All my decisions were easy last night. I was either card dead or pot committed.
Played some .01/.02, was card dead, down about .80. Didn’t do anything great or stupid, just didn’t get much to play, and when I did, it was AK (AK these days means raise preflop, c-bet flop, fold to reraise because I missed). When you’re really card dead and playing less than 10% of your hands, people are going to be able to put you on high cards on a missed flop. No hands worth discussing.
Also played 2 tourneys. A 1.25 45 man on FT, went out in 14th place. Totally card dead for the 1st hour. Played less than 10% of my hands – no real opportunities to steal or anything. I had an M of less than 5, shoved 88 preflop, got called by late position AA with a smaller stack, was left with an M of 1. Got KK a couple hands later, shoved, got a caller, doubled up, but still only had an M of 2.5. Shoved KJo a few hands later, got called by AQ, didn’t connect – out.
These tourneys are basically playing themselves for me lately. I’m sure this will change, but recently I’m facing one of two situations:
1) Get a big hand early like KK or AA – someone else wants to get it all in, and I have to call. I get cracked. I’m satisfied playing a smaller pot with these, but no one is letting me.
2) I get absolutely nothing until my M is in the 5 range. We’re talking every hand has a 2 or a 3 in it – I just refuse to play those hands unless they are pairs. Can’t steal or resteal with something like that because the table is too loose, or there’s already raises and reraises in front of me. I won’t resteal with a hand like 72o. I just can’t do it. So with an M of 5 or less, I’ll pick up a medium hand like KJ or QT or A8 and have to shove because any small raise pot commits me, but I still have to play the hand. A big stack calls me with a medium hand or I run into a hand and I’m out. I refuse to get completely blinded out on the bubble, I’d rather make a move with a reasonable hand that gives me a chance to stay in the tourney.
Played in another Ulitmate Points 10 man SNG. It was kind of silly – 5 people were out in the first 2 rounds. The guy that took them all out and had a 7k stack then said ‘I have to leave’ and went all in every hand. I called with AQo and doubled up once. He was out in less than 10 hands, and the chips went mostly to a crazy aggro guy, who then dumped them with terrible play to a solid player. It didn’t take long to get heads up with the solid player, but he had me with a 3-1 chip lead. We played a pretty long heads up session and exchanged the lead back and forth because the blinds were relatively low. Of course I was generally card dead. He was crushing me on small pots, but I got lucky with a couple of big pots (he tried to trap me with a set of aces and I backdoored a nut flush) and got it even again. After maybe 60 hands, he had me about 7800-7200 in chips. I finally got a good hand – QQ. He raised preflop, I reraised, and he called. Flop came 972o. I bet, he raised, I shoved, he called, he had A9o. I was a 4-1 favorite. 9 on the turn, no river, I’m out. He was a worthy opponent, consistently making solid bets and raises, playing a good smallball game. I was having a hard time stealing with bad cards and ended up having to play a longball game.
I’ve been playing these UB Points tourneys about once a session now, and I’m cashing every time although it’s always 2nd or 3rd. I was thinking I was going to try to build up some points to earn an entry into a WSOP satellite or whatever, but I can’t even find any good points satellites. PS has them all the time. Unless I can find something worth doing with them besides getting a 10k point hat, I won’t bother. I hate UB’s game selection interface. It’s impossible to read the tournament descriptions.
UB 80.70
FT 15.75
PS 80.10
