Where the hell have I been?

So last I left this thing I was on cloud nine! My bank roll was approaching baller status again and I was playing well. Rakeback was pouring in and things couldn't get any better! I took some shots and had some success but got a little cocky and that mixed with some untimely variance saw my BR plummet drastically! I want to say over the course of a week and a half I had lost almost 2/3 or my BR and had to drop back down to the lowest of the low limits to begin to grind it back out again. I wouldn't say that my confidence was battered but more that my frustration level was getting the best of me!

I did take some horrid beats in some monster pots that did play tricks with my tilt meter. But I didn't lose my cool completely and new what had to be done, so I stepped back down and begun to grind once again. I had some decent showings and made little amounts of money here and there but nothing to write home about. I had strictly been held to all cash games due to time constraints, so obviously it's much easier to get caught up in things and lose lots of dough. For some reason I just can't keep a consistent win rate in tact when playing cash games. I feel as though I have an above average grasp of how the games are played and how to exploit other players weaknesses, but if consistency is the game then I lose hands down! Sure I'll have great winning session and brutal losing session, but I feel like I'm never in that realm where it was just a mediocre day where I won or lost $10 - $30. I think it has something to do with me knowing when and when not to quit. A lot of the time I'll have great sessions get washed down the drain because I hang around too long and get a bit spewy or reckless with my chips. Something I need to work on I guess.

Then this weekend really helped shed a whole new light on things. I really didn't get to play much because of birthday festivities late last week and all weekend. I did though have some recovering time on Sunday to fire up the green felt and get some hands in. I figured it was Sunday so I would take a shot at satelliting into one of the big tourneys and sure enough after spending $50 I was in the FTP 750K and was ecstatic having never played it before.

The tourney started off horrible when I called down an early aggressive player with QJ on a queen high board and he felted KQ :(. After starting with 3000 chips and losing that hand I was immediately down to 1200 and not looking good. The blinds though were still at 20/40 and I had to continue to tell myself that it wasn't the end of the world. From there I ran great for the duration of the first hour, doubling up with 88 after hitting bottom set when a guy flopped top two and re-shoving with KK and taking it down pre-flop. So heading into the first break I was right back where I started at around 3000 chips.

Heading into the second hour I made a gutsy play where I squeezed on a pot with two NITS and unfortunately got snap called by KK. My 99 was way behind and on the brink on elimination until a miraculously 9 spiked on the turn and shot my chip stack up to around 5400! From there I didn't really see much and tried to limp numerous hands, small pocket pairs and connectors but was shot down about 90% of the time by this one guy who would raise the limped pot every single time! Well of course I noted this and used it to my advantage when about 5 min before the second break I picked up AA in middle position. I limped it like I had been doing and sure enough out of the SB he raised it on up and this time the BB called too. I gave it the old 15 sec "look like I'm pondering" act and then shoved 'em in and he called after a little bit of thought with AJoff! Needless to say I won a monster and was now sitting with about 11K.

I went on to play some great poker but ran into some unlucky situations. For example, holding Q3 in the BB and the SB completing and seeing a flop of 9-10-J. He min bet and I of course called....the turn brought the 8 completing the straight and he lead out, I raised, he pushed, I called, he flipped KQ, and I lost a pretty huge pot to ship me right on out of the top 50. I did though rebound and make it to the cash and even a little further! I played a great short stack and managed to get myself all the way back up to an average stack with around 150 people to go. This thing started with a whopping 4000 entrants so making it this far was a win in itself.

The demise of my tourney though happened when I picked up AKoff in the BB and it folded around the SB. My stack at the time was about 54K'ish with the blind at 2k/4k. The SB had me covered and just open pushed trying to take down the blinds, I snap call and he felts 10s7s. The flop came 10-7-J and all my hope relied on one of those last two queens. The card didn't come and I busted in 145th place :(. Had I of won that race I would have had well over 80K and sitting in the top 30 with not many to go :(. Needless to say I netted a cool $600 bucks and even more so a much needed boost to my BR.

Everything always seems to circle back to a tournament and you'd think by now I would have learned that...but no. I don't know where I'm going to go from here...it's still hard for me to find the time to commit to tourneys these days but I know with the WSOP in the not so far distance I will have to. My goal for the next 2 1/2 months is final table a tourney and have a 4 digit cash, nab one 2K prize package to a WSOP event, and continue to increase my BR. More than anything I want to travel out to Vegas this year and experience the WSOP, but all that is dependent on whether or not I can win something online here in the next few months or so. Wish me luck.