Kudos

Played a tiny bit of online poker yesterday, having a small window of opportunity on a rare day off from blogging PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker.

That PokerListings Run Good Challenge continues next Saturday with another no-limit hold’em tourney, this time using a turbo format. So instead of playing my usual PLO cash game -- which, in fact, I haven’t played at all for the last week -- I decided to join a little 18-player sit-n-go to practice.

Stumbled a bit early, but righted myself (largely by winning an all-in coin flip, admittedly) and was there with five players to go and a less than average stack (in fourth). Even though I was low on chips, I liked my chances as both of two chip leaders seemed on the passive side. The fellow in third place was a bit tricky, although as it turned out I didn’t tangle with him much during the endgame.

Meanwhile, the table’s short-stack (to my left) was absolutely refusing to play a single hand, folding a good 25 in a row. Then he took a chance calling all in with a flush draw and one card to come and he hit it. That made me the shorty. A couple of hands later, I raised with Q-Q, he shoved, and I called. He had A-K. Flop J-T-x, but an ace on the turn (and no king on the river), and I was bubble boy. Again!

Which is why I’m playing $5.50 SNGs. For now I’ll leave the big buy-in tourneys to people like Haley and Pojo, both of whom cashed this week in WCOOP events.

Haley made a nice run in the 8-game event (known around these parts as “S.P.L.E.N.D.O.R.”); she writes a bit about it here. Pojo’s cash was yesterday in the 4-max no-limit hold’em event, where he was among the chip leaders for a while there early on. (I noticed at one break -- about four or five hours into the thing, I think -- he was in 11th place.) I was watching when he sent PokerStars pro Dario Minieri to the rail, the little guy’s scarf flappin’ in the wind behind him. Then he got moved to Hevad Khan’s table and held his own against that PS pro, too. Nice work, you two.

I’m sure I have other buds out there who are playing these events and I don’t know about it. (If so, tell me!) I mentioned last week how terrific (and unique) these structures are for the WCOOP events. Half-hour levels, for the most part, with the blinds/antes rising more gradually than you normally find in even the slower online tourneys. And the fields are massive, thus routinely making for big prize pools, too.

Covering the tourneys -- and reading all of these tourney-centric books -- is definitely making me want to play ’em more often. And perhaps lift my ambitions a bit beyond these tiny buy-in donkaments. Will be putting those thoughts on the back-burner for now, though, as my next day off from the WCOOP is a good ways down the road.

Good luck to all who are playing. You know I’ll be watching.