Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. Mine was especially nice with my brother in from Vancouver, Canada, along with his new wife. My mom and dad are here as well, so it has been a nice time for everyone. We say every year, "This will probably be the last time we are all together for Christmas". We have been saying it for 7 years, and hopefully, we just keep saying it.

As far as poker goes for me, I played a lot more over the holidays than I expected. I got my bankroll to a peak just before Christmas of about $2,300 only to have an extremely shitty week. I really didn't feel as though I was playing worse, I just kept running into monsters. I don't have pokertracker or anything like that, but over the last month, I have started to keep notes about certain hands and how much I win/lose and stuff like that. From December 12-30, here are some interesting stats:

QQ: All-in preflop 8 times, won only once when called (called 5 times), net -$77.25
KK: All-in preflop 14 times, called 11 times, ran into AA 8 of those times and lost all 8, lost to JJ once, won the other 2, net -$122.50
AA: All-in preflop 12 times, called 4 times, won 2 of 4, lost to 87cc and QQ, net +$5.25 (ICK!!)

That was the story of my big pairs over this very negative run. I hit my low (down from my high) on the morning of the 29th when my total bankroll was at $1,675. I proceded to take the 29th and 30th off, to clear my head, re-group, read the Negreanu book of 50 tips to improve your play. Was planning on being off all the way through to today, but on NY's eve, everyone went to bed by 10. Had many family members in town, and everyone was gone or sleeping. Sweet.

I hopped onto 3 tables on FT as well as a 45-man $5 sit-n-go. My luck/run changed right away. Amazingly, I had Aces twice in the first 10 minutes, and went all-in against KK both times and won. (Love it when your AA finds KK). The first hour went nicely, with me up about 2 1/2 buy-ins, and I am sitting with $50 on table 1 (even) and tables 2 and 3 were over $100. At the first break of my sit-n-go, we had 12 players left and I was the chip leader with 15,000 chips (out of 67,500).

Then, on table 1, made my first real mistake of the night when I had KK and had 2 callers to my raise. A very high coordinated board came out and I pushed. I was called by a guy with top pair and an OESD which he hit on the river. Cost my almost a full buy-in. To say it was a mistake, maybe it wasn't, I was marginally ahead when the money went it, but it was most likely a coin flip. Probably not +EV.

I get down to the final table of the sit-n-go, 6 people are paid, I am chipleader with almost 20k in chips, 3 really short stacks. When we break the money bubble, I have about 15k, and in 2nd chip position, unfortunately, he is directly to my left.

I pick up pocket 7s on the button on table 3 and raise to $2 after a limper. Guy raises to $6 from the BB ($30 behind), and I was going to fold, but the early limper called ($85 behind), and I figured if I could hit my set, it might be very profitable. Flop comes J76rainbow. Sweet! BB puts out a bet of $10, and the early limper thinks about it for about 20 seconds before calling. That frightened me a little I guess, but I am ahead of everything except JJ so I pushed for my whole stack of $100ish. BB insta-calls and the early limper thinks about it all the way until his timebank ended and folded. BB flips up KK and I show my set. Turn: 8 River: 9. Board reads J7689 - I scoop the pot. The early limper said he folded TT. If that was true, I am glad I pushed.

We get down to 3-handed play in my sit-n-go, I have 20k, other guys have 38k and 7.5k. Blinds are pretty high at this point, like 600/1200 I think, the guy with 38k is playing nicely with me, and I could tell he was trying to get rid of the shorty to get heads up with me. I was folding to his raises, he was folding to mine, trying to put pressure on the other guy. Finally, I pick up KK in the BB, 38k-guy makes his standard raise to 6k (blinds are 800/1600 by now) and I push all in. He called with AQ and I fade his flush draw on the river to scoop a nice pot and become chip leader. Shorty gets agressive after a while and ends up knocking out the previous big stack in 3rd, and he and I get heads up, I have 45k, he has about 22k.

It was getting kind of late, so I played my cash tables until the blinds came around again, and ended up with $75 on table 1, $104 on table 2 and $138 on table 3, for a total profit of $167.

Going heads up in the sit-n-go, I stole about 5 or 6 blinds in a row (at 1000/2000) as it seemed he was waiting for a monster hand to double up. He had about 12k left and he pushes with A8 and I called with AQ. Board runs QJT92. He's back up the 24k. Fucking straight. Stole a few more blinds and had him back down to about 16k and he pushes again with 33, I have 88. He hits a set. FUCK!

He bleeds agains from 33kish down to 24k, I have 43k. I was just pushing with anything decent. I push with Q7suited, he calls with AK. Flop: AQ4, turn: Q, river: 3. GG me! I missed a couple of other hands that we got to the river with during heads up (which lasted 63 hands) but of the 8 times we got to the river, the inferior pre-flop hand won. Just nuts.

So that was a nice $85 win. I was wondering what you all thought about FT's payout struture for sit-n-gos. What do you think? They pay generally less people, and the payout structure is more top-heavy. The top 3 were something like $85 / $57 / $38 or something like that. So you have 80% of the money for the top 3 finishers in the 45-man tourney. Obviously, I liked it because I won, but at Stars, they seem to pay more people (7 in the 45-man tourneys) and the payout structure is a little flatter. Just wondered if anyone had thoughts on that.

Played a little bit last night and early this morning, with a few small successes and find myself currently here:

FT: $1,502
PS: $604
Total online bankroll: $2,106.

I am also due for a $75 New Year's bonus on FT after I earn enough FPPs and a rackback payment here in the next 10 days, so that should help.

Again, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and I hope that you all have a prosperous New Year, online and otherwise.

God Bless.

Ryan