Today's games

So, today was a pretty good day, despite the fact that I probably lost more (theoretical) money today on FTP than any other day. Back in my early days of figuring out what the hell I was doing, I used to occasionally partake in the $6.60 token extravaganzas on FTP. These are actually a pretty good deal on FTP if you're willing to put in the time and have a substantial bankroll (which I don't, and therefore am not messing about in these tourneys anymore - furthermore, if I had the bankroll I probably wouldn't be willing to put in the time), although just like so many other low-limit games on FTP there can be some crazy moves that will drive you nuts. Anyway, from those early days, I had three $26 tournament tokens lying around (hey even the donkeys win sometimes), and I've been determined to use one in a real, non-turbo, preferably deep-stacked multi-table tournament (MTT) while Claudia was in Brazil (since one of these tournaments can easily take 5-6 hours to finish, assuming you get that far).
Anyway, today I woke up early and decided that today would be the day to spend that token - I entered a deep-stack, multi-table tournament with 450 people, and finished 88th - sadly, I still had quite a few spots to go to take the money. Overall I was happy with the way I played except at the end (well, hell, I can almost always say that!) - I simply got frustrated with not playing and watching my stack go from well above average to "all-in or fold" mode; I must have folded 35 hands in a row pre-flop because I was either getting nothing, or a decent hand that wasn't good enough to justfy the two or three raisers in front of me. The couple of times I had something decent with position, I'd raise it up and completely miss on the flop, then have to decide whether to C-bet or leave it be. Every time, I seemed to make the wrong call. I ended up calling a 3-bet with AJ on my BB - the board had nothing noteworthy on it, we checked it down to the river, till I finally pushed all-in for about 3/4 of the pot, and he called me with AK. Ouch.
Still, like I said, I'm happy with it, and it was nice to play in a tournament with a deep stack, slow blind structures, and good players who weren't just shoving all-in all the time. It would be nice to have the money to do that more often.
So, after that, I chatted with Clau some (always one of the highlights of my day), then went with my friend Stefan and his friends to the Munich-Dortmund football match. Jan (Stefan's friend) apparantly had some friends who had business seats, and they were willing to sell them to Jan. I have a feeling that I was invited out of sympathy, but that's cool! It was kick-ass. Muenchen won with a goal in the final minutes of a game that had been tied 1-1 for the entire 2nd half, and man the place was rocking. The stadium holds 69,000 and apparantly it's sold out for the entire season. Crazy. Oh yeah, did I mention that we were center court (slightly on the Muenchen side, naturally) in the EIGHTH ROW?!? The tickets were 65 Euros each but totally worth it. I got lots of snaps on my blackberry, hopefully some of them came out good. The only problem was it was really, really cold - I'm still feeling a bit of the chill. Overall, though, a fantastic experience. Afterwards, Stefan and I grabbed one last beer, then headed back, at which point I started writing this post and got totally sidetracked in that last post about the fool sucking out on me with a gutshot straight. That one's gonna burn for a while.
But, today I watched Muenchen trounce Dortmund along with 68,999 other people and I loved it, so that's the happy thought I'm going to bed with.