"I'm So Tired" - The Beatles

I'm friggin beat. You can't just go to sleep after you do well in a poker tourney, no no no my dear friends. You stay up and analyze everything. "What did I do wrong?, What did I do right? What can I improve upon? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

So although the tourney ended at 1:30ish I had to be tossing and turning for a good 30 minutes more, and here I sit nodding off as I type this.

Overall I'm proud of my performance, I feel like with every tourney I'm getting better reads and making less and less stupid decisions. I got berated from Alissa (aka Death Adder. j/k hunnybun I love you. Any GA fans out there?) for calling Mookie's all-in with my A-Q. She says she wants to be my "fold" coach as apparently my weakness is not folding. I'd agree that my head's up play was pretty bad, but I was trying to be aggressive. I got too aggressive and donked my chips off to better hands.

If I had to review some choice hands from last night I'd start with the one I posted last night in my Full-Tilt Tilt. I called 4k into a 10k pot, which was a mistake with middle pair. I put him on 2 overcards K-Q, K-J, Q-J since he pushed all in that flop, and more recently I had been making some good folds when people were re-raising all-in. I thought this was another attempt to just re-raise me all-in to bluff me out of a pot (which it was) so I put my money on a pair. As FT so loves to do the gutshot filled out on the river.

I think what most people in the tourney didn't realize is that this hand occured right before the second break and I was down to 1,350 when the avergae stack was closely approaching 10k. I doubled up when my 9s-10s caught a 9. And then I got back into the game when my Ad-2d caught 2 aces to beat K-J. I had a real shot to win this as I had a commanding chip lead after I knocked 3rd place out.

That hand played out like this: Dealt Ah-9h on the button. I had just tossed this hand one hand before when there was a decent raise. This time I raised it up and Don pushed all-in (I really hate that raise, more later) this time I thought about it and I figured he really could have anything in the SB, and he was the short stack at the table. If there was any a good time to take a stand it was now. He flipped over A-6o and I cruised.

I hate the all-in reraise. HATE it. Not just doing it to me because I pick and choose my spots, but its a weak move in my opinion. Yes you are most assuredly guaranteed to pick up the blinds and whatever the original raiser tossed out there but the trade-off is you are risking your entire stack on what could be crap if the raiser woke up with A-A. And if you re-raise all in with A-A you need a CAT scan, WHY would you chase someone out of a pot? Unless you are 100% sure the person has a call-worthy hand or you've been screwing around with him and he thinks you are just bluffing with him again, it makes no sense to me. Short stacks I understand but if you are average to chip leader in stack size it shouldn't even be a thought in your head.

My .02

Grats to MM again for a game well played. I was so close to getting the Mookie interview I could almost taste it!