Target Junk, Adminster Kick

Lady Poker continues to assault my genitals with swift, precise kicks. On the bright side, I've only been playing a few MTTs and SnGs a night, so the financial damage is somewhat limited. On the non-bright side, dude, poker sucks sometimes.

Last night was frustrating in that I played just about as well as I could in 2 different 180 person SnGs on Stars (or MTTs, or whatever the hell you call that hybrid beast). I like the format of these, as they don't require a huge time investment but still offer pretty nice potential payouts. Well, assuming you manage to, you know, make the money.

I ended up going out 20th in one and 24th on the other, right there in prime bubble territory. Did pretty much everything I could, scratched and clawed back in both from getting beaten down by assorted two and three outers, stayed aggressive, built a decent stack, then finally got shown the door when QQ lost to 910s and AKs lost to A9o, with the villains both times calling a substantial re-raise for more than 1/2 their stack, with the bubble looming.

And yeah, I know, it happens, and it's a tiny, tiny thing in the grand scheme of things. But I hate when I let it get to me like I did last night, with the final beatdown of A9o smiting my AKs leaving me really, really close to picking up the nearest thing on my desk and chucking it. It's nice to pretend that I can maintain complete and utter tilt-free serenity, despite stormy conditions, but it's just not true.

I have at least developed the good sense to turn off the computer and go to bed, so there is that. And, to some extent, I think getting pissed is good, in small doses. Mad to the point of throwing things, not good, but you're likely suffering from a larger (more troublesome) lack of competitiveness and/or aggressiveness if you always just simply accept your fate, meekly, when you get outdrawn by someone displaying fine, lemurish behavior.

Sucks. Yeah, poker, I'm talking to you. What are you going to do about it?