Success, sushi, sediment, and SoJo
Mar. 15th, 2005 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flatvurmWelcome to the new not-in-New-York Robland. I haven't developed a good online habit yet here in South Jersey, so I haven't been keeping up as much as I would have hoped. As such, I've got about a week to catch up on.
The short version: After doing pretty well at another freeroll tournament, I got the rest of my belongings together without much incident, headed back to South Jersey, and have been here ever since. I've played poker, lost some money, won some money, and generally tried to start the laborious process of establishing myself.
The long version...
Tuesday: When last we left our hero, I had been trying my hand at those freeroll no-limit hold 'em tournaments offered at PartyPoker. I had a pretty exciting time giving it another try last Tuesday. After a very rocky start (by which I basically mean an early goof), I caught a miracle card or two that kept me in the game. I also noticed that I folded a lot of hands that were either the winner or would have been the winner. This is not an uncommon thing, but it means more in a tournament than in a live game, and I was put a little out of sorts by it. In any case, though, those two factors (catching miracles and my inability to stay in with winners) really drove home for me two important facets of no-limit tournament play, neither of which are really my strong point: guts and luck. That is, you need both of those to win no-limit tourneys. This realization cast even further doubt on my thinking that I was ever going to make it as a big time player.
That aside, though, I lasted quite long in that particular tournament, and it was lots of fun. I took more notes for myself during that tournament than I have during any other game. In reviewing them, I see that I survived with a lot of miracles. What this says to me is that I was often making moves when I had the worst of it, which is not a winning strategy in any analysis. On the upside, I think I played my stack well (aggressively as short stack and cautiously as big stack), and I feel I was able to make use of whatever feels I got for various people's playing styles. I don't mean anything subtle about that...just basic stuff. There was one guy in particular that played pretty loosely and aggressively, and I was able to adapt to his betting patterns and play against him differently than against other people, for example. All-in-all, I was pretty pleased with my performance in that tournament, even if I did make a few mistakes here and there. (Remember that this is my fourth one of these ever.)
In any case, as the tournament wore on and I climbed higher and higher on the ladder, I was getting more and more excited. When I crossed into the money, I felt like I'd exceeded my expectations when I started. I fought my way through the excruciating final tables, and amazingly, I actually placed fairly well. The final tally: I came in #11 out of 1,474 entrants. I'm very proud of that, even if I did miss the final table by one position. All told, I spent about five hours on that bad boy, and out of a free entry I got myself a nice $18.75. Leaving aide that I could easily make more money slinging burgers, the elation I felt at doing well was priceless. I considered trying to find something I could buy for exactly $18.75 to keep as commemoration, but that hasn't really gone anywhere. In any case, though, eleventh place! Not too shabby.
I was thinking of relating a few highlights that I noted down, but they're not that exciting in the re-telling. :) I would like to recount the hand that knocked me out, though, just to show how important luck is from time to time. I'm also going to interrupt the story from time to time with some analysis.
This is going to be shop-talk heavy. If you're not into poker, you can safely skip this part. :)
It's very late in the tournament (down to the top 11, apparently), and I have a medium-short stack at about 56,000. I forget the average stack size, but I think it was something like 125,000 or so. The blinds are 5,000 and 10,000, which means I've got a couple rounds in me before I get blinded out, but I know I need to make a move soon. (Except I don't, because at this point, even sitting there and limping to the final table wouldn't have been so bad.) I'm in late position (maybe one or two off the button), and I look down at a KQ offsuit. Everyone folded to me, and I call the big blind to limp in.
Right away, I can hear the pros among you groaning. That move right there was the big mistake in the hand, in my mind. With my stack and those blinds, I should know I'm going to take this one all the way if I meet any playing-back, and I should have moved all-in right there. Pretty basic error. I'm unable to explain my behavior, except that at the time I didn't accurately analyze my stack against the blinds, and that I still had dreams of limping into the final table, not realizing that by playing this hand, I was basically abandoning that plan. Limping instead of moving in was a goof for sure, but...live and learn.
So I limp in. It's folded to the small blind, who calls. The big blind, who has a stack slightly larger than mine (maybe he's around 60,000?) raises the amount of the big blind, which was basically the standard raise at the time. I re-raise the same amount, small blind folds, big blind calls.
There it is again, basically the same mistake. Even if I didn't realize it before, I should have now realized that I needed to go all-in. What's interesting to me, though, is that the big blind should also have done it, since he was basically in the same situation as I was. The way things went, we were two basically short stacks going head-to-head and fighting for a seat at the final table...this is destined to be a crap shoot, and I've got a pretty good hand.
So the situation currently is a goodly-sized pot and two really short stacks looking at it as the flop comes out. The flop is a Q-rag-rag rainbow. That is to say, it is just about the best flop I could have hoped for. There's 70,000 in the pot, and I have 26,000 and change in my stack. I immediately move all-in.
My opponent sat and thought for a very long time. In retrospect, I should have talked my hand up, because even though I kind of want him to call me (since I believe myself to be quite a favorite at this point), it would have been perfectly fine to me if he folded, because that leaves me pretty healthy (at just under 100,000 chips in the top 11) and him crippled. Anyway, I didn't, and there was silence as he sat and thought. And thought. And thought.
He eventually calls. I flip my KQ, showing my top pair and second-best kicker. He flips A3 offsuit, showing ace-high. I am, at this point, ecstatic. He has two shots at only three outs to oudraw me.
Or does he? Once again, the pros among you are probably thinking, "Uhh...what were the rags on that flop again?" Truthfully, I don't remember. But, yes, they were quite low. Say...six or lower. You probably know where this is going.
The turn and the river come rag-rag, and I'm sure I've won the hand and secured myself a seat at the final table. But, no...the two rags that completed the board also completed a runner-runner straight for my opponent, and I was knocked out. The injustice! What a favorite I was! I was flabbergasted, both at his call and at the result. His call may not have been so bad, since in his position I might have made the same move. What I found most interesting about the hand, I guess, is that neither of us moved all-in when we should have, which was before the flop. Other than that, though, it was just basically a nightmare suck-out, and it just happened to come at a crucial time. Overall, though, I couldn't feel super-bad about it, since I'd pulled off enough miracles in my time in the tournament, and I had felt so good to make it in the money at all.
So there ya go.
As an interesting postscript, I had signed up for two tournaments that day, but had to abandon the second one since I hadn't expected to spend so much time in the first one. Since I didn't realize what was going on until the second tournament had started, I couldn't unregister, so I just marked myself as absent and concentrated on the tournament I was already playing. So in the second tournament, all I did was fold every hand and pay whenever the blinds came around. I never did get back to the second tournament, though I peeked in once in a while to see what was going on. What ended up happening by not playing at all and just folding every hand was that I came in #423 out of something like 1,400 entrants. So there's a little lesson in the value of patience. :)
Wednesday: I tried to get moving on the packing and organizing I needed to do before shipping off to Jersey, and I did fairly well. I left it behind, though, to head out for dinner with the El Barrio crowd (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
panyang, kawaiiryuko, aplacental, and kthrin). We had quite a nice sushi dinner out at our favorite place. It was mostly in celebration of James's bonus, but it also made a nice hangout time and last hurrah before shipping out of New York. Lots of good times (and monkfish liver) were had.
Thursday: Since I'd left a bit of packing undone, I spent much of the morning putting the finishing touches on getting my belongings together. I found themes emerging whenever I'm packing up to leave a place I've stayed for a period of time. Aside from the emotional weight I carry around for such activities, there also seem to be three things I'm always dealing with when I'm packing a place up: (1) a box filled with all the random slips of paper I seem to accumulate and leave for myself to go through "some other time"; (2) an extensive collection of take-out and delivery menus, condiments, plastic utensils, and napkins, all of which generally end up in the trash; and (3) an incredible amount of dust.
In any case, once everything was packed up, the remainder of my material posessions were thrown in the back of mom's minivan, I vacated Casa del Barrio, and sought out my fortune in South Jersey.
And the rest: At first, I was thinking that when I first hit South Jersey to settle in, I'd spend some time at least trying to unpack some crucial things and get myself together a little bit. As it turned out, though, I spent much of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday hanging out in the casino and plying my haphazard trade. I did all right on Friday...nothing spectacular. I took a right shellacking over the weekend, though, including some pretty horrendous bad beats. My most memorable bad beat was when I flopped a straight and not only lost to a runner-runner flush, but one held by a guy who cold called two bets behind my check-raise on the flop. I know that kind of behavior is my long-term bread and butter, but it doesn't much lessen the sting from losing that one hand. My most disappointing beat, I think, was when I came in with suited connectors and flopped a gutshot straight flush draw. The turn completed my straight, putting me way in the lead, and then the river completed my flush, improving my hand, but making me lose to a higher flush. C'est la vie.
I mostly stayed out of the cards on Monday, save for some brief online playing (at which I did quite well, strangely). Monday was more devoted to figuring out what I need to do to establish myself in South Jersey. Thus far, I have changed my address with credit cards and such and secured myself a library card. Funfun. :)
So that's about it since I was around last. Sadly, I haven't yet done a lot of catching up on LJ, so I'm pretty behind on everything, though I hope to do some catching up fairly soon. As always, my phone and e-mail remain the same, but if anyone wants to do some address-trading, e-mail me for my new info.
In general, I'm just in that weird space where a new phase of life is beginning and I'm trying to settle in and find my stride. Hopefully my stride will include less spotty Internet usage, so I hope to not have to do this blitz recapping very often. Also I hope to keep up with other people more regularly. :) I'll let you know how it's going next time around. Peace!
The short version: After doing pretty well at another freeroll tournament, I got the rest of my belongings together without much incident, headed back to South Jersey, and have been here ever since. I've played poker, lost some money, won some money, and generally tried to start the laborious process of establishing myself.
The long version...
Tuesday: When last we left our hero, I had been trying my hand at those freeroll no-limit hold 'em tournaments offered at PartyPoker. I had a pretty exciting time giving it another try last Tuesday. After a very rocky start (by which I basically mean an early goof), I caught a miracle card or two that kept me in the game. I also noticed that I folded a lot of hands that were either the winner or would have been the winner. This is not an uncommon thing, but it means more in a tournament than in a live game, and I was put a little out of sorts by it. In any case, though, those two factors (catching miracles and my inability to stay in with winners) really drove home for me two important facets of no-limit tournament play, neither of which are really my strong point: guts and luck. That is, you need both of those to win no-limit tourneys. This realization cast even further doubt on my thinking that I was ever going to make it as a big time player.
That aside, though, I lasted quite long in that particular tournament, and it was lots of fun. I took more notes for myself during that tournament than I have during any other game. In reviewing them, I see that I survived with a lot of miracles. What this says to me is that I was often making moves when I had the worst of it, which is not a winning strategy in any analysis. On the upside, I think I played my stack well (aggressively as short stack and cautiously as big stack), and I feel I was able to make use of whatever feels I got for various people's playing styles. I don't mean anything subtle about that...just basic stuff. There was one guy in particular that played pretty loosely and aggressively, and I was able to adapt to his betting patterns and play against him differently than against other people, for example. All-in-all, I was pretty pleased with my performance in that tournament, even if I did make a few mistakes here and there. (Remember that this is my fourth one of these ever.)
In any case, as the tournament wore on and I climbed higher and higher on the ladder, I was getting more and more excited. When I crossed into the money, I felt like I'd exceeded my expectations when I started. I fought my way through the excruciating final tables, and amazingly, I actually placed fairly well. The final tally: I came in #11 out of 1,474 entrants. I'm very proud of that, even if I did miss the final table by one position. All told, I spent about five hours on that bad boy, and out of a free entry I got myself a nice $18.75. Leaving aide that I could easily make more money slinging burgers, the elation I felt at doing well was priceless. I considered trying to find something I could buy for exactly $18.75 to keep as commemoration, but that hasn't really gone anywhere. In any case, though, eleventh place! Not too shabby.
I was thinking of relating a few highlights that I noted down, but they're not that exciting in the re-telling. :) I would like to recount the hand that knocked me out, though, just to show how important luck is from time to time. I'm also going to interrupt the story from time to time with some analysis.
This is going to be shop-talk heavy. If you're not into poker, you can safely skip this part. :)
It's very late in the tournament (down to the top 11, apparently), and I have a medium-short stack at about 56,000. I forget the average stack size, but I think it was something like 125,000 or so. The blinds are 5,000 and 10,000, which means I've got a couple rounds in me before I get blinded out, but I know I need to make a move soon. (Except I don't, because at this point, even sitting there and limping to the final table wouldn't have been so bad.) I'm in late position (maybe one or two off the button), and I look down at a KQ offsuit. Everyone folded to me, and I call the big blind to limp in.
Right away, I can hear the pros among you groaning. That move right there was the big mistake in the hand, in my mind. With my stack and those blinds, I should know I'm going to take this one all the way if I meet any playing-back, and I should have moved all-in right there. Pretty basic error. I'm unable to explain my behavior, except that at the time I didn't accurately analyze my stack against the blinds, and that I still had dreams of limping into the final table, not realizing that by playing this hand, I was basically abandoning that plan. Limping instead of moving in was a goof for sure, but...live and learn.
So I limp in. It's folded to the small blind, who calls. The big blind, who has a stack slightly larger than mine (maybe he's around 60,000?) raises the amount of the big blind, which was basically the standard raise at the time. I re-raise the same amount, small blind folds, big blind calls.
There it is again, basically the same mistake. Even if I didn't realize it before, I should have now realized that I needed to go all-in. What's interesting to me, though, is that the big blind should also have done it, since he was basically in the same situation as I was. The way things went, we were two basically short stacks going head-to-head and fighting for a seat at the final table...this is destined to be a crap shoot, and I've got a pretty good hand.
So the situation currently is a goodly-sized pot and two really short stacks looking at it as the flop comes out. The flop is a Q-rag-rag rainbow. That is to say, it is just about the best flop I could have hoped for. There's 70,000 in the pot, and I have 26,000 and change in my stack. I immediately move all-in.
My opponent sat and thought for a very long time. In retrospect, I should have talked my hand up, because even though I kind of want him to call me (since I believe myself to be quite a favorite at this point), it would have been perfectly fine to me if he folded, because that leaves me pretty healthy (at just under 100,000 chips in the top 11) and him crippled. Anyway, I didn't, and there was silence as he sat and thought. And thought. And thought.
He eventually calls. I flip my KQ, showing my top pair and second-best kicker. He flips A3 offsuit, showing ace-high. I am, at this point, ecstatic. He has two shots at only three outs to oudraw me.
Or does he? Once again, the pros among you are probably thinking, "Uhh...what were the rags on that flop again?" Truthfully, I don't remember. But, yes, they were quite low. Say...six or lower. You probably know where this is going.
The turn and the river come rag-rag, and I'm sure I've won the hand and secured myself a seat at the final table. But, no...the two rags that completed the board also completed a runner-runner straight for my opponent, and I was knocked out. The injustice! What a favorite I was! I was flabbergasted, both at his call and at the result. His call may not have been so bad, since in his position I might have made the same move. What I found most interesting about the hand, I guess, is that neither of us moved all-in when we should have, which was before the flop. Other than that, though, it was just basically a nightmare suck-out, and it just happened to come at a crucial time. Overall, though, I couldn't feel super-bad about it, since I'd pulled off enough miracles in my time in the tournament, and I had felt so good to make it in the money at all.
So there ya go.
As an interesting postscript, I had signed up for two tournaments that day, but had to abandon the second one since I hadn't expected to spend so much time in the first one. Since I didn't realize what was going on until the second tournament had started, I couldn't unregister, so I just marked myself as absent and concentrated on the tournament I was already playing. So in the second tournament, all I did was fold every hand and pay whenever the blinds came around. I never did get back to the second tournament, though I peeked in once in a while to see what was going on. What ended up happening by not playing at all and just folding every hand was that I came in #423 out of something like 1,400 entrants. So there's a little lesson in the value of patience. :)
Wednesday: I tried to get moving on the packing and organizing I needed to do before shipping off to Jersey, and I did fairly well. I left it behind, though, to head out for dinner with the El Barrio crowd (
panyang, kawaiiryuko, aplacental, and kthrin). We had quite a nice sushi dinner out at our favorite place. It was mostly in celebration of James's bonus, but it also made a nice hangout time and last hurrah before shipping out of New York. Lots of good times (and monkfish liver) were had.Thursday: Since I'd left a bit of packing undone, I spent much of the morning putting the finishing touches on getting my belongings together. I found themes emerging whenever I'm packing up to leave a place I've stayed for a period of time. Aside from the emotional weight I carry around for such activities, there also seem to be three things I'm always dealing with when I'm packing a place up: (1) a box filled with all the random slips of paper I seem to accumulate and leave for myself to go through "some other time"; (2) an extensive collection of take-out and delivery menus, condiments, plastic utensils, and napkins, all of which generally end up in the trash; and (3) an incredible amount of dust.
In any case, once everything was packed up, the remainder of my material posessions were thrown in the back of mom's minivan, I vacated Casa del Barrio, and sought out my fortune in South Jersey.
And the rest: At first, I was thinking that when I first hit South Jersey to settle in, I'd spend some time at least trying to unpack some crucial things and get myself together a little bit. As it turned out, though, I spent much of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday hanging out in the casino and plying my haphazard trade. I did all right on Friday...nothing spectacular. I took a right shellacking over the weekend, though, including some pretty horrendous bad beats. My most memorable bad beat was when I flopped a straight and not only lost to a runner-runner flush, but one held by a guy who cold called two bets behind my check-raise on the flop. I know that kind of behavior is my long-term bread and butter, but it doesn't much lessen the sting from losing that one hand. My most disappointing beat, I think, was when I came in with suited connectors and flopped a gutshot straight flush draw. The turn completed my straight, putting me way in the lead, and then the river completed my flush, improving my hand, but making me lose to a higher flush. C'est la vie.
I mostly stayed out of the cards on Monday, save for some brief online playing (at which I did quite well, strangely). Monday was more devoted to figuring out what I need to do to establish myself in South Jersey. Thus far, I have changed my address with credit cards and such and secured myself a library card. Funfun. :)
So that's about it since I was around last. Sadly, I haven't yet done a lot of catching up on LJ, so I'm pretty behind on everything, though I hope to do some catching up fairly soon. As always, my phone and e-mail remain the same, but if anyone wants to do some address-trading, e-mail me for my new info.
In general, I'm just in that weird space where a new phase of life is beginning and I'm trying to settle in and find my stride. Hopefully my stride will include less spotty Internet usage, so I hope to not have to do this blitz recapping very often. Also I hope to keep up with other people more regularly. :) I'll let you know how it's going next time around. Peace!
