Ridiculous

Horrible, horrible luck tonight.

First, I go down with top two pair, to a joker who played a 78 offsuit and turned a straight. Second, I go down with a flopped two pair vs. a flopped flush. What do you do? I guess I could have tried harder to let my hand go in the first one. The second one, there's not much I could do. My opponent is a fish and I know he'll chase and the odds he flopped it are low, so I have to play it ultra-strong. I want him to fold his draw. The only alternative is to play horribly weak.

You'll never get anywhere folding strong hands or letting your opponents catch you when you're ahead.

The third Wil Wheaton Dot Net tourney starts in 15 minutes; I've already registered. I've also decided to try a little six-handed Limit action -- let's see how that pans out.

Event	Place	Buyin	Win	Net	Running Total	ROI
Carry Forward		$264	$306	$42	$42	16%
Tourney 13	9	$22	$0	-$22	$20	4%
Tourney 14	6	$22	$0	-$22	-$2	0%

[Edit 9:00 PM]

I'm currently in 3rd chip position of the WWdN tourney, and I've been playing like, as Carlos Mencia would say, a total Dee Dee-Dee.

Early on, there's a guy directly to my right playing ridiculously aggressive, pushing all of his chips into small pots and otherwise drawing attention to himself. So, I decided to call him down with top pair. Turns out he had flopped two pair. Dee dee-dee! But, the river gives me a straight, so I double up when I should have busted out.

I'm sure that tilted him, because he pushed in preflop with a baby ace next hand. Luckily, I had pocket jacks, so I called him. My hand held up.

So, I then proceeded to splash around my shiny new stack of chips, until I'd lost over a third of them. Now, there's another guy across from the table playing too many hands and raising too much. And since I'm on tilt, that makes him like a matador and me like a bull. I decide to make him pay with an AQ. I know he's playing crap cards...

So, we end up all in on the turn, on a board that is four to a straight, and all I have is overcards. He rolls over the six that completes the straight. Dee dee-dee! And what happens on the river? A six drops and we chop the pot.

So, this guys's pissed off at me now. A few hands later, I have pocket eights and he overcalls behind a short stack three seats to my left. Oh, crap, I say, especially when an ace flops along with two diamonds. Unhappy guy makes a bet of about 1/3 the pot, so I call, hoping for a nice turn. The third guy calls behind and is all in. The turn is another diamond. I'm four to a weak flush, and I'm pretty sure my pair needs to become a threesome to be a good hand. But the other guy places a tiny little minimum bet. Since I'm tilting, I call, willing to gamble that if the flush hits it's good. After all, if I have correctly put the other two on diamonds, and since the ace of diamonds is on the board, then at best they could have one diamond each. That means that my diamond on average will be about as high as the average diamond they might have.

The river is another diamond. He checks. I check behind, and drag the pot.

Now we're at the break and I think I've cooled down a bit and I have a whole hell of a lot of chips. Let's see if I can act like a poker player and not a donkey for the rest of this tournament.

Oh, and I hate Limit Holdem tournaments on Poker Stars. They need to escalate the blinds a bit slower. I won't be playing any more Limit tourneys over there unless some of them are of the new "deep stack" variety they just introduced. Their standard structure is just too susceptible to random luck to be enjoyable for me.

As I've typed this, the break has ended, and my favorite new nemesis just luckboxed up a flush playing 96 suited. I'm going to do my best to take his stack.

[Edit 9:22 PM]

Mission accomplished. I catch QQ under the gun and raise to 4x the BB. Homey pushes, I call, he has A4 of hearts, I win. I also got an extra 600 chips from a guy in middle position who just flatcalled my opening salvo.

Ok, time to quit "live blogging" this and go win the tourney.