Tilt Continues

For whatever reason, this has been one of the toughest two-week periods ever in my three years of playing poker online. For starters, my 8 to 10 suckouts and setups a night has escalated out of the blue to more like 15 to 20 a night, and when you consider that these numbers are absosmurfly real and not the least bit exaggerated, maybe a few of you at least can begin to consider what this really must feel like to go through on a nightly, hourly, almost minute-ly basis. It ain't fun. In the past two weeks, I have been recockudonked out of big tournaments after deep runs at least five or six times at multiple poker sites. I'm talking about hands like flopping the overboat in the final 100 in that pokerstars 50-50 tournament, getting my overpair donkey opponent allin and then losing to a higher boat on the turn. I have been bounced early from small tournaments, like earlier this week when I lost early in the token frenzy with a turned straight -- again allin on the flop --- to a riverflush. And I've taken horrible beats in blonkaments, like flopping a set in the MATH this week, pushing hard and getting someone to make a hopeless call but then losing to a higher set on the turn, or even in the Mookie this week when I find my only "premium" hand of the night in pocket Queens, only to run it into KK and AK and finish the hand in a distant third for another middle-of-the-pack elimination. And, although this fact is unconfirmed, it is even possible that I might have made a few straight-out bad plays mixed in there as well, which of course also seem magnified whenever you're in a run like this.

What's worse is that once again it is FTOPS time on full tilt, and once again I enter the series in a shitty poker mindset. Just maybe three weeks ago, I was playing great poker and I was feeling great about my game, and about the game in general. I won four satellites into these FTOPS events over the span of just a few days, I was playing great, actually winning 50% or more of my races, actually winning 80% of my dominating hands when allin, etc., and all of that tends to help quite a bit in making the right decisions at the poker tables. It's when you start losing 75% of your races, and losing 40-50% of your 80% favored hands that you start second-guessing yourself, not pushing hard enough on the flop and letting people stick around to suck out on you, etc., and that's when it gets really bad. Anyways, what kills me is that here we are back in FTOPS land again, and just like every single other FTOPS I have played in -- five of them now, as I recall -- except for one of the big tournament series, I enter it in a horrible poker mindset and just generally on a bad streak.

Last night I had several railbirds watching me in the HORSE megasat when some anus wanker sucked out a miracle straight on the river to eliminate me when I had flopped TPTK with my AQ against his AJ and bet out my entire stack against him along the way in limit holdem. I even tried one of those super turbo satellites half an hour before the HORSE event to try to play into there, but I couldn't pick up a good hand and as you know if you've ever played these things, it's impossible to win them without picking up at least one good hand along the way. It was a desperate move, and believe me when I say that in retrospect I'm glad I didn't play in FTOPS #3. But I did play in FTOPS #2, the $240 PLO knockout tournament I mentioned yesterday, and it was highly frustrating for me as well. I survived about an hour and 40 minutes in this thing, and even with four starting cards in every hand, I never once received AAxx, KKxx, a single double-paired hand or even a single double-suited hand. Now I'm nowhere near interested enough to try to calculate the odds of that happening, but my guess is that it has got to be way way low. So with absolutely not a single good starting hand over 100 minutes to play with, I was at an extreme disadvantage throughout the PLO tournament, growing increasingly frustrated given my poker plight of late, and eventually after those 100 minutes I ended up betting big with just TPTK on the flop against a big stack as my own stack dwindled down to less than half of average. Well, I got called by a guy who had 789x on a board with T63, so he had 9 outs to a straight. 9 outs twice, not counting some silly runner-runner draws that either one of us could hit to win. Well, two cards later he had runner-runnered a recockulous flush on me, and IGH in 490th place out of around 1200 runners. While I lasted fairly deep again considering my complete lack of cardage throughout, the frustration level just continued to mount as I received abjectly nothing to work with in the entire tournament, and I got called by a guy who had no business calling me but just couldn't let go of a 9-out draw. And of course he hit. This is the way it's been lately for me online. Get almost nothing to work with, run fairly deep anyways on all bluffs and steals, and then get recockubeat or recockusetup. The frustration is palpable.

It got so bad that I didn't even play the Riverchasers last night. That's not like me, but for the past few nights I have been logging out of the poker sites early thanks to growing tilt issues from consistent phuckage at the tables. I am not having fun at all while I play these days, and I've known for a couple of days that a break would do me good. Unfortunately, right now is not the time for me to get that break, as I had already previously qualified for the FTOPS on Thursday and again I am already signed up for the FTOPS 6-max limit holdem tournament on Friday night as well. That one oughta be a fun one to tilt my way out of for sure. But I don't even know that I will play the donkament tonight, as Monkey Hour of that thing tends to get me on raging tilt on a weekly basis, even the four times I have gone on to win that tournament over the past year. Right now is just not the time for me to get sucked out on in the same tournament 18 times in an hour.

I will leave you with my one bright spot from the night last night, which was watching Chad at full tilt "pro" Aaron Bartley's table while Bartley time and time again played recockulous starting cards in just about every one of the five HORSE games, sucking out a few redonkulous winners along the way before eventually Chad busted his ass for the $216 bounty and another ghey "I busted a donkey" t-shirt. Well, after getting donked a few times by Bartley and the regoddamdickulous cards he was playing, Chad eventually told me in the girly that he was going to play just like Bartley and see where that would get him. So Chad chased a bad hand hard in razz, and ended up sucking out runner-runner low cards.

Dealer: Aaron Bartley shows 8,7,6,3,2
Dealer: cracknaces shows 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: cracknaces wins the pot (3,398)
with 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: Hand #5165521026
cracknaces: just for you Bartley
Aaron Bartley: now THATS bad
cracknaces: fight fire wirh fire, how does it
feel to be donked?
Aaron Bartley: shrug, thanks for trying

That pretty much made my night. Bartley is about as bad a HORSE player as there is among the ftp "pros".

Have a great weekend everybody. Here's hoping I can turn things around before tonight's FTOPS #5 in LHE, and Sunday night's FTOPS #9, the $322 buyin nlh tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren.