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Tournaments/p5: Possibly too level-headed
Mid-tourney blogging
by Adanthar on 02/24/08
Played a big sat on Friday, lasted long enough that it was too late for SNG's but didn't get an actual seat, bought in anyway on Saturday.
Saturday was mixed. My table was fantastic, playing something like 40/8 for four levels with no name pros except the first to bust Cam Hua/later arrival fslexicduck (Vanessa Selbst), but I was card dead for most of the day - at a table like that one, isolating limpers was pointless and overlimping just let me miss every single flop. I did chip up over the final level, though, and wound up with ~29K.
Today's first table seems, uhh...
WROBLEWSKI ANNA 116550 21 1
TRANIELLO MARCO 25225 21 2
EDLER WILLIAM 28800 21 3
JAMES KENNA 16750 21 4
RAVITCH SERGE 28850 21 5
WALNUM ANDREAS 26600 21 6
BAUERLEIN EUGENE 41750 21 7
RAMIREZ SENOVIO 25975 21 8
ESFANDIARI ANTONIO 119475 21 9
I hope it breaks early! Wish me luck.
Two for two in the LAPC*
by Adanthar on 02/21/08
*in busting out before the first break, heh.
The Commerce is a very good cardroom; my impression is that the games are as soft as anything outside of Vegas during the WSOP season. This extends to their tournaments, which feature some incredibly soft play (example today: someone checkraised a 600 chip bet to 1200 with Qx on a Q65r board, bet 500 of his leftover 1050 on a 3 turn, then check/folded a 9 on the river - showing the queen.) Overall, these people are simply atrocious and if I lived here in LA, I'd probably never leave the place. However, the structure features low starting stacks (60-70 BB) with long levels. This is a great structure if you get chips early, because the late game features a lot of play, but it's not good if you're card dead or unlucky in the first few hours; you absolutely need to double or triple up early and cannot pass up any reasonable opportunity to do it. As a result, in both of the last two tourneys, I drifted down a bit due to missing flops, picked up 99, got it all in (on a 765 and T87 board) in big pots, but couldn't win either time and busted. C'est la vie.
On the other hand, I'm nowhere near as big a degen as Nath, who made it to the final 2 tables of the 1500 buyin event (starting in 2 hours), decided to play the 1K today starting 2 hours ago *anyway* and potentially multitable the two, got to my table and busted in < 5 minutes. gg.
Next up: Satellite Friday, the ME on Saturday, and some preview clips from the SNG ;)
The Commerce is a very good cardroom; my impression is that the games are as soft as anything outside of Vegas during the WSOP season. This extends to their tournaments, which feature some incredibly soft play (example today: someone checkraised a 600 chip bet to 1200 with Qx on a Q65r board, bet 500 of his leftover 1050 on a 3 turn, then check/folded a 9 on the river - showing the queen.) Overall, these people are simply atrocious and if I lived here in LA, I'd probably never leave the place. However, the structure features low starting stacks (60-70 BB) with long levels. This is a great structure if you get chips early, because the late game features a lot of play, but it's not good if you're card dead or unlucky in the first few hours; you absolutely need to double or triple up early and cannot pass up any reasonable opportunity to do it. As a result, in both of the last two tourneys, I drifted down a bit due to missing flops, picked up 99, got it all in (on a 765 and T87 board) in big pots, but couldn't win either time and busted. C'est la vie.
On the other hand, I'm nowhere near as big a degen as Nath, who made it to the final 2 tables of the 1500 buyin event (starting in 2 hours), decided to play the 1K today starting 2 hours ago *anyway* and potentially multitable the two, got to my table and busted in < 5 minutes. gg.
Next up: Satellite Friday, the ME on Saturday, and some preview clips from the SNG ;)
Sitting and going in LA
by Adanthar on 02/20/08
Confession: when it comes to travel, I'm pretty incompetent. Oh, I (read: my wife) pack light, don't sweat the small stuff, and haven't ever done anything to get me arrested, but when combining being short on sleep with going somewhere by myself, bad things tend to happen. Nevertheless, one missed connection due largely to my own stupidity later, I did, in fact, get to LA almost on time - just in time for the televised SNG.
Without spoiling it, the event went really well. Unfortunately, I only had one interesting hand the whole time; with the cards I was dealt all being on one extreme or the other, every other decision I had to make was really easy. That hiccup notwithstanding, the event itself was a lot of fun, and, with half a dozen very good online players up against Layne Flack, Todd Brunson and Jose Canseco (who lasted longer than either of those two, BTW), it made for a lot of good poker. I'll blog a lot more about it after the video is released.
After catching up on sleep, yesterday also went well - I put in a semi-grind session with shaundeeb and wound up going 3 for 6, including cashes in both the 1K and the 109r on Stars. I misplayed a hand on the bubble in the latter and lost a shove with 3 tables left in the former, but still have to consider it a pretty good day. I'm also posting a few hands from those later.
Today's the first LAPC event I'm playing, a 1500 which starts in an hour - wish me luck.
Without spoiling it, the event went really well. Unfortunately, I only had one interesting hand the whole time; with the cards I was dealt all being on one extreme or the other, every other decision I had to make was really easy. That hiccup notwithstanding, the event itself was a lot of fun, and, with half a dozen very good online players up against Layne Flack, Todd Brunson and Jose Canseco (who lasted longer than either of those two, BTW), it made for a lot of good poker. I'll blog a lot more about it after the video is released.
After catching up on sleep, yesterday also went well - I put in a semi-grind session with shaundeeb and wound up going 3 for 6, including cashes in both the 1K and the 109r on Stars. I misplayed a hand on the bubble in the latter and lost a shove with 3 tables left in the former, but still have to consider it a pretty good day. I'm also posting a few hands from those later.
Today's the first LAPC event I'm playing, a 1500 which starts in an hour - wish me luck.
Yeah I definitely need to play more
by Adanthar on 02/07/08
Good news: I made my first '08 final table last night. (That sounded really bad until I realized I'd played 30 donkaments all year, lol. Which leads me to:)
Bad news: I took 7'th because I actually made an impatient reshove. Yeah, it was 7 BB to a minraise and probably didn't even cost me much in equity, but it's still very dumb and not something I should ever do. And, after some thought, I'm pretty sure the reason I did it was because I didn't play enough recently.
So, a short term fix = me playing most of the FTOPS events and enough other donkaments to fill my screen before I leave for LA. That ought to be enough to get me un-rusty.
Oh well, at least I made moneys/got the Bodog runbad streak out of the way.
(Bodog runbad streak: a 2000% ROI over the course of a year and a half/70 tournaments, followed by an 0 for 48 streak that brought it down to 500%)
Bad news: I took 7'th because I actually made an impatient reshove. Yeah, it was 7 BB to a minraise and probably didn't even cost me much in equity, but it's still very dumb and not something I should ever do. And, after some thought, I'm pretty sure the reason I did it was because I didn't play enough recently.
So, a short term fix = me playing most of the FTOPS events and enough other donkaments to fill my screen before I leave for LA. That ought to be enough to get me un-rusty.
Oh well, at least I made moneys/got the Bodog runbad streak out of the way.
(Bodog runbad streak: a 2000% ROI over the course of a year and a half/70 tournaments, followed by an 0 for 48 streak that brought it down to 500%)
Hey, I made money on Sunday
by Adanthar on 02/05/08
Only $200 or so, but hey, money's nice. I only played about four tourneys, bubbled the UB 200K, but went very deep in the Stars 1M again before busting out 200-something. It's also got enough plays in it to be a CR vid or two, so I'm set for this month.
If you're in the appropriate states, don't forget to vote today :)
If you're in the appropriate states, don't forget to vote today :)
