I can live with 9th

I entered the MiniFTOPS $33 razz event this evening mainly so that I would have something to do while watching Cardgrrl play it. As she will gladly tell you, she is the Razz Queen. Last night, however, she had a terminal case of the runbads, and lasted only about 90 minutes, winning no more than two or three pots during that whole time.

I, on the other hand, apparently had all the rungood for both of us. I lasted just under seven hours, finishing on the final table bubble, picking up a $450 payday.

From about 45 minutes in until maybe 90 minutes from my demise, I was in the top quarter of the field the entire time, and most of it in the top 10%. This was not--I repeat, not--from world-class play on my part. I just played ABC, getting paid off by the hordes of calling stations when I made a strong hand, and getting away relatively cheaply otherwise. Not rocket science.

I misplayed four hands during the tournament, as I see it. But I'm too frazzled to bother recounting them. Besides, razz hand histories are just too messy to slog through, and there is still apparently no hand replayer for stud/razz hands that would let me animate them for you.

I also lost a big chunk in the late stages--when I could least afford it--on a misclick, of all things. I didn't know the break had ended, and was clicking on a web page, when suddenly it was my turn and my table appeared under my mouse, and the spot on the screen I was clicking was no longer a web link, but the "raise" button. I had accidentally 3-bet the table. Somebody 4-bet it, and since I had two low cards (including the up one), I called with fingers crossed. Caught another good one, so called another small bet, but then bricked and ran away. Dumb.

Once I got severely short-stacked, I was in a perpetual dither about whether to play aggressively and hope to get lucky and be back in it, or hunker down and hope to slither up the pay scale. I mostly chose the latter, and survived two pay jumps longer than I had thought I would as a result, so I guess it sort of worked. But, of course, in the process I basically sacrificed all hope of being in the top handful.

I also blew at least one hand during that period by going back and forth during the hand between getting it all in and hoping, versus conserving chips. That was just moronic and cowardly. My early-age biblical training comes rushing back to me: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:16) "How long halt ye between two opinions?" (1 Kings 18:21)

I had my fair share of good luck and bad luck, no extraordinary amounts of either. It was basically a "can't complain" scenario.

It was perhaps a good warm-up for the HORSE event on Stars tomorrow afternoon, which, should I be fortunate enough to go deep again, will be many hours longer than this was, I suspect.

Thanks to F-Train and AlCantHang for sticking around for moral support all the time I was on life support, and for the many good wishes from Twitter friends. Thanks most to Cardgrrl for being my motivation to enter the thing to begin with.