The Fifty Fifty

"To live, you have to be willing to die" -Amir Vahidi

"To live, I just have to wait for that PP" -Alizona

Another overlay in the 50-50 tonight with only 892 entries, so I gave it a shot with my ring game profit. :) Went out in 226th spot, 73 places out of the money. Here's the real kicker - I played a total of 144 hands without ever being dealt a PP. I did catch a suited Big Slick one time and won a pot with it. Woohoo. Other than that I fell into a tight, conservative game based on my poor starting cards and stack size. The few plays I tried to make with A10s-type hands or suited one-gapper connectors never panned out and I was always below the chip average. As the hour wore down, so did my stack with the increasing blinds.

Late in the hour, I did decide to lay down - regretfully, now - both KcJc and QdJd hands into 3xBB raises. And early on, when I COULD and SHOULD have built my stack, I laid down A8clubs from early position with a UTG raise already in the hand only to see the flop come three clubs. Sigh. Obviously the humongous hole in my game right now is not being able to play back against people who preflop raise. I cannot, will not, do it with rags, never mind with halfway decent holdings like those. I don't know how to do it, and the few times I do try I probably do it wrong because I end up losing my shirt, which then makes me even more fearful to try next time... Fear is the killer.

As the hands wore on... 80, then 90, then 120... I just KNEW I would get get a PP (once every seventeen hands!) and that would be my optimal spot to make the move. If I lost with it, oh well... but there weren't any antes yet, the blinds weren't THAT bad and I wasn't gonna play until I got it.

I never got it.

I'll never get it.

At hand #144, 5 mins into the second hour, I finally got AQo at UTG+1 with 1000 chips left. Best hand I'd seen in 45 mins. Antes had just started, my M was microscopic, and with the big raiser to my right already having folded, it was an easy shove even from such early position. What - do you really think I was gonna get a PP in the next hand or two? LOL

Well of course the whole table knows the deal. I've folded the last 27 hands in a row! They ain't dumb - table folds around to the BB with a big stack, and even he thinks about it for a while. Finally calls, showing 5-10 suited in clubs. I cringed, as I'll explain shortly. Flush possible, straight possible ('Huh?', you say? Read on!).

Flop is 79J rainbow, so now you know where we're going... I once read a little tidbit in the sidebar of some poker book, something that I've never forgotten - it said, "You can't make a straight without a 5 or a 10 in the hand somewhere". To this day, every time I get a 5-10 suited hand, I'm tempted to play it (but never do unless it's a freebie) just because of this voice in my mind repeating that mantra over and over. Weird, I know. But I had to throw that in here because, for me anyway, it adds this really bizarre element to the hand. Now you know why I cringed at showdown. If only I could see my great hands before they happen as easily as I can see the bad ones...

We didn't have to wait long for the kick-to-the-head 8 as it popped right up on the turn as every vein in my skull exploded. Just kidding. Sorta. hehe Still had a shot to trump him on the river, but the pace of play is so quick online that I couldn't really identify which card I needed. When I saw a Q hit the board, my heart leaped because I guess I thought I might have made the higher straight or something - sounds dumb in retrospect, but it was just my mind's ridiculously valiant but absolutely delusional attempt to win the hand. It's as if as soon as I saw 5-10 I willed the bad beat into reality. Without any time for the shock to recede, the table immediately broke and I was left staring at the empty seats and feeling pretty empty myself. I had nothing. And I did nothing - all game. Except wait. And fold. Wait. Fold.

I brought up the tournament in Popopop's Universal Replayer to recheck every hand. I'm sure 144 hands without a PP is not really all that anomalous, to be honest. I'm sure it happens here and there. What the fuck can ya do, poker sucks sometimes. The good news is, I did somehow have 15 hands "in the green" (meaning I won chips) without every having a real hand. And I only had 7 "in the red". For the hand selections I had to play, I have to give myself a pat on the back because you know I had to be making a few moves on the pot to have a 2-1 win ratio. :)

What is BAD, however, about these stats is that I was basically in only 22 hands out of 144, or 15%. Talk about a weak tight player. Just abysmal. But hey... 85o, 39o, J2o, Q7o, 23s... how can you hope to get momentum and a stack rolling with that kinda crap? Yeah, it's an excuse, I know... I just checked and I had 19 hands with Ax (the odds of having at least one A is about 15% so 144*0.15 is 21 hands normally, well within reason). I laid down almost every one of em because I didn't want to weak-call or pop it and then face a (re-)raise and have to meekly fold my "weak" ace. But hell - aren't weak players supposed to be playing weak aces? Doh!

I'm reading a book right now, Killer Poker by John Vorhaus, and right off the bat it says to go sit at a table and raise five hands in a row preflop, and study the table's reaction to the constant raising. Interesting proposition, something I certainly need to go do. I hope the rest of the book is just as good for my game!