Sunday, December 10, 2006

Mixed Fortunes

After another bad day on cash on Thursday i decided to only play a limited amount on Friday. As it turned out the few hours i played on cash became quite profitable, especially late in the morning when i guess i got paid by 1 or 2 drunk calling stations. Multis on Thursday resulted in further lack of confidence in them and i guess it must have been at least 20 multis without a cash before tonight.

Im been in a funny mood the last few days, i think the weather after the caribbean doesnt help and also the distinct lack of fitness and extra weight ive eaten my way towards. Must do something about that and managed to force a 2 mile run today which is a start anyway.

I again bubbled in the 12k this time finishing 32nd (pays to 30) when my A9 ran into JJ. However before this i had played and run well in a 107 player 109$ game and i ended up finishing 2nd.

Things of note in this tournament were the abuse around the bubble i gave the table stealing 80-90% of pots as i already had a monster stack and i sustained that well. Keys hands of note in the game were:

Blinds of 200,400 i flat call in middle position with AA playing a 4-5k stack, next guy calls, but the sb makes it 1200 and i decide just to call and play slow. The other guy only had 1400 left and amazingly folded so it was heads up going to the flop of 983 (all clubs, i had the ace of clubs). He leads out for 1200 and i flat call (obviously could have played this hand so many different ways). Turn is Jc and he again bets 1200, now i only have 3200 left so push all in and dont get any more action. A bit of an overbet on my part but the pot was big enough there and if he did have trips i wanted him to pay for the river.

Several minutes later the same guy raises my big bling to 1200 and i move all in, which amazingly gets called by A8. My queens held up and i was up to 16k in 1st with 2nd place down on 10k i knew i could get more agressive now. There must have been about 30 players left at this point but once we lost a few more i became ultra agressive around the 18 players bubble and got very little resistance. I climbed to 40k , hitting 1 or 2 pot odds pots or knocking small stacks out.

The next hand got me fuming. With blinds of 300,600 (14 players left) my bb gets raised to 2400 and i move all in 40k with AQ. This is such an obvious fold for a 16k stack (in top 5) holding only A8 but he calls and spikes the 8 for a 35k pot. Unreal i was livid, if that pot held up i had over 40% of the chips in play with 13 players left. That certainly would have been the most dominant chip lead i could ever have had in a poker multi at that stage and i was not happy. Anyway i was still 2nd with 30k and i actually was marginally 1st when we hit the final table of 9. There were 3 other stacks almost my size though and the blinds had increased so i tightened up a lot and let the others knock each other out.

Then the reverse variance (or whatever you want to call it) came with 5 players left when my QQ ran into KK but i hit a full house and shortly after there was 3 of us left with level chips. Again i played tighter than normal as the others looked good for a face off and the cash increase from 3rd was $1000 more and only $1600 more for 1st than 2nd so i if i could cruise into 2nd it would be good. The plan worked but i was left 60k vs 100k heads up. I got back to 80k vs 80k but then lost 1 or 2 pots and was back down to 65k. The blinds increase to 2400 bb so i was looking for a good spot to gamble to try and catch up or take the chip lead when i moved all in 65k over a 12k raise with KJoff i was amazed when i was called by A3off as i had not moved in before that. Still in reasonable shape for a pot to go 133k vs 27k but no help came to either of us on the board and i was happy enough to accept 2nd for $3140 and maybe more importantly a multi cash win.

That pushes my monthly profit up nicely to a point where i can enter a few bigger multis this month and i may even consider moving up cash games stakes if i can put aside an amount affordable to lose.

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