SCOOP, etc.

May is going well so far. My mom flew in from Massachusetts to visit me for a few days, which was a lot of fun. It was great to see her again, as well as to spend time walking around the city, seeing the sights of Chicago and enjoying the beautiful weather. After her departure on the 3rd I resumed the grind, with the first few days seeing slow progress. Once the weekend arrived, however, the money started to roll in. I've noticed heavier traffic, and fishier traffic, in the $10 & $20 games on Stars in the last few days, which I attribute to the popularity of the SCOOP tournament schedule that is currently running.

I uploaded the month's hand histories to pokerluckmeter.com to see how I've been running. The site's analysis put my luck percentile at 63%, so average-good for the last week, which is nice. One thing that jumped out at me when I looked at my graph was the huge discrepancy between my red and blue lines; showdown hands account for essentially all of my winnings. I believe that this is the result of the fishier traffic I've seen of late. Against these fishy low-stakes players who don't like to fold, I often gear down and play a slightly less aggressive, small-ball style pre-flop that, I believe, maximizes my post-flop edge by keeping pots small early. Post-flop then becomes a matter of stabbing at pots when I get the sense that they've missed, giving up if I hit resistance (few elaborate "long-ball" bluffs), and value betting relentlessly when I think I have the best of it, trying to induce hero calls from players who are too suspicious that I'm bluffing. That blue line, I think, is the result of the intensive employment of said strategy.

As far as SCOOP itself has gone for me, it's been a washout so far. I completely bungled my first match in the HU event, stacking off with TPTK vs a flopped straight. I then played the $11 NLHE event, which I didn't really pay enough attention to (I don't even remember how I got busted), and the 2-day NLHE event, which went well for a couple of hours, but as Dan Harrington says in HOH II, "If you get knocked out of the tournament because you lost in a set-over-set confrontation, then it just wasn't your tournament."

On the other hand, I've done rather well playing SCOOP hyper-turbo satellites, turning $9 into $22 twice so far. So I guess I'm not down all that much. I plan on playing the Razz event tomorrow, which should be fun. Wish me luck.