A most painful 3rd

I was going to do a different post today regarding how to open 2nd accounts in poker sites. But this Cake Poker tourney last night just blew my mind away. Results below

Well, 3rd place is not bad, you might say. But it was the way I got 3rd that was the clincher. Allow me to vent a little and see if you agree with me how painful this thing was.

We were down to 3. I was 2nd in stack size. Big Blind and I get Q 10 diamonds. Hugewad (3rd in stack) who is in SB just completes. So I check. Flop is Q, 7, 8 with 2 diamonds. So I have top pair and flush draw. Hugewad bets about 3/4 pot. I raise him all in. He instacalls and shows Q fucking 3. I had him dominated.

Well of course, a 7 and a high card had to show up which made us split the pot. This was a sure 2nd that got clobbered by poker fate.

Immediately on the next hand, I was in SB and I get AK spades. Yep. So I raise 3xBB. Mr Joe who was in BB had me covered by about 10,000 in chips immediately reraises me all in. I tank for a while, but what can you do ? I was going for first, the blinds were high and this was as good a hand as I was going to get.

So I call, and he shows AK diamonds. Heheh ..... So at most, a split pot. But nooo ... the poker gods had to have the last laugh. Diamond on the flop and runner runner diamonds to boot me out in 3rd place. Mweheheheheh ............

A win that became a split pot and a split pot that became a bust out in back to back hands ...Sigh.... no wonder you go crazy playing this game.

Close but not quite .....

I made a post yesterday noting that I had made ITM in the past couple of tournaments that I played. But I couldn't break through to top 3. Last night I was busy doing some research for a presentation that I had to make, so I fired up one of the 180 man $4.40 buy in tourneys over at Pokerstars to play on the side.

Well, you can see the results below:

I made 2nd place which is quite nice considering the $4 investment. But still SO close that I can taste it ... The main difference was that I played a little more tightly than my usual game. This was done as part experiment and partly because I was doing something else.

The end result was actually good - 2nd place. But because I played quite tight. When we went heads up, I only had about 40k in chips and my opponent had more than 200K. When you're in a situation like this, you have to push and push hoping to double up.

Final hand was my AJ suited againts his pocket 5s and as usual no luck for me.

OK so now what ? Well, it looks like I have to find the right balance between the aggressiveness before and the tightness last night to finally win one. But I'll take 2nd anyday in these kinds of small tourneys. =)

ITM is a bitch

During the long weekend, I managed to place ITM in a couple of tournaments that I played. But pretty small scale. $5,000 guaranteed over at Cake netted me $75. Next day, $4000 guaranteed, ITM again but for a measly profit of $60.

Last night, I played the 3K guaranteed at Full Tilt. Finished 7th for $150.

It's like I'm playing well enough to get paid, but I cannot seem to breach Top 3 where the good money is. Its not like I'm playing too passive. I fully understand the top heavy nature of MTTs and I really go aggressive once I hit ITM, but I can't seem to win the 50/50 races.

In fact, my feeling is I'm maybe playing too aggressive. Case in point is last night's FTP tourney, I had about medium stack down to about 12 players. And I was willing to race with A-10 twice against low stack pushers. One showed 8-8 and I lost. The other showed 4-4 and I lost again. This totally devastated my stack and probably cost me top 5.

Of course, rivering a flush and getting beat by a bigger flush was the kicker. But that's poker.

I am thinking whether I should tone down the aggressiveness a bit to place higher. But my mantra is Top 3 or nothing and the only way to do this especially in low buy in donkaments is to be willing to race. Hopefully my luck picks up in the succeeding tourneys and I finally take down one of these suckers. =)

WCOOP satellite win and trading W$

As you probably know, the Pokerstars Word Championship of Online Poker happens this September and satellites are in full swing right now. WCOOP offers humungous guarantees and is one of the biggest events in online poker.

To make the story short, I managed to qualify for Event No. 6 which is a $530 buy-in, $3M guaranteed tournament thru the Steps qualifiers.

If you're not aware, Steps are basically like playing a normal SNG. Placing in the top two usually geta you a ticket for Step 2. Then you play a Step 2 SNG and if you place in that, then you get Step 3 and so on.

For me, its better than playing a large qualifying tournament for 2 reasons. One, I believe I have the necessary expertise in SNGs to at least compete and have a fair chance of winning. Two, it is perfect for the limited time I have. I can just play a step 1 SNG now, then play step 2 tomorrow or even a week from now. I am not forced to sit for 5 hours straight or wake up in an ungodly hour just to play a qualifier.

Anyway, last night I won one of the Step 4 SNGs and in return I get the $530 ticket for Event 6. I was quite happy since my investment was less than $40. Until I checked the schedule and saw that it will start at 3AM and was a 2 day tournament. It also coincided with a trip to India that I had to go to.

I know that $3M is a great guarantee and hope springs eternal blah blah. But I am quite realistic and I know that my chances in a field of 5,000+ players is quite slim.

So it was an easy decision to make. I unregistered for the tournament and I got 530 W$ in return. This is the first time I got W$ in pokerstars and I googled what I could do with it. Well, it seems that I can use this just like real money and spend it on tournament entry fees. But it was only allowed for special event tourneys like the WCOOP and other similar events. I couldn't use it for a normal $12 tournament or even SNGs. It seems that T$ are better since these could be used for almost any tourney.

So I googled some more and found that there are sites that allowed you to sell these W$ for real money less a certain processing fee. So I clicked on the first site which offered me $482 real dollar in exchange for my 530W$. I arranged the transaction over at Pokerstars and that was it. My pokerstars account was richer by $482.

In hindsight, I actually made a mistake. It seems that there are a lot of sites which offer this exchange service and just like banks, they gave different rates. Its a good thing that the first site I clicked actually offered the best rate when I canvassed the other sites. So all's well that ends well.

Right now, I will most probably try the steps again and see if I can get another ticket. Heheh .... Maybe this time I might be tempted to play it.

Like rain on a hot summer day

As I noted in a previous post, I wanted to start playing tourneys again motivated by the recent big wins of local players. But as usual my schedule was not allowing me much of anything. I think I played 2 tourneys from that time and that's pretty much it.

I don't remember too much of the details but I know I quickly busted out in those 2 tourneys. One was a $20+2 buyin, the other a $30+3. Getting back to the tournament groove after playing purely SNGs for a good couple of months was turning out harder than I expected.

Well, that was until Sunday. For the first time in a long long while, I had the Sunday afternoon off. So for kicks, I registered for a $5+0.50 buy in $500 added tourney over at Pokerroom. 630+ players joined so prize pool was around $3,700, top 70 got paid. I usually don't like joining these kinds of tourneys as the number of players was just too much for the free time that I had.

But what the heck, I wasn't doing anything and I needed the practice. I played my usual tight game, looking for spots to steal. Doubled up with 33 against AQ. Then back to tight again.

I then got AA with about half of the field gone. Lots of small stacks. Somebody goes all in, somebody calls. I go over the top and that was enough to coast me to the money.

With about 50 left, I was pretty much low stack but was happy to make it to the money although 41-50 was only around 4x my buy-in. My M was already in the 6 to 8 range when I get A3 suited diamonds in middle position.

Shoot, let's take a chance. I go all in hoping for the steal. And I get two callers. Fuucking Sheeeeit. First Caller shows AK. Second Guy shows 99. Well, I was pretty much drawing dead. But surprise surprise. Flop was K rag rag with 2 diamonds. I was chanting "diamonds, diamonds" as the turn came. Blank. River was the lovely 7 of diamonds. Yahahahah !! Guy with AK was cursing me. Calling me a fish and other nasty poker names. Blamed the poker site for cheating and on and on. I pushed, he called with a better hand. Nobody made a bad decision. It was just the poker gods favoring me that day. And besides, its $5.50 dude.

That triple-up was enough to get me to top 10 playing my usual game. Don't remember much of the final table details. I just played it the way I would play an SNG. I knew that I stole a lot as the table was tight.

When the smoke cleared, I finished 2nd for a cool $550. Nothing big but not too shabby either. First was $900, but the chip leader got 5 times my chips when we went heads up. I doubled up once. Then pushed with K4. He called with KQ and that was it.

Hard to describe the feeling of finishing 2nd out of 600 plus after not playing tourneys for a while. The picture says it better. =)