I’ve been sick the past couple of days, so I’ve played some poker during the day while I’ve been home. Yesterday, I played in a 1.20 45 man on Stars, figuring I had a few hours. I got stacked in less than 10 hands with high pair vs. a flopped garbage 2 pair. I overplayed it, but I usually do against guys that play too many hands. Whatever. I decided to try another 1.20 45 man because I expected I still had a couple hours. After about 10 minutes in I realized that I didn’t choose a regular 1.20 45 man, I instead chose a 1.20 45 man that’s really a satellite into the Sunday $100 Grand. I tend to do pretty well in satellites like this where the payout is the same for the final x players. I played really tight early, made a couple of raises with AK and AQ, missed, c-bet, and folded to raises. I was shortstacked fairly early, well under 1000 in chips. I decided to just wait for a spot to shove. I kept waiting because my hands were garbage and there was always a lot of action in front of me. Finally, I had an opportunity to shove. It was garbage, but at least it had been folded to me. I shoved, no call. A couple hands later, I shoved again, no call. A couple hands later, I had KK, shoved, called, doubled up, and I was back in it. I had to make it to the top 4 in order to earn a 10+1 ticket to the next tourney. I proceeded to take pots from this person that played every hand preflop for a call, just raising preflop, and that padded my stack. I hit a couple of money hands, and I was in the lead. When it got down to the final table, things tightened up considerably, but the blinds were high, and the small stacks started going down. I was still hovering in the top 4, so I took my time, figuring I could fold my way in. Unfortunately, some of these people didn’t realize that the big stacks should try to put the small stack out, and kept giving the small stack chips by raising and then folding to the small stack shove. It didn’t make much sense, and I started to wonder whether they were colluding, but then they would make a weird play against each other that made collusion seem impossible. So, I went from the big stack to the small stack. Then came the make or break hand.
I had K9o in the SB. Because I had an M of about 5 at this point, I figured I was probably going to have to shove it if it was folded to me. I expected to get called, however, I had some fold equity because these guys would occasionally fold to a shove if they called preflop, even from the small stack. Well, the 3 guys in front of me called. I wasn’t sure if they all called to see if they could keep me from shoving, or if they wanted to all call me when I shoved, but it was uncharacteristic of them, because they hadn’t done it to the other short stack. Well, I wasn’t shoving into all those guys, so I called in the SB for the 1/2 bet, and the BB checked. Flop came KT9 rainbow – I have a good 2 pair, but have to be concerned about a better 2 pair, set, or straight. Shove or minbet? I chose the minbet, figuring at least one other person hit the flop, and hopefully they would shove and I’d get it heads up so at least I could get rid of the possibility of losing to some weird backdoor draw. I’m not folding my 2 pair. Sure enough, the previous shortstack, to my right, shoves. I instacall. He has AK which surprised me, so I had to just avoid an A. No A, and I double up. A couple hands later, he shoved, we all called, and he was gone.
It turns out the Sunday $100 Grand is a doublestack tourney (T3000 chips to start), and it allows up to 20000 entries, double the usual max of 10000. I don’t see myself having 8 hours to play that tourney, which means I have a tourney entry I’ll never use, so I withdrew. I’ll probably just use the money on some SNGs. It would be nice to have a shot at a big payout, but there’s no way my wife is going to let me blow an entire Sunday playing poker. She hasn’t let me do that since I tried to qualify for the WSOP 2 years ago on my birthday.
I’m down about $30 on Stars in cash games. I don’t even remember how.
On the UB front, I’m down about 2 $25 buyins at 25NL, hovering around $250 again, so I’m back to $10NL. I was stacked once by AA vs. KK (as usual), and another was a set over set. I don’t think the 25NL players are any better, although they are more aggressive, but once again, I’m just running into hands. Does anyone ever fold KK preflop? I may start. The guy was tight and reraised me, so I suspected I might be behind, but I was just hoping he had AK.
So, I’m at about $340 total, so it’s back to being patient at 10NL.
