Sunday Tournament Recap

Forgot to mention that I made the money in the $215 Sunday Warm up finishing about 300th which paid a little over $600.

Yesterday I felt like I played really well all day, but just didn't get any cards. What I got I made the most of, but you can only do so much with well timed bluffs.

When I got a few hours into the $530 NL tournament on pokerstars I finally started making some hands. We started with 995 players and 10,000 chips each. I doubled up early and by the time we were down to 400 players or so I was in 8th place with over 50,000 chips. I hovered right around that level for a while and with 300 or so players I had an interesting hand come up (Let's call it hand of the day #3)

The blinds were 400/800 with a 25 chip ante and I was in the big blind with 94 offsuit. The player one off the button raised it to 1,800 and it was folded over to me. At first glance this looks like an easy fold right? After all I have 94 and it's not even suited.

That was my first instinct as well, but after some thought I decided to call. There was already 3,425 in the pot and it would only cost me another 1,000 to see the flop giving me close to 3.5 to 1 immediate pot odds. But that's not all that was working in my favor. I would expect my opponent to bet the flop if I checked close to 100% of the time. I knew that if I hit I would win much more than the 3,425 in the pot. Also 1,000 was only 2% of my stack so I could easily afford take the chance here. If I had the same matematical situation, but it was going to cost me 10% of my stack I would almost certainly fold. Furthermore my opponent started the hand with 12,000 so no matter what happened I could only be wounded, not killed in the hand.

So I called and the flop came down 9 9 9! HA! I was hoping my opponent had a pocket pair which would mean I was all but certain to get all his chips. I checked an my opponent bet small, about 2,000. This was an obvious time for a slowplay. If my opponent missed he might bluff again on the turn or he might make something. The turn was a ten and I checked again. I was sad to see my opponent check behind me. The river was a small card and I bet 2,000 hoping to get paid off by a hand like AK. Instead of calling my opponent moved all in! It took about a nanosecond for me to call and when the cards got turned over I saw he had AA! HA!

Unfortunately I was on the other side of a bad beat a little later. The tournament paid 144 spots and while I'd started out with a great stack, I started to slip a little and everyone else started to catch up as we got closer to the money.

With 156 players left the blinds were 1000/2000 with a small ante. I got dealt KK in early position and raised it to 6,000. I was shocked, horrified and delighted all at the same time to see the player on my immediate left go all in for 55,000! I started the hand with a little over 40,000 and of course I called.

I thought my opponent could have had anything from 23 to AA and had no idea what I was going to see when the cards got turned over. It turns out I was up against J9 suited which meant I was 80% to win before the flop. After the flop which was 952 I was 82% to win. The turn was a 5 which made me 95.45% to win since a 9 and a 9 only would make my opponent the best hand. But that's what the river was and I was out. CRAP!

The edge of the money was $850, but that's not how much I lost in this pot. How much was that pot worth? Well it's pretty easy to figure out in this situation. There was $500,000 in the prize pool (Exactly $500,000 since that was the guarantee and we came up 5 players short of the 1,000 needed to make it) and I would have had almost exactly 1% of the chips in play. Since no money had been paid out yet that pot was worth about $5,000! ACK!

The total damage on the day was -$1,892. Double ACK!

The good news is my $10,000 starting bankroll for the FTOPS (I'm going to call it the FTOPS for simplicity even though I'm mixing in other stuff) is at $40,389! Hard to be upset about $1,900 when you're ahead $30,000 for the past few days!