The Saturday being err... Saturday,and the blues being my table in the Blue section in Brasilia. Clever aren't I?
Feeling unusually good today. Not sure why. Still nice and positive about my poker, and confident in my reads and feel for my tables. Positivity is no bad thing, unless of course you're positive you're going to have a bad day.
My day hasn't started amazingly, flopping a nut straight/nut flush/gutshot straight flush draw first hand, and losing to one pair (AQ). I could have probably shipped the flop but it's entirely possible that i wasn't getting folded to and I'd be out by now. Having said that with that kind of a hand I'd normally get it in. Instead 4500 is 3500.Ho hum.
Whilst generally pleasant, my gut instinct tells me after 3 orbits that this isn't going to be a table overflowing with fun and laughter. No big deal, just good to be aware of.
Ok cancel that, it's not the morgue I was anticipating. The table's now filled up and a few people are talking to one another, whilst the rest are stoic or glued to their devices. Better anyway.
Midway into level 2 and it's not a great start, running 2 pair into a hand that virtually moved me all in on the river and taking another bite of my stack. I do think that occasionally I will overthink things and make folds that a lot of other people wouldn't, certainly nowadays. One guy on here just called off his whole stack on the turn with one pair(AK). He's now out so maybe I'm not so stupidly cautious after all.
Decided to get more aggressive after going down to 1900. I'm now back up to a healthy 4200.
Obviously aggression in these tournaments is the winning strategy. Up until the point you run QQ into KK, which I just did. The kid who has been semi active and pushed me off 2 pots just raised again and I found QQ in the blind and decided enough was enough. I 3 bet, he min-4 bet but I think based on what I've seen he's creative enough to do this pretty light in position. I jam, which I think gets called by AA or KK only. Obviously he has KK. End of the 1500 for me.
I'm not sure what to think. Normally I'm not nearly so aggro early on in these events, there are generally enough bad players to just harvest the free chips and climb slowly. I drew a line and decided that my table wasn't so weak and I needed to up the 3 and 4 betting to get a stack today. I picked the wrong spot and the wrong player with the wrong hand.
Comments welcomed. I think the aggression I'm trying was warranted bearing in mind I've been playing these events with a short stack because I'm plodding pretty cautiously, but even with aggression, getting it in with QQ on level 2 preflop is a mistake, even though others are doing it with worse.
Maybe that bit doesn't read so well, but I'd rather be honest and say what I think, than make up a bullshit story to make myself look better and paint a picture giving the impression I'm horribly unlucky. Of course if the queen flops or I find a bad player with JJ or 1010 it's a different story, but I didn't, so there it is.
Regroup and get my head right for tomorrow. Sorry today's sweat was short and sweet. At least it wasn't short and bitter.