Stupid call? Likely. Good result? Sure.

Still not sure whether I played this hand well, but I think I miscalculated the math at the time and counted all the chips villain shoved in and not just the chips I could win since he had me covered. Regardless, I don't generally shove all my chips in with a hand like this:

Stacks:
BB with 1570
UTG with 4650
UTG+1 with 1300
MP1 with 1955
MP2 with 2525
MP3 with 3345
CO with 1010
BTN with 2625
SB with 2235

Poker Forum


Blinds:
Site: Full Tilt Poker
Dealt to BB: J♣ K♥
Sklansky group 5
Preflop:
2 players fold.
MP1 calls [100]
Hero checks
5 players folded.
Total folds this street: 7
Potsize: 250
Flop:
3♦ 9♠ 10♣
Hero bets [200]
5 players fold.
MP1 raises to 1,855, and is all in

So there's in essence about 1,850 in the pot (250 preflop, plus my 200 and his 200, plus the 1,200 I have left), so I I'm getting 3-to-2 odds. Am I better than 40 percent to win?

If he has one pair, which I decided he did, then I am close. (If he had two pair or a set, I don't think he shoves.) That likely gives me wins with a jack, a king or a queen for a straight. Odds calculators say I'm about 38.5 percent to win, which makes this a borderline call at best.

But I think I counted the extra 600 that he had pushed in when I did my calculations, which led me to call. Still, even if I had a shot at those extra chips, this was for my tournament life. Should have folded.

In the end, I hit a jack on the turn and a king on the river for two pair and a double up. Didn't matter. Slump continued with another middle-of-the-pack finish.

Current bankroll: $1,261

OPR ranking: 98.41

Breaking even

Not much movement in the online balance for the past month, which is a change from the previous two months or so, when my bankroll skyrocketed. Lots of reasons:

— Took most of a week off while playing live poker and getting ready to go to Vegas.

— Took a week off while in Vegas.

— Played not so great on my return from Vegas.

— Spent one night taking the worst run of bad beats in my life. Lost the following hands, all of them all-in before the flop. (Didn't get run down trying to slowplay people.)

AQ vs. AT: Villain rivered a straight.
AK vs. JT: This was the very next hand from the one listed above. Villain rivered a straight.
KK vs. TT: Villain rivered a ten.
QQ vs. 56s: Villain raised and then called my shove because he was committed. Ran me down.
TT vs. AT: Villain turned a straight.
AK vs. AA: OK, so I had the worst of this one. But it's wonderful when you're shortstacked and an opponent wakes up with AA at a shorthanded table.

Oddly enough, I ended up ahead for this night. Finished fourth and first in the last two tournaments I played.

Current bankroll: $1,288.

OPR ranking: 98.45.

Crunching the numbers

While playing in a 45-player, $26 SNG the other night, I took a moment to study my numbers on officialpokerrankings.com. After clicking a few buttons and sorting my stats several different ways, I realized I was 0-for-7 in $26 tournaments.

A few minutes later I was 0-for-8.

Since I was barely bankrolled for $26 tournaments, it seemed like a good indication that I should take a step back, so I dropped down to the $11 level and scored a good cash right away. (I would have preferred to drop to $22, but those don't seem to fill up very often.)

I'll do my best to kill the $11 SNGs for a while before moving up again.