Bankroll is replenished

I sent the following email to my beloved cousin Jason, and thought that it might be interesting fare for anyone checking out my poker action. By way of explanation, I've cashed out from Pokerstars a couple of times now; once after I cleared my last deposit bonus, and once recently after, in a fit of madness, I entered an $11/45-player sit-and-go (SNG) and (to my disbelief) ended up taking second place (worth $104).

After playing in a couple of the WWdN invitation tourneys ($10+1 entry fees) and flaming out brilliantly, my account was sitting pretty low (at least, lower than my liking: around $70). So I resolved to go back to playing the $1.50+0.25/18-player SNGs that I had used to learn the game of online poker in the first place: players tend to be less capable at that level, and it was good therapy for me to take it slow in the midst of questionable madness all around me. I promptly took second place in the next three tourneys I played, which meant that I was slowly crawling back towards the psychologically important $100 mark.

After diving back into the $6/18-player game with Jason (and losing before the final table: my QQ ran into AA), I played another $6/45-player SNG and got knocked out in 10th place when my top pair ran into a full house created by the original caller's decision to limp in with 2c-6c; urgh!

These unfortunate losses put a dent in my account, of course, but I was quite happy with my play and was confident that sticking to my guns would pay off... well, here's the tale of the tape:

Played two $6/45-player SNGs today.

Came in fifth in the first one, basically holding on for dear life and

hoping for fools to go out before I crashed and burned -- that was good

for $24.

Then came in first in the second one, playing a tight/aggressive game

that was well-complemented by some timely pockets. I became the chip

leader relatively early and stayed there until the last three players...

That was good for $80. Yeah!

Interesting stat: I had a total of 13 showdowns in the entire

tournament. I established respect fairly early on by only playing very

solid hands, and busted out a few people. Then I just concentrated on

taking the short stacks' money. It seemed to work quite nicely.

Outstanding suckout moment: I'm chip leader with $8700, dealt A9o in

late position. BB is at $600, somebody before me with 2600 in chips

raises to 1200, I reraise him to 2400, and to my surprise the BB goes

all-in with his $2700. The initial raiser calls, I call, and the cards

are flipped to reveal that the initial caller has pocket 10s and the BB

has Qc-Jc. I'm praying for an ace, but I catch a 9 on the flop, and

another 9 on the river to make my set and wipe out both players. That

put me in an extremely solid position for the end game.

Best trap (heads-up):

About halfway through our heads-up action, I looked down to see pocket aces. I had been playing quite aggressively, raising all-in to force the big stack to commit to either risking a large chunk of his chips, or to let me nibble on his blinds, and the big stack had been content (or timid) enough to fold pretty consistently. On occasion he reciprocated, and I happily folded, because he was doing it infrequently enough that I was making headway. But with aces, I wanted more than just his blinds, so I tried feigning weakness; I knew that limping in would be so out of character that my opponent would suspect something fishy was going on, so I settled for a raise to 2XBB. If worst came to worst, he would fold and I would pick up the blinds; in the best scenario, he would have a decent hand and immediately raise me all-in preflop. Instead, he called -- which told me that he had a hand with some potential. I checked on the flop (rainbow 8KJ), hoping that he would interpret that as a sign that I had A-something and had failed to hit my hoped-for ace. He bit, raising me all-in... and while I was nervous that he just might be holding onto something like pocket J's (making his set), I figured that he would have reraised me pre-flop if that were the case. I called, he flipped over 98o, and he never improved beyond his pair of 8s.

So now, since Wil convinced me to play online poker in October (no, he didn't sit me down and talk to me one-on-one; I read about his Katrina charity tournament and it sounded like a fun way to contribute to a cause), my return on online poker has been approximately $230. Given that my goal has been simply to bankroll this poker hobby without causing Lynn to frown too deeply, I'm quite happy about the results. Baby needs a new pair of shoes, indeed!