Chasing Chris Ferguson

I’m almost in love with A-K Clubs. I won two hands with it in the span of five minutes. I got 9’s beat - 10’s beat and this hand is one that strikes me as being typical of NLH play tournaments:

PokerStars - of course - a $4.00 +40 NLH 180 max sit n go. The first blind level…actually I think it was the 2nd or 3rd hand. I was one off the Button and raised it going in with Ah-10s off, to $80 and got the small blind - zwolle hit: calls 70; baddbiggboss: calls 60; migimo: calls 60.

*** FLOP *** [Jh Qc Kd]

zwolle hit: checks
baddbiggboss: bets 80
migimo: raises 480 to 560
PokerWorks: calls 560
zwolle hit: raises 290 to 850 and is all-in
baddbiggboss: folds
migimo: calls 290
PokerWorks: calls 290

At this moment, I believe the Card Fairy has truly decided to give me a winning hand - with great action - and stop being a little BE-YATCH! Yum - YUM!

*** TURN *** [Jh Qc Kd] [5h]
migimo: bets 800
PokerWorks: calls 575 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (225) returned to migimo

*** RIVER *** [Jh Qc Kd 5h] [Kh]

*** SHOW DOWN ***
migimo: shows [Ks Js] (a full house, Kings full of Jacks)
PokerWorks: shows [Ah Ts] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
migimo collected 1150 from side pot
zwolle hit: shows [Kc 4c] (three of a kind, Kings)
migimo collected 2970 from main pot

Obviously I was out of the tournament. How do they know that K-J is such a big hand? I can’t quite get the feel of it. I went from first to worst without even leaving my chair. And I wasn’t happy, but instead of going into the swearing mode, I started belly laughing, forcing myself self to laugh - out loud - obnoxiously (who cares - there’s no one here to hear me) for about four minutes. All that anxiety and irritation of getting the shit beat continuously out of me was gone after I stopped laughing.

I play approximately 6 tournaments a day. My card run is horrible. To ever say I’m running good would mean that

A) I’m lying;

B) I’m saying it to hypnotize/visualize it into reality;

C) I’m on serious drugs and getting ready to download another batch of them;

D) My body is inhabited and I’m speaking in tongues.

I DO NOT run good, ever, not since it happened once in MT over 25 years ago. None of it’s ever easy. I can play through complete tournaments without ever picking up a playable hand - I simply try to steal when I can - and then when the deck makes a mistake and gives me a hand, I’m beat, if not on the flop or the turn, the river will get me. Just like the hand above, it happens over and over and over. The good news is that I know that it happens to everyone else too. I just hope to play through my dead zones a little better than they do and that’s how I will beat the game in the long run.

In the meantime, my BR if at $480. It jumped to $580ish last week because I won a 180 player $4.40 sit n go that paid $216. I’ve played quite a few of those in the last five or six days, coming in the money in 3 others. I still play the $3.30 and $11 and $5.50 re-buys each day only going in for one buy-in. They are tough but if I can ever get close to first, the payout is wunnerful! That’s what I’m shooting for, 1st place.

And an inside tip - the Card Fairy works overtime at being a BIG BE-YATCH!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.