I had been playing well all night and the cards were finding me at mostly the right times. I was down to heads-up on my last table of the night and had a better than 2-1 chip lead. When I picked up AA in the BB and my opponent pushed I started looking forward to a perfect end to my night. Here’s how it all went down…

HAND #1:
Full Tilt Poker $50 + $5 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t250/t500 Blinds – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): t9250 M = 12.33
BTN/SB: t4250 M = 5.67

Pre Flop: (t750) Hero is BB with A A
BTN/SB raises to t4250 all in, Hero calls t3750

Flop: (t8500) 9 9 Q

Turn: (t8500) J

River: (t8500) T

Final Pot: t8500
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Nines)
BTN/SB shows K 9 (a straight, King high)
BTN/SB wins t8500

HAND #2:
Full Tilt Poker $50 + $5 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t250/t500 Blinds – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN/SB): t5000 M = 6.67
BB: t8500 M = 11.33

Pre Flop: (t750) Hero is BTN/SB with A A
Hero calls t250, BB raises to t8500 all in, Hero calls t4500 all in

Flop: (t10000) 8 8 Q

Turn: (t10000) Q

River: (t10000) K

Final Pot: t10000
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Queens)
BB shows 4 Q (a full house, Queens full of Eights)
BB wins t10000

Believe it or not, I wasn’t even mad. I looked at my buddy and we both laughed and said, “No fucking way that just happened!” I turned off my computer and took the dogs out before going to bed. As I fell asleep I was thinking, “85% my ass!”

Yep.  That’s me.  In a past life I was a PartyPoker donk.  I saw Moneymaker win the WSOP and I thought I could do it too (along with about 20 million other donks!).  I played poker when I was in the Navy and did well, but that was before the Hold’Em boom and we were playing ridiculous games like “Night Baseball” and “Follow the Queen” with idiots that didn’t know they were allowed to fold.  I figured if I could take down a few hundred a night in THOSE games then I MUST be pretty good at poker…right?  So…I deposited $100 on Party with visions of building a seven figure bankroll and using poker to pay the bills and party.  At times I was borderline obsessed with playing, but somehow I never really took it very seriously.  I read a couple of books, but none of them were heavy on theory.  They were mostly of the “in this situation do this” variety, but I didn’t always understand WHY I should do it.  That caused a big problem in that when I found something that seemed to work I would try to go on auto-pilot.  I played a TON of hands at FL/NL micro-stakes up to .25/.50 and some SNGs up to around $20 and at one point I was closing in on a $2000 bankroll (just a little shy of seven figures!).  Of course I had probably deposited around ~$1200 along the way, but I was still up.  Anyway, I didn’t have a good handle on bankroll management and a little success encouraged me to play over my head.  One or two extended bad runs later and I had basically erased my bankroll.  I made a few more deposits, but I never really got it going again.  If I was being totally honest with myself I’d have to say I probably donked off $2000 – $2500 over about two years, but the money wasn’t an issue at the time.  Then, after the UIGA made it a pain to deposit money and a divorced felted my life bankroll I decided I was done with online poker.

Fast-forward about two and a half years…

Between F’ing EB talking about poker on the Junks all of the time and the birth of MPR, I started getting horny for poker again.  I held off for a while, but every week I couldn’t wait to listen to the new MPR broadcast and I was convinced that I had a much better idea of how to approach the game.  This time I made a deal with myself.  I was going to deposit $100 on FTP and if I got felted I would just accept that I sucked and stick to the occasional home game.  If I built a bankroll I would stay disciplined and see where it took me.  So…I deposited $100 on FTP at the end of February and started playing micro-stakes STT/SNG on a limited basis (<1200 tournaments since 2/25/09).  I was initially only staying above zero as a result of my deposit bonus and rake back.  I was finishing 4^th and 5^th WAY too often and couldn’t figure out what I needed to change to get in the top three consistently.  I was starting to think it was time to take my $100 back out and call it a day when I heard the Collin Moshman interview.  He talked about a few things that seemed to strike a chord and the next day after work I ended up going to four different book stores before I found his SNG book in stock.  I started reading while trying to tread water at the tables and slowly things started to turn around.  I’m still struggling with countless aspects of my game and I can’t seem to avoid the bad runs that almost erase the great runs, but I’m maintaining an upward trend.  It’s nothing amazing by ANY measure, but my original $100 is almost $1300 (~$800 in winnings and the rest in rake back and bonuses).  I would be close to $2000, but I’m just coming off of a ~$600 landslide.  Of course, if it wasn’t for “bad runs” we’d all be millionaires!

If you’re still reading this you have to be saying, “DUDE! WHAT IS THE F’ING POINT ALREADY?!?!”  Well, here it is…Since my return to online poker I’ve had plenty of occasions where I had what I thought was an interesting story or question or just a plain ol’ rant that I wanted to share, but none of my friends play poker enough to understand the things I want to talk about.  I want to use this blog to talk about NL SNGs…bad beats, amazing suck outs, theory, situational plays, PT stats and how to use them, table selection, and whatever else anyone wants to talk about having to do with SNGs.  I may end up talking to myself, but that’s no different from most of the time I’m playing online!  Hopefully, there’s some interest in this and it turns into a resource for the MPR SNG crowd.  If not, I may just use it to bitch about JP and why I think Bret should be the fourth Junkie!

Later tonight I’m going to post the final two heads-up hands of a $55 SNG that seemed to be the forewarning of that $600 freefall I just had.  I’ll give a quick tease by saying that I had AA back-to-back.  Can’t lose…right?  We’ll see…