Before I get into today's post and word on Omaha Hi-Lo. Skip it if you know how to play Omaha.
In Omaha each player is dealt 4 cards instead of 2 and you must use EXACTLY 2 cards from your hand and EXACTLY 3 cards from the board to make your hand (in hold'em you can use 0, 1 or 2 cards from your hand and 5, 4 or 3 from the board). In Omaha Hi-Lo the highest hand and the lowest hand split the pot, but in order to make a low you have to be able to make a 5 card hand with 5 cards of different rank 8 and below. If there is no low hand the high hand gets the entire pot. Aces are both the highest card and the lowest card making them very powerful and you can use the same cards or different cards for the high hand and low hand. The best starting hand is AA23 with A2 of the same suit and A3 of the same suit, but generally any hand with A2 or A3 in it is good as you can make a really strong low hand and hope to back into some kind of high hand. Aces are great, low cards are good, high cards are OK and middling cards like 6,7,8,9 are total garbage. Also this game is usually played fixed limit meaning you can't just bet all of your chips, there are set amounts that you can bet or raise (equal to the one big blind before the flop and on the flop, and 2 big blinds on the turn or river). Boom! That's Omaha Hi-Lo.
Now on to the actual tournament!
We started with 85 players each getting 10,000 in chips and blinds of 25/50 and I found myself at a great table.
But before I get to the tournament a word on word choice. There are a ton of common phrases for bad player such as: fish, donkeys (or just donks if you prefer!), suckers, chumps, clowns, rubes and so on. The classy thing to do is to call them recreational players, because after all no one is born knowing how to play poker and losing players are there to have fun. I think this is the right thing to do and I try to use this most respectful term whenever I can.
With that said, these chumps were HIGHLY recreational. Donks don't get more recreational than these clowns!
The guy two to my right did not fold a single hand preflop. Not one! On the second or third hand he got to showdown and I saw him turn over 9864 and I was like "Recreational Player Alert!" Then another guy raised what turned out to be J844 under the gun. The other players were not much better!
I wanted to play this tournament because tournament players don't get to play much Omaha and Omaha players don't get to play many tournaments. I've played some number in the hundreds of hours of Omaha, thousands and thousands of tournaments and some poker stuff translates across all games. But I was worried that I might run into some Omaha specialists. Nope! Every singe player at the table did something that was categorically unjustifiable.
I got garbage for 45 minutes and then I finally found a good hand. I came in raising with A25T with the A5 of spades, two players called and Mr. Never Fold 3 bet it with KQJ8, I 4 bet it and we took the flop 4 ways. The flop came down K43 with the 43 of spades. This meant I had the nut low draw, the nut flush draw, and an A, 2 or 5 would make me a straight. Mr. Never fold had a pair of kings, no low draw, no spade draw and no clue. I bet, he raised, I reraised and he 4 bet it (4 bets is a cap meaning I couldn't raise again). I should point out that no one who has played Omaha for more than a couple of hours would even call the flop here let alone go balls to the wall in a multiway pot.
We took the turn 3 way and it came out a red Q. Now I needed an 8,7,6,5,2 or A to make the nut low plus 7 of the spades and 3 other jacks to make the nut high. Mr. Never Fold bet, I made a questionable raise, the other guy called and it came back to me at 3 bets. I just called and the river came out an 8. I made the nut low, but I had no high so when Mr. Never Fold bet, I just called, the other guy called and I got half the pot.
In the second hour of play the torture really started. Keep in mind that every hand has been going down like the above where Mr. Never Fold and many others are WAY over playing their hands. In the course of 5 hands at 100/200 blinds I got dealt a hand with an A2, and two with A3 suited and I just totally bricked out. This is kind of the equivalent of getting an AK and pocket jacks twice and losing them all, but it's worse because it's a split pot game. Missing out on high and low 3 times with really strong hands was rough.
In the first two hours I won two half pots and that's it.
A little later at the 200/400 blinds level I get dealt AQJ8 with the QJ of diamonds in the big blind and call a raise to 800 5 ways. The flop comes down K99 with one diamond and it checks around. The turn brings out the A of diamonds giving me a gut shot, top pair and a Q high flush draw. It checks around to Mr. Never Fold who bets and I call. Under normal conditions you'd never call with the #2 flush draw on a paired board in a 5 way pot, but I knew none of these clowns was checking a 9 or KK on that flop or AA on that turn and Mr. Never Fold could have anything. The preflop raiser also called.
It turns out I was up against QQJ6 that had raised preflop (THIS IS SO TERRIBLE!), and AJ85 from Mr. Never Fold. If you look at the board of K99A what do they need to hit to win? This is an astoundingly rare spot where I have two players drawing almost totally dead with a really marginal hand. The raiser needs the last queen or two 9's to scoop and a non diamond T to chop. Mr. Never Fold has no outs.
The river came out a T which I thought was a good card and I got half the pot, but when the cards got turned over I was like "WHAT THE FUCK! HOW IS QQJ6 OVER CALLING THE TURN! CAN I GET A CLEAN RIVER ONE TIME! THIS IS TORTURE!"
And that was one of my good hands.
On my final hand I got a free look in the 600 chip big blind with KQ73 with the Q3 of spades. The flop came down Q72 with two spades giving me top two pair and a flush draw. I bet out and stack off for 4 bets on the flop and one bet on the turn with AQ84. On the flop I'm 79% to win the high, 25% to scoop and 5% to win the low, but the turn was an A and the river was a 9 and that was it.
Torture!
My $10,000 starting bankroll is now at $10,180.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Project Phaser: Phase 3.3 (Another Bay 101 $350) Good Reads
I was back at it today at Bay 101 with 10,000 chips and back to the same structure from Monday. As you may recall yesterday's event was billed as the Monster Stack with 25,000 chips! I would call this Monster Bull Shit!
The Monster Stack actually had less play in it than the regular stack. For example, in level 3 today the blinds were 50/100 with a 100 big blind ante, while yesterday level 3 was 200/300 with a 300 ante. A cost of 250 chips a round vs 800 a round (more than 3X as big) and starting stacks of 10K and 25K (2.5X as big). They could start us with a billion chips, but if the blinds are 50,000,000/100,000,000 it's still 100 big blinds. This is actually fake outrage! I'm not upset about it, just thought it was worth noting.
On to today! I had my first hand of note at the 50/100 blinds with a 100 ante level, getting dealt 88 and raising one caller to 400. The caller called my raise to 400 because as they say, haters gonna hate, players gonna play and callers gonna call. The flop came down K 7 2, the villain checked, I bet 700 and he called pretty quickly.
The villain in this hand was a guy I'd played with once or twice before and he's a recreational player who is not very good, but he's absolutely loose and aggressive. He was an early position caller and I didn't think there was much of a chance that he'd just call preflop with a K and if he did I thought he'd check raise it here. I also thought there was a good chance he'd bet out or check raise a flush draw. Discounting those, I put him on something like 76 suited or 97 suited. The turn was a black J, he checked and I checked it back. The river was a really interesting card - the A of hearts - and my opponent fired out 1,500!
You'd think with the front door flush draw getting there and three over cards 88 would be an easy muck, but I stopped to think this through. What's interesting about the A is that when most players raise preflop, bet flop and check turn they have a ton of Ax type of hands in their range of possible hands. Even people who aren't good at hand reading know this. It looks like I should have AQ or AT here. So if this guy did have a K or a J in his hand he's not going to bet that for value when the ace shows up. If he did have a flush draw there is a good chance he'd go for a check raise here. Combine that with the fact that I thought he'd push a draw on the flop if he had one and that puts me back at my original read of him having one small pair. After a short delay I made the call and he turned over 44! Huzzah!
I won a couple of other small pots and got my stack up to about 15K when the next hand came along. A new guy sat down at our table and on his first hand he opened to 375 under the gun at 75/150 blinds.
I didn't recognize him, but my snap judgement was that he knew what he was doing. He was a 40ish Asian guy with a shitload of tattoos (he had two different sets of 4 letter words on his knuckles with one letter on each finger) and he hand a backpack with him (usually a giveaway for good players - casual players don't bring a backpack, but if you're planning to be there all day and want to be comfortable you bring a lot of shit with you). I looked down at QQ which 97% of the time I'm going to 3 bet, but I just called. Something not totally at my top level of thinking was telling me not to 3 bet it.
I did think, this guy just sat down and usually people want to get settled for a few minutes before they play a hand so this one is not on the fence and since he's under the gun it must be a really strong hand. Even still QQ is the 3rd best possible hand so it's still probably a 3 bet.
Looking back I could make the argument that normally a tight UTG range would be TT+ and AQ+ or AJ suited, but most of those hands make it 450+ in that spot and really it's only KK or AA that would go for the small sizing from up front. Also I could add that early stages are about survival and I should minimize my chance of going broke. But I honestly wasn't thinking any of that at the time.
So I called with my black QQ and the button and big blind also called. The flop came out 866 with two spades and the main villain bet 900 into the 1,800 chip pot. I just called and everyone else folded. The turn was the J of spades and now he checked. I didn't really see a reason to bet here. If he had AA or KK or a big spade he wasn't folding and if he had something like AK, AQ or AJ I think it was worth giving him a free card for the potential to give him a chance to bluff at the river. I checked it back, the river was the 5 of spades and he checked again. Now I came out betting 1,500 which was a small bet hoping to get a crying call from AA or KK or even TT with the T of spades. He looked back at this cards, paused for a moment and made the call. I showed my hand and he turned over KK with the K of spades! Ack! This was not great, but should have been so much worse. If I play it fast I'm going to have a hard time getting away from it on that run out.
On the next hand of note I made it 600 with red 99 at the 100/200 level and only the big blind called me. The flop came down T 8 5 with two diamonds and one spade and to my surprise my opponent led into me for 900. I was thinking this could be a T or a flush draw, but whatever it was betting into the preflop raiser from the big blind on a board like this is odd. I made the call and the turn came out the J of spades making me an open ended straight draw. My opponent bet again, this time for 1,200 and I decided to put the heat on. The only hand that made any sense that was value betting here was JT and everything else was getting a little out of line. I made it 3,500 to go fully expecting to take it down (it's not just the 3,500 here, but knowing that if I really have the goods I'm putting in at least another 5,000 on the river so there is no cheap way to get to showdown), but my opponent quickly called. The river was a disaster, the ace of spades and my opponent fired for 2,000. Now I did not think he was out of line. This sizing looked like a value bet for sure and I figured I'd run into AT or some kind of Tx hand that had two spades in it. I folded and my opponent showed Q4 of spades! Ack! What a goof ball play this guy made. I lost the hand, but felt good about sniffing out the oddness of his line.
So those were my good reads, but in the end I just didn't get anywhere today. I had another hand where I flopped open ended, played it aggressively and missed. That took me down from 6,200 to about 2,900. Then with blinds of 200/300 and a 300 ante I shoved with A8 from the cutoff, the button called me with KK and the board ran out Q J T 7 2.
I didn't hang around to see what the prizes were and don't know exactly where I finished. My $10,000 starting bankroll is now at $10,530. Tomorrow Omaha!
The Monster Stack actually had less play in it than the regular stack. For example, in level 3 today the blinds were 50/100 with a 100 big blind ante, while yesterday level 3 was 200/300 with a 300 ante. A cost of 250 chips a round vs 800 a round (more than 3X as big) and starting stacks of 10K and 25K (2.5X as big). They could start us with a billion chips, but if the blinds are 50,000,000/100,000,000 it's still 100 big blinds. This is actually fake outrage! I'm not upset about it, just thought it was worth noting.
On to today! I had my first hand of note at the 50/100 blinds with a 100 ante level, getting dealt 88 and raising one caller to 400. The caller called my raise to 400 because as they say, haters gonna hate, players gonna play and callers gonna call. The flop came down K 7 2, the villain checked, I bet 700 and he called pretty quickly.
The villain in this hand was a guy I'd played with once or twice before and he's a recreational player who is not very good, but he's absolutely loose and aggressive. He was an early position caller and I didn't think there was much of a chance that he'd just call preflop with a K and if he did I thought he'd check raise it here. I also thought there was a good chance he'd bet out or check raise a flush draw. Discounting those, I put him on something like 76 suited or 97 suited. The turn was a black J, he checked and I checked it back. The river was a really interesting card - the A of hearts - and my opponent fired out 1,500!
You'd think with the front door flush draw getting there and three over cards 88 would be an easy muck, but I stopped to think this through. What's interesting about the A is that when most players raise preflop, bet flop and check turn they have a ton of Ax type of hands in their range of possible hands. Even people who aren't good at hand reading know this. It looks like I should have AQ or AT here. So if this guy did have a K or a J in his hand he's not going to bet that for value when the ace shows up. If he did have a flush draw there is a good chance he'd go for a check raise here. Combine that with the fact that I thought he'd push a draw on the flop if he had one and that puts me back at my original read of him having one small pair. After a short delay I made the call and he turned over 44! Huzzah!
I won a couple of other small pots and got my stack up to about 15K when the next hand came along. A new guy sat down at our table and on his first hand he opened to 375 under the gun at 75/150 blinds.
I didn't recognize him, but my snap judgement was that he knew what he was doing. He was a 40ish Asian guy with a shitload of tattoos (he had two different sets of 4 letter words on his knuckles with one letter on each finger) and he hand a backpack with him (usually a giveaway for good players - casual players don't bring a backpack, but if you're planning to be there all day and want to be comfortable you bring a lot of shit with you). I looked down at QQ which 97% of the time I'm going to 3 bet, but I just called. Something not totally at my top level of thinking was telling me not to 3 bet it.
I did think, this guy just sat down and usually people want to get settled for a few minutes before they play a hand so this one is not on the fence and since he's under the gun it must be a really strong hand. Even still QQ is the 3rd best possible hand so it's still probably a 3 bet.
Looking back I could make the argument that normally a tight UTG range would be TT+ and AQ+ or AJ suited, but most of those hands make it 450+ in that spot and really it's only KK or AA that would go for the small sizing from up front. Also I could add that early stages are about survival and I should minimize my chance of going broke. But I honestly wasn't thinking any of that at the time.
So I called with my black QQ and the button and big blind also called. The flop came out 866 with two spades and the main villain bet 900 into the 1,800 chip pot. I just called and everyone else folded. The turn was the J of spades and now he checked. I didn't really see a reason to bet here. If he had AA or KK or a big spade he wasn't folding and if he had something like AK, AQ or AJ I think it was worth giving him a free card for the potential to give him a chance to bluff at the river. I checked it back, the river was the 5 of spades and he checked again. Now I came out betting 1,500 which was a small bet hoping to get a crying call from AA or KK or even TT with the T of spades. He looked back at this cards, paused for a moment and made the call. I showed my hand and he turned over KK with the K of spades! Ack! This was not great, but should have been so much worse. If I play it fast I'm going to have a hard time getting away from it on that run out.
On the next hand of note I made it 600 with red 99 at the 100/200 level and only the big blind called me. The flop came down T 8 5 with two diamonds and one spade and to my surprise my opponent led into me for 900. I was thinking this could be a T or a flush draw, but whatever it was betting into the preflop raiser from the big blind on a board like this is odd. I made the call and the turn came out the J of spades making me an open ended straight draw. My opponent bet again, this time for 1,200 and I decided to put the heat on. The only hand that made any sense that was value betting here was JT and everything else was getting a little out of line. I made it 3,500 to go fully expecting to take it down (it's not just the 3,500 here, but knowing that if I really have the goods I'm putting in at least another 5,000 on the river so there is no cheap way to get to showdown), but my opponent quickly called. The river was a disaster, the ace of spades and my opponent fired for 2,000. Now I did not think he was out of line. This sizing looked like a value bet for sure and I figured I'd run into AT or some kind of Tx hand that had two spades in it. I folded and my opponent showed Q4 of spades! Ack! What a goof ball play this guy made. I lost the hand, but felt good about sniffing out the oddness of his line.
So those were my good reads, but in the end I just didn't get anywhere today. I had another hand where I flopped open ended, played it aggressively and missed. That took me down from 6,200 to about 2,900. Then with blinds of 200/300 and a 300 ante I shoved with A8 from the cutoff, the button called me with KK and the board ran out Q J T 7 2.
I didn't hang around to see what the prizes were and don't know exactly where I finished. My $10,000 starting bankroll is now at $10,530. Tomorrow Omaha!
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Project Phaser: Phase 3.2 (Bay 101 $400) Don't Call It a Comeback
We started with 25K chips and 227 players putting up the $400 buy in today at Bay 101. 27 spots were in the money with 27th paying $720, 9th paying $1,430 with steady pay jump all the way up to $22,220 for 1st.
I ordered breakfast as soon as I got there during the early levels and it was goooooooooood!
I got into my first big hand of the day 2 hours in with blinds of 300/600 with a 600 big blind ante. The cutoff raised to 1,500 and I made a speculative call in the big blind with 65 of spades. The flop came down K 3 2 with two clubs, I checked and my opponent bet 2,200 and I made a loose call. My plan here was to either A) hit a 4 B) have him check back the turn and then fire the river no matter what C) bluff any club on the turn D) hit a 5 or a 6 and somehow make it to showdown and win against a hand like AJ.
The turn was a great card for plan C, the 3 of clubs. I bet out 4,500 and after thinking for a bit he called. I was considering if I should bet again when plan A came into play - I hit a red 4 making me a straight! I bet 7,500 and my opponent quickly folded. This put me up to 37K chips.
A little later with blinds of 600/1200 there was a raise to 2,600 and a call. I looked down at pocket aces! Oh baby! I made it 8,500 hoping that someone would think I was squeezing and come back at me. The raiser called, the other guy folded and the flop came down Q 5 3 with two clubs. After some hesitation the villain shoved for about 15K and I snap called him. He turned over 99, the board bricked out and I was up to 60K.
At the 1000/1500 blinds level I made a pretty ballsy play. I was in the small blind and just called with K5 off. I'd had 4 hands where everyone had folded to me in the small blind and I'd raised the big blind every time. Once he'd called, twice he'd folded and once he three bet shoved on me. I figured for 500 with 4,000 already in the pot it was worth it to go for a limp. He checked his option and the flop came down A T 3 rainbow.
This is a spot where neither of us should have an ace and there are no draws so I fired out 3,500 thinking it would probably get through. Even if this looks suspicion most players don't have the stones to make a move. To my surprise my opponent made it 8,000 to go. I had absolutely nothing, but I took a closer look at the board and thought about what he could have. Setting aside preflop considerations there is no way he'd flop a set here and then raise me when on the flop so I threw out AA, TT and 33. If I really can rule out him having an A, then I'm left with T3 as the only hand I really have to worry about. No other hands can stand a raise and there is a ton of other shit he could have. So I jacked it up to 25K to go and he quickly folded. You think you playing with kids man?! Get that shit outta here!
That one put me up to 90K but I quickly blew off 2/3 of my stack. I lost 13K when I raised to 4K with A3 suited on the button and called the big blinds all in. He had K6 and hit a K. Next, I raised 44 to 5,500, got called, fired 9K at the flop and my opponent shoved on me. Finally, I just called with AJ out of the big blind, called the flop on a Q T 5 board, bluffed at the turn when a T came, gave up on the river and lost to QJ.
I lost a little more to blinds and antes and was down to 33K. Yuck!
Then I had a total reverse. With blinds of 1K/2K (don't forget the 2K ante) two players just called the 2K and I ripped it with 77! Rip! The first caller immediately called off his 25K stack and I thought I'd been duped by someone limping in with AA. To my amazement he had 55 and my hand held. Two hands later I raised AQ to 6K and the small blind shoved for 50K! This would normally be a tight spot, but this guy was a super aggro young guy who was blasting all in with random shit on a regular basis so I did not hesitate in calling. He had J8 of diamonds and the board ran out garbage. Get THAT shit out of here too!
All of a sudden I was up to 110K with 81 players left when the average stack was 70K. I got accolades from my table mates on my turnaround. Speaking of my table mates, they were a Bay 101 murderers row with 4 guys who I suspect are pros.
A little later it was down the toilet again. I called a 22K all in with AK and lost to AJ when the board ran out QT829. Then I made a highly questionable play. The button raised to 6,500 at the 1500/2500 blind level and I made it 20,000 to go with Q7 off from the small blind. I thought he was a little deeper but after he called me I saw he only had about 15K left. The flop came down 985 which game me a gut shot and one over and not sure what to do I just put him all in. He quickly called me with QT (queen ten! Ugh!) and his queen high held up. Both of these hands were against the same opponent and he was not quiet about winning these pots.
I was down to 60K at the 2K/4K level in the big blind when 3 people just called. The first guy who called was regularly raising on the larger side when he entered the pot and did not seem at all the type to limp with a big hand. The other guys were in no way just calling 4K with a big hand. So with 18K sitting out there I shoved for another 56K with Q2 off suit. The first guy hemmed and hawed but they all folded.
There is a big difference between these two hands despite the fact that I'm getting aggressive with shitty off suit queens. In the second hand I had a very strong indication that no one could call an all in. In the first one I was kind of hoping he wouldn't call. It was too aggressive. If I'm being honest I was still feeling a little emotion about losing the AK vs AJ hand and did something I wouldn't normally do. In the Q2 hand I wish I'd trust myself more often in spots like this and go for it.
On the very next hand after the Q2 hand I was in the small blind. The big blind had about 45K and since I had him covered I wanted to put the pressure on him. I looked down at my first card and it was an ace. The was enough so I just shipped it without looking at the other one. He instantly called me and I thought "Oh shit!" but then he rolled over A4! And I had AJ! And I flopped a J! Huzzah!
No I had 125K, we were down to 45 players with 27 spots paying and it was 3:45 or 6 hours and 15 minutes since hand #1.
When we got down to 40 I had 110K chips and got moved to a new table. I looked at the table and it was all chumps! I mean there were a couple of unknowns, but it took me 7 seconds to see that half the table looked like deer in the headlights and there were certainly no pros in the bunch.
A few minutes passed and then I got involved in a big hand in a questionable spot. With blinds of 2500/5000 a guy in middle position opened to 11,000. This is a really small raise and while this is kind of standard in bigger tournaments, the standard in this one seemed to be 2.5X-3X the big blind. Anyway, the small blind called and I made a speculative call with Q9 with the Q of clubs. The flop came down A96 all clubs giving me middle pair and the 2nd nut flush draw. I checked it over to the raiser who bet out 30K with about 60K behind. The small blind folded and I decided to go for it. If he had something like AK or AJ I'd be about 50/50, I'd be about a 2 to 1 underdog against a set or a 2 to 1 favorite against Kx with the K of clubs and everything else would just be folding. It's that last part that makes moving in in spots like this often times the right move. Plan A is to have him fold and pick up 68K chips, and plan B is to have a fighting chance if he calls. 68k chips is worth more than $1,000 in equity!
But there were 2 problems - 1) 30K is a big bet and I should have looked at that as strong hand that was looking to protect against a flush draw, but not likely to fold and 2) my opponent had A9. Shit! The turn was an ace and just to rub it in the river was the J of clubs making my flush, but not enough to beat my opponent full house.
Luckily I had him covered...by 4,000. On the next hand I had 2,500 of my 4K stack in the pot in the form of the small blind and after someone raised to 15K I called without looking. Amazingly I had A2, beat QJ and was up to 17K. A couple of hands later I picked up 76 suited, shipped it and everyone folded. Now I had 27K and was starting to dream. Not really, but I did have 27K. On the next hand I got A6 and let it fly once more, but this time I got called by 99 and didn't get any help.
I finished in 34th place after 7 hours of play and then drove home 90 minutes in the peak of rush hour traffic. This sucked.
With that said, I felt fine by the time I got home. I had a nice dinner with my family and watched some basketball and I am drinking a solid bottle of Chianti. I also used this as an opportunity to have a conversation with my kids about losing with grace which is something they need to work on.
But seriously, fuck that guy who had the AJ and the QT. :)
I'm back at it tomorrow with another $350 No Limit Hold'em. My $10,000 bankroll for the project is now at $10,880.
I ordered breakfast as soon as I got there during the early levels and it was goooooooooood!
And here is what it looks like in there. This is a terrible picture and I will try to do better next time.
I got into my first big hand of the day 2 hours in with blinds of 300/600 with a 600 big blind ante. The cutoff raised to 1,500 and I made a speculative call in the big blind with 65 of spades. The flop came down K 3 2 with two clubs, I checked and my opponent bet 2,200 and I made a loose call. My plan here was to either A) hit a 4 B) have him check back the turn and then fire the river no matter what C) bluff any club on the turn D) hit a 5 or a 6 and somehow make it to showdown and win against a hand like AJ.
The turn was a great card for plan C, the 3 of clubs. I bet out 4,500 and after thinking for a bit he called. I was considering if I should bet again when plan A came into play - I hit a red 4 making me a straight! I bet 7,500 and my opponent quickly folded. This put me up to 37K chips.
A little later with blinds of 600/1200 there was a raise to 2,600 and a call. I looked down at pocket aces! Oh baby! I made it 8,500 hoping that someone would think I was squeezing and come back at me. The raiser called, the other guy folded and the flop came down Q 5 3 with two clubs. After some hesitation the villain shoved for about 15K and I snap called him. He turned over 99, the board bricked out and I was up to 60K.
At the 1000/1500 blinds level I made a pretty ballsy play. I was in the small blind and just called with K5 off. I'd had 4 hands where everyone had folded to me in the small blind and I'd raised the big blind every time. Once he'd called, twice he'd folded and once he three bet shoved on me. I figured for 500 with 4,000 already in the pot it was worth it to go for a limp. He checked his option and the flop came down A T 3 rainbow.
This is a spot where neither of us should have an ace and there are no draws so I fired out 3,500 thinking it would probably get through. Even if this looks suspicion most players don't have the stones to make a move. To my surprise my opponent made it 8,000 to go. I had absolutely nothing, but I took a closer look at the board and thought about what he could have. Setting aside preflop considerations there is no way he'd flop a set here and then raise me when on the flop so I threw out AA, TT and 33. If I really can rule out him having an A, then I'm left with T3 as the only hand I really have to worry about. No other hands can stand a raise and there is a ton of other shit he could have. So I jacked it up to 25K to go and he quickly folded. You think you playing with kids man?! Get that shit outta here!
That one put me up to 90K but I quickly blew off 2/3 of my stack. I lost 13K when I raised to 4K with A3 suited on the button and called the big blinds all in. He had K6 and hit a K. Next, I raised 44 to 5,500, got called, fired 9K at the flop and my opponent shoved on me. Finally, I just called with AJ out of the big blind, called the flop on a Q T 5 board, bluffed at the turn when a T came, gave up on the river and lost to QJ.
I lost a little more to blinds and antes and was down to 33K. Yuck!
Then I had a total reverse. With blinds of 1K/2K (don't forget the 2K ante) two players just called the 2K and I ripped it with 77! Rip! The first caller immediately called off his 25K stack and I thought I'd been duped by someone limping in with AA. To my amazement he had 55 and my hand held. Two hands later I raised AQ to 6K and the small blind shoved for 50K! This would normally be a tight spot, but this guy was a super aggro young guy who was blasting all in with random shit on a regular basis so I did not hesitate in calling. He had J8 of diamonds and the board ran out garbage. Get THAT shit out of here too!
All of a sudden I was up to 110K with 81 players left when the average stack was 70K. I got accolades from my table mates on my turnaround. Speaking of my table mates, they were a Bay 101 murderers row with 4 guys who I suspect are pros.
A little later it was down the toilet again. I called a 22K all in with AK and lost to AJ when the board ran out QT829. Then I made a highly questionable play. The button raised to 6,500 at the 1500/2500 blind level and I made it 20,000 to go with Q7 off from the small blind. I thought he was a little deeper but after he called me I saw he only had about 15K left. The flop came down 985 which game me a gut shot and one over and not sure what to do I just put him all in. He quickly called me with QT (queen ten! Ugh!) and his queen high held up. Both of these hands were against the same opponent and he was not quiet about winning these pots.
I was down to 60K at the 2K/4K level in the big blind when 3 people just called. The first guy who called was regularly raising on the larger side when he entered the pot and did not seem at all the type to limp with a big hand. The other guys were in no way just calling 4K with a big hand. So with 18K sitting out there I shoved for another 56K with Q2 off suit. The first guy hemmed and hawed but they all folded.
There is a big difference between these two hands despite the fact that I'm getting aggressive with shitty off suit queens. In the second hand I had a very strong indication that no one could call an all in. In the first one I was kind of hoping he wouldn't call. It was too aggressive. If I'm being honest I was still feeling a little emotion about losing the AK vs AJ hand and did something I wouldn't normally do. In the Q2 hand I wish I'd trust myself more often in spots like this and go for it.
On the very next hand after the Q2 hand I was in the small blind. The big blind had about 45K and since I had him covered I wanted to put the pressure on him. I looked down at my first card and it was an ace. The was enough so I just shipped it without looking at the other one. He instantly called me and I thought "Oh shit!" but then he rolled over A4! And I had AJ! And I flopped a J! Huzzah!
No I had 125K, we were down to 45 players with 27 spots paying and it was 3:45 or 6 hours and 15 minutes since hand #1.
When we got down to 40 I had 110K chips and got moved to a new table. I looked at the table and it was all chumps! I mean there were a couple of unknowns, but it took me 7 seconds to see that half the table looked like deer in the headlights and there were certainly no pros in the bunch.
A few minutes passed and then I got involved in a big hand in a questionable spot. With blinds of 2500/5000 a guy in middle position opened to 11,000. This is a really small raise and while this is kind of standard in bigger tournaments, the standard in this one seemed to be 2.5X-3X the big blind. Anyway, the small blind called and I made a speculative call with Q9 with the Q of clubs. The flop came down A96 all clubs giving me middle pair and the 2nd nut flush draw. I checked it over to the raiser who bet out 30K with about 60K behind. The small blind folded and I decided to go for it. If he had something like AK or AJ I'd be about 50/50, I'd be about a 2 to 1 underdog against a set or a 2 to 1 favorite against Kx with the K of clubs and everything else would just be folding. It's that last part that makes moving in in spots like this often times the right move. Plan A is to have him fold and pick up 68K chips, and plan B is to have a fighting chance if he calls. 68k chips is worth more than $1,000 in equity!
But there were 2 problems - 1) 30K is a big bet and I should have looked at that as strong hand that was looking to protect against a flush draw, but not likely to fold and 2) my opponent had A9. Shit! The turn was an ace and just to rub it in the river was the J of clubs making my flush, but not enough to beat my opponent full house.
Luckily I had him covered...by 4,000. On the next hand I had 2,500 of my 4K stack in the pot in the form of the small blind and after someone raised to 15K I called without looking. Amazingly I had A2, beat QJ and was up to 17K. A couple of hands later I picked up 76 suited, shipped it and everyone folded. Now I had 27K and was starting to dream. Not really, but I did have 27K. On the next hand I got A6 and let it fly once more, but this time I got called by 99 and didn't get any help.
I finished in 34th place after 7 hours of play and then drove home 90 minutes in the peak of rush hour traffic. This sucked.
With that said, I felt fine by the time I got home. I had a nice dinner with my family and watched some basketball and I am drinking a solid bottle of Chianti. I also used this as an opportunity to have a conversation with my kids about losing with grace which is something they need to work on.
But seriously, fuck that guy who had the AJ and the QT. :)
I'm back at it tomorrow with another $350 No Limit Hold'em. My $10,000 bankroll for the project is now at $10,880.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Project Phaser: Phase 3.1 (Bay 101 $350) One Hand Wonder
We started with 10,000 in chips, blinds of 25/50 and 20 minute limits in the first event of the Bay 101 Open, $350 No Limit Hold'em. 162 players entered with 18 spots paying, 18th being $580, 1st being $16,050 and the others somewhere in between.
The tournament kicked off at 9:30 a.m. and for the first two hours nothing of note happened to me. I won a couple of small pots in standard ways, but didn't take anything to showdown.
On the second hand back from break with the blinds of 200/400 with a 400 big blind ante, I opened to 1,200 in middle position with 55. To my surprise I got 3 callers including the button and both blinds. To my delight the flop came down J 6 5 with two clubs giving me bottom set and almost certainly the best hand.
I fired out 2,500 into the 4,800 chip pot and only the big blind called. The turn was a 7 and as I was thinking about how much I was going to bet when my opponent led for 3,500. I had about 9,500 left in my stack and with 13,300 in the pot the only move was all in. I paused for effect and then ripped it!
My opponent snap called me and turned over K4 of clubs meaning 13 of the remaining 44 cards would make him a winner and 31 would send the pot my way. Sadly the river was a 3 and that was it for me.
Tomorrow I have $400 buy in No Limit Hold'em Monster Stack! Roar! I know we start with 25,000 chips, but not sure if the structure is the same. I hung around and played cash games and saw that they were down to 18 at 6 o'clock today meaning it took 7.5 hours to make the money. I presume it will take longer tomorrow.
In other news I won $1,600 in the cash games which would have been about 7th place money so it worked out that I got stuffed early.
The tournament kicked off at 9:30 a.m. and for the first two hours nothing of note happened to me. I won a couple of small pots in standard ways, but didn't take anything to showdown.
On the second hand back from break with the blinds of 200/400 with a 400 big blind ante, I opened to 1,200 in middle position with 55. To my surprise I got 3 callers including the button and both blinds. To my delight the flop came down J 6 5 with two clubs giving me bottom set and almost certainly the best hand.
I fired out 2,500 into the 4,800 chip pot and only the big blind called. The turn was a 7 and as I was thinking about how much I was going to bet when my opponent led for 3,500. I had about 9,500 left in my stack and with 13,300 in the pot the only move was all in. I paused for effect and then ripped it!
My opponent snap called me and turned over K4 of clubs meaning 13 of the remaining 44 cards would make him a winner and 31 would send the pot my way. Sadly the river was a 3 and that was it for me.
Tomorrow I have $400 buy in No Limit Hold'em Monster Stack! Roar! I know we start with 25,000 chips, but not sure if the structure is the same. I hung around and played cash games and saw that they were down to 18 at 6 o'clock today meaning it took 7.5 hours to make the money. I presume it will take longer tomorrow.
In other news I won $1,600 in the cash games which would have been about 7th place money so it worked out that I got stuffed early.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Project Phaser: Phase 2 (Bay 101 $200) - "You're the Alpha Male!"
I headed in to Bay 101 today coming off a miserable cash game session earlier in the week where I lost to a group of miserable bastards in miserable ways, but looking forward to the Bay 101 Open which starts on Monday. I don't want to say I've never played a tournament at Bay 101, but I can tell you that the last time I did they were in a different building and Bush was President. With that in mind I wanted to get in one daily tournament over there to familiarize myself with any quirks.
I got of out the house late and arrived at 10 for the 9:30 start and ended up as an alternate.
I got of out the house late and arrived at 10 for the 9:30 start and ended up as an alternate.
If you squint you'll see that of the $200 buy in, $175 goes to the prize pool and $25 to the house. This is actually very reasonable. It means that the average player will lose $25 playing this tournament. This is cheaper than a round of golf and most of the players are the same types of dudes that would be playing golf on a Friday at 10 am - lot's of retired guys or people who are otherwise self employed. You'll also see that I'm Wes in casino land and not Dave!
Here is my sad looking starting stack of 15,000 chips: Black = 100, yellow = 500, blue = 1,000, pink = 5,000. We ended up with 83 entries and played with 15 minute levels (Turbo!).
Getting a late start the blinds were already 200/400 with the big blind anteing 400 when I got my first hand at the start of level 4. It was 10:17 am. On the first hand I raised out of the small blind to 1,200 and got called, bet 1,500 on the flop and got called and check folded to 3,000 on the turn. One hand down, and 1/5 of my stack gone!
At the start of the next level at 10:30 I raised A9ss to 2K with blind of 300/600 and folded to a raise of 5K.
Fast forward to 10:45 and I'm sitting on 8,500 with blinds of 400/800. Down to 10 big blinds, after a little less than 30 minutes without really having much of anything happen? What kind of bull shit tournament is this! A 15 minute limit tournament, that's what kind!
Here is my imposing looking stack. I just barely resisted putting my name on the cash game lists at this point.
Then I got hot! Call the police and the fireman! I'm too hot! Make a dragon want to retire man!
My hotness started with the unquestionably not hot 74 off suit in the big blind. 4 people just called for 800 and I considered ripping it for 7,700 (as the kids might say) to maybe pick up the 4,800 in the pot, but decided that would be too aggressive when I saw the 74. The flop came out 865 and I did a triple take confirming that I had in fact flopped a straight! After we all checked, the button bet 1,600, the small blind shoved for 20,000, I called, he had 86 and my hand held up. Up to 20K!
In the next level with blinds of 600/1,200 under the gun raised to 2,600, two to his left made it 7,500 and I ripped it with AK! Rip! The first guy folded, the second guy called for 16K total, the flop was 8 5 4 and the turn was a 9.
If you noted my hotness comment or can see that this post goes on, you can guess what the river was in two tries. It wasn't an ace. King on the river baby!
On the very next hand I raised KQ to 3K and the big blind called. The flop was K52, he shoved for 9K with 43 off and the run out was 5 on the turn T on the river. Don't call me with 43 bro! Just don't!
It was now 11:17, one hour after my first hand and I had 54K with 55 of 83 players left. This stack looks more respectable!
With blinds of 800/1600 the cutoff limped, I limped in the small blind with A2 suited and the big blind shoved for 9,600 more. The cutoff folded and I looked at the pot. I had to call 9,600 to win 16,400 and this guy could have easily been in desperation mode. This was close but I made the call. Sadly he had 22 which was a big favorite over my hand. The flop came down QJ3 and the cutoff lamented folding JT while I thought that I'd like to see a pair on the turn. The turn was a Q and we all knew how this was going down. I was in seat 7, the guy in seat 8 was all in and the guy in seat 9 started saying "Oh man! Don't do it! Oh man! Oh man" The river came out a J and seat 8 was toast while seat 9 prattled on about how sick it was and how he couldn't help but say stuff sometimes.
On the next hand I made a hero-ish call on the river. I was in the big blind at 800/1600 and there was an open to 3200. I made a speculative call with K6 off. This is a shit hand but I was getting 4.5 to 1 and was the big stack. The flop came down Q96 with two hearts and my opponent bet 3,200. I kind of expected him to follow through with a bet no matter what he had and this was a pretty small bet so I made a speculative call with bottom pair. The turn was a 5 of clubs and it checked through. The river was a 3 of spades, I checked and now my opponent moved all in for 9,600. This did not compute. The flop was super draw heavy and if he had a Q or a 9 or a pocket pair he'd probably bet more on the flop and certainly fire the turn to protect. This felt like desperation! Or maybe the nuts, but probably desperation. After a 30 second pause I made the call and beat KT. Zing!
At that point it was 11:41, I had 83K which was the big stack at the table and the table was talking about hot how I was running.
I decided to push it and made a speculative raise to 5,500 with 76 of spades in the 1k/2k level. I got cold called by the "Oh man! Don't do it! I say stuff sometimes!" guy and everyone else folded. He had about 20K left which was a little more than the 16K in the pot and my plan was to put him all in on most flops. The flop came down A 7 4 with one spade. My first thought was that the ace was bad, but when I took a closer look I had a pair and some backdoor flush or backdoor straight equity, and a pocket pair like 99 or TT was a likely hand for him to have and not calling a bet. So I went for it tossing five 5,000 pink chips into the pot. He tanked for 20 seconds and I thought that my table image must be REALLY good if I could have a guy call me with an ace, hit it and then fold anyway, but eventually he made the call and showed AT of diamonds.
He stood up and started babbling something about how good I was running as soon as the cards got turned over. The turn was a 5 which was a fantastic card for me giving me a total of 13 outs instead of 5. At this point my opponent started bellowing "You're the alpha male! You're the alpha male!" I've had people call me all kinds of stuff at the poker table, but this was a new one! People do odd stuff when they're nervous. Being the alpha male, I hit the 7 on the river and sent him off to spout nonsense somewhere else.
Still in that same level I opened AK to 5,500 in the cutoff and the small blind shipped it for 30K. I quickly called and since I'm the alpha male he had AJ and the board ran out garbage. Now I had a very nice looking stack! Huzzah!
At this point it was noon and I'm sure my table mates thought I was a dork for constantly taking pictures of my stack. But I was the Alpha Dork! I had 145K chips when average was 45K with 28 players left. I would like to point out that in my post about the Lucky Chances $380 that was Phase 1.3 I covered the first two hours by saying that I got a fair start going from 20K to 24K and got A2 off five times. All of the shit in this post thus far happened in an hour and forty five minutes.
Then I got involved with My Nemesis! My Nemesis is a regular cash game player and he is My Nemesis because he is tricky, sometimes overly aggressive and has a really good read on me. He's not the best player I play against regularly, but he gives me more trouble than almost anyone. He's probably in his fifties, is a retired guy and is not a white guy but I couldn't guess at his ethnic heritage.
At 1.5K/3K I opened to 9K with AQ off and My Nemesis called along with This Goof Ball in the big blind. The flop came down KQ2 rainbow and I made a questionable bet of 15K into the 31,500 chip pot. My Nemesis called. I did not like the call, but I did like the turn card which was an ace. My Nemesis had about 55K left and I expected him to ship if I checked. So I checked and he checked. The river was a 5, I checked and he checked. He said "two pair," and I thought "holy shit, you didn't bet two pair!" I showed my hand and he showed AK for top two! I should have taken a major hit here. I can only think that either I was giving off major vibes that I wanted him to bet or that he figured my check on the turn was polarized and that I had a hand like TT or JJ that wouldn't call or that I had a hand like AA or KK that he couldn't beat.
Two hands later My Nemisis just called the 3K and This Goof Ball called on the button. I looked down at AQ of diamonds and thought "What the hell are you doing Nemesis!? Why are you just calling here? Do you have AA or KK your sneaky bastard!" I talked myself out of what should have been an obvious raise, and just called. The flop came down J 7 4 and This Goof Ball had 44! I think if I raised he would have come along and I probably bet that flop so I think I dodged another bullet there.
My notes about the rest of the tournament are spotty and really not that much of interest happened. I maneuvered stealing some blinds here and there but didn't have any big hands. Going in to the final table I had 164K chips and it was 1:23 pm.
I won no hands at the final table. No blind steals, no chips whatsoever. I started my final hand with 75K chips, but I was in the big blind which was 16K and had to ante 16K. My Nemesis who was still in it made it 45K to go from the button and I made the call with 87. My opponents all had between 350K and 500K and it didn't make sense to fold leaving myself with 43K. My Nemesis had JJ and that was it. It was 2 pm exactly and as soon as I went broke they chopped up the remaining prize pool 3 ways. First place was $5,075, 2nd was $3,050 and 3rd was $1,600 so I was pretty close to some decent money, but needed more than one or two breaks to move up significantly.
Happily despite my card dead final table, my stack carried me through all the way to 4th place which paid $1,160 ($960 net). My $10,000 Project Phaser bankroll is now at $11,630.
I'm calling this warm up Phase 2. We'll get to Phase 3 the Bay 101 open next week as I play 5 tournaments in 5 days with buy ins from $350-$550 including an Omaha tournament! I think we're looking at 30 minute levels and a good structure so these will be all day affairs and not turbo like this one. Please practice your Peyton Manning style shouts of "Omaha" and your cheers of "You're the Alpha Male!" in the meantime.
Friday, May 04, 2018
Stupid Ace on the River!
I was back at the Matrix today playing $2/$3/$5 with a $500 max buy in today and got into a few interesting spots.
On the first hand I raised KQ of diamonds to $25 in middle position over a $5 limper, got called by the button and the big blind made it $90 to go. I've played with this guy more than 10 times in the past 6 months and he's somewhere between OK and good. I don't see too many holes in his game other than he calls people down too lite, but I don't ever see him leave with big stacks of chips either. Also he looks like a serial killer.
KQ is a significant underdog to his 3 betting range which is probably TT+ and AQ+, but I was suited, had position and was getting a little better than 2 to 1 pot odds, so I called. The other dude in the pot folded and the flop came down T 8 4 all diamonds giving me a flush. Hooray! It's pretty rare to flop a flush and given that my opponent had a little less than 2X the pot left in his stack there was a decent chance we'd get it all in.
Mr. Serial Killer bet out $95 and I just called hoping he'd go all in on the turn no matter what he had. The turn paired the 4 which I didn't love, but was most likely irrelevant and as expected Mr. Serial Killer moved all in for $307. I snap called and the river was the A of clubs. I was hyper focused on not wanting a 4 or a diamond to come, but I showed my hand first and as Mr. Serial Killer rolled over his hand (showing zero emotion) I knew he had AA before I even saw the fronts of the cards. It turned out he had the ace of diamonds and the ace of spades so I was in fact needing to fade a diamond and a 4 as well as the ace. Stupid ace on the river!
The next hand was even more dramatic. I was in for a total of $800 on the day sitting on a stack of about $850 when two players to my right limped in for $5. I looked down at KJ off and made it $30 to go. The first limper who had a little over $900 in his stack made the call and the other guy folded. This guy was a fortyish Asian guy that I didn't recognize. In the hour or two he'd been at the table he'd been utterly forgettable.
The flop came down KK2 with one spade and Mr. Forgettable checked to me. I bet out $25 which is a really small bet into a roughly $70 pot but I wanted him to come along with pocket pairs or whatever he might have. Betting small like this when you have the goods also allows you to bet small when you don't have shit on similar boards and not give anything away to anyone who happens to be paying attention.
On the turn things got even better as the J of spades rolled off. Now I had the nuts and my opponent was almost certain to be drawing stone cold dead. I figured my best chance to make anything off this hand was the check it back and hope he'd take a shot at it on the river as it wasn't likely that he had a hand that could call another bet. So when Mr. Forgettable checked, I quickly checked behind him.
The river rolled off the A of spades and to my delight, Mr. Forgettable bet out $110. I figured this was probably a bluff, but I was hoping he made a flush. I no longer had the nuts and I couldn't beat AK or AA, but I heavily discounted those hands because my opponent just called preflop initially and then just called my raise. I considered going really big with a raise to $500 thinking that he'd probably never fold a flush here given the turn action, but decided that $310 was a better bet. He paused for about 10 seconds and looked over at my chip stack twice. Then he said "All in." I didn't think too long and called for another $500 or so figuring he probably had either 22 or my turn check convinced him I was weak and he went for the super power bluff. He had AA too! Stupid ace on the river!
It turned out this guy had literally no raising range preflop. He limped in with KK twice and flopped sets both times! He also just called with AK, and every other hand he played. Zero raises or 3 bets preflop in the 6 hours I played with him. It was very odd.
This hand hit me pretty hard. I felt it in my chest. As I was pushing my chips in I had about $10 in $1 chips that I was crushing with a death grip in my left hand and the dealer had to remind me that those went in the pot as well when I called all in. I almost got up and left but I looked down at my phone and saw it was 6:02. It was still rush hour so I decided to stick it out a little longer and pulled out five $100 white chips from my pocket.
I won 2 of the next 5 pots neither of which was that exciting, but I had about $650 in front of me when I looked down a two red kings on the button. Two players limped in front of me and I made it $30 to go. The only caller was the guy just to my right who was a really good looking, sharp dressed dude in his late twenties or early thirties who was working on his laptop in between hands.
The flop came down QT6 all diamonds and Mr. Business checked to me. I bet out $45 and he called me fairly quickly. The turn was the 2 of clubs and I bet out $80 into the $160 pot. Again Mr. Business called. The river was magical - it was the A of diamonds making me the nuts! Even better Mr. Business lead out for $200 into the $320 pot. I had $496 left in my stack so my only move was all in, but I waited for maybe 25 seconds before shoving to make it seem like I wasn't so sure.
When he didn't fold instantly I knew he must have the J of diamonds. My main hope was that he thought I was still steaming from the KJ vs AA hand which had generated heavy discussion at the table. He even said "The only hand you could have with the K of diamonds in it is pocket kings." Eventually he picked up his cards and I saw he had K of clubs and J of diamonds. I thought he was going to toss them into the muck, but he eventually put chips in the pot and I showed him he had the right read but not the sense to trust it. Sweet, sweet ace on the river!
A couple of hands later I picked up AA and won $300 on that hand. It felt like it had been about 45 minutes since my KJ full house disaster, but I looked at my phone at it was 6:17. 15 minutes before I'd been almost ready to leave an $800 loser on the day and now I was up $300. I stayed until 8:45 and left with a $600 win.
On the first hand I raised KQ of diamonds to $25 in middle position over a $5 limper, got called by the button and the big blind made it $90 to go. I've played with this guy more than 10 times in the past 6 months and he's somewhere between OK and good. I don't see too many holes in his game other than he calls people down too lite, but I don't ever see him leave with big stacks of chips either. Also he looks like a serial killer.
KQ is a significant underdog to his 3 betting range which is probably TT+ and AQ+, but I was suited, had position and was getting a little better than 2 to 1 pot odds, so I called. The other dude in the pot folded and the flop came down T 8 4 all diamonds giving me a flush. Hooray! It's pretty rare to flop a flush and given that my opponent had a little less than 2X the pot left in his stack there was a decent chance we'd get it all in.
Mr. Serial Killer bet out $95 and I just called hoping he'd go all in on the turn no matter what he had. The turn paired the 4 which I didn't love, but was most likely irrelevant and as expected Mr. Serial Killer moved all in for $307. I snap called and the river was the A of clubs. I was hyper focused on not wanting a 4 or a diamond to come, but I showed my hand first and as Mr. Serial Killer rolled over his hand (showing zero emotion) I knew he had AA before I even saw the fronts of the cards. It turned out he had the ace of diamonds and the ace of spades so I was in fact needing to fade a diamond and a 4 as well as the ace. Stupid ace on the river!
The next hand was even more dramatic. I was in for a total of $800 on the day sitting on a stack of about $850 when two players to my right limped in for $5. I looked down at KJ off and made it $30 to go. The first limper who had a little over $900 in his stack made the call and the other guy folded. This guy was a fortyish Asian guy that I didn't recognize. In the hour or two he'd been at the table he'd been utterly forgettable.
The flop came down KK2 with one spade and Mr. Forgettable checked to me. I bet out $25 which is a really small bet into a roughly $70 pot but I wanted him to come along with pocket pairs or whatever he might have. Betting small like this when you have the goods also allows you to bet small when you don't have shit on similar boards and not give anything away to anyone who happens to be paying attention.
On the turn things got even better as the J of spades rolled off. Now I had the nuts and my opponent was almost certain to be drawing stone cold dead. I figured my best chance to make anything off this hand was the check it back and hope he'd take a shot at it on the river as it wasn't likely that he had a hand that could call another bet. So when Mr. Forgettable checked, I quickly checked behind him.
The river rolled off the A of spades and to my delight, Mr. Forgettable bet out $110. I figured this was probably a bluff, but I was hoping he made a flush. I no longer had the nuts and I couldn't beat AK or AA, but I heavily discounted those hands because my opponent just called preflop initially and then just called my raise. I considered going really big with a raise to $500 thinking that he'd probably never fold a flush here given the turn action, but decided that $310 was a better bet. He paused for about 10 seconds and looked over at my chip stack twice. Then he said "All in." I didn't think too long and called for another $500 or so figuring he probably had either 22 or my turn check convinced him I was weak and he went for the super power bluff. He had AA too! Stupid ace on the river!
It turned out this guy had literally no raising range preflop. He limped in with KK twice and flopped sets both times! He also just called with AK, and every other hand he played. Zero raises or 3 bets preflop in the 6 hours I played with him. It was very odd.
This hand hit me pretty hard. I felt it in my chest. As I was pushing my chips in I had about $10 in $1 chips that I was crushing with a death grip in my left hand and the dealer had to remind me that those went in the pot as well when I called all in. I almost got up and left but I looked down at my phone and saw it was 6:02. It was still rush hour so I decided to stick it out a little longer and pulled out five $100 white chips from my pocket.
I won 2 of the next 5 pots neither of which was that exciting, but I had about $650 in front of me when I looked down a two red kings on the button. Two players limped in front of me and I made it $30 to go. The only caller was the guy just to my right who was a really good looking, sharp dressed dude in his late twenties or early thirties who was working on his laptop in between hands.
The flop came down QT6 all diamonds and Mr. Business checked to me. I bet out $45 and he called me fairly quickly. The turn was the 2 of clubs and I bet out $80 into the $160 pot. Again Mr. Business called. The river was magical - it was the A of diamonds making me the nuts! Even better Mr. Business lead out for $200 into the $320 pot. I had $496 left in my stack so my only move was all in, but I waited for maybe 25 seconds before shoving to make it seem like I wasn't so sure.
When he didn't fold instantly I knew he must have the J of diamonds. My main hope was that he thought I was still steaming from the KJ vs AA hand which had generated heavy discussion at the table. He even said "The only hand you could have with the K of diamonds in it is pocket kings." Eventually he picked up his cards and I saw he had K of clubs and J of diamonds. I thought he was going to toss them into the muck, but he eventually put chips in the pot and I showed him he had the right read but not the sense to trust it. Sweet, sweet ace on the river!
A couple of hands later I picked up AA and won $300 on that hand. It felt like it had been about 45 minutes since my KJ full house disaster, but I looked at my phone at it was 6:17. 15 minutes before I'd been almost ready to leave an $800 loser on the day and now I was up $300. I stayed until 8:45 and left with a $600 win.
Thursday, May 03, 2018
Two Pocket Kings Hands and Modern Poker Thinking
I've played 3 cash game sessions since my last post and ran into two interesting spots with pocket kings.
The first hand was at Bay 101 at $2/$3/$5 (at most places in the bay area there is a $2 blind on the button at this level in addition to the $3 small blind and $5 big blind) with a $500 max buy in. I was off to a good start sitting on an $1,100 stack in a great game on Friday afternoon.
In the hand in question, three people called for $5, I looked down at KK and made it $30 to go in the hijack. The cutoff and button both called, the blinds and the first two callers folded and then to my surprise the 3rd caller made it $230 to go out of his $640 stack leaving him with $410 left.
Some of you might remember that I had a spot in the recent $630 tournament at Lucky Chances where I got dealt KK, someone limp re-raised me, I was pretty sure he had AA and that is what he had.
This spot may seem similar, but it is totally different. The biggest difference is that this guy was the third one in the pot. If people are going to limp re-raise they're typically the first one in. If other players have shown some interest in the pot the player with AA will almost always just come in for a raise. Secondly, in the tournament I made it 500 to go and the player with AA made it 1,200. That is begging for a call. Going from $30 to $230 is clearly trying to blow everyone else out of the pot to pick up the $115 that's already out there.
This looked like a clear case of someone calling with a hand like 88 or 99 and then getting aggressive with it in the heat of battle rather than a well thought out plan. After a short pause, I moved all in and despite the fact that I was almost positive his hand was kind of marginal, I fully expected him to call. People don't three bet 1/3 of their stack and then fold preflop no matter how bad it looks for them.
As expected he called and then he asked me if I wanted to run it twice. This is a common thing at the higher stakes (much less common at the $5 big blind level) where if both parties agree they will run out a river, or a turn and river, or in this case the whole board multiple times and half the pot will be awarded to the winner of each run out. At Bay 101 the rule is that the pot has to be more than $1,000 and all of the action has to be complete (i.e. an all in and a call) before players can discuss running it twice. The point of it is to reduce some of your variance and also it's fun!
My policy has generally been to say yes anytime someone wants to run it twice. The downside here if my opponent did have something like 99 would be that he'd have 10 shots to hit a 9 instead of 5, but the upside would be that the chances of him hitting a 9 (or otherwise making some miracle straight or flush) BOTH times would be extremely remote.
So we agreed to run it twice and my opponent turned over AK! This was a much stronger hand than I expected, but I was still a 70/30 favorite.
The first flop came out J 7 3 which was a perfectly fine flop, but an A came on the turn followed by a 2 on the river. At this point I was pissed about the first run out, but thrilled that we'd agreed to run it twice as if we'd only run it once the whole $1,300+ pot would be headed to my opponent. Now with one A gone I was a huge favorite on the second run out.
The second flop came out 9 5 2 which was also a perfectly fine flop. The turn was a 3 and I thought "Oh shit, he picked up a wheel draw. This is never easy." At that same moment my opponent stood up and said "Put a four out there! Four! Four!" The river was a 4 and I lost both run outs. This was extremely annoying.
Not annoying was the fact that I won the next pot along with plenty of others and left a $1,200 winner on the night.
In the other hand in question I was at the Matrix but still playing $2/$3/$5. An early position player with about $500 in his stack made it $20 to go and got one call. I was in the big blind with KK (one heart and one spade). I made it $90 to go and only the raiser called. The flop came down A T 5 with the AT of diamonds and the 4 of hearts.
This is not a good flop for my hand and I am out of position so I'm in a tough spot. But this is a good example of how high level modern poker players look at things compared to how every TV show and movie would have you believe it works or even how players of the 80's and 90's might look at it.
In the movies I'd just look at him and his lip would curl or he'd be holding his breath or he'd blink too slow and I would know what he had. Of course he'd either have AA or something like 85 off suit and never ever have anything in between. Also I'd never be the one betting and deciding how much to bet, he'd just be all in and I'd use my super limp curl reading to nail his ass!
I was born in 1980 so I can't say for sure that this is how players in the 80's and 90's thought, but it seemed like they'd look at the preflop raise, and the call, put the villain on a specific hand that was most likely given the information they had and then play the hand as if their opponent had that hand. Of course they'd revise as things went along, but they'd pick one hand and target that. You'll still hear plenty of amateur players these days justifying their play by saying things like "I put him on AK" or some other exact hand.
The modern way to look at it is put your opponent on a weighted range of hands and take a course of action that is best against that range. In this case, I think this opponent after raising to $20 and just calling the $90 probably has 99, TT, JJ, QQ, AK, AQ suited, KQ suited, QJ suited, or JT suited. That's 9 different hands, but I can't just say there is a 1 in 9 chance that he has any one of them because some occur more frequently than others due to the nature of card combinations and the fact that some cards are on the board or in my hand and thus can't be in his hand. There are 6 ways to make a pair, (Club/Diamond, Club/Heart, Club/Spade, Heart/Diamond, Heart/Spade, and Diamond Spade), 4 ways to make a suited hand (one for each suit), and 16 ways to make an off suit hand. We refer to these as combinations or combos.
I can split this into hands I'm worried about and hands I'm not.
Worried about:
AK - 6 combos (We start with 16, but with an ace on the board and two K's in my hand only 6 remain)
AQs - 4 combos
TT - 3 combos
KQ or QJ of diamonds - 2 combos
Not Worried about:
QQ - 6 combos
JJ - 6 combos
99- 6 combos
JTs - 3 combos
KQs or QJs NOT diamonds - 6 combos
That leaves me with about 15 combos I'm worried about and 27 I'm not. So what do I do? Well, the worrying combos are never folding no matter how much I bet and the not worrying ones are probably all folding to any bet. So the answer is to bet relatively small so you lose the least against the bad hands and you don't just give up and let your opponent bet and win with whatever they have.
How do I know that he only has the above combos and not something else? Experience! I'm not looking at his limp curling or his goosebumps, but I know what types of hands people show up with in this spot in general and have observed that there is no reason to believe that this specific opponent would deviate from what is standard for players at this level. There are players where their range here could be any pair, AT+, any suited ace, or suited connectors, but not this dude.
Could he have something else? Sure! There is always a random spaz factor but other than AA or maybe AJ suited I've accounted for everything that's not folding and I can heavily discount those hands. Everything he might have is folding to a bet.
Did I think all this through at the table? Hell no! One of the reasons for writing this post is to rethink it though in great detail, but in the moment I thought "He probably has as many combos of pairs as Ax so I have to bet and I should use small sizing because all the pairs are folding no matter what I make it." Did I figure this stuff out on my own? Hell no! I've piggy backed on the analysis of people way smarter than me.
Back to the hand! $200 in the pot, board of AT5, I settled on betting $80 on the flop and he called. At this point I was ready to give him credit for an ace and just give up. But then a miracle happened! The turn was a the K of clubs! I figured if I checked here it would look like I had QQ or JJ and was giving up so I checked.
In the span of less than 2 seconds I checked, my opponent moved all in for $330, I called and he rolled over QJ of hearts! ACK! He turned a straight! The table said "OHHHHHHH!" Then I turned over my hand and they said "OHHHHHHH!" Then the river paired the 5 making me a full house! "OHHHHHHHHHH!" NOICE!
I really like doing this kind of analysis of the combinations after the fact because it helps me in the moment to have an intuitive sense of how things balance out. Also on occasion if I'm facing a huge decision I can crank through an approximation of this in a minute or two at the table, but my lip curls while I do it.
The first hand was at Bay 101 at $2/$3/$5 (at most places in the bay area there is a $2 blind on the button at this level in addition to the $3 small blind and $5 big blind) with a $500 max buy in. I was off to a good start sitting on an $1,100 stack in a great game on Friday afternoon.
In the hand in question, three people called for $5, I looked down at KK and made it $30 to go in the hijack. The cutoff and button both called, the blinds and the first two callers folded and then to my surprise the 3rd caller made it $230 to go out of his $640 stack leaving him with $410 left.
Some of you might remember that I had a spot in the recent $630 tournament at Lucky Chances where I got dealt KK, someone limp re-raised me, I was pretty sure he had AA and that is what he had.
This spot may seem similar, but it is totally different. The biggest difference is that this guy was the third one in the pot. If people are going to limp re-raise they're typically the first one in. If other players have shown some interest in the pot the player with AA will almost always just come in for a raise. Secondly, in the tournament I made it 500 to go and the player with AA made it 1,200. That is begging for a call. Going from $30 to $230 is clearly trying to blow everyone else out of the pot to pick up the $115 that's already out there.
This looked like a clear case of someone calling with a hand like 88 or 99 and then getting aggressive with it in the heat of battle rather than a well thought out plan. After a short pause, I moved all in and despite the fact that I was almost positive his hand was kind of marginal, I fully expected him to call. People don't three bet 1/3 of their stack and then fold preflop no matter how bad it looks for them.
As expected he called and then he asked me if I wanted to run it twice. This is a common thing at the higher stakes (much less common at the $5 big blind level) where if both parties agree they will run out a river, or a turn and river, or in this case the whole board multiple times and half the pot will be awarded to the winner of each run out. At Bay 101 the rule is that the pot has to be more than $1,000 and all of the action has to be complete (i.e. an all in and a call) before players can discuss running it twice. The point of it is to reduce some of your variance and also it's fun!
My policy has generally been to say yes anytime someone wants to run it twice. The downside here if my opponent did have something like 99 would be that he'd have 10 shots to hit a 9 instead of 5, but the upside would be that the chances of him hitting a 9 (or otherwise making some miracle straight or flush) BOTH times would be extremely remote.
So we agreed to run it twice and my opponent turned over AK! This was a much stronger hand than I expected, but I was still a 70/30 favorite.
The first flop came out J 7 3 which was a perfectly fine flop, but an A came on the turn followed by a 2 on the river. At this point I was pissed about the first run out, but thrilled that we'd agreed to run it twice as if we'd only run it once the whole $1,300+ pot would be headed to my opponent. Now with one A gone I was a huge favorite on the second run out.
The second flop came out 9 5 2 which was also a perfectly fine flop. The turn was a 3 and I thought "Oh shit, he picked up a wheel draw. This is never easy." At that same moment my opponent stood up and said "Put a four out there! Four! Four!" The river was a 4 and I lost both run outs. This was extremely annoying.
Not annoying was the fact that I won the next pot along with plenty of others and left a $1,200 winner on the night.
In the other hand in question I was at the Matrix but still playing $2/$3/$5. An early position player with about $500 in his stack made it $20 to go and got one call. I was in the big blind with KK (one heart and one spade). I made it $90 to go and only the raiser called. The flop came down A T 5 with the AT of diamonds and the 4 of hearts.
This is not a good flop for my hand and I am out of position so I'm in a tough spot. But this is a good example of how high level modern poker players look at things compared to how every TV show and movie would have you believe it works or even how players of the 80's and 90's might look at it.
In the movies I'd just look at him and his lip would curl or he'd be holding his breath or he'd blink too slow and I would know what he had. Of course he'd either have AA or something like 85 off suit and never ever have anything in between. Also I'd never be the one betting and deciding how much to bet, he'd just be all in and I'd use my super limp curl reading to nail his ass!
I was born in 1980 so I can't say for sure that this is how players in the 80's and 90's thought, but it seemed like they'd look at the preflop raise, and the call, put the villain on a specific hand that was most likely given the information they had and then play the hand as if their opponent had that hand. Of course they'd revise as things went along, but they'd pick one hand and target that. You'll still hear plenty of amateur players these days justifying their play by saying things like "I put him on AK" or some other exact hand.
The modern way to look at it is put your opponent on a weighted range of hands and take a course of action that is best against that range. In this case, I think this opponent after raising to $20 and just calling the $90 probably has 99, TT, JJ, QQ, AK, AQ suited, KQ suited, QJ suited, or JT suited. That's 9 different hands, but I can't just say there is a 1 in 9 chance that he has any one of them because some occur more frequently than others due to the nature of card combinations and the fact that some cards are on the board or in my hand and thus can't be in his hand. There are 6 ways to make a pair, (Club/Diamond, Club/Heart, Club/Spade, Heart/Diamond, Heart/Spade, and Diamond Spade), 4 ways to make a suited hand (one for each suit), and 16 ways to make an off suit hand. We refer to these as combinations or combos.
I can split this into hands I'm worried about and hands I'm not.
Worried about:
AK - 6 combos (We start with 16, but with an ace on the board and two K's in my hand only 6 remain)
AQs - 4 combos
TT - 3 combos
KQ or QJ of diamonds - 2 combos
Not Worried about:
QQ - 6 combos
JJ - 6 combos
99- 6 combos
JTs - 3 combos
KQs or QJs NOT diamonds - 6 combos
That leaves me with about 15 combos I'm worried about and 27 I'm not. So what do I do? Well, the worrying combos are never folding no matter how much I bet and the not worrying ones are probably all folding to any bet. So the answer is to bet relatively small so you lose the least against the bad hands and you don't just give up and let your opponent bet and win with whatever they have.
How do I know that he only has the above combos and not something else? Experience! I'm not looking at his limp curling or his goosebumps, but I know what types of hands people show up with in this spot in general and have observed that there is no reason to believe that this specific opponent would deviate from what is standard for players at this level. There are players where their range here could be any pair, AT+, any suited ace, or suited connectors, but not this dude.
Could he have something else? Sure! There is always a random spaz factor but other than AA or maybe AJ suited I've accounted for everything that's not folding and I can heavily discount those hands. Everything he might have is folding to a bet.
Did I think all this through at the table? Hell no! One of the reasons for writing this post is to rethink it though in great detail, but in the moment I thought "He probably has as many combos of pairs as Ax so I have to bet and I should use small sizing because all the pairs are folding no matter what I make it." Did I figure this stuff out on my own? Hell no! I've piggy backed on the analysis of people way smarter than me.
Back to the hand! $200 in the pot, board of AT5, I settled on betting $80 on the flop and he called. At this point I was ready to give him credit for an ace and just give up. But then a miracle happened! The turn was a the K of clubs! I figured if I checked here it would look like I had QQ or JJ and was giving up so I checked.
In the span of less than 2 seconds I checked, my opponent moved all in for $330, I called and he rolled over QJ of hearts! ACK! He turned a straight! The table said "OHHHHHHH!" Then I turned over my hand and they said "OHHHHHHH!" Then the river paired the 5 making me a full house! "OHHHHHHHHHH!" NOICE!
I really like doing this kind of analysis of the combinations after the fact because it helps me in the moment to have an intuitive sense of how things balance out. Also on occasion if I'm facing a huge decision I can crank through an approximation of this in a minute or two at the table, but my lip curls while I do it.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Project Phaser - Phase 1.4 (Lucky Chances $230 Turbo)
Another day, more Battle of the Bay! This time it was $230 buy in with 20 minute levels and we started with 200 entries and a 1st place prize of $12,600. My last tournament was the day before and it was a real grind as I played for 7 hours bookended by over an hour each way in rush hour traffic As a result I almost bailed on this one, but decided to stick it out. In the end I figured with the faster structure I'd probably go broke in time to beat rush hour or make the money.
4 levels in I was down to 17K from a 20K starting stack, but shortly after coming back from the first break I doubled up in a pretty standard way. I raised to 1,200 with QQ, got one caller, the big blind made it 4,500, I shoved for 17,000 and he called me with AK suited. The board ran out jack high and I was up to 35K!
Still in level 5 I had a flop that was pretty good for my hand but I misplayed it. I was on the button with 65 of clubs and the cutoff who was a very active big stack made it 900 to go with blinds of 200/400. I made the call and both blinds called as well. The flop came out 6 5 5! By pretty good I mean I hit the bat shit out of that flop!
The big blind fired out 1,600 and the raiser called. It's not often that you flop and full house and have multiway action and people betting into you and I wasn't really sure what to do. There were two diamonds on the board so this was a really draw heavy flop. I decided to just call and hope my opponents made something on the turn. When the 9 of diamonds rolled off I was hoping someone made a flush, but they both checked to me.
My big mistake was not betting here. If either villain had a 5 or a big diamond I get action for sure, but I checked kind of hoping one of them would have a diamond and hit it. The river was a total disaster - a black ace. If one of them did have a 5, A5 was the most likely and now I couldn't beat it. More importantly if someone had been hanging on with a pocket pair it was now only a bluff catcher. They checked to me, I bet 5K and they both quickly folded.
Over the next few levels I had a couple of big pair hands. On the first I raised KK to 2,500 and got one call. The flop came out 986 with two spades and I made a big bet of 7K into a 7,500 chip pot. My opponent moved all in for what I thought was about 17K or 18K and I called without hesitation. He rolled over JT with no spades, the board ran out 8 2 and I took it down. When I counted it down I discovered he actually made a 26K shove and maybe I should have thought a little longer before calling!
Doing a shitty job of visually inspecting a stack of chip and quickly tallying it is exactly the kind of problem that Phase 1 was geared toward helping me identify.
On the second big pair hand put a guy all in for 18K over his late position raise to 3,700. Unfortunately he had QQ and I didn't get any help.
The way this all shook out was I had 50K chips which was dead on average with 80 players left going in to the 1K/2K with 2K big blind ante blinds level.
In my first hand at a new table I got dealt KK again. This time I made it 16K to go over a 6K raise and my opponent went all in for 24K. Of course I called and I was bummed to see he had AA. But I finally got lucky and flopped a king! More bat shit flops!
My good luck continued in the next level. A player to my right limped in for 2,400 and I decided to just call with 99. Both blinds came along to the flop which came out a beautiful J 9 8 with two clubs. Not only did I have a set, but this board connects with a wide variety of hands so I'd almost certainly get some action. When the action got to the limper he casually chucked four 5K chips into the pot! A couple of hands earlier I'd raised this guy lite and he'd blown me off the hand with an all in so I was hoping he'd read me as a frequent bluffer. With that in mind I moved all in for 51K. He tanked for a long time before finally calling me with KJ no clubs.
I knew that more than half of the deck would have him drawing dead on the turn and his only way to win was a runner runner full house or straight. I was hoping for a deuce, but instead got the worst turn possible - a jack! At that point the guy to my left seeing that I'd made a full house, but clearly not thinking it through said "It's over!"I thought something to the effect of "Oh sweet lord! This son of a bitch has put the hex on me! Why would he say that I'm doomed!" As I've mentioned before I am not superstitious but to clarify I mean that in the sense that my actions don't change based on any superstitions and I believe 100% in randomness, but these thoughts do occur to me. Happily I was not forced to murder Mr. It's Over and I got the pot when the river was a meaningless 3.
I was up to 125K which was double average with 62 players left.
Generally the structure was really good in these tournaments with the exception of going from 1200/2400 to 2K/4K. That is a big jump and a full third of the field went broke in the 20 minutes of that level.
As we approached the money bubble I moved all in for 135K with AK over a raise to 22K and my opponent folded TT face up! Then while I was in the big blind at 5K/10K the small blind just called. He was an older guy with a 100K stack and as the cards were coming out I told myself that I was going to ship it dark if he just called.
Sometimes a tricky player might just call in the small blind as a trap, but I didn't think this guy was capable of that and I knew if he had a hand he'd be willing to go with this close to the money he'd raise it. When he called I was going to make a show of looking at my cards, but then I actually looked at one and it was a 7. Not wanting to look at the other one and find a 2 which might make me chicken out, I moved all in and after a slight hesitation, during which I discovered a nice wave of self doubt, he folded.
Now I was really rolling! I had 190K and was feeling great!
Then I had kind of medium sized hand go south and it was the beginning of the end. The most aggressive player at the table who had me covered made it 22K to go under the gun. I looked down at AJ and made the call. The flop came down K 8 8 and I was ready to surrender, but after I checked he quickly checked it back. In retrospect this was highly suspect as an aggressive player would bet a K high dry board close to 100% of the time vs the big blind. I should have continued my surrender, but I took a shot at it betting 35K into the 62K chip pot and my opponent snap moved all in. Drat! Hopefully this hand will stick with me (along with the 65 full house hand) and I'll avoid this easily avoidable mistake in the future.
I did managed to sneak into the money, but not before a fair stretch of getting no cards at an active table and paying a few costly rounds of blinds and antes.
In my last hand the blinds were up to 8K/16K and I got dealt KJ off under the gun with 85K in my stack. At this point the blinds and antes amounted to 40K per round so if I folded I'd be putting in half my stack over the next few hands and I thought I had enough to still have some fold equity. I moved all in and the player to my left immediately moved all in over the top. As per usual he had AK! You would think by reading this blog that people get dealt AK every other hand, but on a given hand each player has a 1 in 135 chance of getting AK. No miracles materialized and I was out in 16th.
16th place paid $360 so I made $130 on the day. It felt good to make the money, but it is annoying to be so close to winning thousands and to walk out with a min cash.
In the 4 Battle of the Bay tournaments I managed to get my starting 20K stack to 40K+, 100K+, 100K+ and 190K. That is a shitload of equity that I generated and it's a little frustrating to not really realize it to any significant degree, but it's a certainty that if I continue to put myself in a good position in the early and middle stages that I'll bring in a big result eventually. I'm really happy with how I'm playing lately.
My $10,000 bankroll is now at $10,670.
Next on my official schedule is Phase 3 which will be playing 5 tournaments on 5 consecutive days with buy ins of $350 to $550 at Bay 101 starting on May 14th. Although between now and then I will likely post about Phase 2 (playing some online tournaments), Phase 4 (my health and fitness goals for May) and Phase 5 (Playing a stupid long cash game session or two).
4 levels in I was down to 17K from a 20K starting stack, but shortly after coming back from the first break I doubled up in a pretty standard way. I raised to 1,200 with QQ, got one caller, the big blind made it 4,500, I shoved for 17,000 and he called me with AK suited. The board ran out jack high and I was up to 35K!
Still in level 5 I had a flop that was pretty good for my hand but I misplayed it. I was on the button with 65 of clubs and the cutoff who was a very active big stack made it 900 to go with blinds of 200/400. I made the call and both blinds called as well. The flop came out 6 5 5! By pretty good I mean I hit the bat shit out of that flop!
The big blind fired out 1,600 and the raiser called. It's not often that you flop and full house and have multiway action and people betting into you and I wasn't really sure what to do. There were two diamonds on the board so this was a really draw heavy flop. I decided to just call and hope my opponents made something on the turn. When the 9 of diamonds rolled off I was hoping someone made a flush, but they both checked to me.
My big mistake was not betting here. If either villain had a 5 or a big diamond I get action for sure, but I checked kind of hoping one of them would have a diamond and hit it. The river was a total disaster - a black ace. If one of them did have a 5, A5 was the most likely and now I couldn't beat it. More importantly if someone had been hanging on with a pocket pair it was now only a bluff catcher. They checked to me, I bet 5K and they both quickly folded.
Over the next few levels I had a couple of big pair hands. On the first I raised KK to 2,500 and got one call. The flop came out 986 with two spades and I made a big bet of 7K into a 7,500 chip pot. My opponent moved all in for what I thought was about 17K or 18K and I called without hesitation. He rolled over JT with no spades, the board ran out 8 2 and I took it down. When I counted it down I discovered he actually made a 26K shove and maybe I should have thought a little longer before calling!
Doing a shitty job of visually inspecting a stack of chip and quickly tallying it is exactly the kind of problem that Phase 1 was geared toward helping me identify.
On the second big pair hand put a guy all in for 18K over his late position raise to 3,700. Unfortunately he had QQ and I didn't get any help.
The way this all shook out was I had 50K chips which was dead on average with 80 players left going in to the 1K/2K with 2K big blind ante blinds level.
In my first hand at a new table I got dealt KK again. This time I made it 16K to go over a 6K raise and my opponent went all in for 24K. Of course I called and I was bummed to see he had AA. But I finally got lucky and flopped a king! More bat shit flops!
My good luck continued in the next level. A player to my right limped in for 2,400 and I decided to just call with 99. Both blinds came along to the flop which came out a beautiful J 9 8 with two clubs. Not only did I have a set, but this board connects with a wide variety of hands so I'd almost certainly get some action. When the action got to the limper he casually chucked four 5K chips into the pot! A couple of hands earlier I'd raised this guy lite and he'd blown me off the hand with an all in so I was hoping he'd read me as a frequent bluffer. With that in mind I moved all in for 51K. He tanked for a long time before finally calling me with KJ no clubs.
I knew that more than half of the deck would have him drawing dead on the turn and his only way to win was a runner runner full house or straight. I was hoping for a deuce, but instead got the worst turn possible - a jack! At that point the guy to my left seeing that I'd made a full house, but clearly not thinking it through said "It's over!"I thought something to the effect of "Oh sweet lord! This son of a bitch has put the hex on me! Why would he say that I'm doomed!" As I've mentioned before I am not superstitious but to clarify I mean that in the sense that my actions don't change based on any superstitions and I believe 100% in randomness, but these thoughts do occur to me. Happily I was not forced to murder Mr. It's Over and I got the pot when the river was a meaningless 3.
I was up to 125K which was double average with 62 players left.
Generally the structure was really good in these tournaments with the exception of going from 1200/2400 to 2K/4K. That is a big jump and a full third of the field went broke in the 20 minutes of that level.
As we approached the money bubble I moved all in for 135K with AK over a raise to 22K and my opponent folded TT face up! Then while I was in the big blind at 5K/10K the small blind just called. He was an older guy with a 100K stack and as the cards were coming out I told myself that I was going to ship it dark if he just called.
Sometimes a tricky player might just call in the small blind as a trap, but I didn't think this guy was capable of that and I knew if he had a hand he'd be willing to go with this close to the money he'd raise it. When he called I was going to make a show of looking at my cards, but then I actually looked at one and it was a 7. Not wanting to look at the other one and find a 2 which might make me chicken out, I moved all in and after a slight hesitation, during which I discovered a nice wave of self doubt, he folded.
Now I was really rolling! I had 190K and was feeling great!
Then I had kind of medium sized hand go south and it was the beginning of the end. The most aggressive player at the table who had me covered made it 22K to go under the gun. I looked down at AJ and made the call. The flop came down K 8 8 and I was ready to surrender, but after I checked he quickly checked it back. In retrospect this was highly suspect as an aggressive player would bet a K high dry board close to 100% of the time vs the big blind. I should have continued my surrender, but I took a shot at it betting 35K into the 62K chip pot and my opponent snap moved all in. Drat! Hopefully this hand will stick with me (along with the 65 full house hand) and I'll avoid this easily avoidable mistake in the future.
I did managed to sneak into the money, but not before a fair stretch of getting no cards at an active table and paying a few costly rounds of blinds and antes.
In my last hand the blinds were up to 8K/16K and I got dealt KJ off under the gun with 85K in my stack. At this point the blinds and antes amounted to 40K per round so if I folded I'd be putting in half my stack over the next few hands and I thought I had enough to still have some fold equity. I moved all in and the player to my left immediately moved all in over the top. As per usual he had AK! You would think by reading this blog that people get dealt AK every other hand, but on a given hand each player has a 1 in 135 chance of getting AK. No miracles materialized and I was out in 16th.
16th place paid $360 so I made $130 on the day. It felt good to make the money, but it is annoying to be so close to winning thousands and to walk out with a min cash.
In the 4 Battle of the Bay tournaments I managed to get my starting 20K stack to 40K+, 100K+, 100K+ and 190K. That is a shitload of equity that I generated and it's a little frustrating to not really realize it to any significant degree, but it's a certainty that if I continue to put myself in a good position in the early and middle stages that I'll bring in a big result eventually. I'm really happy with how I'm playing lately.
My $10,000 bankroll is now at $10,670.
Next on my official schedule is Phase 3 which will be playing 5 tournaments on 5 consecutive days with buy ins of $350 to $550 at Bay 101 starting on May 14th. Although between now and then I will likely post about Phase 2 (playing some online tournaments), Phase 4 (my health and fitness goals for May) and Phase 5 (Playing a stupid long cash game session or two).
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Project Phaser - Phase 1.3 (Another Lucky Chances $380)
We started on Wednesday with 261 entrants, $380 buy in, 30 minute levels, 24 spots in the money and a first place prize of $29,220.
If you read my last post you may remember that I went broke with A2 when I ran it into AK in a spot that was debatable (not bad per se, but literally debatable). The universe seemed intent on rubbing this in my face as I got dealt A2 off 5 times in the first 90 minutes.
We started with 20K chips again and after a fair start I had 24K coming back from the first break when I got into my first big hand of the day. With blinds of 200/400 and a single big blind ante of 400 chips I got dealt 33 and raised it to 1,200. This is a little on the aggressive side, but plan A is to have everyone fold and take down the blinds, plan B is to fire the flop and try to steal it and plan C is make the best hand. Anyway, I got one field caller and the flop came down 9 4 3!
When I hear big shot poker players talk about hands like this they almost always say "It was a pretty good flop for my hand" or some other such understatement. I on the other hand would characterize this as nailing the bat shit out of this flop!
With bottom set I bet out 2,000 into the 3,400 chip pot and my opponent raised me to 4,000! Ah ha! This guy did not seem like an especially creative type and I read this raise as either A9, T9, 98 or a pocket pair 55-88, TT or JJ. I decided to be cagey and just called. The turn was a 9 which meant that he picked up some outs if he had a 9 or a pocket pair, but I was sure to get it all in if he happened to have a 9. I checked the turn and he bet out 6,000. I looked down at my stack and saw I had about 19K left. Against an aggressive player, just calling and hoping he'd fire the river would be an OK plan, but this guy seemed like a showdown monkey and I thought he'd check back the river if he didn't have a 9. So I shipped it all in and he quickly folded.
A few hands later I got dealt KK, some dude with AK moved all in for 7K and I took him out! Get out of here dude!
At this point I had 43K chips with 145 players left 3.5 hours after the tournament started.
I managed to work in a bluff at the 500/1000 level. I opened to 2,600 with 97 of spades and only the big blind called. The flop came down K84 with two diamonds and one spade. This was not a pretty good flop for me, but I bet out 3,500 trying to steal it. The big blind called and I figured he probably had a K or a flush draw. He had 13K left and my plan was to give up unless I picked up a straight flush draw with the J,T,6 or 5 of spades on the turn in which case I'd move all in. I explicitly thought exactly that in the moment. But then the turn rolled off the A of hearts and I thought "Oh yeah, if and ace comes I'd be a fool not to keep firing." I grabbed a stack of 5 5,000 chips (which was overkill) and plopped them in the middle. My opponent grumbled about how he should have raised the flop while throwing his cards in the muck. The next day I saw him and he asked me about the hand and I admitted I was bluffing.
A little later with blinds of 800/1600 I opened to 4,500 in the cutoff with 99 and the button moved all in for 27,000! Against an aggressive opponent this would be a pretty quick call, but my opponent was a younger woman who seemed straightforward and a little timid. If she had an over pair I'd be a 4 to 1 underdog, but after counting down my own stack and seeing that I'd have 45K left even if I called and lost I decided to was worth the risk. To my delight the board ran out 8765T and I beat AJ.
5 hours in to the tournament I had 110K chips with 82 players left and the average stack was 63K. This was an excellent situation!
Then I ended up with a totally awful table dynamic. I got squeezed between two good players who were making a lot of moves and both had a lot of chips. The way to beat this type of player is usually to make a good hand, play it passively and call them down, but I was getting total shit.
Also around this time "Bay Area Legend" Pay Lyons got moved to my table. Pat is most notable for winning the Arizona State Poker Champion ship for about $260,000 this past April and then two weeks later for winning a $4,000 buy in world poker tour event for $650,000. He was also wearing a World Series of Poker Circuit Event winner's ring. All of this is obviously very legit. But I'm going to throw some shade at him anyway!
My memories of him are as being part of this small group of dudes, who seemed like a bunch of goofs to me, that seemed to be friends, were loud and kind of smug and were at every Lucky Chances tournament. I thought of them as "Those Lucky Chances Guys" in my head because they were there EVERY SINGLE TIME I went to Lucky Chances. I always wondered what they did for a living because they seemed like break even players at best to me.
Pat seemed kind of like the ring leader and one thing I can say for sure is that dude was poker obsessed. After he went broke he'd hang around to see what happened in the tournament! No one does this. To his credit he always seemed to be enjoying himself no matter what. On the flip side I once saw someone offer him $20 in all seriousness to "Shut the fuck up" when he was hanging around the final table of a totally meaningless $150 daily tournament at the Oaks (at midnight on a weekday!) after going broke.
My memories and impressions are all 10+ years old at this point, but when I saw that he won the Arizona tournament I thought "Holy shit! THAT guy just won $260K!" and I couldn't believe he followed it up with an even better win.
One of my favorite songs lately is "The Man" by The Killers that has an fantastic video. Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3xcybdis1k
When the video starts it looks like the main guy is an awesome guy. He's hanging out in Vegas looking tough, with beautiful women singing about how he is the man! Sweet! But as it goes on you realize that he was also looking tough outside a mobile home, cooking a steak on a grill with just a fork, checking his hair in a busted mirror, shooting a can from 10 feet away while feeling pleased (i.e. proud of such and easy shot) and watching VHS tapes in a shitty hotel room. You start to think, maybe this guy ISN'T The Man? Then you see him performing and people yawning. People wouldn't yawn the actual man would they?! Then the beautiful women leave. Finally he's playing roulette and losing horribly to the point where he bets his car. This guy is NOT THE MAN AT ALL! I think this is all brilliant.
I always assumed Pat was kind of like that guy in the video where he was walking around thinking "I'm the man! I'm the man! I got news for you baby you're looking at the man!" but in reality not so much The Man as not the man at all. With this in mind you can imagine how my eyes bugged out when I saw his results.
Anyway, congrats to Pat on his success (I might be shouting boo here, but as they say, they don't boo nobody's) and on to my failure!
I got totally stalled for close to 2 hours as the blinds went from 800/1600 to 1K/2K to 1200/2400 to 2K/4K and finally to 3K/6K.
At this point I still had 90K left despite no real hands of note, but with blinds of 3K/6K and a 6K ante it was costing me 15K every orbit and if I didn't do something soon I'd be toast.
On my first big blind of that level I threw 6K into the middle for the ante, posted 6K for the big blind and had 78K left behind. To my surprise the under the gun player called, the cutoff called and the button called. All these calls were highly unusual this late in a tournament.
I looked around and oddly all of the callers seemed to have about 50K in their stacks. With all of those calls there was now 33K in the pot and I decided if I looked down at anything remotely strong I had to try to steal it. I had enough in my stack that if I got called and lost I'd still have some chips left and if they were't raising they really shouldn't want to call off their whole stack. When I pealed back my cards I had A5 of diamonds which was plenty good to shove, but the stupid small blind beat me to it moving all in for about 50K! I actually considered calling here. I'd have to put in 46K to win 80K which is a good price and this guy could be on a total steal, but I decided that was too loose. I folded, one of the players in the field who had inexplicably limped with AJ made the call, the raiser showed KQ and the board ran out K high...with three diamonds! Ack!
On the next hand I was in the small blind with 75K left. The button inexplicably just called the 6K. Every now and then someone will limp on the button with a big hand to try to induce a raise, but my read on this guy was he just didn't know what the hell he was doing and probably had JT suited or something similar. I looked down at A2 and moved all in expecting to pick up with 21K in the pot without a fight. To my shock and horror the big blind instantly went all in behind me.
At this point I took a closer look at the situation and had a horrible sinking feeling. I had A of diamonds and 2 of clubs which was exactly the hand I'd gone broke with in my last event. There were 44 players left. I got 44th place last time. I lost to AK last time. This time the damn button folded KJ face up and it turned out the big blind had, you guessed it, AK! The board ran out garbage and I was out in 44th again with A2. It shouldn't matter, but the exact repetition of the situation added an extra sting to the loss.
My $10,000 bankroll is at $10,540. Next up is $230 Turbo No Limit at Lucky Chances.
If you read my last post you may remember that I went broke with A2 when I ran it into AK in a spot that was debatable (not bad per se, but literally debatable). The universe seemed intent on rubbing this in my face as I got dealt A2 off 5 times in the first 90 minutes.
We started with 20K chips again and after a fair start I had 24K coming back from the first break when I got into my first big hand of the day. With blinds of 200/400 and a single big blind ante of 400 chips I got dealt 33 and raised it to 1,200. This is a little on the aggressive side, but plan A is to have everyone fold and take down the blinds, plan B is to fire the flop and try to steal it and plan C is make the best hand. Anyway, I got one field caller and the flop came down 9 4 3!
When I hear big shot poker players talk about hands like this they almost always say "It was a pretty good flop for my hand" or some other such understatement. I on the other hand would characterize this as nailing the bat shit out of this flop!
With bottom set I bet out 2,000 into the 3,400 chip pot and my opponent raised me to 4,000! Ah ha! This guy did not seem like an especially creative type and I read this raise as either A9, T9, 98 or a pocket pair 55-88, TT or JJ. I decided to be cagey and just called. The turn was a 9 which meant that he picked up some outs if he had a 9 or a pocket pair, but I was sure to get it all in if he happened to have a 9. I checked the turn and he bet out 6,000. I looked down at my stack and saw I had about 19K left. Against an aggressive player, just calling and hoping he'd fire the river would be an OK plan, but this guy seemed like a showdown monkey and I thought he'd check back the river if he didn't have a 9. So I shipped it all in and he quickly folded.
A few hands later I got dealt KK, some dude with AK moved all in for 7K and I took him out! Get out of here dude!
At this point I had 43K chips with 145 players left 3.5 hours after the tournament started.
I managed to work in a bluff at the 500/1000 level. I opened to 2,600 with 97 of spades and only the big blind called. The flop came down K84 with two diamonds and one spade. This was not a pretty good flop for me, but I bet out 3,500 trying to steal it. The big blind called and I figured he probably had a K or a flush draw. He had 13K left and my plan was to give up unless I picked up a straight flush draw with the J,T,6 or 5 of spades on the turn in which case I'd move all in. I explicitly thought exactly that in the moment. But then the turn rolled off the A of hearts and I thought "Oh yeah, if and ace comes I'd be a fool not to keep firing." I grabbed a stack of 5 5,000 chips (which was overkill) and plopped them in the middle. My opponent grumbled about how he should have raised the flop while throwing his cards in the muck. The next day I saw him and he asked me about the hand and I admitted I was bluffing.
A little later with blinds of 800/1600 I opened to 4,500 in the cutoff with 99 and the button moved all in for 27,000! Against an aggressive opponent this would be a pretty quick call, but my opponent was a younger woman who seemed straightforward and a little timid. If she had an over pair I'd be a 4 to 1 underdog, but after counting down my own stack and seeing that I'd have 45K left even if I called and lost I decided to was worth the risk. To my delight the board ran out 8765T and I beat AJ.
5 hours in to the tournament I had 110K chips with 82 players left and the average stack was 63K. This was an excellent situation!
Then I ended up with a totally awful table dynamic. I got squeezed between two good players who were making a lot of moves and both had a lot of chips. The way to beat this type of player is usually to make a good hand, play it passively and call them down, but I was getting total shit.
Also around this time "Bay Area Legend" Pay Lyons got moved to my table. Pat is most notable for winning the Arizona State Poker Champion ship for about $260,000 this past April and then two weeks later for winning a $4,000 buy in world poker tour event for $650,000. He was also wearing a World Series of Poker Circuit Event winner's ring. All of this is obviously very legit. But I'm going to throw some shade at him anyway!
My memories of him are as being part of this small group of dudes, who seemed like a bunch of goofs to me, that seemed to be friends, were loud and kind of smug and were at every Lucky Chances tournament. I thought of them as "Those Lucky Chances Guys" in my head because they were there EVERY SINGLE TIME I went to Lucky Chances. I always wondered what they did for a living because they seemed like break even players at best to me.
Pat seemed kind of like the ring leader and one thing I can say for sure is that dude was poker obsessed. After he went broke he'd hang around to see what happened in the tournament! No one does this. To his credit he always seemed to be enjoying himself no matter what. On the flip side I once saw someone offer him $20 in all seriousness to "Shut the fuck up" when he was hanging around the final table of a totally meaningless $150 daily tournament at the Oaks (at midnight on a weekday!) after going broke.
My memories and impressions are all 10+ years old at this point, but when I saw that he won the Arizona tournament I thought "Holy shit! THAT guy just won $260K!" and I couldn't believe he followed it up with an even better win.
One of my favorite songs lately is "The Man" by The Killers that has an fantastic video. Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3xcybdis1k
When the video starts it looks like the main guy is an awesome guy. He's hanging out in Vegas looking tough, with beautiful women singing about how he is the man! Sweet! But as it goes on you realize that he was also looking tough outside a mobile home, cooking a steak on a grill with just a fork, checking his hair in a busted mirror, shooting a can from 10 feet away while feeling pleased (i.e. proud of such and easy shot) and watching VHS tapes in a shitty hotel room. You start to think, maybe this guy ISN'T The Man? Then you see him performing and people yawning. People wouldn't yawn the actual man would they?! Then the beautiful women leave. Finally he's playing roulette and losing horribly to the point where he bets his car. This guy is NOT THE MAN AT ALL! I think this is all brilliant.
I always assumed Pat was kind of like that guy in the video where he was walking around thinking "I'm the man! I'm the man! I got news for you baby you're looking at the man!" but in reality not so much The Man as not the man at all. With this in mind you can imagine how my eyes bugged out when I saw his results.
Anyway, congrats to Pat on his success (I might be shouting boo here, but as they say, they don't boo nobody's) and on to my failure!
I got totally stalled for close to 2 hours as the blinds went from 800/1600 to 1K/2K to 1200/2400 to 2K/4K and finally to 3K/6K.
At this point I still had 90K left despite no real hands of note, but with blinds of 3K/6K and a 6K ante it was costing me 15K every orbit and if I didn't do something soon I'd be toast.
On my first big blind of that level I threw 6K into the middle for the ante, posted 6K for the big blind and had 78K left behind. To my surprise the under the gun player called, the cutoff called and the button called. All these calls were highly unusual this late in a tournament.
I looked around and oddly all of the callers seemed to have about 50K in their stacks. With all of those calls there was now 33K in the pot and I decided if I looked down at anything remotely strong I had to try to steal it. I had enough in my stack that if I got called and lost I'd still have some chips left and if they were't raising they really shouldn't want to call off their whole stack. When I pealed back my cards I had A5 of diamonds which was plenty good to shove, but the stupid small blind beat me to it moving all in for about 50K! I actually considered calling here. I'd have to put in 46K to win 80K which is a good price and this guy could be on a total steal, but I decided that was too loose. I folded, one of the players in the field who had inexplicably limped with AJ made the call, the raiser showed KQ and the board ran out K high...with three diamonds! Ack!
On the next hand I was in the small blind with 75K left. The button inexplicably just called the 6K. Every now and then someone will limp on the button with a big hand to try to induce a raise, but my read on this guy was he just didn't know what the hell he was doing and probably had JT suited or something similar. I looked down at A2 and moved all in expecting to pick up with 21K in the pot without a fight. To my shock and horror the big blind instantly went all in behind me.
At this point I took a closer look at the situation and had a horrible sinking feeling. I had A of diamonds and 2 of clubs which was exactly the hand I'd gone broke with in my last event. There were 44 players left. I got 44th place last time. I lost to AK last time. This time the damn button folded KJ face up and it turned out the big blind had, you guessed it, AK! The board ran out garbage and I was out in 44th again with A2. It shouldn't matter, but the exact repetition of the situation added an extra sting to the loss.
My $10,000 bankroll is at $10,540. Next up is $230 Turbo No Limit at Lucky Chances.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Project Phaser - Phase 1.2 (Lucky Chances $380)
While Sunday's tournament had Lucky Chances bursting at the seams, Monday's $380 buy in tournament had it looking like an average Friday afternoon, but on a Monday morning. We started with the same 20,000 chip starting stack, 30 minute levels, 100/100 blinds to start and eventually 227 entries.
Here is the big board with the prizes and such.
I had a couple of real hot shot big talkers at my first table. The Young Hot Shot talked about how he was happy he busted out early the day before because he went home and played a big tournament online, finished second and won however many thousands of dollars while the Old Hot Shot evidently made the final table in the $630 the day before. It didn't stop there as both continued popping off at the mouth about some other final tables they'd made and how soft some of these games are. These guys weren't friends or anything like that, the just shared the common ground of being big mouth hot shots. If you just listened to poker players talk you'd think that everyone was a winning player.
Poker is a game of information and before I'd seen these guys play a hand they'd given me huge head start on categorizing them and anticipating the types of plays they'd be capable of. I kept my mouth shut about my accomplishments and silently rooted against both of them.
To my delight both of them made asinine plays and went broke in the first hour that show a good counterpoint to how I play.
The Young Hot Shot limped in in early position for 100 with 64 suited, got raised by a guy who was very straightforward to 500, two other players called and they took the flop 4 ways. The flop came down 8 4 3 rainbow and Young Hot Shot bet out 2,000 (almost a full pot sized bet) with second pair into 3 opponents. The preflop raiser raised to 6,000 and another guy cold called. If you know how to hand read at all, major alarm bells will go off with that cold call. There are no draws on this board and the raiser has basically announced that he has a big pocket pair so what is that cold caller calling with? It has to be a huge hand. The turn came out a 6 and Young Hot Shot instantly shoved his two pair for about 14,000. The raiser foolishly called with QQ and so did the cold caller who had 33. The river was a K and Young Hot Shot headed back to the online tables.
I'm sure when he told the story to whoever or played it back to himself he said "I made two pair and ran into a set" instead of "I tried to do WAY too much in the first level calling out of positing with garbage preflop, then I made a hopeless bluff and ran into two big hands. But I didn't let that stop me from foolishly taking one off anyway drawing almost dead. When I got a miracle turn I made a bet that was almost sure to fold out any hands that I beat and get called by every hand that beat me. But seriously bro these games are so soft."
In Old Hot Shot's hand the dude who had the 33 in the last hand 3 bet from 800 to 2,400 and he called along with 3 others. The flop came down A J J rainbow, everyone else checked and Old Hot Shot bet 2500 into the 12,500 chips pot. Only the raiser called. The turn was a 5 and it went check, check. The river was a J and now the raiser bet 15,000 into the 17,500 pot and Old Hot Shot snap called him with his last 14,000 or so. The raiser showed an A and Old Hot Shot mucked saying "I made a full house, what could I do there." Well, you could not bet an underpair into 4 people and not call off your entire stack with a bluff catcher in a spot where someone is never bluffing?
Anyway I enjoyed seeing their smug asses hit the rail.
I got off to a pretty good start. In levels 2, 3 and 4 over I had one good hand in each level. I flopped top two with AK and again with KQ getting a little action with each and missed a flush draw with JT suited, but hit the J and was good. These weren't big pots but got me up to about 35K going into the first break. No where in there was limping with a garbage hand or trying some random bluff in a multiway pot!
I stayed between 30K and 40K for the next few hours as the field slowly caught and then passed me. I found just enough good spots to tread water, but I didn't put myself needlessly in danger with the marginal cards I was getting.
About 4 hours in I finally got a big pocket pair. With blinds of 500/1000 and one 1000 ante, the under the gun player who was a guy in his 70's with an 80K stack made it 3,500 to go. I was next to act, looked down at QQ and made it 9,000 to go leaving me with about 30K left in my stack. The dude to my left who looked like he was barely 21 and had about 22K in his stack went into a 45 second round of theatrics saying stuff like "This is so sick" and "I really just have one move here" and "I'm stuck." I was pretty sure this wasn't an act, but not 100% sure. It felt kind of like AK or JJ to me. Eventually he just called, which was a really odd move, but as soon as he did the other guy quickly moved all in!
I have with 99.9% certainty never intentionally folded KK (or AA) preflop and I almost never fold QQ preflop. I only specifically remember doing it a few times and I'm sure it's been less than 1% of the time over my career and is probably more like 1 time in 250. But this was a pretty clear fold. Ask anyone who has played poker at all what the old guy is raising under the gun and then 4 bet shoving over two people and they'll tell you it's AA or maybe KK and that's it.
So after 30 seconds to make sure I was really sure I folded, the young guy called, the old guy rolled over KK and the young guy had QQ also! I kept quiet and didn't tell him he was drawing totally dead! Meanwhile I patted myself on the back for getting away from a hand where most players would go broke and felt like I was playing with house money from that point on.
A couple of hands later I got a nice break. With blinds of 500/1000/1000 everyone folded to me in the small blind. The big blind only had about 9,000 and I put him all in with T7. This is questionable, but he's probably folding preflop 2/3 to 3/4 of the time and the rest of the time I'll usually be like a 65/35 or 60/40 underdog. Anyway, he snap called me with A4, but the flop came out J98! Zing!
At this point there were 82 players left with 21 spots paying and I had 38K which was about 2/3 of average.
I had some snacks with me but I was starting to get hungry for some real food. Lucky Chances has a full menu that you can order at the table, but I hate ordering food in tournaments. I'm not superstitious, but you can go broke at any time in a tournament and the idea of sitting there after busting waiting for food and then hastily gobbling it down sitting at an empty table sounds like the 7th circle of hell to me. Despite that I had to eat something so I ordered some Mongolian Beef and sure enough I put the hex on myself!
With blinds of 800/1600 and a 1600 ante, the under the gun player just called. This is highly unusual as usually at this point it's raise or fold first in preflop. The small blind called and I got a free look with 63 off suit. The flop came down K 4 3. And it checked around.
Right at this time my food arrived. I handed the waitress a $20 bill and my $5 food coupon and asked for some change. She responded like I'd handed her a cactus wearing a small sombrero. The turn came out a 6 making me two pair and without thinking too much about it I bet out 5,000. The under the gun player quickly called and the waitress and I tried to find some common ground. To me it looked like maybe this guy had limped in with AA and was putting on the big slow play or maybe checked back a king looking to squeeze out some action as it was a rainbow board without any reasonable draws. The river was a 9 which looked like a total blank and my opponent only had about 12K left so I moved all in. He snap called me and rolled over 99! ACK! Now that the hand was over the waitress understood perfectly what I wanted and easily made me change on the spot. Stupid cursed Mongolian Beef!
This had me down to 20K but then I won five small to medium hands in less than 30 minutes all at the 1K/2K blinds level 1) I made it 7K to go over a 2K limp with KK, got one caller, bet the flop and won 2) I moved all in for 30K over a 5K raise from the small blind with 66 and took it down 3) I just called in the small blind 4 ways with 97 suited, called a 4K bet on the turn and won at show down on a 5 J J 7 3 run out 4) I raised a 2K limper to 9K with TT and took it down 5) I picked up 12K vs a short stack who had A2 and ran into my JJ. Numbered lists!
After being stuck around 35K all day and down to 10 big blinds a little earlier I was up to 69K with 60 players left. I was feeling so good that I took a picture of my chips!
Then I got into a tight spot. With blinds up to 1200/2400 with a 2400 ante I made it 7K to go from the cutoff with AT and the big blind moved all in for 29K. AT was almost certainly not the best hand here, but I was getting a good price. Specifically I had to call 22K to win 39.6K. I'd be about a 70/30 underdog against a hand like AK or QQ, but I'd only be a 55/45 dog against hands like 88 or 99 and a favorite against something like A9 suited or KQ suited. Probably I was in bad shape, but if there was a chance he was shoving small pairs I was getting the right price against his entire range of hands.
In the moment I took my time to count all the chips, figure out the exact pot odds I was getting and counted down my own stack to see I'd be left with 47K even if I called and lost. Usually if you're getting 2 to 1 pot odds preflop it's hard to fold and I decided the 1.9 to 1 I was getting was close enough. I called and my opponent proudly rolled over AQ. Uh oh. The flop came down 9 4 4 and I was thinking a chop would be nice. The turn was a 6 of spades putting 3 spades out there and I saw that my T was the only spade in play, but sadly the river was a red 3.
After 6 hours of play we took our third break and I came back to a 40K stack on the button with blinds of 2K/4K and a 4K ante. 49 players were left and average was 92K. I had 10 big blinds and it was going to cost me 10K a round in blinds and antes so I'd need to find something quick.
I folded 15 hands in a row none of which were even close and then I looked down at A2 in the hijack. This is close, but I think with 7.5 big blinds in the hijack any ace is good enough. I moved in and to my shock and horror the cutoff and then the button both instantly moved all in! It turned out I was up against AQ and AK. Oddly it's actually better for me to be up against two bigger aces than just one. In this case I was 20.0% to win an 4.4 % to tie but getting a little more than 3 to 1 on my money compared to 23.8% to win and 4.9% to tie getting a little more than 2 to 1 if I'd been just up against AK. Still a shitty spot though!
If I'd won, I would have had 100K exactly, but I bricked out and was eliminated in 44th place.
My $10,000 starting bankroll is at $10,920. Phase 1.3 is Wednesday and is another $380 event at Lucky Chances.
Here is the big board with the prizes and such.
I had a couple of real hot shot big talkers at my first table. The Young Hot Shot talked about how he was happy he busted out early the day before because he went home and played a big tournament online, finished second and won however many thousands of dollars while the Old Hot Shot evidently made the final table in the $630 the day before. It didn't stop there as both continued popping off at the mouth about some other final tables they'd made and how soft some of these games are. These guys weren't friends or anything like that, the just shared the common ground of being big mouth hot shots. If you just listened to poker players talk you'd think that everyone was a winning player.
Poker is a game of information and before I'd seen these guys play a hand they'd given me huge head start on categorizing them and anticipating the types of plays they'd be capable of. I kept my mouth shut about my accomplishments and silently rooted against both of them.
To my delight both of them made asinine plays and went broke in the first hour that show a good counterpoint to how I play.
The Young Hot Shot limped in in early position for 100 with 64 suited, got raised by a guy who was very straightforward to 500, two other players called and they took the flop 4 ways. The flop came down 8 4 3 rainbow and Young Hot Shot bet out 2,000 (almost a full pot sized bet) with second pair into 3 opponents. The preflop raiser raised to 6,000 and another guy cold called. If you know how to hand read at all, major alarm bells will go off with that cold call. There are no draws on this board and the raiser has basically announced that he has a big pocket pair so what is that cold caller calling with? It has to be a huge hand. The turn came out a 6 and Young Hot Shot instantly shoved his two pair for about 14,000. The raiser foolishly called with QQ and so did the cold caller who had 33. The river was a K and Young Hot Shot headed back to the online tables.
I'm sure when he told the story to whoever or played it back to himself he said "I made two pair and ran into a set" instead of "I tried to do WAY too much in the first level calling out of positing with garbage preflop, then I made a hopeless bluff and ran into two big hands. But I didn't let that stop me from foolishly taking one off anyway drawing almost dead. When I got a miracle turn I made a bet that was almost sure to fold out any hands that I beat and get called by every hand that beat me. But seriously bro these games are so soft."
In Old Hot Shot's hand the dude who had the 33 in the last hand 3 bet from 800 to 2,400 and he called along with 3 others. The flop came down A J J rainbow, everyone else checked and Old Hot Shot bet 2500 into the 12,500 chips pot. Only the raiser called. The turn was a 5 and it went check, check. The river was a J and now the raiser bet 15,000 into the 17,500 pot and Old Hot Shot snap called him with his last 14,000 or so. The raiser showed an A and Old Hot Shot mucked saying "I made a full house, what could I do there." Well, you could not bet an underpair into 4 people and not call off your entire stack with a bluff catcher in a spot where someone is never bluffing?
Anyway I enjoyed seeing their smug asses hit the rail.
I got off to a pretty good start. In levels 2, 3 and 4 over I had one good hand in each level. I flopped top two with AK and again with KQ getting a little action with each and missed a flush draw with JT suited, but hit the J and was good. These weren't big pots but got me up to about 35K going into the first break. No where in there was limping with a garbage hand or trying some random bluff in a multiway pot!
I stayed between 30K and 40K for the next few hours as the field slowly caught and then passed me. I found just enough good spots to tread water, but I didn't put myself needlessly in danger with the marginal cards I was getting.
About 4 hours in I finally got a big pocket pair. With blinds of 500/1000 and one 1000 ante, the under the gun player who was a guy in his 70's with an 80K stack made it 3,500 to go. I was next to act, looked down at QQ and made it 9,000 to go leaving me with about 30K left in my stack. The dude to my left who looked like he was barely 21 and had about 22K in his stack went into a 45 second round of theatrics saying stuff like "This is so sick" and "I really just have one move here" and "I'm stuck." I was pretty sure this wasn't an act, but not 100% sure. It felt kind of like AK or JJ to me. Eventually he just called, which was a really odd move, but as soon as he did the other guy quickly moved all in!
I have with 99.9% certainty never intentionally folded KK (or AA) preflop and I almost never fold QQ preflop. I only specifically remember doing it a few times and I'm sure it's been less than 1% of the time over my career and is probably more like 1 time in 250. But this was a pretty clear fold. Ask anyone who has played poker at all what the old guy is raising under the gun and then 4 bet shoving over two people and they'll tell you it's AA or maybe KK and that's it.
So after 30 seconds to make sure I was really sure I folded, the young guy called, the old guy rolled over KK and the young guy had QQ also! I kept quiet and didn't tell him he was drawing totally dead! Meanwhile I patted myself on the back for getting away from a hand where most players would go broke and felt like I was playing with house money from that point on.
A couple of hands later I got a nice break. With blinds of 500/1000/1000 everyone folded to me in the small blind. The big blind only had about 9,000 and I put him all in with T7. This is questionable, but he's probably folding preflop 2/3 to 3/4 of the time and the rest of the time I'll usually be like a 65/35 or 60/40 underdog. Anyway, he snap called me with A4, but the flop came out J98! Zing!
At this point there were 82 players left with 21 spots paying and I had 38K which was about 2/3 of average.
I had some snacks with me but I was starting to get hungry for some real food. Lucky Chances has a full menu that you can order at the table, but I hate ordering food in tournaments. I'm not superstitious, but you can go broke at any time in a tournament and the idea of sitting there after busting waiting for food and then hastily gobbling it down sitting at an empty table sounds like the 7th circle of hell to me. Despite that I had to eat something so I ordered some Mongolian Beef and sure enough I put the hex on myself!
With blinds of 800/1600 and a 1600 ante, the under the gun player just called. This is highly unusual as usually at this point it's raise or fold first in preflop. The small blind called and I got a free look with 63 off suit. The flop came down K 4 3. And it checked around.
Right at this time my food arrived. I handed the waitress a $20 bill and my $5 food coupon and asked for some change. She responded like I'd handed her a cactus wearing a small sombrero. The turn came out a 6 making me two pair and without thinking too much about it I bet out 5,000. The under the gun player quickly called and the waitress and I tried to find some common ground. To me it looked like maybe this guy had limped in with AA and was putting on the big slow play or maybe checked back a king looking to squeeze out some action as it was a rainbow board without any reasonable draws. The river was a 9 which looked like a total blank and my opponent only had about 12K left so I moved all in. He snap called me and rolled over 99! ACK! Now that the hand was over the waitress understood perfectly what I wanted and easily made me change on the spot. Stupid cursed Mongolian Beef!
This had me down to 20K but then I won five small to medium hands in less than 30 minutes all at the 1K/2K blinds level 1) I made it 7K to go over a 2K limp with KK, got one caller, bet the flop and won 2) I moved all in for 30K over a 5K raise from the small blind with 66 and took it down 3) I just called in the small blind 4 ways with 97 suited, called a 4K bet on the turn and won at show down on a 5 J J 7 3 run out 4) I raised a 2K limper to 9K with TT and took it down 5) I picked up 12K vs a short stack who had A2 and ran into my JJ. Numbered lists!
After being stuck around 35K all day and down to 10 big blinds a little earlier I was up to 69K with 60 players left. I was feeling so good that I took a picture of my chips!
Then I got into a tight spot. With blinds up to 1200/2400 with a 2400 ante I made it 7K to go from the cutoff with AT and the big blind moved all in for 29K. AT was almost certainly not the best hand here, but I was getting a good price. Specifically I had to call 22K to win 39.6K. I'd be about a 70/30 underdog against a hand like AK or QQ, but I'd only be a 55/45 dog against hands like 88 or 99 and a favorite against something like A9 suited or KQ suited. Probably I was in bad shape, but if there was a chance he was shoving small pairs I was getting the right price against his entire range of hands.
In the moment I took my time to count all the chips, figure out the exact pot odds I was getting and counted down my own stack to see I'd be left with 47K even if I called and lost. Usually if you're getting 2 to 1 pot odds preflop it's hard to fold and I decided the 1.9 to 1 I was getting was close enough. I called and my opponent proudly rolled over AQ. Uh oh. The flop came down 9 4 4 and I was thinking a chop would be nice. The turn was a 6 of spades putting 3 spades out there and I saw that my T was the only spade in play, but sadly the river was a red 3.
After 6 hours of play we took our third break and I came back to a 40K stack on the button with blinds of 2K/4K and a 4K ante. 49 players were left and average was 92K. I had 10 big blinds and it was going to cost me 10K a round in blinds and antes so I'd need to find something quick.
I folded 15 hands in a row none of which were even close and then I looked down at A2 in the hijack. This is close, but I think with 7.5 big blinds in the hijack any ace is good enough. I moved in and to my shock and horror the cutoff and then the button both instantly moved all in! It turned out I was up against AQ and AK. Oddly it's actually better for me to be up against two bigger aces than just one. In this case I was 20.0% to win an 4.4 % to tie but getting a little more than 3 to 1 on my money compared to 23.8% to win and 4.9% to tie getting a little more than 2 to 1 if I'd been just up against AK. Still a shitty spot though!
If I'd won, I would have had 100K exactly, but I bricked out and was eliminated in 44th place.
My $10,000 starting bankroll is at $10,920. Phase 1.3 is Wednesday and is another $380 event at Lucky Chances.
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