Bubble Burster

Last night was pretty much your prototypical meh Poker night. Cash games were woefully uneventful. Draws missed, a zillion little to mid pocket pairs failed to improve to sets, etc. I think I finished up 10$ which I promptly dumped on the Mookie.

I started the Mookie off with a bang, doubling up my starting stack less than 20 minutes in. I was just catching cards and flops were hitting my ass harder than a two thousand pound bag of bricks. I nailed at least three sets by the end of the second break and got my fair share of big pocket pairs: Kings twice, tens at least four times, AK twice, etc. It's no wonder I had a top three stack for most of this event, even a retard would be successful getting dealt the hands I was given.

So how the hell did I manage to bubble the final table? Weak tight bloggers grinding short stacks waiting for big cards led to my demise.

I'm quite simply shocked at how terribly WEAK some people play these things. Nobody is taking shots or stabbing at pots unless they have the goods. Many hands were folded to me in my BB when the blinds were quite significant (50-100 and up) and I was left shaking my head in disbelief at the consecutive amount of times where hands were simply given up to the BB.

So how was that bad for me? With around 30 people left, the tournament became a ridiculous push-fest where all the weak tight nits were jamming every playable hand they would come upon while I was stuck in card-deadness hell. It's also really hard to steal some blinds with junk like 3-9o when the nits behind are just waiting to go over the top with their 2500 stacks.

So my stack remained solid but I couldn't build on it or run away from the pack. It all unravelled for me in the last two tables. Whenever I tried to make a move, someone would come over the top for all their chips and I just couldn't find a hand to risk 50%+ of my stack. The Coup de Grace was delivered when I pushed Q7s for the cut-+off only to be called by the button with his pocket nines. I flop a queen but the dreaded nine came on the turn and IGHN.

I'm playing at my friend's place tonight and maybe I can squeeze an online session later. We'll see.

I'll see ya'll later!

Don't Call it a Comeback Part 27

Huh, hi! It's been awhile hasn't it? Don't REALLY have a good excuse for not posting anything in nearly four months except that life got in the way. And whenever life gets in the way, Poker tends to take a backseat. I hardly played a hand in three months and while I'd really like to entertain the masses with the non-Poker events in my life, I'm quite simply too poor of a writer to try and take this blog in that direction.

But what have you been up to in these past months Mr. Artiste?

In no particular order: Attending my brother's wedding, organizing the bachelor party for my brother, broke up with my girlfriend, got buried under a shit-ton pile of work, reaching the playoffs for the first time in our indoor soccer league, losing promptly in the first round of said playoffs, intently following the NHL playoffs (Go SENS!) and destroying my Poker bankroll.

WHAT?

Well not destroying per say, but pretty much withdrawing all but 1K of the 10K I had earned in my 18+ months career. I didn't want to take any chances when Neteller announced that they were pulling out of the Canadian market so I pretty much hightailed it out of there leaving 500$ apiece on Full Tilt and Cake Poker (Rakeback you see).

and then what?

I've been playing sporadically. I've definitely quit min-bet Poker. Done. Finished. I simply couldn't stand rebuilding a roll playing 1-2$ limit so I moved up to the Cadillac of Poker, NLHE. So far so good, the results have been positive and my passion for the game seems to be renewed somewhat. I've been playing the absolutely dreadful 25$ tables but I am now on the verge of moving up to 50$. At that point, I'm hoping that I'll be able to grind out a nice little amount of Rakeback and kick the rebuilding phase into high gear.

I've been playing the Mook for the past weeks. I final tabled last week (finished 4th I think) and I landed well into the points the week before. If feels a little bit odd to be overjoyed at winning 80$ but such is the state of my roll those days and I'll take whatever I can get.

So yeah, catch me at the Mook tonight. My schedule is clearing up so hopefully I can manage to do this blogging thing more than once in a while.

Don't call it a comeback just yet...