IP Update

MY Package Update email:

Hi all,

Package update.  Every time I use the word package one of you Beavis and Butthead fans shoots me a text telling me how you enjoys me talking about my "package."  You probably giggled at the name of Alabama safety Ha Ha Clinton Dix.   Well giggle some more because I'm talking about my package again.

Some small good news for those that bought enough of the package to include the side action, but that comes last.  

Now for the bad news.

Anyway, the first three events went bad for different reasons, though a three on the turn was responsible for two of them.  

1A 50k Guarantee:  

Simply got coolered three times by fishy plays.  

1.  Flop top two pair bet. Guy calls and hits his set on the turn. Think it was set of threes, I flopped K9.  Just call his river bet, lose minimum.

2.  In Big Blind with A4.  Multi way pot.  Flop comes 774.  I Bet one guy calls.  Turn is a ten.  Check.  Check.

River is another 7.  Check call guy's river bet.  He has pocket queens.  Ugh.  Maybe I can fold there

but not many people check a 10 on the turn (or limp QQ behind other limpers--yuck).  Hard to give him a bigger pair and figure I can beat A highs, bluffs and all but some mid pocket pairs that also were played kind of fishy because of no effort to protect his hand.  

3A.  Get dealt a Queen face up.  Sure enough in my replacement cards another queen.

I fold, my crappy kicker (instead of betting pocket queens if not for the dealer error).  Two players get it all in on the turn.

The turn was a... Queen.  One guy flopped a set of tens the other the nut flush draw that didn't get there.

Yeah... my triple up right there.  Dealer apologized.

This unfortunate turn of events is only important because the very next hand I get AQ and we had openly discussed what "should" have been and me having a big stack.

3B.  I raise with AQ get called by button and big blind.  Flop is Q82.  Checked to me.  I bet and am called twice.  

Turn is a three.  Checked to me.  I bet.  Button folds.  Big blind ships it.  He's been pretty tight and solid all day.  Still it's hard to give 

him more than top pair on that board (or a set of 8s or twos).  I call not really having enough chips to fold.  He shows 23.  Yeah...  No idea how he called the flop (or even preflop) after a bet and a call on that flop with bottom pair bottom kicker.  My only conclusion is he thought I was tilting from the previous hand.  That doens't really explain him calling after the button did (even if he could beat me unlikely his twos beat the button) but that was my tournament.  Gross way to start.

Event 1B: 50K Guarantee.

I called preflop with KQ on the button against the most aggressive bad player at the table.  

Flop came Q high.  He checked.  I bet he raised.  Ugh.  Let it go.  Then I see him play every hand, badly just

firing chips into the pot at a rate that suggests he was on air most of the time.  Wish I had the hand back.

Later I had Queens and was determined to take my stand against him.  He bet all the way and then hit a King.  (He had AK--of course his only hand was against me).

Probably, I should have pushed back at him somewhere earlier in the hand, but I like guys like that to fire three barrels into me with nothing.  That way they can overbluff the river (though they can also connect).  

Had it not been an ace or king I would have fired back giving him enough room to stack off.  As it was, I guess I lost the minimum.

I got unlucky that I was in a flip.  I had no idea he was as strong as AK, so even if I did push back earlier possible he just comes over the 

top (all he knows is he has an Ace and King and that looks like a good hand)  and we play a swollen pot that I lose.  Predictably he goes bust.  Not before I was down to 1400.  Starting stack of 10k.

Blinds were 50 and 100 and I look at JJ in the big blind.  I fold.  What?  14 big blinds and fold Jacks?  Yes. There was a bet and reraise (by a short stack that didn't shove--Monster alert).

Two players get it all in AA (there's the monster) v. 88.  Good fold.  Happy about that, hard to lay down a pair of face cards preflop with that stack.

Then I mounted a comeback and turned that 1400 into 14000 after scooping small pot after pot.

Thought it was going to be my day. Just as I allowed myself to believe...

Then I couldn't catch a hand for four levels.  Also had a player on my right beating me into pots

any time I sensed weakness or a stealing opportunity.  Gross.  Didn't really have enough to 3bet fold to him and I wasn't about to stack off with a garbage hand so bided my time.

I was in the big blind with 92 and short again, mid position and small blind limp to me. I check.  Flop came three hearts (one a deuce) ten high.

I take a stab with a small bet.  Called by mid position.  Turn a 9.  Now I got two pair.  Again bet small and get called.  River was a 8.  I bet small again.  He puts

my stack in.  I hate this spot.  So many times a big stack chasing a flush with a bare big card is frustrated he missed he flush his over cards outs and will bluff in this spot.  Or he flopped a flush.

I stew.  I decided despite my efforts to pot control I had put too much of my stack in, and two pair wins a lot of the time against many of his hands.  Really should have checked the river in retrospect.  Likely he shoves there anyway, but maybe I can fold.

To his credit he showed a flopped queen high flush, which I thought he played well.  Many players will push back earlier in the hand without the nut flush fearful of an Ace

of hearts running him down with another heart on the board.  So, in that respect, I kind of only get beat by the nuts the way the hand played out most of the time.  So I'm calling against the nuts or bluffs.  Not this guy though he played his flush well and his shoving river range was a little wider.

Event 3A: 75k Guarantee

(sorry for the ensuing tangent)

My daughter caught the flu and Saturday woke up with a blazing fever. Why do my kids only get sick on weekends and holidays? I took her to urgent care to confirm she was flu-ridden and to get Tamiflu.  Sidenote:  Urgent care sucks  Opens at 9.  Parked in front waiting for the doors.  Two people there before me.  Then in short fashion two people after me.  Doors opened, and I imagined I'd simply file in third behind the people there first.

I guess like Black Friday, it's just a free for all when people are sick.  Alright, I told myself as these near dead people suddenly sprinted to the doors, if they want to share a crowded waiting room with a soon to be crying/screaming miserable two year old that's their decision.

Of course, the young and more healthy who arrived last raced to the door.  Thankfully, this wasn't a sinking ship because the old, the punctual, and the tiny children that require a little more time to get out of the car were dead last.  Inside they handed out the paperwork and then it became another race to finish that.  Sure enough with me trying to corral a two year old trying to touch everything, three more newcomers came in and filed their survey first.

As some of the newest arrivals got ushered back before us, I grumbled to myself.

Course, I had the ace in the hole.  At about that point my daughter lost it after a long period of waiting. The teenage girl at the front desk smacking her gum was rolling her eyes at the sick child.  Harper didn't stop being miserable despite ruining that poor girl's morning.  It was a good thing as we were called next with her obviously slotting us in before the latecomers just to get Harper  out of the waiting room.

By the way, I thought I was dramatic when I was sick. Yet, as whiny as I am, these people were either all dying and in need of immediate emergency care, or the biggest babies in the world.  Even my soon to be crying daughter for the first hour was manning up more than this batch of wheezing, groaning, shivering, non-hand to mouth covering coughing, sneezing, near death dramatists.  For a second, I thought I was coming in early on a pandemic.  Influenza of 1917 part deux. Based on the zombies in the waiting room, I considered calling my wife and telling her to shutter herself keep the still well baby away in the house for a month.

Then I remembered my son had it all the previous week pretty badly and recovered, so not likely this was Ebola 2.0.  (EDIT: To be fair, I just found out two of his classmates were hospitalized so maybe I being a little harsh on the sick adults in that waiting room spraying contagions--not for spraying the contagions but for being so overt in their distress). 

We have done everything we could to keep our infant from coming down with it--well besides me going to urgent care and that crowd sourced cloud of infection that was misting the waiting room like the dew on grass at Augusta.    Anyway, we've been keeping the flu kids away from the baby and that means me watching one or two of the kids at our house and my wife with the sick one at her Mom's.  So, I thought I might miss the 555.

I prepared myself to play the alt events on Tuesday, and Thursday (see the spreadsheet).  I wasn't too stressed because I saw it as an opportunity to watch the Iron Bowl (both my parents went to Auburn and first sporting event I ever went to as a kid in North Carolina was an Auburn-Wake Forest football game--so guess who I pull for).  Then as the game started I started getting texts.  Only 50 people in the morning session.  They need 150 to meet the guarantee, there was going to be an overlay.  For those of you not familiar with poker, an overlay is when a casino guarantees a certain amount of money, and not enough players buy-in to meet it.  In this case they ended up being 50 players short--meaning the casino had to kick in 23k of their money.

As poker players you live for these rare events, because you get the prize pool of a bigger tournament with fewer players to beat.  Great equity.

I decided I had to get to Biloxi to play this.  No way we were going to miss this spot (considering the paltry turn-out for the non guaranteed events later in the week glad I went) and my inlaws came through for me again helping my wife with the sick and well kids.  The Auburn game, maybe you heard was kind of good.  But as my friend pointed out perhaps Auburn is stealing all their fans run good for these miraculous finishes.  When I arrived for the evening session I see it's a small who's who of the Coast's best players.  The morning session had finished with about one table left.  Without winning any big hands I progressed to just over twenty players left in the night session. I had a couple of interesting hands which didn't really amount to much and played with my favorite Survivor castaway Boston Rob (a regular down here and a decent player despite what his ill fated poker reality TV show might have suggested).  People were talking about coconuts, and coconut flavored things and I couldn't help but study him to see if he had a reaction.  After all that's all he ate/drank for about three months of his life. 

I kept hanging around then spied AK and shoved over a raise.  Guy called with Jacks.  For a moment it was a flip.  QQJ flop schewed the odds considerably in his favor.  So that sucked.

GOOD NEWS:

-Good thing is the bigger prizepools in the package are all ahead of us, and we got a lot of tournaments left.

-After whiffing in a mega for a seat (and rebate money for ya'll with the extras in the package) missing it by ~four players.  I had a small score in the nightly on Tuesday.   That's not in the package but gets half shares for everybody eligible.  We chopped it four ways (another overlay in a 4k guarantee on a $120 buy-in).  I got the winners photo as chipleader.  For one thirty minute dealer down I got more hands then I got in all the other tournaments I've played combined.  Gross.

Right before my hot streak I sat card dead in the nightly lamenting my bad run so far and having one of those I-really-hate-tournament-poker-moments, then finally caught some cards that stood up.  I tripled up with Jacks.  Had some maroon shove into my Aces two hands later and I was off.  Once I had a stack, for the first time this week, I bulldozed the table and with twenty left I had almost a third of the chips in play. 

By the time we got four handed I had  taken some beats.   One very good player and two very capable players had almost as many chips as me.  We split it evenly.

Now, on to the Main Event Saturday.  Just need to get a little momentum in that event and I forsee good things.

        

Oh yeah, some of you haven't squared up yet.  I understand there's been some issues and we've discussed it.  No problem.  But here is a gentle reminder.  Preferably if you can get the money to me by Saturday am I'd much appreciate it.  About to start buying into the bigger buy-in events will need those bigger chunks sooner rather than later.  

Thanks again for all the support and belief.  Good feelings about Saturday.