Struggle

I just had the most thoroughly miserable day. Was feeling pretty ill and I managed to drop $20 at a table in Empire over the course of an hour. I guess I should have stuck with the plan and not ventured into a game while doped up on medication. But I was pretty bored just reading in bed all day, even watching Season 1 of Alias stop being interesting. I was playing ok poker, but had a few brutal suckouts that were pretty demoralizing. I really need to start stabilizing my play. Whenever I get down, I start concentrating on making my money back instead of focusing on playing good poker.

Because I was unable to round up a sub for my volleyball game tonight, I ended up playing. I had some experience with the opposing team before, so I was pretty sure they would have defaulted us for not having 6 players, even though we had a good reason. After I was able to shake myself out of a bit of a daze, I played not too badly. In fact, our whole team player pretty well and we won what was our better matches of the seasons. We always seem to play better against better teams. But I got home feeling a bit run down. After a shower though, I wasn’t quite ready for bed, so I hopped on Empire.

I decided to hit a 5+1 SNG for a little practice before I surrender my money on Wednesday. I had intended to hit a limit table – how that would be practice for the tournament is an interesting question – but didn’t check and ended up in a pot limit game. I realized it was for the best, as it would be better practice. For the record, fish at a 5+1 table are crazy. Someone went out on the very first hand. And they didn’t even have much of a hand.

I played pretty cautiously, waiting to hit a hand to try to earn some chips. As I determined who was reckless and who was a bit more solid, I started stealing a few pots to keep pace with the blinds. Enough succeeded to keep me slightly ahead of the curve. As we got closer to the bubble, people started to tighten up and I started to take advantage, stealing where I could and putting pressure on the small stacks. Going in to the last three, I had a small chip lead.

The final three did not last very long as my opponents were very happy to call me when I put them all-in. And they called with pretty marginal hands. It was the quickest I’ve ever finished a tournament in the final three. And it was a nice $19 in my account.

Of course, I couldn’t be happy there. I was only a quarter away from breaking even on the day, so I went back to the .5/1 table to try to squeeze out a small win. Of course, my 97 in the big blind turns in two pair on the J97 flop, but the AT stays in to hit his runner runner broadway straight. So, instead being down for a quarter, I’m facing down for $5. I guess I’ll need to concentrate on playing good poker.

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