A New Challenge and Mookie Thoughts

Here's how the month of July has been going for me at the cash tables:

• Pick up AA, cap it pre-flop with the loosest idiot at the table. He has 10-8s, flop comes 10-8-10


• Pick up KQs on the button; raise it up, mp limper calls. Flop comes 4-K-K, limper had pocket 4's


• Cap it three ways preflop with AA, flop comes 5-5-J, one of the cappers had pockets queens, the other idiot had 95s


• Raise from the cut-off with AA, both blinds call, flop comes 2-8-10. Small blind has 10-2s; big blind has 10-8s

Looking briefly at PokerTracker, my two biggest losers for the month are pocket aces and pocket kings! Aces held up 30% of the time and Kings 40%.

Needless to say you won't make money at this game if you're losing constantly with the best starting hands in Hold'Em.

What now? I can't win a pot to save my life so it's pretty useless to wander around aimlessly while destroying my bankroll. I figured I needed some kind of challenge or goal, something to give some kind of purpose to my play.

So I decided to pick up Jordan's limit challenge.

It's pretty simple. Start from a certain amount at a specified limit and when you reach a certain point, you move up. Here's the chart:

Start $            Limit          Play Until          Drop Back
$25.............10/.25...........$55.....................$0
$55.............25/.50..........$110..................$50
$110...........50/1.............$215.................$100
$215...........1/2................$370................$200
$370...........2/4...............$550................$350
$550...........3/6...............$750................$525
$750...........4/8...............$950................$720
$950...........5/10............$1500...............$915


I intend to start with 215$, playing 1 / 2 LHE at two websites. I wouldn't be able to take the damn thing seriously at anything lower. Do I plan to go all the way with this? I might, don't really know, I'll stick to it at least until the downswing seems to subside. If anything, it should bring a purpose to my play, something that has been lacking big time for me lately.

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I signed up for the Mookie last night in a attempt to redeem myself for an absolutely embarrassing performance at the WWDN. Things started pretty slowly while every single player at my table was doubling up as if it was the new “In” thing. I made my first successful move when my pocket 7's outraced AKo to end a 452345 losing streak of races in tournaments. Seriously folks, I almost cried. That double up gave me some chips to play with. I chipped up here and there, maintaining myself amongst the average stacks until I knocked out Bob Respert in a battle of the blinds where we both flopped top pair but I had him out kicked which earned me a pretty decent size pot. And then, I finally picked up a hand…

At 100-200 blinds, I make it 550 to go with Kings at UTG+1. The table was playing really tight and I didn't want to only pick up blinds with my first decent hand of the evening. 2.5X the blind seemed like a decent sized bet. Everyone folds to the button (xkm1245) who makes it 1200 to go, leaving himself 2400 behind. I happen to have him covered by about 100 chips. Ecstatic with this turn of events, I push and he insta-calls with AKo.

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Let's pause for a second and talk about something that's been bothering me a lot lately. What is it with online players and their fascination with AK? I simply can't believe how many players are willingly calling pushes with AK early in tournaments when their stacks are deep. While it's true that it dominates all non pair hands, you're still at best either a 60/40 % favourite or 50/50 against any pair. Again why?

xkm1245 here makes an enormous mistake. An UTG raiser pops it to 2.5X the big blind. That's strength . He picks up AK from the button and he decides to raise it up. Not a bad play, although a call would have made sense since he will have position throughout the hand. He decides to raise it up and I push all my chips right away. That's a shitload of strength. What hands I am representing here? What range of hands would put in a raise from UTG and flat out push after being played back at? QQ+ and maybe AK. So why call off your entire stack (Remember I have him covered) when you're either behind or tied at best? His answer in the chat box when my Kings were turned over (“Mother effer”) seems to imply that he actually thought he was ahead! Meaning he was playing his cards and his cards only.

Now I should be ecstatic about this call. I'm a huge 70% favorite to pretty much double up my stack and be in the top three in chips for the tournament. But since I'm spending so much time on this, it obviously didn't happen, and a fucking ace fell on the turn and my ass was crippled.

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But what can you do? I put my chips in as a huge favourite but the cards didn't fall my way. That's Poker, the long run, blablabla…

Anyway, I hope to get started on the limit challenge tonight. Hopefully I don't end up losing my entire roll trying to get stupid thing off the ground.