Diary of an online comeback...?

[Pizzicato]

Have to admit I like them both but the regular wins is less stressful and better for BRM as well lol

[sheriffatman]

- just recently caught up on this - great stuff, pizzi!
- more hand analysis / stuff about the 'practicalities' of being a mtt reg, if poss. please?

[Pizzicato]

[sheriffatman]

not that I'm aware of
why? - did you call my pint a puff?

[Pizzicato]

Been looking for a chance to say that to you/your avatar lol

[sheriffatman]

[Fingers60]

Good to make your aquaintence earlier Pizzi on stars!
Enjoying your diary notes, keep up the good work!

[Pizzicato]

[Pizzicato]

Well I guess its time for another update...

After the very satisfying run detailed in the last update I was filled with hope and confidence going forward and started my session well on Thursday... Unfortunately starting a session well does not mean it will finish in the best possible way and unfortunately it was one of those nights...

I actually made several fairly deep runs the best of which was my nemesis tournament, The Big 109... My backer was likely starting to dream of untold riches that night as he actually had (at least) 3 horses in the final 18 and we did all have a reasonable amount of chips. He was also 'lucky' in the fact that there was 2 of us on one table and the other was on the other table so what could go wrong....?



If you havn't guessed already Peanut is another one of my backers horses who is actually a pretty nice guy and a pretty competant player. It was actually a very interesting table as usually when you get to this stage of the tournament there is still a little bit of a mix of playing styles on the tables. This particular table however, the 'tightest' player was still playing around 20 - 25% of his/her hands and most of the table were more aggressive. In these stages of the tournament I am usually fairly aggressive myself but I decided to tighten up considerably comfortable in the knowledge that I am still gonna get paid when I pick up a hand, because thats just how the table was.

I have recieved several messages about the above bust hand with the overall theme of the messages being that I was really unlucky and that Peanut played the hand badly... I have to say that I agree with the fact that I was a tad unlucky but I do disagree that Peanut played the hand badly. Peanut and myself actually know eachothers game reasonably well having played in the same games alot, done HH reviews together and shared strategy thoughts in my backers chatroom.

Peanut was having one of his more aggressive days and while not quite playing hyper aggro, he was playing approximately 35% of his hands and raising most of them. His raise UTG with KQ suited is pretty standard and he is reasonably ahead of his percieved range which makes his raise all the more mandatory...

I have a fairly strong handle on P's ranges and know that my TT is gonna be pretty strong against his usual range of hands there. Obviously this means that 3betting is virtually mandatory in this spot as calling to see a flop isn't really ideal with stack sizes the way they are and theres not many flops I will know exactly where I am on because Peanut will continue barrelling almost 100% of the time on the flop and I would expect that aggression to continue on subsequent streets a decent amount of the time. I was pretty happy to see it folded back around to Peanut as while I am certainly ahead of his range, I am not usually gonna be doing great against a cold 4bet from one of the players yet to act.

Peanut knows my game as well as I know his and knows that playing my normal game I would be 3betting him there a large % of the time with actually a reasonably similar range to his opening range from that position with likely some complete air thrown in for good measure. All that added up means that he is actually ahead of my percieved range there with his suited KQ. When I 3bet and its folded back to him he has the usual choices of fold, call or raise. Being ahead of both his and my percieved range, folding there isn't a good option at all and calling isn't exactly ideal either as he would then have to play out of position against me for the rest of the hand which, I at least hope, is less than desirable for him. This leaves him only one option which is to raise... I am sure he was well aware that my 3bet sizing was perfect to allow him to 4bet and for me to 5bet jam with good fold equity so he decided to take that play away from me and apply maximum pressure knowing that I would have to fold alot of the with alot of dead money in the pot. Unfortunately this, at least from my perspective, was the spot where I just always have it and pretty much snap called him and lost the resulting flip.

While that was 'a tad' annoying for me I am sure that my backer felt even worse though due to the other horse not making the final table and Peanut unfortunately busted in 5th Sucky day for everyone involved there...

On Friday my lovely lady decided that I should go out and socialise and me being the kind of guy I am decided to head down to the Alea to play the fun tournament down there and splash around a little in the cash afterwards. It didn't go quite according to plan managing to bust my initial entry in the tournament and both allowed rebuys within about 15 minutes with 1 bluff and 2 combo world draws leaving me feeling like somewhat of a melon and twiddling my thumbs. I popped out for a Subway and a swift cheeky one at my favourite bar and headed back a little later to play a little cash... I made a couple of mistakes early on but found my feet again just in time to run into a few coolers which saw me waving bye bye to about 350 blinds on arguably the best cash table I have sat down to in a long time. After that I decided that I was done and despite having a great table it was time to leave before I got too tilted as I could feel a little coming on. I threw in my last 9bb's in UTG blind for shits and giggles and promptly quadrupled up against a set and some other hand that made it to the river flopping the nut straight with QT... Exit stage left very shortly after pretty tilted that I had decided to leave and not reload...

Saturday was another fun day... I got up suitably late and got a grind on but soon found myself battling fatigue for some completely unknown reason given the fact I had slept unusually well during the day likely at least partly due to the kids being away at their dads for the weekend. The wave of tiredness hit me so hard and fast I unregged everything I wasn't already playing and just tried to make it through to the end of the session... I did actually doze off for a few seconds on one occasion before I was able to wake myself up and was sat out of 2 of my remianing 3 tables though thankfully I didn't miss an important hand. My deep run of the day did wake me up in the end though which was welcome but busting 22nd in the hot 55 made me sigh quite hard.

And now we come to the culmination of an MTT grinders week... Hookers and blow... errr Sunday I mean...

I got up in good time and ready to go but somehow couldn't quite pull it all together... I got off to an awesome start in the kickoff where i managed to more than quadruple up by reshipping my 21 bb over an aggressive open to be cold called behind by a large stack and seeing 2 more reships come in behind. The cold caller folded and I managed to hold vs 2 AKsuiteds. Unfortunately that was where the run good ended and less than 2 orbits later I was gone... While overall I played fairly ok I wasn't playing my best and my one deep run for the day in the Ongame $108 $25K Gtd ended in 16th place leaving me with a nice small hole to try and dig myself out of in the 2 playing sessions left before I head down to London...

Anyway... Its looking disturbingly light outside so I guess its time to start thinking about bed and a nice relaxing day off... I believe I have earned it

[Fingers60]

[StGilmore]

I may not have a comment worth posting Pizzi but I'm completely with your thread!
_________________
"I find it's best to start the day with no composure and then you've got nothing to lose." B. Boatman

http://midlifepoker.blogspot.com/
http://outthescammers.blogspot.com/

[Pizzicato]

[sheriffatman]

nice read again pizzi
I liked how your lass "sent you out to socialise", ('people therapy') and you went to the casino to play cards!? ('hey, it's a friendly,sociable game')
- would be interested to hear how you explain to people what it is you do for a living and their reactions etc. - any funny stories?
(np if you 'don't do requests' btw)

[evelyn]

I don't like Peanut's shove. It's a lot to risk at this stage of the tournament with a so so hand
and not much info. I'd complete for the massive odds on offer (I daresay there were antes of circa 5k as well). It's just my opinion fwiw maybe it's better to play aggro in these games.

[Peanut172]