Back in the saddle

Decided to attend a local tournament tonight in the hope of washing away the bad taste of last night's debacle. A member of our poker meetup group whom I don't really know held the game in his mini-mansion in the 'burbs. Nice setup with food/beer and 40 players at $20 per. Doubled up early against Slacksmonster (his self-applied nickname) with pocket queens. He raised, I re-raised, he went all-in and I called. Didn't think he had kings or aces, although I wasn't entirely sure. Nope. He's got jacks. Nice. Except a jack hits the turn after an A-K-x flop. Not so nice. But out pops a 10 on the river -- way nice -- and I'm the beneficiary of a good old-fashioned re-suckout.

That's pretty much it for me. Given the 15-minute rounds and relatively small starting stacks, these tournaments are, for the most part, card-dependent luckfests. I have neither cards nor luck and finish 15th or 16th or whatever.

Got home, still ready for some poker and entered another 180 on Stars. Ran my stack up and down like the EKG of a man suffering a minor heart attack. Down to 750, up to 2,300. Down to 900, up to 2,800 and back down to 1,200 at the first break. I fork over the blinds and then push with just over 1,000 chips from EP with K-Qo. I know, not exactly the nuts. Loosey-goosey, late-position donk with a little over 5,000 chips wakes up and calls with a monster: A-2o. His ace comes on the turn and I'm toast, out in 71st place. Not sure who made the more donkish play, him or me. Given the result, I guess it was me.

My all-too-accurate spreadsheet tells me that's nine tournaments in a row without a cash. I could have easily broken that streak last night, but I'm trying to put that unfortunate episode behind me. I'm sure in a month or a year or maybe a decade or two, I will have completely forgotten that, in the words of Robert DiVicenzo, "I'm such a stupid."