Back in Action

The FTOPS main event was a big, fun tourney in which several bloggers represented -- brdweb, iakaris, fuel, raveen, lucko, hoyazo, cmitch and probably a few others that I'm missing. Congrats to brdweb for his 38th-place finish!

As for me, I finished about 30 outside of the money in 470-something place. This tourney had the best structure of any MTT I have ever played. Starting stacks were very deep, with 5,000 chips to play with and slow-moving blinds. The large stacks made me feel comfortable to take my time and choose my spots carefully, which is something I often fail to do when the blinds are too high in proportion to my stack.

I started off really hot. I was dealt KK twice, took down a couple of pots with flush draws, hit two pair off the blinds twice and caught two sets. At the high-point, I had somewhere around 25,000 chips.

But then I lost it when I moved in with a flush draw and an overcard vs. top pair, top kicker Tens. I feel good about that play because I had no desire to fold my way into the money. I wanted to keep building my stack, and pushing in with a coin-flip on the flop against a weak made hand is the way to do it. A fold would have been super weak.

At the same time, I was playing in the Big Game, which brought out a very tough field. Thanks to MiamiDon for organizing it.

I held the chip lead heading into the final table, but the second- and third-place stacks were directly to my left -- eventual winner Pauly (congrats!) and Fuel.

The crucial hand came against Pauly. I raised with T9s, and he called from the button. The flop came Qc-Tc-4d. My thinking went like this: Pauly cold called from the button, so it's unlikely that he has a strong Queen. The pot was already pretty large, and I felt like he would bet at the flop with any pocket pair, any flopped pair or any draw. I decided that against that kind of range, a pair of Tens wasn't half bad! Because any bet would basically pot commit him, I decided to check-raise him all in. That's exactly what happened, and Pauly turned over Kh-Qh for the best hand, which held up.

Pauly made a good play. His flat call on the flop made me think he had a low pocket pair or a weak drawing hand rather than high cards. I wonder if I out-thought myself by deciding to play a large pot in this spot. If I had bet out on the flop, it's possible I could have folded to a raise. Meh. I pushed and made (sloppy) quad twos a few hands later against 88. Then I busted with TT vs. an Ace that hit.

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Here's an exerpt from a comment Hoy recently made on MiamiDon's blog. I post it here because I feel the same way he does, except in reverse. My speciality is cash games rather than tourneys:

"I still am more or less clueless in any cash game I play of any real worth. If I could really understand why, I'm sure I would have made the necessary adjustments a long time ago. ...

For me I've proven to myself that I'm a true cash game donk, and there is so much more variance in terms of one's roll anyways, so I just gave up trying after only a brief sojourn to verify that I, in fact, heehaw at the cash games."

On the other hand, I donk it up damn good in multi-table tourneys, but cash games seem to come naturally. He comments that cash games cause more variance that tourneys, which is probably true, but maybe I don't feel the swings as much because wins aren't so far apart. Even when I play well, it's so discouraging to bust out of tournaments.

Perhaps the bottom line is that we feel the swings most at the games we don't excel at, which makes perfect sense.

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One of those games I don't excel at is shorthanded limit hold 'em. And yet, I continue to take shots at it every once in a while because I want a change in pace from the daily no limit cash game grind against the same freakin' players.

I read on 2+2 recently that many successful shorthanded limit players see close to 40 percent of flops! Because I view limit as being a more mathematical game, I would imagine that this degree of looseness may be close to correct. I don't know and I don't understand how to see so many flops and still be a winning player. It's that lack of comprehension that will forever keep me from being a winner in limit.

So, unless and until I learn how to play a lot better, I'm swearing off shorthanded limit hold 'em at any level above 5/10. It'll save me a lot of money.

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The inability to deposit and withdraw money from poker sites remains the biggest issue in the poker world. Ever since Neteller stopped doing business with U.S. players and its assets were frozen by the feds, the games have been dropping in quality.

There's no doubt in my mind that the games will steadily get worse until new payment options gain credibility and widespread acceptance. MyWebATM and Giftcard.com are reportedly filling part of the void, but we're a long way away from the ease of transactions we experienced back in the heyday of the USS Neteller and the USS Firepay.

It's interesting to read and hear about the responses of many poker players to the bleak picture in the poker world. Many players have withdrawn their bankrolls or won't play anymore, and that may be appropriate for their situations.

But for me and many other players, those kinds of actions are decidedly -EV. Sure the games are getting tougher, the fish are busting and it's difficult to turn virtual dollars into real ones. On the other hand, nothing has really changed for the player sitting at the table. We still need to scope out the most fishy tables, find the best values, play our best game and grow our bankrolls to the best of our ability. If you're a winning player, I don't understand why the UIGEA would change your approach to the game itself.

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These last couple of weeks brought a much-needed break from blogging because I felt like my posts were getting worse. I was also feeling paranoid about writing too much about how I play and about the inherent public nature of a blog.

I toyed with the idea of stopping the blog altogether, but the fact is that it makes me a better poker player. Even if I'm just rambling on about random crap (like today for example), at least I'm putting some thought and effort into reflecting on the game.

Now I plan on getting back on schedule. While the primary purpose of this space is to help me become a better poker player, I hope it's also informative, interesting and instructive for you. I realize I'll frequently fall short in this space of achieving those goals, but I'll nail it sometimes, too.