September Doldrums

It’s the end of Summer, well almost. Most people are more active during the Summer. It’s funny for me because I’m the opposite. When the fall and winter comes, I’m more active. There are basketball games to go to, there are football games to watch with buddies and there’s Grad School to contend with. So my online playing suffers a great deal during the fall/winter months.

This past week I’ve been spending a lot of time on my fantasy football teams and watching football in general. Normally on Sundays I play poker but with the start of football season that will be curtailed some.

I did manage to play some online and it was brutal. I lost one buy-in at 25NL and I stopped there. I just wasn’t feeling it so I stopped. 

Additionally, this past weekend, I played in 3 poker league tournaments. The first tournament was a holdem tournament and I managed to chop the 1st place prize with another player.  I was clearly the chip leader and held a 4-1 chip lead against the other player but I made one bad move.  I had over 60K in chips and the opponent had about 15k. I’m the dealer and I have 10/9 hearts.  The villain pushes all-in and I call.  He shows A/10 and he doubles up.  10/9 isn’t that great a hand and based on the villain’s play I was pretty sure he was ahead but I wanted to gamble and try to end it there.  I know I made a mistake on that hand and it cost me the 1st place victory.  This is why I have to work on my endgame in live tournaments.  I’m apt to make a dumb move like that.  My rule of thumb is that I’d much rather be pushing with 10/9 suited than calling with it. I didn’t follow through on my rules and it cost me.

The second tournament was a Omaha Hi-Lo tournament and I was cruising along. My edge in Omaha against the other players is huge in my opinion. They chase the low too many times and it costs them. They call pot sized bets with the crap end of the straight and they can’t lay down their flushes when the board is paired.  So I’m cruising along and basically amassing a huge chip stack until the poker gods decide to take my ego down a notch.  There’s 5 players left and I’m clearly the chip leader. I have AA24 double suited. The blinds are 1,500-3,000. I’m under the gun and I raise the pot. Jimmy who’s the BB calls.

The flop is 3,K,Q. I make another pot sized bet and jimmy pushes all in. I call. 

He shows J,10 clubs and 3,6 unsuited. He’s got an open ended straight draw and a pair of 3s. The funny thing is that he called a preflop raise with that hand and then called a pot sized bet on the flop with that hand. I’m not an expert at Omaha but I know that calling with j,10,3,6 is a little donkish but hey these are the players I’m playing against.

The turn is a 4 and I’m running to the nut low and the nut flush. Jimmy just has his OE straight draw and that’s it but I have 2 of his outs in my AA. 

The river is another Jack. He hits two pair and I’ve doubled him up.

I split a few pots and lose a few blinds but I’m still not in danger of getting knocked out of the tournament just yet.  That quickly changes when I couldn’t hit my nut low and K high flush draw against a made set with two cards to come.

Just like that I’m out on the bubble.

The third game was a turbo NLHE game. I finished 4th in that one when my 66 failed to hold against A/10. The funny thing about that hand was that the villain didn’t hit his Ace or ten but rather the board had two pair (993JJ) which counterfieted my pocket pair. Oh well that’s poker.

We played some cash afterwards on Saturday night. The cash game lasted until 4am. The cash games are fun because we play different games other than holdem. Most of the other players just play holdem and for some reason they just won’t play any other game. Just plain weird.

Everybody buys-in for $50 initially. The blinds are mostly .25/.50 (for games that require blinds) and 2/4 for the limit games. The best thing about the cash game this week is that we played a lot of different games. As a matter of fact I don’t think anybody chose to play holdem at all, which is a welcome break from all the hold em that I play. We played Badugi, Crazy Pineapple, Stud, Triple Draw Lowball, 5 card draw and High spade in the hole and double flop hold em. It’s safe to say that quite a few people rebought. Fortunately, I wasn’t one of them and I managed to score $105 in profit from the cash game and I netted $40 from the tournaments (finished in the money 1 out of 3 games which paid for all the tournaments plus a little leftover).

Coming up for my poker league is a HORSE tournament on Friday and a Heads Up tournament on Saturday. The heads up tournament is a 16 player, round robin turbo format. You start out with 2,500 chips and 10 min. blinds. It’s a double elimination structure. In other words if you lose the first match, you then get put into the first round losers bracket and play another player who also lost in the first round. The winners of the first round get put into the winners bracket and play another winner from the first round. Once the there are 4 players left then it’s best 2 out of 3 to decide who gets the prize money. Sound confusing yet?