My postings to this blog have been slowing down a bit due to a big book project I’m trying to finish by a June deadline, but rest assured: YIPES continues unabated. I’m making time for at least 30-45 minutes of play on Poker Stars every day in an effort to double up my original $5 stack each month. I made the double-up goal of $10 the first month (March), and it looks like I’ll fairly easily make the $20 goal this month (April). In fact, I’m already at $21.25, but I’m trying not to get too cocky about it; I was at $21.50 a week ago, but then saw my stack take multiple body blows on its way down to $14.50.
The main reason the stack took that $7 drop was an amazing run of bad beats. My Poker Tracker stats show that I was dealt AA six times in that run, and they never held up a single time. Similarly, AK failed me 12 of 14 times, KK failed me 4 of 5 times, and QQ cost me over $2 all by herself. Ouch.
I managed to build the stack back up again, however, mainly by way of sheer determination and a grind-it-out mentality. I stuck mostly to 2/4-cent games (playing 3 or 4 at a time) and just chipped away at the tables. I also ventured into the 5/10-cent arena, but aside from one $1-pot winning hand, I’ve not done too well at those stakes. Still need to figure the difference out between 2/4 and 5/10, which is real and substantial. Dunno what the secret is yet....
I’ve also been playing some $1+.2 SnGs with reasonable success. I feel that SnG’s are my strength, so I’m trying to play more of them, but…. damn, are they tough. Typically, 2-3 players will drop out early, but then the remaining 6 players will play solid, tricky poker and really make me work to get into the money. People are clearly reading poker books, watching instructional DVDs, or something. Dunno what they're doing, but somehow the opp is getting much, much better. A couple of the games I played recently went almost to the second break. As you can imagine, the blinds in both cases were enormous (the antes were pretty gigantic, too), but the opp just wouldn’t die. We were three-handed in one game at the 1-hour +40-minute mark. Wow.
That said, there still are some bad players at these low-dollar buy-in SnGs that you can take advantage of and build your stack for the tough end game. There are also a number of folks at these low dollar games that (despite what I just said about everyone getting much better) just don’t understand some fundamental concepts of the game. Two things stick out in my mind.
Firstly are the players at the $1-levels that just don’t get the concept of checking down the pot when a short stack is all-in in a multi-way pot. Invariably, some bozo will check the flop, but then bet the turn or river when some part of his hand hits, forcing the other non-all-ins to eiter match the bet or fold out, thereby giving the short-stack player better odds of winning. I’ve seen this idiocy in many of the SnGs on PS I’ve played so far. (The point, of course, of checking it down is to maximize the chances of knocking out the short stack; multiple opponents against one short stack is more likely to get him out of the game and move everyone closer to the money.)
The second thing that really rubbed me the wrong way happened in yesterday’s SnG. We were in the money with 3 players, and one guy had internet problems. He disconnected and then timed out every hand. I would raise this guy's blind, but then the third guy at the table would come over the top at me, forcing me out. I was short-medium stacked, so I couldn't fight back too hard. I figured I’d just wait for the internet guy to get blinded away (the blinds were getting big). I guessed that the third guy wanted internet guy’s chips all to himself, and I was willing to let him have them if it meant I'd make second place money. The problem was when the third guy LIMPED from his SB into internet guy’s BB repeatedly, and let the internet guy win the automatic showdown. He basically would reraise any aggression I showed, but limped whenever the internet guy had the BB. What should have been an easy second place guaranteed finish for me ended up with my departure in third place. Arhghg. This was either really stupid of the third guy…. or really brilliant, in that he basically knocked the one live opp (me) out of the game, leaving the disconnected internet guy all to himself to polish off at his leisure.
(Oh, and the time-out/disconnect thing on PS is awful. Unlike on FTP, where once you've used up your disconnect time bank, your hand folds automatically every time it gets to you, PS gives the problem child 15 seconds every single time it gets to them. They also cover up the stack size of the opp with the word "disconnect" so that you can't tell how big his/her stack size is any more. Talk about frustrating... arghgh.)
Oh well, enough bitching. YIPES continues and I’ve already met the $20 goal for the month of April. Just gotta maintain it and (hopefully) get a running head start on next month’s double-up target, which will be $40. Yipes!
All-in for now…
-Bug
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