My First Mookie

I guess I'm getting into this whole blogger thing a lot more than I ever suspected I would. Now I've got blogger tournaments listed on my Google Calendar. Addictive personality.

So, last night was The Mookie. My first time in this one. They should have been more gentle. Eh, just kidding.

The first thing I need to do is apologize for delaying the game. My connection was horrible for much of the tournament. I lost count of timeouts in the first hour. I'm still living in a hotel here in Orlando and am subject to the vagaries of the wonderful wireless system they have here. Sometimes it works fine. Then there are times like last night where even Yahoo! and Google don't want to load completely. This, more than anything else, is going to force me to find an apartment where I can get a reliable, wired connection.

I had one real donkey hand fairly early where I got the stupid idea that my rivered bottom pair might be good and called Surfkiller's pot-sized raise. His mighty third pair crushed me. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, okay, I was thinking he was trying to buy it, but, unless he was on a stone bluff, I would have needed more than bottom pair to win it anyway. Dumb.

I got moved from my first table, but my lousy connection caused the handover to not complete, and I unknowingly sat out several hands, including one where my pocket 8's would have turned into a boat. I can't begin to describe the frustration of seeing a hand like that on the screen and not being able to get the software to respond.

So, it was with a disconnection-folded full house as backdrop that two hands later I decided to push with QJs into blipbloop's 3BB raise. I was honestly just trying to end my frustration and slowing of the game. blipbloop, with more than double my stack, called with A6o. And then came the flop that dreams are made of. KT9, rainbow. I was actually back in this, though I still had a sucky connection.

I was shuffled to another table -- this time the handover happened without incident -- and ended up sitting with mookie99, surflexus, and several others with whom I am less familiar. Fifth hand at the new table I get presto in the big blind and am faced with a 3.5BB raise from surf. I thought for a long time on this one. 3.5BB smelled a lot like two high cards, so I figured I was slightly ahead. But surf had twice my stack and this was already looking like all the chips were going in the pot before it was over. Did I want to risk it all with just a slight advantage and little chance of improvement? My M was still over ten, so I was far from the panic stage. I decided to fight another day. Then surf very kindly showed his teensy little pair of aces. I can dodge bullets, baby!

Very next hand I get QQ and smokkee wisely abandoned his 3.5BB raise when I pushed. I'm often uncertain how to play these hands. Obviously QQ is a strong hand at this point, but far too often I've seen it go down to A-crap when the board is unkind. I'm plagued by the feeling that I'm missing some big opportunities by pushing hard with QQ or JJ when there's something in the pot worth taking now. A smooth call, a flop devoid of A's and K's, and I may have ended up with smokkee's stack. But if an A or a K falls on the flop I have almost no choice but to check-fold and instead of increasing my M to 15 I've decreased it to 10. A bird in the hand...

A bit later I get QQ again and watch in horror as my connection again goes south and jjok and smokkee end up all-in, each with weak suited aces. As the hand played out it was lucky I got disconnected since smokkee turned his flush, but I can't help think my pre-flop all-in might have changed things up a bit. I guess we'll never know.

Several disconnections and a lot of crappy cards later, hoyazo doubled me up to 4800 when my 88 held up against his AKo.

My next big hand I played rather uncharacteristically. I almost never slow play big pairs. But when I looked down to see AA, I also noticed everybody left to act was in the M=5 range. I was hoping a simple call might sweeten the pot enough to convince one of them to make a move. irongirl01 raised it to 4BB and I pushed, knowing she was committed. She turned over AQo
and I became the second biggest stack at the table.

Then came one of those hands that was either stupid or near-brilliant. We're down to five players at this table, waiting for a couple more eliminations to make the final table. I get A3o. Ordinarily I'd fold this without a second thought, but we're five-handed and it folds to me on the button. I make it 4BB just hoping to take the blinds. But surflexus is having none of this and calls from the big blind. The flop comes ATT. Surf quickly makes a pot-sized bet. I think for a few seconds and push it all in. Yes, I know there's a real good chance I'm beat here, but if surf doesn't have a big ace then I'm probably taking this one right now. He thought for quite a while, but ultimately made the call. And his AQ took it down. If I'd had a bigger stack and could have made it more expensive or if his kicker had been just a bit smaller, I think my all-in would have taken it. I guess I'd rather go out in a gutsy, if ill-advised, blaze of glory than get blinded out.

So, that was my first Mookie. Hopefully I'll have a better connection for the next one.