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.