I flopped the nuts!

Took second in a home tournament tonight (always with the rebuy tournaments that I don’t rebuy into: with a ton of extra entries, somehow I manage to keep my cool).  There was a hand that I’m pretty proud of:

We’re at 500/1000 blinds, and I’m big blind.  Button pushes all-in for 1050, and small blind reraises all-in for 500 more.  These are the smallest stacks at the table, and I’m well ahead of them (although first place has me well covered, he’s folded).  I don’t need to play the hand, unless I think I have something that plays well in a three-way pot.  And then I look down at… 7d 4d.

Gorgeous.  Live cards.  Getting 8-1 on my 500, I am jumping to get money in. 

Small blind shows me AKo and says "I have a bad feeling about this."

Button confirms his worst suspicions: AA.  One of them is the diamond, so I need three of those and not four.  And the board comes made to order: two diamonds on the flop, one on the turn, none on the river, and I’m set.  (Oddly enough, since the small blind started the hand with more money, his third-place AK got him paid, the AA went out in fourth.)

How could I be so confident?  Sure, AA had me a little nervous when I saw it (I’d be 32% against AKo and AQs, and I was only 21% against AKo and AA), but I’m having a hard time concocting a situation in Poker Stove where I don’t have the odds to call all-in.  I knew it was right, I did it, and it paid.

12/31, 1/1, and 1/2 were all all-time highs for my bankroll.  I went to bed on the 2nd fifty-six cents away from $800.  Five of the next seven days would be losing ones, three more than $100, and so I gave up a couple months’ progress.  Not a huge deal: variance had been very good to me for a while, and payback is inevitable.

Here’s the good news: dropping below $500 meant leaving $50NL for $25NL, and I’m a better player than I was when I left $25NL the first time, so sessions have been more positive more often.  I’m still up in the air on my tournament play: I redeposited at Party just to play their $10+1s, but 800 chips and killer blinds in the fourth round just put in me bad situations more often than I would like.  I did have one memorable tournament (out in fourth) where I’d been pushing my 5BB stack with every A, K, or pair that came my way.  I survived for a long time doing this, but when I finally got caught (with T9s vs. 77 - a matchup I’ll take any day shortstacked), the table just lit up: they were so glad I was gone… it’s such an effective strategy.  When they’re glad you’re leaving, you’re doing something right.

I read the NL chapter of Super System, and it didn’t really move me that much.  I guess it brought some of the value of draws into perspective, but I don’t play that many drawing hands to begin with.  (Of course, if you’re going to start, you learn a lot about position, and a lot about post-flop play, but I think there’s also a reason people don’t use his system as the foundation of their game.)  He likes to get all-in with crazy draws and have people fold.  I suppose that works for some people, but at the low levels, you’re putting your crazy draws up against other crazy draws, and people don’t fold.

I cashed out of everything to collect a Party bonus I’d heard about, but BonusWhores.com decided not to tell me when Party withdrew the bonus, so it was all for naught.  I did just deposit my bankroll at Paradise to do their Super Bowl weekend bonus, and if the Seahawks win, I go to the freeroll tournament.  Go SEAHAWKS+4!