Another final table -- almost

Played in one of the PokerStars 180s last night (their 180-person tournaments that they run), and came in 10th; final table was 9. boo.

On the way there, this hand came up:
AA over QQ

Basically, his pocket queens ran into my pocket aces. Then, see the chatbox in the image of the table, below:



Now that's just rude.

Anyways, I was definitely running pretty hot in the first half of this tournament -- this hand put me up to about 13k in chips, which was good for at least top 5 at this point. I basically hovered between 1st - 5th for a while, but then after a while I just couldn't make anything happen, and eventually busted one shy of the final table. oh well.

I was just realizing, too, that I've not yet come in 1st in one of these big tournaments... in anything bigger than like 5 tables. I mean, I haven't played all that many yet, so it's not surprising or anything. But like, these prize pools are very top-heavy; 1st place is where a large chunk of the money is. So... it's time to make it happen!

16th of 301

Last night I played in another medium-field tournament, still of a small buy-in ($5, with 1 rebuy and 1 add-on; I didn't have to rebuy, but I did the add-on), but with 301 players, 1st place got up to about $750 so that's certainly a nice prize for a $10 investment.

Things were going pretty well, and I got all the way down to the final two tables without much mishap. Then comes one hand, when I'm sitting at about 50,000 chips (just below average at this point): a short-stack moves all-in for about 12,000, one of the bigger stacks re-raises to 20,000 and I'm sitting in the small-blind with pocket kings. I move all-in, everyone else folds and the big stack calls. He's holding AQ, spikes an A on the flop and I'm out in 16th.

Bummer because if I win this pot, I'm up to like 120,000 chips (which would have been about 2nd in chip standings) and would have an excellent chance of making it to the final table and a shot at the 1st place prize.

Did I play it wrong? No way -- I did worry for a split second about the big stack having pocket aces, but that's such a small part of his range; he could be isolating the short stack with anything down to like a medium pocket pair. So I'm definitely not folding. But... could I just call and re-evaluate on the flop? Not with our stack sizes, I don't think. If I just call, there's now 36,000 in the main pot and 16,000 in the side-pot. Then with about 30,000 left in my stack, basically my only move on the flop is an all-in (or a fold). So... I could shove any flop that doesn't have an ace, but what good does that do? If he had a smaller pocket pair than kings, he's probably gonna fold unless he hit a set. And I wouldn't even know if an ace on the flop was a problem for me or not, so this just puts me in all sorts of trouble.

As played, I got called by an inferior hand which is exactly what you want, so definitely by that standard I did the right thing. Unfortunately, it just didn't go my way here.

For 16th place, I won a relatively meaningless prize of $22.73. However, it IS encouraging to continue to go deep in these medium-sized tournaments, so I'm happy about it from that standpoint.

Two final tables and the Holiday $100K

Last night I played a few tournaments, including two in which I made it to the final table, each with roughly 100 players to start. Of course, I'm playing tournaments with tiny buy-ins right now ($5-$10), so the prize money wasn't all that much -- about $40 for 5th place in one, and $150 for 2nd place in the other. The 2nd place finish was actually kind of bitter-sweet, because in one hand during heads-up I had my opponent all-in on the turn with only 5 outs (I had top pair, he had middle pair), and he spiked his trips on the river. And 1st place was $250, so I missed out on an extra $100 there once he won it in the end. But hey, my bankroll IS getting re-built, little by little...

Additionally, I won a seat into the Holiday $100K. So this is a tournament with a total prize pool of $100,000, with 1st place prize money of $10,500. That takes place on Sunday, 12/28 so that's still pretty far away. But it'll be my first tournament of that magnitude in a while.

Matt and I were unsuccessful in our endeavour to play free poker at Goldie's; it turns out that the information on the website was incorrect, and they only have poker on Monday nights (the website said Monday and Wednesday, and we went on a Wednesday). Bummer. Maybe I'll just have to get myself to a real casino again soon...

End of the quarter

Since winter break just started, there is more time to play again. And I've been feeling the desire lately to get back into it.

Last year's WSOP effort didn't end up amounting to anything, because I ran/played really bad for a bit and almost busted my whole Full Tilt account before really even getting into any satellites. I also just pulled over $1000 out of my poker bank account to help pay for overwhelming bills of late.

So now it's all about building the roll back up, before dreaming up any more WSOP plans. In other news, I think I may have finally gotten over the drunken poker stupidity problem -- that is, my habit of signing into my poker account after a night of drinking, and then losing lots of money. The fact that I don't get that drunk very often anymore helps with this too, but last night was our end-of-the-quarter party, and after it was over, I managed to keep myself to just 1 $5 tournament (which I even wound up winning!) before going to bed. So I'm proud of myself for that... and really, all told I think I must have dropped like $3,000 over the years while playing drunk... so it'd be good if I've finally learned my lesson with that.

Matt and I are going to a free poker night at Goldie's up the street from us. I don't know what it's going to be like, and whether they'll have prizes or what, but hopefully it will at least be fun. I've really been itching to touch some cards and chips again.

WSOP EFFORT: UPDATE

School is more fun than poker.

WSOP: 2008 effort coming up

I've decided that I want to make a semi-reasonable run at a WSOP seat this year. I've just been dreaming about it so much lately. As you know, I did NOT play in 2007. I didn't get the chance to play very many satellites, because I was bogged down with school and we had our 1st year comprehensive exam in June. With the WSOP being in June-July, this didn't really work out so well.

This year, I'm still getting pretty clobbered by school, but we don't have a huge exam in June. So the schedule might work such that I can get some satellites in. I also have a slightly healthier bankroll right now than last year, although it's still not in GREAT shape (right around $2k now).

This is also coming in the wake of dropping about $250 online the other night while playing fairly hammered. Sigh, some things never change, I guess. At least I wasn't playing 30/60 HU this time. Hopefully I've learned THAT lesson.

Anyways, in my Full Tilt account I currently have $1,064.33. Satellites start probably really soon, but I'm gonna work on building this roll up a bit more first.

Here's the plan: Build the roll up to $3k, and then allocate $1k to WSOP satellites. When I won the seat in 2006, I had allocated $2k for satellites, although I actually got it around the $800 mark.

Now, building up to $3k does seem a bit lofty right now to do in a short amount of time, especially since I'm not playing particularly high limits at the moment. But we'll see how it goes. If I don't quite make it to $3k, I might just take 1/2 of whatever I've made between now and May or so, and put that to WSOP satellite use.

Here's to being a kid with a dream.