Sometimes the Best Move...

... is not playing at all.

I was supposed to play live at the club with Kat last night, but life/poker tilt put her on mini-vacation. I decided by the time I got home that I didn't much feel like playing live either. So I unregistered for the tournament, cooked up a quick pasta dinner, fed the cats, and hunkered down by the warm glow of my monitor to play online.

I registered for the $75 frenzy, and fired up a $22 turbo SnG (my new stomping grounds it seems). On the first hand I called a minraise with A8s and saw a flop of 88x. The minraiser minbet, and I raised. He pushed, I called, he flipped over Q8o. Um. Okay. Not what I was expecting from a preflop minraise. Way to disguise your hand I guess? Turn comes Q and my jaw drops as I go out.

No problem. Fire up another. 5-10 minutes in I run my top pair with a flush draw into a slow-played flopped set and am out.

Started to get aggravated, I fire up one more. I go out on the bubble when I flop trip kings on a KK6 flop only to run into the guy who limped his pocket sixes. Wow.

Okay, RNG not my friend. I get it.

So I go over to Stars and register for The Monkey Tourney. I completely dominated it until we were down to 5. My dealer apparently really wants me to stay at Stars, as even though I had no rockets, no cowboys, and maybe one pair of ladies, I couldn't be beat. I flopped 2 nut boats and 1 2nd nut boat at the final table with ridiculous cards. I flopped 2 straights, turned another, and two pair were being handed out like candy to me. It seemed I could see a flop with any two cards and get the nuts. It was nuts.

Then my phone rang.

I'd take this call over an $11 tournament any day. An hour later I was out of the Monkey, don't even remember how I went out of the frenzy (but have vague memories of Hoy being two to my right, but us not being in any hands together), and happy I'd decided to stay home.

In a great mood between the comaradarie of the Monkey and the phone call, I fired up another $22 Turbo. I took 2nd. Then another. 2nd again. Then one more before calling it a night.

My phone rang again... while I was on the bubble.

2 minutes into THAT call and I'd gone out 3rd for some profit in my last game for the night and had essentially broken even.

An hour later I was off THAT phone call (different person) feeling good about helping a friend drop some anxiety and relax.

All-in-all, a great night that wouldn't have happened if I had walked down the street to toss some real chips around.

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Tripjax had a post up a week or so ago about SAGE. He linked to Klopzi's post which was more detailed. So I did what I do and threw together an Excel sheet that did all those pesky calculations for you in a tidy little package.

With my recent rash of SnG play (and getting to heads-up multiple times), I've been putting it to the test.

Inital results - wow does it blow.

The beauty of a turbo is that when you get heads-up, your Blinds:BB ratios are going to be getting small. So I plug in my hands and the blinds and all that, and do what I'm told. I've constantly run facefirst into the brick wall that is variance. J7h with my opponent's ratio being 4? Push. He flips A9h. A5o, ratio of 5? Push. A7 for my opponent. I've gone into 3/4 of these with the chip lead, and finished in 2nd EVERY single time by following this system. There are definitely hands I wouldn't have played if I was playing my usual heads-up game, but who knows how it would have turned out?

I'll still give it some time. I haven't played nearly enough for a proper sample size.

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Mookie Mookie bo Bookie bananafana fo Fookie me mi mo Mookie... Mookie. You try writing "Mookie" that many times and tell me it doesn't look strange. Anyway, our Wednesday tradition continues tonight as the BBT 2: Electric Boogaloo rolls on. 11 TOC seats have been won so far, and I have a feeling #12 will be decided tonight. I have one goal tonight - 1st place, with authority. I'm missing the Riverchasers tomorrow, so tonight counts twice as much.