Daily Update

I'm going to keep doing these until this run to end all bad runs finally hits the finish line. 

 

Last night I played the Cheap Stakes $0.50 tourney on Stars.  I lasted appx. 30 minutes and had only one hand of note.  In the BB I look down at QQ.  There's a 3x raise from MP, and the SB shoves for 1200 chips.  I have slightly more than him. 

 

Keep in mind this is a $0.50 tourney here, so I'm not exactly surrounded by Kid Poker or Hachem.  Well I either want chips or I want to get away from this, so I shove - fully expecting the MP raiser to come along.  He does. 

 

We flip over the following:

MP: AKo

SB: A9s

Me: QQ

 

Flop Q J T w/ two diamonds...holy crap, I flopped top set!!...and I'm way behind the flopped broadway.  But stop the presses...I actually improved my hand.  That in and of itself is noteworthy. 

 

Of course I didn't improve from there. 

 

Then on to a $10 SNG on Tilt.  The usual, I never really got much above a starting stack until we got to five-handed, where AT outlasted A5.  Then I slowly bled down into the money, crashing and burning in 3rd as the short stack. 

 

I can sum this recent experience up as follows:

* I'm having trouble finding good situations to play.  When I have a stealable hand from late pos., there's almost always a strong raise in front of me.  I'm not interested in calling with 78s in this format - I'd much rather raise here, but the stack sizes mean I'll be committing waaayyy too much of my stack on a drawing hand.  Back to the main point - I'm finding it hard to encounter appropriate spots to come into hands aggressively.  And if you can't do that in the first 3-4 levels of a SNG, all of a sudden you have about 10-12 BBs left and your options are just SO limited. 

* I'm not getting enough quality starting hands, and when I do, I'm rarely getting action.

* I've become a bit gunshy on bluffing.  I did run a couple as we got to five-handed in the SNG last night, but I've been looked up SO much more often lately that I'm becoming more hesitant to pull the trigger...not that I ever bluff that much to begin with. 

 

This has definitely affected my mental approach and I need to just go full bore into some games with no reservations to get beyond this.