Well, I finally came off my “I’m emotionally likely to be on tilt so let’s not risk money” hiatus today, and immediately did something stupid.

Luckily, the poker gods saw fit to neither punish nor reward me for my insolence. I decided I needed to continue playing, but that it would be wise to take action to ensure I don’t try to end this dramatically again.

There, if I don’t see the higher buy-in games in the lobby I’m less likely to go “I will end this in one blow!” all stupid-like. I also did this for cash tables.

The two-table MTT I played was interesting. I doubled up with early when utg raised the pot, I 3-bet with AAK7, committing half my stack. The original raised flat called, and I shoved on the fop of KJ8. He snaps me off with J743, and the turn is an 8, severely reducing his outs. The river falls blank as well. I then lost about 2/3 of my stack before the final table just due to raising good hands at high blinds, getting about 4 calls and completely missing the flop. I can’t bluff shove into too many people without even a good low draw, unfortunately.

I doubled up twice in short time at the final table and became the chipleader. Unfortunately, the blinds were super high by that point. By 1k/2k blinds we were still on the bubble (5 remaining, 4 places pay). Since any gain to my BR is important in this contest I folded a lot of marginally profitable spots, which was made worse by the fact that the short stacks kept getting the magic nuts every damn hand they got all-in. Eventually I was left with 854 chips. UTG shoved for 862 total, and got several calls. He was eliminated that hand, and another player decided to suicide, getting me third.

The last sng I played for the day was strange. I didn’t gain many chips until I got a timely doubleup near the bubble. On the bubble a player shoved into my bb and even though I had a weak hand I called since the short stack had so few chips and it wouldn’t hurt me much. I got lucky and scooped, and took out one of the other players on the next hand, leaving me with about a 4:5 chip disadvantage going into heads up. Before I could start to play, I noticed the other player was sitting out. I managed to blind them off to about 1.8k chips before they arrived and that very hand we got it in preflop, and I scooped for an easy win.

So, I got stupid, dodged burning away a third of my BR, and then played smart for the rest of the time I played today. I even closed the software after taking my screenshots and am not opening it again until I’m ready for another playing session.

I will say, the hard part here really is finishing, and the main reason it’s hard to stay in high spirits is because of the lack of content from my competitor. You might think I’d be fistpumping that basically all I have to do is take my time and finish this out. Believe me, it’s a really great spot to be in, but I have to admit that, oddly, I would probably feel more encouraged to try harder if he collected even just ten cans and posted -something- for me. I think it’s partly because I do need to send in these blog updates, and while I can rant about stuff I don’t really believe all I want, and maybe some people find it funny, let’s be truthful- the reason people are here is to see a guy collecting cans to try and defeat his opponent. Without him trying, this is just a microstakes poker blog, and that isn’t all that interesting.

So, I will try to come up with some ridiculous stuff for next time to make it a little more entertaining.

Current BR: $71.xx (sorry, I don’t remember the exact cents at the moment.)