WBCOOP fail #1

First attempt at qualifying for the finals this morning didn't go great, although I guess I did give it a bit of a shake.

Got up at 5.15, but was able to concentrate okay. Actually had a speculative hand or two early, that just didn't pay off. A3s limped in 6 ways flopped my flush draw. Obviously missed by the river, although an A on the turn gave me a small hope.

About 3 other similar hands where I started with a strong holding and flopped either a draw or nothing lead me to being down to 1.3k chips from the starting 2.5k. I then managed to steal a few blinds or win pots with good cbets to get back to a bit above my starting stack.

At about the 40/80 level (somethin like that anyways) after an hour I even managed to luck box a double up with my 99 versus QQ with my 9 flopping sweetly. From there I kept my stack at about 5k for the next half hour, mainly through stealing blinds as I was pretty much card dead. Scored AA once, but still only got the blinds with a 3x raise.

When my stack was about 4.5k and the blinds 100/200 I found myself with AKo in middle position with one early limper. With the pot at about 800ish I decided to just shove from the HJ, as i'd stolen the previous two hands as well. The CO with about 2k behind him decided this was worth calling with K7s. The button with 3.5k behind him also thought his 66 was worth a call. With the flush hitting on the river, and me getting no help i'm then crippled on just under 1k chips. I guess my shove was a poor decision ...

I fold a bunch of hands then eventually find it folded to me in the CO with 54s. I decided to shove to try to steal blinds since I only had about 700 chips left. The sb calls me with JTo, and even though I flop the flush draw, I find myself out in about 250th of 500ish.

Oh well. There's always tomorrow in the 8game crapshoot.

I had a few cash tables open at the same time, and cleared enough points on Interpoker to clear my $50ish bonus for the month. It took opening and closing a few tables to find one with decent position, but eventually I found one that was okayish (well okay since I only needed a few points to clear my bonus, but not ideal for a long term table). I made a few BBs in the process as well on one of the $3/6 tables.

I also had a couple $1/2 bodog tables open, and managed to find one of the best tables that i've ever played on. All three players to my right had a VPIP of 60+ and preflop aggression less than 10. The two on my left were tight passives - one so tight that he folded 100% of my blind steals ... although admittedly there weren't too many stealing opportunities with limpy mclimpster playing on my right.

It started horribly, and I was quickly down 40BBs as the limpers were eating me alive. One of them at one stage had a win rate of 60BB/100 over 70 hands. A good chunk of those wins were from my pocket. Slowly though it turned around, as they kept calling me down with crap and I pounded them constantly with raises. I probably ended up about 20BBs or more, although a couple of the fish were still showing a profit after 150+ hands.

I had one interesting hand where I had AdTd UTG. I obviously open raise this, and get two callers. Flop is KdQdJd ... so my third royal flush ever I believe. SB bets into me, which I just call hoping CO calls as well which he does. Turn is a blank 2 or something, which SB bets, so I raise. River is a blank 3. SB checks and I bet. SB folds.

Then I suddenly think to myself ... doesn't Bodog have a royal flush bonus running at the moment? OMFG .. what if they don't pay if there's no showdown? what have I done? I quickly fire up the website, and read some of the sweetest words i've read for a while -

"The hand does not have to go to showdown "

So there's another $50 bonus (at which point I start to realise ..oh its only $50 .. but then again .. better than nothing!), and all I had to do was fire off an email to their support. It should be credited in the next couple days when I will add it to my bankroll.

So all in all, even with the disappointing tourney result, not a bad little session.

Current bankroll: $15,300