Here we are, one week into the Historic (I'm going to claim it's Historic, just work with me, OK?) Battle of the Blogger Tournament Series III - so important, and as we have already established, Historic, that I have bequeathed it roman numerals.
OK, I think I side-tracked myself there, so let me start over.
BBT3: it's happening.
I have been able to make three of the first five tournaments, a strike-rate of blogger event attrendance that I have not approached in a looooooooong time. I was unable to make Tuesday's tournament because... well, because I was busy getting drunk with All-Star. Wednesdays are bad for me in general, since I have my writing group, and now might have footy training that night (which means Tuesdays might look a bit iffy, if we move the writing group, but I digress).
So far my story has been one of consistency, but ultimately disappointment. I satellited my way into
Miami Don's Big Game, and managed to make it to the final two tables, busting in 11th (or maybe 12th). I suffered a couple of beats late; nothing outrageous, but the kinds of 60-40s that have to hold when the blinds are so massive in terms of your stack size for you to do much damage. I then got my money in a little earlier than I would have liked in the wash-up. The cash was nice, however, given the buy-in and the fact I managed to satellite into the event.
The first
Hoy event of BBT3 was interesting; I don't play much 6-max (either cash or tournament), but I seem to do alright in them, taking into account the small sample size. Second hand in I watched
Mike almost double against NumbBono with set vs overpair on the flop, while I chipped up a little early with some aggressive play. This allowed my to double through Mike (crippling him in the process) with my own set vs overpair on the flop. From this platform I was able to stay in the top few positions of the leaderboard for most of the way through the tournament, when I slipped to the middle of the pack, when I managed to trick someone into gifting me their stack. This put me in third with 22 remaining, with 12 cashing.
I busted in 17th.
I had made the points, but was again unhappy with the finish, especially given the position I found myself in late.
On Thursday I logged into Full Tilt for the Riverchasers tournament, fully expecting it to be NLHE. Not to be! PLO was the name of the game, and similarly to my 6-max NLHE game, PLO is something that I have not much played in tournaments (or cash, really), but have had some
good results. I do have a strategy for playing PLO (essentially it's as follows: see as many flops as possible as cheap as possible, try to flop a monster, get as much money in as possible; once the blinds get high, open-raise much more often to try and take down the blinds and antes, play AAxx in particular fast and furious before the flop), which I followed diligently, and allowed me to coast along before building a decent stack. I was sitting pretty, with 10 people left and a couple of shorties at my table, when I pulled a very questionable and out-of-position mostly-bluff-re-raise on the flop against the monster stack. It takes a lot of skill to get that much wrong, people! Strangely this move didn't work, and I busted on the money (and Final Table) bubble. Again I was in the points, but didn't get anywhere near as deep as I hoped.
So after it is all said and done, my consistent play has got me into 9th place on the
BBT3 leaderboard. I'm in the mix right now for the "end of month" prize, but I either need to keep being uber-consistent, or to at least take down a tournament, both which are easier said than done. Factor in work blowing up for me, and things become even murkier. Thankfully, given satellites and such, I am also in the black for the tournament series so far, which is also an aim I have.
The most interesting wrinkle for me so far has been the appearance of Scott Fischman. I noted his registering for the first event, which he duly took down after apparently sucking out against half the field. In his defense, from what I saw of his play, he was playing a lot of flops and taking down a lot of pots there and then, which built his stack up enough for him to play his draws and such hard and make a lot of questionable calls against short stacks. Again, people who played against him for longer may have a better impression, but that's what I saw happening. Despite playing in every event so far, Scott has not hit the points again, and it will be interesting to see if he keeps up his attendance.