Itch meets Scratch...aka Evolutions you don't need to wait millenia for...aka FTOPS ME here I come!
May I humbly [not my strong suit I agree, but nonetheless...] recommend pokah blogging.
I truly don't know how I forgot this key to improvement, but playing without reflecting on what you've seen and done is just plain stupid. Not all of us are going to invest the time and energy in using the online tools the upper tier players we know use and recommend. But if you don't at least use your blog or your notebook to review your questionable plays, you are condemned to repeat the same mistakes endlessly, burying them in excuses instead of forcing the orbits to the mirror in an effort to pull off that sleightest of sleights-of-hand; to see oneself clearly.
Now that I've recommitted to writing about my shortcomings and gaps in the line [obscure electrophysiology reference], I've noticed myself returning to better MTT form, while continuing down this road in developing a bad LAGitude. Nowhere close yet, but I do find myself playing in new ways, sometimes making moves that I intuit without complete understanding. For the first time ever someone referred to me at WWdN as LAGgy in the chatbox, so progress in perception is being made. Of course someone else also called me a donkey, so I take it all with a grain of non-iodinated salt.
This is fun. And since I'm mostly a results-oriented JimFinch, I'm happy to post my the results of my first attempt to win a FTOPS ME seat:
Waffles may be right, I am no lucko, but fortunately there is more than one way to be successful - just ask wunderkind Bill Fillmaff (yes, he is just as fucking hilarious as ever, thank you for asking. I had forgotten a male voice could come in supersoprano...a tone of fierce beauty indeed). So I am making changes and still finding some small successes in the limited time I play NLHE MTTs these days. Who knows, another FTOPS run like last time and I may take the year off...
Which of course leads me to congratulate our brotha Jeciimd, who like yours truly is part of the third oldest profession (after the prostitutes and pimps, society created a position to treat the inevitable venereal diseases - hence the birth of medicine. strange origin I know, but it's a medical fact.) Bloggahs reprahsentin' in the FTOPS baaaay-beeeee...
One hand from my magnificient run, you ask? Please share with us your usual penetrating insights into the nature of success as seen from the top of the mountain you plead while grovelling before me?
Well certainly, I am always happy to oblige my legions of fans...
90 runners. 16 ME seats. 109 buy-in. 17 - 19 get some cash [who gives a fuck?].
Down to 17. Yep...the bubble. Two tables. Shorty on my table down to 3kish with 400/800 blinds +antes. Shorty on other table down to 2kish...ie. on the way out. I am at 6500 and above the fray but by no means safe.
Dealt AKh on the button. MP shorty (4k) pushes.
Q1. Call or fold?
Q2. What do you think I do and why?
____________________________________________
Gave you a little space to mull that one ovah.
I called because in addition to any pair, I included all Aces down to A9, suited connectors from 8/9 up. Plus the chance to end the tournament, with a short stack still left to battle with if I lost. Only 2 hands hurt, I race against 11 pairs, I dominate 4, and am the favourite against 5 SCs tie with AK. Not much of an edge is the only problem, but I felt I might not get even this edge again.
Yet this is a call in context...should I have folded here betting that one of the shorties would bust this orbit and I would get my seat without a fight? What if they doubled up (exactly what happened for the lowest two). I would have folded the best hand I am likely to see in the end game and on the button. Position only gets worse from here.
He turns over QQ and takes it down when the board gives me the bird. I am dead to rights. I feel myself getting tight in my head...telling myself to hang on, let the blinds go through if I have to and wait...a monster will come for me.
Then the other, newer, voice in my head says fuck that. Three hands later, now in MP I am dealt A3o. The table is still running tight since the shorty doubled on both tables. Realizing this hand is dreck but that it has been folded to me, I push. The big stack 9k to my left doesn't call and I immediately know I am going to take it down...every one of the remaining shorties between me and daylight folds and I take down lifesaving blinds to crawl up over 4k. From there, I start firing almost every time it's folded to me in MP to LP. I take down two blinds an orbit for three orbits before I lose my first pot. By the time I lose my internet connection temporarily (FAWK!) I am up to 9100.
That I coast to the seat from there is hardly my point. That I almost imploded and even in retrospect I am ambivalent [EDIT: by ambivalent I mean revolted] about my play is more where I am coming from.
Your thoughts as always appreciated...I've noticed my readership dropped off in my self-imposed exile, and while that's understandable, I will not tolerate it. Anyone who fails to read and comment here on a bi-weekly (or bi-sexual) basis will have their testicles electrocuted the next time we meet. Assuming they have testicles. I'll have to work some contingency plans I admit, but the concept is sound at least...
One last thing. Still like the fact that almost everytime I win my way into something cool, our boy Hoy is waitin' on the signup sheet in view. Encouraging, and with lucko and jeci leading by example, hopefully a lot of us can do some damage this Sunday. I'm definitely thinking good thoughts for you all, so think some for me too.
Papa needs the Paypah, aftah awl...
Bastante!
posted by Iakaris aka I.A.K. at 1:11 AM
9 Comments:
satellite poker......dump it.
I'm a wuss.
Congrats on the entry!
Consider this some constructive criticism: That is a catastrophically bad call with AKs. You can make a case for calling with it in the big blind when you're closing the action and there's nobody else in who can bust you, but it's probably a bad idea - as it stands you can go three whole orbits without playing a hand and probably four or five other stacks can not. On the bubble of a satellite, unless the pace is absolutely glacial and nobody else is calling shorty all-ins, you'd be well within reason to fold AA there, much less AK (and with players waiting to act you should probably fold AA on the button as well).
Still. Congrats.
dude im surpised you called that with AK....personally you should have definitely folded that hand especially in a sat tourney....hey were both going deep on sunday mark my words
No no...you're all absolutely right, and Ryan as usual puts it most pithily: catastrophically bad call - no two ways about it.
In the chat box before the board hit I had already typed "Not Smart" but more accurate would have been - "I am a Moron."
Yes, I think you have to fold here. It would be understandable if you called with Aces or Kings (even if mathematically you should fold), but putting in the majority of your chips in the pot with AK when you are not in immediate danger of being bubbled is probably not a good play in the long run (Even if they are soooooooted). At this point you shouldn't be playing any hands that already have action in the pot.
Leave my testicles alone.
Way to stick it out IAK.
Sometimes a little implosion works for you....clears the CHI.
Good luck in the ME.
I think the ghost of Anna Nicole Smith helped carry you through.
Nice work.
Um...good luck in the ME?
Now my balls are safe. Although lord knows at this point, with two more on the way, that shocking them might not be such a bad thing.
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