I continue to reaffirm my belief that I am going to win a poker tournament one day. I've been working on it, it just hasn't come to fruition quite yet. I figure if I keep playing better than most people, I'll get there. I'm definitely top 10% (maybe better, this is the new humble aejones) in most tournaments, and even today's 10k Split event (sweet format: 9 handed first day, 6 handed second day, and heads up in the money-- if only I'd been able to make day two!) I was top 20% of the field. I'm just playing well. I'm no longer playing too loose in stupid spots where my opponents' biggest leaks are stacking off too wide and having too wide of value ranges. Sometimes I even fold K8 suited in the hijack, true story.

Today was not that day though. I played some funky hands. I played this hand where I opened button to 425 with queens, big blind 3-bet for the second orbit in a row to 1300, I 4-bet to 2900 intending to get it in ~28k deep (I think stacks are very good for him to 5-bet bluff and the fact that it's the second time he did it should make him think I am a reactionary poker player), he calls. TT6ss, check, 3100, call. 3 completing flush, he leads 4300 (lol), I call. 6 double pairing the board on the river, he checks, ~18k behind and ~20k in there, I think briefly about shoving for value and I think briefly about betting 3500 for value, but ultimately decide that my biggest leak in tournaments years ago was not identifying spots where people just aren't calling the river with worse and they're more likely to be trapping me than calling with whatever random crap they got there with. I check expecting to win >75% of the time I'd say (hmm... at least 60% I think, I'm not sure, felt like I had the best hand for sure). He had aces. I can dodge bullets baby!

I made a bad call in a WEIRD fucking spot where I had a sweet draw on the flop (tbh, probably should have just gone with it) and then made some showdown value and he backed into a straight trickily and I paid off a river bet like I usually do. I'm due to stop doing that. I'll make an extra awesome fold in the main event now in honor of how often I pay off the river with stupid hands (I actually made a sweet fold the other day in the shootout, Dan was very proud). I doubled back up to 20k when I flopped top pair in a 3-bet pot, but that only lasted about an orbit and I busted with jacks to AK all in before the flop.

I'm not sure why I felt like writing a little about poker, but I've just been playing live poker and keeping these absurd hours (much of them filled with disappointment after not winning a tournament when it's late night in Cannes and nothing is open) so I'll probably take to blogging a bit more. Made some plans for San Remo after this, but honestly I've only heard bad things. Fortunately I've heard equally as amazing things about the quality of local Italian poker players in San Remo... Until next time..