Playing again.

I’ve finally started playing poker again with some sort of regularity, not that I have anything great to show for it. I played a 20 table SNG on Stars and the 17K Guaranteed on FullTilt this weekend, but busted out just before the first break in both. In the sit-n-go I just didn’t get any cards. I saw very few flops, and when I did, there was nothing I could do with them. I don’t think I played poorly I was just one of those things that you can’t really do much about. The 17K started shortly thereafter, and I didn’t have much luck there either. I crippled myself when I flopped top two pair with KQ out of the big blind. I checked, trying to slow play. The guy behind be checked and the dealer bet the pot. I called, the guy behind me raised and the other guy called. I pushed all in figuring that I was probably ahead and I could get at least one of them to come along. I also wouldn’t have minded if they folded since I figured at least one had AK or AQ or AA and I didn’t need them picking up a second pair to counterfeit my hand. I should probably point out that the other card on the flop was a 9 and that when I was aware that they could have JT for the straight. For some reason I convinced myself that they didn’t and I was wrong. Not a good play on my part. After that I was severely short stacked, although I was able to stay alive for quite awhile with the push or fold strategy.

Other that I played a bunch of ring games. I decided to try moving completely up to $2/$4 for a while. I do OK I’ll stay there in hopes of moving to $3/$6 in a few months, and if not I can drop back down.

Saturday did not do a lot for my confidence at those stakes. I kept flopping top pair top kicker, or pretty good kicker, and running it into slow played aces. And then to top it off, my aces would get cracked even though I did everything in my power to represent aces, and the guy that beat me only had K6 and no help on the flop.

OK that was sort of a lie, I did get my aces cracked when he runner runnered two pair, but I did get them a few more times later in the evening and they held up for some substantial pots.

Even though I haven’t moneyed in them yet, I think the guaranteed tournaments on FullTilt are very much +EV. You get 800+ people in these things and after an hour there is between 300 and 400 left. That’s a lot of dead money. I think if you are patient in the first hour, hit a big hand, you will get paid off, and set up in pretty good shape for the rest of the tourney.