The NumbBlowMe marathon

This will be short because I am writing this on my lunch break at work and hope to take a power nap after I post.

I played in the NumbBlowMe ten-cent rebuy tourney last night. After about 5.5 hours of roller coaster donkery, I finished in second place. More results and info can be found here.

How did I do it, you ask? Besides rigging the RNG, you mean. I can sum up my strategy for success in this tournament in one word:

Patience.

As you might expect, when you are playing in a tourney where rebuys are only a dime, there is a bargeload of maniacal play and ATC pushing. I chose to wait for opportunities to get my chips in with reasonable hands, and not shove against bigger stacks unless I had what looked like a better than average chance to take the pot. I double or tripled or quadrupled up a few times during the rebuy period using this method. Getting good cards was a big part of it, because they held up a lot of times. By the break, I was well above average in chips, although I took the 1,500 chip add on anyway (it was only $0.10, after all). I only rebought for $0.20 during the first hour; there were a total of 4,417 rebuys in this tourney. What does that tell you about how wild things were during the rebuy period?

I won't say that I played championship level poker, but I feel like my decisions were pretty good most of the time. Still,I was racking cards like crazy all night. I had starting cards of AA, KK, QQ or JJ more times than anyone would expect, even over the course of 5 hours, and they didn't get cracked as often as you would expect either. One particularly painful hand (for my opponent) was late in the game when I had JJ and flopped quads against Joanada who, on the short stack, pushed to my check on the flop. Although I took a couple of nasty beats myself, it seemed like I was dishing out more than I was getting.

I almost didn't play this tourney, but I'm glad I did, for the experience and for the bankroll boost (but not for the lack of sleep). And I'm really looking forward to the bounty I am supposed to get for busting Joanne. Beauty, eh?