Min-raiseaments and getting that monkey off my back

A couple nights ago, I was posting on +1 and a few of us decided to donk around in a 1c/2c game. I think I open-shoved the first hand I got, and then whalehunter/scott/brokedonkey, Nik Santi, jmill and I got into a minraise war:

We ended up doing this a few times, and invariably the guy on jmill's right would call a few times and then finally give up. On this particular hand, I got in with the best of it to lose to Santi's Q3s that backdoored a flush. The next time he, jmill and I got all in (which took about 5 minutes because our stacks were deeper and we were raising in 2c increments) Nik-- the angleshooter-- had aces and managed to fade our horribly dominated hands.

In those game, I also talked shit to ferg before open-shoving with kings, only to get called by his aces. Stars is rigged.

Last night, I took down my first MTT. I think I'm gonna start playing some of these a little more often. I got pretty lucky for the most part after having my all-ins called, but I also think that I was unlucky to have run into the hands I was up against. I also didn't really have to make any really difficult decisions the entire tournament. Even at the final table, the table was pretty loose/passive, with a lot of open-limping or min-raising.

My way to the final table had me short most of the time, and I build up mostly by shoving and getting a couple key suckouts (straighting a QTs vs. a KQ, tripling through QQ and 99 when I shoved late with A2o-- I was very short at this point).

At the final table, I got lucky to bust a shortstacks A7 with my QT, and then had AK hold up vs. a lower ace.

When we finally got down to 3 handed, I was down to about 10BB and not catching many cards. Fortunately, the guy on my right doubled me up once on a pretty marginal call...



And then I got beat down a little, and he managed to get in a coinflip, but he made a really god-awful call



that was basically tilt induced. He typed into the chatbox after this hand "I'm through calling him, toddbrinwall." A couple hands later, he shoved into todd with only a wheel draw and I was down to HU with about a 4-3 chip disadvantage.

I thought that todd had played pretty well earlier in the game-- he was playing very aggressively and generally picking his spots pretty well. Heads up though, he just had no clue. He folded his BB to me way too often and never raised in the SB. I ran him over for a while and got to almost even and then he fought back a couple times and I had to let a couple raises preflop go. Then I got into a coinflip with him and got there:




And at this point I think he was starting to tilt, because he was open-shoving a lot more. At first, given the blind to stack sizes, this wasn't bad but once he built up I think he just wanted to get in, get lucky and get his chip lead back.

Once he'd build back up to about 60 thousand (the stacks were the opposite of where they started) he'd calmed down a bit with his play. Then he limped the button, and I checked with 78o. The flop came 665 and I checked, planning to checkraise (he'd checked behind with top two earlier, but was betting the flop often so I was expecting a bet from a weak hand). He checked, and I got my free card-- a 9, completing my straight. Putting him on some kind of hand because he checked, I potted it to him on the turn. He insta-potted it back and I jammed. He called with his aces and I held



and finally won my first MTT. It was a small one and the field seemed particularly weak, but it was nice to finally get a MTT under my belt, especially considering how rarely I play them.