November Review--Please don't suck out on me!!!

What a month...all the extremes of poker rolled up into 30 days. I seem to have developed a pattern when I have a good sized tournament score.

Here are the goals I set for November:

• 150k hands online-Played ~100k...once I had the tournament runs I played a bunch of FTOPS and other tournaments

• Make a live Final Table-Only played one "real" live tournament. Did finish second in a live home tournament of 24.

• Get my fat ass in the gym 3x per week-Not so much
  

I have had 4 decent sized tournament scores (3 of which were 5 figure scores) in the last 12 months starting in November 2009. After each of these scores I have run like absolute death at the cash tables and can't possibly win a hand. After the 2 scores I had in Nov '09 and Jan '10. I actually put in significant volume at higher stakes NLHE than normal and ran/played like absolute death and was a donator to the regs at those levels. This time I decided to stay at my levels and it happened again. Is it a doomswitch that is triggered by luckboxing a tournament? Maybe so...

In any event here are my results for the month:

On-line cash -$489.09
On-line tournaments +$12,148
Stars FPP value (16,800 VPP x 3.5 factor x 1.5 cents per) +$882
Full Tilt rakeback +$27.47
Live cash -$12
Live tournaments -$65

Total +$12,491.38

So obv if I don't have that big score we are talking about a pretty bad month. But I guess that is the nature of poker, especially tournament poker. That is why closing out tournaments and playing to get deep is so important to your win rate. Consistently min cashing is bullshit and will get you broke pretty quickly.

The live numbers are interesting. I started out the month with a -$1k trip to the Borgata so I fought my way back to essentially break even. Frankly I played very little live this month.

Here is a pretty good hand to illustrate post doomswitch:

SB: $47.10
BB: $84.15
Hero (BTN): $72.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BTN with J 4 3 6
Hero raises to $1.50, SB calls $1.25, 1 fold

Flop: ($3.50) 2 5 K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $3.35, SB raises to $9, Hero raises to $30.35, SB raises to $45.60, Hero calls $15.25

Turn: ($94.70) Q (2 players)

River: ($94.70) K (2 players)

Not a huge pot but this is what I keep seeing over and over again. Villain here is a mega fish running like 65/22 over large sample. I omitted the results inadvertently but he ended up showing up with 9922. So he gets it in as a 60/40 dog and holds. I scoop with any A, 3, 4, or 6 and at least win low with any non-paired low card.

Here is one more for you...in this case villain is unknown and just sat down.

Poker Stars $50.00 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter By DeucesCracked Poker Videos

Hero (SB): $109.90
BB: $150.55
UTG: $125.00
MP: $143.60
CO: $60.70
BTN: $255.35

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with K 8 2 6
UTG calls $0.50, MP calls $0.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.50, Hero calls $0.25, BB checks

Flop: ($2.50) 6 8 8 (5 players)
Hero bets $2.95, BB folds, UTG calls $2.95, MP folds, BTN folds

Turn: ($8.40) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $8.00, UTG raises to $17, Hero raises to $59.60, UTG raises to $121.45, Hero calls $46.85 all in

River: ($221.30) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)

So I flop the nut full house and get called by 4557 with 57 of hearts and he turns a 2 outer for the str8 flush. Now 4557 is not a good H/L hand (tbh my hand sucks ass too but pot was limped and we are deep stacked). His low draw sucks on the flop, the board is paired meaning a str8 or a flush is probably not good if we get stacks in. On the turn I am just trying to blow him off a naked low. Sigh....I ran into 3 str8 flushes holding the nut full house in 1 DAY...last night.

So what to do about these runbads, etc. Not really sure other than keep playing and try to fight my way through it. I am going to take a break from PLO8 cash. Running nearly 10 buy-ins below EV in a month is a little hard on the nerves and I need to restore said nerves. I may or may not go to the WSOP-Circuit events at Harrah's AC. It actually starts Friday and runs for 2 weeks. Best guess I will go up for a $500 or $1k event. I know Borgata is running a concurrent series and I will look at the structures and determine which events make the most sense.

GL at the tables and please don't suck out on me...I can't take it anymore!