Know What's Fun? Regaining an Entire Day of Losses in an Hour

Tuesday was pretty uneventful. I went home for dinner with the fam, and after we chilled and watched American Idol.

Yesterday I played a lot of tournaments. I don't feel like writing them all down. Basically I had a chip lead going into the money of a $20 180 player SNG, as you all by now is the final two tables. I didn't play the best I could have I think and I wound up losing a lot of hands once we got down to 5 or 6 at each table. I wound up making the final table, but going out in ninth.

I also cashed in the $20 re-buy for $140 something after being in for $100. In that one I pushed a ten big blind stack UTG with QQ and got called by AA. Oh well.

Overall on the day I was down about $600. I was actually down $500 but I decided to play a $115 heads up match to try and alleviate the losses for the day. Luckily for me I ran into the third overall heads up player on PokerStars for the $100-$300 range. I learned this by looking him up on sharkscope.com. I lost by re-raising with 33, he pushed and I called instantly. I was hoping for it to be a coinflip, but he had 66 and I lost. When you are playing against better players than you it is important to play big pots pre-flop, to minimize their skill edge later in the hand. I thought that pushing with 33 and hoping for a coin flip was my best chance to win.

So today I woke up and showered, and before I did anything else I played a $60 45 man turbo SNG, with the same goal of trying to re-gain my losses from yesterday. Luckily I won. Here are some key hands.

With the blinds at 100-200/25, a player I see a lot on the site, (which usually means he is a strong player) raised to 500 one off the button. A calling station on the button with a lot of chips called. I had 1300 left in the big blind, and held 77. I know I have no fold equity, but I have both of these player's range beat. Also I knew that if I pushed, the strong player would probably shove over the top to isolate, increasing my chances of winning, and giving me better pot odds.

The strong player pushed, the calling station folded, and luckily my hand held. The next key hand occurred at the final table. As I discussed earlier, sometimes my ambition to abuse the bubble backfires, and this time it almost did again. With the blinds at 400-800 I was second in chips with a little over 10,000. The chip leader was on my direct right and min-raised to 1600 one off the button. He had me covered by like 1,000. I pushed all in with K 7 because I read him as weak since he only min-raised. There were eight players left, meaning that if he lost, he would be on life support and virtually out of the tournament one out of the money. He thought about it for awhile and called with 88. It's the right call for sure, but I think a lot of players would make the laydown, not wanting to jeopardize their chip position that close to making the money.

Luckily for me I hit a king on the flop and had a dominating chip lead. We got down to three handed, and I think I played well. I made a few close laydowns, once with K 5 getting 2 to 1 on my money, and once with A 8 suited getting 1 1/2 to one. In both cases, I thought it was a marginal spot, where I would sometimes make the call, but I felt that I had a better chance to win if I didn't relinquish the chip lead with a weak hand.

So I wound up getting first and winning $760, more than making up for yesterday. I'll check in maybe tomorrow or the next day.

Until Then,
Southrnctowl