I have to say that this has been a pretty good weekend. Angela is away in Florida, which sucks, but that gives me more free time for a little game called poker.

My PokerStars bankroll had gotten a little low, and I didn’t want to transfer in any more cash, really, as last week was Bill Paying week. So I decided to try a few cheap tournaments to see what I could do. The plan was to risk small amounts of the bankroll and see what I could get back from the investment.
On Friday evening, I entered one of the $1 + 0.40 5 table SnG tourneys on the site. By playing solidly, and waiting for the right times to move, I took that tourament down and got first place. It was a pretty quick moving tourney, and by the time we got down to 3, there were two other very solid players left. We were at 3 people for about 35 minutes, until finally one of the other two busted out. I went down to heads up play I was at a considerable disadvantage. Heads up play, though, is something I’d like to think I’m pretty good at. (I have a number of 3rd place tourney finishes, and a number of 1st place finishes. I almost never go out in 2nd). I ended up taking it down, and raking in the massive first place prize of…. $14. Which means that I only really earned 4 bucks and hour, but hey… it’s practice, right?

After the tourney, I hosted our usual Friday Shadyhouse game, which has pretty much moved to my apartment for the summer due to the central air conditioning here. It was a fun night, with one of my new coworkers and her partner joining us for the first time. I ended up slightly up on the night. Furthermore, Jimmy didn’t have any cash, so I spotted him both of his buyins, and he transfered an equivalent amount from his PokerStars account and into mine.

On Saturday, I played another 45 player $1.40 tourney, and ended up taking 3rd, giving me another $7 to play with. Later, I went back to the $.50/$1 limit holdem tables. That ended up with me down just a tad. No big deal though. I had a friend come in and stay over for the Pittsburgh Triathlon. After she crashed so that she could get up at 4:00 AM, I headed over to The Drinkingest Party hosted by Brian and Jen, and was able to see a bunch of folks that I haven’t gotten to talk to in much too long.

Earlier today, I was browsing around the PokerStars lobby and found the 180 player $4 + $0.40 buy in SnG. It looked interesting, and the blinds were set to advance on 15 minute intervals, rather than 10, so I figured I’d give it a go. Let me tell you the play at that thing was TERRIBLE until we got down to about 70 people. At that point, most of the players remaining had at least some acumen. When we were down to 54 players, I was back in 52nd place with just about 8 BB left. I was UTG+2, and opened all-in with 88. I was getting down to desperation mode. I was called by two players. The first reraised all in, and the second called all-in for a stack larger than mine. The reraiser had TT. Man, I was hosed. The other dude who called had.. get this… Q9o. Amazing. Anyway, I got very lucky and hit my set on the turn and tripled up. The TT guy just came out a little behind by taking the side pot.

On the next hand I had JJ. A loose player in front of me raised about 4xBB, and I pushed all-in in hopes to isolate things, or just pick up the pot there. To my horror, a dude calls all-in behind me, and the original raiser called all-in too. This time I was against TT (the first caller) and, A7s… from the original UTG raiser. My hand held, and I ended up doubling up again. That was the ammo I needed to go deep. I didn’t see many good hands for a while after that, but I was able to coast into the final two tables being 4th in chips. We went from 18 to 9 pretty quickly, and I found myself in the final 9 with the 5th largest stack.

Things were going well for me, and we were down to 4 handed play. I was basically tied with another player for 3rd in chips, and found myself holding KK. I raised UTG, and 4th place stack reraised me from the BB. I pushed all in and he called. I had run my KK straight into AA. The Aces held, and I found myself all-in from the BB with less than a full blind in front of me, with a monster hand of 74o. There was action behind me and I figured I was done, however by the river, I hit a flush with my 7 and tripled up. The next hand I had rags and had to fold from the SB. After that though, I found myself with AJo on the button, folded around to me, so I pushed the chips in. My raise though, was less than 1 full BB. I was called by the BB who had T2o, who proceeded to hit 2 pair by the river, and sent me packing.

All in all, I was pleased by the result. I took 4th place, for $57.60, which is not bad at all for a $4.40 initial investment. I will probably try the same format tourney again another afternoon when I have 3-4 free hours.
Later in the night, I headed to the South Side Works to see The Descent, a thoroughly freaky movie.

It’s time to get ready for bed though. This is the last week before the RAs arrive, and I have a mega-ass-load to get done this week to have the building ready for them. When I go to bed, I’ll be really, really glad I’m not in a creepy-ass cave in the Appalachian Mountains.

I also need to get a working spell checker for WordPress.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 01:10 and is filed under poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.