S A T M

S.A.T.M explained my playing style in a live tourney that I played Friday night. We'll get to that in a minute.

I'm still dabbling with Micro Limit No Limit so far. I'm still not playing near as much as I used to. This weekend was due to Basketball and Easter. We had two Easter Dinners (both with Mrs Wonka's side of the family). They are so much joy. To make things worse, they had the Cardinal Spring Training game on at one of the houses. YIKES!!! OK, truthfully, I had no problem with it as it was Mrs Wonka's 90+ year old grandmother. Who am I to deprive her of something that she enjoys?

Anyway, I've only played 2,000 hands of NL; but I am still seeing a profit. I would say that I am in the 13bb/100 range. I will stay at this limit for a while because as always happens to me, I will play well or at least have positive results for a few days/weeks; but then give it back in one session. Of course, I will try to avoid that this time.

The beauty with this limit is you almost always find somebody that thinks he is Doyle Brunson and can just take control of the table and our whopping $50. So far, it has been fairly easy to pick these guys off; but we all know that these guys will eventually hit their needed cards and it will be oh so important to stay calm.

Remain calm, you say? Well, that didn't happen this weekend. Now, I didn't go ballistic or anything; but I was in a 21 person home tourney. The buyin was $30. We are down to 11 or 12 people. I'm not in the best of shape; but I still have time to be patient. They play in this home game is generally not great. A lot of limpers wanting to hit hands before they donate chips. To my left was one of those guys. He called most flops regardless of what he held. This particular hand, he limped UTG. I was in the BB with a little over T2,000. Blinds were 100/200. There was another limper from the SB. I looked down with AQ and immediately knew what I was going to do. With 600 chips in middle I of course pushed all in. Both limpers called. One had QQ and one had 66 and I did not hit my Ace and was sent packing.

I guess the moral of the story is that you really need to adjust to the tables that you are playing.

There was another small game playing with 7 players. This one only $10. It was just beginning when I went out. I came over and said that I would play; but I would be in Super Aggressive Tilt Mode (S A T M). I went on to tell my story of course getting no sympathy as they all had similar stories.

I've got to tell you, this may be the most enjoyable tourney that I have ever played. As a guy that always play tight aggressive poker, it was fun just to spew chips for the sake of stealing pots. It was working really well until others caught on. On one occasion, somebody pushed back on a flush board with AQ with the Q being the flush card. Luckily, I already had a flush and was ready to take a huge lead.... until another heart came on river which severely crippled me. A few hands later, it came to me and I barely had enough to cover the blinds and for whatever reasons the whole table went in blind to cover my blinds. I ended up winning that hand and then getting really hot. I started hitting river cards, I was able to bluff people off of hands. Again, the most enjoyable tourney ever for me.

The final hand came down to me and Fluff. I was really looking forward to a nice heads up match as in my opinion, he was really the only other good player left. My buddy Iceman also played; but he was the recipient of one of my river cards to knock him out. Anyway, Heads up didn't last too long unfortunately.

I raised with T2 and he called with 52 which is just the way things role when heads up. The flop came something like 22J and we checked it down to the river where he went all in. Of course I called and that was that. We were probably even the hand before where I hit a straight when he had top pair. He made a very good laydown and then got rewarded with a cooler hand. Such is poker.

I just might have to try this S A T M poker more often.

Have a good day!!!