The past week has been pretty hard on my account. I have not been getting the hands that I use to get. The first tournament that I played was $1.10 buy in with ten players. I ended up with nothing but crappy hands and finished last. Then I entered into another one with the same buy in. I had J Q and A 9 two times in a row. I finished this one in the money some how for a $0.90 cent gain. After that I decided to enter into a tournament with a $0.25 buy in and 45 players. I ended up going all in on the turn with just one card away from a flush. The player that called had a pair of Qs and Js. I finished 16 out of 45 on this one with no money being won.
I then entered into another tournament with ten players for $1.10 buy in. This is the one I usually play in and win some money but this time I finished 7th, which won zero money. I then entered into a tournament for $0.55 buy in and 90 players. This one went okay. Nothing amazing or surprising happened and I finished 18 out of 18 out of 90. The next one I did was a Fifty50 with $1.08 buy in and ten players. I ended up finishing one place out of the money. I went all in and was called when I should have folded and let someone else get taken out. I did another one of these and just made it in at 5th for an 18 cent gain. I decided to do one more of these and finished 7th. With how late it was getting I decided that I was finished for the night and went to bed.
Saturday
When I got up I was not sure what tournament I should play in. I took my wife to the BART station so that she could go to a street fair in the city and knew that I only had a couple hours before I would be picking her up. So I was looking on Bluff Magazines website when I came across their rules section. I was looking at the categories and on of them was Badugi. So I decided to click on it and read how to play it. Over the past month, I have been thinking about trying a new game to change things up a little bit. After reading the rules and the hand rankings, I thought I would give it a shot with some play money. So I found a table that was play money and took a seat with a $400 play money buy in. This was a fast passed table and I was not ready for that. Before I knew it I had lost all $400 in play money. I decided to give it another shot since it was not real money I was playing with. The second buy in was for another $400 in play money and I left the table with the first $400 back along with a $85 gain in my play money.
It is not that hard of a game. I think the hardest part of Badugi is getting use to the betting and that the best hand you can possibly have is A 2 3 4. It felt a little weird playing a game where you only get four cards and are trying to get the lowest hand with all four cards. If you have cards of the same suit, it only counts as the lowest card. If you have two cards that are the same value, it only equals that value once. Over all, it was an interesting game and I probably will play it again but only with play money. With how fast the pot grew, I would not think about playing for real money.
After that little experiment, I went back to Texas Hold'em. I entered into a $530 play money tournament with four players. I finished last in this one due to overall bad hands. I decided to do the same play money tournament and finished 2nd, which did not win any play money. In this one the winner is the only player to get any play money. The next tournaments was a $0.10 buy in 360 player tournament. This was also the last one I did for the day. I had some very lucky hands that should have taken me out of the tournament but I was very lucky. Not only did I make it to the final table but I finished 8th out of 360 and took an $0.80 gain. I also saved part of my stats for this tournament. During this tournament I was dealt 93 hands and saw the flop:
- 8 out of 12 times while in big blind (66%)
- 5 out of 13 times while in small blind (38%)
- 14 out of 68 times in other positions (20%)
- a total of 27 out of 93 (29%)
As you can see, if you want to place high in these tournaments sometimes it is best to fold till you get some good cards. Look at how many times I saw the flop when I was not the big or small blind, only 20% of the time. It was a good time to go out of the tournament since shortly after I had to go pick up my wife from the BART station. Another thing that I came across on Bluff magazines website was some player rankings. If you want to check out where I rank you can go there or toOfficial Poker Rankings and search for 1&only696 to find out how I am doing with these tournaments. Right now on Official Poker Rankings, I have a ranking of 34.80%, which is up from last years rankings. Not by much but it is still a little higher. In order to have another star I have to get up to 55%. I also have 32.68 in Frequent Player Points and 58.72 in VPP. I was trying to have my VPP reach 100 by the end of the month but with the month ending on Tuesday, I do not think I will be able to make my goal of 100. I think I am going to change my goal to 60 VPP in a month since that seems like a more reachable number. I am currently at the Bronze Star level and need to reach 750 VPP to make it to the Silver Star level. I can only wait and see what will happen.
As always please feel free to leave any comments or questions that you might have. May the Poker Gods smile upon your cards each and every day, and may Lady Lucky help you in any tournaments you may play in.
No comments:
Post a Comment