I'm Baaaaaaaack. And Deja Vu in the 40k Guaranteed

First of all, continuing with a theme I first posted yesterday, I am officialy Back. I was playing like an absolute jagass for the better part of a week, but last night I officially put an end to my donkplay and came in second place in a $25 turbo sng. The actual profit was only a little over $40, but it's the thought that counts. After playing exclusively MTTs for the past several days, this was my first poker win of any kind since early last weekend, so it means a lot more than the actual cashish does. And plus, the only reason I didn't win the damn thing was because of this stupid dominating bad beat:



so I can't beat myself up over that too much. The point is, I have morphed back from donkey to man, after spending a week playing basically every 84o and T2o that came to me and not giving anyone credit for anything they would be willing to call my maniacal bets with. Ahh it was fun while it lasted, but being back to playing winning poker is a great place to be.

Secondly, while enjoying my newfound non-donkness on Thursday night, I had a horrible case of deja vu, of the worst possible kind of event having happened to me before. You will recall my recent post about how I lost in this week's Wednesday night Mookie tournament in the 14th hand of the tourney on this setup:



Well, last night after a quick IM chat with Surflexus, we both decided to make a run at the 40k guaranteed tournament on partypoker at 10:20pm ET. This is a tournament in which I have cashed a few times before, and ultimately it is the largest of the non-rebuy nightly guaranteed tourneys (more than twice as big as any other nightlies in fact) at anywhere near its buyin level. Things started off ok as I chipped up about 15% over the first 10 or 15 hands with a few well-timed bluffs, steals and maybe even some good cards or two thrown in just for fun. I was dealt Kings early and hit a King on a flop that also included an Ace, and I managed to grab another 1700 chips or so on that one play alone. Then, with just over 5000 in chips only 29 hands into the tournament, I actually won with the Hiltons!



Literally, the first time I can remember my Queens holding up in any meaningful way in at least several months, if not longer. Ever maybe. Effing biatches. Anyways, this hand got me up over 8400 chips, and into the top 20 out of over 1700 players remaining at the time (2421 entrants overall), and nearly twice the tournament average, and it was off to the races. I was back to playing well, I had accumulated a nice stack through smart play, and I could smell the cash coming as we crossed the threshold where less than 2/3 of the original field remained in the tournament. Just seven minutes after my chipup with the Hiltons, this hand happened, when I was not expecting it in the least:



Can you believe it? Knocked out of two MTTs in two consecutive days by my KK running into AA? In the Mookie, it was early in the tournament, such that I was left knowing that I never had a real chance in that thing because this was destined to happen on hand #14. In the party 40k last night, however, my preordained destruction did not occur until hand #39, and not until I had recorded several solid wins and made several solid poker plays to get where I was, into the top 30 out of 1600+ players remaining, and even then it had to happen with someone who was one of the half a percent of players then in the tournament who actually had more chips than I. So just like that, in the span of about 2 or 3 seconds (literally!), I go from thinking about what the 10k+ in cash for first prize will look like when I lay it all out on my bed, to IGMFH. Two days in a row. Effing rigged I tell you.

For those of you who don't already know, the next WPBT POY event has been set up for this weekend, Sunday night at 9:30pm ET to be exact. Check out Byron's site for the details, as always, and be sure to be there to play. Currently I'm in 47th on the wpbt leaderboard, which is incredible given how donkeyish I've played in these events for the most part. But then I look at the people ahead of me on the list, and I know I'm better than most of you, so....