Razz follies. And a "Bad Beat"

When I met Vivica, I thought I was onto something/A week later, no, no it was nothing. (laughter)
-50 Cent

The above quote reminds me a lot of the WPBT razz tourney from last night. The ol' cat was on death's door once before winning chips and jumping up to 7th place. I kept that positioning through the break but lost a hand for half my chips and then bounced out in 12th place of the 21-player tourney. I was wondering at the time if I would have enough momentum to place in the top three for the money.

Oh, well. It was fun, though. I hadn't played in a MTT for a while, so it was fun. And Razz is always a strategic delight. On 5th and 6th streets, I sort of imagine in my head that game on The Price is Right where people have to guess if the card will be high or low. That's what it feels like estimating how well your hand is going to hold up.

I saw lots of attempts with steals against the bring-in in the Razz tourneys, but they may be just a waste of chips. When the person forced to bring-in calls, They almost certainly have some kind of low card. Continuation betting fourth street may be futile unless you're doing it for value. And if you have some kind of high card showing, forget it. You're going to get yourself raised. Like the cat did to a couple people.

At the same time, I was playing the Bad Beat on Cancer tourney. It was double-stack, which is nice and I was initially sitting to the left of Rafe Furst. I made an easy call against a guy who bet the min on the turn and 3/4 pot on the river. I picked off his river bluff with 55 for a huge amount of chips. At the very end, a big stack went all-in on the bb among a field of several limpers. I thought that was suspect, so I called with 88. He caught a 5 on the flop and another on the river. Ha ha. You can't tell me this guy isn't a toaster, no matter how big the stack.

Things feel like how they used to, except no more PartyPoker to contend with. I won a $30+3 SNG on 'Stars catching all kinds of evil cards. Went into limp-call mode on the button with a sizeable advantage and stole lots of pots when the other guy didn't hit.

"Can you see my cards?" the other guy asked me.

No, no, I didn't have to.