Rundown by The Rock

No, I'm not referring to the movie (which I can't dig on cause I haven't seen yet), rather, it's what happened to me a few nights ago.

I was over at PJ Pocket's for their Tuesday midnight tournament. The format changed recently - instead of a straight $25 buy-in for 1200 chips, it's now $25 for 1000 chips, with a $20 rebuy for another 1000; and if you pay all $45 upfront, you get a T500 bonus. Blind structure is still the same: start at 25/50, 50/100, 100/200 and then SB goes up 100 each round from there. Many other places just start doubling the blinds (so you never get a 300/600 blind level). Almost everyone takes the add-on, so starting with T2500 allows for much more play... raise and reraises instead of just raise and reraise all-in... although with that many chips some people end up making T1000 raises even during the first level. Okay, whatever.

I really like this new structure and actually cashed both Monday and Tuesday last week, so I was feeling pretty confident going into it that night. Took down a few small pots early, and in the 2nd round raised 3x with A5s when it was folded to me in LP. Only the SB called. Flop comes 556. Nice flop, and not wanting to overplay it or slowplay it, I make the same continuation bet I'd made a few times before and get check-raised all-in. I have him covered by a few hundred and I make the call... Pocket Sixes? Nope, he had Pocket Eights... he had put me on a big Ace so thought his overpair was good. But of course the board comes 7, 9 so his 8 makes the straight and I was pretty much done.

I thought about how I played that hand while fiddling with my remaining T600 chips... if I had pushed on the flop, that would have screamed "I missed my overcards and I just want to take down this pot" and he would have called anyways. Checking would have given him the open-ender, and you know how people love to call all-in with their draws. So there was really nothing I could do.

I came to the realization it was just bad luck and resigned myself to a bad night. I didn't know it at the time, but my negative thoughts must have been so strong that they coalesced and came into being on this plane of existence right before my eyes. No, it wasn't in the form of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man... it was The Rock.

He was a big Samoan guy who could very well be a relative to Dwayne Johnson. And that was the only thing his nickname was based on... his play style was far from Rock-ish. In fact, as he took his seat as one of the last alternates, one of the solid players on my side of the table said, "Oh shit, I hate playing with The Rock... you can't put that guy on anything."

I thought it would be amusing to watch him play, and it didn't take long for the show to begin. On his very first hand, with blinds at 100/200, Rock was UTG and says, "Three-bet!" and puts out three T100 chips. It's explained to him he has to raise to 400, so he throws another chip out there. A few callers and the flop comes with an Ace and he goes all-in. The guy who beat me with the Pocket 8s calls and flips over A5. Rock has A9 and doubles up on his first hand. Next hand he raises from the BB, flop comes 976 and he pushes. Gets called by K9 and A7, and he shows 56s. Runner-runner 5s and Rock busts out two people!

I looked over to the solid player who made the comment and said, "You weren't kidding, were you?" Rock sat out a few hands, busily stacking his chips. Then he calls a raise and is the first to go all-in when the flop is King high. He shows K2 and the raiser has Aces in the hole. A King on the River and the Aces guy goes storming out the door in a huff.

Unbelievable. Where do these people find that kind of luck? My AK loses the race to Queens and I'm out of the tourney while the night is still young. I get myself a rack on the live 4/8 half-kill game and enjoy a comped meal and play tight and solid for the next hour, occasionally hearing a "THREE BET!" or "BUCKLE UP!" from the Rock at the tourney table. He ends up making it down the final two, and I don't know if he won or took 2nd or chopped it, but I see him counting a couple of fresh hundred dollar bills from the cage.

Wait a minute, Rock and I never tangled during the tourney. In fact, he provided me much amusement for awhile. So why all the bad vibes? Yup... he bought into the live game and his luck continued to hold up. The game had been pretty lax up to that point. Once he sat down though, it seemed that no pot went unraised, and if it was raised it was usually capped. It was rough to put $16 into the pot pre-flop with pocket tens only to have a K flop and a Q on the turn. I let it go and saw that Ace high won. I was in for another $16 with AKs. Rock led out the whole way, and I was going to raise him on the River to see what he would do. The guy before me raised first, so I folded... as did Rock.

These were huge pots. Three or four people seeing the Flop at $16 a pop... seeing the Turn was at least another 2 or 3 bets, and most everyone hung around. An ungodly portion of the time, the chips went over to The Rock... he would win one and not have enough time to stack them all before he was raising the next hand, yelling "BUCKLE UP!". He'd win that one and have even more added to the pile in front of him. Once, I had the nut Flush on the Turn when a second Duece in my suit hit the board... I bet out, he raised me, I re-raised and he capped. I was hoping he'd just hit Trip Dueces. I checked the River, saying "Pot's big enough," but he still bet. I say I call and start stacking my chips and Rock yells, "CAP IT!" and starts pushing out more chips from his pile. The dealer tells him to slow down and pushes his extra chips back... then pushes him ALL the chips when he flips over 92o for a Full House.

Buckle up, indeed. I knew I just needed to take down one of these monster pots to be able to walk out of there with a decent win. I thought it was my time when I got Pocket Aces. Of course it was capped, and flop came Jack high. It was bet and raised before me, so I 3-bet, and Rock capped it. A Trey on the Turn, all four suits, no straight possibilities, I lead out, Rock raises, and everyone else drops. I check to him on the River... take a second to think when he bets and flash the Aces to my neighbor. I make the decision to raise, and even blurt it out; but Rock wasn't paying attention (he was still stacking chips) and he tables his J3 two-pair. I showed my Aces and no one made me commit to my verbal raise, so I saved a few bets there.

Now I was down to about $60. AJc in a kill-pot. I raise it, saying "I'm on tilt!" after just having my Aces cracked. I hit an Ace and basically get the rest of my chips in... with FOUR callers! In a raised 6/12 kill-pot no less! There was over $300 in that pot, and I was beat by three of those callers... two of 'em had two-pair, one had the straight, the last was on the flush draw... and me with just my lowly pair of Aces, Jack kicker was done.

It was 4am at this point... I knew if I bought-in again, I'd eventually get a winner... but it could have cost me a few more hundred to get there the way things were going. I called it a night and tried to get in a few hours of rest before work. Hard to get any peaceful sleep though, after The Rock Layeth The Smack Down.

986th

I'd been running decent in tourneys all week... cashed in the PJ Midnight tourneys, placed 50th out of 2000 in a Party rebuy MTT, a few solid SnG cashes. I figured that I was either just getting warmed up, or that I was definitely overquota on my luck for the month.

Unfortunately, it was the latter.

Got Big Slick once and had to chop it (but mine were suited!); lost a race to a short stack; and doubled up with AA, but I was already the short stack at that point so it didn't help much. There were two really aggressive players that I was stuck between, and I couldn't get any cards or a matching flop to play back at them.

Ah well. Congrats to the winners. I hope the conversion rate for new, first-time depositors at PokerStars will make it worth their while to make these Blogger Freerolls a regular thing!

In the meantime, it looks like PokerBlue is extending their Freeroll for a few more weeks, so I won't be cashing out of there completely quite yet.

Oh, and since I'm on the topic of somber news, while I was playing at the Muckleshoot, I heard another player telling the dealer that Midway was closed... that employees showed up and the doors were locked. My heart sank a bit, as that was the place that my Hold'em cherry was popped. First live tourney, first live ring-game, first time playing 10/20. And like a good whore, she was both of my younger brothers' first as well.

I spent many long nights there and really liked all of the dealers. Felt kind of bad as I was hearing the news while sitting in an Indian casino... like I was caught cheating or something. My guilty feeling quickly subsided though, as I hit my draw on the River and raked in a $150 pot.

R.I.P. Midway. I'll take the lessons I learned from you and make you proud. There'll always be a special place for you in my heart.

FreeRollin' Idiot

Ahh, finally, a moment to breathe, relax, read some blogs, and punch out my own post. Last I was here, the kids and I were getting ready to fly off to New York city. It was a great trip: got to see two Broadway shows, had the full the NY taxi-cab experience (the 7-yr old even almost got creamed by one!), and visited all of the major Manhattan tourist attractions - Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, WTC site, MoMA, Central Park, etc.

Didn't get a chance to make it out to any of the cardrooms, but that didn't matter, because the most important part of the trip was getting to spend some quality time with the wife. :)

:)

:D

AAAnd, I'm spent.


Anyways, last week was obviously a hectic week, as it always is when I'm out of the office for 3 days and since I don't really have a backup in the department. And my evenings have been pretty much tied up working on finishing up a database project. Not easy to do when the SQL server is down for most of the night and then running at half speed after that. But server downtime == online poker time! Managed to squeeze in my four hours at PokerBlue and then couldn't resist the $500,000+ BBJ tables at Party.

Tried playing at all three levels I could comfortably afford (2/4, 3/6, 5/10) and it seemed I was the only one taking the bad beats, and unfortunately they weren't bad enough for the jackpot. Dropped over $400(!) over the course of the week, as well as another $50 or so bubbling out in a few SnGs. Put quite a dent in my already tiny online bankroll, but at least it's all been someone else's money I've been playing on (yea yea, I know, a bad gambler mindset to have). Oh, I did make about $30 via the new Blackjack and Sidebets. Go -EV!

Fortunately, I had a really good weekend at the casinos and am currently carrying around a fat wad of $20s. No amount of virtual low-limit table winnings come close to the feeling of lifting off 3-1/2 racks of white chips and lugging them over to the cage to cash out. :) Was supposed to meet up with EasyCure for an evening of fishing, but I decided to treat the kids to a night out at the movies instead with the winnings.

Sunday rolled around real quick, and I took my last shot at PokerBlue's $12,000 Package freeroll. Only 185 people in this one, and I could only make it down to #30. :( I was at about T7500 with the blinds at 300-600, and there was an EP short-stack All-in for T1500. I figured he had any pocket pair or Ace/rag so I went over the top to isolate. Didn't cost me that much to try to take someone out. Then the guy behind me with just about T9000 calls! With AQ!!! What a horrible call, except it turned out to be a good one when two more Q's hit the board. Didn't I just read somewhere, "It's all about making the wrong play at the right time."

I also got called an idiot earlier on in the tourney... I had just recently doubled up with AK versus AQ (oh, the irony) and was sitting on T4000 with the blinds at 75-150. Not a bad position to be in. There was a min-raise UTG so I called with Pocket Dueces. Flop it or drop it, or maybe pull a move if it was a low raggedy board. Flop comes 233 and the PFR leads out. I figure I'll let him hang himself and just call. But the Turn is another 3, pretty much killing my hand if he had a bigger pocket pair. We check it through and he shows AJ and I take down a small pot (compared to what I might have gotten had that 3rd Trey not fallen).

So I say, "Whew, that turn killed my hand, thought you had a bigger pocket pair."

A guy not even involved in the hand says, "So why'd you call a pre-flop raise if you thought he had a bigger pair? Keep chasing your two-outers, idiot. You'll learn..."

What? I replied, "Hey, it was a min-raise and I had chips and position. Flop it or drop it, and I f'in flopped it! If he had a bigger pocket pair and caught it on the turn or river, then he would have been the one that two-outer'd me."

I held back from pointing out the fact that the guy calling me names only had T900. Unfortunately, I doubled him up a few hands later when I had KK and he had AT and caught the Ace. "There," I told him, "You have some chips now so quit whining."

If nothing else, playing these big-prize winner-take-all Freerolls have made me think about aspects of my play... overvaluing hands and getting all-in when I don't need to be. I'll take it all as preparation for next week's PokerStars Freeroll. Should be an interesting mix of good players, political bloggers, and me - the two-outer chasing idiot!

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 6059488

Distractions

Last Friday was payday, and a coworker wanted to go play some cards to get his mind off the busy week. Gee, twist my arm, why dontcha! We went down to the Silver Dollar at lunchtime and made the wait list long enough to warrant opening a second table. Bought in for $60 each and ordered some lunch as well.

My buddy took some beats - his pocket Qs flopped a set and lost to a flush, and KT ended up with trip Tens, but someone had flopped a set of 4s and the paired tens gave the villain the boat. He was busted out with 20 minutes left to go in the lunch hour, so he just turned around to enjoy his Kung Pao chicken. I was down to about 1/3 of my stack and was resigned to strike up this lunch hour as a loss. About 10 minutes left before heading back to the office, I get 56c in the BB. Flash the cards to my buddy and when it goes unraised, I tap the table and tell the dealer to flop me a BB special.

Flop is AhJc8c. "That's it!" I yell, "But I'll check 'it'..." MP bets and myself and one other call. Turn is the 9c. I check again, MP bets and I pull the good ol' checkraise. Other caller folds, and MP looks sickened as he calls so I know he doesn't have a higher flush (yet). My buddy's worried he has a big club so he says quietly, "No more clubs..." I double check the board and whisper back, "Well, the 7 of clubs would be nice..."

BAM!

I shake my head in disbelief. I say out loud to the dealer, "Winnie, why another club? I had him on the Turn!" MP checks his cards... and yes, he has the Ace of Clubs... so he bets his $6 and I checkraise him all-in for $10. I start reaching in my pocket for my wallet because you need your ID to get paid on the Monte Carlo jackpots. The guy gives me another $4 but he knows he's beat, and the dealer asks me, "Jackpot???" I toss my ID onto the table as I turn over my cards. That pot got me back to even, and I got an extra $140 ($20 of which went to Winnie) from the jackpot.

It was back to the cubicle after that. I wonder now and then if I shouldn't just take another hour off work because my payrate at the tables some days is so much better.... Anyways, thinking back about that hand, the Ten of Clubs would have clobbered me, but I still would have gotten paid for the jackpot because both of my cards played for the lower Straight Flush. Now, if someone had QTc, would we have split the jackpot? I guess I should find out about these things before I hit my next one! I do know though, that if the board had come out 789Tc, only my 6 would have played and I wouldn't have made the extra $120. Anyways, it was a good day and I was happy for the distraction.

Newsbreak!
Horrible times for Seattle! City Council approves tougher strip-club rules: "The council voted 5-4 to approve an ordinance that will require clubs to keep dancers and patrons at least four feet apart, install a 3-foot railing between the stage and audience, ban direct tipping and install brighter lighting."

Ugg... wish this wasn't such a sissy city. Guess I'll have to go back to just getting my jollies online. Speaking of playing online... [segue] I ended up at the final table at the Poker Blue WPT Freeroll!

I took an early lead, as I always do, and then I tightened up too much and let everyone else surpass me. There was one point where a guy took a bad beat and then just went all-in for the next 6 hands or so. The three times he got called - he won. The last of those times, I had KJs but I let it go, knowing he was going to push and he had built up enough chips to hurt me if I lost. I would have won. :(

Then I got a lucky double-up when no one raised my T3o in the BB and I flopped two-pair. MP had AT so he reraised me all in and I caught another 3 on the River to seal the deal. He didn't see that there was a 3 on the flop and started berating my play. "What a river! How could you call with a 3 kicker, you didn't think you were beat???" "Umm, dude, you didn't raise and I hit two pair... I wasn't going to let it go." "Oh, didn't see that. Nice hand, then."

I continued playing smart and survived the field of 200 to make it down to the final table. I was still kind of short-stacked, sitting at 7th place or so. Unfortunately, it was about 6pm and there were a couple other things going on. I'm taking an online database management class, and we had a group project working on some SQL scripts. I had just gotten off the phone with one of the group members who was telling me he had a family emergency and couldn't get his part of the code done. Being the group leader, as well as needing his section of code to be able to get mine done, I was all of a sudden dumped with a double load of work and it was due in about 4 hours.

HDouble recently wrote about focus and concentration on your game. It was a very inspiring post, but due to the circumstances my game time was split... ALT+TAB'bing between folding and coding database queries. Then it happened. JJ in late position, UTG min-raise and I pushed. He called with A9 (sooooted!), caught his Ace and I was out in eighth.

I just sat and stared at the screen in shock. How could he call an all-in with A9??? After a few minutes, the realization of what happened sunk in. It was a horrible move on my part. I should have considered the position and the chip stacks. I should have just called the raise, and after seeing an Ace and a King on the flop I could have let the Jacks go and played on. Turns out the guy who beat me was the next to bust out.

I was distracted, plain and simple, worried about getting my assignment done (which is a completely valid worry) and not being able to focus on the game. A friend told me he would have rather went out 150th than 8th. Yeah, I guess I would have felt even crummier if I went out in 3rd or 2nd as I usually do in tournaments, but it would have been nice to have had a shot at the grand prize.

At least I know I can get there. I'll be out of town this weekend, but I'll definitely be back for Blue's final Freeroll on the 16th, not to mention PokerStars Blogger Freeroll on the 23rd. And you can be sure that I'll have my work done by Saturday so that nothing... not even the Seahawks pulling out a win... will take my focus off the game.