Sunday

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was incredibly frustrated by poker. Today, I'm relatively satisfied. I say relatively because though I am up ~$150 on the day, second place is never fun. I played two tournaments, a $4/180 and a $2 6-max. In the 6-max, I busted 35th after playing a fairly tag game throughout and profited just over $11. There were no significant interesting hands that I remember, everything seemed pretty standard.

In my opinion, I ran pretty good, but I was also playing pretty damn well in both tournaments. Anyway, skipping to 3 handed in the $4/180, I was the mid-stack with ~80k after getting solid value from my mid-strength hands. CL had ~140k, and the shorty had ~50k. The CL raised or called raises on ~70% of hands played aggressively enough post flop to take a lot of them down. Anyway, cut to me calling the short stacks 10 BB shove at 1k/2k/200 with JJ and holding over his ATo to put the final two stacks at 120k and 150k, respectively. I fold the first hand in the heads up dual from the SB, and then the following hand comes up.

Poker Stars, $4 + $0.40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 1,000/2,000 Blinds, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: 148,854
Hero (BB): 121,146
Pre-Flop: (3,400) T T dealt to Hero (BB)
SB raises to 6,000, Hero raises to 19,000, SB calls 13,000

Flop: (38,400) K 4 3 (2 Players)
Hero bets 27,000, SB raises to 129,654 and is All-In, Hero calls 74,946 and is All-In

Turn: (242,292) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (242,292) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 242,292 Pot
SB showed Q 5 (a flush, King high) and WON 242,292 (+121,146 NET)
Hero showed T T (two pair, Tens and Nines) and LOST (-121,146 NET)


And just like that, second place it is. IMO, his pf call is pretty bad unless I always pay off when he hits the queen or a flush. When he has a draw it's still a coinflip, so the pf call doesn't work in his favor in that case. However, I think calling the 3-bet with Q5s gets him in too much trouble post flop to be worth playing. This time though, it worked out in his favor. Meh, that's how it works sometimes.

A side note that is somewhat frustrating, I've now played 125 career $4/180s. I've only won one, and finished 2nd three times and 3rd 4 times. Pretty frustrating, but considering I'm still way up thanks to this tourney, I don't think I can complain too much. I just need to work on being more aggressive when short-handed in tournaments, even more so than in cash games, because the stacks are so much shorter with respect to the blinds. I used to play way too tight late, and would enter 5 handed play with 10-15 BBs way too frequently. I think I played pretty well short-handed today, but maybe a little too much on the tight side. Hopefully I can continue to improve on my mid and late-game play by going deep more often. If that happens, August may turn out to be an OK month.