TOURNEY TIME

After my political excorsism yesterday, I feel pretty good.
Big game coming up Sunday. The Vikes are playing for the NFC championship in a dome that Favre owns. Go purple! My favorite moment from last weeks game against the Cowboys was when Fox showed a split screen of Prince and Bud Grant (two of my favorite Minnesotans, and idols) right before cutting back to a beautiful touchdown pass from Favre to Rice that pretty much put the game out of reach for Dallas. Sweet, sweet moment.
As I said, my poker game is back on track. It's helped me considerably to think of pennies as dollars when playing micro micro stakes. Basically equates a 1-2 cent NL or 2-5 cent NL table to the lowest NL stakes at Foxwoods. Makes it easier to walk away from a table with 80 cents profit when I think that that would be $80 in a casino. I've also been buying in for $5 ($500) at those tables, which gives me just enough buying power to get some respect on bluffs.
Things have been going well, so I decided to play a $4 tourney. It was nice to play in a tourney with 1500 people instead of the 8000 I'm used to. Everything was moving along nicely. I hit some cards, made some good decisions. I did lay down pocket tens to an all-in and a call ahead of me. Not only did neither of them have a pair, but two tens ended up coming out on the board! I still think it was a good fold, but it would have only cost a 1/4 of my stack to call the original all-in. I was worried about the caller, who had me covered. Of course, I would have flopped the set, but hindsight is 20/20. It's so hard to shake off a hand like that where I would have won a nice pot with quads. You just have to shake it off and play with a clear head. All part of becoming a better player. The tournament ended badly. I was cruising towards the money, when I woke up to big slick suited against a 2x BB preflop raise from a hyper aggressive player who had been getting lucky with suspect hands when he showed. I min raised and he called. Flop comes K-4-10. He bets 2x pot, and I shove. He snap calls with pocket 4's. His set held up and I clicked "close window" in a shocked stupor about 40 places from the money. 2 1/2 hours completely wasted, and a certain cash snatched from jaws of victory. Did I blunder? I knew he didn't have pocket K's or 10's or he would have raised more pre flop, and probably check post flop, but I didn't even consider 4's. I put him on K-Q or worse. I had seen him bet so aggressively with mediocre hands for about 1/2 an hour. I would love feedback from my (possibly imaginary) readers....
Oh, and don't forget, if you are in Vegas, stay at the Palms Place or Signature at the MGM Grand! Perfect for extended poker stays. Sweet suites at a sweeter price! Ugh, I feel so dirty....