Tournaments Bad....Cash Games Good!

Sound like a common theme here lately? That's because it is. My no-limit holdem tournament performance has left much to be desired over the past several weeks, despite a few fairly deep runs in the nightly 20k guaranteed tournament. I think I'm playing more or less fine, downright good even these past several days as compared to the few weeks before that when I might have been pressing a bit much when my stack is just at the beginnings of short. But I have seen some crazy, crazy things and suffered a number of highly unlikely beats in online poker tournaments of late, most of which I have detailed right here at the blog for you all to see.

This trend continued last night, as I played the 20k as well as the Mookie on full tilt. Another nice big crowd for the Mookie tournament, 61 players as I recall, so a tourney that size really tends to bring out the who's who of the poker blogging community, which is always a fun thing for a guy like me. As is when I see this massive three-way allin within the first 15 minutes at my 20k table:



Thankfully I was not part of this preflop pushfest, because if you read the blog then you know I would not have won with this hand:



It really is unreal the frequency with which other players tend to win with pocket Bitches, as compared to the infrequency of my own wins with the Whores. I phucking hate Queens, I really do. I hate getting them myself, I hate seeing other people play them, and I certainly hate getting allin against them when I am ahead, because we all know how that always turns out for me. Anyways, it's not every day that you see three preflop allins on the same hand, with what turns out to be the three best possible starting hands in holdem, so I thought that was interesting.

Fast forward about an hour, I've survived through the first half of the Mookie's 61-person field, and then I am dealt my nemesis -- pocket Queens. I'm in middle position, and Squib and IronGirl each limp into the pot for the 120-chip big blind. I put in a standard 3x raise to 360 with the Hand of Evil. Joe Speaker surprises me by flat-calling my 3x raise from the cutoff after the two early limpers. All hell then proceeds to break lose when Squib pushes allin on a reraise, and by the time the action gets back around to Speaker again, here's what it looks like:



with me, of course, making the oh-so-questionable decision of calling a raise-caller and two allins with pocket Queens. I pretty much knew I was unlikely to be good here, but at some point with all the smack I've been talking about the biatchwhores lately, the screenshot almost becomes worth more than the measly $10 buyin to the tournament, so I had to go for it. Then Speaker went and called the three allins as well, and the hands were flipped:



Bam! Aces, Kings, Queens and Tens all out in the same hand at the same time, each allin heading for the flop. And, you have to figure, since the Queens won earlier today at my 20k table by spiking trips against Kings and Aces, that's what would happen here for me as well, right? Nope:



Interestingly, notice the runner-runner Jacks to complete the board after the flop, making this the first time that I can ever recall in a holdem game where I was looking at a pair of Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens all at the same time in the same hand. And the fact that Squib's Aces managed to hold on at all in this hand is pretty amazing enough if you ask me. Naturally the bitchtresses did me in again and a few hands later I was out of the Mookie, in 25th out of 61 places:



So, yet another night of frustrating beats in no-limit holdem tournaments. What can I do. I admit it -- I knew it then in fact -- that calling the raise-caller and then the two allins with pocket Queens was a bad move. I knew at least one of those bettors had KK, AA or at least AK, but like I said I went ahead and did it anyways, more for posterity's sake in the blog than anything else. That was a bad call by me and I paid for it. Nonetheless, you gotta admit, seeing pocket Aces vs. pocket Kings vs. pocket Queens vs. pocket Tens in the same hand is quite a rarity. And seeing me lose yet another big pot with pocket Queens is quite the -- what is the opposite of rarity anyways? Commonality? Typicality? Dammit where is Iak when I need him? Let's just say me losing with pocket Queens is quite the typical bullshit and leave it at that. Fuck you Queens!!!

On a happier note, Hammer Wife and I got up early today when both of the Hammer Girls woke up around 5am. Hammer Wife decided in about 10 seconds that this was too early for either of them to be awake if they are expected to behave anything but awfully during the day today, so I talked M back down to sleep while Hammer Wife rocked K in the glider. Once both kids were back asleep, my wife crawled into bed as well, leaving me kinda wide awake with maybe an hour or so to kill before work, so...and 2 hours later, I'm up another $120+ at 2-4 razz. 2-4 was the highest razz game going at 5am east coast time this morning on full tilt, and at that it was only a 3- or 4-handed game for most of the time between 5 and 6am. By the time I was outta there around 7am today, the table was already full and there was at least one person waiting on the waitlist. So it's nice to see that there is more and more action on full tilt at times and at limits that there did not used to be before the demise of partypoker in the U.S., and it's even nicer to see my bankroll climbing for the 5th night out of the last 6, due mainly to cash games, be it razz, pot-limit Omaha, or stud hilo. Even despite the redickulous things I've been running into at the nlh tournament tables recently, I still look forward to that damned 20k whenever I can play it at night. As Iak recently said in a post, the 20k is like "that girlfriend I just can’t get ovah, I know". So true, Iak, so true.

OK before I go, I wanted to link over to three really great poker blog posts I've read over the past few days. One comes from our boy Iakaris himself, and the particular post I loved was a story about his trials and tribulations in the 20k from a few nights ago, and could be aptly subtitled "My Night as a Donkey"....read the post here.

Second is another knockout post from Joe Speaker's blog, this one masterfully weaving some personal history of a significant relationship in Joe's life together with one of the most poignant and unforgettable baseball memories of my own life, and those of many other sports fans out there. As usual, Speaker's post is a must read, so please go check it out here.

Last but certainly not least (except maybe in terms of height) is Iggy. The blogfather is back this week with an uberpost to end all uberposts, and whether you're looking for information on the ramifications of the recently-passed anti-gaming legislation in the U.S., material on the future of gaming, or the undoubtedly greatest-ever Tuff_Fish video, Iggy's latest post has it all. So go jump on over to the blog that started it all and get your daily dose of uber, dwarf style.

That's all for me today. I plan to check out the WWdN Not tonight on pokerstars at 10:30pm ET (password is "monkey" as always), but I won't know for sure if I can play that until the last minute and I can tell what's up with the Hammer Girls for the night. And at some point I'm going to have to admit that I am flat out costing myself money every time I don't have at least a couple of razz tables open, so I may have to hit some of those too tonight to make up for lost time last night. Come find me if you're looking to make some serious coin at razz tonight!