Really Really Exhausted

I was pretty stoked to play the WSOP satellite last night--even managed to win my buy-in plus a little sweetener at the ring game tables at FT (100 NL full ring has become my new grind game, nothing specaturlar but steady profits for the past month or so).

I was in for a bit of a surprise however when I got to my table and found myself with 5,000 chips and 30 minute blind levels. It definitely would have paid to read the fine print. Don't get me wrong, I very much prefer deep stack tourneys--they give you a chance to spread your wings and play some poker. No push fest there, very thoughtful play required for success. This is a great structure, particularly good for a blogger tourney that people were unusually serious about. Right off the top, thank you Iggy for organizing this plus even more donating the prize pool top off to make sure we had 2 seats as we were so close.

Unfortunately, having it a 9:00 pm on a Monday night made it pretty awful life -EV for me. I quickly realized I was facing one of 3 fates:

A) most likely: busting out early--while not favoring push monkeying, the top 2 payout only definitely argued for extra aggression as chip accumulation was paramount but made a relatively realy exit more likely.

B) less likely, but most awful: cruel survival, seeing my aggessive strategy pay off with a few good cards and suckout magic when needed, getting a good enough stack to play deep into the night, but not quite deep enough to bubble with no prize and no sleep.

C) Extemely unlikely: success, joy, glory, still no sleep but I could float through the next day.

Without a doubt, C>A>B.

As you probably guessed by now, I fell smack into B, finishing 7th out of 93rd which was good for exactly $0 and 3 hours of sleep. I couldn't even bag it this morning as I was interviewing a potential future colleague first thing at my boss's request.

At any rate, having slogged through a morning of conference calls, a relatively slow afternoon left me with a choice between writing this post and passing out over my keyboard. I started to write up key hands, but good grief, there were so many, so many many hands. Long story short I played 522 hands, mostly like a rabid rodent on crack. The key seemed to be a balance between not really minding if I busted out with a healthy dose of competiveness that kept me from wanting to bust out in a dumb way (though a few times I must say I really tried, ask Garth).

A few general notes:

I am scared of Maigrey. Yikes. Especially in the beginning, we tangled. A lot. We both ripped a few flesh wounds in the other; luckily I sucked out on others as well so we both survived.

If GCox raises preflop, you better have a hand if you want to play on. (Condolences man, making 3rd was a huge accomplishment but must have sucked royally.)

If Hoyazo raises preflop, he may have two cards (may also apply to myself).

SoxLover's guide to beating S.T.B.: get your chips in behind and hope you get lucky. I've yet to figure out how to do it the other way.

When reading Poker Champ's chat...realize you're really getting played. I'm not going to claim anything near immunity to tilt, but immediately after I busted (at someone else's hands helped by myself) he suggested that "check out his site to improve my game". This at 3:45 in the morning after busting out following almost seven hours of play resulting in bubkis. Grrrrrrr.

In a weird way I'm kind of proud to have been one of his last victims.

Well played whomever you are. Bastard.