Short Stack for a Short Profit

I had an interesting day in AC with many low points and just enough of a run to save me in the end.

I start off the day early at The Tropicana. I register for the 100+25 Freezeout tourney. While I'm waiting I take a seat at a 1/2 game and proceed to get hurt. A few sad examples are

I get QQ in EP and raise it up. Get 2 callers. Flop comes 228, both guys check, I bet out $20 and one guys smooth calls me. Next card is a 4, check check, J on the river I check he bets out $40. I'm thinking he's trying to steal, I call. He turns over Q2

I get 77 in EP, I limp with 2 others Flop 759. I check thinking I'm going to trap. I end up losing a bundle when guy hits his straight on the river.

And finally lose again when my full house, 5's full of 9's looses to 5's full of K’s.

Down almost $300, I wish everyone good luck, as if they need it, and head over to the tourney tables. In the first hour the blinds are 200/100 and I have a stack of about 3200. I get 10 10 in LP. A very loose player limps in. He has gone all-in 2x already showing down A7 and Q7 when he shoved in after the flop with top pair. I raise it up to 800 he pushes all-in and has me covered. I call and he turns over QJ and hits his J on the flop to knock me out. I should have probably folded, but I felt that I had the better hand going in and you have to win some races to get far in a tourney, so it was not my day to pull off a hat trick.

I'm down 1 buy-in and am out of the tourney and its only 11:30am. It has officially become a bad day so now I need to start getting back on track. First thing to do is get out of The Tropicana. I find that when I start to get cold it's a good idea to move on. A new atmosphere can sometimes do wonders. So where do I like the atmosphere? One place jumps to mind immediately and you guessed it, The Borgata!

I head over to The Borgata and decide to use a strategy that I have been experimenting with on the internet that has been working out quite nicely. It is The Short Stack Strategy that Ed Miller wrote about in his book Getting Started in Hold-em. It involves buying in for 20 Big Blinds and playing only premium hands. I decide to try it out at a 2/5 table and buy-in for $100.

I proceed to loose that buy-in quite quickly when my trip K's get beat buy a flush. Now I'm down close to $500 for the day and I think I see a black cloud forming somewhere close to the ceiling near The plasma TV's that are showing the Mets destroying their arch rivals The Atlanta Braves.
I rebuy for another $100. I did not show down my trip K's, so now the table thinks I'm a loose cannon and I'm glad. The short stack strategy starts to work when I double up with QQ against 33, and then again with AA against 88. Now I'm no longer short stacked and am playing my regular big stack game and all is well when I leave the table with $650 making me a small winner for the day.