Bankroll Rising

Well now that I am half asleep at work I might as well write a post. I really felt good about my game last night. I made a few mistakes and got really lucky a few times until the very end. I sucked out at least one 2-outer and a 1-outer so I can not complain about a 3-outer.

The two outer actually came early in the game. I was a few hands into the game and I saw QQ. It was raised and pushed before me. I thought I might be beat here.. but I sort of wanted to hope I was not. I really felt like I should have folded. It was really early though and I figured I had a chance to tripple up. So I took my shot and pushed myself. The original raiser called also. The hand ended up being AJ vs KK vs QQ. When I saw the Kings I even said to myself "Damn, I thought so". However the Queen on the flop gave me a nice chip lead.

It would turn out I would need this as AlCantHangs RiverFailure kept me too distracted to play well during the first hour. I basically folded every hand after that first tripple up until the first break. RiverFailure was messed up. It was HU which it was not supposed to be. I end up beating two people and then find myself on a table with a 6K chip deficit. No let me repeat that. I did not lose 6K to the guy. I did not make a bad move. I just sat down and it is 12K vs 6K. I fought valiantly and finally went out when the guy decided to call two HUGE bets against my KK with some 69o crap hand which rivered a straight. Hey he had the chips to do it. If I win that hand I would have kicked his ass.

Anyways.. I finally came back to the 25K game and tried to steal a little more. My tight image helped with this. Right before the second break I end up getting Aces in two hands incredibly close together and I am off to the races. I stack two nice sized stacks and I am sitting on 10K in chips.

My second amazing suckout happened when I cold called a decent sized raise with 88. The flop comes 89x and I am like BOOYAH! When the EP guy bets I push all in and he calls. I am no sooner done saying "Suckah!" than he flips over his pair of 9's. I have him covered slightly. It turns out not to matter as I river my case eight! BOOYAH! I got very lucky but I do not think I misplayed that hand at all.

The rest of the night consisted of a couple of mistakes with AK vs KK. Ya I ran my AK into kings twice. No help for me. AK really ended up hurting me last night. I fluctuated from 30K down to 14K where I made some nasty re-steals. One I remember was calling with A7c, the flop comes down 2 clubs.. and I check-raise the Button ALL IN. I think the button had bet pot or a little less. I felt it was a BS position steal bet and if I was wrong I had outs.

I also had a fun hand with the guy who would eventually bust me. This guy was a LuckDonk if I ever saw one. Kept getting all his chips in with the worse hand and winning. One funny example was another A7c s00ted hand. It was HU between me and Donk and he decides to push all in to steal my blind. I am a little low and while I do not want to call I figure I have to. He turns over 94o and AMAZINGLY makes a straight.. lucky that I flopped a flush.

My final hand happened when I had 20K in chips. I end up calling Donks all in push with AKo. He has AJo and I am pretty happy to get my chips in as a 80% leader. Can you say DOMINATED. Until at least the two jacks hit the flop. Not just one but TWO. Ouch.

One thing I keep asking myself over and over is did I have to call that? No really did I HAVE to call that? I will say it was not a bad call. I keep asking myself if these are the places I want to get my money in though. If I fold do I get a better hand later? I was pretty low in chips and may not have. I need to keep asking myself if I should fold. I want to try and take out as much luck as possible in my MTT game. Anytime you go all in pre-flop an amount of luck is involved. I want to see how much I can make my MTT experience a post game experience.

Obviously this can be hard. Almost every Donkey wants to push every hand they can. As I said in my previous post this is a good strategy for them. They are stupid. They can not outplay a sponge (Feminine, not Sea), and the only chance they have is to push and pray for a good outcome. They need to reduce a better players skill. So if I call them just because I have a hand with good potential I am doing what they want. I am reducing my edge. I want to stop doing this. I know to a point you can never really remove the all-in aspect of these MTTs but I want to keep looking for the right balance.