two final tables yesterday

and neither of them were in holdem!

i played a ton yesterday and ended up playing a total of 14 mtt's. it's pretty crazy since i think the most mtt's i've ever played in a day is probably 6. i usually find myself really burnt out after 5 or 6 tournaments if they haven't went well but for some reason every time full tilt advertised the next tournament in the chat i found myself registering.

anyways, here is how the day layed out.

started w/ the noon $26 nlh and busted about 15 hands in when i got AQ all-in pre vs Q9. i usually would never get it AI that early pre w/ AQ but this dude was a complete idiot and when he squeezed my raise it was a pretty easy shove.

i ended up grinding out a bunch of $22 turbo sngs and a 45 player sng until the next mtt i was interested in. ran well in the sngs and took 6th in the 45.

my next multi was the $10 rebuy pot limit omaha @ 1:30. i played it fairly tight and at the end of the rebuy period i was in for the minimum and had an ok stack. i eventually busted 54/125 fairly uneventfully.

next was the 2pm $26 deep stack. once again i busted very early, here's the hand. (no hh since ftp tournament hh's are horrible)

villain is sitting on about 2.5k and ep has about 850. i cover villain by 15 chips, blinds are 20/40

ep limps, i raise pot and it folds to villain in the sb who calls. from what i've seen of villain early he calls tons of raises and plays any broadway cards. when i raised pot i was 90% sure he was calling.

folds to ep limper who shoves for his 810. i decide to flat call for 2 reasons:

1) villain obv hates folding so he might decide to reship me here since i haven't shown that much
strength

2) even if he flat calls he's getting it all on the flop w/ any peice which is fine by me.

i call and villain calls.

the flop comes down KT7 and he open shoves his remaing 1600 or so into the 2500 chip pot. i insta call and he shows QJo for a straight draw.

he gets there on the river and im left w/ 15 chips. i like my play here, just a bit unfortunate to not hold up.

after that i played a couple more sngs and decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109, 60k guarantee @ 6pm. once again i ran fairly well in the sngs and after about 2hrs won my seat to the 60k.

i took a break/nap and got ready to come back for the 6pm.

the 60k has a great structure and despite having no real chips i managed to last into 3rd hour before busting 233/671.

next i was onto the 7pm $75. once again i had really no chips the entire tournament and when i finally picked up a premium i ran my AK into AA to bust 95/404.

the 7:15 $26 limit holdem was the typical roller coaster when i busted on a bit of a cooler.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265623

the 8pm $26 didn't go well. i busted 889/1069 after making a bit of a silly play.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1265629

a bit embarassing looking at in hindsight but at the time he just looked so weak and i really thought he was full of complete shit. he was weak but i was weaker. bad hand.

next was the 8:30pm $3.30 nlh rebuy. i went off a bit in this tournament and the first hour was brutal. i ended up w/ the minimum 5k stack at the end of the first hour and was in for 10 rebuys and the add-on. early into the 2nd hour i went bust with this hand which is pretty bad. getting it in drawing dead, never good.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1266217

i was planning on the rebuy to be the last tournament of the night but i figured if i was still in the rebuy (which i was at the time) i might as well keep going.

i entered the $26 deep stack plo at 9:15. the tourament drew 171 players and i started off pretty slowly. i slowly bled chips until about 1/2 through the second hour when i took down a couple big pots and slowly started building up chips. before i knew it had about 30k w/ 30 players left w/ avg being around 15k. i hit a nice run of cards and stole some nice pots pre to keep building down to the money bubble of 18. from there i bounced between 30k and 40k until we reached the final table. we lost 3 players pretty quickly and i was sitting around middle of the pack w/ 60k. down to 5 and i was now low stack w/ 50k and the chip leader potted it for about the 4th time in a row. it folded to me in the sb and i decided to take a stand and reship w/ QQ9T single suited, bb folded and chip leader made an easy call w/ AAxx. i failed to improve and was out in 5th for $307.

during this i was also going semi deep in the nightly fifty fifty. ($55 buy-in, 50k guaranteed) early on i was making hands and ran up my stack to a peak of about 9k. things went really dry from there and on the money bubble (top 135 pay) i was sitting w/ about 6.9k at 300/600/75. about an orbit after the bubble burst i met my demise. after picking up the blinds i had 8.1k at 400/800/75 and in the sb i picked up KK.

the action went short stack shove in mp, mp donk cold calls, button thinks for a minute and then raises to 7k, i shove my 8.1k in and mp donk calls off the rest of his stack.

short stack showed rags, mp donk shows Td9d and button has AA obv. i come 3rd in the pot when T9s flushes on the river and im busted in 126th for a minimal cash.

the 10pm $26 was all over the place in the first hour. i had some really big hands but never really got paid off past the flop. i ended the first hour w/ about 2.5k but slowly dwindled down before making re-steal w/ 87o and about 13bb's from the bb and getting called by KJo. i ended up busting 419/1191 in this.

finally, my last tournament of the night was the 10:15pm $26 horse. the tournament had 204 runners and paid about 1.5k for first.

i lost a good chunk of my chips very early when in holdem i flopped an open ended straight flush draw against a set. as funny as it sounds, i didn't play another holdem hand till the final table. i was just completely card dead throughout the holdem portion which sucks since its my best game in the rotation.

i hovered around 700 chips for the first hour. i was picking up concealed kings during razz and A23 during stud hi. everything was backwards until i picked up a huge pot in stud hi w/ trip Kings. that put me at 3k going into the first break. in the second hour i hovered around my 3k stack for awhile before winning a couple decent sized pots and chipping myself up to 7k. before i knew it we were down to 30 people w/ the top 24 paying. the thought of cashing in a mixed game event pumped me up pretty good and i buckled down and tried to concentrate on each hand. i picked up lots of well timed pots and then got super lucky to have a very good mtt player dump me two straight pots in stud hi. i saw the blue lights once again and was sitting as chip leader w/ 6 left.

down to 4 and i was 2nd in chips. the chip leader had about 105k, i had about 89k and the other two players were in the 40-50k range.

then everything went down the tubes. i dropped a few small pots in razz but the blinds were so high that it put me down to about 60k. all of sudden we were all fairly close. then a big hand happened in stud hi where i made a very bad fold.

the bring in had a 4 up and i raised w/ TT in the hole w/ an Ace up. the bring-in called. we both caught rags on 4th and i bet and he called again. on 5th i caught another rag and he caught an Ace and led out into me. it looked so weak to me and although i have almost no stud experience i thought for sure he was trying to take the pot away from me.

at this point the pot was a decent size and i was sitting w/ 42k behind. instead of raising i just called for some reason. it was a classic donk move, too scared to raise and not willing to fold. on 6th street i caught an Ace and he caught a rag and for some reason that i still haven't figured out i simply check/folded.

he dragged a big pot and showed me a lowly pair of 5's. i was so fucking steamed at myself. i totally read the situation right and just didn't have the confidence in myself to go with it. that's very dissapointing and i won't let it happen again.

i was left w/ 30k after that and w/ a 1k ante i was running out of time. for the next 12 hands im guessing i was the bring-in about 8 times which just totally destroyed my stack. eventually i was all-in pre 34J against KKJ. i managed to make 2 pair on 6th but he hit a flush on the 7th to send me packing in 4th.

4th paid about $375 but i wanted that win so bad. not even for the cash as much as the win.

that was it for the day. all in all a pretty good day but it could've been a lot better.

i'll write more later but this blog has gotten way to big.

tg