Ha! Was nice to see you on the same table norton. Did you see my KK hand that was one of my last hands? I was getting worried because I thought my play was gonna backfire terribly, and I would be made to look a fool in front of a fellow BTPer! Lucklily my play worked out well and I won a nice pot! If you didn't see it then I needen't have worried anyway!

Martin

Yep -- looked fine. I would have raised the turn too, since the guy led the flop and probably doesn't have the flush. Once he reraises you know you're likely behind, but I think you have to call down.

The part I was most worried about was whether to bet on the end or not once he had checked to me. Only the A would've beat me, but if I got check-raised I would've felt like a fool. Luckily, it worked perfectly and he paid me off with a worse hand. About the only thing that went my way in my limit session - stick to the PLO!

Martin

A bit bloody tonight at the $25NL tables. My continuation bets were continually check-raised and the flush card came with alarming frequency. The best hand though was when I held [As], the board came queen high with all clubs, and I got called down by [9d] who made runner-runner straight. I guess he was drawing to the eight high flush, lol.

Ended down about $17, but on the bright side cleared the $100 bonus. I ended up $38 overall on my play, +$50 at $25NL and -$12 at $1/2.

Also played at the BTP PLO table yesterday, ended up $10.

Managed to miss the HORSE tourney -- I remembered at about 6:02. Fuck!

Another great session at stars. Lots of premium hands, and they mostly held up. Lost a bit towards the end to some total muppet runner-runner plays, but still ended up $38 after 300 hands. 1/4 of the way through the bonus.

My VP$IP is up to 18 now, and I'm feeling really in control of my limit game. Once I clear this stars bonus I'll move up to the $2/4.

Played a little more last night and ended down $10 in a mostly uninteresting session. Some guy went runner runner flush with a bare AKo for the third time yesterday, putting me on mild tilt (see my "awesome new move" post in the limit section). Yes, you have AK, but the flop missed you so lay it down already!

Put in another 300 hands this morning, up about $49. Spent some time at 6 max, and man are those guys terrible. I was the tightest player there with 27% VP$IP -- everyone else was above 40.

I'm on a nice little tear clearing this bonus. Almost halfway through and I'm up $110 so far.

Took the morning off to play again in Ocean's 11's morning NLHE tourney ($30+5). Ended up taking down 5th for $250.

I didn't play a hand in the first two levels, and played & won my first pot with AJ when I raised and the two callers folded the undercard flop. With the blinds at 100/200 I found TT in UTG+2 and raised to t500. A calling station who played every other pot but hadn't raised in the hour we'd been at the same table came alive and reraised to t1500. I was pretty sure I was up against a big pair, maybe AK but I thought he'd probably smooth call that, so I layed it down.

When the blinds got to 300/600 I had one caller in the BB with Td2d. The flop came A34 with two diamonds, so I pushed and took the pot. Then I found A6s on the button and pushed with t1500 or so. The SB who barely had me covered found AQ and pushed, but a 6 hit the flop and I was up to t3900. This was the only hand where I got lucky as the underdog.

At the 500/1000 I took out the BB shortstack when I found K9 on the button. A few hands later at 1K/2K I doubled up with JJ, and took out a smaller stack at 1.5K/3K with AQ vs A9 (flop came KJT), leaving me with 16.5K when we got down to 2 tables.

On the last 3K BB, which was on me, the button raised to 6K, and I had A8s, so I considered pushing. Since we were close to the money and others were much shorter, and the button was leaning way back in his chair, I decided against it. After the tourney he told me he had AA and was praying for a call (he finished 6th).

Due to a screwup we played too long at the 1.5K/3K level, so the blinds went to 5K/10K on my small blind, and I went from slightly desperate to very desperate (having less than the BB). I managed to survive when I found QJ.

I got to the final table with 12K, barely enough for the big blind, but there were others in worse shape. One person busted before the blind got to me, and I beat another short stack's QJ with K4 on my blind. Two more short stacks busted shortly thereafter. I had 19K at that point and the blinds went up to 10K/20K, so I called all in when I found KQ. The BB had AJ, and I hit a Q on the flop but an A hit the river, knocking me out.

The tourney was over shortly thereafter when the last 3 chopped. Funny sidenote: at the final table the tourney director told us that the winner would also receive an Ocean's 11 jacket, worth $25. When the smaller stacks brought up the chop for $850, the big stack says, "well, what about the jacket?" 1st place is $1300 and he's worried about a crappy $25 jacket

I also got a free entry to a Sunday tourney in a few weeks, same buyin/format, so that should be fun.

Nope, you're right -- it's a total crap shoot. For the first hour you can play post flop. After that I never had more than 10BB. It's basically a matter of finding the right combination of cards and people in the blinds and pushing it in -- good short stack training.

I wouldn't think so because short stack training normally comes with some big stacks that can afford to gamble and such while this, any all in loss kills someone. I personally wouldn't want to play them but since you got free entry, good luck. It just sounds like the turbo SNG's i've seen on Pacific or a more intense Party SNG.

Ah, the poker gods definitely like me again -- just finished a +$94.50 session over 300 hands at Stars. Still 200 short of releasing that bonus, but it shouldn't be long now.

Also, I found out something pretty sweet -- I was under the impression that the monitor out on my laptop could only be used to mirror what was on my desktop. But my roommate clued me into how to configure it to extend my desktop over another monitor, which can be at a different resolution. So now I can have 4 tables on my 21" CRT with no overlap, and another 1 or 2 tables on my laptop screen, which really rocks.

I think I'll look into installing AutoHotKey so I don't have to move the mouse around so much.

I reread SSHE over the last couple days. It's definitely a great book, but they stress counting outs so much that I sometimes find myself overcounting them, and doing stupid shit like this:

PokerStars 1/2 Hold'em (8 handed)

Preflop: Hero is Button with , .
1 fold, UTG+1 raises, 3 folds, Hero calls, 2 folds.

Flop: (5.50 SB) , , (2 players)
UTG+1 bets, Hero calls.

Me: "sweet, I've got 4 outs to the nut straight, a backdoor queen high flush draw, plus if he has QQ/JJ he'll probably give me a free card. No way I can turn down 5:1"

Turn: (3.75 BB) (2 players)
UTG+1 bets, Hero raises, UTG+1 calls.

River: (7.75 BB) (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets, UTG+1 calls.

Final Pot: 9.75 BB

Results in white below:
UTG+1 has Tc Ts (three of a kind, tens).
Hero has Ac Qh (straight, ace high).
Outcome: Hero wins 9.75 BB.

OK, it turns out the poker gods are somewhat undecided about me. Gave back about $50 from my earlier session -- lots of big hands that just went down in flames. On one table I bought in at $50 and had to rebuy about 10 minutes later after AK went down twice, queens went down, and I ran into set over set.

But on the plus side, I finished my bonus. I was up about $87 overall clearing it, over 1800 hands, for an unspectacular 2BB/100. And the bonus was another $120 on top of that.

AutoHotKey is pretty much the bomb, although before I got the hang of which keys did what it got pretty hectic with 5 tables. It inevitably led to some silly things, like 3-betting with KQ suited (which led to me having to chase a gutshot straight draw that didn't materialize). But it should be really useful for the future.