way as to avoid a big coinflip, but without forcing myself into a spot where I'm getting the worst of it. The standard play would just be to raise, and if he moves in on me I'm not happy about it but I'd have to call since there would be dead money in the pot and his range would be pretty wide. If he shows up with a bigger pair it's just unlucky. The problem with this is if he just calls I'm in the awkward spot of playing 55 out of position in a pot that is already big, or if he decides to move in on me as a bluff he's still going to accidentally only be a coinflip most of the time. So I feel the superior play I made was to limp. A lot of players will raise this limp with an extremely wide range of hands, and then I can move in on him putting the ugly decision back on him, and often just picking off a steal attempt. Of course if he ends up calling it's probably still a coinflip, and if he has a bigger pair I was likely destined to go broke anyways. If he checks behind I have a pair in a small pot where I have more room to maneuver. Of course as it turns out he did have the bigger pair and busted me in 12th.

In the end I probably made around $3K today I guess, too lazy to add it up right now. Oh well, so Thursday I head to Vegas which I'm obviously looking forward to. With any luck I'll break out of my tournament slump at just the right time for the bigger tournaments there. And of course that means more frequent and likely more interesting blog entries for you as well.

Mike