Today I had to deal with my personal life and didn’t really have time to freeroll. I’d say that’s a pretty sick beat. All I managed to play was a 7500 man PLO Rush Poker freeroll on Full Tilt. The entire game really works one way- Nobody plays well, and since this is Rush one can get away with playing a superior hand range and watching people throw their stacks at you.

http://weaktight.com/3177749
http://weaktight.com/3177751
http://weaktight.com/3177752

As you can see from these hands, that never stops being true. My plan was to get a lot of chips and generally play tight. When I have over 80bb I don’t want to play too tight for fear of bleeding off blinds slowly, so occasionally I loosen up and limp in when other people have already entered the pot. My reasoning behind this is that I don’t want to raise because I don’t want to end up creating a huge pot with a drawing hand and having to decide on the flop whether I should get in my whole stack. This wouldn’t be my usual MTT strategy, but in this case less than 1% of the field gets paid, so playing a more small-ball game and focusing on survival became key.

Here’s one hand that illustrates what I was thinking:

http://weaktight.com/3177442

The pot isn’t huge preflop, and being out of position I don’t want to raise and suddenly have an SPR of ~10. Just completing the small blind is fine as I’m fairly deep.

The flop is where my conservative strategy is most clear. I don’t like playing passively, especially in Omaha, but I didn’t lead out here because I didn’t want to get raised and swell the pot too much, and I felt that with the king out there somebody would bet. The kind of situation I want here is for somebody with Kxxx or a poorly played AA to try to bet down. I might act differently if I were in position, but that isn’t the case. The minraise made me question what was happening. I felt that that could mean anything, but at low and no stakes it does often mean the nuts, especially in Omaha. Given his UTG limp KKxx is definitely in villain’s range, so I decide to proceed with caution.

On the turn, I honestly didn’t notice that I had boated up. Oops. Given the confident pot bet I felt it was possible that K7 or possibly a7 could be added to villain’s range, leaning towards an a7 style hand that hasn’t made a full house, since the pot bet could either be an attempt to charge flush draws, or it could be an attempt to build value against me. I decide that there are now too many hands beating me and fold because I’m too blind to notice I’ve made a boat. I kicked myself pretty hard when I pulled this hand out for view. Oops. That’s what I get for trying to do this while tired.

On the river, I fiercely grabbed villain’s cards and tossed them into the muck, then called the floor and demanded that I be awarded the pot. Full Tilt Poker dragged me out of the casino in 138th place.

The late game, I continued to do very well, and then I got coolered pretty hard. Someone decided to put a huge number of chips in on a bad top pair on the flop and runner runnered a flush. With no board pair along the way, that fucked me pretty hard. With about 14bb remaining I managed to put in most of it with an AAxx hand. Some villain did that thing bad players do where they put too much in preflop with K973 or a hand of similar premiumness (or premiumnity, depending on your locale) and flopped two pair in a spot where I was too committed to do anything but shove the rest in.

However, I’m not discouraged. One high note was that I busto’ed in 138th place just 2 hours into the tournament. Those things run so fast and that’s a big help. Were I to play this freeroll again, I think I’d play with the same mindset as I did this time, because while this isn’t normally a wise way to play, the difference here is that I’m in a race and therefore don’t have time to think about the long-term best decision. Obviously this doesn’t excuse general bad plays, but I have to give weight to riskier short term strategies where it feels necessary. It’s hard to find the balance. It is also necessary, because if I overcompensate then I am going to go from “adjusting due to lack of time” to “outright playing poorly on an absolute scale.” and I want to avoid that.

Current bankroll: about 4.8 Full Tilt Points. Time to go to the store and order 1/1000 of a shirt! Awww yeah girl.






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