Turning the Corner

Well, after yesterday's dissappointing results in all the tournaments that I played, except for one 2nd that I got, today was much better. I don't feel that I played necessarily bad yesterday. I had a lot of misfortune, but I definitely played to weak at times. My finish in the 180SNG on Stars was very very disappointing finishing 24th. I played very well and just had the worst of it in the end.

I reviewed my finish last weekend in the Deep Stack where I finished 45th and put it into the PokerXfactor replayer and reviewed a lot of hands. I also put my 180 yesterday in it to take a look at what I was doing, and I definitely saw some hands that I played very very weak.

Today, I didn't play weak at all. I played in the Deep Stack on Stars and although I finished 117 out of 873, I fell that I only played two hands less than optimal, and on one I might have made a good laydowm. I had Tens in MP and did not reraise the UTG min-raising fool and as a result it was a 5-way hand on the flop. The UTG raise min bet and I just called, BIG MISTAKE, I should have repopped it 3x. The guy behind my min raised and then one fold and the LP reraised 3x the min raise. I thought about it, but folded the 10s, by the way, the flop was 8 high and ragged. I think I should have reraised preflop and definitely on the flop to isolate the UTG donk, who folded to the action on the flop.

The other hand I won, but I did not give myself a chance to get more money. I had AQ and raised, was called by the bigstack and flopped AQX. I checked and he checked it. The turn filled me up with an A and I put out a weak bet, when I should have checked to induce the big stack to try and steal it on the river. It was a win but a bad play.

I had AK with a min raise UTG and 2 callers so I pushed 4 times the pot and got insta-called by the SB with AA. I was down to 1300 chips at 200/400. I had QJ next hand and went all-in, and amazingly quadrupled up when everyone missed. I ended up back up to 23,000 chips or so. I had QQ UTG and raised it 3BBs to 2400, and big stack reraised to 4000. I was getting 2.5 to 1 to call his reraise, but I would only have 10,000 or so left. I only had about 10x the pot when the hand started, so I decided that I needed to push, because I couldn't lay this down. He could have made this move with AA-88, AK, AQ. So I called and was knocked out. Just bad timing I guess.

I played 1 NL SNG on stars while I was in the Deep Stack and I won that. That SNG was pretty fun. I felt really good about my play.

After I was knocked out of the Deep stack I was a little frustrated so I decided to go fishing at Party Poker. I played 22 SNG and got sucked out on by a really weak player who called 1/3 of his stack with T9s and hit his flush to knock me out. While I was playing this I entered what I thought was another NL SNG, but because Party Poker's selection screen sucks really bad I ended up in Turbo Limit SNG. I didn't realize it was either for several hands into it, but as luck would have it, or I should say skill probably, I went on to win it. I seem to almost always finish in the money whenever I play limit. I don't know why I don't play more limit tourneys.

All in all it was a great day at the tables. I made a couple great reads and really was cruising in the Deep stack until I hit the two coolers. Oh, well, the progress is definitely there.