Turn of the new year

New year's was pretty quiet. Spent it with wife and the baby - it snowed a ton here, so staying in was THE thing to do. It was fun, and it is a little difficult getting back to the stress of the real world, but alas, bills need to be paid, and diapers need to be purchased.

December ended up being one of the most profitable months, pretty much only because of the $94 score in the $1 MTT. In other good news, I barely hung onto my sharkscope star. I was in 19th place, and another guy had played a ton of $2 HU PLO and shot past me and some other guys, so I was in 20th. I decided not to play any more games. I had a good year in HU PLO, and if it was not good enough, it was not good enough. The last thing I wanted to do was press it and lose and be the reason I didn't finish on the leaderboard. It's fair to say that a disaster like that would follow me.

In the end, I think the 2008 leaderboard expands to the top 30 players, so I was in good shape anyways. Interesting to see how close or how far I actually was from losing the star though.

Right now, I'm tied for #2 in 2009 in that category at a whopping $6!!!! Seriously, it's good just to be able to play it again after taking so much time off. It's 1000 times better and more fun than HU NLHE - at least when things are going right.

I completely abandoned my experiment at the $5 tables, way before I hit the stop loss. There were a couple reasons for this. One - I felt I was playing those games just to play them - I had the totally wrong mindset, and I had lost a pretty good chunk of money. When you play at my stakes, $75 is a lot of money.

Second, I was just doing badly. When you bubble three out of 4 SNGs, you can't help but think that you are never going to cash again. Even when getting HU, missing out on that first place money seems to "cost" so much. Why bother to burn through another $50 until the bad run is over? Just drop down, gain confidence, then go back up. This is what I've done before, and it has worked at times. At least I am playing HU PLO again to try to supplement the BR. It would be nice to learn a 3rd game that I'd be confidently +EV in. I don't know if I want to spend the time or $ to learn it at this point.

Even after dropping down, the bad beats kept-a-coming. I was glad that they happened at the $2 tables.

On the plus side - actually, this could be a plus or minus - I earned about $30 playing MTTs over the weekend. Saturday, I made a final table of the $1 turbo at 7pm. I busted 7th, with QQ. 2nd position raised, I RRAI, basically praying that no one else woke up with a monster, but of course, the guy next to me gets KK and I don't hit. I'm fine with it though. It just sucks. Earlier in the match, I had QQ to KK and flopped a Q, so I guess it's fair. I won about $28 for that.

Last night, I made a run in the $1 4pm tourney, eventually busting out in 21st place. I was pretty disappointed with this, although I was crippled down to 200 chips early on with AK on a A9x flop when my opponent held 99. I was able to hit some fortunate doubles (which at the time were trivial given my minimal chipstack). Happened to get QQ to nurse me back to the original stack, and then tripled up with TT when I flopped a set. I nursed the low stack pretty much from 75 players on. I limp/shoved 88 UTG and won a flip vs. AQ to keep me alive for a while. My opponent criticized my play greatly, although I figure - I'm shoving all of this - and so I don't think it mattered whether I shoved outright or limpshoved. The limpshove invites more players in, but I didn't mind playing that pot 3 ways, given my chipstack. Plus, if I outright shove, I might be pushing out marginal hands, and not getting full value.

I got AA late in the tourney and was not able to get a full double up, which was a big missed oppportunity. The other big mistake was not playing TT a few hands later. It was a weird hand because the huge CL was to my right, and he raised, and there were 4 players left to act. I just dumped it. In so many of those spots, I am either crushed by a higher pair, or I get in in 3 ways against AK/AQ, or some such hand. It turns out the chipleader had 88, and a guy to my left who moved all in, had 99, and I would have had the best hand and flopped a set to boot. Oh well. I eventually made a desperation shove from the SB with 2-7 os, to get called by a dominating A2. Stupid play, but at that point, I was pretty much done, I think. Actually, the play is not justifiable in any way. Cashed for about $4.

I feel like I am starting the play better in the $1 tourneys, although a TON of it is luck. Experience helps - I feel like I'm doing better with the mid-tourney play (which you don't get exposure to in SNGs). I'm also of the mind that one must make at least one huge laydown during the tourney in order to succeed. I'm trying to do a better job of feeling those situations out. Even before the last two though, I had done a better job of making it near the money (although I blew up in those other ones). Avoiding the blow ups and all that is just a part of gaining experience though.

I am still not doing a good enough job of maximizing value when I have a strong hand. I feel like I always bet, bet, bet, and give my opponents an opportunity to get away from their hand. I think I may need to play a little more relaxed, and perhaps utilize the min-bet, min-raise, or check raise more often. At the same time, the bet, bet, bet strategy does allow me to pick up pots with what is sometimes the worse hand.

Now would be a good time to learn how to do that. The prizepools for the $1 have gone way up. Yesterday's 4pm tourney had a first place prize of $295. Compare that to the day I won, which was only worth $188. Of course the number of entrants in yesterday's was over 1300.