My Triumphant Return to Poker...

Sucked. Ass. I haven't had so many opponents with premium hands at the same time that I held a slightly-less-premium-but-still-pretty-premium hand in quite a long while, and for a first day back in action, it left a very negative taste in my mouth. Let's review:

I ran JJ into KK about 30 minutes in to Al's Riverchasers tournament last night, which saw Al make his second straight rc final table (is Al becoming the new Gary?). At least I can take comfort in knowing that it was the eventual luckbox winner of the event, someone with "Flyers" in their name, who got the benefit of being in that lucky situation against me, but there was almost no way for me to avoid this outcome after an all-raggy flop made my meh hand look like gold Jerry gold.

I ran into somebody's pocket Queens shortly into the final table of CC's Thursday bash last night as well. A decent run, but done in by another high pair by another opponent in my first night of poker of the week.

Later in the evening, bayne min-raised with the sooooted hammer just a few hands in to our head-to-head matchup to begin CC's HU tournament at 11pm ET, which I called with some not-great hand, I think maybe it was T8o. I'm not going to kill the guy for this play. In general, bayne has made a nice recovery since duking it out with StB a few weeks back over StB's play with the hammer, although as a general statement I don't think the minimum raise preflop is the best way to play the hammer, which I suspect bayne will learn over time. A real man puts in a real raise with this hand, not a minraise, but in any event that play was ok with me, at least he raised with it before the flop to begin with. On the flop, however, which came down J8x, bayne bet out and then I put in a nice raise where I was sure I was ahead. Here, bayne called my allin for a fifth of his stack, when it turned out he had just the 7-high flush draw with his soooted hammer. Damn, gotta love that. Almost as much as the third heart on the turn, and I was basically done. I made the guy sweat it out for a while longer before finally succumbing with my pair to his slow-played pocket Jacks, but that was basically that on like the third hand of the heads-up tournament. It all came down to a guy who put all his chips into the middle with just a 7-high hammer flush draw, and who of course hit on the turn. Lovely, thank you pokerstars.

Oh yeah, I also played that PLO bracelet race on full tilt at 9:30pm ET, but went out just before the first break after only playing two hands the entire hour, when my pair of suited Aces ran into a donkey who called my preflop pot-raise of 5 other preflop callers with just ATxx with the Ace suited. Of course the flop came with two Tens, there was basically no way I could get away from my Aces in my own head, and I ended up losing it all when the guy slow-played his donktrips until the turn and I was done.

Just about the only real highlight of my poker evening on Thursday night was that I managed to win my way in to the nightly 30k guaranteed tournament, for the first time by winning the 8:30pm ET $8 rebuy satellite on full tilt. Nothing special, but it was nice to play my way in via this sat for the first time, in particular because I had been knocked down via bad beat into a distant 8th out of 8 players remaining, with just the top 4 getting seats to the nightly 30k guaranteed nlh tournament, so that comeback was enjoyable and got me some good action starting at 11pm ET while cc's heads-up debacle was going on. Unfortunately, I ran pocket Tens into pocket Aces allin preflop very early on in the 30k itself as well, completing my night of refuckulous early tournament beats on setup-type hands where I was dealt a premium hand at the same time that an opponent at my table had a top-2 or top-3 hand in no-limit holdem.

Overall let's just say that my return to the virtual tables really fucking sucked, and just leave it at that. I'm looking forward to getting in some solid play this weekend, and getting back into the swing of things as far as playing some good, solid poker and not getting card-effed like I was so many times on Thursday night.

The big news for me this weekend will be my return to Atlantic City, where I will be joining a number of bloggers including at least Jordan and Al at Caesar's for the $300 buyin WSOP Circuit Event #6 which goes off at 12 noon ET on Saturday. For those of you who might be able to make it, I plan to arrive at Caesar's as close to 10 or 10:30am as possible, in hopes of avoiding the inevitable unknown crowds and procedures to sign up, get my players card, etc. I already got a card from my WSOP tournament at the Rio last summer, so I'm hopeful (but not optimistic) that I won't have to wait in that line again on Saturday. And if I'm lucky, the Hammer Brother (my older brother, his first time ever mentioned in this blog, lucky him) may join me down there to get our gamble on, Hammer style. If any of you can make it down to AC on Saturday, it should be a fun time by all, and some number of bloggers should be in town as well so it should be all good.

Wish me luck in my latest live-poker-is-rigged activities! Full update of the fun times coming on Monday!