Contender to Pretender

I have a confession to make. Though I haven't made any mention of it here, I'm not a complete virgin to online Poker. My wife and I signed up on UB many moons ago, before we became Casino-rats, just to get down the basic mechanics of Hold'em. I had even deposited $100 for her birthday. This, of course, was when we thought J3o was worth cold-calling 4 bets preflop. :) Happy Birthday for her, and Happy Day for whatever sharks found their way to her table.

As we spent more and more hours in a real Poker room, the thought of depositing more money into UB was never much of a consideration. But we still play every now and then at the Play Chip tables and on UB's Freerolls. What better way to go on tilt than for free?

Well, after my unprecedented success last Sunday, I seemed to be on some meteoric rise to Poker stardom. Well, okay, I exaggerate... it was more on the pace of a Macy's store escalator. On Wednesday night, I signed into UB and registered for the 11:00pm Freeroll, a prize pool of $500 bonus dollars. It gives me something fun to do on the computer while I pay bills or clear through spam. I don't usually last long, or if I finish up with what I'm doing, I'll play stupid just for the hell of it.

But something was different that night. Either I was getting really lucky with the cards, or my subconscious took over and made my play decisions much tighter and smarter. It was crazy. My AQ caught a straight to bust out someone holding AA. My A-rag suited flopped the Flush. An unraised 35o on the BB sees two more 5s on the flop - I had actually had the Check/Fold button clicked and turned away for a second before the flop. When I looked back, the board was already to the River because no one else had bet. Didn't have much of a chance to build that pot, but it didn't matter because somehow I had made it to 1st place out of over 2000 registrants.

Next thing I know, it's 4am in the morning and I'm still playing in the Tourney. Uhhh, yeah... 3 hours of sleep is good enough to get me through a full day of work! At this point, things were still going okay for me, but I was being too passive. It was down to less than 100 people, and everyone else was doubling up big around me. Eventually, I'm all in on QQ and get beat by AT with a JTKAT board. Finished 22nd place and made a whopping $2.50 in bonus dollars. Was the $2.50 worth staying up that late to play for? Hell no. But the confidence boost it gave me definitely was!

On Saturday, I registered for an Ultimate Points tournament. Their Points system is a great bonus structure, I think. You get points monthly for the amount of time playing, even on Play chip tables; and they build up even faster when playing with real cash, so we already had a small stockpile of points from the Birthday deposit. You can play for U-Points in ring games, and even use UPs to buy into real cash tourneys.

I was in for 50pts with over 200 people registered. Early on, I knew things were going well when I cracked AA with the Hilton Sisters - is someone still offering a prize for that? I got JJ followed immediately by AA, and took out 3 people between those two hands. I was in first place and led for over two hours. It got to the point where I could play 72 off-suit (off-color even!) and still win. The next hand after that was 25. I was going to play it, but my wife told me not to be an ass so I folded what would have been the straight to bust out another AA. I hate low pocket pairs that decide to wait until the Turn to triple up.

I made it to the final table in 3rd place, and not two hands in, my two-pair KQ is devastated and I'm the short stack at the table. Nothing I could do when my pocket T hits the set on the flop, but I get called by KK who gets his set on the Turn. Tenth place paid out 126 points, though I would have preferred the 3100 pts for first.

Obviously, I'm feeling pretty good about myself, thinking NL tourneys should be my new "thing" - but that dream is quickly dashed on Sunday at the Midway's Freeroll. I'm the 4th one out; ironically my wife lasts and finished in 4th place. We've still got at least 5 more tries at getting to the Midway's final table for that Vegas package!

I should have known that things were going to go bad for me when the Seahawks couldn't do anything against the Patriots, seeing as how my Poker fate and destiny is cosmically tied into the Seahawk's success (or lack thereof) this season. Well, now that Jerry Rice is the newest Seahawk, maybe we won't lead the league in dropped passes anymore - as long as he doesn't get caught up in the Pacific NW's herbal habit. Here's to hoping that next week's post can be titled Contender Once Again.