Lay Them Bitches Down, Daniel-San

Managed to satellite into Sunday's FTOPS #2 event pretty cheaply and got off to a good start, sitting with nearly 8,000 at the first break. Dropped down to about 7,000 near the second break when the hand o' doom struck, and I donked off all of my chips with QhQc on a 8h 9h 10c 3h board, with all the chips going in on the turn, and villain's black kings holding up when the river was a non-heart, non-queen, non-jack.

And that's not the absolute donkiest way to go out, but the pre-flop/flop action pretty much screamed that he had KK/AA (pre-flop there was an initial raise from UTG, I re-raised a hefty amount, villain then min-re-raised on top of all that action; on the flop I bet out the pot and villain once again min-raised me), but I managed to talk myself into calling the pre-flop re-raise to see a flop (possibly ditching it if a K or A came on the flop), then talked myself into calling the flop re-raise to see the turn (ditching it if I didn't improve), then managed to talk myself into shoving on the turn, based on the highly dubious logic that I couldn't call him if I checked and he fired at me again, and that I might have picked up flush outs, etc. (Jebus that's a long, ungrammatical sentence.)

Just not goot play. If I'd folded to his re-raise on the flop I'd have still had 4,000 or so, which was a good bit below average but still enough chips to work with. But instead, whee, there go all of my chips. The more disappointing aspect of it is that it pretty well sums up the last year or so of poker for me, which has been lots of grinding with little progress to show for it. Most of that's my own fault, from leaping to and fro from different games and stakes with no real purpose or direction, but I should be at the point where I can lay down QQ as outlined above. Boo, me.

On the brighter side, things are clicking along fairly well on the SnG front. And that's even with running pretty badly the last few days, from a purely statistical sense. One of the nice things about the turbo SnGs (and one of the frustrating things) is that the majority of the time you reach push/fold territory when blinds get high, all the chips go in pre-flop and you get called, at which point it's blatantly obvious whether you were ahead or behind. So it's easy to note what hand bounced you so that you can go back over your last 0-8 streak and see exactly how non-goot you're running:

7th: KK loses to 77
5th: AKs loses to A8o
4th: JJ loses to 1010
9th: AA loses to JJ
4th: KJs loses to K10o
5th: AKs loses to QQ
4th: AJo loses to A4s
4th: AKo loses to 66

To be fair, the above is also ignoring the times you get donkfish lucky and cash, so it's kind of silly to point out the statistical unlikelihood of losing the eight consecutive hands outlined above.

Like, oh, say raising a hefty amount with QQ UTG, getting one caller from MP, than a solid regular player on the button pops it again for a largish re-raise (but not all-in, in that I-have-kings-or-aces-please-Jebus-reraise-me fashion), then calling to see a flop of A 10 5, rainbow. Check-check-check. Turn is Q. You shove, MP folds, and button insta-calls with AA. Except, umm, the river is the case Q for runner-runner quad Qs. Whee, one outers.

I'm still having intermittent issues with the FullTilt client, but I do think the turbo SnGs are softer there, as more Party regulars seem to have transitioned to PokerStars than to FullTilt. I'd split my play roughly equally on both sites until the last few weeks, but more and more often I'd find myself at Stars in games with tough players that were still 8 or 9 handed with blinds of 100/200, which is pretty rare at FullTilt. Rakeback is also a goot thing, which is another vote for FullTilt, so I'm pretty much solely playing there these days.

I'm still in the process of noting Sharkscope results for players, which is kind of a funny process, as I usually pull up their results and copy and paste the results into the player notes, then using the color flag option on FullTilt to note broad categories (red for profitable regulars, green for losing lemurs, orange for break-even decent players, etc.). The funny part is guessing beforehand, based on the name chosen, whether the player will be a winning or losing player according to Sharkscope.

Some of the trends make sense, as far as annoying-ass names that are difficult to look up actually often trending towards solid, profitable regulars. It surprised me at first, as I'd assume that someone who chose "16261513281" or "hoop4u____27162o0li" was just a dumbass (and more than likely a losing player), but if you're a profitable regular you're aware of sites like Sharkscope and, if signing up for a new site, possibly inclined to make your handle as hard as possible to quickly Sharkscope.

There's also the contrarian trend, as far as any handle with "fish" in it usually trending towards a profitable player, and anything with "cash" in it usually belonging to a losing player. Players with famous pros incorporated into their handle, such as IveyBluff322, are almost always losing players. "Pimps" are actually surprisingly good at poker, while "gangsta" can go either way. Pretty much the whole weak is strong, strong is weak thing, which I suppose makes sense.