So I play tomorrow (Sunday). Looks like there's going to be around 800 players so probably over 2 million euros for first. I'm not ready to do tell you all about Monte Carlo yet because I didn't leave my room today. Last night was the PokerStars cocktail party which was a lot of fun. It seems like everyone is here, this tournament is just big. Anyways I ended up having a bit too much fun trying to take advantage of free drinks as opposed to $10+ drinks like anywhere else here. So today I just lied around and did nothing all afternoon. In the evening I played the Saturday afternoon EST tournaments to get my mind back on poker for tomorrow but had little luck. I also mixed in some cash games though and ran really well at those. I was up $22K at one point ($20K on one 25/50 table) but I lost a few big pots at the end to finish up only $13K. I haven't posted any cash hands in a while so here are some of the big pots from today:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425185 - I decided to slowplay preflop. It should still be fairly obvious I need a biggish hand to call here so I was pretty surprised to get paid off by such a weak hand.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425213 - His little minireraise was scary and I almost decided to play the hand more passively by just calling it. He was an unknown player to me who bought in fairly short and had run it up and on this site that usually means a fish. He didn't seem to be that bad though and passive players can definitely have AA or KK here a lot. I decided that it was likely enough he was just doing something stupid and would give me lots of money so I opted to just try to get it in preflop.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425200 - A very skillful hand on my part. Notice how I can win from either side of these races, with the AK or the pair, the sign of a real expert.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425254 - Here I mixed in a 3-bet bluff. It's hard to get action from worse hands on the flop having overrepresented my hand preflop so I check behind for pot control. This gives him the chance to bluff with worse hands and also lets me see some more cards to try to improve my hand if I happen to be beat. If he's slowplaying a big pair which is not all that unlikely and I make 2 pair or better I may win a huge pot instead of getting checkraised off my hand if I bet. I backdoor my flush and win a nice pot.
So I'm rolling along unable to lose a pot until these two hands at the very end of the session:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425308 - I'm never sure how to play the turn here. I usually just lead out but then if he raises me it's really ugly. I probably have to fold but it's not a fold I'm entirely comfortable making since it feels so weak. I decided to just check/call down and give him the chance to run a big multi-street bluff trying to represent a hand like AK. In particular once he bets big on the turn I'm very concerned he has a huge hand and I definitely am not going to raise him, but I certainly can't fold at any point.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2425343 - Just one of those gross hands. I don't think I can play it any other way but the queen is such a bad turn card, as soon as it hit I just had that feeling that I was about to lose a lot of money.
Anyways time to get some rest before I play tomorrow. Play starts at 1pm here so 7am EST. CardPlayer is here doing live coverage (www.cardplayer.com) so if you're bored that's probably the best place to check and see if they happen to have any updates about me.
Mike
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