Semi-Super Sit-n-Go

My wife positively hates football, so she went out with our son while I watched the Saints beat Indy in the Super Bowl. Fun game, with a couple of gutsy calls by New Orleans, including a totally unexpected on-side kick, plus a go-for-it fourth down attempt that failed. I didn't really have a dog in the overall fight, so it was good fun just to watch and enjoy the football. (Minor complaint: what is up with the organizers having The Who perform at halftime? Last year it was Bruce Springsteen. It feels like the Super Bowl is a generation or two behind the times with these geriatric bands....)

Anyway, after the game, I still had some free time to myself, so I used a token to impetuously sign into a $26 45-man SnG that was just filling up. Then I just settled back and focused on the tourney. The bad news was I was card dead for the first 30-40 hands. The good news was I was card dead for the first 30-40 hands. It was no where near as bad as the lower stakes early game die-off rate, but players still continuously dropped out of the tournament at a relatively fast pace. Per the ICM, my tournament equity went up every time I did nothing and someone else was eliminated, so being card dead, while not ideal, wasn't as bad as you might think it was. Anyway, when we hit the first break, my VPIP was a super tight 8%, and there were less than 18 players left. Oh, and in spite of my relative lack of playable cards, I still went into the break with an average chip stack size (thanks in large part to a pair of Kings that held up). In these games it pays to be patient.

Long story short, as we approached the bubble I began opening up my game. Bobbing and weaving and accumulating chips as other players buckled down. I made into the the money with a largish stack, and then opened my game even more, attacking the shorter stacks and adding chips at a steady rate. The bad news is I didn't win the tournament. The good news is I busted in third place. Wait, this is good news? Answer: yes and yes. On the final hand I got my money in with the best of it (AK vs. AQ) and just got unlucky. You can't really complain about that, right? (Well, you can, but all your poker friends will just tell you to quit whining and man-up to the fact of the whole "that's poker" part of poker.) The other half of the good news is I cashed for $175. The buy-in was a $26 token, which I won by playing an 1800-pt single table a few weeks ago. In other words, the $175 feels like pure profit from a freeroll. Can't beat that. A night of good football and winning poker. What more can a bug ask for?

All-in for now....
-Bug