Friday night started well with a 6th place in a $3.25 45 man but from there I failed to cash in the next 9 tournaments. I fell just short in a Sunday Quarter Million qualifier and bubbled 2 or 3 of the $2.20 180 mans. I ran in to a number of big hands at the wrong time. Approaching the money someone would minraise and I'd have pockets in the blinds. The plan was to call pre and then push on the flop and hope they had missed the flop or had an under-pair to the board. Unfortunately, the times I did this the opponent infact had an over-pair.
I started yesterday slowly taking a few misses before I cashed a Sunday Quarter Million qualifier. From there things went to shit as I got nothing out of the next 15 games. It felt like suck-out central ... with some seemingly horrible beats that were taking their toll on my patience.
I then cashed 3 of the next 8 games, a 7th a 6th and a 4th all in the $3.25 45 man games. After another stretch of failing to cash, I finished the night with 3 out of 4. Bubbling the final table of two 180's and finally a second place finish in a 45 man. Just before the final table I tripled my stack by taking out one player and crushing another stack when I had two all-ins in front of me and I had kings in the big blind short-handed. First player pushed with king queen off, small blind tried to isolate with pocket tens and I caught the last king on the flop to crush them both.
A couple of hands in to the final table I took out two players with pocket aces holding up against ace queen off and pocket 5's. So by this point I had a massive chip-stack in comparison to the rest of the table. Not surprisingly I went a little card dead at this point but cruised through to the final 3. Still in a good position I turned up the pressure without much luck against my opponents. By the time we got down to heads-up the other guy had a 2:1 chip lead having knocked out the last player. I OPR'd him and found out he was a good player and seemed to be showing it at the table. He had one gear heads-up and that was either all-in or fold. With his chip lead and the blinds at 1/10 of my stack the battle didn't last too long. I pushed all-in from the small blind with ace 5 off, got called by queen ten suited and he flopped a queen.
So at the bottom of yesterday my bankroll was down to the low $400's but I got it back to $470 by the end. A losing couple of days and very frustrating. I've been at this same level for the last couple of months, going up and down between $400 and $600. I feel like I'm playing well, I know at times I need to be more aggressive stealing blinds late but its hard at these levels when you get called by rubbish a lot of the time. I really feel like I have something to prove ... that I can smash this level, but its just not happening right now. As you can see from the graph below, its only the $2 games that I'm not ahead on. Sure, I'd also like to be a lot more profitable at the $3 level ... but at least I'm a little ahead.
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