Friday, November 30, 2007

Day before big tourney.....

Well it is Friday and I have been looking forward all week to tomorrow. At 10AM the year end championship tournament for La Rue starts. I haven't really been looking forward to it because I think I will win it or cash in it, I have been just very anxious to play deep stack poker. I will be starting with 34000 in chips.... and the blinds start at just 5 / 10!! I am one of the top 15 stacks out of about 165 players so I am looking forward to trying a slightly different style than I normally play. Will have a report early next week.

Also played in my usual micros and freerolls..... not much luck. Cashed in the $1 and 0.50 MTTs on Stars...barely. LOL Sucking bigtime at the SNGs except I did make final table of the .050 / 50 man SNG on UB. And also just missed twice in the freerolls on FullTilt... Razz and Holdem..... 70th and 71st. They pay out top 27. There were two hands in Razz that on 4th I seriously thought I should lay down even though I knew I would have a low... just not low enough. Those two hands were the difference... I probably would have made the money. And I have no money on that site and am trying to win money in the freeroll and see what I can actually work it into.

Well , back to work. A good weekend to all.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Donkey into decent freeroll finish....

Wow.... been awhile since I have posted...

Anyways... I finally broke the freeroll curse on Stars. I qualified for the weekly $2k. I have played many of the Freeroll Qualifiers (Eddington's, Hubble's, Haley's, Copernicus'....etc.) and go deep many times but almost always come up short. They recently changed their payout structure from 24 and 27 to 88 and 99! Course that helped some. LOL
I actually qualified in a Stud H/L game which isn't my strongest game to say the least. One player got upset with a couple of raises I had done but I had a ton of chips and decent draws.... oh well.... I typed F R E E R O L L in the chat window to get my point across. I wasn't just pushing chips... had decent drawing hands.

I have played a decent number of other micro buy in games lately. Haven't done all that well. Did final table $2 MTT on UB. Didn't make much as I went out 6th (134players)

I continue to do well Stars 10fpp $500 freeroll @ 19:40 (7:40 PM EST). I have a cash rate of about 60% of the time on it and actually made it to 26th place the other night. Deepest I think I have ever gone in that tourney. Still only got $0.85 LOL.

Well for all the bad beats I ever complain about I now have one to think about that is perhaps the worst I have ever seen.

Buddy of mine is in a MTT online and has one limper in midposition about 2/3 of the way through the field. Hero has AA in the cutoff and raises pot 4.5xbb. Blinds fold and limper calls. Flop comes AKK (rainbow). Limper shoved ai (and is covered by my buddy's stack). My buddy thinks for a minute but figures it can't possibly be KK as the player never reraised preflop. So he calls. Limper shows 44. Now my buddy is a 99.8% favorite. That is right, he is only .1% to tie(runner runner KK) and .1% to lose. Of course the turn is a 4. He is still a 97.3% favorite to win the hand! River is a 4. Riverstars strikes again. But it was really Runner Runner Stars. This was way worse than any one outter an idiot has hit on me. Mainly because it is such a bad play on the limper with 44. His play makes it obvious he doesn't have AK or KK, at least normal players would try to trap if they had those hands. Granted sometimes you shove to make it look like a bad play but 90% of the time players are going to trap with either hand.
So I now try to think about this hand when I get sucked out on...... but I still managed to bitch about my "badbeat". LOL

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Live Tourny Tries

Well after the long weekend of freerolling... with little success (LOL)... I decided to try a couple of live tournies.
First was a $50 tourney with 26 players. Usually run pretty good at the club with a good record of cashes but bubbled this time. Bad play on my part as I put it all in with AQs figuring the original raiser had a mid pocket pair. Didn't get lucky to beat his 9s. I should have waited as there was at least one shorter stack but there had been 3 short stacks but they kept on doubling up.
Next was a tourney on Sunday that I had been looking forward to. It is one that is part of a series that is held for a 12 month period. Part of the entry fee ($50) is withheld for a year end tournament that only those that make the final 10 of a tournament are eligible for. So I was looking to get some more points towards that tourney. Each place earns points that at the end of the year tourney you get $1000 in chips for each point. Normal chip stack is $2000 starting. Started with 140 players, first hand flopped a set and lost just over $400 on the hand when river put up 4 hearts and 4 to a str8. Played tight for next two hours and stayed about even... blinded down a bit. Started hitting a few hands when we were down to 5 tables... about 3 hours in. Accumulated a few chips to get down to 2 tables but still was in the bottom third of stacks. Was patient and made it to the final table probably in 8th place out of 11. Ended up going out in 5th place... on a hand I normally would have folded UTG. Damn AJs... tried to make a move and ran into AK and QQ, both of them in the blinds and 1st and 3rd stacks! I fold preflop I finish 4th. Got 8 points now for a grand total of 32. I check the list of qualifiers before the tourney and there were only 13 people with 30 or more points and only 33 with 20 or more out of a total of 160 qualifiers. Only one more tourney to go means there will be no more than 177 players to play in the year end tourney which will have about a $20,000 prize pool.
Also played in the usual $20 Tuesday tourney, they had 123 players. Didn't have any hands to play early and just before break I committed 40% of my stack calling a preflop raise with 88 feeling that I had the original raiser beat as I have played against her many times and she only min raised also. This allows the bb to call and he flopped two pair. I went out about 20 minutes later. Pretty much blinded out. But as usual lately, was my own bad play that hurt me.
And of course still been playing tons of freerolls online. LOL I have played 101 freerolls since Oct 1 and have been in the top 5% of 35 of them. But still that isn't good enough in most of them as most pay out less than top 1%. Also haven't been doing very good at the cash tournies online lately either.... but I don't feel I have been playing very well.

GL to all at the tables.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

UB Freeroll Deep again......

Once again went deep in one of UB's $1k freeroll qualifiers, 97th out of 5003.
Tourney started at 7:30 PM EST and it was getting late and I was short stacked (bottom 5 players) so I decided to limp with 6s UTG+1 and go for it no matter if it was raised or not. The raise was for 75% of my stack to like 6900 from the player to my left.... fairly decent player but with a pretty good stack. Player in mp calls 45% of his stack off, maybe even 50%. So a little worried but don't put him on a made hand because he didn't reraise. Just the 3 of us to the flop. Flop is 5,10,10 rainbow. I go ai with about 3600. Now know this really isn't enough to move anyone but I didn't put either of them on a made hand. I did think that perhaps one might have A10 but I was willing to risk it and at least figured I had 2 outs. Original raiser amazingly folds!! Folds for only 3600 more into a 20,000 something pot. And the next player only had maybe 8000 left. Was shocked as the original raiser had about 50k in chips still. Anyways, the mp player ended up calling. He had 10c5c!!!! I was drawing dead. I could have dealt with it if it had been A10.... maybe even Q10 or K10. Still fairly bad plays but I could have lived with any of those hands...... but 105!!!!! wow... oh well it was bed time anyways.... 11:30PM.

High Stakes Poker (HSP) $500,000 buy in......

So did anyone watch it last night?
So many people are talking about Doyle's lay down when he had the best hand. They are shocked that he did that.
I think they are failing to take in all the play that has transpired between Doyle and Gold on HSP. I feel Doyle has a very good read on Gold, especially when he is bluffing or weak. Previous hands have mostly shown that. Now many would then say: Why couldn't he make the correct read last night then? ........
The main reason is he made the right read! Gold played the hand the way he did because in his mind he had the best hand. He never once thought Doyle could have him beat. He played it like he had the nutz for the hand because in his mind he did. So there was no bluff there to pick up on. Doyle read Gold for having the best hand... because the hand played out that way.

I did something similar in the past..... but it cost me most of my chips in a tournament.
During a 30 man tournament at a friends home, I played a pair of 6s in late position. Got very lucky and flopped a set. On the flop (K,10,6 rainbow) EP player bets 3/4 of the pot. He didn't look back at his hand. Fairly solid player but one I knew couldn't get away from decent pair decent kicker. Next mp player, looks back at his hand... thinks for a little while and calls. Now I know this player fairly well also and put him on top pair but not so great kicker. I chose to raise here..... Seems strange but I get drawn out on all the time. I raise the pot about 2x the pot. Next lp player folds..... original better just calls, still not looking back at his cards. Next player looks at me and smiles and lays down his hand. He knows me too well. So the turn comes up and it is a 9 (if I remember correctly it was still rainbow). But I can tell the ep player likes that card.... he has picked up a draw. So he bets out like a third of the pot. I put him on the draw and a pair. So I figure I better move all in at this point. I reraise over $8000 more and I have him covered. Now he is stunned at this and sits there and stairs at me for awhile. I told him I have the best hand but he can try to draw. He sits and things a while longer. Then he decides to look back at his cards. He jumps when he looks and goes "Oh I call". He had QJ. River was a 2. He thought he had KQ and that is why he took so long. So I actually made the right read on the player based on what he thought he had!!! Just too damn bad he wasn't smart enough to remember his cards correctly!

Doyle laid down because his read on Gold was that Gold had the best hand because that is what Gold thought. Doyle had a good read on him....... Gold just didn't know he was losing and drawing dead if Doyle called.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Freeroll Friday Night....... and Sunday

Been trying for awhile to make it to the payouts on UB in their freeroll qualifiers to the Sun $1k freeroll. Gotten close many times (41st, 56, 119...) but couldn't quite break that 30 place payout list. I ended up playing 11 freerolls on Friday night on UB and another 6 freerolls on PokerStars. LOL By 6 AM(Sat) I had finally got knocked out of one UB tourney in 25th place and qualified!!! Most of the fields were in the 4000-5000 player range. Smallest one was 3800+. Also cashed in the $500 10fpp on Stars as usual (I cash about 70% of the time in it but usually just barely get into the money which means like 20 or 30 cents).
Sunday came and I had stayed up all night again playing live at the local Vegas Nights here in Columbus. Was stuck most of the night playing 10/20 limit. Really couldn't afford to lose..... and got lucky towards 4 AM and started to pull out of it. Walked out a decent winner... nothing huge. But I needed that win as I haven't been able to win at limit poker in my last 8 or 9 sessions! That gets very demoralizing after the first 5 sessions.
Anyways, back to online....... so after not getting much sleep on Saturday night I got up by 11:30 to run some errands and to get something to eat before the tourney started (1:15PM EST). Ended up going fairly deep into it (top 25%) but played like the Superfish that I am and ended up going out around 887 (if my memory serves me correctly) out of over 4000. Course only top 30 paid. Would have been nice to crack that one. But I did enter into the $2k 50fpp on Stars later that day..... ended up getting 4th out of 2300+ players!!! First final table I can remember in a long time.

Friday, November 2, 2007

First Post

Well figured I would try this blogging thing. Actually hoping no one reads it as I think it will end up being fairly dull. More to the point, mostly whining by me about my bad beats. LOL
I am a fairly tight nit stuck playing low limts in both NLHE and LHE. And the occasional O8b and Razz game. I have no bankroll to speak of but have been playing for 5 years. So the poker economy of central Ohio has benefited from my full time employment. LOL