♠ Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Apparently Blogger ate my tournament results last night, so:
I was chip leader for a good while at the final table, after making some unlikely hands, but didn't seem to be very good at stealing blinds with that lead. I normally only like to do that (steal blinds) with hands that I don't mind so much if I get called, and I didn't get enough chances.
I put a number of people out at the final table, and ended up heads-up with JeffsDad holding nearly a 2-1 chip lead. Then I really fell apart.
I'm really not happy with my heads-up play last night, at all. I'd like to be able to blame the cards, but usually heads-up I'm able to represent hands even when I don't actually have them. Always when I've been headsup before, I've been in a single-table tourney, or at a ring game that's gone seriously short-handed. So the stakes weren't that high; the difference between a three-buyin payout and a five-buyin payout isn't that big a deal, at least in the $30 and under STT's I play; and headsup in a ring game the other guy's entire stack isn't more than, say, $100 -- and if he starts losing it heavily, he'll leave. But last night, the payouts for first and second were $2600 and $1600 ... and I didn't want to forfeit that $1000.
In short: I think I was playing scared. Not aggressive enough. Hopefully I make more final tables, so I can try different strategies, but whatever I did last night didn't work.
But the $1611 payout was pretty nice. I was in a really weird mood today at work, for a lot of reasons: My $1611 was two weeks pay, or more than that, since my pay has tax withholding out of it.
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Iggy sends his well-wishes in that tourney, since Blogger (actually I think it was my wacky Internet Explorer) ate my post of the results. He also sends his reminder that he's added this blog to his list of links: Thanks, Iggy!
If I don't post any more tonight, you won't see posts for a while: I leave for Vegas in the morning. Vegas trip report when I return!
