All-nighter

I played in the Mookie last night. I had a hard time getting any traction, and was almost never at or above the average chip stack until very late into things. But then it all started going my way, and I got, first, to the final table, and then down to three, though I was the short stack. I was patient and waited for the big stack to make a big mistake, which he did, and it resulted in me having the biggest stack and being able to do some bullying. We got to heads up essentially tied in chips, and then I blew it, finishing second. I was feeling pretty down on myself because I thought that I was in a great position to win the thing, and with it a seat at the blogger tournament of champions, in which I just might be able to win a WSOP seat. This was probably my best chance at it, and I screwed it up.

I spent a couple of hours watching TV, reading a magazine, and doing a crossword puzzle, but couldn't get sleepy; I was too irritated with myself. So just before 4:00 a.m., I gave up trying to sleep and entered what I have discovered to be one of the softest online tournaments in existence: Doyle's Room $1000 guarantee at 4:00 a.m. Pacific time. This time 105 people entered, at $10 each, so there was no overlay as there has been other nights I have tried this.

This was a wild roller coaster ride. In the Mookie, not once--until the very last hand--did I get all in with the worst of it. But in the second tournament of my night, the suckouts came fast and furious, and I was on both ends of them. I was chip leader for a while, then way down in the standings, then way up, way down, and finally back to the top when it got down to the end.

Once again, I made it to the top two. My opponent was not a strong player, and within about half an hour I had gone from the 3:2 chip lead with which I started heads-up to a solid 5:1 lead. But then I encountered an awful stretch of card death--an endless string of 8-2, 9-3, etc. He caught up with me, winning nearly every pot for a period of about 20 hands.

We stayed even for a short time, and then this hand happened. As you can see below, he had the tiniest of chip leads at the time. I had K-K, he had 5-4 offsuit. He flopped an open-ended straight draw, and check-raised me. I shoved, he called, and he hit one of his eight outs on the river. Absent that, I would have had nearly every chip, and it would have been virtually impossible for him to recover.



I won $169.95 in the Mookie, and $173.25 in Doyles Room, each on a $10 + $1 investment, for a total of eight hours of play (3 1/2 for the first, 4 1/2 for the second). So objectively it was a good and successful night of work, given that I consider online tournments to be one of the weakest parts of my overall game. $40/hour is well above what my online tournament average return would be.

I suppose that I should feel proud of myself. By rational standards, entering two tournaments and finishing second in both is a reasonably commendable accomplishment. But because of how they happened, instead it feels like I had the win in my hand, and dropped it, two times in a row, like a stupid, incompetent screw-up. Does it feel like I beat 86 out of 87 and 104 out of 105 opponents? No. It just feels like losing.

I feel ill, like I've been punched in the gut--twice. Now I'm not sure I'll be any better able to sleep than I was after the first punch.


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Does anybody know of a hand animator/replayer that works with Doyles Room (Cake network) hand histories? The one I usually use, at pokerhandreplays.com does not seem to accept the Cake format. I would post a few interesting hand from the tourney later if I can find a player. (I think they would be a lot less interesting as static hand histories.)