Not a great start, and encountering an old villain from the 1.10s

So, my new found motivation for poker has taken an early pounding. I just put in about four and a half hours, and although I played pretty solid as usual, I ran like pretty much the worst I've ever run for basically the first half of the session. It was a total nightmare. I could barely win an 80/20. And as for a race? Forget it! Add in some of the most retarded calls in ages, plus shoving into the top of everyone's range and the result was that after 38 completed games I had only managed a measly 11 cashes, so I was down just under $90.

One moment was particularly hilarious, in a perverse kind of way. There's been some debate over the last couple of days about an account with the screen name 'rs03rs03'. For about the last six months this account has been grinding away every day in 16hour nonstop sessions at the 1.10 turbo DoNs, racking up 1200+ games per day, while playing 60 tables at the same time. The debate has been about whether the account is actually a bot, because lets face it, 16 hours a day while 60 tabling would surely be enough to drive anyone mad, while at the same giving them a serious case of RSI. Last year it made Supernova status just from the 1 dollar DoNs.The account has a 1% ROI, but over something like a bazillion games it actually adds up to a fairly decent total profit when you add in the Supernova rewards.

The argument was that if it isn't a bot then why hasn't it moved up the buyin levels? Then suddenly I see that it's sitting at one of my tables! In a 5.20. Really odd that we'd only just been confirming, amongst ourselves at least, that it was a bot which was only capable of beating the 1.10s because the players are so retarded down there. Anyway, it was always an ATC shove on their BB because it's probably only gonna call with aces.

So, the moment comes round. At an appropriate time in the middle of the game I shove, yet to my horror and disbelief it calls. Has it finally loosened its calling range as it's now playing at the nosebleed heights of $5? No, of course it hasn't, it just flips over AA. Boom, another tourney gone down the drain! I thought there were only four aces in the deck, but it seemed every shove there was someone waiting with a pair of them waiting to take me down.

The second half of the set ran truer to form and I picked up a much more respectable 24 cashes from the remaining 40 which left me a shade over $55 in the hole for the session. A decent recovery, but still over 10 buyins behind where I started the day.

I still feel pretty positive about the session, I think I mainly made about the same good decisions as usual, and that's what counts. Maybe I was just doomswitched for not grinding up enough FPP earlier this month to buy the $50 bonus from the VIP store at the sale price of 3000FPP.

At least I'm nearly at Silver Star, which was one of my goals, but the other goal of a Sharkscope leaderboard spot has slipped a little further into the distance for now.


2010 so far:

Games 596
Wins 328
ITM 55.0%
Profit $180
ROI 5.8%

Not tilted though, despite this setback. I know that it's just part of the game. I was actually having a play with the ROI simulator to get a feel for how strange the results of variance can look, I guess I'm getting an early taster for real. Tomorrow is another day.