Thoughts on My Play

I have not been very motivated to play lately. It probably has something to do with not having a monetary goal to shoot for. My big profit in October went to help pay the bills instead of something fun. November will probably be a small loss.

I am also suffering from a case of fancy play syndrome. I played in the 3-250 spread limit game at Casino Arizona a couple weeks ago and ran a ridiculously stupid bluff. I had been up around $50 for most of the session and had about 15 minutes left before I had to leave. A younger fellow raised in early position and I called pocket 5's on the button. We were the only two in the pot and the flop was Q-9-3. He made the continuation bet and I decided that I was going to float him and try to take it away when he checked on the turn. The turn was a King. He made another bet. Instead of being smart and giving up, I decided to raise. I put in about 1/2 of my remaining stack. My opponent kind of jumped back in his chair a little bit, so I thought he might actually fold. Then he asked me how much I had left. After I told him, he pushed the rest of his stack into the middle. I folded quickly.

I have noticed that I tend to force the action sometimes at the end of a session. Especially if I had been up early but am down late. I start thinking that I can get back to even with just one good hand. It doesn't hurt me much in limit poker but in these spread limit or No Limit games, it can really kill me. I need to remember that it's just one long session over my lifetime.

Today I decided to play the 11:15 AM tournament at Casino Arizona. There was a pretty big turnout as the board said there was 208 players. I started out pretty well and had doubled my stack by the first break. Inevitably, the blinds were going up faster than my stack and buy the time of the second break I was down to 11 big blinds.

My demise came when I was in the Small Blind. There was one limper and the button raised to 4x the blind. I looked down to find Ad-Kd. I had about 14 BB by this time because earlier I had pushed all in with pocket 6's over the top of a raise by the player on my right. So I knew if I pushed in again, he was likely to call. Plus he started the hand with about 9 BB so he was pretty much priced in with any two.

He did make the call with pocket 10's and I lost the race. I was left with 5 BB and the blinds were going up in 5 minutes.

This is where I am constantly amazed at how tight everyone playes with a short stack live compared to online. My favorite was when I pushed all in for the second time in the round with 10-4 of spades. I was UTG+1 and had 5 BB. It was folded to the BB who was an older gentleman. I did not think much of his game as he tended to overbet when he had a good hand, "to prevent people from sucking out on him". He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds and folded Ace-Ten face up. Looking back on it now, I should have flipped up my cards just for the tilt factor.

A couple of hands later, it folded to me in the small blind and I found QJ. I pushed again but got called by K-9 of clubs. My opponent turned a King and I was drawing dead. I finished in 70th place.

One of my original goals for the year was to qualify for the Pokerstars Carribean Adventure. I would still love to give it a shot, but so far their qualifiers have sucked. I like satellites that have multiple seats to give a way and a cheap way to qualify. It seems like most of the satellites I see only have one or two seats available. I hate to play for a few hours and end up with $100. Maybe the frequency will pick up here in the last month.