Big score and big heartbreak...

Pretty fun game we play, sometimes.

Funny how in my last post, I have no action over a couple weeks, and then in the next few days, I come across two of my more interesting tournaments of the year.

On Saturday I played a few afternoon tournaments. At first it looked like just another brutal day, taking 8th in the afternoon PokerStars $320, and 7th in their $50+R. Buttttt... I kept battling, and played out my last table, the UB $320 100k deepstack.

I had a bunch of wild bad beats in both directions... I lost a huge 2 outer with 4 tables left, then won an even bigger one with 3 tables left. I hit a massive card rush just before the FT, and my short stack shot up to 2nd place.

My rungood continued at the final table. I had a good aggressive player, IEATDONKS, on my immediate left, making things tough for me. He was reraising me very frequently, and since we were the only two monster stacks, it was very hard to play back at him.

Fortunately, a little bit of good luck has a way of overriding these things. After getting 3-bet by him for the millionth time, I decided to finally play back a bit, and took a flop with QJcc.

The flop was 8c5c4x, a huge luxury for me, since I was planning on playing back at him on almost any decent flop. Naturally, I checkshoved, but somehow he showed up with AA... good timing by me, clearly. A Q on the turn gave me some extra outs, but they turned out to be unnecessary, as I binked a club on the river for an enormous pot. Yay.

I was pretty much able to ride those chips down to heads up, where I went in even-stacked (1 or 2 bb chiplead) with a pretty weak-tight player. First was ~~25k, and 2nd was ~15k. I took a shot, and said I would chop only if he gave me some extra, even though we had even stacks. I was very much willing to play it out, but I figured if I could avoid a 10k heads-up and take advantage of a good chop, that it'd be worth it. Long story short, I ended up taking $21.2k to his $19k flat. Even though we had even stacks. Pretty good deal, I'd say... and another much-needed big score/win (I'm counting it as a 1st, gfy).

Butttt... clearly karma was all over me when I was running good in that tournament, because it decided to instantly hand me a brutal Sunday, and a heartbreaking Monday night.

Even though I only played four tournaments, Monday was pretty unbelievable. I had some good luck deep in the PokerStars $100+R, followed by some horrible luck at the final two tables. Though I was briefly 4 of 13, I ended up taking a very disappointing 12th place. Little did I know how insignificant this would seem by the end of the night.

After this finish, I was one-tabling my long-time nemesis, the Full Tilt $1k Monday. This tournament has given me some of my biggest scores (a 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th, and a few more FTs) and biggest pains (AA<QQ for a monster CL or bust with 10 left comes to mind). Last night was just another for the books.

I was short stacked going into the money, but went on a big rush over three hands, going from 25k to almost 100k. At the final two tables, I got as high as 150k, when I lost a 100k flip blind on blind 33<JT. This put me back down to 100k, and one orbit later this hand went down, with 13 left...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4825389

ehrjkjklqeklqekljeq. For a third place stack or bust, gg me in 13th place.

Nevertheless, I'm back at the tables as I post this, and plan on playing a lot over the next couple days. These close calls only make me hungrier, so I'll only feel OK once I take down another big tournament.

So I think I'm gonna go do that. = )

-AJK