Chasing Chris Ferguson

I’ve been bashed a bit by the card fairy as of late but this isn’t a whining story - I consider it a winning story because of my attitude and game plan development.  The highest my BR has been is about $580.  It’s at $523 right now.  I won all of it by playing micro limit tournaments on PokerStars.  I graduated (in my thoughts anyway) to playing ‘low’ limit tournaments but still jump into micro limits.  I’ve won a few $$ and given back a few $$ playing micro limit ring.  I like tournaments over ring games  - another reason for me to play online over live.  There’s a new tournament starting every few minutes and if my brain can handle the intrusion of screens popping up everywhere, I can play more than one at a time by multi-tabling.

My cards seem to have done the death spiral and a few hands left me really muttering to myself, like A-A getting snapped by Q-10 off and the flop coming A-little-little, a K on the turn, and a J on the river, and this was not an ‘all-in’ pre-flop - I charged at the pot every step of the way - it was a $400 raise pre-flop (at 50-100 blinds) - a bet of 600 on the flop - a bet of 800 on the turn - with three way action and Q-10 was all-in after the Turn call.  I don’t understand this player’s chip death spiral but that’s what makes poker such a great game.  They really had no call coming and I might have been happier about all of it if they just pushed on the flop, then I could understand the “I’m gonna bluff you” theory.  Another one that really set me off was in a SnG MTT, when I had a good shot at the $$.  I had Q-Q and raised $600 - got raised a 1000 - and I went all-in for 6K more.  The board played out A-10-3-J-J.  He made quads.  Those two hands sent me out of two tournaments - although the set of Aces getting beat didn’t bust me, it started the downward spiral where I never put anything together after that.

Usually, the way a player plays a hand doesn’t bother me at all, it’s the Card Fairy that gets on my nerves.  A lot of hands that beat me, I would play also, of course a lot of them that beat me, I wouldn’t play with your money.

I like the guarantee tournaments, re-buy and regular.  The only investment is a few $$ and of course a lot of time if you make the money but the potential to earn really big money is there.  Yup, that’s what I’m looking for…small investment, big return.

I played four tourneys yesterday, one of them was not a guarantee tourney but the other three were.  In two of them, I managed to hang on by a thread and finished around 100 out of the money.  Oh well.  A $3 + 30 re-buy found me finishing in 78th place out of 3395 players, pocketing $60.73.  I had the opportunity to win $5,931 for 1st place - yes, that’s what I’m always shooting for is first place.  In these tourneys, I’ve resolved to one buy-in, that’s what makes it a great parlay for me.

I was never going to win the hand I win busted on because the player in the pot with me was convinced that A-Q off suit was going to win, and it did.  I had been card dead for the last few hours and managed to steal the blinds/antes now and then, and held on to a few chips.  We were at 4K/8K - ante 800 and I looked down to find J-J.  This is how it played out:
donztastic: raises 8000 to 16000

PokerWorks: raises 132887 to 148887 and is all-in

One other played took a sweet bit of time considering whether to call or not and they had over 700K in chips.  Glenda was sweating me.

donztastic: calls 132887

*** FLOP *** [4c 4s 4h]
*** TURN *** [4c 4s 4h] [As]
*** RIVER *** [4c 4s 4h As] [9d]

donztastic collected 316974 from pot

My raise was a serious amount of chips according to donztastic’s chip stack - 356354.  And the funny part of it was that about 4 orbits before, he had raised with A-K  and got called by 2 players, one of them went all-in with K-shit of hearts, K-shit won the main pot by making a flush and donztastic was giving K-shit a little crap in the chat box about what a lame call they had made (although they were already in the pot before donztastic came in).

Amazingly, I even considered pitching J-J.  Why?  Because it’s almost like a fluke.  You sit for three years and never pick up a playable hand, let alone a raising hand, and it seems to me that every time I’m in this same situation, it’s a trap hand…I never win the pot with it.  We were also at the serious money level where pay out was getting better and better.  But the other side of it is, my cards have been so dead that what am I waiting for comes to mind, and I’m in ‘the gap’ position - UTG +1, and I do have a hand, and I do have enough in my stack to make someone think about calling, and I do have enough in my stack to seriously injure someone if they don’t beat me.

No complaints as it goes.  I want that kind of action.  It may be a coin flip but keep on flipping, baby, I’m in the race for the winner’s seat.  I’ll get there.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.