MrMon
12-14-2004, 05:15 PM
I just had my most pathetic ITM finish last night, came in 3rd on a Paradise $20+$2 while only playing 3 hands in the midst of a noisy phone line. There's a serious question at the end of this.
Here's what happened:
Start playing and immediately started dropping the modem (still on dial-up, don't give me a hard time). Redials kept hitting massive noise on both phone lines. Finally got through to play game #7, where I won to put me at 1265.
Folded a bunch of rags, dropped again, got back on to fold rags, played game #21 which put me at 1405. Immediately dropped and couldn't back on for 27 minutes.
Now I'm back on, barely, at 14.4K, where I see I'm still alive, game #54, small stack at 520, 4 left, and I've got A2o. (My opponents are at 7290, 1215, and 965.) Knowing I could drop at any second, I go all in, big stack calls with K8s, I see the flop miss both of us, and drop again. Never could get back on until this morning, where I see I came in 3rd at game #60.
Going over the game, which I managed to retrieve, I see I would have played many hands that ultimately lost. Decent stuff. I doubt I would have did as well by playing. (Even folded AA preflop 3-handed to a min raise!) I did very little to win this game, and ultimately my opponents lost to a dead hand, albeit one with a slightly larger chip stack. Yes, having one massive chip leader helped, as did the small number of hands, but still, it's an interesting experience.
The serious question is this: Are we and our opponents usually defeating ourselves? We'd all like to believe we're good, but are we really just less bad, especially at this level of poker? I know there are times where my play helps me win, but this experience confirms for me that tight early is better and we should just get out of the way while our opponents destroy themselves, then swoop in to pick up the spoils.
Here's what happened:
Start playing and immediately started dropping the modem (still on dial-up, don't give me a hard time). Redials kept hitting massive noise on both phone lines. Finally got through to play game #7, where I won to put me at 1265.
Folded a bunch of rags, dropped again, got back on to fold rags, played game #21 which put me at 1405. Immediately dropped and couldn't back on for 27 minutes.
Now I'm back on, barely, at 14.4K, where I see I'm still alive, game #54, small stack at 520, 4 left, and I've got A2o. (My opponents are at 7290, 1215, and 965.) Knowing I could drop at any second, I go all in, big stack calls with K8s, I see the flop miss both of us, and drop again. Never could get back on until this morning, where I see I came in 3rd at game #60.
Going over the game, which I managed to retrieve, I see I would have played many hands that ultimately lost. Decent stuff. I doubt I would have did as well by playing. (Even folded AA preflop 3-handed to a min raise!) I did very little to win this game, and ultimately my opponents lost to a dead hand, albeit one with a slightly larger chip stack. Yes, having one massive chip leader helped, as did the small number of hands, but still, it's an interesting experience.
The serious question is this: Are we and our opponents usually defeating ourselves? We'd all like to believe we're good, but are we really just less bad, especially at this level of poker? I know there are times where my play helps me win, but this experience confirms for me that tight early is better and we should just get out of the way while our opponents destroy themselves, then swoop in to pick up the spoils.