The Shark Tank

I had a rough time after the dinner break.  I believed that I had a good tight image and that would serve me well now that we were at teh critical blind stealing period.  Unfortunately, it may have backfired as I made three pre-flop raises and got chased out of the pot all three times.  Once I got to the see the flop with KQs, but the flop came out monotone and Ace high and the other player pushed.  The other two times (AQ and AJs) another player either pushed or made a big re-raise and I had to let it go.  With the blinds at 600/1,200 and 100 chip antes, it didn’t take very many of these to eat up my chip stack.

I got short and doubled up with AT where I pushed to isolate a crazy player who had been raising with anything and everything.  He had me dominated in this case and I sucked out on him to get back up to average.  Just a couple of hands later, the SB pushed about about 1/2 my stack and I called with A9s.  He had KT, but flopped a ten.  At the start of the next level, I was in the SB with 11,000 chips when the button raised 4,000.  He just barely had me covered and a call of the raise would have committed me, so I pushed with 77.   Jean-Robert Bellande pushed behind me in the BB.  The button hemmed and hawed and eventually called with AJ.  Bellande had Ax.  I was dodging two Aces and three Jacks, so it was about as good as I could have hoped for.  Unfortunately, an Ace fell and I was out.

I think Joannie Liu was at my table, based on something she said in chat with Bellande about finishing 4th recently and at least two other players at the table knew each other from playing these events, but I didn’t recoginze them.  Bellande was fairly amusing.  There was an old guy at the table whose play was quite unusual.  He would min raise almost anything and virtually any time you bet the flop or turn he would raise you the exact amount you bet.  He ran an angle-shoot on me where he checked out of turn and then raised my bet.  There was some confusion about whether or not that should be allowed.  The floor was called and let him do it.  I probably shouldn’t have bet, because then I had to fold a gutshot draw.  He also sucked out a few big pots on Bellande, who was quite vocal about his unhappiness with that result.  He ought to go deep into the money, because he has about 90,000 chips at the moment.

I feel like I played pretty well, although it may take me too much time to get reads on other players.  When I was at my first table, I felt like I had a really good feel for what everyone had, but when I got moved and moved again, it took me some time to figure out what was going on.  I also probably got bullied off of pots in situations I probably should have been more willing to go broke on.

Maybe in a day or two I’ll feel better about finishing 91/365, but right now I’m annoyed.  I heard from Wade who has arrived in town and I’m going to probably hook up with him for some cash game action tonight.  That seems to be what I do best, anyhow.

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