Final Round

I love making the last round of the evening so I can title the blog post "Final Round" and you don't know if it's my last of the tournament or the night...

Anyway, last I checked in with the blog, I had spent the better part of two hours folding non-stop... with a little losing mixed in. The nice part about a 2 hour cold run is that it must come to an end.

Right?

About 10 minutes in everyone folds to my big blind and seat eight's small blind, so he limps. I look down at J10 suited and raise... he calls. Flop comes K 9 7... with two hearts. Ok, so I missed the flop. But I kind of have an open ended straight draw - an 8 is a straight and a queen is a straight. And any heart is a flush. And a Jack or a ten is a pair. Hmmm... for not having a hand, my hand isn't too bad. He checks, I bet big, he folds.

Winning!

Shortly thereafter James Woods got knocked out two tables over... although you could probably hear him screaming obscenities two states over - Aces over Queens, the guy two-outed him with a Queen on the river. I know how that goes - but man can that guy curse... loudly.

Anyway, that early win was nice - it signaled that my cold streak was over and it was time to resume winning.

45 minutes later, I get fives in a late position. In another 45 minutes, fives were the best hand I could get. Ugh, cold streak continues. But the nice part about a 3 hour cold streak is that it can make even 5's look good, so I raised. Flop comes K J 4.

Well I missed that one pretty good... so I laid out a continuation bet. He called. Now I'm in trouble, I can't win this hand with 5's, I've been bleeding chips for 3 hours, and he called my pre-flop raise and continuation bet.

Turn was a 5.

Oh.

Well that's nice. I check, he checks. River came a Q, I value bet for about 8,000, he called and paid me off! Phew, stopped the bleeding and hopefully put an end to my cold streak.

40 minutes later, I continue to just bleed chips to antes and blinds...

And then - QJ off on the button with a raise and a call in front of me. Flop comes 9 5 7, the first guy checks, the second guy leads out, I fold, the first guy folds, the second guy showed jacks. More losing.

And that was the final round. 3 hands in 2 hours. 8 hands in the last 4 hours. I ended the night at 39,800... that's a M Ratio of 9 for the first round on Friday. Worse, blinds and antes jump to 300/1,000/2,000 in the second round, so 40K in chips is only a M Ratio of 7... if I held constant through round one.

So... I've got my work cut out for me Friday, but at least I did make Day Three and this tournament is nothing if not all about survival. I don't know that I'm playing particularly poorly or well, but I've certainly felt "off" for most of the tournament... and the last two rounds have driven me completely mad.

That suck out this afternoon really cleared up my tilt, so that was great on several levels, but it's not going to matter if I can't find some semblance of a hand or two.

Of course, all I need is to find one or two in the first couple levels on Friday and there's a good chance I make the money - and after 4 hours of nothing, maybe I'm due?

We'll find out Friday... day off tomorrow.