HugePoker

A couple of hours ago I ran past the deadline for the last tournament I could play to win a triple crown. As was the case one week ago, since I had only one crown in the bag, and there were not two triple-crown-qualifying tournaments I could play simultaneously to pull off a true last-second miracle, the deadline was meaningless from any practical standpoint, but just to engage in a little hopeful superstition I played the last possible tournament again, hoping to catch another lightning strike as I did a week ago when I won my second (and a half) crown. It would have been a very funny (and profitable) pattern to develop: repeatedly failing to bring home the triple crown but always keeping the quest alive for one more week by winning the second crown at the last minute … but it was not to be. I didn’t even make it past the first hour of play.

This hasn’t been the most profitable or most exciting two weeks of my poker career. I’ve made more money and had bigger scores both live and online, in previous stints at home, at the WSOP, and in Aruba. The two-week period back in September encompassing the triple crown wins and the Aruba Satellite win was a better performance by any bottom-line measure. But the past two weeks have certainly been the most consistent set of final table tournament finishes I’ve ever had … out of 44 triple-crown tournaments, I’ve cashed in 11, final-tabled 6, and when I’ve reached the final table I’ve done much better than average chance would suggest: 2 wins, 1 2^nd, 2 4ths and only one ugly 8^th … with an overall net profit of just over $10,000. To put it in baseball terms I’ve been hitting a lot of doubles, with a few singles sprinkled in for good measure. By choosing the most likely triple-crown tournaments I’ve been playing it safe a bit and not really swinging for the fences, so grinding out a lot of doubles is really the best result I could have hoped for. With the triple-crown quest over, for now, I can open up my swing and go after the long ball. So that’s my official goal for 2010 – I’ll define a triple as a high-five-digit score, and a home-run as breaking into six-figures. I’ve arguably managed a triple with my overall performance at the 2007 WSOP, but never in a single swing of the tournament bat. And I’ve never really come close to a home run – unless you measure my tournament equity in the 2007 main event before I busted out with AQ vs my opponent’s KQ … I probably had over $100k in equity before the hand, and when we got the chips in and turned over the cards, I probably had close to a quarter million … so I had hit the ball long and hard, clearly in fair territory, and it was sailing up towards the upper deck when my opponent hurled his glove into the air and got lucky to have the ball hit his glove and fall straight into his bare hands, transforming a home run into a game-ending fly ball. Did I really launch into a bad beat story from over two years ago? Wow. I’m not bitter – I’m over it, really.

Well, anyway, those are my poker goals for 2010 – to focus more on tournaments with home-run potential, and to knock out at *least* a triple on my way to hitting my first ball out of the park. As a kid in little league baseball I was always a good solid single and double producer, and with the exception of a couple of fluky inside-the-park jobs I’m pretty sure I only ever hit one honest-to-god home run, but I still remember it, and I’d like to repeat that experience now in middle-age. A side note: a former teammate of mine on that little-league team who I haven’t seen in 30-ish years stumbled across my blog a couple of years ago and has sometimes posted comments … while writing this post I searched through my email for what I thought was the one email message he sent me (after I asked if he was really my old baseball teammate), and I found a second message from 6 months ago that I’m not sure I ever read (and certainly never replied to). He claims that I had a slightly better batting average than he did (.667 vs .645) but I definitely remember him hitting a lot more home runs. So anyway, Paul, if you’re still out there, sorry I haven’t responded, and let me know if you’re up in Seattle some weekend and we’ll try to get you into a home game (poker, not baseball).

Well, that was quite a meander … I didn’t win a triple crown this time around, but I had a good time and made some decent money trying. With the deadline passed I’m shifting my focus (or at least part of it) to bigger field tournaments where I’m not as likely to make a final table or win the thing outright, but where the chance of a big score is there for me to swing at. If you see a post with a baseball reference in the title, it might mean good news.

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