What are the odds?

After being in a tournament for about 2 hours and being somewhat low on chips I'm dealt Ah/As. I make a sizeable raise from the big blind with several limpers in the hand, and get 2 calls. I make another bet about half the pot after the flop comes 10h, 2h, 7h. A guy goes all in behind me. I take a few moments to weigh the options and make the call. I have the guy covered by about 2,000 chips anyway. I'm up against a flush (Jh, 3h) that I can't figure out how the guy called the preflop raise, but whatever. I need another heart or the board to pair and an A to fall, but don't get it as the last 2 cards are complete blanks.

Somehow the guy tries to make a comment about my play being stupid. 2 things are wrong with this: 1) He won money from my play, he shouldn't complain or be insulting about it; 2) He called a large preflop raise with Jh/3h. That's stupid in and of itself. I tell him both things and get no response for the short time I'm left at the table.

The very next hand I get dealt Ad/Ah. I go all in with my remaining 2,000 chips. I get a call from 1 person who has As/Jd. The flop comes Ks, 10d, Qh. I'm drawing dead to a chop at this point. But no J falls and I go out from around 14,000 chips in 2 hands with pocket Aces.

What are the odds of being dealt pocket Aces twice in a row? What are the odds that you lose both of them also? If luck was balanced, I'm betting I should probably buy a lottery ticket for the swing back to good luck at this point.

Bad Luck Happens

I've been playing small wager large tournaments on Pokerstars. Like $2.20 entry (or sometimes the frequent player points) 4000 players type games. After 5 such tournaments, I've placed top 2.5% in one, top 5% in another and top 10% in the one I played last night. Pretty good. It's not been a lot of money made doing it, but I seem to do a little better in tournament format than doing cash games (I think table selection, lower bankrolls, and not knowing when to switch tables or "cash out" are my biggest downfalls here).

So today, I decide I'll take a foray into a tournament a touch higher. $4.40 buy in. When I joined there was just over 1200 players in the tournament with a $5,000 guaranteed prize pool. I figure one day, I might just win one of these things (yeah right!) for a nice payout. For example, this one would have paid around $1,300 to the winner after all the late registrants.

However, it was not to be today. I somehow managed to stay in the tournament for a little over an hour. This was a feat in and of itself. 85 Hands dealt to me, a total of 5 played. And 3 of those were cheap buy ins from the blind positions. It seemed like every time I was in the blind or in position, I would get terrible cards or mediocre at best (like J/4 suited) and get a big raise before me or a raise that would put me all in after a BB call in position. I bled chips most of the game, only getting 1 Ace, which was paired with an off suit 2 and the resulting flop was a straight draw. An all-in bet put an end to the hopes I was winning that pot though. Until the hand I went out with, the best I had seen was probably my K/9 of hearts that I flushed with and was probably the reason I got to stick around for as long as I did. I never had 2 paint cards (not even paint and a 10). I never got mid range suited connectors even. On top of this, watching the play after folding this horrible hands, I didn't see a single one that I could have won by the cards that came to the board. It was seriously the worst 85 hands in a row I've ever seen. I'd say you have about the same odds of hitting a jackpot as you would getting dealt a worse 85 hands in a row (with the subsequent boards being part of the hand). 85 hands, and could only win 1 (granted I can't be sure none would have won since I don't get to see everyone's cards and sometimes you don't even see the flop or the board is incomplete. But I didn't notice a single time when I truly thought I could have won the pot).

Down to $1200 in chips with blinds at $100/$200 with an ante of $50, I get a pair of pocket 9s. I'm out of position, but I pretty much have to make a move. I raise to $800, almost hoping to just take the blinds. I get pushed all in by a K/8 off suit on the button. Flop comes K, 8, 8. I have no idea what the last 2 cards were because I closed the window right there in disgust.

You've been left out

I have been playing poker a bit here and there for the last few days. After another somewhat annoying and bad live tournament game with my friends, I decided to go ahead and jump back into the online poker ring.

I've actually done very well. I've went from a paltry ~$2.80 back up to ~$45. I'm barely shy of my initial investment. I'm extremely happy about this, as I honestly thought I was never going to make it back to that level.

I'm also using a nifty little program called PokerTracker now. It helps me identify what cards I'm playing, in what position, and how I'm doing with those cards and/or positions. No surprise, I've made most of my money from late positions and the biggest sum on the button.

It also gives a HUD during play that gives nice information like percentages of how often a player raises preflop, how often he/she plays aggressive, etc. Really makes those tough decisions a little easier. I also think it will really help me out when I start trying multiple tables again. And yes, that is a goal. For one thing, I'm getting bored somewhat too often waiting on people to play, even in "fast" games. For another, this could really boost my potential profit. If I can level it at 75% of my normal profit between 2 tables, I'm making 50% more than I would by playing a single table, and I think it'll be less boring and annoying. It will also force me to forget that last bad beat or stupid play quicker and prevent tilts (hopefully).

I was mainly keeping up with my stats on here as a way of book keeping. However, poker tracker now does that for me. So, I'm discontinuing the tracking of my profits in so specific a way through the blog. I will however try to keep some updates, as this is a big experiment and that's part of the reason for blogging about it. I just don't want to keep such an accurate and detailed history on the blog, it's a waste of my time since I have another easier & quicker way of doing it now.

Break Time

I'm attempting to take a break from poker. Both my weekly live game and the online thing. I've been infuriated with the way the cards are treating me for about 2 weeks and I really need to just cool off before sitting back down to it. Otherwise, I'm just going to lose all the investment I've put into it.