Bittersweet biggish cash

It's been awhile since I've updated, but not much has changed. I still haven't tested for PTQs even though they start next weekend, but I've played some limited with Conflux and a decent amount of poker.

I went to the Conflux prerelease and went 2-2. My rares weren't that great, and neither was my manafixing. I had a Sigil of Distinction, but my other rares were pretty unspectacular. A couple of nights later we did a six-man 3v3 team draft, just playing for the rares. We only had enough packs to do SCC, so that's what we did. I firstpicked Resounding Thunder, got passed a Jungle Shrine, Wild Nacatl, then another Jungle Shrine and wound up the pack with some other animals, Resounding Roar, and Esper and Jund Panoramas. I was planning on being straight Naya going into Conflux, but there aren't really enough animals to make that worthwhile, especially with the manafixing. Instead I ended up 5c Naya-based with 4 (!) Matca Rioters and 2 Paragon of the Amesha, plus Fiery Fall, Exploding Borders, and a Charnelhoard Wurm to top it off. I only had one maindeck two-drop creature to go with 2 Kaleidostones, but that was fine since my 3-drops were so good.

The games were pretty uneventful and I 3-0, 6-0ed the draft. Having your Matca Rioters and Charnelhoard Wurm given first strike via Rakeclaw Gargantuan is pretty unfair. The four nonbasics I picked up early allowed me to play one of each basic land and still have really good mana.

On the poker front it's been a wild week. After I requested my weekly paycheck last Friday (the 6th) I decided to try to have a big week and put in quite a few hours over the weekend. Unfortunately I played pretty badly and ran worse and ended up stuck a couple hundred bucks. I tend to exercise avoidance to adverse situations, so I didn't put in many hours Monday through Thursday, and the hours I did put in were scattered about cash games and tournaments, which didn't bear much fruit. Fast forward to yesterday and I'm stuck about $500 for the week and planning ways to mise for the next couple of weeks until I can make back enough to pay myself. I enter a round of 4 Sit-N-Gos and things go fairly well, so I decide to try a handful of MTTs again. Four hours later I'm at the final table of the $26-buyin $12.5k guaranteed with 60% of the chips in play. Depressingly enough, I went for the win instead of trying to just move up to second (which would have been very easy) and ended up busting out in 4th, good for $1300. It sucks to run so hot and get so close to winning a big one and fall short. For the record, 1st would have been $3600 and 2nd was $2300. When you take a step back though, it's a lot of money to me right now and I really needed it.

Strategically, I didn't really do anything differently than I usually do. I just tried to play tight when my table was active and capitalize when I thought I had a good seat to steal blinds. I won a big coinflip with AJo vs A8o vs TT after we were in the money which sent me up to 2nd in chips, and I was able to bully the table and run hot in coinflips to stay in 2nd for the final table. Once there I turned a straight against the other chipleader and took the massive chiplead. I think my downfall included me getting bluffed out of a big pot, but I'll never know.

I'm back to playing a bunch of MTTs today. Seems like a solid plan for the time being. Wish me luck.

E is for Effort

So my weekend was pretty much what I hoped it would be. I even had a hand in celebrating my best friend's 21st birthday. I'm just going through life day by day right now, trying to play enough hours to stay ahead of the bills while enjoying the days as they go by. I even worked out yesterday, and will probably continue to do that off and on in hopes of losing a little weight/becoming healthier.

On the poker front, I'm still playing 25NL, because in the short stint I played in 50NL I wasn't making as much per hour in that game. I'm sure I'll continue to dabble in 50NL once every week or two, because eventually I'm sure it will be profitable to move up, TT and because I'm already adequately bankrolled for it.

TT overpair hand
I think I got confused on this hand because the first preflop raise was a minraised. Normally in a 3bet pot you're free to stack off with an overpair if you think you started with the best hand because your 3bet has made it unprofitable for your opponents to setmine against you. If they flop a set every once in awhile it's fine, because enough of the money is going in preflop that it isn't profitable for them to continue to setmine in that situation (assuming <~110 BB stacks). However, in this situation not enough of the money went in preflop for me to stack off with a weak overpair, even though I didn't think he could have JJ+. PokerStove tells me that I can't stack off if he can only have QhJh+ or a set, but that I can stack off if he'll stack off with 88 or 99. I think my play is fine but I might bounce it around some forums.