Thursday, May 21, 2009

I am a survivor

As you might guess from the time stamps on recent posts, I decided to stay home today. I played two HORSE tourneys on Stars, finished 3rd in the $5 and 1st in the $10.

About a month ago I did a post about a long, drawn-out, heads-up battle in one of these suckers. The situation is similar here: I've gone 18 times without a win, which is just awful, and I went into these games bound and determined to take one down. This heads-up match turned out to be even longer than the last one I wrote about. We were one-on-one for 23 minutes (an eternity, as these things go), 85 hands. We started in Stud, went through Stud/8 and hold'em, finally finishing in Omaha.

I was behind most of the way. In fact, I survived six, count 'em, six showdowns where I was all-in with a call. My worthy opponent (who frankly, I think, played better than I did) survived one, then died on his second.

Here's how the stacks went:



Hands 112-117 were Stud 300/600; 118-152 were Stud/8 400/800; 153-194 were hold'em 500/1000; and 195-196 were Omaha/8 750/1500.

Unfortunately, I still can't show you the stud hands, there being no online hand replayer. (Why oh why does somebody not remedy that glaring lack???) But I have put up the entire hold'em and Omaha portions here. When you see me making bad plays, no need to post critical comments--I've watched the replay myself and cringed appropriately.

But I got lucky when needed and played just well enough to take advantage of the good fortune. That's just about always what it takes to win, I suppose.

3 comments:

SN8 said...

Have you tried pokerhand.org to replay hands?

Rakewell said...

No. But I just looked at it. It appears to me that, like every other such site, it takes hold'em and Omaha hands only. Do you have reason to think that it will take stud hands?

SN8 said...

My bad, I mistakenly thought I had posted my razz hands there, I didn't check before I commented.