This tournament is driving me nuts. I have played it probably 15 times in my life and cashed about 10 of them, and placed...9th (last night), 13th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 28th. 3 or 4 of those finishes were in like my last 5 attempts in the last month. I just can't finish strong in this tournament and it is absolutely driving me crazy. But anyways what can you do?

For last night...I was so happy with how I played. First off I decided I was going to only play 4-6 tables at a time. So I loaded up the 16.50 turbo, a 500 cap $55, the $109 turbo (I think?) and one other (I'm so tired I can't even remember what I played). I get a real nice stack in the $55 I think top 5 with about 100 left just to get coolered twice in a row by the most clueless player ever. So frustrating and that's how it's been going lately, I have been losing showdowns at a ridiculous clip. I decided to load up a few $60 sit n gos and the nightly 100k after this and just relax for the rest of the night. I ended up taking 9th in the nightly 100k, I can't imagine a more frustrating position to go out in a tourney like that, here's the recap from what I can recall (I'm on 2 hours sleep)...

I started the table with ADZ and a couple other regs. I LOVE this because regs don't know who I am because I play such low MTT volume and I know how to exploit them, it's great being a random to them. So I chipped up to about 6k taking little pots here and there. ADZ had like 120k on cash tables at the time and was playing so spewy because why would he care about a 162 dollar buy in with 120k in cash? So I took some pots off him and he eventually got coolered and was gone. I was up to about 12k at 100-200.

A big pot for me happened at this level. I had QQ in middle position and early position total unpredictable donk made it 600 to go. He had me covered and I was about 99% sure he wasn't gonna 4-bet me with anything other than AA or KK so to avoid turning QQ into a bluff I flatted. I was ecstatic to see a 7k stack jam from the big blind and when initial raiser folded I snap called to find his JJ and took a nice pot down.

From there I chipped up to about 35k without showdown and was like 5/150 at the time. I then lost an all in pre with AK<AQ for 15k to bring me down to 20k. That sucked. But like 2 hands later I got those same chips back to get to where I was at 35k.

About an hour went by and nothing really happened. Blinds were 800-1600 I think and I raised to like 3600 with QQ in middle position and Sooners jammed for his last 25k and I held against his 55 to get me up to around 60k. I got lucky enough to get AA aipf against AQ a few hands later to get me over 100k. From there a lot of chipping up to get to 165k and I was chip leader with about 60 left.

I then lost a few pots. Then at 1500-3000 I had AJ on the big blind and snap called the small blinds shove for 50k and he showed K2 and turned a king to take a nice pot and i was down to 85k. Then I lost QQ to AT for another 40k and found myself as the short stack with about 20 left. Here we go again.

I picked up AT and jammed a donkeys raise and he showed up with KQ and I held. Then I got AA and held against KQ for another double up. And to fast forward with a lot of chipping up got up to 240k before the FT bubble burst.

I still feel sick to my stomach right now because I had such a healthy stack that I could have guaranteed myself 5-6k but I just always have to play so aggressive at FT's and I spewed away my stack (well I got unlucky, kind of)...

I was obviously watching both tables when we were 18 handed and below. When it was down to 12 there was a player at the other table who 3 bet literally 75% of the pots and either took them down or folded to the 4-bet. Never a showdown, either 3-bet/fold or 3-bet win the pot. I was at the FT for about 8 hands and he had 3 bet 3 of them and 4 bet 1 of them. I picked up 66 in the cutoff and he was small blind. At this point I have to assume that if I raise he will 3 bet me, so I shouldn't raise if I'm not planning on 4 betting --- if i'm not gonna 4 bet I should open fold. So I thought about it as it folded around to me. This would be a great spot to pick up a nice pot without showdown and jump to 3/9 in chips and go from there. So I raised to 16,500 (4k-8k blinds). He sure enough reraised and made it like 38k. I jammed for my stack which was about 210k as planned. He snap calls and flips over TT, are you fucking kidding me?!?>! GG another nightly 100k let down. I have had this sick feeling in my stomach all day thinking about it. I don't regret what I did because with my read I bet if that same hand played out 10 times he would snap call 1 of them and the other 9 I take down a nice pot and am sitting pretty. You always seem to think when you win a pot like that you are a genius and when it doesn't work out you feel like a donkey. I just have to not be results oriented and forget about this one. I just can't help but feel like I left so much equity on the table, but I also like I said can't help but play for the win.

Man I'm feeling confident right now. Good things to come if I can increase the MTT volume a little.

Kind of long, cliffs:

- I always get deep in the nightly 100k

- I always exit upset

- Terrible timing at FT with LAG player

- I played for the win and of course wish I would have nitted up after I went out.

- FML right now.

My laptop got all messed up the other day but it's old anyways so I went and bought a PC. Since all I do on a computer is either work or poker related I figured I'd cash out exactly what the computer costs from Stars so it wouldn't affect my real life accounts so that's what I did. For computer people (I'm not one), I got an ASUS PC don't know the model off the top of my head (at work now) but it has tons of memory and is cheaper than the comparable HP and the guy at best buy says he likes it better so that's what I went with. It is so incredibly smooth and it came with a 22'' monitor also ASUS as well as a wireless printer for $900. I am considering sending the receipt to Stars and having them pay for it with the concierge thing but I may just keep those points for later on haven't decided.

The reason I say blessing in disguise (I made a PD thread about this earlier haha was pretty excited) is because I'm used to playing on a laptop. I had no idea how limited I was on a laptop in terms of multi-tabling. I had 35 tables up yesterday, I'd say 20 were STT's and 15 were multi-table sit n gos, and it really felt like I was playing 20 on my laptop there was just zero lag whatsoever. Oh, I had 3 movies downloading as well. So anyways I figure this will really help with increasing the volume and should pay for itself.

So anyways as for poker, I'm still behind on my VPP goal but not by too much only a few thousand and I really haven't been playing all that much lately due to a few things which will hurt my volume for awhile now: first I am now in 2 basketball leagues and will be starting a 3rd in a few weeks, and second I've been busier at work than expected right about now so if that persists it's gonna be tough. As far as basketball goes, it's my favorite thing to do and one of the few things I wouldn't even hesitate to choose over poker so it's definitely worth it. Bad news is my ankle is swollen to the size of a tennis ball right now from my last game and I'm pretty sure my other foot has plantar fascitis so I'm gonna be out for awhile which blows.

I finished off February pretty well, here are my sit n go stats for the month....
<table id="t1" border="1"><tbody id="tablerows"><tr id="coolhandkev#pokerstars&2/1/2010 2/28/2010 SNG Only"><td id="coolhandkev#pokerstars&2/1/2010 2/28/2010 SNG Only2" align="center">coolhandkev </td><td align="center">1,096</td><td title="The Av. Profit is the Average Profit Per Game after rake has been subtracted." align="right">$2 </td><td title="The Av. Stake is the average tournament buy-in amount." align="right">$19 </td><td title="The Av. ROI is the Average of each game’s Return On Investment. It is the average of each (Payout-(Stake+Rake))/(Stake+Rake). This is not the same as total ROI which is (Total Payouts-(Total Rake+Total Stakes))/(Total Stakes+Total Rake)." align="center">10%</td><td title="The Total Profit is the net profit for this player (and includes rake)." align="right">$2,470 </td><td title="Super Hot=6 straight payouts. Hot=3 straight payouts. Tilt=4 straight losses. Super Tilt=8 straight losses." align="center">-</td><td title="The ability rating is a number up to 100 that shows a players ability based on combining all the statistical measures we have for that player." align="center">N/A</td><td align="center">PokerStars</td><td align="center">2/1/2010 2/28/2010 SNG Only </td><td>x</td></tr></tbody></table>
So I only played 1096 sit n gos which is pretty disappointing but my roi is right where I want it to be. I feel good overall about the month because I had a HUGE downswing right in the middle and kept an even keel to bounce back real big. So far March has been rough but I feel a big night coming tonight! I am going to throw in some MTT's tonight I've been lacking in that department. I only played a few in February and had a lot of min cashes nothing noteworthy, although I made it deep in the turbo takedown which was a fun tourney but 300 out of 20k only gets you $300 unfortunately no audi!

So I am still feeling real confident with my game at the moment. I fixed a few leaks last month and have already noticed some salvaged equity due to that. I'll probably take a few days this month to study up a little other than that I'm gonna just play. To be on pace I have to be at 50k VPP by the end of this month, yikes probably not gonna happen, here's where I'm at....

VPP's - 23,849
Profit (across all sites not factoring in FPP value yet) - $2,445

Oh and also thank goodness for my new home buyer tax credit or I would have owed 3k this year! Just got my taxes done, note to self keep money set aside if you have poker winnings in the future.

I've been on a wild up and down ride these past few days! With an average buy in of $22 I have gone up $1,700, back down $1,200 and now back up that same $1,200 to where I started the last downswing. So altogether I am up about $1,700 in the last 5 days or so with two big upswings and one big downswing. Nothing inbetween right about now either hot or cold!

I am really trying to build my roll up to a point where I can comfortably grind the $27 and $38 turbos with 15+ tables. The swings are pretty big in those so I feel like I should have at least 5k to deal with the swings. I do have income aside from poker so I could easily play them now but I really want to not redeposit and build from what I have online currently so I am going to get there the hard way. The way I see it, when I get there I can really put a dent in my VPP goal for the year, I just can't possibly get 200,000 VPPs by grinding the $16 sit n gos. I have already incorporated the $33 STT's into my grinds as the swings aren't bad at all in those and quite frankly I have always crushed the regular speed tournies, they just don't fill up very fast these days and take so long! So I've been loading 8 of those while playing 8-12 turbos on the side the last week and that seems to be working well. The one thing I haven't been doing which I said I would is playing MTT's I just haven't felt like committing the time for that, with sit n gos if I want to do something I can be there in an hour, can't do that with MTT's. I think I am just going to start to dedicate Sundays to MTT's but sit n gos are so soft on Sundays it's tough to ignore!

So I fixed my biggest leak this week and I'm not afraid to admit that I have leaks. In spite of being more confident than ever in my game, even against the regs, I can admit I have things to work on and everyone should realize this about their game. Without getting into too much detail I found that I wasn't bet/folding nearly enough...particularly on a river bet. I see tons of additional ROI coming my way if I can bet/fold at the right times where prior I was bet/calling. So I'm happy about that.

Other than that I am still behind on my VPP pace for the year. As I said above it's really going to depend on me increasing the average buy in to attain, so that's extra motivation to go on a heater here. Here is my info YTD:

VPP's - 16,951

Profit - $549 (excluding any FPP's which increase profit)