BLEEDING IN TOURNEYS; RAKING IN RINGS

Friday night, I played a $30 MTT in which ten places were paid. I was cruising along as the chip leader or close to it nearly the entire time. I guess I fell into second place right around the bubble, because one confrontation later, I was gone in 12th place. There was a player limping and limping and seeing flop after flop and actually building up quite a stack despite mediocre playing ability. I raised him from the small blind when I stumbled upon AQ. He called and the flop came QT9. I bet out to take the pot down and he put in a huge raise. I thought he could have T9 but he is more likely to have JT or QJ. In a bigger tourney, maybe I lay down top pair here, but with "only" $30 at stake, I came back all in. I thought he might be hesitant to commit all his chips at the bubble, even if he did have T9. He did have T9 and he did call and he did bust me. Of all the rotten flops.

It was late, but I was pissed that I bubbled out again, as I have not made any payouts since my back-to-back showing last week. I fired up a $4/4 NL table at PokerRoom, the first cash game I have played at that site in a very long time. I played for maybe half an hour and won over $700 and called it a night.

Today, I had about 50 people over to swim and celebrate the end of our baseball season. It was my second year as coach of my son's tee ball squad. This year, we were the Pirates, which I made abundantly clear is my favorite team. Two of the parents, independently of one another, slipped me an envelope containing four tickets to a Dodgers/Pirates game in their personal season-ticketholder seats. The great thing is that the games are in two separate series, the first is next weekend and the other is in September. All the parents with kids that are moving up to coach-pitch next season wanted to assure me that they would try to get on my team next year, which was a fine compliment.

After cleanup and a swim, I got to the couch to settle into poker mode. I didn't make any real money, but I did break my dry spell and made the money in two events. I played a $50 at Full Tilt and made the money but cashed only $70. At PokerRoom, I played a $30 Omaha Hi/Lo event just to shake things up, and I made it to 5th place and got paid $100. It's a start. At least I'm viable again going into Sunday and it's requisite $750 investment.