Clawing and Scratching

That's what last night was all about - clawing and scratching my way out of big holes, little holes and just to stay alive. I ventured back to the warehouse game last night, and managed to lose a lot less than I could have thanks to a late surge in the cash game, which was playing at 1/2 instead of the usual 2/5. Good for me, since I'm not really comfortable at 2/5, even the short buy-ins that these guys usually do.

Interesting side note - BadBlood's home game plays more like a 2/5 game than a 1/2 game, and I'm perfectly comfortable playing there, but I'm not completely at ease playing in an actual 2/5 game that behaves more like a 1/2 game. Not sure why that is, but it might have something to do with knowing and trusting at least most of the people at the table.

But anyway, last night was a $75+5 tourney with 7,000 in starting chips. Plus 1,000 if you RSVP and show up on time, plus 2,000 for a $5 dealer toke. So it's an $85 tourney with 10,000 chips. I shucked and jived for the first hour and finished with 15,000 at the first break. My most significant hand in the first hour was against Jim, who along with T accompanied me to the game. I picked up QJo in late position, hit the Jack-high flop and called all the way down to his well-played pocket Kings. He kept the bet sizes small enough to keep me in, and not so small that I felt froggy, so he pretty much maximized his value there. After the second break people started dropping pretty quickly, and I chippe up to a little over 20K when what had to be the most ridiculous hand of the evening occured, which led to a three-way all in and two people (myself included) bounced to the cash game.

I'm in late position with blinds of 500/1000. After UTG limped, small stack in early position raises to 3K, leaving himself about 8K behind. I assumed he was pot-committed, because I certainly would have felt that I was at that point. Big stack two to my right flat-called, and the player immediately to my right with tear-inducing body odor folded. I looked down to find Kd-Qd, and shoved all in. I had played very few hands with the big stack or the shorty, and figured my fold equity was pretty good.

Until the Small Blind shipped it all in, and the UTG limper moved all his chips in as well. I leaned over to Angelo the dealer and muttered "oops." Shorty went into the tank for a long time before he folded what he said was pocket sevens, which is no way a fold I could make with all that money in the pot, and the big stack folded as well. Also not necessarily a move I would have made, since were his cards even live, it would have been worth 20% of his stack to send three players to the rail in one hand.

Of course I watched my outs dwindle to vapor when the SB tabled Queens and the UTG limper tabled Aces, but the flop jacked me back up to 12 outs twice when it came down 8-9-10 with two diamonds. No diamond or Jack on the turn and river, and I was out, although the 7h on the turn made Shorty puke a little in his mouth. I don't hate my move there, since I thought I was in pretty good shape with good fold equity, but I ran into two monsters and headed to the cash game.

Where the hits just kept on coming. Within the first two orbits I missed with 99, 10-10, Ad-Qd and A-10. That put a $100 dent into my $200 buy-in, and I spent the next couple of hours trying to rebuild. The table was pretty sickly loose, with two players behind me that had a huge tendency to overvalue middle pair, so when I was finally able to string a few good hands together, I finished up $35 from the cash game. Add that to the $105 I dropped in the tourney ($85 plus a $20 last longer with Jim), and I was only stuck $70 for the night. Pretty good considering the number of times the drippings of my cash game buy in were all in the middle.