Random Pokerings

A few interesting pokery items to report on today:

First, I'd like to report on the continued success of my newfound push to play a bet less aggressively in the 180 sng, after extensively observing some other bloggers' successes in the 180 and 90 person sng's on pokerstars. The first time I consciously played with this new "survival" strategy was this past weekend, when I made it to 11th out of 1083 in the $10 MTT on pokerstars (as described in my previous post), so I had already some success with the new perspective, and I was more than eager to jump into a 180 sng and prove my mettle to myself. After being dealt AKo and a single Ace on the flop on the very first hand, I am pleased to show you this graphic:



Way to go, Hoyazo. For those of you who play these 180 sngs often, going out very first is actually somewhat difficult, as it requires you to not only be a donkey, but to do so very quickly before any of the other 5-10 pushmonkeys who invariably bust out on the first hand. But when I flopped TPTK with AKo, I was sure my opponent was on another (lower, obviously) Ace, and I have to admit, all of that "survival" stuff completely flew out of my head as if I had never heard or thought of it before. I bet out on the flop, got called. Bet again, larger this time, on the turn, and got called. Then I watched in horror as my fingers clicked in the rest of my stack on the river, and again got called down by the guy who had flopped two low pairs on the flop, and IGH. Sucked.

In other news, check out this suckout that I got to enjoy the other night on Full Tilt. We've all seen this happen before, but to occur in your favor is always fun:



Nothing like having the same two cards as your opponent, but sucking out a flush against long odds. Yes, I know, mine were sOOted, but still, it's always fun watching this happen live right before your very eyes.

I also made a nice run last night in the partypoker 750pp freeroll for 2 seats to the monthly million dollar guaranteed tournament, the same tourney that I cashed in in February to the tune of $741.50. 259 players entered, and with about 140 remaining, I got myself up to a 5-digit chip stack by hitting a nut flush on the river with this hand, against some clown who I guess thought playing The Mookie (T8) was a good idea for his entire stack preflop:



which I then grew into a huge stack (3rd place with 50 players remaining) on this hand, which also got in preflop against one of the other then-chip leaders:



It was at this point that I really went basically card-dead, eventually leading me to this fun hand, where I ended up pushing with the Hammer, and ran into some severely dominated pocket Aces, but then the guy with the Aces lucked out and managed to tie in the hand with me:



What a luckbox he was! Unfortunately, the luck ran out on the very next hand, as I pushed with pocket 7s, the first genuinely playable hand I'd received in a good hour or so, and ran into pocket 10s:



and IGH in 27th place out of 259 entrants. I'm proud of my showing in this tournament, especially since, as a freeroll, the pushmonkeying and fishmongering going on was rampant and barely believeable, but of course with nothing to show for it in the end, it's hard to get too excited. I would love to play in another million dollar guaranteed tournament, so at some point I may have to start focusing on where the good satellites are running on pokerstars and partypoker, as right now this is just not something that I regularly focus on.

One other thing I had to reproduce here -- it's another great quote from Overheard in New York, which posts daily quotes actually heard in New York City, said by actual New Yorkers. I read this thing and I just could not stop laughing, and it is very a propos for those of you who might have watched David Blaine last night hold his breath underwater for nearly 8 minutes last night on TV, after spending the better part of a week living immersed in a bubble underwater in the middle of Lincoln Center in midtown Manhattan:

>> Man: This is stupid...and incredibly boring.
>> David Blaine: Hey, I can hear you!

>> --Lincoln Center

Ha ha, gotta love that one. OK, see you tonight at the WWdN. I'm just getting over a fairly annoying cold from these past few days, so I won't be at 100% for the tournament tonight, but I still say the WWdN is just about the best pokerbloggery fun you can have for $10, and plus, the last time I played this thing when ill, I managed a 3rd place finish, my best yet. So I'll be expecting big things tonight from myself, although I am going to try to play the "survival" game more like I did this past weekend than the way I did it last night in that 180 sng. God what an embarrassment.