Throwing Airballs

Well, yesterday was a great day for my buddy Jon and his $90,700 score on Poker Stars. Unfortunately for me it wasn't quite so good. I missed cashing in the Stars $530, Party $374, Stars 2nd chance $215, FullTilt $215, BoDog $109, and Pac $65. The worst moment of my day was defiantly when I made a very stupid move on Party right as we were getting to the money. I had about 17k in chips and the average stack was about 22k. I get Q7 off in the SB and it folds around to the button who opens the pot for 4k (Blinds 800/1600). The button has about 20k in chips and I think that if I push he will be forced to fold most all hands ESPECIALLY on the bubble, so I send my 17k and he insta calls me with KK. I end up getting 401st place and the top 400 cashed, so I basically just threw away $500 that I would have been guaranteed to win if I just fold the hand. Not the greatest move I have ever made.

They day wasn't a total loss though, Mats talked me into playing a $215 Heads-Up tourney on Stars just a few minutes before it started. I have never played a HU tourney, but feel like I am a very difficult person to play heads-up so I decided to give it a shot. Mats and I agreed to swap 1/3 of each other, kind of a standard deal we have, and we both cruised through the first round. 128 people started the tournament, so after the first round we were down to 64 and I was set up against a fairly well known young player who writes for cardrunners.com. We played for quite a while and I slowly chipped away playing small pots and waiting for trapping opportunities. I outdrew him when he was very short stacked on the last hand and instead of getting mad he said "gg, you deserved it" I couldn't tell if he was serious or sarcastic, but then he said "I have never felt so outplayed heads-up in my life". I was almost taken aback for a minute because that is a really amazing compliment from a very, very good player. Just to make sure he wasn't messing with me, I asked if he was serious and he said that he was and then started asking me questions about my game, if I was a pro, ect... It was really cool and gave me a lot of confidence going into my next match. I really made pretty short work of my next guy and was in the final 16 before I knew it, oh, Mats cruised into the final 16 as well. My next match was against a really aggressive player, and I didn't realize the match had started until a few minutes after it did, and I got to my table already down 3:2 in chips from being blinded off. I fought back very well though and had my opponent at a 3:1 chip disadvantage after about 20 minutes. Then he won a coinflip to pull back even and I made two semi-bluffs that didn't get there when he had big enough hands to call, and I got busted out in the final 16, which still payed $500. Mats won again, and again, and in the final 4 he was playing a very exceptional young player that we both met in Vienna at the Austrian poker championships. They really had an epic battle going back and forth but eventually Mats wore him down and took the spot in the final. It turns out that the same guy who knocked me out was also the same guy who Mats was playing in the final, but they agreed to chop the prize money and each took $6,144, 1/3 of that being mine :) Mats also cashed for 1k in the big Stars tourney, which I had 1/3 of as well.

So overall after airballing all those tourneys I still showed a profit of over $1,000 mainly because Mats is the man.