CARDRUNNERS

I played a number of SNGs yesterday at the 25+2 level, and was very surprised to find the play about the same if not weaker than the 15+1 level. Some of the things I saw were scary. Calling  open shoves at 15/30 with 22-55. Calling raises with K4o etc.

Anyway, I was doing fine a little above break even until my last session where I was in 2nd on three tables w/ 4 left, while at the same time playing a 5400 fpp million qualifier where there were 5 left (4 get ticket). In each case I was shoving to pick up blinds and simultanously I busted from all 4. I shoved from the turbos with AK (chip leader calls with A9o and catches flush, to put this in perspective I had about 4000, he had 4200, and the other two had about 2000 each), JJ (chip leader calls with AJo and rivers ace), and one other of similar merit that I can't remember. This actually tilted me a bit which I haven't felt in a while. I was third in the million qualifier and 4th shoves, I call with TT and he flips KK, I flop a ten but he turns a king, leaving me with 2 bb and I can't survive with AJ...pretty annoyed at myself for throwing the t$ away.

So, to prevent myself from doing things like this again, I'm stepping back down to $15+1, where I've established a good comfort level. Despite the above I lost less than a buyin. If I had taken third in each of those and taken the ticket I would have had close to a $350 day...just a huge swing. Time to refocus.

Results:

SNGs played: 22

Total SNGs played: 374

SNGs remaining: 626

Daily Profit/Loss: -$22.50

Total Profit/Loss:   $744.2

Played a short session this morning and was down about half a buyin, and as I check sit out I get AJ, AK, JJ, QQ on four of my tables, Each pot is raised, and I 3-4bet each one. Flops come down J26, K83, 739, J74 respectively. I lose to a sickening display of sets, 22, 88, 33, 77...i'm so tired of pissing away money to setup hands after playing relatively solid over the course of a session. Luckily some of these guys were shortstacks and I ended down about 3 buyins overall...terrible way to end a session.

I'm looking to build a new desktop, because mine has been overheating as of late...and I'm too lazy to install additional fans for a 4 year old PC. I usually just buy some sort of barebones kit from Tigerdirect...but may go completely from scratch this time. Not too sure. Any suggestions are welcome.

Edit: Now down 6 buyins on the day, every time I tried to make a play (even semi-bluffs) I ran into the nuts...very frustrating. Continually got stacked with made hands, AJ on A5A board runs into 55 despite 4 betting preflop. KK runs into AA aipf, AK<QQ, AK < TT, AK<77 (all against short stacks). Running very poorly today. Only hand of note that I won was one that I played marginally. I 3-bet on the button, a regular LAGs pfraise. BB calls, LAG folds. i flop a gutshot, c-bet, bb calls, hit gutshot on the turn and get it in. He turns over JJ on a 8 high board...and asks me to apologize following the hand. I'm really not upset at how I'm playing at all....I'm very frustrated with the way the cards have been falling. For instance this session I got dealt a ridiculous number of premium hands, but would have the nastiest flops/setups. I think the worst was having AJ in the bb, folds to sb who raises, I 3bet, he calls. Flop Ks10hQd. He bets, I elect to call with the nuts to extract more value. Turn is the Jh, so now i'm looking at a split pot ...ugh...thanks pstars. He bets again I just call again. River 2h, he shoves. I call, he has A8h for the flush. Fun.

Stars have a cool new leaderboard for SNGs, splitting them into 8 buyin divisions and awarding prizes of up to $1500 for the top placing players each week depending on their overall scores in blocks of 20 and 100. I will probably be having one or two goes at each of the top two divisions each week ($100-300 and $500+) and have just finished my first try. Basically the points structure allocates 10 points to each player in a sitngo, so 200 would be an average overall score for a block of 20. I didnt do so well in the mid-stakes, only scoring 123 after 10 games (with the leader having 400 plus), at which point i gave up, but the higher division started well and i had 205 points after 8 games. However the next two sessions went less well, including losing AA vs AK on the bubble of a 555 (among numerous suckouts), and finishing 2nd in two at the end with a big chiplead (one where i had 11500-2000 and lost AK vs J7, A2 vs K4 and then A9s vs AK). Then early in the last game a player called a raise drew to a gutshot when i had AQ on a AQ7 board and backdoored a flush.I did manage a few results among the carnage though and ended up scoring 319, good for 5th but off the leader at 369. Oh well, at least I finished the run up about $4000 which is v good for sngs, and will get another $500 if the 5th place holds. Back to the cash games, will try again next week...

This run also wasnt helped by one game where in a close bubble situation a regular called Scossett basically stalled, ran his time bank down and timed out for a series of hands at the end of the 100/200/a25 level (the blinds then jumping to 200/400) when we were the two short stacks to ensure i was the first to be committed in the big blind when the levels increased. Of course people are allowed to use their allocated timebank to think etc, but doing this in a blatantly obvious way hand after hand is really a scummy move. Of course i was eliminated, and he then proceeded to start playing at normal speed and acting in a second or two again. This is by far the worst case of stalling i have ever seen in a sng, so i was motivated to email pokerstars to clarify their rules in such a case, and it seems they have been in touch with this player to remind him what good poker ettiqute means... It would help though if Stars could introduce a 150/300 level to stop incentivising this behaviour, they could even replace the 100/200/a25 level with a 150/300/a25 level as in some satellite sngs if they are that concerened about the lost revenue of each game lasting 5 mins longer ;-)

In other news, I am totally addicted to the Wire at present, a criticallly acclaimed cop drama from HBO and the makers of Homicide - life on the streets. I only really watch series like this when there is some artistic value to them as it takes up so much time, but this show is very strong, in fact its lucky Lovefilm can only send me 3 discs at a time or i would probably have watched the entire run in a week, whereas ive only seen the first 2 sereis so far. I also rewatched Nathan Barley the other day, which is an awesome and scathing comedy about the part of London where i live (i.e. 'trendy' shoreditch/Hoxton) and its inhabitants, based on Charlie Brookers TV Go Home columns. Id recommend both if you need to take a break from poker for a while.

I played realy bad this weekend from friday to sunday. Getting my money in bad un countless ocasions, trying to make 30/10/2 and 50/20/2 type players fold TP with air etc.

 {mosimage}   

Cashed in a tourney for +650$ so im only down like 250$ or so on the Weekend  

In an effort to reduce my silly plays, im going to post a bad hand of the week.

And try to post a hand i think I played fine, but maybe not.

Goals for November:

Play 3-6 tbl + 1 Tourney each session.

Play ~5 hours/day, this should get me over my 60.000 hand goal.

Play 100NL until I reach 100Bi for 200NL

Do a PT rewiev each morning. Save big hands I missplayed or are questionable. Pokerstove.

Be active on the Forums.

Make a blog entry each week.

I'll start right now.