I Should Go On More Vacations

I seem to do really well on the poker tables after coming back from a vacation. A couple weeks ago, we were out of town for a few days, and when we came back, I fired up the poker machine that night and won $600. This weekend, the Mrs. and I went on a short mini-vacation for one night. We got back on Saturday, and after the kids were in bed, I fired up some tables at Party Poker intending to finish off the most recent $100 bonus. I ended the day at a profit of over $800!

And to think, I didn't flop one set in those approximately 400 hands. Pocket Kings was the hand of the night. I got dealt them four times, and made over half of my profit from the night from those four hands. I also won a big pot with T6o. I was in the BB and some dude min-raises to $4 from early position. There were four other callers, so I called too. Flop came TT8. I checked, and the PF min-raiser bets just less than pot. I'm the only caller. The turn is an 8, so the only hand now that beats me are quad 8's. So now I am thinking, "How do I get the rest of this dudes stack?". I check again, intending to check-raise, but I don't need to as the dude pushes all-in for about five times what is in the pot now. I figure he must have the other Ten. I call and he flips over Pocket Queens. No two outer for him, and I scoop a nice pot. What was this guy thinking?!?

Father's Day was awesome. The Mrs. and the kids out did themselves yesterday. I got homemade monkey bread/caramel rolls for breakfast. I got some really great gifts: A coffee mug with hand and foot prints of the kids on it, some chocolate caramel coffee, and some beer. Oh, and I am going to see Pearl Jam and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers next week. You can't beat that. Then we went to a park and had a picnic, and when the kids were taking their naps, I got to play some poker.

Since I was planning on playing in the Blogger Freeroll, I decided that I should also play in a few more tournies. And since I made some good money on Saturday, I decided to enter into the PokerStars Million guaranteed MTT. I know that this is probably well above what I should be playing. But I figured, when am I ever going to get a chance to play in this again? I hardly ever play on Sunday afternoon. Plus, I made $800 the day before. So I gave it a try. I also played in a BoDog WSOP MTT with the free $135 tournament credits they gave me. And finally, I played another one of those $20 180 person MTTs on Stars.

I made it to the first break of the blogger tournie but busted not too much after that. I played top pair crap kicker too hard and some dude thought that their AJ was good. It was. I'm not a big fan of these big freerolls. For one, there are just way too many people who don't show up and just sit out. You can have a serious advantage or disadvantage depending on where and how many no-shows are at your table. Three of the four people to my right were gone. So that means pretty much everyone who was playing at that table had position on me. The dude who knocked me out accumulated lots of chips from all the no-shows to his left. Free blinds four times an orbit! I know some sites boot no-shows after 15 minutes or so. PokerStars should do this too. Oh well. I didn't expect to do anything in this anyways. I looked at the final standings, and I didn't recognize any of the names in the top 100! Who are these people?

I did better in the million guaranteed. I hovered right around average chip stack for most of the time. I lasted past the 2nd break and went out around 1100th place out of 4500 or so. Top 600 got paid. I went out with Pocket Kings vs AJo. Horray! I probably should have just pushed PF, and the dude might have folded. Blinds were 200/400, and I had right around 5700 in chips, for an M of around 9. I was in the SB with Pocket Kings, and there were two limpers. So I raised to 2000 (5x BB, 3x BB + 1BB per limper is kind of standard) leaving me 3700 behind. One of the limpers called. Flop had an ace in it, and with the pot at 5000, I pushed the rest of chips in. He called with AJ. I'm not sure what I should have done here. Pushing Pre-flop would have been best I think. But check/folding after the flop just because an ace flops just seems really week to me. I made one other mistake earlier in the MTT when I flopped a set. The PF raiser bet almost pot on the flop, and I check-raised all-in (My check raise was about triple his bet). If I would have just called, I probably could have gotten his stack later on. Oh well. It was fun, and I was pleased to make it that far on my first million guaranteed try. And it is nice to know that there are still people at these big MTTs who will call off half of their stack with AJ.

I also took the free 135 in BoDog MTT credits and entered in one of their WSOP tournies. This one was a $125+10 and only 49 people entered (Nice overlay!). I got knocked down to half my starting stack early, but climbed my way back after a while. With about two tables left I was around average chip stack. I made it to final table as one of the short stacks, and eventually went out in 6th place. I lost with Pocket Jacks to KQo (Queen on the river, Booooooooo). If I would have won that hand, I would have been right around average chip stack again. Wow! Pretty damn close to a Main Event seat!

And finally, I played in a $20 180 person MTT. Top 18 paid, and I went out in 19th place. I was in 15th chip stack with 19 left, and got dealt Pocket Queens. Wouldn't you know it, but the BB wakes up with Aces. Yay. I love these MTTs. I'm going to have to play more of these.

So, I didn't cash or win anything in these, but it was tons of fun. I went out in three of those four with KK, QQ, and JJ. I guess if your going to be knocked out, you might as well get knocked out holding a premium hand.

Cheers!