Sunday Million 5th Anniversary

Think I'm going to put up the cash and play this thing. I literally never play the Sunday Million because it's way outside my buyin level comfort zone but you aren't really ever going to find a $5MM guarantee at $215 so I'm going to jump on it.

{ Edit: I had a Step 2 ticket I decided to run up in the last couple hours. Step 2 was easy peasy when I decide on the 'look-like-a-fish' strat for the first few orbits which worked out nicely when I limp/call an out of nowhere JJ all-in shove with AA my first hand and run 65/20 the first 3 levels. Step 3 I managed a do-over the first time around and the second time I knocked out Stars Pro Dag Palovic to secure my seat in the Million with 3 minutes to spare. Cost me a total of $37.50 to get into the Million. GG Steps. It's looking like 50k+ entries and $10MM at this point. }

I've played one Sunday Million before going the Steps route and managed to bubble out with about 50 people left before the money iirc. Hoping some of my new found run good will carry over. I'm kind of torn on whether I want to give up 30 minutes of the Sunday Million to try to get in through the massive hyper turbo they'll be running although I suppose I could just play both and have an extra ticket if I win that.

I'm always a little amazed at the payout structure of tournaments and how top heavy they are. And these Sunday majors are of course notoriously flat compared to most. I'm quite luck/risk averse so this pretty much explains why I'm not a fan in general. I mean, 50% of the $5MM prizepool in a 25k+ person donkament goes to the final table with 9th place only getting $30k. That's messed up in my world but I suppose that's the whole point and it does bring new fish in hoping for that elusive, impossible huge score just like the corner gas station does with the lottery. My spread the wealth mentality, of course, comes from the viewpoint that my chances of making the final table are realistically 2000:1.

Good luck to everyone else playing this monstrosity!




{ Edit #2: And I'm out. Terrible table draw that just refused to break no matter how many players we went through. 60/15 and 25/20 aggrotards on my left with 3x as many chips as everyone else. And then I get this range of hands dealt to go with it: }

Almost

I took a break from cash games the past couple days and played a few more tournaments. Along with the SnGs I had loaded up last night, I entered 4 MTT Guarantees. I min-cashed one of them which was a little disappointing after 3 hours for a 100-ish place out of 1000 but I was still super deep in my other remaining 6max MTT.

Nothing really interesting happened except for the fact that I managed to maintain my mid place position from 200 left down to 15 left before I dropped to 12/15. Oh and also that I limped the very first hand with A7s and checked down 4-way on 875K7 and made a 130 river bet in a 150 pot that got shoved on for 2k chips by T9o; I couldn't force myself to fold. So at 12/15 I loaded up the other tables and was a little frightened to see that while I had 18bb and was in decent shape, nearly everyone else was sitting with 40bb except for a couple 5bb stacks. Despite that, I managed to get down to the final table of 6 by just maintaining my stack through blind stealing while people busted around me.

First hand of the final table I pick up AKo on the button and it folds around to me with 500k for 10bb and the pot is 105k and I'm just hoping to start taking down the ever increasing antes. I get snap-raised by the SB who has 750k - I think he's using the auto action buttons as some sort of meta to get people to fold which kind of backfired on him earlier when he did the same thing with QTo in the BB vs a button steal and I was in between with KK. Anyways, he flips over 44, the board runs out 325ss (oh noes), offsuit A (yay! oh... wait...) and that's it for me.

I don't really like his play at all since he's sitting with about 15bb and has a lot of room to play but he's going to be completely crippled if he loses plus the BB is chip leader and will call this pretty light since it's only 1/4 of his stack. So he's best case flipping against everything when he doesn't need to be and would be better off shoving any two the next time it's folded to him in late position in terms of saving his seat vs needing to make a move.

So close to a decent MTT bink. Finished 6 out of 3673 without using my one time. I already wasted that last week on the 50 billionth hand and according to Isaac Haxton you only get a new one when you get a hair cut. Congrats to tbvle on the $56k, but I don't know what he was doing at 5nl when he's capable of finishing 83 out of 2443 in the WCOOP for another $10k.


It does feel nice to know that I can make these deep runs. I've been reading Timex's blog on Card Runners along with watching some of his videos and I'm pretty happy that I'm understanding what's going on and that I'm actually turning it into some decent runs that I would have never had before. My MTT strat from a couple years ago was to basically survive and wait for monsters and this usually ended up with me busting close to either side of the bubble. I'm a lot more aggressive now and I've noticed a huge difference in being able to chip up in the mid stages and accumulate these 20-30k chip stacks required to make deep runs. I'm fistpumping more as well, with the highest frequency being when I bink the turn after all in preflop as a 40/60 dog and whiffing the flop.

I've also been messing around with a bunch of different SnG formats to figure out which ones I like best. In terms of overall structure, the regular 180s are miles ahead but I just don't have that kind of time to sit and play for 4 hour stretches. I've tried out some of the turbo 180s and 45s and I think the turbo 180s might be where I'll put in a bit of volume when I feel like playing something different.

Best Day Ever

Yesterday was fun:

• +6 BI in 330 hands and then played another 1k hands on the plateau. Stop at $2/hand imo.
  
• Won a 27 person donkament for $100. 
  
• $82 Step 3 ticket --> $215 Step 4 ticket --> playing in my first Sunday Million which is actually the Sunday 2 Million yay!

Also going to play in the Turbo Takedown considering the sick changes they've made to it. Basically going to be playing to try for consecutive cash's which give you free bonuses of $100(n) up to $1k. And I guess a car would be nice too.
_____________________

I managed to bust out of the WBCOOP Event #2 shortly after this hand which tilted me slightly being results oriented and all. PLO is the game of the future if this is going to continue to be standard. I'm definitely not any sort of PLO expert yet but this baffles me.

Poker Stars Freeroll Pot Limit Omaha Hi Tournament - t125/t250 Blinds - 8 players - View hand 499287
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: t17225 M = 45.93
UTG: t23395 M = 62.39
UTG+1: t70 M = 0.19
MP1: t18214 M = 48.57
MP2: t2640 M = 7.04
CO: t25867 M = 68.98
BTN: t5730 M = 15.28
Hero (SB): t35107 M = 93.62

Pre Flop: (t375) Hero is SB with J 8 7 Q
UTG raises to t875, 5 folds, Hero calls t750, 1 fold

Flop: (t2000) 9 7 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets t2000, Hero raises to t8000, UTG calls t6000

Turn: (t18000) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets t18000, UTG calls t14520 all in

River: (t47040) A (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: t47040
UTG shows A J 5 J (a pair of Aces)
Hero shows J 8 7 Q (a pair of Sevens)
UTG wins t47040

This tournament kept me away from FPSing a lot in my cash games. I might throw one in if I'm planning on playing a longer session and see how it works out.

Monthly $100K Today

Well I had a good run at the Monthly $100K Gold+ Freeroll today - 6600 entrants. I hovered between 20th and 70th for a good portion of the tourney - I believe the highest I got was 12th. I've read up on what I consider to be some pretty solid MTT strat and I think that helped a lot. Card dead-ness really used to affect me in MTTs and that's why I avoided them, but I think I've got this down now.

I busted out with about 250 left. I had doubled up and won a bunch of domination situations vs short and medium stacks and was sitting with a stack about 2.5x the average - which let me really start to open up and steal more pots against medium stacks and snap off short stacks who I thought were desperate. I was really hoping for a table change due to the LAG sitting 3 seats to my left who covered me slightly and was making life miserable. I'd only been able to take blinds when he was UTG . He was running 44/33 and playing really aggro postflop and getting a lot of folds. The rest of the table was quite nitty except for the dude that is running 10/10 and has a few less chips than me but is open shoving any Ax for some reason with 50BB late in the tourney.

So I raise up KcQc in MP and expect to pick up blinds. I haven't tangled with the LAG yet, the problem has just been that he won't let me get into any pots despite me having position a lot as I'm really not comfortable playing postflop with him with much.

LAG calls on the button. Flop: 2c 7c 6d. Wonderful flop imo. SPR is 4 and I bet 2/3 pot which basically committs me, and I'm fine with this considering I have overcards and a FD. LAG calls. Turn is a harmless looking 9s. I shove since I'm committed and would really like a fold, plus I have a ton of outs and I've seen him float with J high no draw. Villain snap calls with Ts9s and river blanks. I'm out and thinking I should have just gone ahead and overbet-shoved flop with that much equity, but I'm probably just being results oriented.

Maybe I'll start playing some small MTTs or 6max. I think I just need something different to try to get motivated again. If I could do it again, I don't know if pushing so hard for Supernova in December was worth it for a full month of burnout that was January. I still don't really feel like playing - not even to get my $1500 bonus cleared.

VIP Platinum Tourney

Busted out ~120th or so. Guy was stealing like mad, 80%+ and I had 3bet him a couple times already, he calls my KQo 3bet this time with QhJh and shoves over my flop bet on AsKh9h. I used some time, figured if this was a strong Ax he would have shoved PF and he wouldn't play weak aces. Turn is 5h and he takes my chips. I was starting to think I might cash this, too.

Sigh. Donkaments.

End of July

I'm playing in the Stars VIP promotion tourney for the end of the month. Would be nice to go from Platinum to Supernova Elite, but only 1 pays and there's 832 registered with 1 hour to go before we start. Top 27 for Supernova is going to be awfully tough to crack, too. I watched the bubble of the one that ran this afternoon and it was crazy. After that it was a free for all 27 way flipament since the next payout was 1st place.

I'll probably just play LAG at the start, get a big stack or bust out early. Survival only gets you so far when the payout is so top heavy. Would hate to just waste my time being card dead and blinding out 3 hours in when I could be grinding tables or making a serious run at this instead. Hopefully there will be a lot of people that are absent/sitting out so I can play 6 max strategy with dead blind money.

Updates to follow...

In other news, 50NL can DIAGF as far as I'm concerned. Trying to move back up and people are so aggro I can't figure out what is going on. Constantly getting coolered and getting my overpairs cracked. I see monsters under the bed, but they are actually there. Sigh. I can't figure out if I'm running bad, playing bad or both. I feel like I'm getting played back at with ATC except I don't have anything to call down with either.

I'm so tired of being floated. Extremely frustrating. In or out of position doesn't matter, they still do it. The times I c/r I get shoved on, too. I can't believe I can't beat this level when I beat 25NL SO easily. I just can't figure out how to adjust. They always have it. Then I go back down to 25NL and crush it again. Get a +4 buyin day at 25NL, move up and lose it back in 1/2 an hour.

LOL Donkaments

Lol these tournies put me on monkey tilt. 80% ahead PF, can't hit my 36% chance postflop. MP1 running at 55/2/0 and does not have a fold button. I was in 6th out of 45 left. Went out shortly after with another KK loss. Sigh.

Poker Stars, $4 + $0.40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 100/200 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP1: 4,447
MP2: 9,796
Hero (CO): 7,952
BTN: 1,175
SB: 3,510
BB: 3,880
UTG: 5,895
UTG+1: 890

Pre-Flop: (300) K K dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 890 and is All-In, MP1 calls 890, MP2 folds, Hero raises to 2,000, 3 folds, MP1 calls 1110

Flop: (4,890) 9 Q K (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
MP1 bets 2,447 and is All-In, Hero calls 2,447

Turn: (10,084) A (3 Players - 2 are All-In)

River: (10,084) 2 (3 Players - 2 are All-In)

Results: 10,084 Pot
MP1 showed T J (a straight, Ten to Ace) and WON 10,084 (+5,637 NET)
Hero showed K K (three of a kind, Kings) and LOST (-4,447 NET)
UTG+1 showed 7 6 (high card Ace) and LOST (-890 NET)