This is a Cruel Game

I was looking forward to playing poker this Friday at my friends birthday party, I really wanted to shake the tastes that the recent beats I have taken left in my mouth. I feel I do a good job of keeping my cool when it comes to bad beats, and I don't dwell on them most of the time, but sometimes you just want to get back to the tables to erase those memories. So we start the tournament with $5000 chips, and 15 minute blind levels. There are 18 players total, so it should be a fairly decent amount of play available.

Well as the tournament gets underway within the first few minutes I start to notice that at my table it's between $200 - $500 to play while the blinds are $25/$50, and I laughed to myself because I only do it when I have Aces, and the hands these amounts were being raised with weren't even close to that. So I decide to take advantage of of a limped "Family" pot, there was about $600 out there in free money and I bluffed on the flop and everyone folded to my bet. But I was shut out of the action for a considerable amount of time after that because of the pre-flop raises and I didn't even have connectors to call with. Gerrie has been all over the place with his chips and he goes all-in for his last $2000 chips, I have about $5300 or so, and I look down to see , so I go all-in to isolate him he flips over , Gerrie catches a on the flop and he survives. Once again good call, but nothing I can really do about it at this point.

So I take a hit there, but I still have enough chips to play with. There was a lot of pre-flop raising going on at my table as I stated before, and with the hit I took against Gerrie that made calling a few bets to see a flop even more difficult. About 1 blind level later I pickup in fairly early position, I was dwindling in chips and the blinds had gotten up to a decent amount so I decide to push all in hoping for a fold as there was about $450 in blinds to be had in the pot. Suprisingly everyone folds, I thought for sure I would get a call from someone, but I didn't and I needed chips too. The tournament started with 18 players and at this point there were about 13 people left, and the final table seemed far from attainable to me. For some reason I just wasn't feeling great about my chances at this point.

The blinds still sit at $150/$300 and I am still hovering around $2000 in chips, I pickup in first position. I think for a minute about how much I can bet to take the blinds down without getting a call from someone. I decide to go all in because of the unpredictability of the play, and the fact that if I do get called there weren't many hands I was going to be a complete dog to. Everyone folds, and it gets to Frankie in the BB, he has about 4k in chips and he decides to call and he flips over , what??? Of course he promptly catches a on the flop and my hand doesn't improve to knock me out of the tournament. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the tournament, I went off and did Karaoke to get my mind of off it. Here were the final results:

1. Mark
2. Daniel
3. Brian
4. Christina

We played a one table consolation tournament afterwards, and I placed third after putting the pressure on Ben only to find he had a better hand than me. The reason I titled this as a cruel game is because, I make every effort not to rely on luck, but I seem to always lose to players that do. It's just frustrating to make the right decision and be in the lead most of the time when it's for all the chips, and have it backfire on you and lose. That's the game, and it happens to everyone, I just have to weather the storm and get back on track.

The Marksmans Returns

I haven't posted an update in a long time, primarily my education was in the way and taking up a lot of time. There were also a few family issues here, and there but for the most part those are behind me. Perhaps the biggest reason is the attack on poker by the U.S. government, I had money sitting in various places and sites started shutting down because of the UIGA. Then the intermediaries started disappearing with Neteller going down as well. This has made it quite a pain to move my money around to the handful of sites that are still left. It always seems like when I am ready to throw myself into something an obstacle rears it's ugly head, I don't think online poker is going to die, but it's in for a tough fight.

But in the meantime there has been a little bit of action on the poker front for me, Adrian hosted 2 tournaments in the past few weeks, and I played a few SNG's online. I didn't do that well in the live tournaments I went out fairly early in both of them, and ironically each time I went out I was holding Pocket Aces. I placed in 2 out of 3 SNG's that I played recently, I had to play $5 - $10 limits because I didn't have much money in the sites that still allow U.S. Players, and a lot of my other money is tied up in Neteller until that mess gets sorted out. I am taking the time to go over my Poker tracker stats, read some more poker material and get a fell for where I am at with my game right now. Lately when I have played I don't feel I have been making horrible decisions, I have taken some tough beats and gotten unlucky, but overall I think I made fairly good decisions. I am playing in a tournament next week, so we will see how that comes out.

Hand of Note:

I am in First Position with , the blinds are $25/$50 and it's very early in the tournament. I decide to raise 6x the BB because there were a few crazy players at the table and I wanted to announce that I had a good hand, and on top of that everyone thinks that when I over bet huge pre-flop that I have Aces, I really just wanted to pick up the blinds being out of position. I get a call from Lynn who is a crazy player who will go all in just about anytime, and will take an unfavorable race. That's just the person who I didn't want to call (thus the reason for the huge raise), Nick also decides to come into the pot as well. The flop comes I am the first to act. I decide to bet big to once again claim the hand, at this point being in first position I was at a big disadvantage, but I wanted to gather as much information as possible. I put out a bet of $1200, this should be enough to push out most hands even a flush draw at this point, unless someone made a set then I am feeling good. I could have bet less but Lynn and Nick will call 2 - 4 times the big blind to try and catch something from time to time. So Lynn goes all-in after thinking for a minute and Nick folds. At this point I feel she is on a draw and just wants to make sure she sees the rest of the cards, she had me covered. I could have folded, but I was sick and tired of folding to crazy players I had been playing tight conservative poker for the past year and just wanted to have a nice sized chip stack early for a change. So I call, she turns over what??? The turn comes giving her a flush and the hand, I was out and my tournament over.

To break this hand down a little bit more, I have talked with several people about this hand, and people say I bet too much pre-flop, and my flop bet was too large that I couldn't get away from the hand. I agree with that sentiment to an extent, but where does the fact that her pre-flop call was horrible (yes it was horrible), and even though after the flop the odds were 50/50 for her to win she chose to go all-in this early on a coin-flip???? How can I not take that, I looked at it like this with the way she plays if she doesn't get lucky she is going to lose a large amount of chips each time, why shouldn't I go after those chips? Her luck ran out later in the tournament and the guy she lost them too finished 2nd in the tournament, if I don't get chips when people make bad decisions against me then it's going to be tough to win, good players don't give you a lot of chips when you beat them most of the time. So, taking her chips is much easier, she leaves it up to luck and she got extremely lucky considering pre-flop I was an 82% favorite to win the hand!!!!

People say I bet too much pre-flop well, a few weeks before I was in a similar situation and sat there with , I acted before Nikki with the blinds at $100/$200, so I raise to $600 and Nikki calls, and she gets open ended on the flop (un-beknownst to me) and I lead out with a $1200 bet on the flop Nikki calls and makes a straight on the next card and I go all-in of course and she knocks me out. She told me later I bet too little pre-flop to push her out, so I bet 3x the BB against Nikki and 6x the BB against Lynn and I get called both times. So how much is enough? The answer to that is there is no magical number Lynn may call if I go all-in pre-flop, Nikki probably wouldn't. But I have no way of knowing who I am going to be up against since they both have position on me in each situation. Then on the flop against Nikki I bet 6x the BB, and against Lynn I bet 24x the BB and I get called in both situations. So, I really just have to chalk it up to bad luck and situations that just didn't go my way. If I bet smaller in either case all I do is lose less chips, and may survive for another shot to get chips later. But I have played that way for a long time and have seen my fair share of success, I really want to be more aggressive with my play to the point that I find a medium between my generally tight (conservative) play, and aggressive lose play.