The whining post that wasn't

I was precariously close to making a very whiney post about the injustice of poker. I played several tournaments today and got knocked out or seriously wounded by donkeys in all of them. I know that's the kind of thing to expect in $5 tournaments (hey, I felt like playing a big tournament and it was the only one starting in the next hour), but you'd think after the second break the donkeys would have mostly been eliminated. I was kind of proud of lasting as long as I did considering I was card dead most of the time and with a table full of dice rollers it's really hard to bluff your way through a pot. But the donkeys finally got the best of me.

Then I played a satellite to some kind of $30k tournament at Full Tilt. Was doing okay in that, got my money in with way the best of it and suffered a horrible suckout (even according to my definition).

One more $5 tournament with a very quick exit, again with me having way the best of it when the chips went in. I know that's the best I can hope for, but it's been a while since I cashed in a tournament and even that was for very small money. It starts to build on you in a very bad way.

As a last shot at some kind of success today I entered a $20 SnG at Stars. I played what I think was a pretty smart game, occasionally stealing a small pot, mostly going to bat with decent cards. When we got down to five players I hit a mini-run, knocking two players out within a couple hands, getting past the bubble with more than twice the chips as the next closest player.

I felt I was a better player than the other two (what a shock!) and tried not to rashly rush into making big plays. We stayed at three for quite a while. Finally one of the other players knocked the third one out. I had a 2000-chip advantage going into heads up play. I don't think the other guy had a lot of heads up experience. He was playing fairly passively and appeared to mostly be playing his cards.

I finally got a huge lead and it appeared to be all but over. I call the BB with Q2o. The flop comes KQ8, two spades. The other guy pushes all-in. I was reluctant to call given my opponent's tendency to only bet good cards, but I figured he would have raised pre-flop if he'd had a K, so my Q's were probably good. I called. I was right. He had two small spades. He rivered the fifth one and started his climb back. Long story somewhat shorter, I went card dead, he kept pushing all-in, and he eventually took back the lead. Even on the final hand, I got all my chips in with the best of it and he rivered another flush to beat me. But I took second, made a small amount of money, and restored just a bit of my faith in myself.

On a different poker-related topic, it seems the folks at "Poker After Dark" felt the players weren't making enough noise so they decided to mic the chips this week. EVERYBODY at the table was shuffling their chips. What a horrendous racket! I always record it on the DVR and watch at a more reasonable time during the week. I started watching last night and couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes. I tried again tonight. Didn't make it five minutes. Deleted the whole week's worth of episodes without watching them. Listening to this was like having your head stuck in the coin tray of one of the old dollar slot machines (back when they gave out real coins) with the machine stuck on permanent payout. NBC, hire a sound man who doesn't need a hearing aid!