Another Day at the Office

Friday morning I woke up with the master plan to play in the 12pm $40 tournament at the Bike. I'm a little rushed in a way I'm not comfortable with.. I'm sharing my morning with someone as we have breakfast and get ready and both run out the door to our respective places that will hopefully lead our unemployed selves to some form of an income.

In perfect LA fashion, I am faced with break lights and my Jeep is brought to a crawl on the 5. This is not good.  I know there is late registration into the 1st level and that's great.. I have a window of at least 20 minutes.  Well, I am not even on the 710 yet and it's 12:10.  I'm yelling at other cars and not dealing well at all.  My adrenaline is flowing and my heart rate is up.  How am I going to run in and register and then pull up a seat at the tables like this?

As soon as I am seating cards and being dealt to me. There are 171 players in the tournament today.  I fold and get myself situated and take a few deep breathes and try to focus.. I made it.. now don't blow it. After all, you don't want to have gone through all that and driven here to just pay them $40... right? As soon as I am seated I scan the table and realize I am the only female and they are all staring at me. Slightly uncomfortable.  The first few pots I am in I play really well and unpredictably. My opponents don't know what to make of me or how to play against me.  They approach every pot with caution instead of aggression.  I like this a lot. Before I can build up my stack to a real comfortable level our table is broken and I am moved to table 2 seat 3.  My new table is talkative and aggressive. I know two of the players from other sessions. Things are not going well here.  My cards are terrible and I can't seem to gain any control with all the heavy raising.

I am dealt QQ and raise. I am called by one of the aggressors.  The flop comes A-K-3 rainbow.  I check and with some confusion my opponent checks back.  He expected me to bet the A. I technically would have raised pre-flop with an A.  The turn brings a blank and I throw out a semi-weak bet. He calls.  I check the river and he checks back. He shows a K and I muck my QQ. Lesson learned... I completely played the QQ wrong. I needed to bet that flop to feel out whether or not my opponent had the A and to represent the A at the same time.

I never really recovered as the blinds increased and I was out soon after. I left the Bike defeated and mad at myself. I am a very competitive person and, even more so, super competitive with myself. It's not so much about losing to the other players.. but the mistakes I allowed myself to make....