Riverchasers

With my semi-hiatus from poker this month I also took a break from the blogs. There were still a few I tried to keep up with. I always enjoy Al's tales of booze and bacon. (The cuties don't hurt either.) I still think he needs to try the bacon flavored coffee at Boca Java. Julius Goat's player profiles are also not to be missed.

With my return to tournament play I've started reading some of the other blogs again. I stopped by Hoyazo's and skimmed through some of his recent posts. He's been advocating very tight play in the early stages of the larger blogger tournaments. His justification is success with this strategy in a number of tournaments and general lack of success when not using this strategy. I think what he recommends is a sound strategy, particularly against the highly unpredictable play of some of the more donkey-ish players, but the justification is classic poker fallacy -- drawing conclusions based on a very small number of observations.

All that aside, I decided to try playing a bit tighter tonight in the Riverchasers. Not that I play like a maniac normally, but in the tournaments with loads of dead money I've been playing a lot more speculative hands early in the hopes of hitting something big and picking up a huge pot. Tonight, with double stacks and the slower levels, we had mostly the same players at the table for a very long time. And something unusual happened. After obviously playing very tight for quite a while, when I made a move on a pot I got respect. Or at least it seemed that way. Admittedly, I'm doing just what I accused Hoy of above -- drawing larger conclusions based on a very limited sample size.

I do know that I took down a very big pot in level 5 on a stone cold bluff. It was a good situational bluff -- I'd actually been on a nut flush and straight draw that missed -- taking advantage of the board and the way the betting had gone. Man, there is nothing sweeter than stealing a big pot on nothing but air.

For a while I was actually near the top of the leaderboard. Well, much closer to the top than the bottom. I think I broke into the top ten once. Then came the river suckout that launched me on a downward slide. Plus, with the blinds and antes increasing, I was forced to play more marginal hands, few of which amounted to anything.

My only big mistake was on the final hand. I suspected I was way behind, but most of my chips were already in the pot so I figured there was little left to lose. If I'd folded when the other guy pushed, I'd have been left with enough for maybe one more round and absolutely no folding equity at all. So I called and then hit the rail, finishing in 40th. Not a stellar performance, but sometimes the cards just fall that way.

I believe this weekend will be spent in pursuits other than poker. My next tournament will probably be the MATH next week. Have a good weekend.