HORSE weekly tourney? And a Stud hi/lo hand for Hoy!

I run across a lot of funny names at work. Funny names this week:

Richard Simmons
Charles ALCANTar (arrr! Should have been hang!)
Rich Beggar

In sad poker news, I fired up Full Tilt last night and was not happy to see a new $1 HORSE SNG being offered. Previously, the lowest HORSE SNG was the $5+$.50 ones I was playing. Got some *terrible* players in there, usually one or two out of the full table who didn't know all of the games.

The first SNG I played last night was pretty bad, I was drawing much too often and at much too little, and understandably not hitting. There was a stud hand where I got dealt Qs7h5s and saw that no one else had a spade up, so I chased a flush to 6th street. Just not very good poker. I think I got sent packing on the second go-through of Hold'em in 6th place on a coin-flip preflop.

I've started to realize that a lot of bad beats that occur in tournaments are between a shortstack and a large stack. Beginning to understand the value of having a large stack for tournament theory. I'm sure more than a few of Jamie Gold's suckouts came because of his dominant chip lead. He probably wouldn't have made the same play if it meant he would be the one going out if he lost.

Anyways... the second SNG I played was much better. I took three out of the first four pots in Hold'em with AK, AQ and A9 (on the button). Built my stack up to about 2200 from 1500 starting chips and cruised through the first round of HORSE.

*ALERT* Stud-hi/lo hand here*/end ALERT*

Then I had a couple of very promising draws snapped by the player directly to my left. In "E" on 4th Street I had 2,4,5,7 all of hearts and her board showed KQ. She raised out and I just flat called, waiting to hit either my low or a flush before I started re-raising. Neither came, and I had to fold my Q-hi to her shown pair of 3's on the 7th street.

That was a very frustrating hand, because my notes on her stated that she would call anything down. Against a different opponent I think that a semi-bluff on 4th street or beyond might be warranted (especially the river?), but I felt like waiting to hit, then making this particular opponent pay me off was the best strategy. It was frustrating when nothing hit, but in running through how to play it differently, I'm not sure I could have lost less money than the way I played it.

Suggestions, Hoy? Anyone?

I would have been happy hitting my low on 5th or 6th street and re-raising in hopes of hitting a straight or a flush to scoop the whole pot-but being content to just chop it up if my hi-outs didn't come.

When the SNG got down to 6 players, I was lucky enough to be among the big stacks. The HORSE SNGs take on a unique tone when they get down to the bubble and the stacks are varying sizes. We had three people with between 2-3k in chips, and three players with less than 900 in chips. Unless someone gets extremely lucky, or plays very poorly, those big stacks will make the money (top 3). Seeing how this is a limit event, and 3 of the 4 rounds are bet primarily on "up" cards, it is a card game to bluff your way back into the money.

We widdled our way down to four people, and I knocked out the 4th after he got anted-down to being all-in blind for "O." The first hand into 3-handed play I knocked out the lady next to me in a huge raise/re-raised pot with AAK5, I think she showed A2xx and had capped it preflop. No low help for her! Definitely no reason for her to go to war with that hand, seeing how we were all relatively even chip-stacks.

Heads up lasted only about 10 hands, but I lost about a 2:1 chip lead, then gained it back and knocked out the other guy still playing "O" with another AAxx hand. I was a bit scared that he might have tripped up when the board came Qh 5c 9s and he raise/reraised, but he hand JJT9 and didn't hit his outs.

Glad to see that there are still some questionable plays at my level in the HORSE SNG's. Thinking about testing out an $11 one soon, but think I'll work on my Full Tilt roll a little more first.

If I were to go about arranging a private HORSE blogger weekly tourney, would anyone be interested? Has anyoen tried to get a weekly HORSE tourney going before? I was thinking about maybe 5:30pm on Wednesdays-enough time before the Mookie to play the majority of the tourney; or on Thursdays overlapping the WWDN:NOT tourney, which seems to usually have a pretty low turnout.

Thoughts?