More NLH Bad Beats, But OK in the 20k

That's right guys. Last night I actually didn't suck in the 20k guaranteed tournament on full tilt! I know, I can't believe it either. Although I was interrupted on probably three different occasions by crying Hammer Girls of some kind or another, luckily the Hammer Wife was feeling generous last night and managed to take enough of the action with the girls that I was able to play at least fairly contiguously in both the 20k as well as the WWdN Not tournament that also went off at 10:30pm ET last night as usual.

Early in the WWdN Not last night, I hit this gem for a a nice screenshot and a decent chip win from Bobby Bracelet:



DQAB baybeeee!

That hand, and a random string of several AK hands during the second hour, helped propel me to the final table of the Not, my first trip to the Not final table in probably a month or so, not that making a final table in a 15-person tournament is anything to write home about. But anyways, I managed to nearly double up early on at the final table after getting Iggy the angry dwarf to lay down to my reverse hoy reraise in a large pot. So all was looking good, a few other final tablers dropped out, and with me sitting comfortably in 5th out of 7 players remaining, I find AJo in the cutoff. As I pondered what to do, SpecksBacon open-pushes allin from immediately in front of me, one of the only two shorter stacks at the final table than mine. Since Speck was so short and in obvious position to steal the 300 chips in the two blinds which would increase his stack by nearly 20%, I could not put him on any real big hand, so I called with my AJo assuming I was ahead. I was right:



And then I was wronged:



and IGH in 7th place, out of the money once again because I put all my chips at stake as a 4-to-1 favorite. They say those are supposed to lose once every five times you play these dominating hands in holdem. Seems lately like I'm lucky to be winning one out of every five. It's sick. Anyways, you have to admit that is a fitting way to end my week in blogger tournaments. I'm looking very much forward to starting a new week of blogger events on this coming Sunday night at 9:30pm ET, when Miami Don's inaugural Blogger Big Game will go off on full tilt -- remember, the buyin is a $75 (tier II) token on full tilt, and there are lots of fun ways to win one if you aren't the type to buy in for that much to a single poker tournament. In fact, Mookie mentioned on his blog yesterday that he and Don are trying to work things such that Mookie's Second Chance tournament at 11:30pm ET on Wednesday nights can be used as a token qualifier to win one's way into that weekend's Blogger Big Game. Kudos to both and Don and Mookie for another fabulous idea. The shizz just keeps coming with those guys.

So as the title above suggests, I actually made a decent run in the 20k guaranteed last night on full tilt. I didn't cash, it was nothing special, but hey you've got to start somewhere, and plain and simple last night was my best finish in the 20k in close to a month. Granted I haven't played this event over the past month anywhere near as often as I used to, but I've still been in there enough to have lasted past the first hour more than the one or two times I have out of my last several attempts in that tournament. Anyways last night I missed the first 6 hands of the 20k due to Hammer Girl putdown issues, and when I returned to the pc just a few minutes after the 10pm ET start time, I made the mistake of reviewing the hand history for the six hands I had missed. Hand #1 was pocket 8s. The board ended up bringing a Ten on the turn, and one of my opponents won the hand with a 10 in his hand, but who knows if I could have taken this down preflop, or on the flop when no one had anything as the hand actually went down. Hand #3 was pocket 4s, which 4 players saw the flop cheaply with, and that flop was 642 rainbow. So that would have been a big one for me for sure. And then, Hand #4 was pocket Jacks, on an 8-high flop.

So I missed all of those big hands to start of the 20k (naturally), which basically tilted me from the moment I first sat down to the table. Nonetheless, I was able to double up twice during the first hour of the 20k, the first time when I minbet with a flush draw on the flop, and then hit my flush on the river and reraised allin. And the second double came when I limped from the BB with A6s against just the SB who had limped ahead of me, saw an Ace-high flop and then autochecked it on the flop and the turn back to my opponent after he checked out on both streets himself, such that when a King fell on the river and paired my opponent's KJ holding, he also called my allin raise on the end when he finally bet the pot after making 2nd pair. I entered the first break over 6000 chips in the 20k, only my second trip to Round 2 of this event in a few weeks (two in a row now, actually), and poised to make a further run in the second hour. Unfortunately, near the end of hour 2, I was forced to fold two preflop raises from late position to allin reraises from the blinds -- in one case I held KQs, and in the other I had a low Ace, so I like the fold in both instances, although the two plays brought me down from my chipstack highs of over 12000 chips down to around 7000 heading into Round 3.

The third round did not give me any chances to make any big moves early, as I was not dealt any good starting hands nor did I hit anything when I did pay to see a few flops, until around 25 minutes into Round 3 when I found AJo playing against 3 limpers into the pot preflop before action got to me ob the button. I was down below 6000 chips, less than 2/3 the average stack at this point, and I had watched the three limpers at my table long enough to know that they were not playing premium hands here. So I figured I needed to get back into things, and this was as good a place as any, as I was likely facing at least one weaker Ace, and probably one pair below my Ace and my Jack, and something else weakish like a connector of some kind among the limpers. So I pushed:



Fortunately, I was right in my reads of all three of the preflop limpers already in this pot. Unfortunately, the luckbox small blind, who had yet to act in this hand, just happened to wake up with AKo on that same hand, and the rest is very, very predictable history:



So I went out in 150th place or so overall, with I think 124 spots paying out. So no cash for me last night, but as I said it was my first deepish run in the 20k in quite a while. I am hopeful that this will get me back closer to the right frame of mind to be making these late-night pushes into the big daily mtt's on full tilt and pokerstars. I am hoping I will be able to play the 20k this evening and maybe again tomorrow night, but if there's one thing I've learned since we moved the two Hammer Girls into the same bedroom, it's that those two really do not like me playing online poker, in particular that 20k. They will come up with any excuse to stay up, or at least to wake up, right around the 10pm ET start time every night some weeks, so they always keep me guessing about my poker plans for the evening.

Have a great weekend everyone, and -- oh yeah -- please remember to stop by Card Squad to weigh in on my latest hot hand post, this one for a hand that occurred early in a pot-limit Omaha tournament on full tilt.