Bounced off of 22M again today. I won my first SNG, bringing my bankroll north of 22.0M for the first time in about a week, and then played 5-6 more SNG, none of them letting me into the money. I lead in the early going in at least four of them.
To summarize how they all go: I win a big pot with a made hand like an A-high flush, and KO a player or two, then I the table settles down and no one busts for 30-min or so, I bleed down from my early lead to lose a few thousand chips. I play some big cards and nothing hits, I can’t get any bluff through, suddenly everyone’s hitting something but not me. I get screwed in a close hand where we both had something, lost a big chunk of my stack, and now am down in the middle. I get a series of cards I’m ready to die on, go all-in, until someone calls, inevitably nothing hits for me, or V just slams the board for trips or better, and I go from 1st to 5th-and-out in a few hands after 45 minutes of patiently trying to play the game the way it was meant to be played, only screwing it up each and every time.
So I’m down about 600k on the night after initially going up 400k earlire in the morning, so about a net 200k loss on the day, and I’m sore about it. I’m a better player than this, and yet the results are what they are: 40 minutes of dominating a table, followed by a bad beat to take away half of my stack, followed by a quick flame-out.
I decide to switch it up and move over to a middle stakes ring game, find a nearly-full table, at 1k/2k, and sit down at the open seat for min buy-in, 250k.
My first hand, I’m UTG, get dealt K8s, limp, the whole table limps, I miss the flop, BB bets pot, most of the table folds except one guy across the table who calls, UTG fires another pot-sized bet on the Turn, guy across the table decides to let it go.
Second hand, I’m dealt JJ, in the BB. Entire table limps again, I open to 3BB, one person folds, I think, and we’re 8-ways to the flop, which is like AT7 or something like that, fairly dry, but the overcard sucks for me with 7 other V’s at the table surely each of them has at least one Ace in their hand, the 27 Aces in the deck distributed evenly among them all, 3 apiece for flopped Quads. The maniac to my right bets pot and gets a couple of calls, but not me. I give up the hand and now I’m down 10k out of my 250. I forget how the hand runs out, I think the maniac to my right bet big on the Turn and closed the action, no showdown.
It’s only 3 hands, but I’m pretty sure I have a good read on this guy.
Next hand, I get dealt A6o, and I’m in the SB, out of position, and it’s a terrible play, but I’m already tilted from taking an extended beating all night in SNG play, so I play it, limping in after the entire table limps around yet again. I flop top pair, Aces, on an A85 board, two spades. I know I’m probably not good here, so I check, and the entire table checks around. OK. So maybe A6 is good here? Turn card is a 4, and I have an inside draw to a 4-8 Straight, which I’m not even thinking about here, I decide to fire with my A6, and because there’s so many who need to fold for me to win it, I make it a pot-size bet, 14,000. Two players call, and then Mr. Maniac playing on the Button, raises to 84,000.
Now, ordinarily I would give this play credit for having a better hand than I have, and it’s pretty easy to have a better hand than AA6 here. But I’ve seen the previous hands, and I’m tilted, and I’m ready to die, so I say “screw it” and shove, let’s see what he does.
Maniac calls, flips up A3, and is in deep trouble unless he can catch a 3 here. Instead, the river fills my inside draw, 7c, and I make the straight I wasn’t even trying for.
Absolutely godawful play, and I take my first 500k pot ever in ring play, because I hardly ever play ring, and unlock the final achievement left for me to achieve. But hands like this are what you see all the time in ring play, and it’s garbage like this that makes me not want to play it. It’s always maniacs who don’t care about their chips throwing around giant piles of them with terrible hands and no real strategy or guile, giant pots most hands, and the losers just rebuy and go at it again until they’re sick of it or broke. You can hang out for a quick big score, but sometimes you get nothing playable for an hour or more, bleed down, and when your win comes it merely tops you back off to where you were when you started. People hit big hands by accident, like I did, take a huge pot because everyone’s loose as a goose, and feel like they’ve played well.
It’s a good place to call it a night, having partially recouped the losses sustained over an evening of frustration, and I’m almost slightly happy. Despite it being bad manners to “go south” after winning a big pot, it’s close to bedtime and I need to get my head clear before I play again. I fold the next few hands, until the BB comes around, and leave the table, +267500 chips in about 5 min. Back up to 21.7M, which is where I’ve been at since mid-October.