Skippin' the Heartland, and Pulsating MTT Action

Well, good luck to everyone going up to Blackhawk for the Heartland Poker Tour. I decided tonight not to go, as my temperment is currently unable or unwilling to deal with the most atrocious donkey beats imaginable.

The online poker world has been, with one notable exception, kicking me in the junk beyond belief this week.

I swear, if someone calls my reshove (holding AK sooooted) with J8 off and hits, two from the money in a $5k...or calls my 4 bet shove (with QQ on button) with A9 and hits A on the river, for a stack big enough to take me to $$$ in a $40k guarantee...or runner runner flushes me three spots from the money in a 500 player tournament....

Anyway, I'm embarrassed at how loudly I was swearing in my living room last night...loud enough for the Good Doctor Mondo to hear as she pulled up to the garage last night.

If that happened to me up at the Golden Gates during the HPT, I think I'd be as likely to literally throw a fist at someone, instead of just slapping my fist on a barstool or pillow. I am simply not presently in a mental state to take the horrible beat by a horrible player three spots before the $340 qualifier bubble. A race is a race. And I can totally deal with running QQ into AA, or say, having KK outflop AA, or even having AQs catch an AK, etc. You know what I'm talking about, the kind of battles for stacks where, whether or not the play was optimal, it was at least understandable or justifiable...where your stack is truly short enough that it's +EV to shove any two broadway cards from the cutoff in an unopened pot, or restealing from a button who you've seen to be raising light and showing down trash, etc.

But those incomprehensible plays by terrible players, who these days are invariably hitting their river miracles on me...I just don't think I can deal with that in a high buy-in live event right now, because the online poker world has just been truly abusive of me of late. It's so bad, I'm correctly predicting the river that beats me just about every time now. "Here comes the case K.............and there it is."

I did mention above about one notable exception, and here it is:



BOOOOM!, I actually took one down, the Bodog $10+1 NHLE Turbo, that runs at something like 9pm in my time zone. There were around 143 runners this time around, and for once, I didn't take any atrociously horrible beats. I mean, I did lose a couple of pots where I was heavily ahead when the chips went it, but in each case, they plays were completely reasonable under the circumstances, and I never felt hosed.

This almost didn't happen. After chipping up big early, and coming into the final three tables either 2nd or 3rd in chips, by the time we got to the final table bubble, I was just about on the morphine drip. However, I was able to last, and got in a strong position when I called all ins by two short stacks at the final table and my AQs held (I belive the all ins were A7 and A4s). This put me in 2nd of the final five, and I was on my way. Heads up looked like this:



Heads up went somewhere between 18-20 hands or so, with a bit of back and forth. At one point, we were nearly even in chips, but there was essentially no button limping on either side, and pots were taken preflop or on the flop, until this hand:



I believe I raised pot preflop, and he smooth called. What is he shoving that flop with? At this point, I don't care, I'm not folding bottom two pair with backdoor possibilities here.




Well, guess some of my backdoor options are knackered, but I'm ahead (less comfortably than I thought), and may have made the same shove myself. Frankly, I think check-shoving the flop is as good a play as shoving. Is it better or worse, what do you think? If villian put me on a random A or K, or small pocket pair (given preflop action), he probably thinks he induces a fold here. Anyway, I think his play was fine.



And it actually held up. Wow.

Once again, the final payout was pretty small. It's always the 400+ runner and more MTTs where I get truly hosed. So maybe the ticket for me is to stick with 150-180 player tournaments, no matter the buy-in? Does that make any sense. This was my 5th MTT victory at Bodog this year, but none had more than 220 runners, and two had less than 100. I suppose that's variance, or maybe the 15-20 table starting range is just a sweet spot of sorts for me. I haven't figured that out just yet.

At any rate, I've been able to work my Bodog roll just about up to what it was before my recent withdrawal, so I'll take it.