FNZ

Just finished a very dissappointing weekend. Friday night, i didn't go out at all so i decided to pull an all nighter playing some tournies. For some reason i can't remember exactly what i played, but i am pretty sure that i made the FT of a $3 MTT. Whatever it was, it was the last thing that i played before i went to bed.

Saturday i woke up ready to play. I was a little groggy from the previous nights activities but i figured i would be OK. I was looking over the tourney schedule on stars and saw that they were running the $16 double shootouts to a $650 wsop qualifier. For some reason, i decided to play these all day in hopes that i could win at least 1 and sell the ticket for cash to increase my roll.

I made 3 FT's in these things that day and did not cash 1 time. In the 1st 1, the payout were as follows:

1st: $650
2-4: $75
5: $6

I managed to double early and was cruising to atleast a 4th place finish when the following hand happened. I was in the BB with AQ, it folded around to the SB who limped with A8o. I raised it 4x the BB and he made the bad call. The Flop came A8x. He checked and i pushed. He called and i lost. Now, this hand was played bad by both of us. The general strategy in these things is all about survival. There was no need to call my raise PF there with a weak Ace. We both had about the same stack and i represented strength with my raise. Regardless if i was on a blind steal or not, his hand was way too weak to be calling in that spot. Post Flop, i hit the Ace and had a strong kicker. I should have just made a standard continuation bet and when he came over the top of me i might have figured him for the set and folded. Who knows, i probably would have just shoved anyways.

The second 1 was a real heart breaker. In this 1 there was no payout other than 1st place. I managed to get to heads up play with me having 2000 chips and my opponent having 12000. I knew that i was in trouble and had alot of work to do. I quickly realized that the other player was a really weak heads up player. I shoved on him about 13 times in a row, some after he raised pre flop, and he folded every time. After about 15 min of this, he finally called me and i won the hand. I was now in the lead and was cruising. I was putting the pressure on him, and at 1 point he was down to 1000. He came back and had about 4000 to my 10000. Then disaster struck. I raised it up with AQ, he then shoved on me with 88. I called and did not improve. I was out a few hands later when he figured out my aggressive style in the match and started calling with any 2.

I decided to play 1 more that night. I get down to 7 handed, with payouts staring at 5th place. I was short stacked for a while, but mananged to build back to 1700. There were 2 guys at the table that were under 1000 in chips. This is when death happened. I pick up AA in the BB. There was an early raiser who raised it up with 66. It folds to me and i re raise instead of shove. ( it is a big tell most of the time that when someone is low on chips and they standard raise re-gardless of shoving then they have a huge hand. I did this to get the guy to fold or shove over the top of me ) He re raises me here ( that is how bad the play in these things, The original raise with 66 is not bad, as it disguises a weak hann. But to re raise here is just retarded). Here is where i mad 2 gigantic misclicks. Meaning to shove all in on his raise, i hit the wrong button and just call. The flop comes out 234. I meant to shove all in here too, but hit the wrong button and bet the minimum. He calls. Turn is a 6. now i shove and am dead. I was so pissed that i broke my phone. In retrospect i don't think that the misclicks mattered. This donkey was determined to get all his chips in with 66 and nothing was going to stop him. GG $650 for the 3rd time today.

Playing in these things makes me realize how much i miss the old stars SNG structure. When they were 15 min levels i used to cash so much more often. Now, it is a crapshoot everytime you play a SNG that it is almost not worth the time to play them.

Sunday, i played a live home tournamnet where i donked out in 4th place, 1 shy of the money. I then played in the www.pocketfives.com survey freeroll. Was not too much money for 1st in this one, but it would have been cool to win it. I made the FT and finished in 9th place for no prize. But hey, i regained the status as the last final table in the house. Gonna employ a new strategy in tonights play. hope it works..............................later

Nothing too too exiting to post today. Last night i played in the www.pocketfives.com micro mayhem. I did not do to well, although i did have the best hand i have ever played. I have a tendency to over play hands due to the fact that i get scared of getting out drawn ( which does happen alot ). Last night in the $3 MTT ( 1st tourney of the night ) i pick up 77 in late position. There were 3 or 4 limpers ahead of me already so i decided to limp as well. The flop came down 37J with 2 diamonds. Now here is where i would usually overbet the pot or check raise, because of the 2 diamonds that hit. This time i just checked. player 1 bets out 60 into a 160 pot. I call as does 1 other person. Now, here comes probably the best card for all involved. Turn card brings a 7. I have quads, it pairs the board, and it is the 7 of diamonds to complet the flush draw. The reason that it was the best card ( for me anyway )is because player 1 had Kx od diamonds for the second nut flush, and player 2 had 33 for a fullhouse. Player 1 now bets 90, player 2 calls and i flat call again. The river is a blank. Player 1 Bets 160, player 2 calls and i raise to 400. Player 1 shoves all in, Player 2 re-shoves all in and i type in GG and call both of them. BAM, up to 4500 in chips in the second minute of the game. I felt that i could parlay that into another final table appearance but after that i could not get anything going. I went into the 2nd hour with about the same stack. I tried 2 blind steals late in the tourney but got re-raised pre-flop both times. I ended up shoving from the button when folded to me with A4 spade. GG me when the BB woke up with AA. I finished 124th out of 1700. Not too bad i guess. After this i played in the $3r and for the 2nd day in a row i went into the 2nd hour with an abissmal 5000 in chips. I could not get a hand to save my life in this time frame either, which made it even harder to make it to the money. Even as card dead as i was, i still managed to build up to 12000. I thought that i was cruising, and i am very comfortable playing the short stack. Then i got coolered when a guy limped UTG with JJ ( very dangerous on his part but worked out ) It folded around to me in the BB with J9. I check. Flop brings AJx. Ther was 1 other person in this hand as well. It checked around. The turn brought a 9. I bet, Player 1 raises and player 2 calls himself all in. Right here i am not liking my chances, but i am def not folding 2 pair on the short stacked in a 3 way pot. Player 1 flips up his trips and i am done. ( player 3 had Ax ). The best thing is that for the 1st time in a long time i did not get pissed off 1 time about a bad beat. I am trying to get ahold of that as i think that is 1 of the reasons that i blow alot of money. The only really bad beat that i took yesterday was in a $1. Early on the player to my left kept open shoving every hand. I woke up with KK and called. He had AK. Obv the A hit am i am done. Tonight i am going to be playing a bunch of $4.40 SNG's on stars. I am going to be trying to be something new too. I am gonna set up in an office for total concentration and i am also puttin a stick not over my hole cards. This way, i have to look at them only when it is my turn to act. This way, i am gonna try to stop myself from making impulse decisions. I will let you know how it goes......................later

After the recent success that i had, i went a little crazy with my playing. I started to play a little looser and call with hands that i know that i should not be callin with. I was feeling good about having all that money in my account and thought to myself, "who cares if i lose this tourney". Well, that time is over. Starting on the 1st of July, me and Fuzz are teamates in the www.pocketfives.com micro TLB challenge. Basically, you play a bunch of micro tournies ($5 and under ) throughout the month of July and add yor top 10 scores together. Well, i must have played 30 MTT's on the 1st and i did not cash in a single 1. I was really losing in the most bullshit of ways though. The 1 that sticks out the most is, around the bubble of 1 of the $4.40's that i played i pick up KK in the BB. I have a slightly less than average stack. The cutoff limps ( has me covered by 300 chips ) the Button and SB also limp ( both are pretty deep stacked ). At this point the pot was already pretty healthy with the blinds and antes in there. I did not want to standard raise and leave myself with barely any fold equity incase an Ace hit the flop. So i decided to shove. Well, in true idiot fashion that the people i run into are, the cutoff FLAT CALLS!!!!!!!! (leaving himself 300) with 54d. Now before i tell you what happend, let me tell you how bad this call was. There was still 2 people left to act behind him. He does not know what either 1 of them are going to do. They could come over the top and put him all in, and he has no choice now but to play that hand 3 way or more. Also, what on earth are you beating with this hand. even against any random 2 cards you are a a coin flip at best. With that said, i was obv happy when the cards were flipped up. But of course, he hits 2 pair on the flop and i am out. I ask, "how in the hell can you call with that" he says, " i thought that you were bluffing". GG me GL stars tard. Since that i have not won anything. I blew over 200 in losses and cashed out 200 so i wouldn't lose that. But i think i have found a leak and may have fixed. I have been tending to overplay hands lateley. I have been a top pair donkey as well, never believing that the other guy has me beat ( it is really hard sometimes with some of the play that i have seen latelty) I got home yesterday and watched and Xfactor video. I finally see the error of my ways. PLAY SMALL POTS. I played in the $3r yesterday and i feel that i played great. If you don't know anything about re-buys, let me just say this, If you come out of the re-buy period with less than 10000, you did not do a good job. The very least amount possible is 5000. That is a double rebuy at the break and the add on. Well, this is where i was at yesterday as i was not able to build a stack in the re-buy perod ( i was up to 8000 with 7 min to go and i got it all in with top 2 pair against a guy that already had a made flush. I shoved this 1 hoping that he would call and still be on the draw). Well, after the break i was 1 of the short stacks. I managed to build my way up to 17000 pretty quick. ( this is the other thing about re-buys, you get donkeys that get a big stack in the re-buy period and when that is over, they think that they can still play the same way and they end up donking all their chips off with middle pair.) I had KK and raised PF, and had a guy call me all the way down with A9o after he hit a pair of nines on the flop. I managed to hang around long enough for a $25 cash and a few TLB points. Not to bad considering how the re-buy period went for me. Tonight is the Micro Mayhem. I will keep you posted on how I do............................later

Here is the story. Last night i played in the pocketfives.com Micro Mayhem challenge last night as usual. Here is the deal with this thing, it is made up of about 12 or so micro tournaments ( $3 and under ). You can play in as many as you like, but only your top 3 finishes count. Now, i could care less about most of the tournaments that i play in for this as they are all $1 buy-ins and well, it is only $1. There are three that are part of this that i take my time in every week and that is the two $3 buy-in and the $3 re-buy. The rebuy is tops though. 1st place in that is usually arond $4,000. That is the 1 that i really want to win. Last night i busted out of the 1st $3 tourney pretty fast when my AK ran into A9. The 2nd $3 i can not tell you what happened as i had about 10 tournaments going on at that time. Probably shoved in with pocket 2's thinking that it was a $1. The re-buy made me sick the way that i lost. I was dealt KK under the gun and i decided to limp in hoping someone would raise. it limp folds to the button and he raises it up with AQ. I re-raise him and he calls. It is just us two now. Flop comes xxQ. I fire into it, he raises it and i shove all in. He insta calls and i am ahead. Then the turn card brings another Q and i am done. I was so pissed off that i tilted off all my chips in the other tournaments that i was in. In the last tournament that i played though i managed to make it to the Final Table ( that is all we care about....remember ). While i was at the final table i did manage to make the worst call in my life. It folded around to me in the SB. I had a little over 200,000 in chips. The BB had around 60,000. I look down and see 35o.....a premium lol..... I raised it up 3x with blinds at 3000/6000. The BB flat calls. The flop came out A23. I have middle pair and a gutshot. I bet out. The BB shoves over the top of me. For some odd reason i decide to call. He had AJ, but i hit another 3 on the turn to win. I got berated after that by the other players. I was tired and i didn't care if i lost, i would still have had 160,000 in chips. Anyway, i ended up coming in 2nd. I just can not crack 1st place. Gonna play a little tonight so i will keep you posted.......................later

I finally have made back to back final tables. Not that this is something that i think i should be doing on a regullar basis or anything, but fuzz did it a couple months ago and i was getting sick of hearing about it. This was done i 2 Pokerstars 180 man SNG's. Even though it is a small field, it still feels pretty good. I was in a position to make 3 in a row, but this was the day after the 2 in a row and i was playing very loose in cocky and ended up getting crushed with 66 on a board of 345. I called an all in from some guy who had 55. I hit the 7 for the straight on the turn, ( here i thought that i was unstoppable because enroute to the 2 final tables i did not lose 1 race when all in ahead and when i was behind, it didn't matter because i sucked out ) But then the other guy hit a 4 on the river for a full house. GG me. Now the only thing that fuzz has over me is the he has a 1st place finish and i have 1 2nd and 2 3rd's. Tonight is micro mayhem. Hopefully more final table to come.

I played in the pocketfives.com micro mayhen=m this past tuesday. this is a great event run every week by mr_blonde6 on pokerstars. if you play on pokerstars, or on any site for that matter,i suggest you go to www.pocketfives.com and sign up for an account. anyway, i did really bad in most of the tournies that night. in the last one that i played in, i made the final table and ended up busting in 3rd. woot woot. the money wasn't that good, but i love making final tables. today i played in a $3 multi table and busted out in 180th place out of 1200. not too bad. got a busy MTT weekend ahead of me. i will keep you posted on the results.

After a few bad days where I couldnt even crack the money in the 5.50 sit n gos, I came back today. Played all day, hopefully I'll get some sleep at work tonight. Cashed in 5 of 7 sng's with only one first. Took a flyer and played in the 36 + 3 sattelite to the Big sunday tourney which I crapped out in 30th (seats to the top 9). Then decided to end the day with a 4.40 180 man, since I didn't have the time for a big field MTT. Played pretty well, but got handicapped with about 50 to go when I had q2 in the BB, saw the flop for free, hit top pair (not thriled with my kicker), checked around and tripped up on the turn. Thought I'd throw a value bet on the river but like an idiot didn't factor in that with a board of jq8qT that the other guy in the pot might have limped in middle position with AK. Sure enough he did and I lost a lot of chips. Could have went broke, but the guy was nice and didn't raise me on the river. Anywho, treaded water until about 30 left and decided I'd chuck 'em in with a6, got lucky and drew out on AT. Very next hand against the same guy I got AKc and shoved on his mini raise (QQ) tripped up the aces and I was off. Ended up going out third when my AT bumped against the chip leaders KJ. Hit my ace, he turned a straight, gg me. Good day overall, and it feels good to be back.
Heres a couple tourneys that I thought I played well in for your enjoyment including the 180 3rd place today.

View the Tourneys through the PokerXFactor Replayer

Short Stack Ninja - http://www.pokerxfactor.com/servlet/pxf?a=mv&t=myhand&handid=10782&fn=1026_20060606_040217

180 SnG Win - http://www.pokerxfactor.com/servlet/pxf?a=mv&t=myhand&handid=10748&fn=1026_20060605_220926

180 SnG 3rd - http://www.pokerxfactor.com/servlet/pxf?a=mv&t=myhand2&handid=12234&fn=1026_20060615_2101251026

Up until the last 2 days it has been pretty rough in the online poker world for me. About 2 weeks ago I took 5 really bad beats 5 different games in a row that emptied my pokerstars account completely. In all 5 games I was all in with a Pocket Pair and up against a lower pocket pair, and in all 5 the other guy hit a set on the flop and I was gone. The last time was the icing on the cake though cause after I lost I threw my laptop and it crashed my hard drive. That cost about 300 to get fixed and fucked my money up until payday. So the other day I decided to download all the other poker sited that I know of to see if I finally wanted to try outa site other than pokerstars. I think I have SNG site, but stars is still tops for MTT's. Anyway, 1 of the sites that I tried out was Ultimate Bet. I guess they have this promo goin on once a month that you can play a freeroll to a monthly Million dollar tourney. You only get one shot at this per month too I guess. Well that was the 1st tourney that I played on there and I ended up placing, so I get to play in the next round which is next Saturday. Today I played in a couple 180 man SNG's on stars. I came in 12th in the 1st 1 for a cash and then got busted by some moron in the 2nd 1 that called my AK all in with K8. He hit trips on the flop and i was gone. This guy got a few comments sent his way courtesy of me because earlier in the game he was talkin about all the donkeys that were in this tourney and all they do is shove everything in there and pray. He actually had the nerve to explain his call with the phrase " they were soooted" that is like the biggest donkey comment that you can make. The thing that made it worse what the fact that i had him covered by 50 chips. I can see someone ( never would i do it ) making that call if they had someone dominated. Oh well. After that i played a 5 SNG and took 1st in that. I was about done for the day, but then i saw that someone had put together an unofficial PXF tourney. PXF is www.pokerxfactor.com it is a training site that i am a member at and it is %100 guaranteed to improve your game. I almost didn't register cause i didn't want to blow $11 on a long shot. ( there were only 19 players, but PXF tournies are hard to crack cause everyone is better than average because of the site and you really have to pick up cards to be able to win ) finally i just said screw it and played. It looked pretty bad early on as i could not hit a flop, but i went on a little rush and ended up coming in 3rd. Should have been higher but i made a bad read on a guy when he shoved on me after i raised, it looked like a text book re-steal to me beacuse i had raised his blinds alot when we were 3 way and he was getting short stacked. I had KJs and he had AJ. I missed and was out about 3 hands later. This cash was good for $30, so i ended the day up 40 and can now pay fuzz back for a backing deal that we made last week. That is it for now, more to come when i feel like it.