B-2-B

Poker is teh streakaments. Had a couple of hours today in which to relax, and decided to try another small MTT over at poker.com. Smaller entry fee, but I took down the thing, making me two-fer-two for the week.



I'd like to tell you how I crushed the field in this one, but I'd be lying. I had to suck out twice in the early/middle stages just to stay alive. The second suckout got me from endangered to healthy, though; I pushed UTG w/ A-Kx, got a call three seats to my left, and then an all-in re-raise from the cutoff, which was called as well. The re-raiser showed K-K, which was great until I sucked out an ace on the flop. Odd was that the third player made the call with 10-10, and thus departed. Seemed like a hand he could've gotten away from. But I was all of a sudden in the top five in chips with the triple-up.

The one play I was pleased with let me take out the second-place player and gave me a commanding chip lead -- even though I would give a bunch of those chips back later in the final table.

I was in the small blind with an all but worthless 6-3 of diamonds, but there were two limpers before it came around to me. 7:1 to see a flop? (Assuming the BB doesn't jack it up, and he didn't.) Sure. I was back up to over 30 BBs at this point, and a couple of the other deep stacks were in it as well.

Flop comes a heavenly 5-4-2 rainbow... and I bet out for over three fourths of the pot. An aggressive player I'd taken a couple of pots from earlier barely hesitates before pushing all in with 9-9, which was toast barring a runner-runner catch that didn't show. In these low- to medium-dollar tourneys, betting out with a made hand on an all-small board is usually gold, because these players get so trap-conscious that a check-call or check-raise doesn't drag the big pots as often as you'd think. This player was a bit too aggressive but fairly decent, and I think he could have gotten away from his 9-9 if I'd slow-played it, because he had to put me on top pair -- maybe with the straight draw -- when I bet out. As it was I got his chips.

I gave them back to a different player soon enough, due to overplaying A-K when I didn't need to, and then I settled down and tried to play good positional poker as we went from five players to four and then to three. This did wonders for my chip stack. I saved my third suckout for the final hand, when I had a sizable lead and re-raised the short-stacked button all in with A-8. Whoops! He flipped A-10 and would have jumped ahead of me, but a donkalicious eight popped on the river.

Now, if I can just make it three-for-three....