blwhah

I'm hating poker lately. I had an up and down month last month, but I didn't play much, so meh. I am playing really well, as well as I ever have, but I'm running like shit. Sometimes I play a $2 satty for my MTT fix and when I win the ticket, I play whatever 11 is available. So I played a 27-man and won that. With the 100 bucks I played a 33 and the Nightly 70K. In both I took fierce beats from guys who limpcalled with suited cards preflop. So that was that. Never mind, only risked 2 bucks.

So I moved up to the 22s and that worked well. Or not, as you can imagine. Whenever I move up a level I immediately run like shit, just so that my head gets fucked with. I'm 100% certain I'm playing well, but running bad makes you question that so much. When a tight player completed at t150, should I really have shoved 13BB or whatever with T6? Well, I'm pretty sure I should, because how can I possibly know that a player who is winning more than a buck a game is bad enough to snapcall with KJ? And obviously I can't help all my big pairs getting cracked. I'm not talking just about shoving QQ on a K7x flop and the loose big blind having K7; I mean having AA, getting it in with JT on a AJ8 flop and the turn, river are 9,7. I am not fucking kidding, although I wish I was.

So tonight I said fuck it, because my laptop is broken and I wanted to stay upstairs, and played some bullshit games on FTP. I can proudly report that my record in 3.80 superturbos is now 1/0/0/1 and only a bad beat prevented me from cashing in both. However, I remain cursed in the 6.5/90s, where I have never cashed and probably never will. I shove 55 with a decent stack and a fish calls off 10BB with A3s, which is terrible.

Why is that terrible? He has an ace, right? Well, I am shoving more than 10BB effective, so my range is going to be fairly tight, and I haven't shown much sign of insanity yet, so you can definitely figure that you aren't beating much. Maybe KQs if you think I'm superfrisky, but you're not much ahead of that. My range otherwise is pairs, which nearly all crush you, and big aces, which also crush you. So you are hoping it's a pair and that you can suck out. Which the fish did. So I'm left shoving 9BB with KJs and the SB, who has, I dunno, 20BB, snaps with A6. This is also terrible. In case you truly suck at poker, let me tell you two facts: one, raggy aces are shit hands and two, raggy aces play much worse than you think against any sane shoving range. I just have so much Ax in my range and most of it smashes you. The pairs crush you mostly and even hands like the one I had fare okay (in theory) against your dogshit. But hey, you cover me, right, so gambooooooool? Well no. Your chips are worth much more to me than mine are to you. You just do not win poker tourneys by making loose calls, even if you think you miiiiiiiight sometimes be ahead.

This is one of the problems of tourneys. We don't mind too much the guys who limpcall with suited cards and eventually flush on us. They are chasing such longshots that we gain much more than we lose. But the guy who calls with A6 can hurt us much more. Not only does he rob us of some of the value of shoving weaker hands, but even if we have a stronger hand, he still sucks out much more often than he does when he calls pre with a suited hand. The guy who calls off his stack with A3s is an equity burner -- but although you got your money in good, he is burning your equity too by calling. The A6 guy, well, bleh. If there was any justice, I would have binked a J and lol'd him to oblivion. But there is no justice in poker.