Donkerific!

I'm glad Kat's Friday tournament is called a Donkament. It gives me a good excuse for my play.

15 runners. 125 rebuys. 12 add-ons. I tried to get into the spirit of things by taking what chances I could during the rebuy, and I didn't let a little thing like getting total crap cards stand in my way. I pushed at every remotely reasonable opportunity, and failed almost every time. I have no idea how many rebuys I made, but I'm quite certain it was way more than my one-fifteenth share of the 125.

I took a few all-ins during the first hour, but got sucked out on a couple times and then couldn't get any traction. Toward the end of the rebuy period I was getting desperate to build a stack and kept pushing with anything that had any chance, and kept running into hands just a little bit better. And they held.

At the end of the rebuy I was near the bottom of the pack with 3700. The big stack at my table had 24k. And as bad as the cards were during the rebuy, they got worse once it was over. It was another of those nights where I might as well have sat out.

I did take a few decent pots and managed to stay afloat, but it was a cycle of win enough to be okay, then get crap and get blinded down.

Once desperation set in, I got very lucky. I kept getting it in with the worst of it and sucking out. It felt like the universe swinging back into balance, what with all the horrible luck I had during the rebuy. One of the observers commented that he hadn't seen me get it all in once where I wasn't behind. Of course, he didn't have the benefit of seeing my cards when I made the push and the other guy folded. I'm pretty sure I was ahead in at least one or two of those. Through donkerific suckouts and just a wee bit of decent play, I somehow managed to make the money, taking third.

Among all the horrible cards I saw were a few hands that looked like gems. Three times I got pocket aces. (Yeah, I know, that seems in direct contradiction to complaining about the cards, but even the aces didn't make up for the rest of the crud.) The first time I played them fast and took almost nothing. The next time I slowed it down. Even caught a set on the turn, but lost anyway to a low straight.

The third time was my last hand. I slowplayed it again. Looking at a two-suited flop of Q52, I thought my dream had come true when the betting escalated until all my chips were in the pot. Then ElSnarfGrande turns over 52. Great slowplay.

Despite taking $30 for third, I'm pretty sure I lost money overall.

Earlier in the evening I added a bit to The Quest bankroll. I was looking over the spreadsheet and noticed I've been at this for eight months now. Admittedly, I've taken a few rather long breaks and haven't even played 60 sessions yet, but that's still quite a while with only $32 profit to show for it.

On the other hand, it is a 640% return on my investment, not counting time spent. If my other investments had done that well over the last eight months I'd be typing this from a beach someplace while half-naked native girls brought me drinks with umbrellas in them and waved palm fronds to keep me cool. I guess it's all about perspective.