Running Stupid Hot

No not me... Ever. I have to grind out everything... In life, career, parenting, poker... everything.

So when a friend pointed me to his Stars ROI in $4 180 mtt's, I laughed. He has been playing these exclusively for about 2 years. His ROI? 395%.

I call him luck sack. Why? You ever play one of these things? On Tilt they are $2 -180 man mtt's.

So I played one last night to prove a point. While I played a $5 45 person simultaneously. I final tabled both, but the 180 took precedence. Only because I wanted to see how stupid the beats would be.

I have played the $8 180's a few times, winning it twice, and final tabling it thrice, out of about 20 tries over the last two years or so. But I usually don't have the patience to sit there for 4-5 hours for the pay out without gut shoving every single nut draw that comes my way.

However, last night turned out pretty to be pretty calm. There wasn't a whole bunch of retardedness going on, and I was watching 7 pounds while I was playing, which was a good and necessary distraction. When we got down to about 30 I had just been hovering just around 12k.

I managed to more than double up over 2 hands that saw me dodge no less than 12 outs twice each time. I even surprised my rail bird friends demanding comments like, "who are you?", and "no way that just held".

I managed to get cut in half in a B v B situation when I was dealt AT in the small and it folded to me. I raised 3x's (1200) into a 10k stack. I had been stealy up to that point and he reraised me to 3800. I guessed he was re-stealing with the likes of a small pair to KQ or so, so I shoved. He called and tabled 66. I missed and went down to 10k again.

The next hand I shoved AcJc from the c/o only to be called by the bb holding AQ. He held and now I'm sitting at 2400 or so.

The next sequence of hands show me cracking AA twice within 7 hands. I shoved both times, once with KQ and the next with 99. The KQ hand I flopped the joint, and the 99 hand I turned the 9.

I managed to take 4th in that one after gettting back up to about 25k and avoiding some suckyouties, only to jam a short stack from the small with Js2s. BB had AQ and IGH.

Now, my lucksack statement to friend with an almost 400% ROI in these things on Stars relates to the fact that to do that well in such a large, inexpensive field overtime requires jams to hold up, not be coolered, and saved when you are dominated. It's not about his inability to play, and only to rely on hitting 3 outers when he gets in bad.

One of the bigger hands I had was when I managed to get the chip lead along the way was when I held KK in the bb. The c/o raised I reraised, and he shoved. He was a big stack as well, and he showed QQ.

I saw this happen no less than 7 times during the tournament, on my table alone. You gotta be pretty lucky to dodge them in any large field tournament.

Another qualifier is that this guy doesn't play a whole bunch. So it's not like he is playing 300 tournaments and winning 100. He is cashing in almost all of them. And believe me, this guy is pretty aggro. He's no nit limping into the cash, and then shoving from there.

It was fun though, and I think I might play more of these instead of the 6 max sng's I've been playing. The doom switch has been on all week for me in the single table sng's. Always running into AA or KK, or sets to two pair or straights to sets. It happens. But these longer tournaments are fun, and I might just be able to find the time to play more. Especially at 1am.

I won two $10 45 person sng's over the last 2 weeks, out of the 4 I played, and took 2cnd in another $5 45. They're just time consuming. In comparison, I don't know how I manage to run so poorly in blogger tournaments. CK put a post up about familiarality. Maybe there is something to that. I'm sure it has to do with the stakes as well. I just don't care. Sometimes, I put those out of my head and just focus on playing well, and winning. When I do that, I usually do very well. But as an example, when I was short last night, it came with 3 left to the cash. A railer pointed that out to me, and advised to fold til 18 ($3.80). I laughed and said I was sitting on a couch that contained no less thatn $37 in coins in it. Commence sucking out on AA twice in 7 hands.

I will be playing the Brit on sun, and if basketball goes south, I will be playing the big game on sunday night. We'll see what goes down.

Happy Memorial day weekend to everyone. Backyards and bbq's are on tap all weekend!