My Monday

I was about to sign up for Mondays At The Hoy last night when I had an attack of "what's-the-point?" Nothing against Hoy, his tournament, or any of the blogger tournaments. I haven't been playing that much lately and haven't been doing much at all with tournaments.

One of my PokerStars bonuses will be expiring in March and I have another one waiting beyond that one. I generally clear Stars bonuses at a glacial pace so I knew if I was going to clear the next one it was going to take some effort. A bit of analysis of rake, points, my account balance, and the percent seeing flop on the Stars limit tables, and I decided to take a bit of a step back and play 1/2 limit to clear the bonus. The pot only needs to get to $10 to get one FPP and there are still more than a few horrendous players at the 1/2 tables. If not for a couple horrible suckouts and one very unfortunate hand (A J44 flop with me holding JJ and the other guy holding 44. There's no way I'm NOT going to the wall on that one.), I'd be doing quite well at the tables in addition to the bonus.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I've been playing mostly low end limit the last couple weeks and my tournament play is probably a bit rusty. So, rather than play the Hoy, a tournament which is good but does not usually reflect the kind of play you see in the real world, I opted for the real thing instead. I had a couple $26 tournament tickets I'd picked up cheap at Full Tilt (those Tier 1 tournaments are like shooting fish in a barrel), so I played the nightly $35k.

Considering I haven't seriously played a big tournament in quite some time, I think I did okay. If not for an early suckout (my AA vs her KK) by someone who proceeded to donk off my chips, I think I would have done considerably better. (I really hate it when my chips go to someone undeserving.) I only made a couple mistakes I'm aware of, and on one of those I sucked out. (That suckout is okay because I used the chips wisely.)

The other mistake lead to my downfall. We were into the money and the blinds had climbed to a fairly ridiculous level when I get TT in late position. Some guy in MP made a min-raise. Several people at this table had done this with big hands and it did make me suspicious, but his stack was well into the danger area and I thought he might be simply being cautious with his chips. I raised him all-in. He called and turned over KK. His hand held and I was down to about an M of 5. I managed to steal enough to stay afloat and eventually pushed with AKs. Got a call from somebody with a mid pocket pair. The board was not kind and my night was over. 71st of about 1200 for $50-something. Considering I won my ticket to this in a $8.60 satellite, I guess that's not bad.

Interest in the WWdNot appears to have dwindled to just about zero. It was cancelled last week because only two people signed up. Without publicity from some source more popular than this blog, I'm afraid it's doomed. My efforts to get some promotion at Card Squad were unsuccessful. So, once again, the WWdNot is going on hiatus. We'll have to see if it turns into permanent retirement.