The weeee hours of the morning....

WARNING: LONG ENTRY

I went to bed at 3:30 a.m. last night. The last couple of weeks, I feel like I am in college again, going to bed so late. The difference is that I can't cut work the way I used to cut class. =) However, the underlying reason for my late bedtimes is almost always due to a final table appearance, thereby justifying my fatigue the next day. That's right, tiredness does have a price...I would prefer the price to be winning the tourney as opposed to 7th and 8th place, which I seem to have a lock on, but for now, as long as I am making final tables, that's fine. So I finished 8th for a $750 cash, which covered all my buy ins for yesterday pretty much. I will work on strategy to build chips at final table. I have made more final tables in the last week and a half than in the last four months. There is definitely something to be said for that.

Additionally, considering the beats I took on the cruise and over the weekend, I cannot say that I am on either a good run or a bad run, I'm kind of just doing my thing. For a period of 2 hours last night, after the rebuy period ended, I did get a series of unbeatable hands, but I was also a big stack with an aggressive image, which is huge.

In any case, I made the final table and lost when my10s failed to hold up to AJ, Ace on the river. I was satisfied with how I played. I was a bit overly aggressive at times, but that has been my strategy for building chips late in tourneys, so I think I played well. One of my friends pointed out that I don't necessarily need to raise so much, especially when the difference between 3x the bb and 4x the bb is significant to my stack, and I agree. However, I think, to some extent, it depends who my opponent is. I know great players who will see a small raise as weak and a large raise as strong, and attack my bet that way, especially if they have a lot of chips. But, at the same time, there are only a few players that are capable of doing that. Overall, I agree with him that I can fine tune my game by raising a little bit less when blinds are extremely high.

I think another aspect of my game that needs improvement is I have to work on is switching gears. I am capable of playing tight in the beginning and then LAG style, but then I get stuck in LAG. It is, to some extent, addicting to be the aggressor at the table. And at some tables, like one of the ones I was at last night, it is extremely beneficial to continue to be the aggressor. But at a table full of good players, I will get mutilated if I do not change it up. So I believe another weakness I must work on is shifting gears more smoothly and more often.

ANNUAL FATAL HANDS

I have a ridiculous, just-for-fun theory that each year, there is one hand that is an overiding disappointment and exit point in many tourneys.

10s have been deemed the fatal hand of 2007. In 2004, it was QQ. At least 1/2 a dozen tourneys that year, I busted out with QQ. In 2005, it was 10s. So bad for me. I busted out of several tourneys with 10s that year. In 2006, I don't think there was a fatal hand. I do specifically recall losing with KK quite often in online satellites, but I do not think that is enough to qualify it as the Annual Fatal Hand. Actually, I believe it could have been AK, but only against a weaker Ace. I seemed to lose a lot of those that year. Sigh.

10s are definitely the 2007 Annual Fatal Hand. It is only May, and I can count more than a dozen tourneys that I exited with 10s, because I had to take a race. Even one that included a race against Q10 (HAHA, he flopped the nuts, i need not say more).

Theory #2: The Deuce Factor

This is not really theory than more of a simple science issue. There is an invisible magnet inside me, with varying amounts of strength on different tournament days. The stronger the mangnet is, the more deuces I see. This magnet was discovered in Dec 2005, during the $1k WSOP event at Harahs. I built a big stack right away and then proceeded to get a 2 almost every other hand. I started counting, and in 90 minutes, I had gotten something like 34 hands that contained a two. That is so sick. And then I bubbled, 39 out of 300, with 27 paying. Yek. I am considering having surgery to get my deuce magnet removed, but then, what will I do if I can't count 2s during my tournament? And then that means, I can never flop a set or get quad twos, so I think, for all intents and purposes, it may be better to just leave it alone.

More later...

Good luck and peace,

Lucky C.