THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

After a week of firing blanks, I've forgotten what it smells like. I've been playing fine poker, but I can't seem to get the breaks I need to smell success. Actually, I'm smelling it just fine, I can see it and smell it - I just can't taste it. I'm in that top 30% meltdown window. I'm easily getting to the top 50% of runners, then as we're closing in on the top 20%, something seems to go wrong every time of late. In the old days, I was melting down with A8, KJ, 55, and other questionable holdings. Now, I've upgraded my holdings to AK, AQ, JJ, but the results are the same. I am just documenting the misery, not bitching, because whenever I bitch and say that I am mired in a slump, then suddenly things go right and I win a tourney. I know it is just variance getting me back for winning back-to-back last week and it is bound to turn around without notice, so I'll ride it out.

Today, I played three games at once on my PC - all at PokerStars: $100 rebuy, $50 rebuy, and $50 freezeout. I was cruising along in the late stages of all three with no less than $15k at any table and I felt really good about my $550 investment. Each game in turn offered up a cooler hand that would precipitate my demise. In the $50, I made a standard raise UTG with AK and was reraised a healthy amount. We were about even in chips. I thought about mucking, since I wasn't all that invested and he was saying he could beat AK. Then Carl Olson appeared on my shoulder holding a pitchfork and he poked me a couple of times and told me to shove it all in there. I didn't really care to race for all my chips, so I took the weaksuck approach and just called to see if I caught a pair. The flop was KJ9 with two spades. Top pair, top kicker, now I've got to go with it. I knew there was the possibility he just hit his set, but that is an 8:1 shot, so I just had to discount that, just as I discounted the possibility that he had aces, since I had one of my own. I should have kept up the weaksuck approach and just made a pot-sized bet to see how he responded, but instead, I made a massive all-in overbet, which he quickly matched with his set of nines. Out on the bubble.

In the $100 rebuy, I built up a nice $22k stack and I planned to protect it from scavengers. I was stealing the blinds uncontested at a decent enough clip to maintain the stack with slow growth and watching the desperados go all in with each other, awaiting my chance to take down a huge pot. Finally, I got my chance when the button went all in on my big blind as I held AT. I called and he showed Q6, which of course won and cost me a few thousand. When it got down to three tables (two getting paid), again I found a decent hand on the big blind with the button pushing into me. This time I had 88 and he had A6. The ace connected and turned me into a desperado. I picked up the blinds once, but on my second try, my Q/rag was called by A/rag and his better rag hit the river after my rag hit the turn. Out on the bubble.

In the $50 rebuy, I was just waiting for disaster to strike. I got QQ in middle position and when third position raised, I went all in to avoid a flop. He laid it down and I picked up his $1200 along with the blinds. The next hand, it folded to me and I raised with KJ and picked up the blinds. Then the dreaded third hand in a row. The guy who laid down earlier raised again from UTG as I got dealt jacks. I immediately went all-in as before and as soon as I did it, I knew it was a mistake. I even said out loud, I'm certain he's got queens. He sure did and he called and I doubled him up and left myself on a short stack which would soon disappear. Bad day for Dude.