Another good WWdN: Not The

Attendance was a bit off for the WWdN: Not The last night. My co-host darval was absent due to his current living conditions which include a lack of basic amenities like reliable high speed internet and electricity that doesn't depend on you keeping the generator tank full. Quatloos probably would come up with some lame excuse like sitting at a blackjack table or attending some fancy wine event. Anyway, we had seventeen tough competitors for last night's tournament.

I continued in my quest to play and hit more of the Negreanu-style small connectors and one-gaps. For a change, a few of them actually came through. Fairly early I caught a straight when I went with 75s. Unfortunately, the board was not kind, bringing up a third 3 on the river. The obvious full house threat kept me from maximizing my gain. To make matters worse, Darzog had the idiot end of the straight, meaning I had the potential to really hit this one big, but the 3's scared us both away.

Looking back over the hand history I see I was catching some decent hands early. Shadowtwin's apparent slowplay of his AK which flopped TPTK allowed me to fill my straight on the river. I kept hoping he'd come over the top of my bets, but no such luck. A few hands later I caught AA. We didn't make it past the flop, but it was still a decent pot for early play.

Shadowtwin got it all back and then some a bit later. It folded to shadowtwin in the SB. He completed, I checked my massively powerful 83o. The flop came A87, rainbow. Shadowtwin made a pot-sized bet. I reasoned that if he had an ace he would have raised before the flop, so there was a chance that my 8's were actually ahead. I put in my standard 3x raise, making it 600 to go. He pushed all-in. If it was a bluff, hats off to shadowtwin. I was now faced with putting all but 15 of my chips in the pot on a pair of 8's with an ace on the board. He certainly could have been holding 87, and I suppose a less aggressive player might have simply completed pre-flop with A8 or A7. Regardless, there's no way I could make the call, so shadowtwin made off with a third of my stack. Well done, shadowtwin.

My next time in the BB brought another exciting hand. My 97o turned the nut straight on a rainbow board. I wasn't too happy when the river moved me down to second nut, but I figured it unlikely that Wyscan would have bet the turn with just an inside straight draw, so I put in a few more chips on the river and got back what I lost to Shadowtwin.

From there I just blinded off until I was getting close to short. Made a move against Budohorseman with A5s. Looking back at the hand history I can't imagine what I was thinking. Blinds were 75/150 and I still had 1600, giving me an unadjusted M of 7. Budohorseman made a standard 3BB raise and I pushed with A5s. Now that I think back, he'd been stealing quite regularly. Several times he turned up the hammer after he made away with the pot. I guess I figured he might be stealing again and I could either re-steal or, maybe, my ace was good. He called and turned up KJs. Not a pure steal, but also not the greatest hand to be calling an all-in with. My ace held, improving to a pair on the river, and I doubled up to 3200.

My newly increased stack didn't last long. When NewinNov pushed his rather short stack into the pot pre-flop, I figured my A8s might be good, so I pushed as well. He turned over AKo, it held, and I was back to 1800.

My roller coaster ride continued a few hands later when I pushed with 66 and got a call from Speck'sBacon with the big stack holding KQo. My 6's held and I was up to 3800.

The next dip came when I gladly called shadowtwin's all-in with my KK. He turned over AKo, promptly flopped two more aces, and again took a big chunk of my stack.

My night ended when I pushed pre-flop with AKo and got a call from Budohorseman with QQ. His queens held and I finished in 5th.

Sunday is the WPBT Circuit Event #9, PLO8 at Full Tilt, 21:00 EDT. Assuming I play, this will be my first PLO8 tournament. I'm sure it will show. I tried practicing a bit last night at a cheap PLO8 ring table. I did okay, but, as one might expect at a nickel table, the sophistication of the players was a tad on the low side. For much of the time it played a lot more like limit than PL. Several times I was able to steal by tossing in a pot-sized bet when I had good starters. My understanding is that this is the way the game should be played -- max bets early with promising hands so you can build the pot for the times that they hit. The other players didn't seem to appreciate that. I walked away up a few bucks. Maybe I'll try a couple practice SnG's before the main event.

Next week we have all the usual blogger tournaments. I'm sure I'll post again before they start.