brief hiatus

Okay, so it's been a while. I've been playing more live cash games lately and have been off-line for a while when it came to poker. Add to that a losing streak I've been on. Well, it hasn't been too bad but I've been using some of my winnings to play some double-shootouts to qualify for the WSOP main event.

Speaking of which, I am planning on playing Event #2 ($1500 buy-in) NL Hold Em tournament on June 2nd. Haven't bought the plane tix yet but I plan on it when I get back from my Austria trip.

Well, I've been playing some cash games at a few places and have been playing well and haven't had a losing session yet. I think I'm 5 for 5 in terms of non-losing sessions. Once I completely broke even so besides that, I've made a good profit.

I played at a friend of mine twice so far. They play .10/.25 games. The typical buy in has been $40. So that's like 160 BB worth of play. Very deep stacked. So I usually sit back and wait for cards and get in there with the best of it and get out when I'm in bad situations. These guys are fast and loose so I stuck out like a sore thumb playing tight and conservative. However, on their own admission, they play for fun. While I also enjoy playing, I want to make money and enjoy the competition of collecting chips. I'm extremely competitive and my enjoyment is beating my opponents with good reads, lay downs and making great poker plays.

Anyway, the cash game has been good to me. I think this part of my game has improved and really rewards my style of play which is to play patiently, tight and selectively aggressive.

Last night, I started back on my winning trend on pokerstars. I was down to my last $15 in my account. I played a $10 sng and took second. Then with that money, I played a $20 sng and took second again. Then I played a $30 and took first.

Then this morning I played another $30 and took first again. So I'm definitely on the hot streak and need to ride this out as long as possible. An interesting note in this particular one today was we were three handed and the chip leader had about just over 50% of the chips while I was slightly tied for 2nd with the other guy.

The chip leader started to get really aggressive with his play by going all-in quite a bit. At first I folded my hands as did the third guy. I understood this guy's game. Since his two opponents were close in chips, it was perfect pickings to be aggressive since we'd try to jockey for second place.

So after about the third all-in by this chip leader, I didn't give him credit for a premium hand. I had Td9d and called. He played 3c8c. He flopped his eight. But I backdoored a straight and doubled up. He began to comment on my play. He said he wouldn't have called an all-in with my hand. I replied back saying I know what he's up to with his all-ins. Then two hands later, he went all in again. This time I had AdJd. He had A8. He couldn't catch an eight and got knocked out in 3rd place. Then he started to berate my play back with the Td9d call. He said I had no clue on how to play sit-n-go tournament structure. I told him I think he's got it backward.

The truth is, the payout structure for a typical sit-n-go is 50-30-20. So what is my incentive to play tight 3 handed with a chip leader who has about half the chips and I'm tied with the third player? The 10 percent difference is negligible. On top of that, he's pushing all in too often to give his hands any kind of credit. With Td9d I'm only a 3:2 dog against AK. And that's about as bad it would get. Additionally, there is no way he'd go all in with AK. He'd do a standard raise. The only hands he would go all-in would be low pocket pairs and maybe high suited connectors like JT or JQ suited. I know the chip leader's mentality would be, "Even if one of them calls my 38, I'm only a 3:2 dog" And that's exactly right. Had I called with AQ or AK, his paired 8 would have won. Then I'd be getting the speech, "You need to get lucky to win these. GG." Fuck that.

If I call with Td9d and lose, I win the 20% of the pot. If I win, I'd be chip leader and I'd have a much better shot at winning first place valued at %50 of the pot. In fact, I'd be a slight favorite to take down first place. Is that worth at worst a 40% shot at winning a pot when the alternative is a guaranteed 3rd place finish? My opponent seems to not think so. I think it's worth it.

Now I'm not saying to go ahead and start taking all kinds of chances but given this specific situation where I'm basically tied for second and short stacked, it's better to take chances and double up than trying to fight for a 10% gain. This is all with the chip leader being overly aggressive. This provides a great opportunity to double up and now take a legitimate shot at 50% of the pot instead of 30%.