SUPER SATURDAY

Two weekends ago, I had a horrendous Saturday, which I'm only now ready to recap. The first tournament was the HUGE Become a Poker Pro event. There were 69 entrants and it was to play down to the top ten, which would then go on to play a live event in a location to be announced. We started with $10,000 and 30-minute blind levels. Going into the second level, I was down a smidge at 9,720. Half an hour later, I was holding steady at 9,895. Then, the blinds increased to $50/100 and I was down at $6,845.

I remember the hand that killed me. I held A2c and the flop came AJT with two clubs. I called a big bet and the turn came J. This improved my hand to a ten kicker rather than deuce, but I was still hoping to catch a club. I called another big bet, hoping for at least a chop. The river was a ten and my opponent went all in. He's saying he has a jack, but even if he has AK I am beaten. I can't put all my chips at risk looking for a chop, so I folded.

It was downhill from there. At the start of the fifth level, I had $5,520 and needed a good run. At one point I got so low, I pushed all in with KJ just for a fighting chance to double up. DJdaddio called with AT but I sucked out on him. My golden missed opportunity came when I called a multiway pot with KQ. The button raised behind me and everybody called the raise. The flop came king-high with no danger of flush or straight draws. It was an ideal flop for me to push in, but I stupidly checked and the preflop raiser allowed it to check around. The turn was an 8 and it again checked around to me. I made a big bet, which was called in two places. I checked the river and discovered that I was beat by a set of eights. If I had pushed in at the flop, I would still be a force, but now I was crippled and soon after I was out in 54th place. My Monaco compatriot mdjohnny made the final table. My other Monaco compatriot badassmuther1 was the first player bounced.

Since I had the entire day earmarked for poker, I got into the Big Deal tournament since I had a $300 ticket gunnysacked. When I failed to finish in the money, I used my other gunnysacked ticket to enter into the $420 WPT stage 2 tourney. Again, I busted out far from the money. It was a trifecta of suckiness. No money, and three major events wasted.

Now it is ten days later, and I can see that I was in a poker slump that day. I had gotten into a bad habit of calling off too many chips preflop with fantasy hands. I was playing every T9, 87, 65 looking for that magical flop that would enable me to bust the other guy even if he was holding aces. There are times to play hands like this, but I wasn't waiting for good times, I was playing them out of postion, against raises, against short-stacks - basically, I was playing losing poker. I was putting money in the middle in the manner that I wish my opponents to do - call, call, call. Too bad I had to waste my golden tickets on a day I was slumping, but when I'm in the slump I can't tell it's a slump, it feels more like bad luck. Only ten days later can I call it a slump. I'm back to playing winning poker now.