My Mom lived There, Omaha

One of the things I do is look at site meter to see where my readers come from and what search criteria is used to find my site. With this in mind, I get a lot of hits originating from The Poker Chronicles as well as a few other places. My search engine wars seem to indicate that my blooms taxonomy post and my shark scope post call many of my readers. Last night someone was searching for oral massage and found my site. Now I made mention of this topic last week in a post about the history of myself but I can’t imagine how many other web sites this person searched before finding mine.

******************

I played a little Omaha hl last night. Noble has a $1000 guaranteed $5 re-buy at 8:15 central that I like to play. The field is small (75-90 player) and there is almost always an overlay of about $100. Most nights I’ll sit back and wait for my opportunities and push my strong holdings because the tables are very loose and you will get paid. Also, in general, I’ll drop $5 for the add-on for a total buy-in of $10.50. The top 10 spots pay.

I got involved early on a few hands that didn’t materialize but finally hit just before the add-on when my AAQ2 hit the nut low on the flop as well as the nut flush. Two players pushed in front of me as well as two behind and I go from around 1350 chips to just less than 7000. I eventually end up with 7900 after the add-on break.

This is about the time I go card dead. Now I know its Omaha hl but it is possible to get crap cards for and extended period of time. I stayed alive as we moved to the higher blind levels by making pot size bets and forcing players to fold. As we hit the second break, I have about the same chip stack with 18 players left.

I continue to push the medium stacks when I can and get extremely lucky with 12 players left when I push on another small stack and somehow pull off a split when I held crap. As the bubble burst, I pushed with AK23 and hit the low with two callers and moved into 8th. The final table was a mixture of no cards and luck as I stayed at or near the bottom. I held at most 12,000 chips with two stacks in the 70,000 range as well as two in the 40,000 range. I moved up a spot when one of the medium stacks went to war with a big stack and lost when the low didn’t come in. I made a couple of plays but got quartered when my tied with the nut low and lost the high to a higher straight. With blinds at 2000/4000 I have 3700 and on the big blind. I have no idea what happened other than when the hand was over I had 2286 chips left. At this point I have no chance to win in my eyes so when a shorty in front of me gets his chips all-in and is raised by another stack I folded trying to move up a spot. In the end two players were knocked out on the hand and I moved up two spots for double the return. I ended up getting knocked out the next hand in 6th place and a nice return on my investment.

The killer part of this tourney was the two hands that saw me flop top sets each time and lose to a straight and a flush. If either of these hit, my stack is sitting at the 20,000 range instead of the 2,000 range at the end of the tourney and I could have made a run. I guess I should have pushed with almost anything when it got late but I was trying to maximize my payoff.

With this small stack is it better to earn a higher spot or go down in a blaze of glory.

Anyway, this is the third time I’ve played this tourney and the second time I made the final table. My other attempt saw me knocked out in 13th when I misread my opponents chip stack by missing a zero at the end of it. I thought I had him out chipped and raised to put him all-in. Then he came back over the top to put my in. I was pot committed with two pair and lost. So overall I’ve success in this tourney and I hope to continue with this trend.

**********************

I watched my old boss run over a table while he played a SNG. The deck hit him in the face and the monkeys kept thinking he was on a bluff. It’s always a good time when the cards run like that.

After he won, we jumped onto a HORSE SNG just to kill time. He had never played one so we played the $1 Full Tilt version so he could learn. I got knocked out early, partly because I was concentrating on my Omaha tourney and partly because a calling station called me down in razz with her made queen. My down cards were A3 with a 4 up. I proceeded to get three pair when an A and a 3 come on 4th and 5th street as well as a 4 on 7th. Now the highest card I held was an 8 on the board and yet I still got called down to the end. Oh well. Anyway, I eventually got knocked out when the same player calls me to the river and hits a queen, making my pocket jacks no good. My boss ended up running over the table despite never having played Razz or Omaha before. I gave him some pointers about starting hands and he took it from there.

I probably won’t play tonight but I am signed up for an Omaha free roll on Friday. The pot is only $300 but it is free and I’ll take anything I can get.