Change100 at PokerWorks

While sweating the Ohio State-Georgetown and Florida-UCLA games Saturday night (Pauly had bets out and I’m miraculously in contention to win his NCAA pool), my inner junkie got the best of me so I played this:

Then I woke up Sunday morning at 7 AM after having awful dreams (in one of them, I beheaded the family cat, Willie with a carving knife and gave her headless body to a homeless man). Clearly I couldn’t go back to sleep after that, so I played this:

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..and I ended up with a nice $389 in Stars T$ after the T$41 I put into the $11R (where I played like an absolute lunatic BTW. That cat dream freaked me the fuck out.)

So, attached to my laptop for the afternoon for an assignment, I decided to jump into the Stars Sunday Million. I played well, but I think too tightly and in the end I busted in 1483rd place of 7034 entrants (money started at 1080). My bustout hand wasn’t the interesting one. This one was.

Blinds are 750-1500. I have 45,000 to start the hand. Average is about 40K. The cutoff (106,071) makes a min-raise to 3000. The button folds, the SB folds, and I call with the Jd-Td in the BB. The flop is the 2d-4d-Qd. I check. He’s very aggressive and I’m very sure he’s taking a shot at this flop. He bets 9000. I call.

The turn is the 2s, pairing the board. I made a HUGE mistake and checked (there are monsters under the bed). I regretted it the second I did it and he checked behind. The river was the 3d. Very bad card for me. I fired 10K anyway and he called. He had the As-Kd for the king-high flush.

It’s true. One mistake and your whole tournament is fooked.

So, people smarter than me at poker. I played that hand like crap. What’s the better move there?

(A) popping his 9K raise on the flop to something like 25K (would leave me 17K behind)?

(B) moving all-in over the top of the 9K flop bet?

(C) calling his 9K bet on the flop but leading the turn if any non-diamond falls?

I have an idea which one I’d choose. What would you do?

I only had 22K after that hand while average was about 40K. I picked up J-J a few hands later on the button, raised, and was called by the BB. Flop was the Ad-2c-7d. I fired out 6500 to see where I was at and the BB immediately put me all-in. I folded and he claimed a set of deuces.

That left me with 14K. I shoved it in from the cutoff with A-7 and was called by the button and BB with A-T and A-J respectively. Promising flop of Q-9-7, but the J on the turn sent me packing. Booooooooooooooooo.

So clearly, I’m still insane, still a good satellite player but still have a long way to go at tournaments if I’m continuing to mess up easy hands like that one. And (of course) still the most god-awful bankroll manager you’ll ever meet.

Today I’ll be following PokerNews’ coverage of the final table of the EPT Monte Carlo, where Pauly is working so hard to bring y’all the news as it happens, as well as quality photos of the hot European “tail on the rail.” Play starts at 7 AM PDT/10 AM EDT, so leave your boring Monday morning behind, destroy workplace productivity, and come watch the action with us degenerates.

Pauly also just discovered that some of his recent articles have been translated into a number of foreign tongues including French, German, Polish, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Chinese (Mandarin AND Cantonese) and Japanese!

Me? Just Hungarian. Oh, wait, and Finnish too!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.