Well, when it comes to sats, anyway. I didn't get anywhere in either of the last two big tournaments - once due to a bad bluff on my part, once due to a bad beat that dropped me down to the 8-15 BB range where I stayed in for the next four hours before mercifully busting - but I feel like I'm playing better, which includes chopping a 525 and a 215 razz sat (probably the only other razz tourney I'm playing this year.)

Today's live NL hand: I'm sitting on the left of Cam Hua, who's, frankly, playing really bad - loose/passive all over the place and pretty much spewing everywhere except for his hand reading, which is still on target. I've already won a nice pot off him with a river overbet with the one card straight nuts that he paid off when, at 50/100, he limps UTG (his range includes K9s here.) I pick up AK in MP1, raise to 400 to isolate, and everyone folds back to him/he calls. (I have ~5500ish and cover him by a fair bit.)

Flop QT7. He checks, but this clobbered his range, so I check behind. The turn is another 7, he instachecks and I check (I'm probably calling a river bet unimproved at this point.)

Except, the river is a K and he bets 550.

The pot is 950 and ordinarily, online, this isn't even a close call - but he knows exactly what I have, and he's still betting. Right after this post, I'm going to go on 2+2, post this hand, and get clobbered by people telling me to call...and they'll probably be wrong. I really feel like I picked the worst of the three options, and that if I wanted to win this pot, what I should have done is to bluff shove, representing the nuts I already got him with one time. More likely, I should have just folded. Instead, I called because I like pot odds and was, of course, shown J9. I need to learn to trust my instincts and go with them more in annoying spots like this one.

Today's razz hand and why I love the idea of a razz tournament even though I'll probably go busto in it ASAP: Six players remain in a sat where the structure is so nuts that the average player has, I'm guessing, maybe 6 BB. After two people including myself fold, the remaining upcards are a 3 (held by Mr. Bracelet Winner from the day before yesterday), a 9 (held by some guy who's attempting to play well but the structure is so fast that he's failing), an 8 (the only other decent player in the field), and the bringin, a 10 held by an Asian guy who's never played razz before and is basically a total newbie.

How to screw up your tournament in one go: Bracelet Winner *open limps* his 3 (I think completing KK in the hole is probably a smaller mistake than this). The 9 calls behind him. The 8 now raises (completes), indicating a decent hand (but who the hell knows), and the 10 looks at his cards and says "I think I have to call" (he has two babies down but can obviously be gotten off his hand on fourth).

I'm fully expecting Mr. Bracelet to now go ahead and reraise so the 8 can 3 bet and try to shut the 10 out, making a huge pot heads up vs. an 8 where he can't possibly be a big dog. Instead, he folds (lol). The 9 follows and the 8 actually gets the hand heads up against the 10!!! The ten pairs on fourth, folds and the 8 doubles his stack without ever seeing fifth street. Completely ridiculous, and why I am going to love this tournament. I don't even care if I run bad, as long as I get to laugh at the play.

Oh yeah - I finally booked a nice, big sat win on top of that, my friend Justin Rollo is at the FT of the 2K, and I won my first ever shot at credit card roulette. Running good is awesome.

The good thing about being a poker player is the ability to set your own hours. A lot of people in and around poker have written a lot of things about keeping yourself in prime shape to play, and some of that is knowing when to take a couple of days off. After the shootout the day before yesterday, I was pretty ready for a nice break, and since there was only a 5K NL event yesterday/no event at all today, it seemed like a good time. Putting in a few hours playing different games instead of grinding out SNG's and tournaments was a nice touch; instead of trying to pushbot and hoping not to get called, I spent some time making street by street decisions in limit and (tonight) some 15/30 razz at the Rio.

Razz is a game that is almost always played in a mediocre to bad fashion (I'll be fair and say I'm mostly including myself here) because it's so math heavy and compounds errors so much - one loose player who makes big mistakes on third or fourth street and locks himself into hands to the river can pretty much make the entire game. Tonight, I played with an Omaha bracelet winner, a guy who presumably understands poker, who was far too loose on third, made himself keep drawing with marginal hands because of it, and visibly tilted because he wound up down so much to people who (despite making big errors like betting with no edge themselves) just destroyed him with their better hand selection. Unfortunately, you never see this game anymore, because of the variance associated with good players playing each other and because bad ones get wiped out ridiculously fast. That's too bad, because it's one of the most fun, and the easiest to play 'decently' - while also giving you the chance to make some nice, thin value bets. It also lets you play one of two diametrically opposing styles depending solely on the guy across from you - you can either bloat pots early, tying both of you to a pot where you have a big equity edge on third, or keep them small and let the other guy make huge equity mistakes on fourth and fifth. Add in some obvious crazy semibluff spots, and it's a very subtle, but rewarding form of poker. I don't pretend to be great at it - I probably give away equity to most of the top FT pros - but, wow, did I ever have an edge over the non-2+2'ers at the table tonight. With that, I've basically talked myself into playing the razz bracelet event on Sunday.

But enough about a game none of my readers care about...tomorrow, it's back to the grind. Three hours of totally different games later, no limit sounds good again.

Also, I got no pocket pairs, AK's or AQ's in 90 minutes. Busto! Meh, there's always the limit shootout next month.

The good news is, other than a 5K event tomorrow that I'm undecided about playing, there's nothing else on the schedule until Friday. Time to catch up on sleep and win a few more satellites.

Today's featured $525 satellite hand:

On the second hand of the tournament, two people limp, an Asian guy in LP makes it 100 (I feel like the stereotype is *always* true here and he's going to be super LAGgy) and it winds up being 4 ways to a K 9x 4 board. It checks to the Asian guy, who overbets the pot and gets two quick calls. Turn 5x; both people check, the Asian guy shoves for 1.5x the pot, the first one folds (what can he possibly have had?) and the second thinks, then calls another overbet shove with 8 5. Sadly, he misses and KJo is good.

Today's featured "how live poker is different" hand:

Later in that same level, two people limp and a woman player in MP makes it 100 (uh oh.) The Asian guy, now with a mountain of chips after busting one more person, calls, as do the limpers, one of whom is a pretty decent younger guy that has to be a winner here.

Flop 9 7 5 . It's checked to the woman, who bets 2/3 into 3 people (uh oh.) The Asian guy instantly min-CR's and the decent limper insta cold calls. The woman then takes roughly half a second to shove her stack in. The Asian guy clearly has a tough decision, hems, haws, and finally checks his hole cards one more time before resignedly calling.

The limper now says "I have a straight flush draw, T 8" and tanks himself. IMO, he should have instafolded here even with the something like 4:1 odds he had, because that last hole card check was obviously diamonds. He mentions the possibility out loud, but finally resignedly calls; sure enough, the Asian guy turns over A Q.

So, yeah, time to catch up on sleep and work on a few projects. The Rio will still be full of bad beats tomorrow :)

Most of those hours, unfortunately, were not in the $2500, as I busted out of that at the 150/300/25 level. My actual bustout hand was fairly uneventful (AK < 77 for 20 BB or so), but there are a few interesting hands, most of them against the same, not very good but thinking LAG opponent. The highlight is flopping a straight flush draw with K 2 on a Q J Tx 3x Jx board, leading all three streets and getting minraised on the river/shown a jack after I folded (I'd lay odds on the other card being a K or 9.) The river was the big decision in that hand - bluffing it cost me about a quarter of my remaining stack - and while the pot was big and I actually thought some of his hands would find a fold there, in retrospect I should probably just give up.

I also had time for four $525 satellites. I ran as bad as ever in three (the highlight was a flop all in against Rainkhan with QT on a QT6, 2 diamond board vs. Qdxd on the very first hand of a sat, which I of course lost), but managed to chop the fourth for a $1500 sat profit on the day. These continue to be ridiculously soft*, and I hope to be crushing them as soon as the runbad stops, since Rainkhan told me just how badly he's dominating these and I'm a better player ;)

*Fun flukey hand: I raise A Q in EP and get called by the BB, a 50ish man who basically looks and acts like more or less of a drunken hobo (but a nice guy!) The flop comes 8 7 2, he looks at his cards - clearly checking the suit - and checks, I mentally say "awesome, lower flush draw no good" and bet; of course, he calls. The turn is the Q, he checks again, I bet about half the pot to keep him in, he takes about 15 seconds and calls again. The river is a club, giving me the nuts and him a lower flush...except that now, he tanks for 30 seconds and checks. Well, okay, he doesn't have a flush, so I'll just bet 2/3 pot or so (half our stacks). Sure enough, he tanks and eventually calls one more time...then, while I'm flipping my cards and dragging the pot, turns over K K and softly asks "What else can I do here?" Wow.

After the sats ended, I went to watch Nath play the stud/8 event for a couple of hours. It's not my best game, but I have a good grasp of the fundamentals, and as Nath was at the table with John Juanda and next to a couple of other pros, it was very interesting seeing them all play. Juanda actually open completed a bring-in (and eventually showed down 262 2 tone), something I've never seen anybody good do before - worth thinking about.

Tomorrow is the NL shootout, where I get to play anywhere from 1 to 3 tables full of people like the KK guy. Please let me run good :)

Unfortunately, I'm continuing to run very bad (0 for 3 big 70/30's in just one Sunday tournament is impressive, honestly, as is running Ax into AA 4 times this week), but in the meantime, there are definitely benefits to being out here. Playing live is certainly different, but the games are so much easier/the players so predictably bad that I can feel myself improving - thinking about new lines, getting people to fold through raw aggression, and opening up my game in a number of areas. Live players telegraph their hands so much and so thoroughly that simply taking away pots, including big ones, is incredibly easier.

A bunch of hands from this week:

1)The hand I posted about a couple of days ago (63d on the AA8 flop) is a fantastic Yeti theorem hand. Bluff recently published a segment on 2+2 poster's Yeti's theorem, which, in a nutshell, is "people who bet/3 bet a paired board never have anything". It's so true, especially on AAx boards, where an ace just never 3 bets a raise (a big mistake pretty often, BTW), especially not a small 3 bet. Pulling the trigger on a four bet with 6 high is something else altogether, though. I have no idea who the button is, but I'm sure I'll be seeing him on TV at some point.

2)In the 1K sat I played last night, I raised with AA and got called by an MP player who then folded QJ face up on a JT7 flop because "I bet so much" (2/3 pot, when we were 100 bets deep - this is a profitable call if he puts me on exactly AA.) This is just another "live players are so bad" post, but this week, I've been trying to see how profitable it is to check TPTK+ after a PFR, especially on multiway boards when I'm sure someone will bet. So far, that's been pretty mixed live (most of them are so straightforward that they just don't bluff no matter how much you want them to, and the rest are so bad that it's irrelevant whether you check or bet) but has gotten some nice results online. Nobody ever believes a PFR followed by a checkraise on a K72 board, either.

3)Another fun hand from the 1K: two limpers at 50/100, I raised to 500 with AK (I'd been raising a lot and had 8Kish behind, covering everyone), they called and the flop is AQJr. Both limpers thought [I was 100% sure that both had at least some piece of this flop], then checked. This is a very tough spot online that most people misplay - the fact is that you usually have too many outs to bet/fold to a CR profitably, and if you follow the predictable "bet the flop, check behind on the turn" line, when either villain bets the river you will often be folding the best hand (because you can't really call that bet profitably.) The correct play here in multiway pots, especially vs opponents that won't 2 barrel bluff, is to check behind and look for cards that change your turn equity (also balancing out the times you check behind with something like 99).

After I checked, the turn bricked off, the first limper bet 800, and the second thought forever and called. Normally, online, this is a close decision between a call and a fold, but live, it was very easy to tell the second guy just didn't have much - a weak ace at best. So I overcalled, the river bricked off as well, we checked through it and I won a nice pot. The interesting part is that I'm pretty sure I missed a small value bet on the end - something very hard to make online against anyone half decent, but pretty easy with live reads. I'll get better at these as the month goes on.

Tomorrow's event is a 2.5K NL freezeout and/or some sats I'm looking forward to; hopefully, it'll break me out of running bad :)