Missed It By That Much

Another shot falls short of the mark at $20+$2. If I could just make the money on one of these things I'll be well on my way to being comfortably in the $20+$2 level.

Today, I managed to sit down in the middle of a rock garden and again I collected absolute crap for cards. I made enough moves and had decent enough cards to make it to the bubble, but the already airtight table went into a vaccuum and all cards over a Ten took a leave of absence and refused to match each other in my hand. Finally the blinds went to 200/400 and I just simply wasted away.

$20+$2 - 4th -$22

Man I'm getting tired of red numbers in that level...

Since I, again, fell below the $20+$2 level I fell back to the $10+$1 level and sat down at the polar opposite of the last table. This table played like .50/1 ring. Everyone calls, no one raises. It was bizzare. I mean, people would have AA in the pocket and make min bets. This was actually a good thing because when I finally was able to get cards a decent raise would scare off the competition, especially pre-flop. I got stung early on in like the 3rd hand of this round when I caught AK in the pocket and pressed the issue on the flop and turn when the board missed. Finally, I had to check fold the river, and found myself in the T625 range early on. Since the table was so passive, it took until the blinds were in the 100/200 level before people started dropping off, but I managed to steal enough blinds to keep ahead of the bleed and when it got to 4 way I pounded the chip leader (who hit me early with the AK debacle) and put myself in great position to watch the others kill the bubble off. Then it was just a matter of getting cards and raising the passive wimps into oblivion. The frustrating part of the whole deal though was watching the all-in/fold thing going on... I'm yelling at my monitor "CALL IT, CALL IT YOU WUSS!"

fold. Gkkh!

$10+$1 - 1st - +$39

Technically, after this win, I had the Challenge bankroll back into the $20+$2 range, but I was gun shy and hit the $10+$1 button again.

$10+$1 - 4th - -$11

No stupid moves on this one either... Just no cards to make the real move with, and another rock garden made for a tough table to make moves at. I have to figure out how to get around these tighter tables if I want to have success beyond the $10+$1 levels.