Jinxed... indeed

Well, in my last post, I said that I was probably jinxed for mentioning a winning streak whether it be positive variance or newly found aggressiveness. Nonetheless, I started playing Monday and quickly found that things were not going to be easy. Playing 2 3/6 tables, I quickly got down over $100.... then $200.... then $250... closed one 3/6 table and opened a 5/10 table... you probably can write what comes next... no, not really... actually got it back to $150.... closed down 5/10 after doubleing up (and further down in 3/6) and opened up a new 3/6...

OK.. a little interjection here.... Up to this point, I have a 10 day winning streak going. 11 in a row is my record so I vowed to keep playing until I got positive...

OK.. back to our regularly scheduled program... I can't believe the river beatings that I am taking and get down almost $400... OK, no more messing around.... 2 5/10 tables... By the way, I started playing a little bit after I put baby Wonka to bed which would have been around 8PM. OK.. it is now starting to get late (past midnight). I finish the 3/6 portion of the evening down $458 which is not easy to do. Suffice it to say that nothing went right there. At this point, I'm about $130 up on 5/10... To the grind stone....

Staying with the original game plan of aggressiveness, I dive in. Things go good and bad (as usual). It turns out that the tables that I were on were very loose so not a lot of bullying to do. Everybody was putting in their votes to be table captain. Anyway, to make a longer story shorter... At 3:30 AM and after 1,303 hands I finally was only $9.90 down..... but I had amassed $90 in bonus for the night. That was good enough for me and I called it a night up $79.78. I'm counting it. So I now I have tied my record for most positive sessions in a row... Cool...

Now fast forward to Tuesday... It is actually my birthday (the big 4-1)... Perhaps the poker variance folks will be good to me. I really don't want to put in another marathon session. First hand... AJo in BB.. I raise it up.. I caller and they fold to flop (K36) bet. So far so good. 5th hand. QQ in SB.. betting capped (including a 11% so I am a little worried). Turns out that the 11%er had JJ and I take down a $81 ($55 net) pot. 6th hand. 66 UTG+1. I raise it up.. Beautiful AQ6 flop... I take down a $63 ($33 net) pot. 12th hand.. T9 on the button.. I raise it up and both blinds call... 78J flop (2 hearts.. I have none).. they both call... Turn 8c.. they both check call.. River As.. BB check calls with Ah5h so I take down a $57 (net $33.50) pot... and that is it.. color me up... No need to get greedy... I wanted the record and $100 was the goal for the night so I finished up the night up $118. Nice... A new winning streak record for WillWonka (12 straight days)... a nice birthday present. And I thought I was jinxed... indeed. (Although, I'm probably really jinxed now).

It obviously has been nice to be back on the winning side of things; but more importantly, it feels a lot better playing down at these levels as those painful river losses just don't hurt as much and definitely don't make me change my style.

Switching Gears.....

I want to catch you up a little tourney action from the past week. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Absolute gave me free entries into a few tournaments. Well, last Tuesday, I decided to play the 15K guarantee. To keep in short, there were 216 people along for the ride. As usual, things neither go great or bad and by the first break I'm above average. It was a rebuy/addon tournament so I did do the double add-on ($40). Things are going good and I find myself at the final table. Now, 1st place gets $2,100 so I'm starting to get psyched. I'm in about 4th position... Well, unfortunately, things don't go so well as the small stacks all hit their desparate all in attempts and we are down to 7 and I find myself to be the short stack. I have about 4x the blinds. UPG raises me all in... now this guy is a good player but has been using his stack to his advantage. I know he has something to raise UTG; but I turn over KTs and knowing that I will be in the blinds in 2 hands, I call it. He turns over QQ and takes me out in 7th for a $525 payday. Part of me just wanted to blind myself away and try to raise a couple of positions (675, 900, 1200 for 6th, 5th and 4th); but instinct took over and I called. Truthfully, winning is all that matters. Oh well, it could have been a great day.

Saturday, I played in the Empire Poker 10K freeroll invitational with about 1,100 people. I got good hands to start it off; but never really caught a flop and if I did, it was second best; so I didn't last too long in this one... maybe to level 4 (946th). That's kind of how you have to do it in these big freerolls.. Take your chances early in hopes that you can build a stack to compete later.

Also on Saturday, I did something that I have never done before. I bought into the AP 100K guarantee. Now, I have always wanted to play in a big online tournament. The entry fee was $162. I told myself that if I can make the entry fee via ring play, that I will buck up and play with 476 players. Well, I made $170 that day in ring play so I bucked up and entered. Things were going OK.. I started with 1500 and had it a little over 2000 when they swithed tables on me... From here, I saw something that maybe I have never seen before. When I got there, the chip leader was there. OK, no big deal... but here is the deal. The average chip count at this point was about 1800-2000. This guy had over 10,000. Wow... I proceeded to watch him build that to over 25,000 by either bullying people with over the top huge raises and calling others all in and hitting whatever he needed to win... including one time calling with 42o and hitting his 2nd pair on the river. It was truly a site to behold. He ended up 3rd. I unfortunately was one of his recipients of being bullied. I raised 3x in LP with KJ and he raised me all in. I layed it down. A few orbits later I pushed with 88 only to get called by A3o and of course the flop was Ace high. I didn't hit my 2 outer and I finished a disappointing 308th. I may try some of these later.

I also played at Full Tilt qualifier to a WPT tourney in Tunica. No luck there either when my Top pair lost to a flopped straight. You ever get that feeling that you know you are beat for some reason you call anyway. Dang... I was in 5th place with about 18 remaining when this happened and he just happened to be one of the people that had me outchipped. Oh well.. I will definitely give these a try again.

OK, that should do it.. I'm off to finish watching Spanglish... So far... just so so..