Sunday, April 11, 2004

Howdy, all! Hope everyone is doing well today. I feel great! Glenn and I are doing things around the house I never could have dreamed of a year ago. Little things like painting a room are things most people take for granted; an unwanted chore, put off until the last minute. To me, however, this means FREEDOM! I am no longer a 35 year old stuck in the body of a 90 year old. I took Decker's queue and painted most of a room myself during the last week! Glenn and I area also recarpeting our new house, room by room. This means I am actually living again, not merely just surviving. Yippee!

I'm still playing in the Stud 8 tourneys at Planet. Like I said, the middle-to-late portion of these tournaments is brutal. We can have 30 +/- players left going into level seven (72 minutes into play), but that will quickly become about 10, since the antes go from 25 to 75 in that one jump, and the betting goes from 200/400 to 400/800. I usually take that opportunity to make a couple of big moves. I will steal from small stacks trying to survive and not realizing that they have no hope of survival if they don't double up during this level. I will also play a hand to the river during this level that I might not consider playing during the early, gently rising, levels. If I do engage in a hand during level seven, I'm 99% sure of going all the way. I usually don't have enough chips to make it through the entire hand anyway.

Most of the time, I have the best hand, and it stands up, or I back into an unexpected low and get half of the pot. Naturally I try to scoop, and perhaps triple or quadruple up. It's not always possible, but if I start out with the best hand, I might just end up with the best hand.

Ironically enough, it is not during this level that I usually get eliminated, if I don't make it to the cash. It is normally during the next level. Perhaps it is because I am one of the very few who even realize that the jump is coming, and prepare myself accordingly.

Planet has a very top heavy payout structure, a la the Mike Caro school of poker tourney thought. I like this. I know that flattening the payouts attract more fish, and keep them coming, but I am greedy. When I win, I want most of the money myself. I don't want to be paying some yahoo that came in 53rd place a percentage of the prize-pool. So that means that I bubble a lot at Planet, or just outside the money. I don't mind, I just join up for one of the many Stud 8 tourneys coming up, and get back into the action. Multi-table Stud 8 at Planet is sort of like playing SNG's at Stars, they are available around the clock. This turns a potentially -EV situation into a +EV situation. I can't even tell you the number of other attributes that make this tournament worth playing. Obviously it's not the structure, lol, but in a way, even that can be turned to a weapon to use against my opponents. I like to take advantage of every opportunity to play my best, at all times. Once again, the Mike Caro school of thought. I try to play 100%, no matter the game, the stakes or the set-up. Thanks, Mike!

Last night I played in another Stud 8 tourney, this time coming in 3rd. Only the top 3 paid, so even 3rd was almost 10x my buy-in. I couldn't overcome the chip lead. He came to the table with over 30k in chips, when the rest of us were hovering around 5k. He played every hand, and got enough catches to eliminate most of us. The chip stacks were just so skewed that I couldn't overcome that deficiency, even though I moved up from the shortest stack to 3rd place, due to doubling up through him, while letting him eliminate everyone else.

Jeez, we are up to 8 for the PJK Tourney! I might not win after all, drats!

Tonight is our PJK Tourney. It looks like I may actually have a chance to win, as there are only three of us signed up! Look out, guys, I have the eye of the tiger, maybe I can actually outplay the other two of you! LOL!

Seriously though, I never thought about it being Easter, but I hope we have a fun time anyway.