I played 2 donkaments in New Orleans, both Friday. I played Circuit Event # 1, a $500 event, and a $300 "second chance tourney." Neither tournament was very eventful and I never really was in a spot I liked. In both tournaments I ended up short stacks and shoving wide which eventually resulted in being knocked out by a better hand.

The real story comes from playing cash game on Saturday night. I was playing 2/5 NL with a whole crew of locals and a few good players. After about 2 hours of play I was down to about $250. I called a $20 raise with 77 from the BB along with 4 other callers. Flop comes K67 with 2 hearts. I check, someone bets $100, 3 call, and I shove my remaining $230 in. I get 2 callers who both cover me by about $200. So the main pot is about $900. The turn is the 6 giving me a full house and completing a flush. The other 2 players shove/call the turn. One tables A6 and the other KJ. River - K.

I go back to my hotel busto and ready to get the heck out of New Orleans. Nothing like putting your chips in with 98% equity and losing.

April was a great month for me, I finished up about $3k and finished 185th on the Stars TLB (got a fat $50 bonus from Stars).

The first week of May has been horrendous. Lost almost $1k of my April winnings right off the bat. It's part running bad and part making bad (dumb) plays. I'll get to play lots of live poker in New Orleans this weekend, and hopefully play and run better.

I got a PM on 2+2 that posed an interesting question so I thought it might me good to post the question and my response on here.

Question:

You seem to be the most knowledgable poster here [sidebar: LOL], so I was hoping you could settle something for me.

You've helped me reconsider my approach to MTTs (from survivor to accumulator). However, for whatever reason, I'm not yet fully convinced that taking a +chipEV edge early is always correct (I know this is an on-going, classic debate...but it seems there is now a consensus that the accumulators are correct). Here's why:

I think a valid assumption at the early stages of an MTT is that we are going to be dealt many hands. We can calculate the probability of getting AA...which will be relativley high (we can add in KK and QQ, etc...so, even higher). When we take the early +chipEV....we are foregoing this high probability of being dealt AA.

Again, I know this has been hammered (and have read Woodguy's thread)...but how can we justify passing up on a future, larger +chipEV (that is not certain, but probable) for a smaller +chipEV early? Is it simply because we cannot assume that it is probable that we will be in a higher +chipEV spot?

I just need to get past this disconnect and was hoping you could help (as you did with explaining why $EV doesn't matter until real late). Thanks.....

My Response:

LOL @ me being most knowledgeable. But, I do know a thing or two and can help answer your question.

To win a tournament you must take every edge given to you, either by the cards, by aggressive play, by outthinking your opponents, etc. In large field tournaments, waiting for 80/20 edges where you actually get paid off may happen once or twice if you are lucky. Even if you are lucky and get AA 5 times, doubling up with it once is probably meeting expectation. (meaning someone else had something they were willing to stack off with and put all their chips in play). Most of the time you get AA you are going to raise, someone might call, you bet or check/raise and most of the time they fold. 1 out of 5 times your overpair will get cracked. Thus, waiting for overpairs and 80/20 spots, while certainly solid +Cev spots, will not by themselves be near enough to win a tournament. Moreover, if you consistently passing up spots with, say, 99 because you are "looking for better spots" and are unwilling to race against overcards, you may infact we giving up an 80/20 because villian could have 88 or less. This is why villian's ranges must be merged and weighted and our +Cev hand felted in these spots. For the same reason most advocate calling nearly all all-in's with AK. Most of the time we have already put in a raise with AK and along with the blinds/antes and any other dead money in the pot makes the all-in call +Cev even when we are the 45/55 dog. Tournaments are won by chip accumulation, and the only way to accumulate the number of chips needed to win is by outplaying opponents and winning coin flips. Every large field tournament winner sucked out more than his fair share to get to that point as well.

In sum, you won't maximize your tournament potential if you don't embrace the need to felt small edges. Those who refuse to engage in early/middle stages coin flips are usually the kind of players that bubble and min cash a lot. To get to the final table you must take every +Cev spot available and have the cards go your way. Only one of those factors is within your control.

Hope this helps.

In addition to a 33rd place finish in the Pokerstars Sunday Hundred Grand and some other deep cashes, grinding $12/180 turbos on stars has been going really well. These tourneys are known to be high variance and can be really frustrating when not running good. However, they are easily beatable long term and I have had good overall results. I'm up over $2k overall for April so I hope to continue this run going into WSOP-C in New Orleans.



Coincidentally, I am not really bankrolled for the WSOP-C $500+50 event I am playing May 9 so if anyone would like to make a one-time staking arrangement I would be interested. I finished 3rd in the event in November but unfortunately had bills to pay with my winnings.

I was staying with my parents in DFW so we decided to head up to the Choctaw casino in Durant. My parents play the slots but I would have at least a couple hours to try out the poker room.

The casino is very smoky inside, but the poker room is smoke-free. They have burgers that seem to be free that you can fix yourself laying on a table in the room, buffet-style. The poker room manager has a modern computer setup outside the poker room where you put your name on the interest list. I signed up for 1/2 NL and after about 15 minutes they started a new table for me and the others that had signed up. The poker room is pretty middle of the road but probably more upscale than a typical tribe casino. Not as nice as Vegas rooms or Harrah's in New Orleans, but solid. The tables have auto shufflers and the dealers seem competent, although a bit "country." There isn't much for a hundred miles on either side of Durant, so this should be expected. The action went along well and I had no dealer problems during my 3 hours of play. I ended up around $140: it would have been more but I had 2 cooler hands that cost me around $100 total.

Overall the room is better than expected for a tribal casino and I am very likely to return when visiting the DFW area. I will also try out the Winstar Casino when I am in DFW next as it has a much larger poker room.