The Mookie and other tidbits

Played in The Mookie -- Iak's Coronation last night. Forty-four players showed up. Mookie live-blogged the whole thing. This one did not turn into a marathon like some others recently. It was all over in just under two hours. Congrats to DuggleBogey for outlasting the rest of the field this week.

I'm afraid my performance was short and rather unsensational. One quickly shut down bluff, several unsuccessful attempts at catching a hand with suited connectors, lots of folding and blinding down, followed by a quick flameout when I pushed with A6o when my M dropped below 5 and ran into csquard's pocket 7's that held. I won three hands the whole tournament, all of them simply picking up the blinds.

I've been on a run of bad cards lately and they obviously continued into the Mookie. At least they've mostly been non-starters so they haven't been terribly costly. Except for when my 64 ran headlong into a wheel in Razz. That was my biggest single loss at limit in a very long time.

On a somewhat brighter note, while waiting for The Mookie to begin I got into a single table SnG at Full Tilt. My cards there were also fabulously unspectacular until with the blinds at 60/120 it folded to the SB who completed and let me play K3s for free. I flopped the nut flush and the SB had the misfortune to pair his ace. He pushed it all in on the turn and I doubled up. Some slightly better cards appeared and I went on to take second.

Since my exit from The Mookie was a bit earlier than I expected, I popped over to PokerStars and played another SnG. In this one I actually had one of those highly speculative small suited connector hands come through for me. I flopped an inside straight flush draw. My call of an almost pot sized bet was probably marginal considering I was drawing to the lowest possible flush and an inside straight, but I just had to see one more card. The turn filled my straight and the other guy folded to my purposely weak check-raise.

This was another of those situations where I'm never sure if I should take the bird in hand or go for the flock in the bush. In this case I was a bit concerned about him drawing to a better flush so I decided to do the check-raise. As I said, it was a pretty weak check-raise -- 240 on top of his 180 bet into a 260 pot -- but I'm guessing he was on second pair or maybe just semi-bluffing with a flush draw and he bailed. Decent pot, though, for that stage of the tournament.

When we got down to five, I made a play with ATo that ended up being very costly. I think my initial raise to 3BB (75/150) was okay, but bluffing into a 899 flop after my opponent checked was pretty stupid. He pushed all-in in response. I knew I was almost certainly beat, but getting better than 3-to-1 from the pot I thought the chance of him bluffing was worth making the call. Actually, knowing what his cards were, I was way into correct move territory by making the call. His pocket 5's made him a not quite 3-to-2 favorite. But the 5's held and with the blinds increasing to 100/200 on the next hand, my M was reduced to 2.

I picked up a few pots by pushing all-in, then lucked out big time when my all-in with A8o was called by AKo and I flopped trip 8's.

When we hit the bubble the table went very tight and I took advantage, slowly building my stack to where I at least wasn't in serious trouble from the blinds. Basically, this allowed me to hang on until we were heads up. I went in at a serious chip disadvantage and the other guy played the situation well. A few hands later I had another 2nd place SnG finish. Hard to turn much of a profit taking second at $10+$1 SnG's, but it's way better than being first out.

Don't forget the WWdN: Not The Mak_K_4_Life Invitational tonight, 22:30 EDT at PokerStars. Password is monkey.