WCOOP, bad start, 2 interesting hands

So first of all I've played 5 events so far and have been eliminated within the first 15 minutes of when I got dealt my first hand in 4 of those events and bubbled the 5th, so not good (they were all big coolers or bad beats). Today I played the $320 no limit holdem ante up tournament and the $215 heads up tournament and both of my bust out hands were interesting.

First was the $320 holdem tournament. I began by opening to $50 in mid position with AK, the button (a bad player) called and the sb 3-bet to 250, we both called. The flop came KQ8 rainbow and the sb bet out like 350 into something like an 850 pot. I called and the sb folded. The turn is a 4 and he bets about half the pot. I call again and the river is a 2. At this point my opponent shoves all-in for about the size of the pot. Now, I only have top pair, top kicker, but think about what my opponent can have. I basically only lose to a set here. KQ is kinda possible but very rare (he would have needed to 3-bet preflop with it). Any other 2 pair is basically never. There are no straights or flushes possible. What he has done here is what we call polarizing his range. This simply means he either has a nut hand (in this case, a set) or is bluffing. If we count the number of nut hand combos there are, we see there is only 1 KK combo (2 Ks are out of the deck already), 3 QQ combos, and as for 88, 44, 22, those are going to be so rare that we'll give 1 combo for all of those combined and 1 more for KQ. That gives us about 6 combos that beats me. Since I'm getting about 2-1 on a call, he only needs to have 3 bluff combos in his range to make this a profitable call. When the number of bluff combos required is that small, you don't really have to think about what hands he might be bluffing with, just assume you have to call. I called and he turned over QQ, so I busted in that but it was just an unlucky spot.

My other bust out hand for the day was in the $215 heads up tournament. Going into the match I saw my opponent was a consistent winning player in low stakes tournaments. He kept having the nuts and developed a 2-1 chip lead on me when the following hand arose. I was dealt Td 4d on the button and min raised to 120, he called. The flop came Ac Ad 2d, he checked, I bet 120, and he raised to about 400, I called. The turn was a 6d and he moved all in for like 2000 into a 1040 pot. At this point I know in my head that I am like never folding but decided to stop and think for a second because I think it is closer then most people would think. Based on the way the match had played out up to this point, I felt like he was basically never going to be bluffing here. He hadn't made any big bluffs yet and has been playing very passively. Now if you are playing a good player, they will use their image (or at least might) but I didn't think he was ever going to. Additionally, think about if he has Ax. A naked A doesn't really get called by worse (except a worse A) or get better hands to fold. For this reason, it didn't make much sense for him to be shoving Ax. That brings his range to be boats and flushes. If that was his full range and I didn't believe he was bluffing this would be a very very close spot. (By the way, shoving a boat here isn't a bad play, my range after calling the check raise and then having the flush card hit is very strong and you'd hate to let me not go broke with Ax or a low flush by having a 4th diamond hit on the river). However, even though shoving Ax doesn't make sense, I was under the impression that my opponent wasn't very good and was capable of shoving Ax for one of two reasons: 1, he is protecting against a 4th diamond or 2, he is frustrated by the flush card hitting and so he just shoved. With this in mind, I called and he turned over some weak A and rivered a boat to send me to the rail.

Tomorrow I'll be playing the $265 NLHE 6-max Knockout and the $215 Razz. Hopefully I turn this around.

I didn't get in as many 45 mans as I wanted, but that tends to happen when you are running really bad (2nd graph). This is the longest losing streak by number of games for 45 mans, o well, not a big deal. From the 24th to the 30th I have a bet with some guy (forgot his name) for $1k on playing 400 $45 mans (100 $12s, $27s, $38s, $60s) in 1 week, taking the roi of each and taking $12roi + 2*$27 roi + 3*$38roi + 4*$60 roi, bigger number wins. Hopefully I run better during that bet.

The other graph is posted cause it's pretty funny. It's a player I play with a lot. He is close to finishing an incredible task over a shit load of games. I'm rooting for him.

Just for fun, the second is my 45 and 180 man sngs overall the first is when MI_turtle was registered in it with me. Lol, Nick always crushes me.

A Challenge to anybody

I put up the following on 2+2:

I'll offer anybody the following bet for 45 man turbo sngs on stars:

Over the course of 1 week, we play a minimum of 100 45 man turbos on stars of each stake, $12, $27, $38, $60 (100 EACH). If you don't get at least 100 games of any stake, the difference will all be counted as losses. At the end, we take the roi for each and add them up, higher number wins. If you play more than 100 games of a stake that's ok, just take that roi of ALL the games, as long as you play at least 100. We'll use sharkscope to determine results, it has final say. I'll do it on any week of July as long as it ends by the 30th.

I'll bet anybody between $500 and $1000. If more then 1 person wants to accept I am not going to have more then 1 going on at the same time unless it's a pool where everybody participating is against each other.

First losing month of the year

As the name implies, June was my first losing month of the year. That really sucks considering I played over 80,000 hands. I didn't lose much, basically the entire month I was never really up or down much which was really frustrating since I played so much.

Last night a friend of mine that has been trying $12 45 and 180 mans on stars claimed that somebody 6 tabling $12 135 mans on rush could make more than me playing as many tables as I wanted of $12 45 and 180 mans. He doesn't have the money to bet, but I told him if at any point in his life he wants to bet me on that, he can have anybody in the world play for him against me playing 20+ tables at a time in 45/180 mans and I'll be very confident. He has also been doubting that 15-20% roi is really attainable in those while playing lots of games at a time. At this point I've only played 259, always while in a ton of other games, and have 31% roi in them. The image shows all my 45 mans ($12, $27, $38, $60) and that has an average roi of 23%. Obviously the sample is really small but for fun I think I'm gonna play a ton of these $12 games over like the next week or something and see where I'm at. I'll let you know how it goes (though I might just go back to my normal routine of playing bigger and making more).

Becoming a Supernova

As you can see from my profile pic change, I became a Supernova a couple nights ago. That should be the last time I'm not a Supernova for a very long time (or Supernova Elite). This month has been pretty awful pokerwise. It seems like every time I get anything going I just run bad again shortly. I'm only down about $1000 on the month but that's largely thanks to bonuses and even that is really shitty considering how much I've played. The graph on the right shows my lifetime mtt sngs (45 mans and 180 mans) and you can see the run I'm on in those is pretty depressing. I've also been playing a lot of $104 and $52 double or nothings and not running well. I never really get discourage though. I've been on lots of downswings over my career (many much bigger than this one so far) and it always turns around sooner or later.

Grinding mtt sngs

I've been playing a lot of mtt sngs the last few days, 25 tabling $12 and $36 180 mans, and $27, $38, and $60 45 mans. As you can see from my graph, I've had a lot of success in these games. I actually challenged MI_turtle to a bet for the mtt leaderboard next month but he couldn't do it until August or September, which is when I go back to school.

On another note, I bought a piece of Jorj95's action at the series for $1500 (I already had $1k of him in the $50k 8-game). So hopefully he dominates.