Donkaments will be the death of me

As I stated in my list of goals for the year 2007, I need to make a better effort of sitting down in some tournaments and put myself in situations to win a big score. Sooooo, I sat down at the Laptop yesterday with the intention of playing some tournaments. Browsing through the list of upcoming tournaments on Full Tilt two events ended up catching my eye: The nightly 25K guaranteed and the 10$ Double something (It’s basically a set of tournaments that start at 9:00 and 9:02 with some kind of promotions and what not tied into it.)

Time was slightly an issue since I didn’t feel like paying the full buy-in for the 25K, preferring to go the token route instead. I decided to enter one of the double and a two-table 26$ token donk and go.

My run in the double was short-lived. After doubling up my starting stack on the first hand (in a ridiculous one where my ATo became TPTK on the flop, Trips top kicker on the turn and Quads on the river) I promptly dumped 2/3 of my stack pushing KK into AA pre-flop a few minutes later. I was out shortly after when I pushed A9 from the CO into the BB’s AK. Let’s try this one again tomorrow, shall we?

The donk and go went well. I doubled up, again, in my first three hands. I flopped two pair and ended up going all-in against some tool who figured this was a good spot to call an all-in with an OESD. That was pretty much it. I barely played a hand after that and folded my way to a token. Off to the 25K I go…

And this was quite the interesting experiment, I’ll say. Ever played a tournament where you kept winning your races when you’re WAY behind when the money goes in but lose all the ones where you’re a huge favourite? These are usually the nights where you SHOULD be making the money and reaching final tables but, alas, it was not meant to be. I had started pretty nicely, doubling up my stack early and playing some sound focused Poker. That was until I had AA and TT cracked in succession to relegate me to short stack status. That’s when the circus started. Every single hand I ended up pushing with was behind but I kept winning the showdowns. A9>AQ when I flop two nines. 88>99 thanks to a four card flush that I spike on the river. A7> AK when I end up dodging a billion outs for my opponent and hitting a miracle 7 on the river. And yet, even if I’m winning all those races, I really couldn’t get ahead since I kept losing chips at critical moments that didn’t allow me to build my stack. I went out when I pushed A8 into the BB’s AK and no suckout to bail me out this time.

I believe there were 1500+ runners last night, which is a LOT of donkeys. I don’t really have the patience or the discipline to sit down and play such an event properly. Yep, that means the Crack Head Kid^tm made an other appearance as I started popping cash game tables open while I was folding myself to sleep in the tournament. At least the cash games went well, I ended up winning a couple of hundreds which easily covered the expenses for the night but still…

Will be doing again for sure, most probably on Thursday. I just need to get into some kind of groove and find out what situation works out best for me as far as number of tournament tables open, limits, etc. Once I get there, I can really focus on winning some serious Moolah.