Return of the Bloggerment Blahs? And a Near Miss?

So...when I sat down to play the Tuesday night two-fer bloggerment madness, the positive vibes were in the air. The Skillz was HORSEy, a rotation I like. Well, at least 3/5 of it, anyway. The Bodonkey tables looked reasonably well-suited, and were generally populated by some pretty decent folk, who I like to share table space with.

Unfortunately, after a nice chip up in the first couple levels of the Skillz game, I made a couple of poor plays in hour two, and went out short of the cash. There was the one Stud hand where my 5th street boat was destined to get paid by ScottMC (who's taken chips from me on more than one occasion):



Once he hit his K-hi flush, I was going to get paid, no doubt:



I just wish I'd had another 675 chips available, so that I could have collected a bounty, as none were to be had.

The Bodonkey was going much better, with me riding the Dank Position with three tables left, all the way to a 9th place final table finish, just squeezing into the points.

Going out of this tourney was no fun, however. Though I was the shorty when final table started, I felt confident that my 99 shove would survive. And when I was called by 99, things were looking up, at least for a few more hands of surviving, andy maybe getting up to 5th (where the juicy $T overlay kicked in). Unfortunately, eventual winner Blinders (Whatsthenuts) hit four hearts on the board to send me home in a most brutal fashion.

I must say, the irony is getting to me, in one respect. I've final tabled two of these things, and both times it has been on nights with exactly 44 players in the field. In other words, exactly one player short of having nine payout spots, instead of just five. Both times, I finished below 5th, which is getting a bit frustrating. Still, I'll take the points.

With a couple months left, I've managed to crawl up to 29th in the standings, but more importantly, only about a 5th place finish away from the current top 18. Only 25 players have pointed in as many as three Bodonkeys in the series, and I'm 24th of those (and 9th out of the 10 who have pointed in exactly three events). There's probably a few different ways to look at it, but I suspect part of it is just running bad once in the points.

That said, I recognize that one of the things that contributed to my final table stack being so short was that Sean managed to steal my BB or re-steal on me a good 5-6 times last night. None of these were really early, when the pots were meaningless. I must say, nice betting. I'll also say he was pretty active, generally, taking lots of stabs througout the night. I do wish I'd had at least one hand in those spots that held showdown value, because I'm pretty sure 2-3 of those steal attempts were fairly light. Still, the best hand I held in those spots was QJs out of position.

Anyway, I'm growing tired of playing the Skillz game, for the most part. I'm a non-factor in the BBT, because I'm completely unable to play the TOC, even if I earn a seat. And, while I am definitely not a NLHE specialist, and thorougly enjoy several of the variants, I just don't like the way I'm running (hot as hell the first couple levels, then nothing but bricks when limits go up). I'll probably sit out next week (Stud 8), which is one of my worst games, and then see how I feel.

Oh yeah...I also took cracks at the Daily Double. Normally, I'd shy away from these things, as entering both last night represented 5% of my FullTilt roll, and I like to practice reasonably good bankroll management. But something about last night told me it was a good night to play. Well, that "something" was half right. I got 3-outed on a river to cripple me in one Daily Double (going out soon after), but ran well enough in the other to finish 55th of about 1150 or so, and recovered my buyin to both.

Then, there was the $10+1 90 player turbo KO SNG, where I picked up AA in the big blind, but had to run a veritable gauntlet with it:



UTG called preflop, then hijack called, button called, and small blind shoved. The only play for me was to re-shove for a tiny bit more, but I suspected there would be at least two, if not three more callers, just because of pot odds. I was pleasantly surprised when only the UTG called, and I was really digging my chances. Why QJo shoved from the small blind there, I'll never understand, but always appreciate.

As you can see, the best hand preflop had to make a miraculous suckout to survive:



Anyway, I didn't final table this one, but got enough KOs to almost recover the buy-in. A bankroll negative night overall, but not terribly so. Also took a shot at the Stars $11R, and doubled up early, but my AK went down hard to AQ (at least it was on the turn instead of the river) five minutes before the rebuy period, and I chose not to chase a rebuy/addon which would still leave me with a relative microstack in hour two.