I’m not sure how to characterize the first month of league play. I guess I’ve done respectably — I’m 7th in overall points, but I haven’t claimed a seat in the big WSOP freeroll, which is clearly a major goal.
My earn rate is well down compared against limit ring play, but I’ve been having a lot of fun. I am up on the season and I’ve played a few 2 and 3 table SnGs, since they seem like good practice for the ITH events. Even at reasonable buy-ins ($55), the play is a tremendous amount worse than the ITH events. There is a lot of pushing and calling with crap, people going broke with overcards and silly stuff like that. I’ve been playing more specularive hands and stacking people when they hit. I’ve had to train myself not to try to resteal and blow tight players off of their hands. It doesn’t work as well outside of ITH!
I’ve become a lot more confident in my short stack game. Watching Suited has given me more patience and I’ve made nice recoveries from very short stacks twice in ITH events now. In todays event, I was down to around 400 chips (and dead last) in the early going and managed to build back up and finish 5th. When we were down to 5, I foolishly decided to push on Taz who raised UTG. I thought he could be raising a wide range of poor hands short handed that he would let go to a push and if he called, I’d probably have a coin flip. It turns out he had QQ and AJ wasn’t a coin flip. At least he put my chips to good use and won the event.
The ITH games provide some interesting meta-game moments, when people do something because they know that you know that they shouldn’t. I got caught twice calling an all-in bet pre-flop because I was sure they wouldn’t push a strong hand. Being wrong the first time was just one of those things, but falling for it twice was stupid. A lot of people think I’m a maniac, which leads to some interesting situations too. I get called in spots where other people wouldn’t. I try to keep track of who thinks what, but it is tricky.  Playing tourneys with the same people over and over makes it a lot more interesting and fun. I just wish they were worse at it!
