The cards don’t care how much you think you deserve to win a tournament.  They don’t care if you’re playing lights out, piss awful or somewhere in between.  All that matters is what falls and the value of the respective hands when all the cards are out.  This is rather unfortunate for me, at least so far.

First, the bad news: The series has not gone well for me thus far.  I’ve played seven tournaments and have been out of all of them on day 1.  I don’t recall much from the first three, but the last four have been especially brutal.  In hold’em, I’ve busted AA  Last night, in No Limit 2-7 Single Draw (a much lesser known but great, great poker game), I got all in pre draw for an over double average pot with a made 9 and was beat out by a two card draw to 2h3h5h.  I’m not quite certain of my equity on this hand, but I’d put it about 88-90%.  The hold’em hands are frustrating, but there are still hundreds and hundreds of players to wade through even if I win those hands.  The deuce hand is far more frustrating, so please allow me a moment to vent.

Only 250 players signed up for the $1,500 NL Deuce event, and at 1am last night there were around 100 players remaining.  The table is 7-handed, and other than myself, there are two good players including Erick Lindgren and an unknown player both on my right, three bad players, and a new player with a pretty big stack who is a decent hold’em player but I’m not sure about his deuce game.  I’ll be more sure in just a minute.  I’ve been playing extremely well all night, and opening a lot of pots, when the following hand happens.  I open the button to 750 at blinds 150/300 and a 75 ante, with an 11k stack.  The new player I described is in the big blind, with 16k chips.  He looks at his hand, puts on his sunglasses, and fires out about 5000 chips.  I move in, he calls, and draws two to beat my pat 9.  If you know anything about the game, you know his play is bad, but it is especially piss awful for a few more reasons.  Since he is a good enough hold’em player, he should have the mind to know some no limit tournament strategy.  He should also have already spotted the three marks at the table.  He must also know that he is two to my left, and will have position on me for five of every seven hands.  He may not know that I’m the best player at the table (sorry Erick) and top 5 in the tournament, but he should have a better idea of that now.  So, this player, who we’ll refer to as Mr. Piss Awful for now, decides to play a pot for over 2/3 of his stack, almost 80 blinds total, in a somewhat rare out of position pot, against the best player at the table, with about as bad a hand as you can get in with.  Maybe I made him snap, maybe he snapped on his own, or maybe he thinks it’s a good play, I don’t know.  I just know that this tournament was probably my best shot to win a bracelet, and with more than double average in a 100 man field full of people just looking to take a shot at a bracelet, I’m no worse than a 10 or 15 to 1 dog to get one.  Wiping the tears, moving on…

And now, the good news:  The series is hardly a week old.  I’m playing well.  Only one buy in was for $5k, with all the others $2,500 or below.  I’m going to rehab today.  Life is good.  If you can keep things in perspective as a professional poker player, especially if you’re a tournament player, you’ll be a lot more successful, and more than that, live a much happier life.  It’s easy to get tunnel vision and only see that you have bricked your last seven events; but, in the big picture, it’s really only seven events.  There are over 30 on my schedule for the month, and that’s only this month.  Now, I just need to try to make a few day 2s.  Because right now I’m on track to play all 30+, and that would be bad.

I’ll leave you with this week’s schedule.  I really hope I don’t play all of them like I did last week.  I opted to skip the $1k NLH yesterday for the NL Deuce, so I may play it today if rehab isn’t amazing.  But then again, what are the odds of that?

This week’s schedule:

Sunday – Rehab at the Hard Rock, possibly a late reg for the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em

Monday - $1,500 No Limit Hold’em (6-handed)

Tuesday - $5,000 No Limit Hold’em

Wednesday - $10,000 No Limit 2-7 Single Draw Championship

Thursday - $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha

Thursday - $1,500 Seven Card Stud

Friday - $2,500 Limit Hold’em (6-handed), or possibly a day off since I despise limit hold’em

Saturday - $1,000 No Limit Hold’em

Sunday – Who wants to go to rehab?