A New Chance and A Memory Relived

I was gonna play a couple SnG's tonight, but Ultimate Bet was down upgrading their servers. Oh well, I'll probably just write. Now that I took a break and am just coming back, I'm not playing as much as I used to. When I was playing regularly I was going up to the local casino (Chumash) 3 or 4 nights a week. Now I'm doing this whole SnG thing I'm not playing as much as I was, and it kinda sucks. When I get my bankroll up to where it needs to be, I'll be playing the higher limit cash games on a schedule. I can't wait, cuz I hate not playing all the time. I don't really care so much about not playing the SnG's, but I'm trying not to play more than I should.

And although UB is down tonight, Joe and I did head up to the casino to sign Darsky and ourselves up for the March 11th tournament at Chumash. Here's a little info:
March 11th, 9:00 AM
700 registered players, 100 waiting list
$200+20 Buy-in
$50,000 1st prize
Last tournament like this was in November. Same buy-in, same field. I coulda went huge, but I ran into some bad luck. They paid 100 players, and I finished 107th. Since I haven't played online in a couple days, I'll recap the last Chumash tournament.

I showed up at 8:45AM and I was prepped and ready to go. I hadn't gone to bed as early as I had planned (I think it was like 2:00AM), but I really felt like I was fresh and ready to go. My starting table was very, very weak, with the exception of Uncle Paul (who hosts our Saturday home game). He stayed out of my way though, as I had told him before the tournament that I would be playing loose aggressive to take advantage of all the dead money and bad players. Things started off ok. I took down the first 3 pots I was in, with 9-high, 4-high, and 6-high, all post-flop, and I felt confident that if I got dealt some hands I could do something with my stack. The starting was $5000, with the blinds at $25-50, so I had room to splash around for the first hour. In the first hour I built my stack up from $5000 to $7000 just from buying pots, and I had showed a couple bluffs so my image at the table was pretty loose. Now if I could only get some big hands, the whole tournament was mine.

Unfortunately, my big hands were few and far between. I picked up A-Qo in middle position in the second hour, and I got stuck in a raising war preflop and let it go with minimal losses. But other than that the big hands just weren't showin up, and when they did they just weren't holding. The plan was to play lots of weak hands aggressively, give some up for cheap, and take down big pots with big hands. Well for most of the day I was taking down medium pots with weak hands, and giving up my big hands for big pots. That's not the way it was supposed to work! I survived though, and I was doing alright. Right before the lunch break I was down to $5000 in chips after a rough hand in a SB/BB showdown. I was confident in my comeback ability, so I went to eat lunch with a fresh mind. We came back from the lunch break with the blinds at $600-1200, so I had some work to do. But in the first two hands I was back up to $12000. And had some shoving power again. Half an hour later our table broke and I took about $10000 over to the new table.

The first half hour there I was up to $26,000, and nothin was going to stop me. After a pretty active hour at that table, the field had narrowed down from 800 total players to only 120. 100 places were getting paid, and I was with a little under average stack hovering between $25,000 and $30,000, and with the blinds now up to $2000-$4000, those swings weren't bad at all. I got stuck in a medium size pot and passed through 2 rounds of unplayable blinds when the field was at 107 players. I had $15,000 left and was waiting patiently for a big hand to push, considering that even picking up the blinds at this point was big. The big blind was about a 9th of the average stack, but thus is Chumash blinds. It folds around to me and I have KK in about 7th position. I push in for my last 15,000 expecting to get called only by another PP or any medium-strong Ace, either of which I was a huge favorite to. It folds around to the BB and he asks how much it is. "Fifteen-thousand," I say confidently. He shakily calls and turns over an Ace. Perfect. He struggled lifting the other card up, and as he turns it over and I see another Ace my heart drops. Seven players to go and I run into KK vs AA. I stand up and start to put my jacket on, and just then the dealer turns the flop and the door card is.....a King!!! I hesitate for a nanosecond as he slides out a third Ace on the flop and now I'm drawing to one King. The turn and river (obviously) don't produce my miracle King, and I'm sent home with nothing but a Kings versus Aces story.

I'm really feelin good about my tournament play lately, so I should make it pretty far into this one on the 11th. In other news I started roamin FCP again today, and I found a new safehouse in the HIDEOUT!! I reunited with a lot of people from FCP, and a few from the FCPPC. It was great to talk to these guys again. I've added a couple of their blogs to my links. It's good to see none of them have lost their badass-ness.

Also, I got my golf clubs back from my dad's house, and it's been a long, long winter away from the course. I keep wanting to hit the range, but the weather is so shaky. Bright and sunny one day, and cloudy and rainy the next. I'll make it eventually, though, cuz I really am eager to get out there again. On a note of crazy weather, I'll end this entry with an oh well, just like it started.

Bankroll: $686