The Question Is How Fast, Pt. 2

Continued from previous post...(road trip theme being abandoned)

So I have just doubled my short stack and my table has broken. I'm not too upset with this, as that table had begun to eyeball my stack and take shots at me.

My new table, however, is a dream. Three ultra tight older guys, check. One insane old guy who will play and continue any hand at full speed and never slow down if he misses a flop. A couple of guys in their thirties and forties who play straightforward. One girl with a healthy stack who seems to be mixing it up pretty well. And one guy who loses a huge pot as I settle in when his top two gets shoved upon by crazy old guy's flush draw (which was for crazy old guy's whole stack, not insubstantial) who I get an immediate suspicion had been the table boss prior to that hand. He now is on a shorter stack than I and I watch him closely, as we are going to make similar plays with our short stacks.

I feel okay about it and my first hand is AcJc and I sweep the blinds with a preflop raise. Bingo, hope this continues.

It doesn't.

Neither the cards nor the plays got there for me. It was really frustrating watching the play at this table and then having to peek down at J,3 off and fold. As I got shorter and shorter, I just wanted anything that would give me a shot because I really felt as if I could make a run if I could even get a semblance of a normals stack.

Limp, limp, limp, limp to me in the small blind, ready to shove. 8,4 off. Muck.

Frustrating.

I wonder if I should shove anyway but such thoughts are nixed when a multi-way limped pot (about 4 or 5 players) that I can't enter gets shown down and the crazy old guy has pocket kings. Pocket kings.

Finally, under the gun (literally and figuratively) I get 9,9 and in it goes. I get looked up by crazy old guy who has A,8 off. Here we go.

'No ace, no ace, no ace,' I think.

Ace on the flop. I mentally check out about 95%.

'Nine on the turn. Nine, nine, nine, NINE,' I think.

Ace on the turn. I mentally check out the remaining 5%.

I stand.

Four on the river.

I walk away. I get about 10 feet from the table when the girl calls over to me. "Where are you going?"

I walk back over. She points at the board. "You made a flush."

Holy shit. It's true. I hit runner, runner (including his third ace) and provided one of the dumbest displays ever. I didn't do anything out of line, I was just that donkey who didn't even bother to consider the board or the options.

So back to it, after an apology to the table. The old guy doesn't even seem to have noticed, as I really didn't dent his stack too badly.

Unfortunately, I can't capitalize on this gift. I am ice cold and can't enter any pots. I get short stacked and shove. Everyone folds. Over and over and over. Four hours I play my short stack like this. Four hours I have zero pocket pairs, perhaps punishment for my inattentiveness with my nines.

Finally, I get it in again with a caller. The BB looks me up with AK off to my Qd9d. He looks slightly ill at my holding, one of the worst ones for his hand to be ahead of.

I flop a queen in the window!

But there's an ace underneath! An ace on the turn (deja vu?) I scan for diamonds--not this time. I need a queen. Two outer. Two outer. Two outer.

Out. Two hundredth.

(or so. top 70 got paid)


My assessment of my play? Too tight, mostly. Too aggressive with middle pairs. I think I did a good job managing my short stack in particular. I got it in against the right players, the ones who would fold when I didn't have it, and the ones who would call if I did. I tried not to let it get down to 10 BBs, preferring to move with about 13 or so to keep the gamblers at bay. I had a good feel for people at my tables and, while my starting hands limited my action, felt like I had a decent read on how people were playing. It was a good experience, good to get a big tournament feel, one I haven't had in a long time. If things go well in the next couple weeks, I might hop to Borgata to see about their WPT event coming up.