It's Easy Really, Just Be a Card Rack

Since I was able to find a prepaid Visa during lunch, I was able to buy-in to the Mookie last night. It was great to get back in to his tourney. I don’t play it as often since I generally go to bed when it’s starting and I haven’t had enough for a buy-in lately. I was feeling my oats from my WWDN success on Tuesday night and was jonesing for some more so I decided to stay up late and give it a shot.

The short story is I had great cards preflop or they turned in to monsters on the board. If you’re interested, the longer version is as follows:

My first great hand that gave me a few chips was my quad Kings against Kajagugu. I did my best to get paid as much as possible and feel I made out alright considering how scary the board looked to him. My other big breaks happened when I made a couple of not so smart preflop calls when I was reraised, but was rewarded handsomely for my royal donkness. First was by willwonka from the button and again when Tripjax was in the small blind. In both cases I was crushed before the flop, but pulled huge suckouts to knock out each of them. After these hands, I dialed it back a little and only got involved when I had better starting hands. I guess I felt like I was emptying my luck box too fast.

Sometimes your biggest hands are the ones you fold. I had a brain fart when I raised from the button with AK. The chip leader was in the SB and the BB was a shortie that was basically committed to his hand. I should have just called and let the big stack SB complete so we could knock out the SB and start the final table, but I saw Big Slick and my raise reflex kicked in. To my surprise, the BB reraised all in and had me covered. Now this is the only person left that can do me any harm and if I call I could walk away with nothing. I folded and I had to ask him why he did this. When he flipped over KK, I understand he was positive he’d knock out the shortie and if I call, he would have a ginormous lead and would pretty much be unstoppable. It really saved my ass because the flop had an A and a K and I would have surely gone broke right there. Good fold for me. Yay! My patience paid off and the poker gods were still looking after me at the final table. When we made it past the bubble, I think I took the first three pots when I started getting phenomenal pockets. This put me in the top 2 for the rest of the night and I never looked back.

I had some really good plays and some really lucky ones, but I still pale in comparison to Smokkee’s skills. That guy was down to below 2K on the bubble and was able to cash out in third. Apparently his lessons are worthwhile because love_elf was kickin’ some final table ass. The only way to keep Smokkee at bay was to make the move you knew he was about to make and hope your hand holds up against his. I had a great time and thanks again to Mookie for being one of the greatest poker hosts in the biz.