THE DARK AGES

 

It was a rough APPT Manila Championship for me. Absolutely ZERO ITM in the four events I played. I played the 10/10/10, The Super Deep, The Double Stack and the Sunday Supersonic. 

The Sunday Supersonic was painful. I had built a great and healthy stack of about 100,000 in the first 6 levels when the average was still 40K or so. Then, I ran into a painful set over set situation. I flopped the sixes while the villain had eights on the turn. We checked both flop and turn and started bombing on the river until the chips went all in. My stack got crippled to around 45,000.

In the following hand, I had tens on my big blind and defended by going all-in. The opening raiser who just sat down for his first hand, called his entire stack with a fucking Ace-Five suited and made a fucking one-card straight from 4-to-8. The poker gods must fucking hate me. I was then stuck to around 15,000 , which turned to 15 big blinds after the second break. 

I shoved with nines to flip against big slick. I got Greensteined. 

I stuck around to play the cash game and lost my stack on another set over set. I flopped tens and the dude flopped queens. Even if I hit quads, we wouldn't win the bad beat jackpot. 

Set over set was the theme of the day. Nothing more cruel and painful and dark. Something that gives you hope with a strong hand, exactly what you were looking to hit, but then you run into a cooler with a better set and the hope drains real fast and just zaps the energy out of you. It's cruel.

So, that was my series. 

On a side note, I've been playing well online. My last two tourneys gave positive results. One I didn't make ITM, but made a lot of money with the bounties. In the last, I got both ITM and bounties. 

At least, in some sense, we're not all fuckin fish... At least, it gives some me some confidence that I know how to play poker. I just wish the luck came on when it mattered.