Another Big Showing in the Stars $10 MTT

May has started off well for me so far in the online poker world, as this past Saturday night saw me stay up until 3:20am in a $10 MTT that I entered on pokerstars. The tournament was the regular nightly 10:40pm ET $10 buyin event, and this particular one had 1083 players entered all-told. I liked it because, while I took a few bad beats in key places, I also laid a few ugly beats on people, which -- I admit it -- I fuckin love to do.

Things started off well for me in the cards department, as I used two pocket Aces during the first 55 minutes of the tournament to win me significant chips both times and each time eliminate another solid stack in so doing. First there was this one, which is just karma repaying me for the fuckage I received over the past few weeks being on the other end of this exact scenario:



And then a little later, against a much more fishy move from a guy with a decent-sized stack at the time:



This last one vaulted me into 18th place out of 554 remaining players shortly before the end of the first round, and I was off to the races from there. Playing the way that I play, giving me a huge stack early is often trouble for the rest of the field, even though in this one I was determined to learn my lesson from the Sox's and the Waffles of the world and play with a little less unbridled aggression than I might otherwise have done. From this point, I was in 22nd place at the end of Round 1, which I ran up even more on this hand when yet another fish pushed in with too weak a starting hand and on a fairly short stack, with five players yet to act behind him:



Then came my first big suckout of the night. This hand:



turned into this hand:



I mean, what do you even say to that? As my readers know, I have a policy to never, ever apologize to anyone for any beat I lay on them. #1 this happens against me probably a good ten times more often than it occurs in my favor, and #2, I did have around 3 "adjusted outs" here with 5 cards to come, which means I'll win in this situation around one in 7 times or so if my math is correct. Anyways, I was loving every minute of this, and it allowed me to jump back up to 23rd out of 222 remaining players, and I ended Round 2 in 20th place out of 178 left, already into the cash which began at spot #198, using the reCOCKulous "20% payout structure" that the fish so love at pokerstars.

Round 3 began early on with me hitting another glorious river suckout against a guy who reraised me allin preflop from his Big Blind but gave off the vibe of clearly not wanting a call, so I gave him his call with my A8s, and then out came the board:



As we got down to the final 35 or 40 players or so, another huge stack at my table went ahead and called my allin raise with this hand, which I still don't understand given his position at the time:



Although this was only about a 51% shot for him preflop, I did spike the winner again at the river (!):



but he had business playing that hand in the first place so I shed no tears for that guy with the huge stack that he had. It was definitely NOT the time for him to push it all in on a clear race situation at best for him (what, did he think I was raising with pocket twos?), so he got what he deserved, and I rocketed up to first place with 142 players remaining.

Now my luck started to turn somewhat, as this hand:



turned into this hand on the turn, costing me about 30% of my stack:



Can you believe this guy reraised me allin preflop with friggin JTo? Unfrigginreal.

But luckily, winning another pure race situation got me right back up near the top of the leaderboard:



leading to me entering the third break in 4th place out of 50 players left. About 20 minutes into Round 4, down to just three tables left, this hand took in a huge pot for me when my opponent folded after reraising me to 21,000 preflop (which I called of course):



Although this aggressive move landed me in 5th place out of 27 remaining, much of the gain was quickly erased however when my AQ ran into AK and I doubled up a guy across the table from me. However, continuing with the roller coaster that was this tournament for me, shortly later I soared to new chip heights after I actually won a big hand with the fucking Hilton bitches (netting me 7th place out of 22 remaining):



and I eventually headed into break #4 in 6th place with 15 remaining, and in good shape to make my first final table of the month of May.

Unfortunately, the poker gods weren't so into that idea. Shortly into Round 5, I lost with AQ to KK:



and then, a few hands later I moved in with a bottom-three stack preflop with A8o and ran into another monster:



and IGH in 11th place overall out of 1083 entrants, a very solid performance despite only returning $100 for my efforts. And more importantly, I tried hard to play a bit less aggressively than I might otherwise have done, seeing this strategy work so well with the other bloggers, and my performance seems like kind of a validation of that strategy. I look forward to more successes in the coming days as I continue to refine the nuances of playing tight-aggressive poker, but also not blowing too many chips where I'm not sure I'm ahead.