Back to the Blonkaments

I haven’t been playing the blonkaments for a while.  I could not even find a way to play more than a couple of the last Bodonkey series.  It’s a combination of me not pushing myself to play more poker, and schedule changes that make the playing during blonkament hours more difficult.  I used to have a window on Thursdays and occasionally other days to sneak a blonkament in, but no such luck anymore.  Well I had the urge, and played in the Mookie last week for the first time in about a year and it was a blast.  It’s always fun when you make a deep run, but it was also nice to face some quality characters along the way.  I should have been eliminated early on. 

Very early, I pick up QQ and UTG opens to 90.  I reraise to 270, and UTG re-re-raises to 666.  Alarms bells were going off big-time, and I decided to just call.  The flop came all low, and I basically had already decided I would go to war if that happened.  I guess I was hoping for an A or K on the flop to scare me off.  I forget exactly how it went down, but we got it all in on the flop, and I was against AA obviously.  A rivered Queen would put me back in business.  If I get a quick double up in these double stack events, I am good to go deep.  I don’t actively try to get a quick double up (ignoring the example hand above), but if I get one, I am already mapping my way to the Final Table.  Getting to 6k in chips, allows me to stay in “modified cash game” mode for hours, and from experience I tend to chip up when playing this way.  The key is allowing yourself the time to get into situations where you can accumulate lots of chips, and avoid bleeding away small amounts while you are waiting.  I played fairly aggressive based on the cards I was getting for most of the first hour, and eventually took the chip lead near the end of hour 1.

I was multi-tabling Bodog Beginner S&Gs while the Mookie started, and I got 1 & 3^rd in the $16s, and 4^th in a $32 as the second hour started, and was able to focus more on the Mookie.  I think I got up near 10k in chips, and then went through a long lull w/o cards.  I limp called a jam with 66 at one point, but the jam was from a semi-short stack on the button, and I was not giving credit for AA-QQ there.  I was against A7o and won the flip.  I got to call an all-in preflop with AA with two tables left.  I would arrive at the FT as the short stack with just less than 10k in chips.  Lucko was abusing the table with tons of micro preflop raises, and I was waiting my turn to get some, but I was pretty cold for much of the FT.  I was in a tough table position, with an unknown player on my left, that called me every time I entered a pot at the FT, and lucko one more to the left.  I was going to need cards to go to war with because it would be tough to push off either of these two deep stacks.  I doubled through lucko with QQ vs. AK.  I limped from UTG with KK, and busted the short BB when he hit top pair on the flop.  I was trying to trap lucko here, as he was raising a ton preflop, but he folded preflop.  I did get the auto-call from my left for some extra chips though.   I bled down with no cards, and when I finally over pushed with A8, my friend to the left came along with AT and I was out in 6^th.  Mookie held on for an entertaining Heads-Up match with lucko.

Overall, I felt great about my play.  I always get criticized for playing too tight late, but it tends to work for me.  I came to the FT as the short stack, and lasted about an hour.  My big starting hands were paid off big time, and that can over come several orbits of nothing.  I big hand was still going to get paid off form me late.  AJo would have been good enough on my final hand.  I need to find a way to play more of these.  Maybe the BBT4 will be enough to get me back at the blogger tables.