so last weekend i put in a ton of hands of plo. (for me at least) I played a couple hundred hands Friday night and lost close to 3 buy-ins. in that session i lost about a 265bb pot where i was 75% favourite that would of made the session break even.
saturday was a massacre. i played early in the day and lost a couple more buy-ins. later that evening i put in a good long session and unfortunately lost some more. the whole weekend put together i think i played around 2200 hands and lost 11 buy-ins. ($1100) it definitly sucked but at no point was i ever playing steamed or tilty. i was level headed the whole time and never really payed attention to how much i was down although i knew it was fairly significant. i sent some hands off to my plo coach and there were some definite mistakes and although i didn't play perfect i don't think i played awful either. i can only think of two hands where i made big mistakes and most of the other mistakes was stuff like felting bottom set to a fairly passive player and what not. i ran a little bit below expectation over the course of those hands as well so the loss was a bit easier to take.
saturday nite i also played some mtt's. i started with the fifty fifty at 9:30pm and got knocked out of that fairly early on when i ran AJ into AK on a AxxA board and was pot stuck. the hand went like this:
ep raises and gets multiple callers to me on the button. i elect to call with AJs which i normally insta-muck to a raise but since i was suited, the pot was multi-way and i had the button i thought it was playable. flop comes Axx, it's checked to me so i fire out a little more than 1/2 pot, ep raiser calls as does one other player. the turn is another Ace and there are no draws out there. it checks to me once again and i bet, ep raiser c/r all-in and the other guy folds. i have to call off like 800 to win a ton so i call knowing im crushed. ep raiser was a good aggressive player and my initial read on his flop call is that he might have had a hand like JJ-KK that he didn't like the Ace but couldn't necessarily fold to a button that might stab at this flop a high % of the time without an Ace. i don't know, i think the third player in the hand screwed me up cuz i think i have to bet my trips in case he was check/calling a weak ace and is now ready to go broke with it. if the pot were to be heads-up with the ep raiser i think i most likely check the turn through for pot control.
after that i played the 10pm $26 and went semi deep for my first cash since returning to mtt's. i placed 169/1232 for $38 and snuck into the money w/ less than 5bb's and was probably in the bottom 5 of the tournament from 200 down.
i also played the $10 rebuy at 10:30pm and busted in that 87/440 but i don't remember how.
so Sunday i was really tempted to play but decided not to since i was tired from playing late the night before.
my next session came tuesday night but i didn't play a hand of plo. i felt a little burnt out on the game and thought maybe it would be best to take sometime away from it. after my very small cash on saturday and i really started craving the tournament action. so tuesday i decided to play nothing but mtt's and see how it went. i didn't get started till 7pm but i threw a few bucks on stars as well so i could play there as well.
here's a recap of what i played and how it went:
7pm $109 on stars - this tournament was going well and i was getting some playable hands and probably had an active image. i worked my way up to about 3600 picking up small pots when i got it all-in pre just before the break w/ QQ vs AKo and lost the flip leaving me with 116 chips. i busted shortly after that. although i like this tournament i don't think i'll put any more money on stars to play it. it's really the only tournament i could play on stars since most of the fields on stars are like 2000 people and they run until the weeee hours of the morning which is not ideal since i have to go to work the next day. also, the two tables i played at had like 5 known players at each which can't be all that great for my expectation.
7pm $75 on full tilt - lost some small pots and slowly got down to about 2200 from the original 3k (i think this is how i start this tournament every time) until i was on the receiving end of set over set and busted fairly early.
7:15pm $26 limit holdem on ftp - played poorly i think and eventually busted early in the 2nd hour.
$75 45 person sng on ftp - played 3 of these getting knocked out early twice and going deep in the third one finishing 2nd for $776. should have won it but oh well.
$22 180 person sng on stars - nothing really happened in this one and i eventually busted around 60th i think.
8pm $150 on ftp - went fairly deep in this one without any real crazy hands. pretty much hung around below average but not quite shortstacked for most of the tournament until i made a bone head move. 59 left with top 54 paying (520 runners) and this hand goes down:
http://www.cardrunners.com/members/display_hand.php?session=s%3A5%3A%2211495%22%3B&hand=s%3A6%3A%22381589%22%3B
it's bonehead cause im not deep enough to make the initial raiser fold pre-flop since he'll be getting close to 2-1 on a call.
7:30pm $20 rebuy 6-max nlh - picture is worth a thousand words.
so yeah i won. pretty cool, just over 3k for first. i usually don't like to play 6-max tournaments but decided since i can only play tournaments that will end at a reasonable hour that i should give this one a shot. i double rebought right off the bat and build up to about 4.5k, then lost a big pot w/ KK vs 97 on a J9x board all-in and had to single rebuy to get back to 3k. after that i cruised and had 10k after taking the add-on at the end of the first hour. (in for $82 total)
i played some big pots (don't quite remember) but somehow built up to a big stack of about 40k and then got into a big hand. i had been opening liberally and picked up TT in the Co and made a standard raise. the sb a very good (according to opr) player re-raised and i 4-bet since i thought he was re-raising light. he shoved and i had a tough decision. i can't find the hh but i believe i was getting 2.5-1 and although he's showing up with a big hand here often i thought he had a wider range than a normal shover there and ended up calling after timing all the way down. the other reason i called is that even if i lost i still would have had an above avg stack. to my surprise he had AQo and i held to be top 3 in chips. (running it in pokerstove even if he is only shoving JJ+ and AK i am only a 2-1 dog so im well within my odds to call.)
after that i was planning on raising everyhand since i was like 8x avg but of course being 2nd in chips full tilt moves the chip leader to my exact left. i stayed active but everytime i moved tables or got a big stack moved from my left another came in so i couldn't go too nuts.
i managed to get down to two tables and was still top 4 in chips and the chipleader at my table. i had two complete maniacs to my left that were doing everything in there power to go bust. they kept 3-betting my raises, raising my blind even though i was 3-bet shoving them wide and this is after i call there all-ins light and they get there. eventually i busted one of them and then with 7 left i busted the other one when he raise, the sb cold called and i shoved and he snap called me with AJo and i had AKo and held.
i had 295k when we got to the final table and was chip leader by about 100k so my plan was to tighten up since i had final 3 chips already but i was getting a lot of good starting hands for 6-max and ended up being the laggy player at the table. when we got to 4 handed i was actual the shortest stack w/ 145k. i hung tough and soon two others busted and we were heads up almost dead even with about 500k each @ 2.5k/5k/600a which plays pretty much like a cash game. i felt i had a good edge on him and eventually had ground him down to about a 700k/300k disadvantage when i picked up AA for the 2nd time heads-up (i had AA about 5 times in the rebuy period and never got action with them), villain raised, i re-popped fairly big cause i was pretty sure he was calling and i wanted to build a bigger pot. he called and the flop came down Jxx all diamonds and i held the Ace of diamonds. i open shoved the flop and he snap called me with J7o no diamonds and it held for the win.
this is getting long so i'll write some more in my next entry.
tg
