First Freeroll Cash

I sensed your expressions of chagrin as you read yesterday's blog, when I wrote I will be blogging less about poker. So to assuage your frustrations, I'll give you a recap of today's tourney min-cash. It was the Supernova Weekly Freeroll, where Stars puts up $75k and anyone who is supernova can enter for free (along with some Platinum and Gold players who enter qualifying tourneys with FPP's). They had 2200 runners today, with a first prize of around $11k.

I was strangely pumped about making it into the money, and considering that it was worth all of $52.50 (or, more accurately, $26.25 to me, $26.25 to the staker) I don't think it was really about the $. I guess just feeling like I'm getting value out of the whole Supernova thing, feeling like the freerolls aren't a waste of time (this was my third one, failed to cash the other two). Obviously the dream target is to make it into the top ten or so, get a decent payday and if you get hit by the deck maybe a five figure one. But the min cash makes for a decent hourly (and you can obviously grind cash games the whole time), so that's the realistic goal.

Anyway, I basically folded my way to the money. I was only all-in three times the whole tourney. First time was within about ten or fifteen minutes of start, I still had my t1500 starting stack. UTG opened, and I was UTG+1 with JJ. I actually wasn't sure what to do. I mean, it's a freeroll, who cares if you bust? But I had no read of note on UTG, and I wouldn't feel great about it getting in here. So I just called without a real plan (which is kinda the cardinal poker sin, you should always have a plan, but whatevs). Folded around to BB who shoved, UTG folded. BB had been incredibly active already, so it was a snap call for me. He tabled 22 and didn't improve, I doubled up.

Then spent about 90 minutes folding and stealing blinds, never deviating more than about 10% from the t3000 stack. Until suddenly blinds were high enough (it's not a real slow structure) that I was already in shove or fold mode preflop, and I shoved on the button with KJs. I got looked up by a tight player in the blinds, who I had barely covered, with K6o. Pretty bad call, if you ask me. He still had an M of like 6 or 7. Anyway, board ran out 10-10-4 x 4. At least a 6 didn't hit, I guess, but it was pretty annoying. I would have had a pretty healthy stack, just about average, but instead I was still grinding my short stack.

A lot more folding/bit more stealing and we were down to within about 20 of the money. I folded a whole orbit and a half with no attempts at stealing, bringing my stack all the way to like t1700. It's not like I wouldn't have gone with a decent hand, but I knew I could fold into the money so I wasn't going to take any unnecessary risks. (I mean, I wasn't going to fold QQ just to get my $52.50, but I wasn't going to steal with 76s either).

We hit the money with 396 left, and were almost instantly down to about 350 when a tight player open shoved. I had an M of about 1.25 and 66. Obviously not crazy about the spot, but I got close to the best I could hope for (obv 22-55 would have been better, but short of that) when he showed K6s. K in the window, game over.

So I got it in three times as a heavy favorite, and went 1-1-1. In general I have taken to playing tourneys very passively, sort of in survival mode, which is okay I guess but does end up in a lot of min-cashes. The logic is, the min-cashes pay for the entries, and if once every twenty times or something I get hit by the deck I can make a deeper run. But truthfully I probably need to get more aggressive. Most of the time I'm playing a lot of cash games at the same time and not really giving the tournament much attention, so I guess it will be different when I finally get back to live tourneys. Hoping to play the ME in 2010, should probably try to get some live tourney practice before then...