Badger's Belated January Summary

I have been a little remiss at posting (and, for that matter, playing online). I have been caught up in some pretty wild bricks 'n mortar games. More on that in a sec.

Anyhoo, after my little final-week comeback, I managed to close out January at $132.05. I am not thrilled at that, but I am pretty happy with that final push. Clearly I will need to hone my SNG skills and, simply put, plant my ass in front of this screen and put in the hours.

On Sunday I managed to grind out a second-place finish in our weekly bricks 'n mortar tourney. I had some crazy luck in the first blind level (flopped, I kid you not, quad-A's...and then quad-6s). It was insane luck; alas, with the blatantly-paired board, I didn't get paid all that well.

I then ground my way to the final table and, short-stacked, managed to stay alive by being HIGHLY selective in picking my all-in moments (credit Herr and his coaching there). A flying Finn was making frequent all-in moves, blithely swiping blinds right, left-and centre, particularly when he was the SB...and I the big blind. I let him get away with it a couple times, then looked down and, finding bullets, called 'im. He had something stellar such as a J-10 offsuit; my AA held up. I doubled up and was back in contention.

Soon there were three of us--we'd made it into the money. "Lion King", a very tight but very solid player took out the third player with an all-in (I believe he had AA--his fourth pair of bullets in short succession). The good news was that we were down to 2; the bad news was that Lion King now had me more than double-chipped.

Heads-up is not my forte at the best of time; against the big-stacked grizzled Lion King, it was not a fun experience. He raised early and often (as so he should); I waited for cards so that I could come back over the top at him. The couple of times I had (low) pairs, he folded. Eventually, with K-10, I raised him. He re-raised. I could have folded and be left with less than a 1:3 ratio. I went for it. Leo, bless his furry little heart, shows an A-K. I am dominated, and his big slick holds up. It was a brutal finale to the tourney but, heck, it was a good experience overall.

After the tourney I made some good $ playing cash games before heading out to watch the Super Bowl (morning in Asia). Last night followed a similar trajectory: a very profitable cash game, followed by all-night socializing (this time with saccharine Asian karaoke, not salty American football as the backdrop).

The good news is that I have been making very good dough playing bricks n mortar. The bad news is that I have been shirking my PokerScars play-time. I need to get back to it! And really work on my heads-up play.

I've started Sklansky's Advanced Tournament guide--it seems promising, especially as it has been updated with a fair amount of NL THE material. But all the reading in the world won't move me towards my target. Time to get back to playing!