The Wheaties - Return and Early Departure.

Back in the WWdN last night, after a couple of weeks hiatus. A tiny field of 52 should have - but didn't - improve my odds of finishing in the money. Instead I finished as badly as I ever have in a Wheaties tournament, in 43rd position, 37 minutes after the tournament started.

As I've said before, I don't give that much credence to "card dead" claims, but last night was as good a counter-argument as you're likely to see. Out of the 53 hands dealt to me during those 37 minutes, I saw the flop a total of 8 times, three of those times either in the small or big blinds, and winning exactly half - 4 - of those 8.

Looking back at my hand history, I played a couple of marginal hands, but the hands I lost were with A 10, K 10, and so on, with flops showing things like QQ, flushes, and so on and bets that would have crippled my stack made at me when the flop hit. In any case, I blinded down to less than 1000 chips, won my way back to around 1350, and had blinded/lost back down to 760 again when Katitude put me out of my misery.

Typical for the night, I had Jc Kh on the button with 25/50 blinds. Two limpers. Maybe I should have pressed, but in all honesty, if I had gone all-in pre-flop and lost with that hand, I'd be calling myself a fool. One limper, maybe. Two, too much chance of one of them holding an Ace, and one of them Bone_daddy, had more than enough to cover my all-in.

I call. Blinds fold away. Flop is Jd Ks Td, both bad news and good for me. Good is that I've got two pair with the high card. Bad is there's both a flush and straight draw on the board. Kat bets 200 which probably means she's got the K and one of those draws. Bone_daddy, I'm happy to see, goes away, as two players in on that hand would have ensured at least one of them was drawing out. I go all-in with my last $510, and Kat calls. I pray that she's holding K 10 and no diamonds, but indeed she is making a move at the straight with K Q and gets it when an Ace hits on the Turn. No joy for me at the River, and I'm gone. She would have beat me too with a full house if she had been holding K 10.

I'd stick around for awhile railbirding Iggy and Xkm among others, and watch some very bizarro hands indeed. Iggy's pair of 8s go down under a flurry of Qs and Ks, and a short time later, Troublecat gets busted out as half his table goes all-in pre-flop with pairs of As, Ks, and Qs.

Until next week.