Weekend Wrapup

Played the Hardware Bar tourney and redeemed myself. Built up a healthy shtack and made it to within spitting distance of the final table. Hit some nice cards and luck. One a hand with king high, drew out on someone else who gave me free cards until the river king that gave me top pair.

I played very well for me in terms of mistakes. Folded big slick twice, once pre-flop, and was the better for it. There were many times I folded pretty good hands that were proven to be losers by the end of the hand.

With the exception of a very costly mistake, which I'll get to later, the only misplays I made were:

1. Not being aggressive enough;

2. I was shuffling the second deck and I accidentally pushed my cards into the muck. I would've hit two pair and won the hand.

My decline started when I had pocket aces, two opponents (one all-in,) and a huge pot. The aces were cracked by a set of eights on the river.

Then came my donk-move. Had a pair of sevens in the pocket and went heads-up in position with the big stack, who had at least three times my chips. The board was xQT and the big stack puts out a large bet to me. Of course, I go all-in.

I'm sorry, did you say all-in? Are you nuts? You can't bluff him off the hand, he's not afraid of the board, do you THINK he's afraid of pocket 7's?

To be honest, I wasn't thinking at all. I was tired, wound-up, and happy to have a pocket pair. He called right away showed me his AQs. Didn't hit my two-time 22-to-1 shot and was excused from the table.

I was upset with myself, but still pretty pleased with the evening in general. I had a blast, which is the most important thing. I learned some things, especially that I need to work on keeping focused. Also, I noticed that I'm starting to remember things about certain players, as I've faced them a few times now. Which reminds me: another good thing about Friday was that I had some of the really good players at my table and out lasted them. So I must be doing something right.

Clearly, tight is right in this caliber of tournament. While there were a few hands that were folded to the raiser, the vast majority of hands see a flop. Usually there's someone who'll call you down as well. Aggression is also key- you can make serious hay when you have the edge and there's people willing to pay off.

So, it's back to the World Tavern Poker Tour on Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll earn some points and get a ranking that gives me a fighting chance to move on to the next level.

As far as online, I'm back to my old SNG luck. Played only once and was out quite early. The limits was up and down. Went up a dollar in about forty-five minutes in the afternoon, but was down almost that much by the end of the evening. I'm not skilled enough in math or enough of a statisitics wonk to work out my standard deviation to see what my swings are like. I want to know if looking at my daily results can give me an idea if my play shows the effects of good skills limiting natural random results, or if I'm just a donk at the whims of fate. Can anyone give me advice on this?