Poker comes along and humbles you.
The good news is, I haven't been playing terrible or even that bad really. But the shoe has dropped, and I'm 0-3 in flatline, not even making it to the final 20 let alone the final table! I also managed to drop about 10 buy ins on MTT's before cashing on Full Tilt, losing seemingly every race and getting in behind time after time with premium or middling cards.
Everyone loves bad beat stories, so here's mine. (BTW, as Homer Simpson would say, "That's sarcasm in case you didn't know.")
Flatline:
T1 - I wake up with kings in the third hand. Standard raise, one caller behind in the SB. Flop comes rags, he check raises me. Like an idiot (because I happen to be playing an idiot) I shove. He snap calls with a set of sixes. Exit me.
I played that one badly, though I'll concede in our turbo structure that it's pretty hard to get away from cowboys when no over cards hit.
T2 - This one is all on the donkey to my right. Again, about half a dozen hands in, a whole gang of limpers, I look down at Aces and shove. Single caller - with A9. He flops a set of nines, then turns quads. That is what we call a fucking cooler.
I played this one exceptionally well - knowing with a virtual stable of burros behind me, chances are I would get a call. I was ecstatic when he showed his cards, though in the back of my mind I feared a flush (his A9 was sooooted you see).
Be happy. You want that call.
T3 - Last night, about a dozen hands in. I had already stacked donkey number one by slow playing my flopped two pair that turned into a boat - got all of his chips when he had aces in the hole that he played so slowly as to allow himself to be bitch slapped by my Gus Hansen like garbage. Hey, he gave me the right price by just smooth calling my limp.
For the bad beat that saw me exit early for the third straight week I had A9 suited, though I played it correctly by raising from the cutoff. The button called and I flopped two pair. I led out, the button raised. I tanked. There was a flush draw, but I knew this player (Timmy, a guy who is about the best in the league besides me lol) was not likely to get out of line on a draw so early in the tournament and with stacks so deep, nor was he likely to have a set of aces or nines or threes (the third card) he would have re-raised with aces and folded with threes and I already had a nine. I shoved, wanting to give the impression of a bluff. It worked.
He snap called with TPTK - yep, big slick. Big stinking trap hand in this instance that saw him dead to three cards, one of which of course he hit on the river.
GG me.
I won't bore you further with the details of my weekend cold streak over on Full Tilt. Let's just say it was a healthy mixture of brutal cards and my own tilt induced donkage that contributed to the $20 chunk being taken out of my bankroll. The good news is on that front that I've stabilized a bit and gone fairly deep in two huge field dollar tourneys. Still haven't managed to get into the real money though (upwards of $50).
Poker crushes the souls of people on a regular basis. Those of us who are blessed with the awareness of variance and being decision oriented have a much easier time than those who are emotion driven and focused on results. Still, poker is a brutal beast - even for the most detached and zen like hobbyists, one of which I am struggling to be in this current streak.
Still, I will carry on. I've taken to banning myself from Full Tilt during the week except for Monday nights - and I make sure that I don't play late on Sunday night, it can be a real bear to go to work when you've been up until 3am. This makes it alot easier to be enthusiastic about the game when I get to return to it - I'm hoping that enthusiasm will start resulting in better play and a better focus when the bad beats inevitably reoccur.
My live game has been fair to middling - I recently had a H.O.R.S.E. tournament at my home which was great fun even though I went out early (busted by a combustible card rack who is typically a passive fish). Up next is Omaha/8, before we return to NLHE for the remainder of the year. I don't expect I'll get that far, unless the poker Gods can see fit to get me off of my current spate of running bad. O8, especially in tournament format, is a pretty card dependent game. I have no doubt if I can by some miracle run half decent I will cash.
