Friday, February 29, 2008

Master of my domain

I thought I was going to take down the RakeBrain LeCheese Challenge right when I was dealt the first hand. 7 2o. The Hammer had come to town. I was UTG and can only pot it. BB calls. On the K high flop, I pot again and get called. Now I know I am in trouble. Hammer no good. Especially when an A hits the turn. Now I am screwed. But I fire the second bullet anyways. I get raised. Time to fold. If the pot gets pushed my way, I know I win it all. But instead I am shortstacked and fighting my way back for the next hour.

The worst part was the slew of shit cards I got during the Omaha rounds. Absolute crap. I would have been able to slog away if it was O8, but these cards were just crap for the high only game. That made it frustrating. It is like playing HORSE. You see some people just fold the Razz rounds because they don't know how to play. I find it somewhat embarassing to sit back and fold thinking of how it just makes me look like some schmuck who can't play. Add in an aggro big stack and it just pissed me off.

Thanks to RakeBrain for the invite. I did have fun and would participate given another opportunity. Congrats to Blood and Mook for earning some cash.

I found myself waking up yesterday being double teamed by a cold and a hangover. With many vacation days to burn, I figured I would sleep in and play some poker when I felt better. Part of me wanted to find a good tournament and hopefully pull out a sick day win ala Jordan. There wasn't anything big ready to start on Full Tilt so I took advantage of the double points promotion and played some PLO8. I also hopped into the little $3 90 man SnG with knockouts for shits and giggles.

The PLO8 was kind to me. I made some good money to help get me out of my hole. I still have a ways to go but I am more comfortable with how I am running and my style of play. I am slowly learning about aggression in this game. How to pick spots to slam the pot and when to hold off. How not to bluff too much. And how to maximize the nuts. After a month I can say that I have really enjoyed playing the game. I think it may help me out in other aspects of poker, mainly because it is helping my patience.

As I mentioned, I hopped into the small buying SnG. I had done this a week ago and had some fun collecting bounties. Funny, I had the same result this time around. 3rd place with 4 bounties collected. It is amusing how bad the play is. I got A A 3 times and felted each player in the process. Each time they would reraise me all in preflop with mid pairs. I hardly played any hands but they never noticed how tight I was playing. My favorite though was the UTG clown who limped and then re-raised all in with A 4. I thought about 4 seconds before calling with 7 7. I knew he didn't have a a big pair and the basically that way too many jokers think they can limp and reraise big with shit believing players will think they have A A.

I may take it easy today and get ready for a day of PLO8 in the morning with a run at PLO in Pauly's tournament in the afternoon. Anything that can prevent me from shoveling more snow is a good thing.

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