I have been playing…tsk, tsk…you didn’t really think I’d quit, right?  Nah!  Can’t give up the fix.  Strangely enough, I’ve picked up some playable hands.  It feels weird and fantastic at the same time.  I placed in the money in five tournaments in the last week.  Nothing major, but making a few $$ back is nice for a change.  One today that I really wanted to make it to the final table as the payout was HUGE – well – read the following for details.

I always misplay a hand or two – maybe more but one or two that I know I definitely misplayed.

One, I had 5-5 in late position and called the blind, along with 3 or 4 other players.  The flop brought us something like 10-5-3.  The SB bet around $1K (I think it was close to that), the BB went all-in for close to $3.5K and me, tired of being drawn out on and playing like an idiot, I raised it another $3K to isolate the BB.  The SB thought about it (or they have a satellite connection like I do and you can never tell) and finally folded.  I won the hand and busted the BB.  But if I had just called, I may have made a lot more on the hand.

We got down to late stages, this was a $10+1 daily $30Grand guarantee (if my memories working), there were 4554 players and the prize pool was – you guessed it – $45540.  I went to stage one dead cards.  Pitching, pitching, pitching, pitching my ass off.  Early out I folded A-J H after I raised it to $400 and someone came over the top of me all-in (and other hands like that where I tried to put a move on the pot and pick it up but they wouldn’t let me steal) over all, the play of the tournament was fairly sane.  Not a lot of all-in moves all the time and I picked up K-K about 6 times and won blinds with it each time.  I won one real pot with the Kings and managed to hold on to my chips fairly well.

The other hand I misplayed?  The last one obviously, that’s how I got broke.  We were at 1,500-3,000K blinds and a 300 ante.  I’d been dead for about four orbits and looked down to 10-10 (yah, I’d pitched them twice earlier when I raised and someone came over the top of me all-in).  The thought of pitching them went through my head.   I really wanted to move up in the $$.  A player UTG raised the pot $6K – it was $9K to me.  Another flash of ‘fold and live to play another hand’ – I had $30,041 in chips and pushed instead.  Of course I got called.  He had Q-Q and flopped a set…and had me covered.  It was out in 248th place and claimed $40.99.

I kind of wanted to slap myself but on the other hand, I just have to figure how many times I’ve seen people make that same move with small pairs and A-little.  Everything was worth stealing at that point.  If I have to fold every time I pick up a playable hand, I can’t play.  But in retrospect, wish I’d gone with my first impulse and pitched.

On other fronts, it’s been gloomy and the sky’s been crying off and on all day.  Tomorrow will be a fun day for me, I found a Masseuse that will come to my place – have table will travel – and we’ll see how well we fit.  I’d love for this to work out, she’s reasonably priced and I want to go back to the once a week routine I had years ago in Vegas.

And on Sunday it’s the PokerWorks Family H.O.R.S.E. Tourney.  Clearspine has all the info up on his blog.  I’ll send out the nag email tomorrow.  See You There!