So in case you haven’t figured out by now I ended up busting the shootout. The second table was pretty tough. I hadn’t really thought about it til I showed up that morning, but the level of skill after the first table of the shootout goes way up. Normally in an MTT you’re still going to be playing with a few fish up until the very end, but not so much in a shootout I think. Mark Seif was on my left, but no Ivey. Everyone else was unknowns to me. I think I played bad, but I’m going to chalk it up to any of these excuses
- Tough table, I’m more willing to gamble
- Like Ricky Bobby says if you ain’t first you’re last in a shootout. 2nd at your 2nd table pays the same as 9th. I’m more willing to gamble
- Got invited out to dinner with some friends that night and didn’t want to miss it nursing a shortstack for no extra pay
- Fatigue. At this point I’d been in Vegas seven days including the day I arrived and played in tournaments on six of those days. It wears on you.
In reality I think I psyched myself out a bit over all these factors and blew them a bit out of proportion. I should have just played my game and not think about these things. The first real hand I played UTG(who looked exactly like the android from Prometheus but younger) opens and I decide to just flat call QQ in the BB as we’re still 9 handed at this point. Flop is 68T. I check call. Turn is a brick deuce or something I check call again. River is another ten and I lead/block bet a bit less than half pot and he snaps with 9Ts. Not sure how I feel about this one.
Next hand I’m in the small blind with pocket 7s and flat a CO open. Flop is pretty gin 79T two or three spades(I forget, it was like 2 weeks ago!). I lead out and he calls. The turn and river were bricks, I led out and then shove the river to double up to 60k or so. I lose a couple pots after that bleeding away until my final bust out hand arrives.
Same villain from first hand opens utg+1 to 2500, but we’re six handed at this time. I know he’s opening very wide from his 9Ts hand earlier and have 75o in the big blind at 600/1200/200. My stack is 55kish. It folds around and I decide to defend. The flop is 6d9dTd and I have the 7d for the one card seven high straight flush draw. A suckers draw really, but I decide to lead out for 5k. He calls and we see the 3s turn giving me three additional straight outs. I decide to lead out again for 10k and he shoves. It feels like he has a pair in which case its a bit less than 50/50 if he has a diamond if he has a pocket pair, and a bit less than 25% if he has a pair matching the board. Of course he can have the made straight or flush already, but he could also have a set or two pair with no diamond. I have to call 35k into what would be a 115k pot or so I need 30% equity for it to be +EV. I could fold and wait for a better spot and still have 20 big blinds, but I decided to gamble and call it off.
Vs his actual hand I was slightly +EV (34% equity) as he showed up with KT no diamonds but vs his range it’s definitely a -EV call. I kind of hate every decision I made in the hand and think I should just fold preflop despite the great pot odds because of situations exactly like this. Whatever, in my head I justified it with the excuses above, but there’s really no excuse for the hand. Live and learn I guess. If anyone has comments on it I’d appreciate them.
Since I’ve been back I’ve just been relaxing mostly. I had some business to catch up on initially(installed two ATMs my first couple days back) but that’s about it. I went to go see Prometheus Spoiler Alert and it was decent, but felt like such a let down. It was hyped up pretty good and I along with a lot of other people were expecting awesomeness but it just turned into your typical slasher film with better special effects on another planet. Here’s a good link summarizing the gripes http://www.juliansanchez.com/2012/06/11/whats-wrong-with-prometheus-a-partial-list/ I mostly have two complaints about the movie
1. The movie goes through the trouble of coming up with a reasonable explanation for how the humans will be able to communicate with the alien humans (the android studied ancient languages and sorted it out). Then when the climax of the movie comes and they finally meet the alien human face to face and start talking to him he just rips peoples heads off and starts trying the kill the rest of the gang without saying a word. Really? It might as well have been freddy krueger at that point. The best movies are the ones where the villain has reasonable motives. The Rock he was just trying to honor soldiers who died for their country, Predator is big game hunting Alien wants food and to breed. Alien humans? Wants to kill people just cause. Lame.
2. The casting. They dressed up Guy Pearce
as a ninety year old man and put him in the movie for maybe 10 minutes. Why didn’t they just cast an actual old man? I just found out a week after seeing the movie it was even him.
Then they put smokin hot Charlize Theron
as the supporting role and left the lead to Noomi Rapace
Why didn’t they oh I don’t know maybe let the stars be the stars of the movie?
Random, but I stumbled across the best summary I’ve ever found of Obamacare on reddit today.
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vb8vs/eli5_what_exactly_is_obamacare_and_what_did_it/
If you have no idea what Obamacare does like I did and I’m sure 90% of Americans do read that. It’s ridiculous that the actual bill is almost 1000 pages. The constitution is six pages. There’s no reason any bill should ever be longer than the constitution.
Also please sign this poker petition. It probably won’t change anything, but it can’t hurt either. It takes less than 30 seconds.
https://www.change.org/petitions/let-s-tell-congress-to-pass-federal-legislation-licensing-online-poker