and now our feature attraction

The BBT4 is finally over. I managed 11th in the brit tourney in the afternoon (1 lousy point?), followed by a middle of the pack finish in the big finale.

I have so many thoughts on my status, where to start?

Ok, the small-ball obsession is concluding. I have added it to my bag-o-tricks, but I find it difficult to play this way online where stacks are 20BB. I can use it early, and when deeper, but can not think of it as a way of life. I like it to control my FLOP play though and then on the Turn deciding what my best options are (showdown/no-showdown).

Second, I cant stand the FT timeouts. My bank is 15 seconds and yet I get 1 minute on a disconnect? GEZ. I had a hand last night that if I had the time to think through, might have been different. (I'll add that to the end of this post).

BDR was fun last night, with Chad becoming funnier as the beer kicked in. I appreciate the fact that the gang put me (your humble narrator) in the non-donk TOC category. Chad made a comment that I am disguising my hands well. That was good to know. Apparently he also made the FT 100k final table at the same time last night. Astounding.

Finally, a brutal recap of my weaknesses as we approach the TOC / WSOP.

1. When I go card dead in the middle rounds, I bleed too many chips. Even when I try to make plays, I only seem to make it worse. I need to catch some hands during the middle rounds. Even after working on this for a year, I still have only a smattering of answers.

2. My playing style seems to work best with 6/7 players at a table. This may happen multiple times at the 5 table TOC, but rarely at the WSOP.

3. I don't give players credit for hitting sets enough. If you read this blog over the last 3 months, you can still hear my screams. Yet, last night I let a user bluff a river'd set and I folded a winning hand.

4. I often start a tournament by losing 10% of my chips. WTF? Is it really that easy to small ball off your chips that fast seeing a few flops? No, its the FLOAT that eats the chips. Got to watch this early.

5. I don't re-steal very often. Okay, never. I am not a big fan of this play and yet, I know you need it at times. That leaves me in a quandary on this one. (See #1)

I think I will take a couple of days off so I can relax with some XBOX-360 (Burnout & "Saint's Row Bitches!") and then get back to it.

I also want to play a big$ Razz tournament, but that may have to wait.