I'm getting ready for a long night of poker. I just registered for the Sunday Million on Poker Stars for the first time in a while. Jenni gave me the green light to play, so I took it. I'm coming off of a win at the VFW tournament on Thursday so I'm feeling pretty good. I played well and got lucky a few times to take it down for $1,200 including the last longer bet.
Before starting the Million, I have a little bit of anxiety but I'm not sure where it's coming from. I think mostly from spending the day with the kids and constantly having to correct behaviors. I guess I'm a little worried that that stress will carry over into my play. But that's one of the reasons I use this Daily Recap. I like to clear my head of any lingering thoughts in order to get focused and be ready to play my A-game.
As far as today's tournaments go, I'm just gonna play poker. I'll fire up a couple of events and just play my best. While I guess there is always a little bit of extra "this would be awesome if I won or cashed big" associated with the Million, it's really not anything I can concern myself with until I get really deep. I've got at least 6 more hours until that happens and even then, I'm just gonna focus on making +EV decisions. If I get to the bubble, I'm going to do my best to chip up against the tight players and I'm going to play for the win. I'm not going to force anything or try and make fancy moves. I'm just going to make reads and make decisions based on those reads.
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First real break and I'm down about 6k in the million. I'm not playing bad or anything, I'm just getting caught in spots where I have to make laydowns. Just gonna look for good 3 bet spots and should be right back in it.
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Bleh, out of the million. I just couldn't get anything going. I had a very loose active table and I was card dead for most of the tournament. Finally got it in good with 55 vs. Q2 and they flopped a Q. Oh well. Even though you can't put too much stock into one tournament, it's still a little dissapointing since I never get to play it and Jenni gave me carte blanch to play tournaments today. All I can do is just play my best in the others that I play and not put much stock into getting knocked out of a single tournament.
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Wow, that was ugly. Just got runner runnered with QQ on a 234 flop when someone bluffed a massive overbet with KJs...they hit 2 more diamonds and we were both very deep. Lost a flip with AK in the $70K guaranteed. Gonna eat something and reset before the 7pm full tilt tournament.
I definitely feel a sense of dissapointment because it seems like everytime Jenni says she'll watch the kids and I get excited about playing a bunch of MTTs, and end up running bad. However, I realized that the way I am feeling right now is because I really want to make deep runs and I put a sense of pressure on myself. I don't feel it too much when I play, but if I didn't address it now, it would definitely turn into tilt and affect my future play. I did notice a couple of times I started focusing more on my cards than the situation as a result. The reality is that this session shouldn't be any different than any other session. Nothing is different and I don't "deserve" to win big because I'm starting to play earlier than normal. I have a full tilt tournament starting so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to practice re-focusing and putting past emotional baggage behind me.
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Got out of the funk and I'm playing really well in a 6 max tournament. Was 2nd in chips for a while out of like 80 left and I think I'm still around the top 10. The player to my right has been giving me fits. He started out really tight and then changed gears. I made a huge laydown bvb after 3 betting him (which I had not done before) and he 4bet 1/2 his stack. We were both around 80-100bb deep, so I wasn't ready to play such a big pot yet. Right now I still have a very healthy stack, so I just need to not play with my ego against him and go with my reads.
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Disappointing is the word for the night I guess. After having that massive stack, I ended up losing a big pot against that same villain. I'm not sure it was a good call or not, but I think based on all the dynamics of the tournament and the way he shoved, it may have been good. I called an all in with JJ after he called my 3.5x re-raise bvb and insta shoved an AQx board with 2 hearts on it. I was right that he didn't have an Ace. He had QT and I got knocked down to a little over 20bb. I did make the money, but busted in 36th when I shoved 69 on the button and the BB called with KT. Dissapointing to go from 2nd in chips to out in 36th place. But I can't focus on results obviously. I need to go back through this hand history to look at EV and see if I could have made better decisions. I'm obviously happy at the way I chipped up and made bluffs at the right times and extracted from my big hands. It just all started falling apart toward the end, so I'll focus on analyzing those hands.
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