Poker Content Ahead

Check out this hand from last night. This is in the $10 MTT, and I'm off to a fairly good start, having nearly doubled up within the first 30 minutes or so of the tournament. I'm dealt AKo in middle position, and it's folded around to me. This is pokerstars, so no way I'm slow playing it of course:



Standard 4x raise from me, not quite even in steal position. Just the big blind calls for 90 chips, and we see this flop:



I've hit the flop, hit it fairly hard in fact. So I'm going to bet here. But I don't necessarily want to lose him if he has AQ or AT or something, or an even fishier A-x depending on just how donkish this guy is. So I bet half the pot, a standard continuation-sized bet. He thinks, and smooth calls my 120 bet, bringing the total pot to 495 chips heading into the turn card:



I can't be afraid of the 5♣, so I bet the pot again, and my opponent fairly quickly reacts:



Moving allin for his last 805 chips. It's only another 300 or so to me, so I have to call. You want to guess what he had?
















....wait for it....
















(always wanted to do that since I saw I think Wes do it one day in his blog)




Slam!! I should have known he called a preflop 4x raise with 42s, and then also called a half-pot bet on the flop with just an inside straight draw and no other realistically possible outs, which is him paying 3-to-1 for a draw laying him 11-to-1 odds on the turn. I should have known.

And that's just the way poker has been running for me lately. I haven't had much in the way of MTT tales for you because, frankly, I haven't been getting beyond the early cash payout rounds for several days (if I'm lucky), and I'm sure those stories aren't any more fun for me to write than for you to read. I'm not playing my best, but my play is not really the problem in my view. Rather, my real problem these past few days is that my opponents are hitting the flops, and especially the turn cards, hard. And it's hard to win consistently in MTTs when you play aggressively, opponents make poor calls on your aggressive bets on the flop, and then they proceed to nail the turn card. That's a bad combination for anyone, and it's been my story over the past several nights at the virtual tables.

And if you're curious how I busted out of the rest of my chips in that $10 MTT last night, here it comes (remember, I had just over 1800 left even after the redonkulous beat above):



I moved in my last 1000 chips when I held A5 on a flop of A53. As you can see, the other luckbox had pocket 3s. Cheesus!

Then last night I signed up for the $3 Rebuy Madness tournament on pokerstars, starting at 8:15pm ET. Three times in the first round I got allin as a favorite preflop with at least two other players. I failed to screenshot the first one because it happened so fast on the very first hand I played in the tourney, but I lost with TT to an A8 and a KJs and had to rebuy. Then a short while later came this hand:



that became this on the turn:



So that was rebuy #2.

Then, maybe 15 minutes later, this hand happened for another huge pot, where I did a masterful job of tricking two pushmonkeys into thinking I was weak:



But that quickly became this on the flop (I think you're gonna particularly love this one):



And that was rebuy #3.

Eventually I stuck around until after the break, went into Round 2 in 1090th place out of 1330 players remaining, and quickly got busted when I ran my AQs into Aces. Sweet!

Then at 8:30pm ET on Tuesday came the WWdN. I look very much forward to this tournament every week, but let's be honest: I am no longer relevant to the WWdN. After final tabling three times in four weeks earlier this year, I have been reduced to a WWdN jackass, and have been left to hope that the deck utterly smacks me in the face and that my monster cards hold up, or else pokerstars finds a way to beat me, or I just flat beat myself, and lately just go out early every week. Here was my starting table:



The list included Drewspop, DNasty, Alan, Derek, and WWdN newcomer Amy, whom I had encouraged to play in her first WWdN earlier in the day at her new blog.

Early on in the WWdN, Drewspop, who has also been running bad lately, got pocket Aces, played them appropriately slow, and tricked DNasty into moving in with his top pair King kicker:



But unfortunately the shit stayed on the fan for Drewspop with the 2-outer turn card:



Although as an aside, congratulations to Drewspop for winning his first ever masrhmallow turbo peep sex $26 token on full tilt by completely running over the final table:



Anyways, the very next hand after Drewspop's untimely elimination from the WWdN, this hand comes up, and I put in a standard raise of 4x in first position:



Flop gives me TPTK, no flush draws, and 2 high straight cards:



Overall I'm sure I'm ahead here, so I bet almost the size of the pot:



My fishponent calls, and here is the turn card:



This does put a three-straight on the board, but I can't really put this guy on 78 or KQ given that he called my 4x raise from first position preflop and with no one else in the pot with me by the time it came back around. So I bet another 500, just more than the size of the pot. And fishy moves allin:



I call it, knowing I am ahead unless this guy either (1) is a big fat fish, (2)luckboxingly flopped trips, or (3) is someone who called a 4x raise from first position preflop with either 87 or KQ, and then followed up that brilliant move by also calling a pot-sized flop bet with just an oesd. We flip our cards:



Um...it was option #3 above. Fucker.

Never fear, even down to 120 chips I manage to struggle throug the next hand or two, and then I am dealt pocket Aces, in the big blind no less! Just that same luckbox limps in, and when I reraise allin, he of course has to call. He flips:



Leaving him just two outs, in addition to some odd runnerrunnerrunnerrunner straight and flush possibilities. Here is the board at the turn, where things have just been fatal for me of late:



And IGH in 63rd place out of 68 players. I'm not going to beat myself up over my play last night -- I actually think I played everything just the way I want to -- but I am not happy about the way things turned out. Congratulations are in order though to G-Vegas's G-Rob who took down the WWdN with his smart, aggressive style of poker, and of course some lucky pulls along the way.

Oh yeah, here is a picture of me Hoyazoing my own self in the fulltilt Bracelet Race last night as well, another time where I hit a flop and played it well, but my dickponent hit hidden trips and I had no shot:



Needless to say, I did not quite come back from that one. Fuckers!

Lastly, I also played the $5 turbo MTT on stars at 10:39pm ET on Tuesday, which is quickly becoming my regular game after an early elimination from the WWdN. I doubled up early when TT could not avoid my KK preflop:



I got another nice pile of chips when I hit my first trips on the flop in at least a week:



And then I nearly doubled again when a fishmonkey with KQs reraised me preflop, and then quick-called my allin re-reraise with my AKo:



Then my luck began to turn when this dickhead then took a nice chunk out of my stack with his lucky flush on the turn (Again with the motherfucking turn card! WTF!):



Followed up shortly thereafter with this hand:



I've been getting sucked out on on the turn and river so much lately that in this hand, I actually bet twice the pot with top pair good kicker on the flop, and this assdonkey still called me with just an oesd, meaning that he paid 1.5 to 1 for a draw that was worse than 4 to 1. Doesn't matter though when you hit the shit on the river, a river card which also gives me top two pairs on the board:



Despite these few examples of donkery which hurt my stack, I managed to chip back up to respectability at 2000 chips when I made trips on the river against a busted inside straight draw for my donkponent. And then trip Queens on the flop (yes I won with the biatches) took me to my highest level of the day. This was followed up 10 minutes later by my Queens holding up against pocket 7s, and another new high stack for me thus far in the turbo event.

This next hand, however, is the one which really vaulted me into the standings, leaving me in 10th place out of the 379 players remaining late in the first round of the tournament, when I moved aggressively with AK in the face of what turned out to be four allins before the flop:



After winning with the Hilton whores twice and winning with AK against three other allin bets preflop, I really began to think I could have a chance to make a serious run in this event, which I have moneyed in several times before.

But then shortly after the break, an uberfish called my preflop allin steal attempt with this power hand (somebody's been watching a little bit too much Negreanu or old Gus Hansen coverage on the Travel Channel!):



which I called with my flush draw and the pair on the flop, and just like that my dominating T6 over 65 became a loser, and I was out almost all of my chips, sitting squarely on the bubble for the cash in the MTT. A few hands later, however, I had some optimism to squeak into the cash with this hand:



which unfortunately turned into this hand when my fuckponent hit another flop:



and before I knew it IGH in 122nd place out of 1079 entrants, with only the top 99 spots getting the cash. Infuriating, but par for the course with the way my opponents have been hitting the boards against me recently.

Just about the only bright spot for me lately has been the sngs. I just started playing some more sngs this week when Jordan suggested in my comments that too much of the same thing can get boring, and predicted that by year's end I'd have shifted away somewhat from my current "all-MTT all the time" mindset. After thinking about his comment for a while, I figured I might as well at least dip my toe back into the sng waters, where I learned to play online poker in the first place, so I've played two 1-table, $15 buyin turbo sngs on pokerstars in the last three days, and last night I also played an $11 buyin 1-table sng on partypoker with my buddy R, the guy who loves the party ministep tournaments. Here is me Hammering someone in the first of the stars sngs:



From first position no less! Then the flop helped me, and I tried to Hoyazo the guy:



He wisely folded, recognizing the unstoppable power of the Hammer and the Hoyazo when put together. Nonetheless, I've been running bad lately like I said, so when I took that first sng down to heads-up, this hand:



quickly turned into this hand:



And a few hands later I ended up in second place -- not bad for my first sng in several months, but not something which left a good taste in my mouth given that I had been a favorite with my luckponent allin at least once without the results I deserved. I also finished ITM (3rd) in the other pokerstars sng I played this week, also losing on a stoopid beat that would have made me the prohibitive chip leader with three remaining. No screenshot of that one, sorry. Trust me though, it sucked.

In the party $11 sng that R and I played, I managed to knock out a fish early on to double up and put me in good shape for the rest of the tournament, when she moved in with absosmurfly nothing against my top pair:



And then I made a great read on a river bluffer who had barely bet at the pot before the river. I simply couldn't put him on a hand that was suddenly ahead of me at the river but that hadn't been worth betting prior to that, and he was not the type to slow play a good hand from my observation of him:



Take a look at this shot, which is right after I Hoyazoed the guy who was in 4th place, the last spot not to make the money in the party 1-table sng format:



That's why I love the Hoyazo. Because this guy knows he's out on the bubble, yet he's forced to sit here and keep playing with his 5 chips until they're gone. I love it.

When we got down to heads up, I moved in with a double belly buster draw on the turn card, and got called by top pair poor kicker (a questionable call to say the least), and of course his lead held up, and I was out in second, another sng cash:



So in all, it's been a rough few days, except on the sng front. Maybe I should be following my own plan from last autumn and playing in the large MTTs, but funding those buyins with sng wins along the way. It just is so hard sometimes to play 3 or 4 MTTs in a night, and also an sng or two, and invariably the low buy-in sng gets the shaft if I have to choose one game to pay more of my attention to. I will keep trying to get it right, starting tonight when I plan to play the fulltilt 17k and the party 40k tournaments starting at 10pm and 10:20pm ET, respectively. Maybe I'll see you at the final table of both of them!