My MATH is improving

I played in the Mondays At The Hoy tournament last night for the first time in quite a while. Also for the first time in I don't remember how long, I did pretty well in a non-SnG, giving my FTP bankroll a very much needed boost. I finished 4th of 51 for $130-something.

Through much of the first half of the tournament I did little but fold. I kept my head above water by stealing the blinds when the situation was right.

My first big hand of the night came with the blinds at 40/80. I got AKs in the BB. Columbo, from UTG+1, raises to 200. In days of old I would have looked at AcKc, figured I had a monster, and pushed a bunch more chips in the pot. These days I tend to look at it more as nothing but a good drawing hand, so I just called Columbo's raise.

Flop is AK2 with two diamonds. Ordinarily I'd be doing cartwheels, but I was a bit concerned Columbo might have pocket aces. I play it cagey and check. Columbo bets 260 into a 440 pot. I come back with the dreaded min-raise. He calls.

The turn is a dream card, the Ks. If he doesn't have AA, I've got a lock. I bet 640, slightly less than half the pot. He calls.

The river is the 9c. Clearly no help to anyone. Here is where I thought I made a mistake. I want the rest of Columbo's chips and figure if I check he might take the whole hand as me trying to bluff my way through and finally giving up. I check, he checks. Damn! Turns out from looking at the hand history that he was on a diamond flush draw the whole time. There was no way he was going to put any more chips in the pot. Why couldn't it have been the 9d on the river? Oh well, shouldn't be greedy.

I mostly stole blinds for a while until my QQ held up against an all-in from Alceste with K9s. Bad timing on his part. That brought me up to 5660 with blinds at 80/160.

In here somewhere I had a few stretches where I was stealing the blinds with abandon. Three, four hands in a row I'd put in a normal 3BB raise and everyone would fold. Either many folks were playing to make the points (this was another of the BBT tournaments) or I got lucky that everybody was card dead. Mostly I was raising with decent hands, but after a while I started wondering if I shouldn't just keep raising every hand. You wouldn't think a bunch of bloggers would let somebody get away with that, but it sure looked like I could have.

The next big pot was a bit of a nail-biter. I had KK in the SB, blinds at 150/300 with 25 ante. Lester000 from the button raises to 600. I min-raise back, he calls. Flop is AJ7, rainbow. I'm thinking to myself, "It's never easy." I check, lester000 checks. Turn is a blank. Check, check. River is another A. I figure there's no way he checked an ace this long so I bet a bit less than half the pot. He calls. He didn't have an ace so I win. I'm up to 7225 now.

Somewhere along in this stretch I went card dead and my stack dwindled. I was down to 5170 with blinds at 400/800 ante 100. Definitely push or fold territory. I get 22 and decide it's now or never. AlCantHang has even fewer chips than I do and calls with KJs. My pair would have held, but just to add insult to injury, the remaining twos showed up on the board. Quack, quack, quack, quack. I get quads and Al goes home. Sorry, Al.

Then came the hand where I got kind of lucky. It was getting a bit late and my attention wandered. I was dealt 88 and figured I'd push if there was no action ahead of me. I started reading some web page and then it was action to me. I clicked "Max" and "Raise". Then I noticed mtnrider81 had put in a 3BB raise ahead of me. Crap. I'm not sure if I would have even called had I noticed the raise. I certainly wouldn't have pushed all-in behind it with just a mid pair. Mtnrider81 thought about it a while and made the call. He showed AQo. The board made it interesting, showing TK39 by the turn. He had ten outs on the river, but it paired the board and moved me from deep trouble to not so much trouble.

We moved to the final table and I hit another long stretch of crap cards. I'm down to M=5 and get KQo. Best cards I've seen in ages. Mtnrider81 raises to 3BB and I push all-in. (Maybe it was this hand where I had the lapse in attention. Or maybe I was just more desperate than I remember. They both look like pretty iffy plays in the light of day.) It folds around to mtnrider81 who again thinks for a long time and finally makes the call. He shows 66. The flop brings a K and a Q, so he's down to two outs. No luck for mtnrider81 and I move from in pretty big trouble to the chip leader in one hand.

Then the cards completely dried up. My stack got blinded and anted from 31,000 down to 13,000. In the meantime we moved down to the final five. An uncalled all-in stemmed the flow for an all too brief a time.

Finally, with the blinds at 1000/2000 ante 250, my stack at 9000 and only four of us left, I had no choice but to push with A2o. HighOnPoker called with A7s and filled his flush on the river. I finish in fourth.

Given my finish position, this was a tournament with comparatively little fireworks for me. A couple big hands, a couple coin tosses that went my way. I think the key was that, other than the lapse of attention or two, I didn't make any big mistakes. There were no big hands where I went to the showdown a loser, other than the last, of course. All in all, I was pretty happy with my play, especially considering I've not played all that much in the last couple months.

And just so this isn't all about me, I have to say I was very impressed with Hoyazo's play. Not so much that he pulled a bunch of clever stunts, but that he showed incredible patience and discipline. I don't know how many times I saw him make a move at a pot, get played back at, and give it up. For a good player, I think play like that takes a lot more guts than just pushing all-in in response to the re-raise. Very smart poker. Good luck in the WSOP, Hoy.

Also, congrats to VinNay on the win. Well played.

Sorry for this being so long and being mostly a boring play-by-play. I'm a bit rusty with this blogging thing too I guess.

The next BBT event is The Mookie on Wednesday. I guess tonight is the WWdN. Probably won't play that one. Maybe The Mookie.