Ugarte's Poker Grovel #12 or Drowning in the River or, more accurately, Bitch Bitch BitchWhile Rick is wielding The Hammer like Thor, it seems that every table I play at is the Nutcracker Suite. It is considered bad form to whine about bad beats, but its my damn blog and I’m in a bad, bad mood.
First of all, Brother of Ugarte tells me that my last Grovel was too long, so this abbreviated Grovel should satisfy his short attention span. Second, it has been quite a while since I was saved by the river. I haven’t even rivered a flush when the odds called for me to try and do so. Understandably, despite my SNG breakthrough earlier this week, it is getting me all twitchy.
Last night I played in two SNGs and crapped out early in both of them. The second is not worth discussing except to give this advice: (1) At 2:30AM, when you have already found yourself falling asleep in the middle of SportsCenter you do not have to play one more game; (2) if you ignore (1), and sit down to play a SNG at 2:30AM do not choose a LIMIT tournament, as it requires an endurance that you no longer posess; (3) if you further choose to ignore (2), write “Omaha = 2 from your hand and 3 from the table” on a post-it and stick it to your monitor as a reminder so that you don’t jam the pot and go all-in at 3:30AM when you don’t actually have the nut straight. That’s all the advice I have to give, and I will now return to bitching about the losses that were not my fault. (Well, I guess it is my fault if I’m wrong, but I don’t want the answer to that question for a while.)
Back to SNG #1 from last night. I hadn’t played particularly well to that point. I was sitting with a moderate stack when I was dealt the beloved AA in late positon. The small stack limped in behind me and I limped also to keep the blinds in for the flop. The SB folded anyway, so three players saw the flop: 2-5-9. The BB made a small bet, the limper called and I called - still building the pot. The turn was a K and there were no flush possibilities. The BB bet, the limper raised all-in, I reraised to put myself all-in in an attempt to keep it heads up (she had shown such garbage in prior showdowns that I was confident in my aces), but the BB called also. I was nervous until I saw their hands. BB showed 94o, which is pretty bad. The limper showed 93o, which is even worse. I could have accepted losing to a player who went all-in with, say, A9, but how does 93 call in the first place? And how does 94 play with any confidence that it isn’t going to get outkicked? Needless to say, I went completely batshit in my apartment when the river was the only 9 left in the deck and I was bounced in 6th. I really should have remained calm. It is quite possible that I am going to have to lose weight if I want to keep playing poker because I don’t think my heart can take this. Anyway, I needed to leave something in my rage-tank for what happened tonight.
I sat down in a .10/.25 NL ring game with $20. I had been playing moderately well, stealing blinds and winning a few small hands, but ultimately was sitting down a couple of bucks after two tough laydowns after betting when a player I respected came over the top. After about an hour I was dealt 6♠6♥ in the BB and I checked with four limpers joining the party. The flop was 6♦-2♦-8♠ and I again I made the minimum bet to get some money in the pot without scaring everyone out and to check for flush draws (which I figured would announce themselves with medium raises) and I got two callers. The turn was 2♠, giving me sixes full (no more flush worries either). The small blind bet in front of me; I assumed that he had trip deuces. I raised, he reraised all-in and I called. He had exactly what I thought: 2♣3♠. So you could color me furious when the case 2 fell on the river and I lost $19 on a full house that I had made on the turn.
To recap: on two consecutive nights I put my opponents on exactly the hand that they were holding. On both situations I got my opponents to commit their stacks when I was holding the best hand and they had very few outs. And in both cases (a four-outer and a f’n one-outer) I was rivered.
And they didn’t even drop a “sorry” into the chat.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go play one last SNG before bed.
(EDIT at 3:09am. I finished in 2d. Maybe PL Omaha/8 is my game. No more Cranky Ugarte, I promise.)
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